After 22 years of arthritis torment, Judi Menzel now enjoys her active life free of pain and medication
The excruciating pain of severe arthritis dominated Judi Menzel’s life. Her suffering began in 1985, when she was in a sedentary, mega-stress job managing millions of dollars held in trust for her clients. At first, Judi treated the emerging pain in her hips and hands with over-the-counter drugs such as ibuprofen.
The torment migrated to her lower back and her doctors began prescribing stronger and stronger drugs, until she was up to using potentially addictive oxycodone. Still, the pain refused to leave, and continued to imprison her activities. Judi notes “I couldn’t sit without pain in my hip joints. I couldn’t write without pain in my finger joints and working on the computer was the worst.”
The turning point in Judi’s health came in 2007, after 22 years of arthritis agony. Her physical therapist at her HMO suggested she stop eating dairy products, read The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, and try eating only plant foods one day a week.
Ready to try anything to mitigate the pain, Judi checked herself into a vegan holistic health center in San Diego area for two weeks of detox from (more…)
Krista Watts Trades In Her Cat Allergies and Inhalers for Veggie Sandwiches
Krista and her wonderfully supportive husband Jeff are the picture of health and happiness
For nine years, Krista Watts needed to use an inhaler several times a day just to breathe. Her asthma overshadowed her life. Exercising was difficult, often leading to wheezing and a flushed face.
Krista’s asthma ordeal began after she adopted two cats. Tests led to the conclusion she was allergic to her new furry family. Unwilling to give up her much-loved pets, she resigned herself to living with a condition that was unpleasant at best, and life-threatening if it got out of hand.
For the last two and half years, though, Krista has not used her inhaler – not even once. She still has her cats, and plays with and pets them every day. Now age 38, she is amazed at her vigorous health and plummeting (more…)
All Your Cells Get Ideal Nutrition When Your Blood Flows Freely
The problem is that, on diets based on animal and manufactured foods, your blood vessels become clogged with plaque. This life-threatening process begins in childhood and progresses relentlessly. Cardiovascular disease is a leading killer throughout the world. You can stop and reverse this process so easily though – the key is your food choices.
Learn more at this Youtube video.
Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet, a nutrition book built on sustainable food choices. Enjoy six kinds of whole foods for permanent, hunger-free weight loss and health.
Enjoying Whole Foods on a Trip Does Not Have to be Difficult
While some people find travel to be the high point of the year, others loathe it as a necessary evil. Regardless of where you fall on this spectrum (I’m about in the middle), you may dread the hunt for healthy food when traveling. You may be tempted to just grab
You may be traveling far from home. You can do a lot better than the usual airline or airport food by bringing your own.
whatever is convenient, even if you are usually on a whole foods diet.
At home, you have all the advantages. You’ll probably get hungry at predictable times, and can stock your pantry and refrigerator in advance. You know where to shop to get the vegetables, fruits, beans, potatoes, and whole grains that are the foundation for satisfying whole foods throughout the day. You can cook in familiar surroundings with all the pots, pans, and kitchen knick knacks you want. Your favorite restaurants with the food choices you like are nearby.
You may think it’s not a problem to just eat whatever is handy when away from home. The thinking is that the trip is only temporary, so you will restart healthy eating when it’s convenient. The problems with this reasoning (more…)
Your body operates according to biological laws you can’t simply wish away. All the food plates and pyramids, diet books, and media outlets in the world cannot change the fact that you are meant to thrive on a whole foods, plant-based diet. Good nutrition is simple, just the way nature meant it to be.
Burritos and brown rice are great whole foods on the Perfect Formula Diet. Enjoy.
Every trip to the supermarket or restaurant gives you three choices. You can select animal foods, manufactured foods, or Perfect Foods.
Animal foods are the muscles, organs, reproductive materials, and secretions of animals
Manufactured foods are factory products made by processing or genetically modifying plants. Some manufactured foods skip the plants altogether and are simply chemicals
Perfect foods are whole plant foods in their natural form or else cooked and combined in someones kitchen
The Perfect Formula Diet gives you a specific method to combine six kinds of whole foods to assure (more…)
A Healthy Foods Diet Doesn’t Stoke Industry Profits, Hence the Orthorexia Label
Vegetables. Fruits. Tasty beans. Satisfying baked potatoes and whole grains. Crunchy fresh nuts. Fragrant herbs and spices. Are you forming a picture of a delicious day of eating? Are you imagining vibrant health, a trim figure, and a sustainable garden or small family farm?
Wouldn't you think this is a healthy, delicious choice?
