Ep 255 – From Poverty to Purpose: Dani’s Story

In this episode of Muscles by Brussels Radio, Dani shares her full journey, from growing up in a low-income household with poor nutrition habits to becoming a leader in vegan fitness coaching.

She opens up about early weight struggles, discovering veganism, and losing over 80 pounds through diet alone, only to later face disordered eating patterns fueled by “clean eating” culture. Dani discusses how misinformation, extreme dieting, and toxic fitness influences shaped her mindset, and how she eventually broke free by embracing evidence-based approaches.

The conversation also dives into the origins of Vegan Proteins, lessons learned from coaching, and why sustainable systems (not perfection) are the key to long-term success. Dani closes with advice for anyone starting their fitness journey and a reminder that your background doesn’t define your future.

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TRANSCRIPT

Dani Taylor (00:00)
Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio. My name is Dani.

Ben (00:04)
I’m Ben.

Dani Taylor (00:05)
And thank you guys for being here. I don’t remember the last time you and I did a podcast together. What was it? Yeah, I really, I’m really like, I don’t remember what we talked about. Oh, it scam artists, scam artists. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, that was a fun one. I’m actually in the middle of listening to your episode right now. mm-hmm, mm-hmm, I just heard the part where you cheated at board games as a kid. So.

Ben (00:10)
I don’t remember either.

That’s the one, that’s the one. word.

yeah?

Well, the truth has come out and everyone can see me for who I actually am now. So I think the clients will be dropping off quite quickly and my career has ended before it really even begins. So that’s it.

Dani Taylor (00:30)
you

Mm-hmm. Yep.

You

Ben (00:39)
But today we’re talking about the opposite of scam artists. We’re talking about you and your story. Sawyer already has his head come out, mine came out. Jock-a-moes I recorded last week.

And today we’re going to be talking to you and tomorrow I’m talking to Alice. So soon we’ll have wrapped up all the coaching stories, but you know, we have a lot of new people who are introduced to our channel for the first time. And I want to just like have an opportunity for each of the coaches to just share a little bit more about themselves. And of course you’ve done various interviews and podcasts and all of that over the years, but there’s always new people who are coming in. So I think it’s just a nice refresher and to get people to.

know you more and especially on the main channel since you’re kind of the face of the channel. think a lot of people will be curious about how you got into all of this and you’ve had videos talking about your weight loss journey and so we’ll get a little bit more into that today. So I think that would actually be a great place to start is just talking about a little bit about the context of growing up and how that has

I think I was having a conversation with my girlfriend the other day. really, the more that I talk to people and kind of see, you know, where they’re at in life today and understand their perspective, the more I feel like it’s not as though you’re predetermined to live a certain life based on your upbringing, but I really think it has a very strong impact on the path that we choose to go down for better or for worse. And so I’d love to know, you know, anyone who’s kind of familiar with your story will know that you’ve lost a lot of weight.

But I think maybe it would be interesting for people to know how did you get to that that place in the first you know in in the beginning where you had a lot of weight to lose and What was your like relationship with with exercise like up into that point and you know how yeah How did that all kind of come together?

Dani Taylor (02:26)
All right, all right, cool. Yeah, so I grew up in Haverhill, Massachusetts, which is where I live to this day. I did live in Oregon for a little bit there, but came back. And I grew up in a very poor household. I think kids that grow up in poor households don’t really know they’re growing up in poor households until they reach a certain age and start to realize that not everybody is living like that. But looking back, that’s definitely…

what it was. Both my parents worked, but they were pretty terrible with money. My dad was actually a cop. So like he had a pretty decent salary. But they were just very, very bad with money spending it on stupid things. And like, food was not one of the priorities in terms of like, where they would spend their money and certainly not healthy food. So

we, I don’t want to make it sound like, we went hungry because we didn’t often go hungry. But I would say we probably, like, if you were to like plug what we would eat into chronometer, it would probably be pretty gnarly in terms of like, quote unquote empty calories with no real nutritional value. Like by the time I was like six years old, if I was thirsty, I would go to the fridge and open like a three liter of generic diet cola and just drink it out of the fridge. And then that’s what you would drink if you were thirsty. So we ate very kind of just like,

traditionally crappy foods, tons and tons of hot dogs, lots of macaroni and cheese, lots of hamburger helper, no vegetables, no like, other than like gross red delicious apples and bananas occasionally, like no fruits to speak of, no real seasoning either.

Ben (03:55)
What about ketchup?

Ketchup is a vegetable,

Dani Taylor (03:59)
ketchup

is a vegetable and you know, I’ve just, we mentioned three things like I’m a big, to this day, so I don’t wanna make it sound like I’m above these foods now. I still love the way all those foods I just mentioned taste like mac and cheese with cut up hot dogs and ketchup on it is like peak comfort food for me. But that was basically what food was like at home and I don’t know, we just weren’t very well taken care of. We were kind of left to fend for ourselves a lot.

