Young Black Couple Transform Bodies and Lives With Vegan Diet
Since adopting a raw, vegan diet in 2012, Andrew Scott is now 130 pounds and Ashley Renee Chong is 119 pounds.
When Andrew Scott lost a bunch of weight off his 5-foot-8, 230-pound body in two months in late 2012, the rumors and speculation swirled.
Was he sick? Was he taking drugs? What’s wrong with him?
But it was none of the above.
Earlier in the year, his girlfriend, Ashley Renee Chong, had researched ways to lose weight before her sister got married and pinpointed her approach: a raw vegan cleanse diet, which then led to a plant-based vegan diet.
“In all my research on health and nutrition, I kept hearing the same things over and over and it clicked. I knew I needed to try eating vegan,” says Chong, the American-born daughter of Jamaicans, her father being half Chinese and half African-American.
“At the time, the change was about losing weight, not being healthy.”
And it worked. The West Ashley High School graduate, who is now 23, has shed 130 pounds off her 5-foot-2 frame, going from 252 pounds to 119.
More Than Weight Loss
But she noticed even more significant benefits. She felt energized. Her skin cleared up and was more radiant. Her thinking seemed sharper and more focused.
Now a convert, she began “preaching” to the man she loved and with whom she is now engaged to be married.
At first, Andrew would have nothing of it.
The couple had enjoyed eating “the standard American diet” and their favorite place to go on a date was Wild Wings Cafe, where Andrew usually ordered “Drew’s Devilishly Delicious Fried Chicken Sandwich” that comes with a side of “big, fat fries.”
Andrew recalls his resistance. “When she first started doing her little things, nobody was listening to her, particularly me. I said to her, ‘You do your thing. I’m going to eat my meat. I wanted my Southern fried cooking,” recalls Andrew.
But Ashley kept at it, fixing rice and beans, and his resistance wore down.
“One day, something happened and it just clicked on. Once I made up my mind that going vegan was what I was going to do, I just dove in,” says Andrew, who started in October 2012, six months after Ashley did.
They both note their weight loss came without exercising, but that both have signed up to work out at a CrossFit box.
Read the full text of this article at Vegans gone viral: Young local couple turn heads with transformation
Category: Veganism and African Americans
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
They both look so much healthier–from hair down!