Fields opts for plant-based protein the same way tennis great Novak Djokovic and a growing number of other plant-based athletes do, including Venus Williams, NBA superstar Chris Paul, and seven-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady. Every day it seems more athletes are choosing to skip meat and dairy and rely on plant foods for their winning nutrition.

Is Justin Fields Vegan?

Fields went vegan back in May of 2020 when he was quarantined with his family and they set out to eat plant-based as a one-month challenge. By the time the month was over, he was the only one who continued on the diet. “I really liked the way it made my body feel,” Fields recalls. So while the rest of his family went back to eating meat and dairy,  Fields is still going strong.

Drafted as the Bears’ number-one choice last year out of Ohio State, Fields had a stellar first season and is well on his way to establishing himself as a household name in his second season with the Bears. He even credits his new plant-based diet with feeling “lighter and faster.”

In an exclusive email interview with The Beet, Fields shares why he initially made the decision to go vegan, how it makes him feel, and everything he eats in a day, including what he eats to fuel up for a game and his favorite vegan recipe that you can create at home.

Bears QB Justin Fields Shares What He Eats on a Vegan Diet

The Beet: Why and when did you go vegan?

Justin Fields: I started during quarantine as a one-month challenge with my family going into my last season at Ohio State. Once I did it for a few weeks I actually really liked the way it made my body feel. The rest of my family stopped once the challenge was over, and I just kept doing it.

The Beet: How has going plant-based affected your athletic performance?

Justin Fields: It’s changed the way I feel and the way I perform dramatically. I just feel so much lighter and faster. Football as a sport is so hard on your body so I just want to do anything I can to have the longest career possible.

The Beet: What do you eat in a day?

Justin Fields: I normally start off my day by drinking some coffee, lots of water, and eating some fruit. I keep breakfast pretty light compared to my other meals because my days start really early with training right now.

For lunch, I will typically try to eat some vegan chicken nuggets or maybe a vegan burger. I try to get carbs in – either potatoes or rice for energy.

My dinner is also pretty similar to my lunch, and at this point in the day, I try to make an effort to get more greens in.

At the end of the day, I always get myself a chocolate Pro Elite OWYN shake to finish off my day and up my protein intake.

What do you eat before and after a game?

Justin Fields: Before a game, I don’t eat too much as I don’t want to upset my stomach, but after the game, I almost always grab an OWYN shake for recovery. Not only do I like the way the OWYN shakes make me feel but I really enjoy them almost like a dessert.

What’s your favorite plant-based recipe?

Justin Fields: My favorite plant-based recipe to make is falafel burgers. I normally eat those a couple of times a week. I personally don’t feel like they taste any different than normal burgers and they have a lot of added benefits, so I love eating those. As a side, I’ll normally do sweet potato fries too.

For more exclusive content on vegan athletes, check out our column. 

20 Athletes Who Went Vegan to Get Stronger

1. Novak Djokovic: Number one tennis champion in the world

The number one tennis player in the world, Novak Djokovic, went plant-based more than twelve years ago to enhance his athletic performance and win more matches. In recent interviews, he has credited going vegan with helping him rise from third place in the world to first in the world because it helped clear his allergies. Before changing his diet, Djokovic had searched for cures to the breathing issues that cost him matches and focus which caused him to struggled during his most intense matches. The allergies used to make him feel like he couldn’t breathe and would be forced to retire from competitive matches as he did in Australia. “Eating meat was hard on my digestion and that took a lot of essential energy that I need for my focus, for recovery, for the next training session, and for the next match,” he said. Djokovic emphasized he does not eat foods that require a lot of digestion, especially in the morning, when he needs all of his energy for training. Instead, he starts the day with hot water and lemon, then celery juice, and some superfood supplements.

2. Tia Blanco: Professional Surfer and Beyond Meat Ambassador Read More: 20 Who Athletes Swear by a Plant-Based Diet to Boost Performance

Tia Blanco won gold at the International Surfing Association Open in 2015 and credits her success to her vegan diet. Blanco reports that a vegan diet helps her stay strong and she enjoys eating different forms of vegan protein like nuts, seeds, beans, and legumes. The professional surfer was influenced by her mother, who is a vegetarian and grew up in a veggie-forward household, Blanco has never eaten meat in her life, which made the plant-based switch much easier. And speaking of making things easier, Blanco has an Instagram cooking page called @tiasvegankitchen where she shares her favorite simple vegan recipes so all of her fans can eat like their favorite professional vegan athlete. In addition to her home-cooked meals, Blanco recently became an ambassador for vegan company Beyond Meat and now she posts Instagram stories and highlights of her favorite meatless meat recipes.

3. Steph Davis: World Leading Professional Rock Climber

Steph Davis has been vegan for 18 years now and says, “there’s nothing in my life that hasn’t become better as a result, from climbing and athletics to mental and spiritual well being.” Davis has competed on some of the most challenging verticle routes on the planet –like Concepcion (5.13), which is known to be one of the hardest pure climbs anywhere. Davis holds the third overall ascent and is the first female to ever make the ascent of the route. Davis described it as her “most technically demanding climb ever.” Davis explained why she went vegan eight years ago when she partnered with PETA. “What can we do to start making changes in a positive way? And if it just so happens that changing our lifestyle leads to environmental benefits, health benefits, economic benefits, and positive social change, then all the better. One thing I’ve learned is you don’t have to do or be anything you don’t want to be, and you can change anything in your life just by starting to do it. It’s you who chooses who and what you are, by the things you think and the things you do.” She goes on to add, “no one says you have to become a “perfect” vegan overnight. But why not start making small changes and see how it feels? I believe it’s the small choices people make that have the biggest power to change, and nothing is more simple yet also more far-reaching than changing how and what you choose to eat. We’re all here for a short time, in the end, and living a well-intentioned and compassionate life seems like what ultimately matters the most, the only real goal that I aspire to.”

4. Venus Williams: Tennis Great

Tennis champion Venus Williams swears that making the switch to veganism was one of the factors that helped to improve her performance and get over an auto-immune disease. The tennis star went vegan back in 2011 when she was diagnosed with Sjögren’s syndrome, a debilitating autoimmune disease with a range of symptoms from joint pain to swelling, numbness, burning eyes, digestive problems, and fatigue. She chose to eat plant-based to recover to her formerly healthy self, and it worked so she stuck to it. The seven-time Grand Slam singles champion recovers faster on a plant-based diet now, compared to how she felt back when she ate animal protein. When you have an auto-immune disease you often feel extreme fatigue and random body aches and for Venus, a plant-based diet provides energy and helps her reduce inflammation. The Beet reported on Willaim’s diet and what she normally eats in a day to stay healthy, fit, and win more matches. Talking about her favorite dinner meal, Williams adds, “sometimes a girl just needs a donut!”

5. Mike Tyson: The First Heavyweight Boxer to Hold the WBA, WBC, and IBF Titles

Mike Tyson recently said he is “in the best shape ever” thanks to his vegan diet. The boxing legend then announced he’s getting back into the rings after 15 years, to fight against Roy Jones, Jr. in California later this fall. Tyson went vegan ten years ago after dealing with health complications and in the wake of having cleaned up his life: “I was so congested from all the drugs and bad cocaine, I could hardly breathe.” Tyson said, “I had high blood pressure, was almost dying, and had arthritis.” Now, the 53-year-old powerhouse is sober, healthy, and fit. “Turning vegan helped me eliminate all those problems in my life,” and “I’m in the best shape ever.” His new trainer agrees: Watching Iron Mike’s speed during recent training sessions, observed: “He has the same power as a guy who is 21, 22-years old.”

6. Chris Paul: The NBA’s Newest Vegan Who Was Influenced by The Game Changers

Oklahoma City’s point guard Chris Paul decided to ditch meat and dairy and was asked join on as a co-executive producer for the popular documentary, The Game Changers. For breakfast, Paul enjoys oatmeal with plant-based milk and nut butter. For lunch, he fuels up with pasta or brown rice with Beyond Meat sausage, grilled vegetables, and a curry sauce. His chef told USA Today, “The main thing is, we try to keep it as light and clean as possible for his normal routine, with organic ingredients. Anything that can minimize body inflammation. Chris is always worrying about what he can and can’t eat.” So far it appears he’s getting it right. In an exclusive interview with The Beet’s Awesome Vegans columnist Elysabeth Alfano, Paul said eating a plant-based diet helps him keep up with players half his age.

7. Colin Kaepernick: Former (future?) NFL Player and Social Activist

In 2016, Kaepernick made the switch to veganism with his longtime girlfriend to recover from a series of injuries that had him down for the count. The Beet recently reported on how this dietary switch has allowed Kaepernick to stay strong and healthy. Now, he’s in the gym building muscle and looks fitter than ever. But will he be picked up? The professional football player claims that a vegan diet makes him feel “always ready” to perform his best on the field.

8. Cam Newton: New England Patriots’ Newest Quarterback is Vegan

Cam Newton just replaced Tom Brady, who also follows a mostly plant-based diet, as the New England Patriot’s QB, after having made the plant-based switch back in March 2019. The NFL Star first decided to ditch meat and dairy to recover quicker from injuries when he learned that a plant-based diet is proven to help reduce inflammation. “I’ve seen such a remarkable change in the way my body responds to the food that I eat,” Newton told PETA for his recent partnership for a new campaign called, “Built Like a Vegan,” proving that you don’t need to eat meat to be strong. Newton enjoys a meat-free burger on a pretzel bun, heavy on pickles and sauce. He adds: “People often ask, ‘How do you get your protein?’ I just say, ‘I get it in the same way you do, but it’s fresher and cleaner.’ ” Newton shares how to do it: “My advice to a person who wants to become vegan is to eat on schedule. If you can eat on a schedule, you won’t miss [a meal or crave meat] or think anything different, and you’ll be alright.”

9. Elijah Hall: American Sprinter Training for The 2021 Tokyo Olympics

Elijah Hall says about his vegan diet: “Going vegan was the best decision” he has ever made. Hall holds records in the indoor 200 meters and was training for the Tokyo this summer when it got postponed by a year due to the pandemic. Hall said “the effects that it’s having on my body are amazing. Becoming a plant-based athlete has opened many doors to my health and my training.” We predict he’ll only get faster in the next 11 months and break records, come home with golf and be the world champion in 12 months.

10. Morgan Mitchell: Omplyian Sprinter Who Won her First Title at 2014 Australian National Championships

Five-years ago, Morgan Mitchell went vegan and it made her faster, leaner and happier. Last year she was featured in the plant-based athletes documentary The Game Changers and said, “Being vegan has helped me immensely. I don’t feel sluggish like I did when I was eating meat, and my recovery from training really took off. It felt like an overall cleanse for my body, and I started seeing greater results on the track.” Now Michelle is committed for the planet as well. “Ultimately helping the environment and not contributing to animal cruelty was a big thing for me, too. That was my initial reason for going vegan, and the rest of the benefits were just added bonuses.” Mitchell describes what she eats in a day for enhanced performance and more energy to win sprints. “I like to make sure I have three different types of protein in there. I use tofu, beans, and mushrooms, along with spinach, vegan cheese, and hash browns,” she says. “I also love to add Beyond Meat for more flavor, which is a great source of plant protein as well. That usually keeps me full for the better part of the day,” she told Well + Good.