But I had grandparents that were amazing, like absolutely incredible, my dad’s parents, and they were so highly involved in our lives. They’d pick us up after school and take us out, but they loved going out to eat. Like, it’s crazy when I think back to how kind of poor we were, but also how much I went out to eat. Like three or four times a week sometimes. I went to a buffet at least once a week and

My grandparents were just like tickled that we could eat like adult size meals and then order dessert. Like to them food was kind of love. So even though I don’t feel like we ever really hit it with like nutrition, like even eating out and get healthy food, we ate a lot, like definitely ate a lot. And not too surprisingly, pretty much everybody in my family, except my mother was overweight and we just all chalked it up to genetics.

Like, is just, look at our family, look at our extended family, this is just the way we are. And I was no exception. I was also following in that exact same path. And, ⁓ you know, it wasn’t really a problem to me because it didn’t feel like it was something that was my fault. It felt like this is just the way we are and whatever. Yes, I always, I always thought it would have been nice to be like one of those like.

thin pretty popular girls or whatever, but like it just wasn’t in the cards for me. So I didn’t even really spend time like thinking about that a whole lot. This wasn’t like a big dream or anything. But I did go vegetarian really young, like eight years old, I went vegetarian where I remember I was at ⁓ an uncle’s house for like a cookout and he was a fisherman and there was a kiddie pool in the basement, like inside the house that had this massive lobster in it. And you know, a bunch of kids.

all day. There’s a freaking lobster in the basement. Like we are so psyched. We’re just like not picking it up and playing with it but fascinated by this lobster all day. And then of course at some point someone came downstairs and got it and brought it upstairs and all the kids ran after it and they put it in the pot of water and I just lost it. Like absolutely lost it. I was probably like seven or so at that time and it was the first time it occurred to me that like chicken nuggets were chicken.

like were actually chickens and burgers were coming from cows. And I remember asking my mom, like, why do we eat meat? And she was like, because we just do. And I said, is there anybody that doesn’t eat meat? And she was like, yeah. And I was like, OK, well, I’m going to be one of those people then. And almost certainly imperfectly, but I was vegetarian from that point on, which meant I was getting even less.

nutritional variety at home because nobody was cooking special food for me. I just got to eat around the pork chop or whatever. But even still, dairy and eggs and all that was totally fair game. And basically by the time I was 16, I was about 210, 215 pounds. I don’t really totally know the top weight, but it was up there. And I guess that’s… I had no relationship to exercise whatsoever. You asked that.

⁓ To this day, Giacomo and I were just talking about this yesterday, I have a mental block around running. Because I think I’m doing stuff that’s a lot harder than running right now, but if you said, go run, I’d be like, I can’t. And I think it’s because of the presidential mile in school that they used to make all the eighth graders run a mile together and time you.

And I can’t think of anything more traumatizing for a little fat kid than having to do that. So I was like second to last in my entire grade of like 600 kids. And it was mortifying. My grandparents tried to put us in karate and it was like kind of fun. But also I remember right before Thanksgiving they had us do this brutal workout. And then on Thanksgiving I couldn’t even like move my limbs at all because I was so sore and I quit immediately.

Let’s see, and I had always wanted to do gymnastics as a little kid. Like that would have been so cool. But I was told I was too tall to do gymnastics. The reality was we could not afford to put me in gymnastics, but I kind of wish somebody had said that, because then I also thought I was just too tall to learn how to do gymnastics for a long time. So yeah, no relationship to exercise whatsoever. Yeah.

Ben (08:16)
So I’m

curious, you mentioned that you had this kind of conception and the gymnastics thing kind of ties into it where it’s like, okay, you have this certain genetic card that you’ve been dealt and this is just how it is. Obviously at some point that must have had to change for you to decide, okay, I want to make some changes here

what made you ultimately decide, okay maybe this isn’t genetics and maybe this is something that I can change?

Dani Taylor (08:38)
So I moved out really, really young. I moved out when I was 16 and that was at the same time that I went vegan. So it was like a really kind at the time anyway it seemed like it was a very empowering time in my life where I was like making decisions for myself and I went vegan because I was already vegetarian and I was writing a research paper for my English class about vegetarianism and

You know, the internet was very young. It was like 2002. It’s just old crappy websites. But I was in my research, I stumbled upon like vegan.org or something like that. Basically just a website that explained a lot of the questions vegetarians have about why anybody would be vegan. Like, but they don’t have to kill a chicken to get eggs. So what’s the problem? And then, you know, the answer was there and I was

horrified. Like what’s the problem with dairy? Cows have to be milked. And then the answer was there and I was horrified. And I had never thought of any of this before. I had never met a vegan in my life. I didn’t even know really what the word meant. But I went vegan overnight. Like before I even handed this research paper in, I was like, that’s it. I’m done. I’m not contributing to this anymore. And I was, I was, I mean, I was a good vegan. I didn’t eat anything that was animal products, but the food that I was eating was still like not

nutritionally sound. didn’t know anything about nutrition. I basically I had just cut out a whole bunch of other food groups that I had been eating. I was left eating things like I remember going to school and getting bagel and then just putting a whole bunch of mustard packets on it telling myself it tasted like a soft pretzel. And I was like, this is lunch. French fries, obviously that sort of thing. And

