Healthy Living in Connecticut Blog

This past Thursday, I had honor of interviewing Dr. Joel Fuhrman about how to be a healthy vegan. If you are unfamiliar with Dr. Fuhrman's work, he has transformed so many people's lives with his Nutritarian diet, including the "GBOMBS" foods that I eat each day (greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries and seeds). Although my diet includes other plant based foods, the GBOMBS are what I make sure I have daily. You can read about Dr. Fuhrman further on his website.

I wanted to interview Dr. Fuhrman as I knew he would have a lot of insight as to what's a healthy way to be vegan. As we all know, vegans can also be unhealthy, evidenced by the fact that many of the processed foods are vegan, like Oreos. As expected, Dr. Fuhrman confirmed that the GBOMBS foods are what vegans, and everybody should be focusing on. People need to eliminate as much processed food in their diet as possible, vegan or not!

Many of my former obese friends will be able to relate to this post. I know a lot of people have gone through this and it can get so frustrating. What I'm talking about here is when others make remarks about your weight, as if they are concerned you'll waste away to nothing.

I'm going to have to deal with this again, as my dad and step mom visit from another state next week. I haven't seen them in a while and it seems like every time I see them, my step mom will say in concern, "you lost A LOT of weight!" And yet it's been over 6 years since I lost the weight. I'm the same weight, around 205 pounds from the previous times they saw me. But I will most likely have to argue, stating how I haven't lost anything since they last saw me, despite her insistence.

I'm one of many formerly obese people that love to run. There's a reason so many of us seem to love the feeling of running.

When I was heavy, I had difficulty moving around. I sat around a lot and did very little exercise. When I did move, it was often painful with knee problems, nerve problems in my feet, etc. After losing 150 pounds and going plant based, all of those issues went away.

I never take my health for granted. Just seven short years ago I was morbidly obese, pre-hypertensive and most likely pre-diabetic.

So when I hear lines like this is the best cholesterol readings my doctor has seen or that I'll most likely never develop diabetes (unless I were to suddenly revert to my old habits), I feel so happy.

I don't believe in New Year's Resolutions because I don't think they work. Instead, I would rather set goals for things I want to accomplish. I think it's much less pressure that way and it seems doable.

Whenever I set resolutions in the past, they were always about weight loss and they never worked. I would be like others... workout for a few weeks and stop going for a while after that. I would change my diet briefly and go right back to the junk food within days.