11. Lewis Hamilton: Formula One Driver Who Credits His Vegan Diet For Allowing Him to Be Victorious

“We were taught that eating animal products was good for us but we’ve been lied to for hundreds of years,” said Lewis Hamilton. The Beet reported on Hamiltion’s vegan diet quoting The New York Times that he credits his new plant-based diet with making the difference in his career. Hamilton gave up processed food and animal products for vegetables, fruit, nuts, grains, because of his strong compassion for animals, for the benefit of the environment, and his own health. Hamilton isn’t the only vegan in his family. His dog Rocco is fully vegan and Hamilton says he’s “super happy” on Rocco’s very own IG post. Earlier this year, Hamilton gave up his private jet because he said it’s a big pollutant and aims to live a sustainable lifestyle. Back in February, he started a line of sustainable clothing with Tommy Hilfiger at London Fashion Week.

12. Patrik Baboumian: Arguably The Strongest Man in The World

Featured in The Game Changers for his elite strength and his superhuman ability to lift a car, Patrik Baboumiam is one of the strongest men in the world and also happens to be vegan. Baboumian lifted 358 pounds in the 2009 German log lift nationals. Back in 2014, Baboumiam partnered with PETA in his campaign “Want to be Stronger” describing powering yourself with plants and how you can build muscle without eating meat. One of his 2019 PETA campaigns showed him posing with crossed arms and leaves in his mouths with the text: “The world’s strongest animals are plant-eaters: Gorillas, buffaloes, elephants and me.” Bahoumiam’s diet consists of a dairy-free shake for breakfast with 8 grams of protein and 0 carbohydrates. For lunch, he enjoys vegan sausage, falafel, low-fat oven fires, peppers, and more grilled veggies. He normally eats 250 grams of carbs and 90 grams of protein just for lunch. Dinner includes vegetables cooked potatoes, and tofu. If you want to eat like Boubanian, he reports his food diary on his blog BarBend.

13. Arnold Schwarzenegger: Former Proessional BodyBuilder, Producer, The Game Changers, and former Governor of California

Here’s a guy who has worn many hats: Bodybuilder, Terminator, California Governor, and now vegan and advocate for the plant-based lifestyle. Arnold Schwarzenegger ditched meat and dairy and has proven that you don’t need to eat animal products to be strong, healthy and reverse symptoms of heart disease. Now 73, he had a pulmonary valve replacement 1997 due to a congenital defect and underwent emergency open-heart surgery in 2018 to replace the valve again. He then changed his eating and fitness habits and now extolls the virtues of plant-based eating for the environment as well as health reasons. He is a producer of The Game Changers (a movie with many masters) and an advocate for going vegan for health, the environment and the sake of animals (he posts on IG with his pet donkey and miniature pony, both household dwelling animals). Schwarzenegger said last year: “Right now, seven million people are dying every year. That is alarming and everyone in the government has the responsibility to protect the people…. 28 percent of the greenhouse gasses come from eating meat and from raising cattle, so we can do a much better job.”

14. Scott Jurek: Named One of The Greatest Ultra-Marathoner’s Of All Time Read More: 20 Who Athletes Swear by a Plant-Based Diet to Boost Performance

Jurek is an extreme ultra-marathon runner who has won the Hardrock Hundred, the Badwater Ultramarathon, the Spartathlon, and the Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run (you get the idea). Jurek has been vegan for almost two decades, after easing into it by cutting out meat in college, he slowly stopping seafood and finally giving up all animal products once he realized that eating this way made him feel healthier and happier. To run such an extreme amount of miles, you need to fuel your body with plant-based foods that will give you enough energy and carbohydrates to go the distance. The goal is to eat 5,000-6,000 calories of plant-based foods daily. Jurek outlined his plant-based diet in an interview with Bon Appetite. Instead of waking up to a hot cup of coffee to boost energy, he prefers to drink tea and a green smoothie with spirulina or chlorella and a host of other ingredients. He adds bananas, frozen pineapple slices, or mangoes, brown rice and pea protein, (for protein) to rebuild what’s lost in training. This is not just any smoothie.

15. Alex Morgan: USA Soccer Star, Plays for the Orlando Pride of the NWSL

Soccer star, Alex Morgan is one of the beloved members of the USA National Team that won the World Cup and has shown that the female players deserve to get equal pay as their male counterparts by the US Soccer Federation. She is also an animal rights advocate and longtime vegan, having given up meat when she decided that “it didn’t feel fair to have a dog, and yet eat meat all the time,” referring to her adorable pup Blue. Morgan aims to eat 90 grams of plant-based protein daily to stay fit and lean, especially for her workouts and on the field. Morgan admitted that breakfast was difficult because “a lot of the things I love like pancakes and French toast had dairy and eggs.” But now she enjoys oatmeal with nut butter and berries, smoothies, rice, quinoa, veggies, black beans, protein shakes, Mediterranean food, Impossible burgers, Mexican beans, and sauteed veggie burritos, she told USA Today.

16. Paul Rabil: Pro Lacrosse Player: A Vegan Diet Helped Alleviate His Sciatica

Paul Rabil who played for the Boston Cannons and the New York Lizards of Major League Lacrosse, ditched meat and dairy after his 2019 season ended and revealed he’s now “officially” vegan on YouTube. “At first [switching to a plant-based diet] was to help solve some pain and trauma that I was going through. Over the last two years, I’ve had two herniated discs…. and that has led to a ton of shooting pain down my legs, its called sciatica,” Rabil explains the purpose of his diet switch. He adds: “I’ve tried to a lot of things; I’ve had a number of cortisone shots; I’ve done physical therapy for two years. And I reached a place where I was thinking ‘okay maybe I can solve this with nutrition because a lot of our pain stems from inflammation. Within a few weeks, I started noticing a lot of alleviation so I started focusing and doubling down more on veganism”

17. Hannah Teter: 2006 Olympic Snowboard Gold Medalist

Hannah Teter won Olympic gold and silver in the halfpipe and is also a seven-time XGames medalist. She changed her diet after watching the documentary, Earthlings when she discovered how “horrible” factory farming is. After a strict vegetarian diet, Teter liked the way she performed and believes that her diet helped her win gold at the 2006 games. She now considers herself “plant-based” and in an interview with the Huffington Post, Teter said, “I feel stronger than I’ve ever been, mentally, physically, and emotionally. My plant-based diet has opened up more doors to being an athlete. It’s a whole other level that I’m elevating to. I stopped eating animals about a year ago, and it’s a new life. I feel like a new person, a new athlete.”

18. Nick Kyrgios: Professional Tennis Champion Ranked 40 in The World

Djokovic is not the only tour player to go plant-based. Nick Kyrgios shared that he does not eat meat anymore because of his strong compassion for animals. During the time of the Australian wildfires, the Aussie native explained: “I’ve been passionate about animal welfare for some time now. I don’t eat meat or dairy anymore. That’s not for my health, I just don’t believe in eating animals.” “I tried a vegan diet a couple of years ago but with all the travel I do, it was hard to stick to it. Since then I’ve managed to make it work, and I’ve been vegetarian for quite a while. “Seeing the footage of these animals suffering from the fires only reinforces why I’ve chosen this diet. When I see these terrible photos, I can’t comprehend eating meat.”

19. Matt Frazier: Ultra-Marathoner Credits Vegan Diet For Breaking Personal Records

Matt Frazier has run 27 ultra-marathons in his career so far and continues to write about the endurance strength of being a vegan athlete in his personal blog, which he started 11 years ago: No Meat Athlete. The Beet recently interviewed Frazier about his vegan journey and how to be a successful athlete on a plant-based diet. When asked about the first time he ditched meat Frazier replied, “I had already cut 90 minutes off my first marathon time. I was still 10 minutes away from the Boston Marathon qualifying time. I had plateaued, and I was not sure how I was going to find 10 minutes. [Plant-based eating] was what I was missing. That’s what it took. The other big noticeable difference to me [after going vegan] was I stopped getting injured. Injuries had always been a big part of my running journey. When I became vegan, it was around the time I ran three 50-milers and a 100-miler. I didn’t have any injuries. If it’s done right, [plant-based diets] can really help you recover faster.”

20. Michaela Copenhaver: Professional Rower, World Record Holder, 10,000m Indoor

Rowing is grueling. It’s known as the toughest endurance sport in the world. The world record-breaking female rower, Michaela Copenhaver went vegan in 2012 for ethical reasons, she told Great Vegan Athletes. “Initially, I just wanted to eat more vegetables. Those things are super good for you, and they’re delicious. Being vegetarian and vegan made me more conscious of how many servings I was getting a day (or not).” When she switched from vegetarian to vegan it was almost accidental: “I was traveling for a regatta in the fall of 2012. I had been vegetarian for 1.5 years already but relied pretty heavily on dairy and eggs. While I was traveling, I was bouncing from couch to couch and had no way to safely store dairy or eggs—so I decided to try a week without them. I felt great, and it wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought. I’ve been vegan ever since.” Now it’s a value system: “Once I stopped eating and using animals, I felt I could finally address a question that had been bothering me for a long time—what right do we have to exploit other creatures? Now, I understand that we have no right, and my motivations are primarily ethical.”

The post Chicago Bears’ QB Justin Fields Shares What He Eats on a Vegan Diet appeared first on The Beet.

This year, instead of relying on drugstore cures for my cold and flu remedies, I’ve decided to go the natural route and find cold and flu remedies that are based on plant-based ingredients rather than pharmaceuticals, which tend to knock me out. So I’m off to the local natural food market to stock up on antioxidant-rich foods and anti-inflammatory ingredients such as herbs and spices that I can make into homemade wellness shots.

Natural remedies to help reduce flu-like symptoms have been around for centuries and some of these ingredients are just as effective as medicine at knocking cold symptoms to the curb. So I found myself researching everything there is to know about how to treat a cold with natural ingredients, and rounded up the best at-home remedies for cold and flu, including some that involve behavior, as well as store-bought products. Here is my report back on how each one affected my cold symptoms, including the best elixirs I would recommend, and the easy recipes that have helped me endure the past five days and made me feel better.

Altogether, searching for the best natural cold and flu remedies has made me feel as productive as I could, while exhausted from the battle my immune system was fighting against the viral invaders. The project (and the remedies themselves) gave me the strength and energy to recover faster than if I had done nothing to treat my symptoms. These natural remedies all work in different ways and are in no particular order. But the first best remedy is always getting a good night’s sleep.

8 Natural, At-Home Remedies to Fight a Cold

1. Sleep

Going to bed early and getting deep sleep has been the reason I feel alert and strong, and wake up with more energy throughout the day, even as my immune system is fighting this cold. Every night I’ve been going to bed by 8 pm and waking up around 6 am feeling motivated to start my day by getting to the gym. The key is going to bed early since studies show it helps your body produce more immune cells, which peak during early nocturnal sleep.

Because I’ve been getting almost ten hours of sleep a night, I wake up less congested and less sore in my eyes. I recommend putting the phone away before bed or better yet,  leaving it outside your bedroom to avoid any distractions that could keep you up or interrupt your sleep. Having no digital interaction or blue light really helps me get better, deeper sleep. Studies have shown that blue light from screens can interrupt your melatonin production, and slow metabolism, so turn off the TV and read a paperback to help yourself get sleepy instead.

2. Steam

After a workout and again before I go to sleep, I tried steaming away my cold by having a steamy shower. The humid vapor helps open my sinuses and I feel like I can breathe through my nose for the first time in days. I don’t have a steam room, so I turn up the shower temperature to the highest degree (without going in) and let my tiny bathroom fill up with the misty air. I also make sure there is no fragrance like a candle or bath soap that could take away from the purity of the steamy vapor. This not only clears up my sinuses but also gets me ready for a restful sleep or a productive day after a morning workout.