I remember I tried, I remember buying soy milk, remember buying pistachios and being like, this will be my new protein. Like I had no idea what I was doing at all. But I had to go for a doctor’s checkup like three or four months later. And when I, I had already been diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome a couple of years prior, I had already been diagnosed with endometriosis or at least suspected to have endometriosis. But when I went in for this checkup,

a few months later, you the first thing they do is weigh you. And ⁓ it was down, I was like 180 pounds and change down from like 215 to 10, something like that. And they were kind of like, well, whatever you’re doing kid, keep doing it. And it was then that I was like, man, what is happening? Like I wasn’t trying to diet or anything like that. So I was like, maybe the things that I’m doing can change.

my outcome, my physical outcomes. Like didn’t really care about health per se at that point. I was just like, whoa, are you saying that like I could be a thin person? I had never even considered this before. And it was from there that I started learning more about nutrition. And I did a lot of things wrong in my pursuit of trying to lose weight from there. I ate very little. You know, I did the 1200 calorie thing that so many people do. I 1200 calories like as the limit.

which so many people do. And, you know, I did lose a significant amount of weight. I got from, you know, 215 down to 130 or so, because I saw other like famous people that were five foot seven and 130. And I was like, yeah, I’m gonna look like that. I did not look like that. So I only started exercising after that point when I realized like,

that was probably the missing piece here was that I just wasn’t exercising because I was what you know you would call skinny fat. I had no muscle on me. I was significantly healthier I’m sure but that was not the way to do it. But essentially I lost all that weight initially with just diet.

Ben (12:10)
And I mean, I was just gonna say, I think that just goes to show like the, when it comes to fat loss, what is really the thing that’s moving the needle the majority of the time. And then I think.

training and exercise should almost be viewed as a separate thing. Like this is for my health or this is for my muscle mass, my bone density, which are all important things. Of course, you can talk about strength training from an aesthetic component and say, well, when I lose all that weight, if I want to have my body look a certain way, the way that I’d probably like to, what most people would think of as toned or athletic or lean, then yes, I should have some muscle on my frame, health and other benefits.

⁓ So is that kind when you started getting into the gym and going down that route?

Dani Taylor (12:54)
Yeah, so you know Choice Fitness, because you’ve been there. The building, when you walk out the door, there’s a huge building right in front of you. And that’s where my apartment was. I lived right there. So I got a gym membership, which was like literally laughable at that point in my life. And I didn’t, there was nobody else my age that had a gym membership then. This was 2003, maybe. There were not 18, 19 year olds in the gym in that time.

But I would go over there and there’s like this little corner of ellipticals and I would just get on the elliptical and I would just do that for an hour before I had to go to work every day. And that was fine. You I guess I lost a little bit more weight that way. But over the top of the wall on my elliptical, I could see into the weight room and I could see some of the women in the weight room. And I really liked their physique, specifically this one trainer that worked there. I mean, she…

I thought she was just like so beautiful and muscular and strong and she looked like a superhero in real life. And I was like, that’s cool. I guess I kind of would like to do that. So at 19 years old, I hired her at $90 a session, which is also was like a bat shit thing to do with my very limited income at that time. But she taught me how to lift.

And that was really, really helpful. was some of the best money I ever spent. She wrote me programs. I learned about, you know, upper lower splits and, you know, there were a lot of things I didn’t learn. She never had me do like a barbell, anything actually. Everything was dumbbells and machines. But it taught me what it meant to like kind of push and what good form was like. And she, was like, but what do I eat? Like.

How do I eat to change this? Because at this point I had started reading like some of the muscle magazines for women at the time and it was all protein, protein, protein. And she basically said like, well, if you’re not willing to have whey protein or eggs at least like the buck might stop here for you. You might not be able to progress past this point. And I would not accept that as an answer. So I just dove head first into.

researching and finding out what kind of plant-based protein sources there were, which was a very short list at the time, and trying to recreate sort of bodybuilder diets that I saw in magazines and stuff, but with vegan foods. Too moderate success, I would say. It wasn’t super successful at first, because I was very hung up on eating clean, very hung up on eating clean, and I think that…

actually kickstarted a whole lot of psychological stuff. At this point, I think right around here is when my psychological, this wasn’t like a fun, healthy pursuit anymore. This started getting pretty warped right around this time. But I didn’t know it until I was looking back on it.

Ben (15:34)
Do you have any like really like wacky meals or things that you remember eating that looking back now you’re like, my God, I can’t believe I ate that or like that was like the way that I tried to get my protein or something like that.

