I’ve followed Freelee the Banana Girl (Leanne Ratcliffe) and her Raw Till 4/30 Bananas a Day diet for 2.5 years and had limited results, no gains no losses. No point basically. I’ve never been anorexic or bulimic so don’t really enjoy binging. I like to have one tasty meal in 10 minutes and get on with my day. I have had massive success just following a regular raw food diet in the past and I’ve gone back to it and delicious health giving green juices. Please read my reasons as to why:
Basically one word: Vanity.
Yesterday I saw a video of Lou Corona – 60 years old, been on raw foods for 40 years, strong, full of love, he looks amazing. He is one sexy 60 year old. Then I saw a video of Doug McDougall, basically what Harley is going to look like (if he’s lucky) in 30 years time. He looks like a wrinkled old t******e.
Then I looked at old photos of Harley Johnstone (Durianrider) and compared them to what he looks like now. He has aged about 10 years in the last 5 years. His teeth look like they are falling out. Sure he is fit and has no body fat but he looks like sh*t.
I decided in that moment I no longer want to risk my looks to be part of the cult of “stuffing in the carbs”. Dead denatured s**t. I would rather put my faith in to someone who is demonstrating the benefits of the raw food lifestyle after 40 years and looks amazing. Mimi Kirk is another long term raw fooder (75 or so) who looks amazing. You would never catch her eating a kilo of dead old corn pasta before bed time. She once made a video showing us what’s in her fridge. She had bottles of really expensive champagne in there. That is what I want to be like at 75 years of age! Enjoying life and looking amazing.
Also recently I’ve seen things in Freelee’s vlogs that have given light to a few things I’m not comfortable with. These vlogs have shown us what her life is really like. I don’t want to get too personal but again it comes back to that one word: Vanity.
Make no bones about it, Freelee the Banana Girl is orthorexic. She’s been anorexic and now she is orthorexic. She obsesses over LOW FAT, LOW SALT, HIGH CARB. I’ve seen her have little disagreements with Harley on camera saying things like: “But we never normally eat like this” and he’s said “I don’t mind eating this much fat” and she said “but we never normally eat like this” and he said “it’s not bad it won’t hurt us” and she then looked uncomfortable and dropped it.
She is orthorexic, he is just an athlete – both of which I have nothing in common with.
Freelee has fake breasts. If she didn’t have fake breasts she would look like a 12 year old boy. No body fat. No womanly curves. If every woman followed the diet to the letter like she does we would all end up looking androgynous or needing fake b***s to look normal. She is very lucky she has a fat face. She always has had a round fat face. It hides any facial sagging – like what Harley has got.
Freelee has hair extensions. Really cheap and nasty hair extensions. You can see them dangling off of her head past her breasts. If this diet is so good and full of “nutrients and nutrition” why the need to wear someone else’s hair on your head Freelee? Vanity, the same reason I’m leaving your cult.
Freelee has eyelash extensions to make her eyes look better. That is fine we all want to look our best, and that is why I’m a bit dubious about continuing on this diet, I want to look like Mimi Kirk when I’m 75, not like Doug Graham with no t**s in a wig.
Recently Harley let slip that Freelee the Banana Girl stayed fat on the fruit diet until she cycled across Australia. He admitted she basically retained all of her fat until she burned it off the good old fashioned way, exercise. Another myth they’ve been feeding us – the weight will just fall off, you’ll burn it off with your “thermogenic metabolism”. This is a white lie they’ve been perpetuating. Freelee burned her fat off and revved up her metabolism from bike riding (across the country!!). Good on her. But there needs to be a bit of transparency about this massive white lie.
Recently Freelee waited until the last possible moment to tell all of her “followers” that she wouldn’t be going to the Thai Fruit Festival. She said: I’ll be meeting Harley there soon …… but about a week later at the last minute tells all her “followers” who were going all that way just to see her the reason she couldn’t go – (which she’d known about for a long time) – she didn’t want to leave her dog with someone “she didn’t trust” as her dog is like her baby, she is like my child, I can’t just leave her with anyone.
A few things about this disturb me – aren’t they apparently making “bucket loads” of money from You Tube? (Harley a few weeks ago said: “How much was that cheque from you tube for last month baby? 20 grand?” – fact of the matter that was probably a quarterly cheque, meaning Freelee is lucky to be making 80 grand a year. Which is great money for making videos! In fact it is enough money to be able to pay the best dog sitter in all of Adelaide to look after her dog for a week??? Is it not?? Or is it more important to let down all the tens of followers who went to Thailand to meet her. F*ck those guys, just keep clicking my videos because I can’t afford a dog sitter or a flight to Thailand for 4 days???