3. A Light Run

Going out for a light, slow, gentle jog has helped my head cold feel lessened stuffed up and miserable. It may be counter-intuitive, but as my lungs start working and my muscles get warmed up, the rest of my system feels energized and adrenalized, which is a relief from the congestion. It’s a bit chilly where I live so I bundle up in sweats and a sweatshirt to start my run warmed up instead of chilly as I usually do. The first few minutes are the hardest because my congestion is at its worst, but if I push through, it gives me the best outcome. About a mile into my run having worked up a decent sweat, my sinuses clear up and it’s much easier to breathe. I can feel the adrenaline start to work as a tingling sensation at the top of my nose and then all of a sudden it’s like opening a portal and letting fresh air in as I’m jogging.

4. Healthy Plant-Based Eating and Antioxidant-Rich Soup

My diet is usually very clean but there are some times I let myself indulge and overeat. This week while I try to reduce my cold symptoms, I’m sticking to eating healthy, clean, plant-based foods that are full of antioxidants and nutrients that help reduce inflammation. I’m eating more berries, citrus, and kale, all loaded with antioxidants to help my immune system power up. I bought a bunch of frozen fruits like raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, peaches, and oranges, and a bag of kale to make smoothies for a healthy snack around 3 pm. In addition, I made a large batch of The Beet’s Chickpea Tuscan Soup (I added noodles and extra kale and I have been eating a bowl of this healing soup every day for lunch.

5. Fire Cider

I’m always on the lookout for superfood ingredients that help strengthen the immune system. There are so many that I was surprised to find a good amount of them all in one store-bought elixir called Fire Cider which is a popular wellness tonic. So I called my local health-food stores, and thankfully, one of them had Fire Cider in stock. The woman who helped me raved about the taste and said, “this stuff is so good, I use Fire Cider in my salad dressings.”

You can’t beat the combination of powerful ingredients in this bottle: Apple Cider Vinegar, Oranges, Lemons, Onions, Ginger, Horseradish, Garlic, Tumeric, Habanero Pepper, and Black Pepper. The taste is so strong and bitter that it made my eyes water after the first sip. But once you get used to the taste, it’s one of those products that feels healthy and you crave more. I have two shots of this natural cold remedy a day as recommended and will continue this for the next week so I can report back on how it works over time,

6. Store-Bought Wellness Shots

I’m not a huge fan of store-bought wellness shots because there tends to always be a hidden ingredient that shows up near the top of the nutrition label which means it’s among the most prominent ingredient in the bottle, like apple juice or orange juice, often used to add sweetness and flavor. Or, sometimes there will be sneaky cane sugar hiding on the label, like in the Rescue Ginger Shots. In my opinion, the whole point of a wellness shot is to boost my immunity, so I don’t need a great-tasting product loaded with sugar. I’d rather have the active ingredients extracted and concentrated. If I wanted juice, I would have bought a bottle of juice.

One of my favorites is The Twisted Shot available on Amazon. The ingredients are filtered water, organic apple cider vinegar, organic honey, organic turmeric extract, organic ginger extract, organic cinnamon extract, and organic cayenne pepper. I started out drinking one of these every day and even the smell of this product opens up my sinuses.

7. Homemade Wellness Shots

So after having spent a lot of money for single-portion store-bought shots, later in the week I decided to make my own at home using my Vitamix and lots of filtered, alkaline water. The thing I love amount making shots in the Vitamix is that it keeps all the skin and pulp of the fruit and vegetables, where most of the fiber lives. (And skins contain most of the vitamins, which shield the fruit from the harsh rays of the sun.)  By contrast, juicers discard the best part!

For this one, I used an entire ginger root and turmeric root and found it easiest to peel them with a spoon, as well as two whole oranges, one apple, cayenne pepper, and filtered alkaline water. I save the tiny plastic store-bought shot bottles and fill them up with my homemade, blended ingredients and pack them away in the fridge. There are some days when I’ll fill up a cup of this mixture and sip on it. The best part of making them at home is that you can make a large batch and save tons of money. This entire batch of wellness shots (which I’ll have for the whole week) costs me less than $5 to make — about the same price as each store-bought single wellness shot!

8. Hot Toddy 

Lastly, I tried sipping a hot toddy. Don’t laugh. Sure this is more from the Mad Men era, but one of my friends came over (masked up and socially distant) and made me a warm hot toddy of whiskey, honey, cinnamon, and lemon juice. I don’t love the taste of whiskey so this one wasn’t as easy to drink compared to my wellness shots, but the warmth and strong, potent taste of the alcohol slowly opened up my sinuses. I appreciated this drink but only had it once.

If you’re fighting a cold or have flu-like symptoms, I recommend trying any one or all of these remedies (or sleep plus a few others) since they each helped me recover naturally.

Do you have another at-home secret you’d like to share? Send me an email at hailey@thebeet.com or go to our Facebook page and share it there –– I’d love to try yours!

For more health hacks, visit The Beet’s Health & Nutrition articles. 

The post “I Tried 8 Natural Remedies to Treat My Cold & Flu Symptoms. What Worked.” appeared first on The Beet.

Heidrich also is an author of  A Race for Life, Senior Fitness, The CHEF Cook/Rawbook, Lifelong Running: How to Overcome the 11 Myths of Running & Live a Healthier Life, and Prevent, Reverse, & Cure ED: Ten Steps to Total Sexual Fitness. She also writes a variety of articles on her blog, emphasizing how a vegan diet can heal and nourish the body.

In an exclusive interview with The Beet from December of 2020, Heidrich – now 86 years old – talks about her health journey, how her vegan diet helped her achieve her running feats, and what she eats in a day. We believe her advice will empower you to load up on raw, plant-based foods and strengthen your body to accomplish your fitness goals!

The Beet: What made you decide to go vegan?

Dr. Ruth Heidrich: With a diagnosis of Stage 4 Breast Cancer, I had the proverbial “medical gun” to my head. I realized that this information about the power of diet could save my life, so I committed myself to it.

TB: Can you tell us the story — we are so grateful you are sharing your health journey.

RH: In 1968, I saw a book entitled “Aerobics” by Dr. Kenneth Cooper. I’d never seen the word, “Aerobics”, before, so I was curious as to what it meant. I ended up reading the book, where I learned of the many benefits of exercise and became inspired to start running every morning. I eventually got up to running marathons. I’d been running for 14 years when my diagnosis of cancer came, and I thought I was too healthy to have cancer. I got second, third, and even fourth opinion that, yes, it was definitely cancer. Right at that time, I read that Dr. John McDougall was doing research on diet and breast cancer and I was curious about this research. He was looking for subjects who were newly diagnosed and before they had gotten any chemo/radiation.

He was trying to show that a low-fat, vegan diet alone, could reverse cancer without chemo/radiation. and not even have any recurrence of cancer. He showed me the epidemiological and animal studies that supported his theory. I was convinced and signed up for his clinical research trial and from that moment on, I was a newly-emerged “Vegan”!

TB: Did you try other alternative avenues as well?

RH: No, I was convinced by the studies Dr. McDougall showed me, that this was the way to go. Armed with this information, in less than two hours with Dr. McDougall, I walked out of his office a vegan.

TB: What did your doc say? Most are skeptical that food is medicine.

RH: My oncologist scoffed when I told him what I was doing, saying “Diet has nothing to do with breast cancer!” He sent me to a gastroenterologist who told me that I couldn’t possibly get enough protein, calcium, and all the essential amino acids. I went back to Dr. McDougall and he showed me how I’d get plenty of protein, calcium, and essential amino acids. So I remain convinced I was on the right track.

TB: What was the hardest moment or biggest challenge? Did you nearly give up?

RH: Armed with those statistics, there was no doubt in my mind that this was the right thing to do. Then I discovered I really loved the food and saw so many other benefits, so it wasn’t hard nor did I ever come close to giving up. In fact, I started raving about the diet, but nobody listened. They thought I was foolish to not follow conventional treatment.

TB: What differences did you see after going vegan?

RH: I started seeing some of the benefits the very next morning! I’d been constipated all my life, That was a big advantage right there. Then the bone pain started disappearing, I got right back into running races and took 17 minutes off my next marathon. So I was running faster and pleasantly surprised at how quickly I was recovering as well. The new bone scan was clear as was the liver. The lesion in my lung had encapsulated so it was just a matter of watching to see if it grew and actually, it disappeared several years later.

TB: How do you eat now? What does a typical day look like for you (in terms of what you eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack(s)?

RH: In the morning I start with packing the leafy greens into a blender which includes kale, bok choi, collards, watercress, spinach, cabbage, arugula, chlorella, cilantro, fennel, rosemary, and even green onions and celery tops. Of course, not all of these are available at the same time, so I juggle variations of the greens and the quantities.  Then I add enough filtered water to the green smoothie to give it the consistency of salsa.

For my breakfast, in a large bowl, I’ll have a clove of crushed fresh garlic which I allow to stand for roughly ten minutes as the exposure increases the availability of allicin, one of the anti-inflammatory ingredients. To get a good supply of omega-3 fatty acids, I add a tablespoon each of flaxseed, chia, and hemp seeds to the green smoothie and buy organic as much as possible.  I pour about a third of it over my rolled oats, different ancient grains such as teff, amaranth, or rye, some blueberries, and enough filtered water to moisten.

For my lunch, it’s papaya or mango, a banana, 7 or 8 prunes, a crushed clove of garlic, an inch of fresh, raw ginger; an inch of fresh turmeric (or ground if fresh isn’t available) with black pepper (to enhance its absorption), a large slice of organic tofu, a handful of almonds, a big sprinkle of cinnamon, and more leafy greens from the green smoothie.

For my dinner, it’s the rest of the green smoothie but poured over cherry tomatoes, broccoli, a carrot, beans, mushrooms, a second crushed clove of garlic, and maybe a beet, radish, cucumber, zucchini, okra, squash, or green beans—whatever I happened to find at the farmer’s market. My main starches are whole grains, quinoa, and as many purple sweet potatoes or yams as I need to give me complete satiety.

The finale is my all-time favorite dessert—more blueberries, a handful of goji berries, a handful of walnuts, a rounded teaspoon of 100 percent cocoa powder, a tiny bit of stevia, and enough filtered water to moisten the cocoa powder. When I find a big, fresh pineapple, I add that as well.

This is as high-nutrient a diet as I’ve been able to come up with, and is so satisfying that I never feel the need to snack. I include every nutrient that I could find to help my immune system. I’m also always on the lookout for any improvements. It is a highly raw and nutritious diet that focuses on the anti-inflammatory aspects of these ingredients. The only cooked foods are sweet potatoes, quinoa, beans, and mushrooms. (You’ve probably heard of those “nasty lectins” which some have said to be in beans and other legumes which is true but we don’t eat uncooked beans, and once they’re cooked, they are healthy, add satiety, and are an excellent source of protein and fiber.)

TB: What advice would you give someone who is considering going plant-based?

RH: Get armed with understanding the science behind how the wrong foods can kill you and how the right foods can prevent most all of the most common diseases that kill, # 1, heart disease, # 2, cancer, #3 stroke, #4 medical mistakes, believe it or not. This diet can reverse type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, E.D., and obesity, and even enable you to run Ironman Triathlons.

TB: What has been your personal biggest triumph? What are you proudest of?

