Healthy Living in Connecticut Blog

Recently, I made some black bean brownies at work. This was from a recipe I got from the Physician’s Committee For Responsible Medicine website. I had heard Chuck Carroll, host of one of my favorite podcasts, Exam Room, brag how good these were and thought they would be perfect for work. I typically make some kind of holiday dessert for work each holiday season.

They were really easy to make. The only thing I substituted was the raspberry jam, as I only had a guava jelly available. The guava jelly was unsweetened. I quickly mixed the ingredients, baked them in the oven and had everything done and cleaned up within an hour. I don’t waste any time!

I first met Eric Adams about three years ago at a veg fest in New York. I listened to his story in amazement as he reversed his diabetes that almost left him blind. He got healthy the same way I did, with a plant based diet.

Our stories are very similar. Aside from reversing health conditions as we began our plant based journeys, I found out he went to Google to search for info on how to reverse his diabetes, just as I had done back in 2012 to reverse my hypertension. We didn’t choose medication to control our diseases, we sought a cure and found it in whole food plant based eating.

If you are whole food plant based like me, you will find there is so much variety out there. I know people tend to think the opposite, that without meat, there's nothing to eat. Well, I’m here to tell you, there is a lot of awesome food that you most likely are missing out on.

When I was omnivore, I stuck with the same foods over and over again. Ever since going plant based, I go out of my way to try new plant based foods. Here are some foods that I found I love after recently trying them.

I still remember my last meal, Chicken Marsala, at a small dinner party celebrating my friend’s birthday. My plan was to start Robert Cheeke’s workout journal, a 13 week workout challenge where you are completely vegan for 13 weeks, the next day. I had done week long challenges before and always thought about how great I felt. I thought 13 weeks would be the ultimate test. Little did I know I would never go back to animal products after that!

I was plant based since 2012, having first started my healthy lifestyle through the work of Dr. Fuhrman. His advice about GBOMBS foods (greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries and seeds) is still an important part of my diet. Over the years, I’ve picked up advice from Dr. McDougall, Dr. Gregor and countless others. I think all plant based doctors have something to offer.

142/90. For some reason, that blood pressure reading stood out. There were others that were high around that time, over nine years ago, but this is the one that confirmed to my doctor that I was pre-hypertensive. I was a walking time bomb, also being most likely pre-diabetic. It was only a matter of time that I would have full blown hypertension and diabetes if I didn’t make some changes.

As many of you know, my doctor initially wanted me on blood pressure pills. I was fortunate to have a doctor that worked with me as I did not want to go on medication. He agreed to let me lose the weight and hope that the blood pressure would go down as the weight went down. It worked, as 6 months later, my blood pressure was normal and I never took a single pill.