If you are vegan and on instagram, I’m sure that you’ve seen the outrage at Tim Shieff’s insta post from yesterday. Now I try to live a very peaceful life where I do my best to just let people get on with their own shit, but occasionally I regress back into an angry outburst of rage and yesterday was one of those moments… Soz guys.
Who is Tim Shieff?
Ok so this post sums Tim up, he’s a vegan Ninja Warrior who is famous for promoting a vegan life style as an athlete, he also runs an ethical clothing company, ETHCS. So on the surface, a great vegan face.
What is a water fast and why am I annoyed about it?
A water fast is a period of time in which an individual stops consuming all food and only drinks water. Now that’s all good if you’ve had a heavy week of food and need to reset by maybe skipping breakfast, possibly even lunch too. But the water fast that is being advocated in this case is now an on-going 26 day water fast and he is using hashtags like #eatsunnotfood, this is completely beyond me. Here is the post that has everyone talking:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bks7H4In1cx/?taken-by=humantimothy
Here he is visibly thinner, which I have no problem whatsoever with – live you own life Tim. But what I want to say is that Tim has almost 90k followers on instagram – that is a buttload of people who are watching his every move. 26 days of a water fast IS starvation.
Starving your body is dangerous.
The lovely Becca from VeriteVegan shared some very honest thoughts on her story today that highlights why water fasting can be so fucking dangerous.
In a world where society thinks that the best version of you is a clean eating, healthy AF, 24/7 fun ball of energy, this kind of diet seems very irresponsible.
Tim seems like he’s forever chasing the next big thing, veganism now popular so last year being a fruitarian was the dogs balls, now he’s not eating at all, seriously, what could be next?
Why have I lost all respect for Tim?
Heather and I were talking about it and she decided to reach out to Tim in a very constructive manner and HE BLOCKED HER. While I am a huge supporter of blocking the nasty haters, this was not that kind of situation, I have seen so many people today claim that their comments have been removed and they’ve been blocked from his profile. See if I thought I’d found secret to a long happy life (who am I kidding, I have, it’s being vegan) I would be using these concerned comments as an opportunity to explain why fasting was so amazing… blocking and deleting is very misleading.
Now when you look through the comments on his post you see nothing but overwhelming support and positive vibes for his fasting (here he is at day 23… and at 25 explaining why he hasn’t stopped fasting yet – disclaimer candida doesn’t fuck everything up Tim and you can fix that imbalance, I did).
At this point, I have lost respect for Tim Shieff, he no longer stands for my brand of veganism (this fasting is NOT veganism) and he is certainly not dealing with his PR in a way that I can understand.
Anyways, all I’m really here to say is that it’s really important that everyone remembers that social media influencers are not nutritionists, they are not always specialists in their field and that if you’re changing your health you can make all of the difference with some hard work and real food. If you’re truly stuck then seek out a professional. Finally here’s a video from Andy at AG Fitness who I really respect because of his no nonsense attitude to fitness and weight loss (seriously, he sits and explains energy in, energy out with sweets) with his thoughts about water fasting.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bk5nz8JFV4y/?taken-by=agfitnesstraining
If all of that wasn’t enough, he’s a flat earther too:
Peace out Tim, it was nice while it lasted.
UPDATE
Tim is no longer vegan and again, not that you’d know about it from his Instagram…
And I am over him, and his ego. Now, finally, he doesn’t speak for veganism.
See ya!
Little Nibble 
Amen sista!! Very well put, exactly my thoughts too.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Food = good. Starvation = bad. Simple! Thanks for commenting.
LikeLike
This post is extremely disappointing. Please look into the benefits of fasting before criticising. I would have thought you would have more of an open mind, especially being vegan. This post reminds me of all the ignorant meat eaters in the world.
You may as well promote that too. Extended fasting has similar effects, if not better, than a plant based diet (however it is not a life style, it may be done perhaps once a year). Look into the actual facts and studies about it. They have used extended fasting in many nations for centuries as an alternatives to modern medications. It was also practiced by Jesus, Mohammed and Buddha.
P.s. nutritionists tell you to eat meat and dairy. Nutritionists and doctors are also taught through an education system that has been scripted by the meat and dairy industry – money talks.
These large organisations obviously aren’t going to promote fasting, as they do not promote plant based diets, as once again – money talks and you do not make money by curing people.
Lastly, starvation and fasting are not the same thing.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hello! I have done an awful lot of reading about fasting in light of this. For me, a lot of the issues I had with it was how he was promoting it as if it was going to cure everything and he was being very aggressive towards anyone who even questioned him, which I don’t think is a helpful method of explaining something to people. I have an open mind and used to intermittently fast and while I felt incredibly healthy, I severely messed up my hormone balance so for me, it’s not something I’d ever like to try again. Please don’t suggest that I promote meat eating, I have only been vegan for two years and I’m not fortunate enough to have had any vegan influences in my life until then so I feel that’s not a fair thing for you to say. I actually went vegan to start with for environmental reasons, not health, although I’m aware of the health benefits.
If there are any studies that you found particularly informative then please send them over to me, I wasn’t able to find anyone willing to share robust studies with me at the time, I just got a lot of abuse for being “an idiot”.
LikeLike
Yes Tim perhaps went a little far with his experiment. But please dont bash fasting when you have no personal experience. You might try it yourself, start with narrowing your feeding window and take it from there. You might find it helps you normalise your weight.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hey babe. I have tried it and while I did lose weight it really messed with my hormones and my relationship with food. Thanks for your constructive comment though, I love to talk about this stuff.
LikeLike