RH: I would say that being curious was my biggest triumph. Out of curiosity I picked up a book, read it, and embarked on a nearly 50-year record of running. Then when I read about some research being conducted on cancer, I was curious enough to find out about it, and if I could participate. Then, of course, I’m quite proud of those six Ironman Triathlons I’ve done, four in Kona, Hawaii; one in Auckland, New Zealand; and one in Hikone, Japan. With the information I’d gained, I turned to lecturing and writing books to get all this very valuable information out to everybody.

TB: What message do you have for the world?

RH: We’re running out of time! Between squandering our resources by raising animals for food, the cruel, painful way those animals are treated, and the climate change we’re seeing already, there is every reason to change now! What we are doing now is not sustainable, especially with the population continuing to increase exponentially.

For more inspiring plant-based stories, check out The Beet’s Success Stories. 

The post This 86-Year Old Triathlete Recovered from Breast Cancer on a Vegan Diet appeared first on The Beet.

Fremont adopted a vegan diet at the age of 69 after receiving a daunting cancer diagnosis. He turned down what his doctors told him was life-saving surgery in favor of switching to a whole food plant-based diet. Now, Fremont, the oldest known vegan runner, holds the marathon distance world records for single-year age groups of 88 and 90.

“I said no, I was going on a diet!” Fremont told Great Vegan Athletes. “In two and a quarter years the tumor began to bleed, and I was operated upon. The surgeon looked for metastasis in 35 places and found zero. In other words, my macrobiotic diet, [which became] a vegan diet, [which became] a whole-foods plant-based diet, killed the metastases!”

This week, Fremont joined the legendary plant-based athlete, author and podcaster Rich Roll to discuss his prolonged competitive career and unwavering strength and endurance. Fremont claimed that the past few years leading up to his 100th have been “the very best years” of his life. Roll asked the 100-year-old athlete what he credits his longevity to, and Fremont unhesitatingly claimed that his diet plays a major role.

“No question in my mind, absolutely, it is [my] diet that has determined my existence. My continued existence and my beautiful health,” Fremont told Roll on the show.

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Fremont has no plans of stopping, or even slowing down. Fremont’s running partner Harvey Lewis – a 46-year-old ultrarunner and fellow vegan – told Great Vegan Athletes that he suggested a 5K run with Fremont for his 100th birthday. Fremont turned down the idea and instead suggested they run twice the distance.

“I asked him about the Flying Pig Marathon and if he was interested in doing the 5K, as we have done it the past couple of years,” Harvey said. “He said, ‘I don’t feel it’s really a race unless we do 10K’ with a big grin. No arguing with Mike. 10K it is!”

Prolonging Life Expectancy with a Plant-Based Diet

Though a whole food plant-based diet is not a recommended treatment for cancer or a substitute for medical treatment, a growing body of research indicates that following a vegan diet can significantly reduce the risk of ever contracting several types of cancer including breast, prostate, and others. This February, a study published in Plos Medicine Journal claimed that you could prolong your life expectancy by 10 years or even more if you start eating plant-based early enough. The report asserts that a plant-based diet can help lower risk factors for several fatal diseases including heart disease and stroke.

Previous generations have historically avoided plant-based dieting due to traditional meal preferences centered around meat and dairy. However, that is changing as more information comes out yearly highlighting the health benefits of a plant-based diet for people over 65. One survey found that 54 percent of UK consumers over 65 have set out to reduce their meat consumption, motivated by the health benefits of lowering saturated fat intake.

An ever-growing body of research has shown that plant-based diets can significantly minimize the risk of heart disease in later life. And the earlier you make the switch the better: Adopting a plant-centered diet between the ages of 18 and 30 can reduce the risk of heart disease some 30 years later. In Fremont’s case, following a plant-based approach since he was 60, he proves it is never too late to switch to a plant-based diet, especially for athletes.

Athletes Turning to Vegan Diets to Optimize Performance

Fremont, Tom Brady, Novak Djokovic, and Nick Kyrgios (who lost in the Wimbledon finals) join an impressive list of talented athletes who count themselves as part of the plant-based community. Notably, Phoenix Suns player Chris Paul credits his plant-based diet to improved performance on the court and in life. This year, the NBA player made his 12th appearance on the NBA All-Star team

“When I first went plant-based, it was for performance purposes but once I saw how my body changed and how I felt — it was for life,” Paul said to GQ. “Years ago, I probably wouldn’t have even gone outside to run around with my kids and all the other activities because my body would be aching. Now, with the constant lifting and making sure that my body is always ready, it’s been a good lifestyle change for me.”

Two years ago, director Louie Psihoyos released The Game Changers documentary, showing the world how athletes do not need meat or dairy to perform professionally. Since then, high-profile athletes have converted to vegan diets to reduce inflammation, improve endurance, and better their overall health including Paul, Fremont, and many others.

For more inspiring plant-based eaters, visit The Beet’s Success Stories. 

20 Athletes Who Went Vegan to Get Stronger

1. Novak Djokovic: Number one tennis champion in the world

The number one tennis player in the world, Novak Djokovic, went plant-based more than twelve years ago to enhance his athletic performance and win more matches. In recent interviews, he has credited going vegan with helping him rise from third place in the world to first in the world because it helped clear his allergies. Before changing his diet, Djokovic had searched for cures to the breathing issues that cost him matches and focus which caused him to struggled during his most intense matches. The allergies used to make him feel like he couldn’t breathe and would be forced to retire from competitive matches as he did in Australia. “Eating meat was hard on my digestion and that took a lot of essential energy that I need for my focus, for recovery, for the next training session, and for the next match,” he said. Djokovic emphasized he does not eat foods that require a lot of digestion, especially in the morning, when he needs all of his energy for training. Instead, he starts the day with hot water and lemon, then celery juice, and some superfood supplements.

2. Tia Blanco: Professional Surfer and Beyond Meat Ambassador Read More: 20 Who Athletes Swear by a Plant-Based Diet to Boost Performance

Tia Blanco won gold at the International Surfing Association Open in 2015 and credits her success to her vegan diet. Blanco reports that a vegan diet helps her stay strong and she enjoys eating different forms of vegan protein like nuts, seeds, beans, and legumes. The professional surfer was influenced by her mother, who is a vegetarian and grew up in a veggie-forward household, Blanco has never eaten meat in her life, which made the plant-based switch much easier. And speaking of making things easier, Blanco has an Instagram cooking page called @tiasvegankitchen where she shares her favorite simple vegan recipes so all of her fans can eat like their favorite professional vegan athlete. In addition to her home-cooked meals, Blanco recently became an ambassador for vegan company Beyond Meat and now she posts Instagram stories and highlights of her favorite meatless meat recipes.

3. Steph Davis: World Leading Professional Rock Climber

Steph Davis has been vegan for 18 years now and says, “there’s nothing in my life that hasn’t become better as a result, from climbing and athletics to mental and spiritual well being.” Davis has competed on some of the most challenging verticle routes on the planet –like Concepcion (5.13), which is known to be one of the hardest pure climbs anywhere. Davis holds the third overall ascent and is the first female to ever make the ascent of the route. Davis described it as her “most technically demanding climb ever.” Davis explained why she went vegan eight years ago when she partnered with PETA. “What can we do to start making changes in a positive way? And if it just so happens that changing our lifestyle leads to environmental benefits, health benefits, economic benefits, and positive social change, then all the better. One thing I’ve learned is you don’t have to do or be anything you don’t want to be, and you can change anything in your life just by starting to do it. It’s you who chooses who and what you are, by the things you think and the things you do.” She goes on to add, “no one says you have to become a “perfect” vegan overnight. But why not start making small changes and see how it feels? I believe it’s the small choices people make that have the biggest power to change, and nothing is more simple yet also more far-reaching than changing how and what you choose to eat. We’re all here for a short time, in the end, and living a well-intentioned and compassionate life seems like what ultimately matters the most, the only real goal that I aspire to.”

4. Venus Williams: Tennis Great

Tennis champion Venus Williams swears that making the switch to veganism was one of the factors that helped to improve her performance and get over an auto-immune disease. The tennis star went vegan back in 2011 when she was diagnosed with Sjögren’s syndrome, a debilitating autoimmune disease with a range of symptoms from joint pain to swelling, numbness, burning eyes, digestive problems, and fatigue. She chose to eat plant-based to recover to her formerly healthy self, and it worked so she stuck to it. The seven-time Grand Slam singles champion recovers faster on a plant-based diet now, compared to how she felt back when she ate animal protein. When you have an auto-immune disease you often feel extreme fatigue and random body aches and for Venus, a plant-based diet provides energy and helps her reduce inflammation. The Beet reported on Willaim’s diet and what she normally eats in a day to stay healthy, fit, and win more matches. Talking about her favorite dinner meal, Williams adds, “sometimes a girl just needs a donut!”

5. Mike Tyson: The First Heavyweight Boxer to Hold the WBA, WBC, and IBF Titles

Mike Tyson recently said he is “in the best shape ever” thanks to his vegan diet. The boxing legend then announced he’s getting back into the rings after 15 years, to fight against Roy Jones, Jr. in California later this fall. Tyson went vegan ten years ago after dealing with health complications and in the wake of having cleaned up his life: “I was so congested from all the drugs and bad cocaine, I could hardly breathe.” Tyson said, “I had high blood pressure, was almost dying, and had arthritis.” Now, the 53-year-old powerhouse is sober, healthy, and fit. “Turning vegan helped me eliminate all those problems in my life,” and “I’m in the best shape ever.” His new trainer agrees: Watching Iron Mike’s speed during recent training sessions, observed: “He has the same power as a guy who is 21, 22-years old.”

6. Chris Paul: The NBA’s Newest Vegan Who Was Influenced by The Game Changers

Oklahoma City’s point guard Chris Paul decided to ditch meat and dairy and was asked join on as a co-executive producer for the popular documentary, The Game Changers. For breakfast, Paul enjoys oatmeal with plant-based milk and nut butter. For lunch, he fuels up with pasta or brown rice with Beyond Meat sausage, grilled vegetables, and a curry sauce. His chef told USA Today, “The main thing is, we try to keep it as light and clean as possible for his normal routine, with organic ingredients. Anything that can minimize body inflammation. Chris is always worrying about what he can and can’t eat.” So far it appears he’s getting it right. In an exclusive interview with The Beet’s Awesome Vegans columnist Elysabeth Alfano, Paul said eating a plant-based diet helps him keep up with players half his age.

7. Colin Kaepernick: Former (future?) NFL Player and Social Activist

In 2016, Kaepernick made the switch to veganism with his longtime girlfriend to recover from a series of injuries that had him down for the count. The Beet recently reported on how this dietary switch has allowed Kaepernick to stay strong and healthy. Now, he’s in the gym building muscle and looks fitter than ever. But will he be picked up? The professional football player claims that a vegan diet makes him feel “always ready” to perform his best on the field.

8. Cam Newton: New England Patriots’ Newest Quarterback is Vegan

Cam Newton just replaced Tom Brady, who also follows a mostly plant-based diet, as the New England Patriot’s QB, after having made the plant-based switch back in March 2019. The NFL Star first decided to ditch meat and dairy to recover quicker from injuries when he learned that a plant-based diet is proven to help reduce inflammation. “I’ve seen such a remarkable change in the way my body responds to the food that I eat,” Newton told PETA for his recent partnership for a new campaign called, “Built Like a Vegan,” proving that you don’t need to eat meat to be strong. Newton enjoys a meat-free burger on a pretzel bun, heavy on pickles and sauce. He adds: “People often ask, ‘How do you get your protein?’ I just say, ‘I get it in the same way you do, but it’s fresher and cleaner.’ ” Newton shares how to do it: “My advice to a person who wants to become vegan is to eat on schedule. If you can eat on a schedule, you won’t miss [a meal or crave meat] or think anything different, and you’ll be alright.”