Well, according to certain “experts,” this kind of diet is downright sick. Believe it or not, there is increased media attention on a fake “eating disorder” called orthorexia. Sufferers of this “disorder” are accused of eating the most unprofitable foods – fresh from the soil, cooked at home, simple and naturally appealing. Such whole foods provide little opportunity for big business to make a buck on your ruining your health or big pharma to make a buck (or several billion of them) selling you the pills to fix the effects of the manufactured foods.
When I first read about this “disorder,” quite honestly I thought it was a joke. However, although not an official medical diagnosis, medical sources do discuss and debate orthorexia and (more…)
I feel younger, healthier, and more vigorous now, when the clock is within striking distance of 2010, then I did back in 1999. In that year, I was more worried about my health and weight than I was about Y2K. Aging felt like it was overpowering me. Even though I was only 47, I was tired of coping with chronic pain and fatigue, weight that had a mind of its own, and ever-tightening clothes.
In 1999 I was meat-free, but still ate eggs and dairy products. I knew the remaining animal foods were at the root of my health issues, but simply did not feel ready to give them up early in that year. Partly habit held me back, partly fear, and partly laziness. What would the “center of the meal” be without some kind of animal foods?
I remember the last time I ate eggs for breakfast. They lay in my stomach all day like a chunk of cement. Finally about 4 in the afternoon I could feel them clearing and moving on to make room for me to breathe. I decided right then to never eat chickens’ reproductive materials again.
Finally, the big breakthrough for my health came at the end of 1999. I collected enough plant-based cookbooks and recipes to know I could make
Me hiking in gorgeous Northern California this summer
satisfying food all day with many delicious alternatives. The last animal food to go for me was ice cream. I discovered soy-based frozen desserts in yummy flavors and never looked back. My prefernce quickly changed to these new frozen desserts, even if they tasted a little different at first.
Within months of going plant-based, I lost 25 pounds and have never regained them! My chronic pain episodes, sinusitis, and ear infections evaporated. Every day I felt more energetic than the last. How unexpected but how welcome.
Ever since 2000, I’ve felt like I’m aging in reverse. My body is detoxifying – this process takes years, not weeks. Toxic chemicals stored in fat are well incorporated and dissolved in the body. If you are still in the throes of an animal-based diet, you have no idea how fantastic it feels to give your body the time it needs to truly heal.
I keep setting new standards for myself in terms of health. This has been a gradual and highly fulfilling process over the last decade. Watching my two daughters also choose a plant-based diet, with vast improvements in their mood and energy, has also been deeply satisfying.
I am physically active every single day now. I’ve deleted virtually all manufactured foods from my diet, including trans fats, bottled oils, chips and any deep fried foods, white bread and bagels, and (more…)
It’s True – Something this Good Can Also Be Healthy
Okay, healthy in moderation only, but who wants to quibble. Let’s not dissect our chocolate. This incredible food, in its most unprocessed forms, contains over 350 biologically active compounds. As in all whole foods, the total effect is greater than the sum of the parts.
Theobromine, one of the best known chocolate constituents, is a mood enhancer and mild stimulant. Flavonoids are plant chemicals, strongly represented in chocolate, with numerous beneficial effects:
Anti-oxidant
Help balance inflammation
Protect the circulatory system and help prevent blood clots
None of these benefits have much to do with why I start my week with a large chunk of dark chocolate. On Mondays, the week seems endless. The weekend, already past, beckons strongly. A bit of pampering is irresistible. The health benefits are only a nice add-on.
So first thing Monday morning, I breakfast on whole grain cereal topped with fruit and two tablespoons of ground flaxseeds. This is my usual fast weekday breakfast. The Monday difference is using chocolate soy milk, not the usual vanilla, over the cereal.
About 9:30 or 10 am, it’s time for another dose – this time half a dark chocolate bar. My favorite way to relish this Monday chocolate is in small
Dark chocolate bar - don't settle for less
pieces, dipped into some soy yogurt stirred with nuts. I love everything about this hard dark chocolate: the aroma, the taste, the texture, how it makes me feel. I sniff my chocolate deeply before consuming. Anyone walking by might wonder what I was up to.
After finishing the chocolate, I still have a bit of soy yogurt and nuts to enjoy. Hot green tea is the last necessity of this weekly ritual. The rest of Monday just streams away, and soon the rest of the week as well.
Half of a 3.5 ounce chocolate bar is enough for the desired effect. My favorite is Equal Exchange Chocolates, mint flavor, which is both organic and fair trade. This delightful product is 67% cacao, which means that chocolate is the main ingredient.