Her not being able to leave her dog proves Freelee’s body is craving a baby. She’s in her mid 30s she has a lot of love to give and her hormones are telling her to have a f*cking baby already. But no “She and harley decided” they’re too selfish to have kids. We like sleeping in to much. We don’t want to have to look after someone else ……. except when it comes to cancelling a trip to a ‘work convention’ that you’ve helped to promote and organise all year – just then you think it’s more important to look after someone else ……. a dog. Riiiiight. Something either smells like bullsh*t or Freelee needs a real baby to give her love to.
While on the subject of the “Thai Fruit Festival” the tens of people who went to Thailand to meet Freelee and Harley – and look I’m not doubting some of them are ripped as f*ck. But all I have to go by is the promotional video Harley put up to show how awesome the festival was and from what I saw the majority of the women looked like average to chubby normal people. Not one bared ripped midriff amongst the ladies was on show. Which is how most of the people at the Woodstock RAW Fruit Festival get around. And lets face it, this is why everyone tries Freelee and Harley’s way of eating. To get ripped. Well it’s not happening for many people.
Whilst on this topic – Freelee’s friend “Princess Neet” – how come we never see her in a midriff top? Freelee eats with this woman every single day almost, she is also “on the lifestyle” however a quick glimpse of her a*s showed she is in no way in the same shape Freelee is in. She also has a face full of botox and fillers. Her face doesn’t move. That is fine, we all want to look our best – but again Neet’s chunky legs and frozen face tell me this lifestyle ain’t working for her. Stay on this lifestyle and eat the exact same food as Freelee and Neet and you will need botox and fillers and Neet also has fake breasts.
The biggest myth of all has been debunked by Freelee the Banana Girl herself lately. This myth being that she hardly exercises. “Freelee exercises the least out of anyone I know” touts Harley. Yes Harley, because you hang out with other cyclists all the time. We have seen from Freelee’s vlogs that she rides her bike up and down a mountain for up to an hour every second day, sometimes even every day. She also takes her dog for a long walk every day that I can only assume is also at least an hour. Freelee does more cardio exercise “than anyone I know”.
While we’re on the topic of debunking – she recently posted a photo of her “working out at the gym, doing strength training for only 2 weeks and look at the gains I’ve made” or some such rubbish. That photo is from a few years ago. I’ve seen it on her Facebook before. Also if you have been “only training for 2 weeks” why has this not been in your vlogs? Your openness and honesty will be tested if you keep telling white lies like this.
Not that big of a point but it is deceit and when I’m taking health advice from someone and risking my hard earned looks on their “dogma” then I want to be able to trust everything they say. Oh yeah thanks for the tip about how great solariums are recently too. The government is “wrong to ban them”. She lives in one of the sunniest countries in the world with one of the highest rates of skin cancer?? Solariums are for idiots who don’t care about their skin or their looks becoming haggard: IE: FREELEE. Again a reason why I will not risk my looks any longer on her advice.
I am beginning to find Freelee’s insistence on “picking fights” with YouTube heavy weights a little tiring. It is the oldest trick in the YouTube book to try and collaborate with people who are more popular than you. However would Jenna Marbles ever do something with a skinny man child looking fruit-muncher from Adelaide? No, so what does Freelee do – make a video called "JENNA MARBLES WEIGHT GAIN". It’s a cheap tacky tactic that has worked for her. If you follow her videos she will continue to do it to anyone who gets a bit of notoriety on YouTube – Trisha Paytas is copping it at the moment.
In conclusion I am discontinuing my online relationship with Freelee and Harley because I’ve done it for 2.5 years and I’ve gained no visible health benefits, however I have aged more in the last 2 years than I have in the previous 33 years. I have derailed years of strict “raw eating” and good habits all in the pursuit of flavourless dead denatured crappy enzymeless carbs.
After seeing one video of a 60 year old Lou Corona, (who I want to be like so much one day) I realised I have nothing in common with a childless, fake breasted, orthorexic who spends 12 hours a day deleting nasty comments about herself from the internet. That has to screw with your head. I don’t want to take important health advice from someone who spends 12 hours a day trawling the internet finding negative comments to delete, hide and ban. Once she contacted me on Facebook to tell me not to follow the Raw Brahs because they eat meat. She actually goes through her followers and makes sure they’re not following anyone she doesn’t agree with. This is seriously disturbed behaviour.
I want to be like Lou Corona and Mimi Kirk, they live, let live, love and don’t have any drama in their lives. They are mature and rich in their spirit. Freelee and Harley thrive on drama. It’s immature, cheap and I wish them the best with their lives.
I’ll check back in with them in 15 years and see how much botox and fillers Freelee the Banana Girl has had and how saggy Harley Johnstone's skin is and how few teeth he has left and feel smug I got out when I did.