9. Elijah Hall: American Sprinter Training for The 2021 Tokyo Olympics

Elijah Hall says about his vegan diet: “Going vegan was the best decision” he has ever made. Hall holds records in the indoor 200 meters and was training for the Tokyo this summer when it got postponed by a year due to the pandemic. Hall said “the effects that it’s having on my body are amazing. Becoming a plant-based athlete has opened many doors to my health and my training.” We predict he’ll only get faster in the next 11 months and break records, come home with golf and be the world champion in 12 months.

10. Morgan Mitchell: Omplyian Sprinter Who Won her First Title at 2014 Australian National Championships

Five-years ago, Morgan Mitchell went vegan and it made her faster, leaner and happier. Last year she was featured in the plant-based athletes documentary The Game Changers and said, “Being vegan has helped me immensely. I don’t feel sluggish like I did when I was eating meat, and my recovery from training really took off. It felt like an overall cleanse for my body, and I started seeing greater results on the track.” Now Michelle is committed for the planet as well. “Ultimately helping the environment and not contributing to animal cruelty was a big thing for me, too. That was my initial reason for going vegan, and the rest of the benefits were just added bonuses.” Mitchell describes what she eats in a day for enhanced performance and more energy to win sprints. “I like to make sure I have three different types of protein in there. I use tofu, beans, and mushrooms, along with spinach, vegan cheese, and hash browns,” she says. “I also love to add Beyond Meat for more flavor, which is a great source of plant protein as well. That usually keeps me full for the better part of the day,” she told Well + Good.

11. Lewis Hamilton: Formula One Driver Who Credits His Vegan Diet For Allowing Him to Be Victorious

“We were taught that eating animal products was good for us but we’ve been lied to for hundreds of years,” said Lewis Hamilton. The Beet reported on Hamiltion’s vegan diet quoting The New York Times that he credits his new plant-based diet with making the difference in his career. Hamilton gave up processed food and animal products for vegetables, fruit, nuts, grains, because of his strong compassion for animals, for the benefit of the environment, and his own health. Hamilton isn’t the only vegan in his family. His dog Rocco is fully vegan and Hamilton says he’s “super happy” on Rocco’s very own IG post. Earlier this year, Hamilton gave up his private jet because he said it’s a big pollutant and aims to live a sustainable lifestyle. Back in February, he started a line of sustainable clothing with Tommy Hilfiger at London Fashion Week.

12. Patrik Baboumian: Arguably The Strongest Man in The World

Featured in The Game Changers for his elite strength and his superhuman ability to lift a car, Patrik Baboumiam is one of the strongest men in the world and also happens to be vegan. Baboumian lifted 358 pounds in the 2009 German log lift nationals. Back in 2014, Baboumiam partnered with PETA in his campaign “Want to be Stronger” describing powering yourself with plants and how you can build muscle without eating meat. One of his 2019 PETA campaigns showed him posing with crossed arms and leaves in his mouths with the text: “The world’s strongest animals are plant-eaters: Gorillas, buffaloes, elephants and me.” Bahoumiam’s diet consists of a dairy-free shake for breakfast with 8 grams of protein and 0 carbohydrates. For lunch, he enjoys vegan sausage, falafel, low-fat oven fires, peppers, and more grilled veggies. He normally eats 250 grams of carbs and 90 grams of protein just for lunch. Dinner includes vegetables cooked potatoes, and tofu. If you want to eat like Boubanian, he reports his food diary on his blog BarBend.

13. Arnold Schwarzenegger: Former Proessional BodyBuilder, Producer, The Game Changers, and former Governor of California

Here’s a guy who has worn many hats: Bodybuilder, Terminator, California Governor, and now vegan and advocate for the plant-based lifestyle. Arnold Schwarzenegger ditched meat and dairy and has proven that you don’t need to eat animal products to be strong, healthy and reverse symptoms of heart disease. Now 73, he had a pulmonary valve replacement 1997 due to a congenital defect and underwent emergency open-heart surgery in 2018 to replace the valve again. He then changed his eating and fitness habits and now extolls the virtues of plant-based eating for the environment as well as health reasons. He is a producer of The Game Changers (a movie with many masters) and an advocate for going vegan for health, the environment and the sake of animals (he posts on IG with his pet donkey and miniature pony, both household dwelling animals). Schwarzenegger said last year: “Right now, seven million people are dying every year. That is alarming and everyone in the government has the responsibility to protect the people…. 28 percent of the greenhouse gasses come from eating meat and from raising cattle, so we can do a much better job.”

14. Scott Jurek: Named One of The Greatest Ultra-Marathoner’s Of All Time Read More: 20 Who Athletes Swear by a Plant-Based Diet to Boost Performance

Jurek is an extreme ultra-marathon runner who has won the Hardrock Hundred, the Badwater Ultramarathon, the Spartathlon, and the Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run (you get the idea). Jurek has been vegan for almost two decades, after easing into it by cutting out meat in college, he slowly stopping seafood and finally giving up all animal products once he realized that eating this way made him feel healthier and happier. To run such an extreme amount of miles, you need to fuel your body with plant-based foods that will give you enough energy and carbohydrates to go the distance. The goal is to eat 5,000-6,000 calories of plant-based foods daily. Jurek outlined his plant-based diet in an interview with Bon Appetite. Instead of waking up to a hot cup of coffee to boost energy, he prefers to drink tea and a green smoothie with spirulina or chlorella and a host of other ingredients. He adds bananas, frozen pineapple slices, or mangoes, brown rice and pea protein, (for protein) to rebuild what’s lost in training. This is not just any smoothie.

15. Alex Morgan: USA Soccer Star, Plays for the Orlando Pride of the NWSL

Soccer star, Alex Morgan is one of the beloved members of the USA National Team that won the World Cup and has shown that the female players deserve to get equal pay as their male counterparts by the US Soccer Federation. She is also an animal rights advocate and longtime vegan, having given up meat when she decided that “it didn’t feel fair to have a dog, and yet eat meat all the time,” referring to her adorable pup Blue. Morgan aims to eat 90 grams of plant-based protein daily to stay fit and lean, especially for her workouts and on the field. Morgan admitted that breakfast was difficult because “a lot of the things I love like pancakes and French toast had dairy and eggs.” But now she enjoys oatmeal with nut butter and berries, smoothies, rice, quinoa, veggies, black beans, protein shakes, Mediterranean food, Impossible burgers, Mexican beans, and sauteed veggie burritos, she told USA Today.

16. Paul Rabil: Pro Lacrosse Player: A Vegan Diet Helped Alleviate His Sciatica

Paul Rabil who played for the Boston Cannons and the New York Lizards of Major League Lacrosse, ditched meat and dairy after his 2019 season ended and revealed he’s now “officially” vegan on YouTube. “At first [switching to a plant-based diet] was to help solve some pain and trauma that I was going through. Over the last two years, I’ve had two herniated discs…. and that has led to a ton of shooting pain down my legs, its called sciatica,” Rabil explains the purpose of his diet switch. He adds: “I’ve tried to a lot of things; I’ve had a number of cortisone shots; I’ve done physical therapy for two years. And I reached a place where I was thinking ‘okay maybe I can solve this with nutrition because a lot of our pain stems from inflammation. Within a few weeks, I started noticing a lot of alleviation so I started focusing and doubling down more on veganism”

17. Hannah Teter: 2006 Olympic Snowboard Gold Medalist

Hannah Teter won Olympic gold and silver in the halfpipe and is also a seven-time XGames medalist. She changed her diet after watching the documentary, Earthlings when she discovered how “horrible” factory farming is. After a strict vegetarian diet, Teter liked the way she performed and believes that her diet helped her win gold at the 2006 games. She now considers herself “plant-based” and in an interview with the Huffington Post, Teter said, “I feel stronger than I’ve ever been, mentally, physically, and emotionally. My plant-based diet has opened up more doors to being an athlete. It’s a whole other level that I’m elevating to. I stopped eating animals about a year ago, and it’s a new life. I feel like a new person, a new athlete.”

18. Nick Kyrgios: Professional Tennis Champion Ranked 40 in The World

Djokovic is not the only tour player to go plant-based. Nick Kyrgios shared that he does not eat meat anymore because of his strong compassion for animals. During the time of the Australian wildfires, the Aussie native explained: “I’ve been passionate about animal welfare for some time now. I don’t eat meat or dairy anymore. That’s not for my health, I just don’t believe in eating animals.” “I tried a vegan diet a couple of years ago but with all the travel I do, it was hard to stick to it. Since then I’ve managed to make it work, and I’ve been vegetarian for quite a while. “Seeing the footage of these animals suffering from the fires only reinforces why I’ve chosen this diet. When I see these terrible photos, I can’t comprehend eating meat.”

19. Matt Frazier: Ultra-Marathoner Credits Vegan Diet For Breaking Personal Records

Matt Frazier has run 27 ultra-marathons in his career so far and continues to write about the endurance strength of being a vegan athlete in his personal blog, which he started 11 years ago: No Meat Athlete. The Beet recently interviewed Frazier about his vegan journey and how to be a successful athlete on a plant-based diet. When asked about the first time he ditched meat Frazier replied, “I had already cut 90 minutes off my first marathon time. I was still 10 minutes away from the Boston Marathon qualifying time. I had plateaued, and I was not sure how I was going to find 10 minutes. [Plant-based eating] was what I was missing. That’s what it took. The other big noticeable difference to me [after going vegan] was I stopped getting injured. Injuries had always been a big part of my running journey. When I became vegan, it was around the time I ran three 50-milers and a 100-miler. I didn’t have any injuries. If it’s done right, [plant-based diets] can really help you recover faster.”

20. Michaela Copenhaver: Professional Rower, World Record Holder, 10,000m Indoor

Rowing is grueling. It’s known as the toughest endurance sport in the world. The world record-breaking female rower, Michaela Copenhaver went vegan in 2012 for ethical reasons, she told Great Vegan Athletes. “Initially, I just wanted to eat more vegetables. Those things are super good for you, and they’re delicious. Being vegetarian and vegan made me more conscious of how many servings I was getting a day (or not).” When she switched from vegetarian to vegan it was almost accidental: “I was traveling for a regatta in the fall of 2012. I had been vegetarian for 1.5 years already but relied pretty heavily on dairy and eggs. While I was traveling, I was bouncing from couch to couch and had no way to safely store dairy or eggs—so I decided to try a week without them. I felt great, and it wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought. I’ve been vegan ever since.” Now it’s a value system: “Once I stopped eating and using animals, I felt I could finally address a question that had been bothering me for a long time—what right do we have to exploit other creatures? Now, I understand that we have no right, and my motivations are primarily ethical.”

The post This 100-Year-Old Vegan Athlete is Still Running and Setting World Records appeared first on The Beet.

‘I became a vegan at 82 and found a new sense of freedom’

Day describes herself as “very much the old-fashioned wife – I would never think of doing anything my husband didn’t want” she told The Guardian in a column about life after 60. After her husband died, she informed her three children: “I’m going to try to lead a vegan lifestyle”, and they were “very, very pleased”. They bought her vitamin B12 since many people on a vegan diet find it challenging to get enough vitamin B12 through diet alone.