Dani Taylor (15:44)
Just so many protein shakes. Just so many protein shakes. There was nothing that was like super, super weird. I mean, I guess it was kind of weird. Like Boca burgers existed, which I still love to this day. So I would like eat a couple of those plain patties for breakfast sometimes. That’s weird. But mostly protein powder, which at the time was pea protein only. We called it GEMMA for some reason. It was branded as GEMMA protein, G-E-M-M-A.

Ben (15:47)
Mm.

Dani Taylor (16:10)
and was just straight, unflavored pea protein. And I probably had three of those a day for like two or three years. So if anybody wants to know why I literally gag at the hint of a taste of protein powder, there’s your answer.

Ben (16:25)
I was gonna say it all makes sense now. Why you hate protein powder. I was gonna ask kind of more of a fun question. You mentioned the Boca burgers. I was gonna ask you what products like back then that you had, if any, you still use today that you really like? And then are there any that used to exist that don’t exist anymore that you’re particularly bummed about that you can remember kind of from that time or maybe in those early years?

Dani Taylor (16:27)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Oof.

So Tofurkey slices existed, they were harder to find. Boca burgers were common. Tofutti cream cheese and sour cream existed then, and I still think they’re the best, although they’re a little bit harder to find. Not health food, but there was like frozen, Tofutti made a frozen vegan pizza. It was like rectangle pizza slices, like Ilios at the time. So that was kind of neat. They made little ice cream sandwiches called Tofutti Cuties.

haven’t seen them in years they might still be around.

Ben (17:16)
the place that I’ve seen the most Tofutti products, they have like the ricotta, the sour cream, the cream cheese, the cuties, is Wegmans. Wegmans has all of those different brands. They have a lot of that niche stuff.

Dani Taylor (17:25)
Yeah, I’m glad those things still exist.

I can’t think of it. I’m sure there’s stuff that has disappeared. mean, Beyond Meat used to make chicken strips. This was not 25 years ago, but probably 15 years ago, they made chicken strips that the macros were outstanding. They didn’t have to be frozen. They were just refrigerated. You could eat them right out of the package. Gardein made an outstanding chicken breast that had crazy good macros. That’s gone.

So lots of little products from lines that still exist came and went, that was kind of sad. But CLIF Builder bars also, because I was a server and a bartender. sometimes I’d work 14, 15 hour days and there was no time to eat. So I would literally keep a couple of them in my apron and I would sneak into the bathroom or crouch down under the bar sometimes and like scarf down half a bar and then just keep going. So I did eat a good amount of those at the time.

Ben (17:56)
Hmm.

That’s exactly what Dana does at work. She keeps a builder bar in her pocket and then she eats it part of the, part of the day. this is my girlfriend who’s a, who’s a prep, food prep chef for anyone who’s listening. but yeah, I just thought it was, it would be kind of a fun question to get kind of inside. I didn’t know some of those products existed, like the, chicken breast or like, didn’t know Beyond was making stuff 15 years ago. So that’s kind of cool. Okay. You mentioned that this was a time where, okay, the psychological aspect starts to get a little bit, maybe obsessive or, or

Dani Taylor (18:18)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (18:42)
erotic, you know, I’ve been there myself. I know a lot of us can’t, you know, experience this, especially I think when you start to become more like detail oriented, more analytical, you really care about the results that you’re getting. So was this kind of at the time that, you know, eventually we all, we know that you go on to compete in bodybuilding and get into really like researching the science behind all these things that we’re doing. Was that kind of like around that similar time? How did, how did that all kind of come together?

Dani Taylor (19:09)
It was over a handful of years, but right around this time while I was trying to research more vegan stuff, I found veganbodybuilding.com, which I’m sure Giacomo mentioned in his thing. That’s where I met Giacomo. It’s where I met Robert Cheeke. It was Robert Cheeke’s website. And it was a forum very similar to Reddit, but it was very active, like 2,000 of us on there every single day talking to each other. And it was…

I was obsessed with this forum. I mean, I was on there and you didn’t have a cell phone, you weren’t carrying around a laptop. Like would rush home from work and just spend like hours reading through people’s blogs and stuff. Cause you could post your training log and comment on other people’s training logs. And I found somebody on there that was a coach, that was an online coach, a vegan online coach. She was a registered dietician as well. She looked fantastic. I was like, boom, this is it.