Dark chocolate is REAL chocolate. The milk version, aside from the issues with dairy foods, dilutes the chocolate, making it almost flavorless compared to the real thing. Also, be aware that Dutch processed chocolate, in order to remove this food’s bitter edge, also strips many of the beneficial chocolate components.
Learn to love slightly bitter chocolate – you’ll get used to this flavor faster than you think. There’s no pay-off in tricking your body with common candy bars that have more milk, sugar, and chemicals than they do chocolate.
Dark chocolate is gourmet on a budget, feel-good without later mood crash, circulatory enhancer without prescription cost or side effects. Read the label to eliminate brands with milk or butter. Have fun trying all the others – new possibilities grace store shelves as more and more people discover dark chocolate as the best occasional junk food treat.
You actually will benefit from and enjoy dark chocolate most when you choose moderate amounts. Half a bar a week – any day you’d like – should be enough to reward yourself without gaining weight. Okay, maybe twice a week, but then treat yourself with other whole foods instead….
Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!
Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet, the smart person’s nutrition book built on sustainable food choices. Enjoy six kinds of whole foods for permanent, hunger-free weight loss and health.
Five Bestsellers Wow the World with Plant-Based Nutrition
People are tired of being fat and sick, dependent on expensive drugs with scary side-effects, and feeling helpless. We know deep down, as a nation, there has to be a better way. An easier and more natural way. We all know people with cancer, heart disease, arthritis, migraines, high blood pressure, and all the other afflictions of current times.
Five books with the hopeful message of plant-based nutrition are topping the charts on amazon.com. Here are five awesome choices in amazon’s top 200 as of early November 2009. All these books will give you ideas and insights
Diet books for healthy and permanent weight loss
into getting to your healthy weight and knocking chronic illness out of your life.
Eating Animals. Jonathan Safron Foer, in a Wall Street Journal article, asks why we eat “farmed animals” but not the dogs that many cultures find so tasty. This controversy has propelled his book Eating Animals into the top 50 on amazon.
The Conscious Cook. Tal Ronnen, who has been personal chef to Oprah, gives delectable recipes for plant-based meals.
The Kind Diet. Alicia Silverstone outlines the many approaches to healthy plant-based eating. She includes recipes that will make anyone’s table the most desired place to eat in town.
The China Study. T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., describes the world’s most valuable study of people’s real life eating habits. Dr. Campbell tells you how to use this research to make a huge difference in your own health. Published in 2006, this book still has a firm spot in the top 200.
Eat to Live. Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s compelling and often amusing look at why nutrient-dense whole foods will make you thin and healthy. Dr. Fuhrman shreds a high-protein approach to eating. The November 9 issue of People prominently features this book as Alanis Morissette give Eat to Live the credit for her stunning weight loss.
How popular does a book have to be to get into the amazon top 200? The title has to be selling in the top .01% on the site. Think of it. That’s how many people are interested in plant-based nutrition. Would you want to get in on this action? Check out one of these bestsellers and find out.
Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!
Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet, the smart person’s nutrition book built on sustainable food choices. Enjoy six kinds of whole foods for permanent, hunger-free weight loss and health.
These Are the Health Facts, Whether We Want Them to Be or Not
Walk into your doctor’s office and find a coupon for cigarettes. Or maybe even a sample pack to “ease your stress.” As foreign as it may seem, this could have happened not that long ago. Physicians, well-meaning and helpful, pushed tobacco on their patients because industry assured them this was the right thing to do.
Millions of addicted people and their doctors yearned to believe smoking was healthy, or at least harmless. Public relations dollars on an unprecedented scale fueled their fantasy. Government agencies dozed in the back room, educating and protecting no one.
The dragonfly is there whether you see it or not
The tobacco industry manufactured confusion right along with cigarettes. Yet, as the English author Aldous Huxley so wisely observed, “facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
Nor do these facts cease to exist for choosing a healthy diet and spurning foods that can be as harmful as tobacco is. Billions of ad dollars paint a mass fantasy of what people should eat, but all the money in the universe can’t change the basic facts of human biology and nutritional needs.
You have a naturally perfect body. Learn the real facts to protect yourself and turn your health around with a whole foods, plant-based diet. When you find out, you will want to tell everyone you know the simple secrets to losing weight and reversing chronic disease.
As Aldous Huxley also said, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.”
Intrigued? Now you can use our Whole Foods Blog Finder to target informative, fun postings on plant-based nutrition. Quick information at no cost!
Blog posting by Janice Stanger, Ph.D. Janice authored The Perfect Formula Diet, the smart person’s nutrition book built on sustainable food choices. Enjoy six kinds of whole foods for permanent, hunger-free weight loss and health.