Day had grown up in a strict household, with a father in the Royal Air Force, so when she could get married she left home and began life as a teacher, in the math department since that is where her talents were needed. But she always felt a passion for art and geography. Her life had been all about pleasing others. Now, at 84, she is out to make herself happy.

She married at 21 and had two children and was often left on her own with them since her husband traveled for his job. That suited her fine, as it turned out. “I quite enjoyed that. I was free. I’m sure this is what in my life I’ve always wanted – a certain amount of freedom.” She started a play group with a few other moms and they ran it as a small community project.

Day later divorced her first husband at age 34 and married again at 37, and ended up having a third child with her second husband. “It would bring us all together,” she explains. They traveled as a family, spending time in Singapore and Hong Kong, and visiting Malaysia, and her memories of those trips had a role in her deciding decades later to go vegan.

When they were on a beach one trip, and her children were young, they went out during the night to watch sea turtles clamor up onto the sandy beach to lay their eggs in the dark. She recalls that locals were less sensitive to the natural wonder they were witnessing.

“A lot of young men were chasing them and sitting on them, these giant turtles,” she recalls. It made her children so upset that she believes that may have been the start of their animal welfare awareness, and ultimately led them to become vegan later in life.

Day explains that becoming vegan has opened her eyes to the plight of farmed animals and made her bolder, more outspoken, and truer to her own thoughts.

She admits that now she “can’t really enjoy looking at lambs in a field. “I just think, there they are skipping around fields, not knowing what fate befalls them. It’s absolutely awful.”

Day’s vegan lifestyle has also made her feel like she can speak up in public for the first time in her life, she says. At her local social get-togethers, life is different now. “They all know I’m vegan and have got used to me looking suspiciously at the backs of packets of biscuits.” She is sparking others to try vegan treats, and one made vegan cupcakes to share, she says.

At 84, Looking Forward to Giving Back

Day will turn 84 this summer and says she is loving keeping “a vegan household … I’m feeling more and more my own person. Probably more than I ever was. It’s taken a long time.

“I think, I can’t have that much time left. I’m going to make the most of it,” she told The Guardian.

What does she want to do with her newfound independence? “Be kind and helpful and a good friend to the few I’ve got, be there for anybody who needs me. And point out a way that I think is healthy and gentle.”

For more success stories of how a plant-based lifestyle can lead to health and wellbeing, check out The Beet’s Success Stories.

The post She Went Vegan at 82 and It Changed Her Life for the Better appeared first on The Beet.

So when her ankle benched her, the soccer star, now 31 years old, took the advice from other athletes who sprained ankles, broke wrists and arms, and ate plant-based to reduce inflammation and ankle pain for a speedy recovery. Losada was able to get back on the field at an unprecedented time.

When Losada loaded up on “clean” plant-based foods, her inflammation subsided and her ankle pain started to heal naturally and the midfielder quickly made her come back against Deportivo de La Coruña, subbing for Alexia Putellas and playing back at her pre-injury levels, just a few months after the injury. Her doctors had originally predicted her time on the bench would be much longer.

The Beet spoke to Vicky Losada about her entire plant-based journey, including what she eats in a day and how she prepares for some of her toughest career games.

The Beet: Why and when did you go plant-based?

Vicky Losada: I changed my diet about three years ago. I had a big injury and I saw some male players make a change with their diet and it helped them, so I thought it was the moment for me to do the same. It did help and I started feeling better: less pain, less inflammation, and quicker recovery.

The Beet: Tell me about your plant-based journey and how it started.

Vicky Losada: I wasn’t sure if I was gonna be able to do it because it’s a massive change. The first thing I stopped eating was red meat and I introduced plant-based milk and yogurts. Now, there are a lot of high-quality plant-based protein options on the market and it’s easier to stick to a plant-based diet. The most important for me is to make sure I am eating what my body needs to perform and recover, and that’s why I also have my own nutritionist who helps me every day.

The Beet: How has going plant-based affected your performance?

Vicky Losada: I feel much better. I thought I was not gonna be able to get enough energy and strength from plant-based food but it’s been great since I changed my diet. Feeling lighter, recovering quicker, less inflammation, and full of energy.

The Beet: What do you eat in a day?

Vicky Losada: If I need more [calories] because training is hard I can always add protein powder to recover and perform at my best level.

• Breakfast: Soy milk and yogurt, oats, fruit, seeds, nuts like pistachios
• Snack: Nut butter
• Lunch: Legumes, vegetables, tofu, chia, edamame,
• Dinner: Spinach, plant-based “meat” made from chickpeas, soy protein, lentils.

The Beet: What’s your favorite vegan recipe?

Vicky Losada: Really like a combo of hummus, green leaves veggies, seeds, edamame, nuts, and blueberries.

The Beet: What advice do you have for anyone who wants to go plant-based?

Vicky Losada: My advice is to find the best for you. Now, there are plenty of options on the market. It’s also good to have help from a specialist in nutrition at the start. I’ve learned so much during the process and it’s something that I really enjoyed it’s changed my way of thinking about food, it was very limited before and now I feel way more prepared to make my own choices.

The Beet: Any advice for athletes who want to try a plant-based diet?

Vicky Losada: If you are an athlete you have to be very careful with your diet because every single meal you have is gonna affect your performance and recovery. You want to make sure your body gets all the nutrients needed. Also, supplementation is very important. Vitamin D, iron, vitamin B12.

The Beet: What is your mantra? Words you live by.

Vicky Losada: Everything happens for a reason.

For more inspiring, transformational personal stories, visit The Beet’s Success Stories. 

The post This Pro Footballer Healed Her Sports Injury With a Plant-Based Diet appeared first on The Beet.

By age 24, Joseph was officially declared cancer and lyme-disease free by her doctors, and now, 12 years after her initial diagnosis, she also hasn’t had any flair-ups related to Lyme, which, by the time they had caught it, had become an autoimmune condition. The Beet spoke to Joseph, who is plant-based, about the steps she took to help heal herself. In the ensuing years, she delved deeper into natural medicine and has become certified in holistic healing, and is working toward a Ph.D. in consciousness. Joseph shares how she used the mind-body connection and a host of other approaches to rid her body of illness and find her way to health. She believes these practices ultimately saved her life.

First, she underwent treatment for cancer

After Joseph’s cancer and Lyme diagnoses, she began treatment that followed her doctors’ protocols, based on Western medicine. But she soon felt that the treatment was making her sicker and she wanted to return to a normal life, “I was a human pin-cushion,” she says. Joesph made a decision: “If I’m going to be sick and die this way, then I’m going to go out with my friends and enjoy life.”

Then Joesph, who was just 23 at the time, told her doctor she wasn’t happy living this way. She was curious about alternative medicines that could possibly help her get better. Her doctor made a rare referral for her to go see a holistic practitioner on the Upper East Side in New York City. She walked into the office of Jerry Epstein, a psychiatrist who was known for integrating mental techniques to help treat health-related problems. When they met, he started their conversation by asking about her health. He then offered a theory of how illnesses can be a bi-product of depleted energy fields, using the science of quantum physics to suggest there are other paths to healing. “This blew my mind,” Joesph recalled years later.

Joesph saw Dr. Epstein on a regular basis and spent hours practicing the techniques and natural remedies he recommended. This included four or more hours of meditation per day, working on eliminating stress, practicing being present, and “changing the state of her brain waves,” in her own words. She worked on healing past traumas by journaling and dealing with emotions as she experienced them.

“As a result of living in the present moment,” Joseph says, “I started to learn more about nourishing my body and started to eat a plant-based diet”, avoiding the on-the-go meals she used to eat as a ‘Type A’ New Yorker.

What she ate in a day

On her new plant-based diet, Joseph ate a lot of quality greens and got creative with cooking vegetables in different types of sauces. “You don’t put diesel in a Mazaratti,” she says, meaning she has committed herself to nourishing her body with high-quality plant-based foods, which also energizes her. She focused on vegetables, fruit, and creative combinations.

After eating healthy and sticking with her meditation and journaling, as well as her all-day long mindfulness stress reduction practice, Joseph had found her health again.

“I have yet to have an auto-immune disease flair-up; all my cancer cells are gone, they’ve never come up on a scan, even years later,” she said. Joseph feels healthier and more empowered than ever and has been sticking with her practices. “I had focused on healing my body and isolating myself from stress,” she said. She adds that for her, “conventional medicine was no help, though that was just my experience, there are so many people I know who have been helped by Western medicine.” (The Beet recommends you work with your health care provider to find the right treatment for you and whatever it is that you are working to heal.)

3 Natural Practices Joseph Recommends

Meditate: Start with a group, to help get the hang of it.

“I first started with Sangha meditation and attended a two-hour group meditation session every day,” she says. “Then I would also meditate for another two hours midday and for an hour at night. “When the only thing between you and death is this one thing – lowering your stress levels, there’s nothing to lose. I was on the floor praying that I would get better, and when you’re in that moment of reckoning, people can do extortionary things. Once you learn something like this, you can’t go back.”

Change Your State of Mind: Work on being present.

“At the beginning of my journey, I was striving for tranquility and peace. My brain was at a ‘high-beta point’ – which is fight or flight. When I’m present, alert, and focused but relaxed, my body is capable of healing itself because my immune functions aren’t suppressed.”

“The body can do what I call “long-term building projects” such as healing illness or getting pregnant when you aren’t in fight or flight. So, I stopped doing the things that made me stressed and got really focused on making feeling healthy and peaceful my first priority. When you get your brain waves out of high-beta, when you stop your system from being flooded with adrenaline and cortisol –  it alters your immune function. Science is now showing how incredible the impact of this is on healing almost any chronic illness.”

“I put my body in a healthy state where it was able to repair itself. I do this with my clients now and basically, we take a deep dive together to rewire their neural pathways – to heal inside and out,” she explains.

Deal with Emotions: Face what is bothering you head-on.

“Emotions are like visitors and when one comes knocking at your doorstep, welcome it in with a cup of tea,” says Joseph. “When we cope with our feelings, we don’t need to do destructive things like stress eat, or other bad behavioral habits, or continue to put up with unhealthy relationships.”

“For me, part of the reason I was sick in the first place was that I didn’t know how to cope with my own emotions. I lived in this controlled-centric existence because I wanted to be loved, popular, cool, accepted.”

“Getting sick was the best thing that’s happened to me. I don’t avoid my emotions anymore.”

To start eating a clean, healthy plant-based diet full of greens, make this Green Breaky Bowl with Spinach, Mushrooms, and Almond Butter for breakfast. For lunch or dinner, enjoy this Pear Salad with Maple Mustard Vinaigrette and Whole Roasted Cauliflower.

For more inspiring stories like this, check out our success stories column.

The post This Woman Used 3 Natural Approaches to Get Healthy After Cancer appeared first on The Beet.

After getting through that ordeal, Doug knew it was time to take matters into his own hands and not trust that the AHA had the right approach. He and his wife started doing more research while he was recuperating and found out that a plant-based diet based on whole foods and zero oil was the healthiest way to go for someone in Doug’s position: No meat, no dairy, no animal fat whatsoever. “She wanted to keep me around,” he recalls. Eventually, he adopted a completely vegan diet which ended up saving his life. Within weeks of going full-on vegan, he started losing weight and his blood work improved. Every three months he checked in with his doctor and within 3 years he was completely back to normal healthy levels of cholesterol and other markers for cardiovascular disease.