So, I mean, this is 2006, maybe, maybe 2005. And I was like, I found the person that’s going to guide me to the physique that I want to be. And I thought I had really done my due diligence. I mean, there is nothing higher than a registered dietician. And that’s what I went with. And as it turns out, and of course I was 18, 19, something like that at the time, she was horrible. I mean, she was a very nice lady, but…

She fueled my disordered eating so immensely at that time. She would say things like when I would have a builder bar at work instead of whatever miserable bodybuilder meal she had put together for me because that’s, I couldn’t eat anything else with the time I had. She’d be like, my God, you’re so lucky you can get away with that. I’ll never forget her telling me how lucky I was to be able to get away with eating some of these processed foods like Boca burgers.

which just made me feel like I was doing something wrong. I was leaving results on the table. It made me feel like really ashamed. And also this was around the point where I realized there was no more weight to lose. You know, I was like 125 pounds at that point and the goal was no longer to lose weight. But as if you’ve ever worked with clients that have lost a significant amount of weight and they get to the goal, they’re just like, ⁓ what now? Like it’s, that’s the scariest part. Cause I was like, do I just have to do this forever? Like,

and I had been used to being in a deficit for probably like two years at that point, I was hungry. Like I was really hungry. I was binging on the, was trying to have like my free meal, my cheat meal, right? Which was built into my program on the weekends. And that was turning into an enormous cheat meal and then a cheat day. And then feeling so guilty about that, I would just keep eating at night. And then the next day I’d feel horrible. And then I’d be like, okay, Monday.

we’re gonna go even harder and I’m gonna cut my carb from lunch and dinner to try to make up for all the stuff that I ate on Saturday. And then the next week would roll around and it would just be the same thing. So it was very binging and compensating after that point and knowing that something wasn’t right but not knowing what it was or how to fix it and just thinking, you know, if I just eat cleaner.

Like that kept being the answer. If I just eat cleaner, but then there was no more clean that I could eat. I had cut out oil, I had cut out sugar, I had reduced my salt so much. Like I had tried everything and it just wasn’t working. And I remember just feeling like so lost and so obsessed with, I wasn’t going out to eat with people anymore, which is really hard and you work in a restaurant. It was very, very bad and unhealthy.

in my pursuit of pure health at this point, I had made myself the least healthy I had ever been, which was really scary. And I don’t remember the exact moment where I was like, I have got to do something different because this isn’t working. But it was right around the time that I met Giacomo. And unfortunately, God bless Giacomo. It was not, that was also not good for me because he was also very entrenched in his own

disordered eating shit, which just, he’s older, he’s wiser, he’s in better shape than me, he’s been in the fitness world for longer. I was like, have to, he must know I’m gonna do what he’s doing too awful. It was not good at all. So I don’t know how much he talked about that in his thing.

Ben (23:14)
We didn’t get too much into that. I do think it’s come up in other podcasts, maybe ones that he did with Sawyer, I feel, or ones that we did together. remember, or I can’t even remember if it was personal conversations we’ve had or on the podcast, because, you know, we kind of just have personal conversations on the podcast anyways. But I’m curious what then led you to kind of…

Dani Taylor (23:28)
Yeah.

Ben (23:34)
get out of that. I know you said you don’t remember like a specific time period or a specific moment, but what kind of led to you being able to see that there was a different way and slowly like working your way towards something that looked more balanced and healthier.

Dani Taylor (23:48)
So a kind of Giacomo’s eating situation was also so screwed up that that kind of opened my eyes to it a little bit. It took a while, because like I said, I just kissed the ground this guy walked on for like six months. And he was a raw foodist. So he was vegan and raw. So he ate no cooked food whatsoever. So he took eating clean, quote unquote, to the next level. And you know, I had no intention of being a raw foodist. But you know, if I ate cooked

broccoli, he’d be like, you know, it’s actually really bad for you. And I’d be like, like, my already screwed up brain would be like, no cooked broccoli. It was bad. And he was doing like, a 46 day juice fast when we met, like he was rounding that he is ending that. So him and I did like several water fasts and juice fasts and things like that together. And I could never do it like, God

He has a tolerance for suffering that I don’t have. Like he could do a seven day water fast, which is super dangerous and stupid and there’s no reason to do it whatsoever. But I would be like tapping out on day three. Like I just cannot do this. And then I’d feel like weak and you know, like I had no what’s the word grit, basically, I had no grit to me. And

Yeah, it wasn’t good. And then him and Robert started doing this documentary about vegan bodybuilding and Giacomo was gonna be the raw vegan bodybuilder. And it was watching them get ready for this competition. And of course, all the while, this entire time, I’m still in the background, I’m still researching things, I’m still reading constantly, I love to learn. I’ve kind of branched out of the vegan world and I’m now not in veganbodybuilding.com only, now I’m on bodybuilding.com.

which is a cesspool in many ways, but I was learning Layne Norton’s natural bodybuilding prep series was absolutely fascinating to me. And I devoured all of his stuff. the way he was talking about things made so much more sense to me mentally and scientifically as well. Like there was a scientific basis for why he was suggesting the things he was doing.

and what Robert and Giacomo were doing was nothing like that. Nothing like that. So this was probably where my mental health was like the absolute worst that it has ever been was while they were filming that documentary. And I guess I kind of, and you can ask them to, like, there was a point where I was just like, you guys are fucking idiots. And I didn’t want anything to do with what they were doing anymore. And when they do something, I would just be like, this is stupid and here’s why.

