On top of this, my husband and I had lots of questions as new parents: What was the best diet to feed our son? And how could we increase our chances of living long, healthy lives?

With all of these thoughts swirling in my head, I had a deep desire to become a healthier, stronger, happier version of myself but had no idea how to go about achieving those goals.

Going Vegan

I started watching documentaries about health and wellness. One of the first ones I watched was Forks Over Knives. Learning how the standard American diet was harming my health, the environment, and animals, I decided to go vegan.

I started by planning out what my meals would look like for the following week. I decided to keep things simple by removing the meat and animal products from recipes I already made and enjoyed. I continued to plan my meals out week by week and slowly tried new recipes to replace old favorite dishes. To stay motivated, I continued educating myself about nutrition, watching documentaries and YouTube videos.

Within a few weeks, I felt stronger and more energized. After a few months, I took up running. Before going vegan, I wouldn’t run to catch a bus! I continued to eat some highly processed foods, but I thought that I could get away with it and still manage to improve my health.

Transitioning from Vegan to Whole-Food, Plant-Based

Unfortunately, my symptoms kept cropping back up, and sometimes I was in so much pain that exercise was difficult. Despite the ups and downs I had been having with my health, I decided to register for a yoga teacher-training program and a therapeutic yoga intensive program. Yoga helped with the chronic pain and to calm my worried mind. I was able to relieve tension in my body that I didn’t even realize I was holding. I found myself breathing more fully. However, I was still taking medications and having flare-ups with my chronic illnesses.

After a particularly bad flare-up, I sought the advice of a plant-based doctor, who recommended trying a mostly raw vegan diet. It helped a lot. As the weather got colder, I found myself missing cooked foods, so I started transitioning to a whole-food, plant-based diet. My symptoms stayed at bay, and I was able to start exercising again. Soon I was feeling stronger and healthier than ever.

Finally Thriving

Today I continue to eat a WFPB diet, free of oil, with minimal added sugar and salt, and I’m feeling better than ever. Since adopting this lifestyle, I’ve completely regained my health. I’ve lost 80 pounds and been able to discontinue all medications. I’m running again, doing calisthenics (including handstands), learning how to skateboard, and having a great time being active with my family!

I earned my certificate in plant-based nutrition through the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies at eCornell. I’ve also become a certified healthy weight-loss coach. I’m thrilled that I have the opportunity to inspire and coach others to improve their health by adopting a WFPB diet and making other lifestyle changes.

Ready to get started? Check out Forks Meal Planner, FOK’s easy weekly meal-planning tool to keep you on a healthy plant-based path. To learn more about a whole-food, plant-based diet, visit our Plant-Based Primer.

The post After Years of Severe Asthma and Chronic Pain, I’m Breathing Easier on a Plant-Based Diet appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

In 2018, after a wonderful trip to Italy, I was looking through my many gourmet cookbooks preparing to cook some Italian favorites. Then my copy of The Forks Over Knives Plan, which I’d bought years earlier, fell out of the cabinet. I paused, and I decided to sit down and really read it for the first time.

Once I finished, it was like I’d had an epiphany! I asked Patrick to try a whole-food, plant-based (WFPB) diet with me for six weeks, because I knew it would be too challenging to do on my own. He read the book and wholeheartedly agreed to the plan. We watched the Forks Over Knives documentary again, and then found The Game Changers. We were inspired and ready.

Kitchen Makeover

First, we purged our refrigerator and pantry of everything that wasn’t WFPB. I cannot emphasize how important this step was. It is written about in many WFPB stories and books for a reason. Transforming our kitchen into a healthy environment really helped strengthen our sense of commitment and gave us a positive outlook.

We started the new diet on a Sunday. I made some basic Forks Over Knives recipes with success. At first, we both felt hungry. Eating the SAD way—or as we call it, “eating with the English” (an inside joke from an old movie called Witness)—masks the true flavors that exist naturally in whole plant foods. Eating ultraprocessed foods confounds our bodies and brains, making us addicted to salt, fat, and sugar, so all we do is crave more; meanwhile, we’re robbed of crucial nutrients.

But after a few days, our bodies adapted to the new way of eating. Soon we were snacking on fruit and veggies and reveling in their deliciousness. We were completely satiated, and our energy levels were increasing. Best of all, the chronic pain dissipated within a few weeks. Sit on that for a moment: We were nearing retirement age, and aches and pains that we had carried with us for decades seemed to just vanish within weeks!