All in all, changing to an oil-free whole food plant-based approach helped Doug lose sixty pounds and change his entire life, including changing his career path (he is still working as a school teacher) to focus more on educating others about how to start a plant-based diet of their own, for whatever their reason may be. The Beet chatted with Doug on Zoom and he shared his entire journey over the past 9 years since he got healthy, including the challenges, the rewards, the motivations, the exact foods he ate to get healthy, and what inspired him along the way. Here is his play-book including the helpful movies to watch, books to read, and more.

The Beet: Why did you decide to switch to a plant-based diet?

DS: “I had a heart attack at 49, and nobody expects to get a heart attack at 49. All the research showed that if I didn’t change my eating habits, I would have another heart attack within five years. Initially, I found Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn’s work on preventing and reversing heart disease, and at first, I said ‘That’s too extreme, I’m not going to do that.’

“So the first year I followed the American Heart Association guidelines, which said I could have a little meat, I could have dairy, I could have eggs, and I ended up in the emergency room with a threat of another heart attack. After that health scare, I took things more seriously but still, the switch didn’t happen overnight. It took us about three years to get fully on board. I switched my diet to save my life, but you know that there has been the added bonus of helping the environment and helping the animals, so it’s allowed me to walk a little softer.”

The Beet: Did you feel any immediate benefits when you made your initial change, and how long did it take for you to actually feel healthy again?

DS: “Once we [my wife Shari and I] made that full conversion over to a whole-foods plant-based with no oil– once we did that, all my blood work numbers came in line.

“My total cholesterol dropped down to under 150. My blood sugars all dropped in line. I lost 60 pounds, I went from 225 to 165 pounds. Once the weight started dropping off, as I consistently ate clean plant-based foods, the better my numbers got.

“I had a great doctor, who would take blood work every 3 months and he could tell if I was staying on track with my diet. My doctor would know if I hadn’t lost weight, he’d know if my cholesterol was still high. And as soon as I started eating properly, all those numbers came down and came in line. So it really was miraculous, once that started happening. With those health benefits, that was sort of all the encouragement I needed to keep going.”

The Beet: Your wife Shari also went vegan. What has her plant-based journey been like?

DS: “I had my heart attack just before we met, so she wanted to keep me around. So she was very instrumental in my making the switch. She took the E-Cornell plant-based nutrition course and she would read and say to me: “Oh, we got to stop eating this! Oh, we’ve got to stop eating oil!” And I replied “Really?” But she helped me transition the most, because we did it together. She also had all the same health benefits as mI had. She lost 30 lbs and her numbers also all came in line and she felt healthier.”

The Beet: How long was it before she began to see health benefits?

DS: “We really didn’t see a lot of the weight loss until we hit that no oil phase. In the first week of not eating oil, she lost 5 pounds. Then it just started dropping off after that”

The Beet: Before having a heart attack, how often were you eating meat?

DS: “Pretty much every day. Dairy was definitely all throughout our diet. Pecorino Romano went into just about everything I made. Actually, when I had the heart attack, we moved to an 8-acre farm, and we decided we were going to grow a lot of our own food or as much as possible. That included raising chickens, not for the meat, but for the eggs. When we made that transition over, now we had chickens, but we weren’t eating the eggs. We weren’t going to just give those chickens away, but we weren’t going to eat them either.

“So they just lived out their lives on the farm, being chickens. It was interesting to interact with them, they were great creatures to interact with. We now laugh, when we look at our pantry right now and see that it doesn’t look like what it did ten years ago. The things that are in there are like, My gosh! How ‘Hippy-eating, Kombucha-drinking’ our pantry looks now. We just  laugh.”

The Beet: What were your biggest challenges you found when switching your diet?

DS: “I was a baker in a previous life. I used to be a bakery trainer for a major supermarket chain, Wegmans, before I became a teacher. So I can bake anything, from Croissants to Danish to Cakes, and I also have a sweet tooth. So that was sort of hard. I asked myself “how do you make a dessert without all that added sugar, without all the added fat or the eggs, or the dairy”? Especially because the cornerstone of most pastry is eggs, as well as butter, and dairy. So it was tough to make that change.

“Probably the hardest thing to give up was the cheese. The meat wasn’t too hard, but you know, the cheese, which we used to put on everything. And then we had to figure out ways to get away from that taste addiction.”

The Beet: Are you still baking? What substitutes do you use for dairy and eggs?

DS: “Oh, yes, I’m still baking. For eggs and dairy, I don’t think of it as substituting eggs and dairy because they serve as a certain component. Whether its eggs for a binder or for a lift in a product or for adding fat. So, I look at things I can use instead, for fat, for binders, and for leavening. So for instance instead of fat, a lot of it now comes from using nuts.

“I used to make a French Pear Tart that was totally decadent, and it contained a lot of eggs, butter, and dairy in it. I make that same tart now with crushed nuts, oats, and a little maple syrup for the crust. For the filling, I use flax meal to make the typical flax egg, and that’s enough to act as the binder. So I do things like that.

“I look at ways of incorporating beans to give a creaminess, not just black beans but white beans, to give creaminess in a filling. Also using those old skills and substituting non-dairy milk, I can make a simple custard that tastes just as good as the old one, but without any of the animal products. I found some workarounds for most of these things.”

The Beet: What do you normally eat in a day to maintain your health?

DS: “It hasn’t changed too much. Typically I have an oat-bowl in the morning, with lots of fresh berries– strawberries, blueberries, raspberries–some flaxseed, Lately, we’ve added [plant-based] yogurt to our breakfast mix that we make in our instant pot. For the base, we start with a soy-based yogurt as the culture, and we just use soy milk and put it in the instant-pot overnight, and the next day when you wake up, you have about 4, 5 cups of fresh yogurt. Then we also have a bowl of steamed kale with some balsamic vinegar on the side and that’s breakfast–and that’s also basically lunch. We eat two meals a day. For dinner, it’s whatever we’re creating at the moment. A lot of bowls, stir-fries, soups, and salads, depending on what we’re in the mood for. Right now we’re prepping our second cookbook, so it’s whatever we’re cooking for the cookbook is what’s typically for dinner.”

 The Beet: What’s your cookbook called?

DS: “Our first cookbook is called Eat Plants, Love: Recipes for a Good Life, and the second one that will be coming out this fall is called Eat More Plants, Recipes from the Good Life Challenge and we had some of the people who took our 10-day challenge contribute recipes to it.”

The Beet: What, if any, vitamins do you take?

DS: “Right now, we’re taking Complement, which is done by the guys from Plant-Based Athlete. It gives us our B-12, our D3, and also K2, which is for heart health, specifically for me. It has all the stuff we need, and it also has magnesium and other essentials. Initially, we were taking K2, D3, and B1 separately, but we figured we might as well get it all in one package.”

The Beet: What advice do you give someone just starting their plant-based journey?

DS: ” I always tell people it is going to be hard, because you’re giving up a lifetime of eating habits, so take it a bit at a time if that’s the kind of person you are. Or you can just go all in. You know the first thing we tell people is that dairy is probably the most addictive and is what most people struggle with.

“But you’ll also immediately see results. We do our 10-day challenge, in which we say just do it in ten days because you can do anything for 10 days. That really gets people clean in 5 or 6 days, they feel the results. We tell people going 75% plant-based is not giving you 100% of results. The only way you really see results is going all in.

“We also tell people, you’re going to struggle, relapse, or fall off the wagon, as some people say, but it’s okay, you have a chance at the next meal to eat healthily. Just keep working at it, it’s like any habit, you have to practice it to make it easier. And the longer you do it, the easier it gets.”

The Beet: Do you have anything you would recommend reading or watching?

DS: “One that really hit home was The Game Changers. And, Forks Over Knives of course is a good one. The one that actually made me go vegan was the one Joaquin Phoneix narrates, Earthlings. It’s the movie’s opening with the definition of Earthlings that really made me stop and think. It’s saying that it’s human’s arrogance to think that we’re the only sentient beings on Earth.

“Any creature that lives on this Earth is a sentient being, they are all earthlings, which really hit home to me. You can’t go back [to eating animal product] if you’re true to your morals about animal welfare. I don’t know how people can revert back.”

The Beet: Do you have a mantra that you live by?

DS: “It’s that I walk a little bit more softly on the earth. Whether that’s in my interactions with people or interactions with animals, I know that eating this way helps everything and everyone. It helps the environment, it helps the animals, and I know I’m not hurting anyone.

“That next step for me is to be gentle, generous, and kind, and giving that to the humans I interact with. So it is to walk softly on the earth, or gently. That sort of encompasses everything. My wife and I talk every once in a while, and we ask each other: Would you ever go back to eating certain things. For instance, I loved eggs. I loved meat, but when you think about where these things came from, and those abuses that those animals go through, you can’t let go of that idea. For me, that mantra is walk softly on the earth.”

The post “I Had a Heart Attack at 49, Went Vegan, and It Saved My Life”–Doug Schmidt appeared first on The Beet.

Motivated by the fear of getting sick, she made a decision to make some lifestyle changes, starting with a few key habits, and get healthy, once and for all.  The next day, she decided to visit the fitness center at work and try something she’d never done in her life – exercise. Just a few weeks later, after consistently walking for up to an hour first thing in the morning, Wagner found even more motivation to change her life for the better.

The Beginning of Wagner’s Weight Loss Journey

“I always was someone who meditated, but the process never helped me physically,” she says now. She remembered being curious about health and wellbeing, but not motivated enough to actually put in the effort to make changes and create new healthy habits. Her lifelong excuse for eating badly and not exercising was a chronic state of stress.

Wagner had to hit her lowest point before this all changed. Back then, her diet consisted of late-night runs for fast food burgers and fries, unchecked snacking on chips, an indulgence into copious amounts of cheese, and always, simple carbs like bread, pasta, or pizza. “I would get home late from work and call [in] food every night.” She worked a stressful corporate job that required her to travel around the world and live in hotels and room service was always a phone call away. “I was teaching people about environmentally-conscious beauty, and yet I was reaching my breaking point.”

Healthy Lifestyle Habit 1: Exercise, or Specifically Walking

It all started with the treadmill. Walking up to an hour every day first thing in the morning, with no excuses was the beginning of her journey that led her to eventually lose 80 pounds, without even setting out to do so.

Wagner’s initial intention was to get healthy, and that was it. “I never set out to lose weight as my goal,” she remembers. It was all about avoiding illness and lifestyle diseases like diabetes.

Yet one week into the new habit of steady morning exercise, simply walking for an hour, Wagner felt so good about her decision to get active that she was inspired to change the way she ate as well. Curious about the best diet for health and wellbeing, she began to research every diet and eventually made the commitment to try eating plant-based, as well as gluten-free, since she knew it would also force her to reduce her calorie intake.

Healthy Habit 2: A Plant-Based, Gluten-Free Diet

Whenever someone loses a vast amount of weight, it’s interesting to know what they eat in a typical day. While Wagner didn’t start out making her meals or shopping for all-fresh produce, it’s encouraging to know that it’s possible to eat healthy and not spend a lot of time or money.

In fact, when Wagner made the switch to a plant-based diet, she first did so by eating lots of frozen meals, and store-bought vegan alternatives for meat and cheese. She even ate pre-packaged plant-based snacks and vegan energy bars, simply for the convenience of it, but then she eventually decided to try cooking her own meals – and discovered that she loved it. “I cooked recipes with lots of lentils, rice and beans, tempeh or tofu, and all types of vegetables,” she recalls. “I made soups, chilies, protein pancakes, and even plant-based yogurts. Plus I baked lentil cakes and other types of plant-based and gluten-free loaves.”