And I kind of eventually got the reputation for being that person in our group, just being like, I roll every time somebody would do something stupid. And I guess that was kind of like the beginning of my healing, so to speak, was just kind of not buying into bullshit that other people were selling, not selling, because they weren’t actually selling anything, but like these ideas they were selling. And unfortunately, that included my boyfriend and my best friend at the time, like.

pretty gnarly and nobody cared what I had to say because they were all in better shape than me, which that table, those tables have turned over the years. So yeah, it was a really weird time and they were not the first people to listen to me.

Ben (26:58)
I feel like sometimes it-

sometimes it takes somebody outside of ourselves to like really recognize some of the, and be like, my God, like these things that I’m looking at, like these are stupid or like, this is terrible. And you might’ve maybe in the past had held similar, not exactly the same, but like maybe had similar lines of thinking. And then it’s like, wait, I used to think like that too. wait, like, okay. And you start to kind of have more like realizations around that. And I think it’s…

it’s, I guess it’s a double edged sword in that on one hand, it’s like, kind of sucks that it had to be people that was close to you. And then you had to have those conversations or like navigate that. Like I can’t imagine how difficult that must have been, but then also kind of like, well, figuring out for yourself, okay, this is not something that I wanted. This is not a path I want to go down anymore. And I know, I feel like this was also kind of, maybe was this like the start of you getting into coaching as well and like realizing like, ⁓ I can help.

Dani Taylor (27:52)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (27:54)
And I’m thinking back to the experience that you had working with that dietitian. Like I can kind of help people avoid the same mistakes that happened to me or the same kind of traps or pitfalls that I fell into. And I think it gives people context as well as to like why, you know, you’re so passionate about these topics and like, you know, helping people understand that, you know, this is not the way to do this.

Dani Taylor (28:14)
Yeah, I was still in touch with that trainer at that point. Like I wasn’t working with her anymore, but she was like kind of a big deal in the vegan fitness community. And so was Giacomo and so was Robert, of course. And I was not at all, like just a nothing peon in the background basically. But she would like call me and chat with me mostly because she wanted to be like closer to Giacomo. And I remember at that point she was trying to get me to take ephedra and stuff like that. And I even bought it. And it was funny because Giacomo, you know, he

did ephedra when it was perfectly legal back in the day. So Giacomo, my raw foodist boyfriend, who’s like broccoli is toxic, was like, yeah, ephedra’s awesome. And I was just like, OK, I guess I’ll buy some ephedera. And I did buy it. And I never took it because I don’t know. It really freaked me out, I guess. Like, I knew what it would do to people. But she was still like there, I guess, around. But I was still very active in the vegan bodybuilding forums. And at this point, instead of going on there and just being like, great job, high five, when somebody would.

ask a question, I felt like I could answer the question for them about, you know, ways to eat, ways to train, ways to do these things around each other that were effective because there were no other sources of vegan fitness information out there. It just like did not exist at that time. Veganbodybuilding.com was it. And I spent so much time answering people’s questions and commenting on nutrition blogs and stuff like that, that eventually people started

reaching out to me specifically to ask me questions. So they had never had any intention of becoming a business endeavor whatsoever. It’s just something I was really passionate about. still working a full-time job, like 80 hours a week actually at that time. So that’s kind of how it started. yeah, Giacomo and Robert and those folks, they still did not care what I had to say at all, but there were other people that were starting to care what I had to say and kind of liked my style better than some of the stuff that are

community had been doing before that. And eventually a friend of mine from there asked if I would coach her into a bodybuilding show. And I was like, yeah, I’ll try. Like, I don’t know what I’m doing at all, but I’ll take a crack at it with you. And, you know, if it goes well, tell people I helped you. Like, that’s it. That’s literally how that all started. And that was in around like 2011 or so, 2010.

I mean, I had coached people like in my family and stuff before that, but that was the first like vegan client that I coached into a show. And I had no like aspirations to ever step on a bodybuilding stage, but I thought I had more knowledge than anybody else I knew to help them get ready for it.

Ben (30:45)
And so how does this tie into you and Giacomo having the supplement store slash shop vegan proteins and then that transitioning into you guys doing the coaching?

Dani Taylor (30:51)
and

So he had started the supplement store as a fundraiser. We had like three products or something, but that was a big deal at the time. And because we had a website, veganproteins.com, people that would reach out would just hit the contact button and reach out and be like, hey, can I talk to Dani? Like, and this would happen, this would start to happen more and more until eventually, and I don’t remember exactly when it was, like we put the service on the site.

that people could just click and buy a training program or a meal plan or a training program and a meal plan. But it wasn’t like ongoing coaching. It was like a plan, basically, which in hindsight, I mean, I learned so much doing that, but I kind of wish we hadn’t done that at the time. But that it made sense then. And then eventually, eventually we had to like take it off the site because

So many people were just clicking and buying it. There was no vetting process whatsoever that I was overwhelmed. And I was still working a full-time job as well. It became so much that we took it down. And then also around that same time, I was like, I don’t like this. I could have given somebody a meal plan 10 years ago and they’re still eating it to this day. I don’t know, because I never spoke to them ever again. And it just didn’t feel right to me anymore. So yeah, we very much changed the way all that went.

