Vegan Olympian Kaylin Whitney
Olympic gold medalist Kaylin Whitney has found that a plant-based diet enables her to win gold, again and again. She switched to a plant-based diet during the pandemic, when the Tokyo Olympics were postponed and she had some time to try something new. As she continued her training, she saw big benefits in how her body worked and felt. She found a winning formula and it was reflected in her on-track performances.
“Once I came into that 2021 season, feeling a lot healthier and a lot lighter, my performance in training was going amazing,” she recalls. She ran a lifetime best of 50.29 seconds for fifth place at the 2021 US trials and that gave her a place in the 400m relays at her first Olympics. She came away from the Tokyo Olympics with gold in the women’s 4x400m relay and bronze in the mixed 4x400m relay. She added another gold to her collection as part of the victorious women’s 4x400m team at last year’s World Athletics Championship.
Beyond the physical benefits she has felt from going plant-based, Whitney is also very candid about the mental benefits too. “I definitely suffer from anxiety and have for my whole life,” she admits. “What you eat gives you energy and that directly affects your mood. So, if you eat junk, you are going to feel like junk…It’s help me feel more stable, more in tune with myself. I never feel like I am lacking anything. I don’t crave the things that I used to crave before. For me, it’s a nice way to live my life.”
“It was the best thing I ever did,” she proudly declares of her transition to plant-based foods.