I ordered Darshana Thacker Wendel’s Flavor! cookbook, and found her recipes and general approach to cooking life-changing. She is a rock star, and I’m such a fan.

We had two slips during the first couple of years, succumbing to pressure from well-intentioned family and friends to have that piece of cake at a wedding, etc. We don’t regret the slips, because they only served to make us feel more committed to the WFPB lifestyle.

Stronger Than Ever, Together

Today, we are stronger than ever. I am lighter, no longer limited by debilitating back pain. We lift weights, work out with the vigor of people 20 years younger, and sleep great. And we’re certainly happier.

We spent decades not being the best stewards of our bodies or health. Now we live happier, more even-keeled lives as WFPB people. As far as “eating with the English”—going out and enjoying a normal life—we do just fine. We’ve found that eating WFPB has greatly decreased our desire to eat out and to drink alcohol.

We also feel passionate about doing our part as climate activists by choosing foods that are not only healthier for us but also healthier for the planet. Even though we’d been activists for years, it wasn’t until we went WFPB that we felt we were really doing the work.

We’ve both incorporated the WFPB lifestyle into our nursing practice, and we’ve cooked for gatherings to help others better understand their options for maximum health. I have attended several plant-based summits and highly encourage checking those out. I’ve also created WFPB recipes, which I share online, and our physician has shared them with other patients.

While this may sound silly, adopting a WFPB lifestyle is like reversing time. We truly feel younger, laugh more, and have more vigor than at any time in our lives.

My Advice

If you’re looking to improve your health with a WFPB lifestyle, here are my three tips:

1. Invest in your self-care as much as you can. Training with an excellent personal trainer really made a difference for us. It is something I can’t imagine living without, and I am grateful for the muscle strength and increased mobility!
2. Find a physician who promotes WFPB lifestyle. Ours does, and working with him during our journey has made a huge, positive impact. There are emerging MDs all over the country now who are WFPB forward in their patient treatment.
3. Give yourself permission to be the strongest, healthiest, and happiest version of yourself!

Ready to get started? Check out Forks Meal Planner, FOK’s easy weekly meal-planning tool to keep you on a healthy plant-based path. To learn more about a whole-food, plant-based diet, visit our Plant-Based Primer.

The post Decades of Chronic Joint Pain Gone Within Weeks on a Plant-Based Diet appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

Persistent Back Pain

In 2015 I started experiencing tightness and some pain in my low back and right hip. I’d had a baby in August 2014, so I figured the tightness and pain were just because of being weaker, out of shape, etc. The pain gradually increased over time, and by 2017 I was in pain every day. I awoke two or three times each night, and I began to lose range of motion in my right hip. 

I went for MRI scans and discovered that I had pigmented villonodular synovitis (PVNS), a type of rare noncancerous tumor in my right hip joint. I underwent surgery in December 2017 and was told that due to the location and severity of the tumor, the inside of my joint was badly damaged and it would be a year-long rehabilitation process. 

Fast-forward to October 2019, and my hip still hurt every day—not as bad, but I was discouraged that I still had consistent pain almost two years later. While looking for something to watch one night, I came across The Game Changers, a documentary about plant-based athletes, on Netflix. There were a few athletes featured that went plant-based in order to recover from injuries. While watching the film, it was like everything clicked into place for me. I thought back to patients over the years who were plant-based and how they always did well after surgeries or injuries. I wanted to see if I would feel better and have less hip pain if I adopted a whole-food, plant-based diet. My husband, who is health conscious also, watched The Game Changers, too, and was open to trying the diet with me. 

Up and Running

The first month was challenging, because I didn’t know what to cook. We had a lot of burrito bowls and veggie stir fries. Then around the first week of December, I was running into my office during bad rain, and it hit me: “My hip doesn’t hurt! And I’m running!” I then realized I hadn’t felt pain in my hip for several days. This was the first time in nearly five years that I didn’t have pain. That did it for me. I was sold on the WFPB diet.

Other effects I noticed included better energy throughout the day and clearer skin. My husband has noticed improvements in his energy level as well. Our kids have been really adaptable, and they enjoy most of what I make. 

I have tentatively started running again. I ride horses and am more balanced in the saddle due to less pain in my hip. I sleep through the night without waking due to pain. I am 41 and I feel better than I did in my mid-30s because I no longer have chronic pain. I have been on this plant-based journey for approximately nine months and have no intentions of changing. 

I hope my story can encourage others who have struggled with chronic pain. If you are wondering if diet can affect pain, I can confidently tell you, “Yes!”