And then we shut down the supplement shop in 2015 just because I ran the numbers and our supplement shop had made $500 that year. That’s how much we profited because you can’t profit in the store anymore. And then we just pivoted to coaching and Giacomo wasn’t even a coach at that point. I got Lyme disease in like 2016 or 2017 and I couldn’t get out of bed for a month and he coached all my clients for that month and that’s how it started for him. So yeah.

Ben (32:32)
I remember you telling, wasn’t he like saying, this client like said this or this, this, and you’re like, do this or do that. Was that kind of how it went? And I feel like you played a pretty large role in his like education and becoming a coach as well. Is that true?

Dani Taylor (32:38)
Mm-hmm. Yep.

Yeah, definitely. And I mean, think he had more, he had more push than I did. Like he, I don’t know if it’s still true, but like in the gym, he had more ability to tap into that gear that you need to have in the gym to push to the next level. I didn’t have that myself. I could tell somebody to do it, but he could like, like get them to do it, you know? But I had the, the details, the like finer detail knowledge of how to create the plan.

which is an important part, but also being able to push is an important part. So he kind of came with his own set of skills that I wouldn’t have just developed on my own. So we kind of complemented each other in that way.

Ben (33:22)
Okay, so over time you get into coaching, you grow vegan proteins over time into this sustaining business and to what it is today, not to the point where you have other coaches as well who represent vegan proteins and it’s not just you and Giacomo. And I’m wondering over this time period, you still obviously coach a smaller handful of folks here today. So what do you feel like being a coach has taught you about yourself and about others?

Dani Taylor (33:49)
Ooh, good question. Well, I think probably the most important thing is that humans are human. Like when I started coaching, and I think a lot of new coaches, absolutely, new trainers, they fall into this trap that they just need the next certification, the next level of education, pass the next test, get the next bit of information. And I love that stuff. I love learning.

Like I think I’m going to sign up for the CrossFit level one certification just because I love learning so much. But I will say you think as a new coach, if you write the perfect plan, if you write the perfect diet, if you write the perfect training program, that person is going to get the results. And especially if they paid you, right? They signed up for the plan. Of course they’re going to do the plan and get the results. That’s what they traded money for this service for. But it is, it is so

not the case. Like I would say 10 % of clients are going to be that person that just show up, do the plan, get the results, show up every week going, hey, had a good week, talk to you next week. 10 % of clients. The rest of them, they don’t, I mean, yes, they need the information, they need the plan, but they need the support, they need the guidance, they need the course correcting, they need the planning ahead for the stuff that’s hard. So in that way, it’s really

allowed me to step out of myself. And I think I was always pretty good at this, but it’s made me much better to like realize everybody is not me. Everybody is not going to get good results the same way that I got good results. And I have to be able to be okay with that. And I think that’s also where lot of influencer coaches really fail is they train everybody like they’re them. And most people are not them.

So that’s been really, really important. The level of discipline that I have learned in being a coach is very high because working for yourself is very different. You can do it whenever you want. You could do it at any hour. You don’t have to get dressed. You don’t have to, like it’s on a computer. I mean, I guess you gotta look okay from here to here. But when I first started doing this full time,

That was really hard for me to be like, well, nobody’s going to write me up if I’m not here at my desk at this time. So I had to really build systems for myself. I have ADHD. It’s like I like my routine, but I also need it to be spontaneous at the same time. It’s awful. So I had to learn to set those systems up that worked for me, when to set my breaks, when to set my.

done working time, which I still suck at as you know. But I think like teenager me or early 20, like absolutely could not have pulled this off because too much stuff would have been left just undone or ignored. So it’s really helped me in that way as well.

Ben (36:30)
If there’s one piece of advice that you could give to somebody who’s just starting to get into fitness and being healthier, what would that piece of advice be?

Dani Taylor (36:39)
That’s a great question. I should have anticipated that question. I would say don’t look for a magic solution because I’ve met so many people, I know so many people who really do seem to believe there is a magic solution, a magic way to eat or train that’s going to get them the results. And it’s just not true. If something sounds too good to be true, it is.

set up systems in your life, little systems to do the stuff that like you know at your core is the stuff you need to be doing, right? I think everybody at their core knows they need to eat better, you know, maybe go out to eat a bit less, get some sleep, move your body, set up systems to make those things easier and you’re already like halfway there.