Breakfast: Protein Pancakes

Lunch: Lentil soups, rice, and beans with tempeh or tofu

Snack: Plant-based yogurt with fruit

Dinner: Lentil loaf cake

After a few days of walking on the treadmill and eating plant-based and gluten-free, Wagner noticed a difference in her energy level, her mood, and a shift in attitude – and her physique. “I was losing 1.5 pounds a week,” she says now. “And I was living my values.”

Healthy Habit 3: Mindful or Meditative Eating

Six months into the plant-based-and-gluten-free diet, Wagner was down 50 pounds. She credits her steady and natural weight loss to not just a consistent habit of diet and exercise but also the technique of mindful eating.

She used a form of meditation that allowed her to slow down while she was eating and really enjoy her food, and savor the taste. “When you think about how satisfying your food tastes you can avoid overeating,” she explains now. “I thought about the taste, the texture, the smell,” she says. She also listened to the hunger cues that would tell her when she was 80 percent full and then stopped eating. “I tuned into my body and fed it what it needed, instead of it wanted.”

How to practice meditative eating

Wagner advised anyone who wants to practice mindful or meditative eating to shut off their phone and be present with their food. “Be aware of your eating patterns, identify what’s not serving you, then pause, and set an intention to check in with yourself. Take a couple of breaths, and ask yourself how you’re feeling during the meal, and ask yourself if you’re still hungry.”

Within a year of her lifestyle changes and eating habits, Wagner lost 80 pounds and learned to trust the wisdom of her body. That meant she knew how she could maintain a healthy weight: “I knew I would stop losing weight at a healthy number,” she explained. In addition to the weight loss, her blood pressure came down, she stopped needing medication for her blood pressure and insomnia, and she noticed a positive impact on her metabolism. Her doctor also tells her that she is no longer prediabetic, which is something that brings her relief.  (In America, over 100 million adults have this condition and since it has no symptoms, it can be medically dangerous, since you won’t know unless you get tested for it. Ask your doctor to test you.)

During Wagner’s health journey, she quit her corporate job to become a mediation instructor, and now she works for Healthy Minds Innovations to help others reduce their stress and find calm in their lives, just as she did. In fact, Wagner just launched a program called “Jump Start” which includes 4 online sessions, daily messages, well-being assessments, and a 30-day meditation challenge.

Wagner wants to share her mantra and the message behind it. “My mantra is ‘As it is.’ What this means to me is to just be with things as they are. You don’t need to fix everything or get wrapped up in things, because this kind of resistance can cause stress.”

Bottom Line: To Be Healthy and Lose Weight Change Your Lifestyle Habits

Try eating a healthy diet of mostly plant-based foods and exercise every day, even if it’s just walking for an hour in the morning. Choose foods that are healthy and gluten-free if possible. Then as you eat, be mindful of your food and how it tastes, and listen to your hunger cues. If you only eat until you’re 80 percent full, you give your body what it needs, not what it wants.

For more great content like this, read The Beet’s other Success Stories. Have a success story of your own to share? Head to The Beet’s Facebook page where you can post it there and we will see it and get in touch.

The post These 3 Habits Helped This Woman Lose 80 Pounds in a Year appeared first on The Beet.

How’d it go? Well at least one of them got her husband to cook a mean bean burger. None of them loved using the word “vegan” because every time they did, the reaction was negative since it sounds “too restrictive.” As for their energy levels, health and overall outlook? Well, all those things were impacted positively.

Each sister has a different approach, and different dislikes: One hates tofu, the other dislikes salads and a third one doesn’t want to ever taste vegan cheese again. They each knew that going plant-based was better for their health than eating animal products, and they care deeply for the planet, and of course animals, but going into the month of plant-based eating, each had different health concerns, from high blood pressure to cholesterol to the desire to lose a few pounds. But mostly they wanted to see if they could do it. The chef-iest of the three thought it would be part of the fun to get creative in the kitchen with vegan recipes and plant-based ingredients and loved experimenting with her husband, also a good cook. Here is their story: How it went, how they felt, and whether they would try to keep going.

Meet Melinda, Darci and Susan, three sisters who, though they share the same genes, are as different as could be. They all live in separate cities and states, one in the mountains, in Vail Colorado, one in the south, in Nashville Tennessee, and the other in Orlando, Florida. Two cook while one doesn’t. One loves the foodie life, spending hours with her husband creating meals, while the other two are on the hunt for easy fast food or simple healthy options.

Yet when they all were talking about their health and wellbeing goals, they all wanted to try to go plant-based and do it together, starting on the first day of October and going until the beginning of November. The three of them tried cooking and ordering in and preparing foods that ranged from pre-packaged to homemade. Here’s what happened, and whether they will continue to be plant-based now that the month is over.

What were you most nervous about?

Susan: I love cooking but I was scared of tofu. As October 1st approached. I looked at this “sister challenge” as an opportunity to walk the walk. But, the recreational cook or baker in me was, well, not so excited. My biggest trepidation was that I would be missing things I would be craving, but by and large, I didn’t really crave anything. Until the end when I wanted a little bit of seafood.

Darci: I was about to go on vacation, so that would be a challenge. And I thought giving up cheese would be a big challenge since she had heard bad things about vegan cheese.

Melinda: I had trouble with meals in general since I am not a major cook. But I found vegan options!

What did you find when you went shopping for plant-based food?

Susan: My grocery shopping cart sure looks a lot prettier, bursting with greens, yellows, purples, reds and oranges. Breakfast and lunch were easy: Oatmeal with berries and almonds or avocado toasts and raw veggies, hummus and berries, fruit or nuts were my Go-Tos. Jeni’s Scoop Shops have D-licious diary free offerings!!

How was your energy?

Melinda: I felt better when I ate plant-based but I always do

Susan: I agree! In general, I feel better after a plant-based meal, I’ve noticed I tend to have more energy on busy days (no mid-afternoon slump) and I’m sleeping better.

Darci: My energy felt more steady. I just didn’t have the ups and downs. The first couple of days I felt totally energized. And that didn’t change. I had more energy than ever.

What were your highs and lows?

Susan: I actually had fun going plant-based. I had never spent a lot of time going down the aisle for plant-based and organic items. We found those Nashville chicken tenders from Gardein. They have a little true Nashville kick to them! They were good! I probably won’t buy regular chicken tenders again. You have to be willing to try stuff. I had never tried lentils and now I love them.

Darci: The biggest thing that surprised me was I didn’t find myself craving the meat. I don’t know whether it’s because there are so many things that substitute for it.

Also, I don’t like salads – and I never have. I don’t like them any more than I used to. But I found a new appreciation for eating a lunch that’s healthier. Like a small salad and vegetables with vegan Tzatziki sauce. I’ve also gained a new appreciation of mushrooms from this. A really nice thick mushroom, sauteed and on the grill.

Melinda: I don’t love any of the vegan cheese. I did buy pepperoni. It’s lant-based and I liked that.

How did you deal with loved ones? Did they get into it:

Susan: With friends, it’s been an interesting conversation starter when dining with friends. Some were excited to hear more – while others should have just sent me a sympathy card.

Susan: My husband and I share a love of cooking and great meals. My plant-based journey often found us both in the kitchen but cooking different meals. I thought it was going to be easy for him to just grill an animal protein and throw it on top of what I was having but often that was not the case. Instead, we often shared meatless pasta. 

I am not really a milk drinker but cheese is a guilty pleasure. There’s just something about sharing a cheese board and a bottle of wine with friends. I really didn’t miss or want the cured meats.  I decided the best way to do a dairy-free cheese test was on pizza. We actually enjoyed So Delicious shreds.

Advice to others starting a plant-based journey

Darci: My advice would just go into it. And don’t be afraid to go out to eat. If you explain to the waiter at a non-plant-based restaurant exactly what you want to eat you will be fine.

I went on vacation and was blown away by the restaurants. An example would be, I would look at them and say: Newly vegan! Have to have something potato-based with some veggies on the side. And I don’t like cauliflower. Can’t have it at the table. I would tell them that. And I would end up with a baked potato or sweet potato and I loved that.

Melinda: My advice is not to wait. Just to do it. You can do it. Get creative. Everything can be made plant-based or vegan. Don’t hesitate! There is no reason to wait.

Susan: It’s like training for a marathon. You are not going to go out and run all 26 miles at a time but you can train a little at a time.

Darci: I have heard that advice, about starting out gradually, but I did just the opposite. I just went all in. And that would be my advice. I did better than I thought I would. Just go all in. I thought I would miss certain foods, but I didn’t miss anything. And I really still don’t.

Susan: The other interesting phenomenon that I experienced, mostly if we were eating with friends, if I said I was on a plant-based or plant-focused diet I was met with encouragement. But when I said the word vegan I heard, “Awwwww…” like it was a downer. So I stopped saying that. But a growing number of Nashville restaurants offer separate vegetarian menus.

Darci: Vegan sounds too restrictive. But if you say plant-based everyone wants to join in.

Will you keep going on your plant-based journey?

Susan: I will continue. To some degree. Darci, you can have your cheese and put it on some celery.

Darci: I did miss cheese, but I don’t want cheese.

Susan: Will I keep going? Short answer, YES… to some degree. I wish I could say I have what it takes to go 100 percent plant-based. Moving forward, I’m definitely going to be more plant-forward when it comes to what I put on my fork or spoon. For now, perhaps I’m more a flexitarian. The animals we consume and the planet still weigh heavily on my mind. I’ll try to do my part one meal, one week, one month at a time.

Darci: I am going to keep going. Each time I think about having something with meat or cheese I don’t do it. I think about it and then decide not to!

I have been twice now to Burger King since we’ve been back. I would stop at the Burger King and I was going to allow myself a kid’s size regular burger but when I got up to the ordering voice box, I couldn’t do it. So I got an Impossible burger instead.

Another time I made myself polenta and I thought as a treat I am going to use some real parmesan cheese in the polenta – and then I thought “Why would I do that?” I have an almost perfect meal here. So I skipped it. I just haven’t wanted to give it up. I thought I would get to the end of October and blow it until my stomach hurt, but I haven’t wanted to do it yet.

Melinda: It’s been really good for me in terms of it definitely has me thinking about what I am putting in my body. Like I love dairy-free yogurt. I like the coconut milk yogurt and the oat or almond yogurt. So now I choose healthier ingredients and am checking the labels.

You don’t have to be perfect to get health benefits

Melinda: I went to see my doctor and I told her I had been vegan for 30 days and she said you should really wait to take your blood and test your cholesterol after three months. So my next blood work will be then, so I will keep it up. But I know I eat too much sugar. That’s what Susan kept saying to me when I was at her house. “That is full of sugar!” So healthwise I am going to keep going and get my results in two months.

Darci: Any little step you take to being healthier, whether it’s giving up meat, or red meat, or dairy, even if it’s a little step you take, you’re better off today than you were yesterday!

Susan:  I think everyone should try going plant-based, if even for only a short time. It will make you think twice about what you are putting in your body and where your food comes from. I will live by Michael Pollan’s food rule: “If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, don’t.”

Bottom line: To go plant-based, be creative! Just don’t be too hard on yourself

The three sisters all went plant-based and did it differently. They found that no matter how you choose to do it, you can go plant-based or vegan and get healthier in just one month. Then you may even want to keep going, since you’ll be surprised at how easy and delicious it is.

The post 3 Sisters Challenge Each Other: Go Plant-Based for a Month! What Happened? appeared first on The Beet.