Ready to get started? Check out Forks Meal Planner, FOK’s easy weekly meal-planning tool to keep you on a healthy plant-based path. To learn more about a whole-food, plant-based diet, visit our Plant-Based Primer.

The post My Daily Hip Pain a Thing of the Past Thanks to a Plant-Based Diet appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

Two years ago you could not have convinced me that changing to a whole-food, plant-based diet could change my life and my wife’s life so drastically, but it has.

I had sleep apnea, chronic pain, acid reflux, high cholesterol, and borderline high blood pressure. I was taking six Lortab and two Flexeril a day for pain from a back injury.

During one of my trips to the pain management doctor, my wife, Vicky, said, “Enough is enough: We are going to do something about our health.”

We started counting calories and limiting our carbs. Then one day we watched the Forks Over Knives film, and that changed everything. We decided to stop counting calories and instead switch to a whole-food, plant-based way of eating focused on nonprocessed foods.

After five months, we were down a combined 80 pounds and off all prescription medications. My sleep apnea is gone! Our lives have changed in so many ways, and so has our outlook. It’s never too late to make a change. I didn’t start until I was 50 years old; my wife was 47. If we can do it, you can!

Ready to get started? Check out Forks Meal Planner, FOK’s easy weekly meal-planning tool to keep you on a healthy plant-based path.

The post From 8 Pills a Day to 0: How a Plant-Based Diet Treated My Chronic Pain and Sleep Apnea appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

After Justin’s successful thyroid removal and radiation treatment, we began our plant-based journey. Justin did a juice cleanse and then transitioned first to a plant-based diet. The kids and I were slower to transition but started by cutting out all processed food.

For me, this was the most difficult part. I don’t mind cooking, but finding dishes that were easy to fix and tasted good was a challenge. But one by one, we cut out dairy, oil, and meat from our diet. After that, we began to incorporate more whole foods and plants into our meals. The last part of the transition was our kids’ lunches at school. The total transition took three months.

I couldn’t believe the difference in how I began to feel. Within a year of eating plant-based, ailments I had struggled with for years began to lessen significantly or even fully disappear like my chronic migraines, skin problems, low energy, and painful menstrual cramps (from my endometriosis).

In total, I lost 100 pounds while my husband Justin lost around 200 pounds. He also saw a significant improvement in his overall health and no longer suffers from back pain or sleep apnea.

But we also noticed changes in the health of our two kids, Hannah and Hayden. Not only did our kids’ concentration and grades improve, their moods became more level, Hannah’ s acne cleared up, Hayden’s eczema healed, and Hannah lost around 15 pounds, while Hayden lost 20 pounds. For snacks we can take with us, we love air-popped popcorn with nutritional yeast, and homemade granola and kale chips.

We love how our family spends more time together now. We’ve become more active and do more activities together. We even started having family movie nights together to watch documentaries about plant-based lifestyles like Forks Over Knives, Food Inc., and Vegucated. Ever since we switched to plant-based, every year has been more rewarding than the last with more physical activity, family adventures, and improved quality of foods in our diet.

The post After a Cancer Diagnosis, Our Family Went Plant-Based and Lost Over 300 Pounds appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

I talked to my daughter Sharon about my memory loss, and she told me she’d look into it. She’s a health coach and, at that time, attended classes at Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). She asked PCRM’s President, Dr. Neal Barnard (who wrote Power Foods for the Brain), what I should do. He told her that many common medications can cause memory loss, and then he proceeded to list all the ones that I was taking! He told her to encourage me to change my diet.

That was easier said than done. I’m a little stubborn (in my daughter’s view, perhaps more stubborn than anyone else on the planet) and didn’t believe in her plant-based coaching and teachings. I felt the studies were too small and didn’t want to hear her dietary advice.

At my next doctor’s appointment, my doctor asked Sharon if she had any concerns about my health. Of course she did. She told him she thought I ate too much red meat. My doctor actually agreed and told me it could be affecting my health. As we walked out of the doctor’s office, I told my daughter I would make her a bet. I told her I would give up red meat for three weeks and then go back to the doctor. If the good doc didn’t see any changes, she’d drive me to Burger King, buy me a Whopper, and watch me eat it! Sharon was excited, confident that she’d win the bet. I was just as confident that I’d be the “winner.”

Three weeks later, I walked into the doctor’s office confident that I had won the bet. I didn’t feel any different. In the office, my doctor looked at my blood work and asked me what I had been doing differently. I didn’t want to admit it, so I replied, “Nothing.” He told me he didn’t believe me and kept asking me what changes I had made. Finally I asked him why. He told me my blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol were all down significantly, and that I had also lost weight. I was floored.

