Hello!
I'm so glad you stopped by this blog! My name is Lucy and I'm a 44-year-old wife, mother, attorney, yoga teacher, dog-lover, and nutrition junkie. I've been plant-based since 2016, but I've spent this last year (when the pandemic started) really diving deep into the whole food plant-based no oil (WFPBNO) aspects of nutrition. Needless to say, it has completely changed my outlook on eating, cooking, and providing for my family. I recently graduated with a certificate in plant based nutrition from the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies through eCornell and wanted to do something with the new-found energy and information circling around in my head. And so this blog was born!
To give you a little of my background: I grew up in Lynchburg, Virginia the youngest of four siblings. Around the age of 10, I found classical ballet and never looked back, putting all of my attention and energy into becoming the best dancer I could. When I was 17-years-old, I joined the Nashville Ballet where I performed for three years. And while to the average person on the street I looked thin and fit, I never was able to acquire that ideal 'dancer's body' highly coveted in the 1990s ballet world. So after years of not eating well, I burned out. I stopped dancing and went back to college full-time. And since I wasn't dancing anymore I floundered a bit athletically, gaining weight in my long-desired zest for being able to eat whatever I wanted (finally!). But uncomfortable in my skin, I started running, swimming, and eating what I thought was better, eventually losing some weight and finally feeling like a normal college student. After college, I went to law school (where I met my amazing husband, Will!), graduated, got married, and three years later we started our family. Frances was born in 2007 and George in 2009, who along with Will are the three main reasons for my nutrition interest. Throughout this whole time, I continued running as my main exercise of choice and still eating as healthy as I knew how to but always along the lines of the Standard American Diet. When a knee injury sidelined my running in 2012 and my doctor urged me to "try yoga or pilates," I found myself in a Bikram yoga class sweating, panting, and grinning my way to a new obsession and love.
Yoga changed my life in so many ways--physically, mentally, socially, and therapeutically. In yoga class, I met my first vegans who graciously allowed me to ask far too many questions of their strange eating habits--where do you get your protein? You don't eat CHEESE? What DO you eat? Don't you worry about calcium for your bones? And on, and on, and on ...
Like most vegans, I stumbled upon the documentary "Forks Over Knives" on Netflix, let it sink in, and several months later made the switch to entirely plant-based. And also like most vegans, I initially bought a lot of the vegan "junk food" - fake cheese, fake meat, veganaise, salad dressings--pretty much anything that would trick my tastebuds into thinking I was eating the same way I always had. But my natural curiosity kept me reading about plant-based diets and I began to understand that not all vegan foods are created equal. I stopped buying fake meats and cheeses and ate a mostly whole foods plant-based diet. I also made a family decision to only cook things I would eat, too. No more making two meals--one for me and one for the rest of the family. If you were eating my dinners, you were eating plants!
Then came CORONAVIRUS.
In March of 2020, the world shut down. My kids' schools closed. My husband's office closed. Our vacations were canceled. Our social outings were over. Even the yoga studio shut its doors. Hunkered down in our house, I did the only thing I knew to do - I cooked. All vegan and mostly all whole foods plant-based, but I still used oil. And nut butters. And coconut milk. And even though I was practicing yoga daily at home, walking more steps than I ever had before, and getting plenty of sleep, I noticed I was gaining weight. Just a few pounds and not noticeable to anyone but me, but it was ALL I thought about and I was completely perplexed. Then one day I heard a podcast with Rip and Jane Esselstyn and a lightbulb went off. The brother-sister duo, along with their father and mother, have created a whole foods plant-based, no oil revolution. They are all part of the "Forks Over Knives" documentary (and several others), but as we like to say in yoga just because you hear something doesn't mean you are ready to listen. I was finally ready to listen. And I immediately cut out all oils and almost all nuts and extra fats.
The more I learn about this way of eating and the more I experience how it has shaped my life, the more I want to absorb. When I heard about the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutritional Studies nutrition course, I jumped at the chance to apply. The course furthered both my understanding of nutrition and my understanding of how little I know, but it did increase my passion for health and WFPBNO eating tenfold.
I'm still fairly young and have (I hope!) at least another 44 years on this planet, but I want those years to be filled with health, my family's health, and lots and lots of fun. I've had two total hip replacements, I've had to give up my running entirely, and I've had to change my yoga practice greatly, but through all of these setbacks my health has only gotten better and more rewarding. I've maintained my weight, greatly reduced inflammation in my body, healed quickly from surgery, reduced my chronic asthma symptoms to almost non-existent, and have more energy than I ever thought possible. I hope you will consider trying some of these recipes and maybe look into this way of eating. Please feel free to ask me any questions and I'm happy to try to answer them or at least point you in the right direction.
- Lots of Love and Plants!
Lucy
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