Healthy Living in Connecticut Blog

I know many of my vegan friends can related when I say that I wished I went vegan years ago. That being said, it is now my anniversary of being 100 percent plant based, as my last day of consuming animal products was on Sept. 6th, 2016.

I had been mostly plant based since 2012, but still relied on turkey, eggs and yogurt, along with all the fruits and veggies I was consuming. I cut out all the processed foods I was eating prior to 2012 and was feeling great. I was working out hard and getting results. I had lost the first 120 of my 150 pound weight loss within the first year.

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!

So much focus is centered on weight loss, I wanted to blog about the other reasons to go whole food plant based, that being the health benefits. There are a lot of amazing stories out there and I thought I would share my own personal experience eating this way for better health.

Before I lost the weight, I was on so many yo-yo diets but nothing ever worked. I was unhealthy with hypertension and most likely pre-diabetes. I was going down a path of being on meds like so many in my family. I did not want to be like my parents, constantly making sure I had all my medication with me, worrying about side effects, etc.

Many people who decide to give up animal products in their diet will often call themselves vegan. They figure that the word vegan applies to some kind of diet and they might not be familiar with the terms "Whole Food Plant Based" or "Plant Based". Meanwhile, true ethical vegans get irritated because they believe being vegan is more than just not eating meat, but a complete avoidance of using any animal products beyond food... which means they will not wear fur, leather or use any products that were tested on animals.

As someone who has been plant based for almost 10 months now, people love to tell me how they could never be vegan. I don't even ask them, they just volunteer the information, automatically thinking I'm going to judge them. And the excuses I get range from "I could never give up meat" to "I could never give up cheese or ice cream".

This article isn't going to focus on why someone should go vegan... there's plenty of articles out there covering the subject. Instead, I wanted to focus on how easy it is to eat this way. So many people think it's complicated and because of this, they don't even want to try.