We walked out of the waiting room where Sharon sat bursting with anticipation, and my doctor went over to her and gave her a high five. He said, “I don’t know what you’re doing with your dad, but whatever it is, keep doing it!” She was thrilled.

I wasn’t too happy at first, but I couldn’t deny how much my numbers had improved after just a few weeks. Even I had to admit it was pretty remarkable. Sharon eventually got me to give up poultry, dairy, and almost all seafood. That’s no small feat for a 70-plus-year-old Jewish man! I also kicked my soda and heavy salt habit—I used to salt everything liberally before tasting it.

I’m now off my statins (my cholesterol is now lower than when I was on it), blood pressure medication, and my antidepressant. I also no longer suffer with gout, chronic headaches and back pain, and GERD. I’m a kidney cancer survivor with one remaining kidney (I smoked for years), and at one of my recent appointments, my kidney doctor was amazed because the function in my remaining kidney had improved. That is very atypical; function in these cases usually gradually decreases over time.

I’m now a full convert to the belief that food is powerful and can be healing. I work six days a week as a hardware store manager, my memory is back, and I feel like I’m reverse-aging. It just goes to show that you are never too old to change.

The post At 78, I Ditched Multiple Meds and Health Problems With a Plant-Based Diet appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

Although I was vegan, I was far from a healthy eater. I ate a lot of processed foods, potato chips, convenience meals, and loved Oreos and Nutter Butter cookies. There was a lot of sugar, oil, and salt in my diet. Even though my allergies had cleared up after switching my diet, I still had many health problems.

I had suffered with endometriosis pain for about 20 years, had struggled with debilitating back pain for ten years, and also had recurring chronic pain in my hands, feet, legs, and neck. Despite going to many doctors, no one could figure out how to help me. There were days when I couldn’t get out of bed, and specialists usually wanted me to manage my pain with strong painkillers and pharmaceuticals. Several doctors also recommended back surgery.

Last summer, one of my friends convinced me to do a 30-day challenge and eat only whole-food vegan meals for a month. She is an ethical vegan but also focuses on whole foods, which means she doesn’t eat junk food. She’s also very youthful and energetic. Since I felt like I was aging quickly and was so sick all the time, I agreed. She asked me to kickoff the challenge by going with her to the Columbia, Md Forks Over Knives Meetup group. I had no idea what Forks Over Knives was at the time.

I went to the group with her, which was a potluck with 80 people and about 80 different dishes. Some of the food was really great and I was shocked. The desserts blew me away. I also noticed that the older members seemed so healthy. It was a motivating way to start off my 30 days eating a whole-food, plant-based diet.

The potluck was on a Sunday in July. I woke up the next Tuesday morning and thought I was dying. I felt numb and extremely confused. I hadn’t been without pain for at least a decade and didn’t recognize the feeling. I also hadn’t been able to sit up easily after waking up in many years. I contacted the friend who had convinced me to do the 30-day challenge and told her I was probably dying. She told me the pain was gone because I had reduced inflammation in my body.

I had no idea what inflammation was or what she was talking about, but it felt like magic. I couldn’t believe the absolute change in my body. Once you’ve been in pain for that long, waking and sitting up with ease feels like freedom. You feel like you have a new life. And walking around with no pain is even more awesome! I was so excited to learn more and to find new recipes and dishes to eat. I started to eat and love sweet potatoes, plant-based pizzas and muffins, and many recipes from the Vegan Under Pressure and Forks Over Knives—The Cookbook.

Besides the chronic pain, I also had incontinence for a few years. Many people told me this was normal for a 50-year old woman and that I had to accept it. After about one month on my new diet, I realized I had control of my bladder again. Over the next few months, I also lost 25 pounds without trying, my adult acne cleared up, and my endometriosis pain (which I’d had for 20 years) went away. I felt like I’d won the lottery!

I sleep well and wake up every morning at 5:30 feeling amazing. My mood is great and I have a lot of energy. For a 51-year-old woman who used to have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, this is amazing.

I know my story isn’t as dramatic as many others I’ve heard, where people lose 200 pounds or go off a dozen medications, but I feel like I have to share. If you are suffering with chronic health and pain issues, please give this lifestyle an honest 100-percent try for a month and see how you feel. It’s worth it!

The post How I Cured My Chronic Pain with a Whole-Food, Plant-Based Diet appeared first on Forks Over Knives.