Ben (37:24)
That’s great. And I think if people are looking for more ways to get inspired or to feel like, okay, these are some healthy habits that I can implement. We have a couple of videos on the YouTube channel recently that have gone over some of this stuff. So that would be a good resource, I think, for people to check out. This has been really fun. I’d love to just kind of wrap things up by asking what are some of your current personal goals, fitness or otherwise? I know you’ve gotten into CrossFit in the last year or so, coming from a bodybuilding background. So if you want to touch on that, you definitely can. But maybe just anything else that you’ve

been working on or excited about recently.

Dani Taylor (37:55)
So from a fitness perspective, I have been doing CrossFit. I’ve been really, really enjoying it. But there’s so many skills involved in CrossFit that I don’t have yet that it’s actually kind of difficult for me to narrow down which ones I want to work on because there’s so many. And I don’t want to be working towards like 10 different goals because I don’t think I’ll actually reach any of them if I do it that way. So that’s actually been tricky. It’s been easily the most humbling fitness experience of my life.

thus far. Like it is absolutely crazy to just give it everything you’ve got, leave everything out there to be the most mediocre person in the room. Like wow, that is really something. So I am really enjoying it though. That sounds like it’s a bad thing, but no, I think it’s super cool, very inspiring for me to see people moving their body in ways that I have deliberately avoided moving my body.

my entire life because it’s scary to me because I’m afraid I’m going to fail at it. having the guts to do that has been really good for me, I think. So that’s like on a on a fitness level. Nutri- like I have no intention of dieting anytime soon. Like that last cut I did, it was very successful and I’m glad that I did it. But it also really opened my eyes to the fact that like I just don’t, I don’t need to be smaller right now.

And anytime I, sometimes I feel that way sometimes. Like I’ll catch myself or I’ll put on a pair of pants and I’m just like, mm, these are a little more snug than they were before. But then I’ll also see a video of myself and be like, you look like an absolute pipsqueak. Like you can’t have it both ways. Which one is it gonna be? And you know, I think as a woman, it’s really hard to lean into that. I’m just gonna get stronger and bigger and be okay with it. It’s really hard. But I think that’s the direction I’m gonna try to lean for a while. Cause I got a lot of strength that I…

need to build to do these skills. And then on like a professional level, just launching this app and making sure that all the kinks are ironed out in that app has been an intense labor of love. But I feel like, you know, it is paying off. I feel like people are really enjoying it. They’re liking all of the functionality that’s in there that they just only have to have this one app to do all these different things. So that’s been really rewarding as well. And I want to keep working on that and building our membership.

and making the membership as cool as it can possibly be. Cool and effective, not just cool, but also effective as it can possibly be.

Ben (40:13)
Awesome. I feel that was very comprehensive. Do you have anything else that you want to say before we close things out?

Dani Taylor (40:18)
Hmm, I guess I guess there’s one thing that I always kind of want to talk about when I’m talking about my story and it’s just that It’s kind of like what you alluded to in the beginning when you have a particular upbringing It is very easy to pigeonhole yourself into that kind of lane for the rest of your life and I feel like I was well on the track to doing exactly that and If you grew up like me and you grew up kind of like poor like white trash situation that I did

you can feel really out of place in the fitness community as an adult and there is, especially in the vegan fitness community, my God, that’s like way worse actually, but there is space for you. Every time I kind of talk about some of my upbringing, people reach out to me and say, my upbringing was like that too and I always feel so alone and I feel like I don’t belong and I know there’s a lot more of us out there than…

People think because it’s not, this is not like a water cooler conversation usually, but there’s a lot of us. So there’s space for everybody there. And if you want to pursue that avenue, you should absolutely pursue it.

Ben (41:19)
I love that. And I think communities come up a lot in these podcasts that we’ve been doing. I think that if you feel kind of alone, it can be a really powerful thing to feel like you have other people who are on a similar path to you or journey, even if you have different upbringings or different goals, know, there’s something to connect on there. So.

If you are interested, can check out more about our community, our vegan proteins community on our website, veganproteins.com. You can also search vegan proteins in the app store and you can find our app there. If you are interested in getting some more personalized experiences with working with a coach, a professional along your fitness journey, that’s what we do here at Vegan Proteins. And that’s what Dani and Giacomo have been doing since they started this thing. So if you are looking to get some assistance,

you can head over to veganproteins.com, fill out an application, we’ll get back to you within a business day. You can find all of us on social media, Dani at Vegan Proteins, Giacomo at Muscles by Brussels.

and myself at Ben A. Mitchell and then Sawyer is at Soyboy Fitness Coaching and Alice is at Vegan Proteins. Alice, you can also send us an email, coach at veganproteins.com if you’re for any additional information. So thank you everyone for listening. As always, it really helps out if you can leave a review or a rating on any of the podcast platforms. If you’re on YouTube, comment, like, know, anything that you want to hear from us in terms of topics to cover, please let us know and we’d be happy to do that. Thanks for listening to another episode and I hope that you all have a good rest of your day.

Bye bye.