Plant Yourself - Embracing A Plant-based Lifestyle

Lauren Plunkett is a registered dietitian living with type 1 diabetes. She's also the newest addition to the WellStart care team - and we couldn't be more pleased or delighted! Lauren is a dynamo of positive energy, and a shining example of the power of lifestyle to enhance quality of life. Diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of 11, Lauren struggled for years to feel good and have the energy to do what she wanted to do. She went on a mission to learn everything she could about nutrition and health. Once she discovered plant-based nutrition, she knew she had found the key to thriving with diabetes: reducing insulin resistance.  The post Eat Your Way Healthy with Lauren Plunkett: PYP 332 appeared first on Plant Yourself.

Kathy Hester is a cookbook author, gear and gadget junkie, and vegan wizard. She's also a neighbor of mine, and a hilarious and warm and wonderful human being.  This is her third appearance on the podcast - and frankly, I got tired of talking about food and not getting to eat it! So for this episode, I invited Kathy into my kitchen, to teach us all how to use the air fryer to get low-fat plant-based deliciousness into our lives. The post Mastering the Air Fryer with Kathy Hester: PYP 331 appeared first on Plant Yourself.

Jesse Herrera is founder and chief visionary of Urban Theory, which I'd categorize as a "think tank" and an "act tank" for social and economic and environmental justice. Jesse is a former gang member, as well as a recovering architect. An urban planner. A visionary realist. We met at the World Healthcare Congress this past May, and immediately bonded by nerding out over sustainable small-plot agricultural tools and strategies, such as 2-wheel Italian tractors and compost tea. And discovered that our missions aligned. I work with individuals and organizations, while Jesse targets cities and communities. His passionate vision and clear-headed appraisal of obstacles and opportunities makes for an inspiring conversation. The post Tackling Food and Economic Insecurity Through Urban Agriculture with Jesse Herrera: PYP 330 appeared first on Plant Yourself.

Linda Carney, MD, returns to the podcast to talk about a wholistic approach to treating depression. It turns out that while adverse childhood events, genetics, and traumatic life circumstances all contribute to the onset and severity of depression, we do have choices and tools and strategies to prevent and recover from this debilitating mental condition. We can change our thoughts patterns, for example. And - and this is even easier and more straightforward - we can improve our diets. The post Overcoming Depression with Linda Carney, MD: PYP 329 appeared first on Plant Yourself.

Josh LaJaunie returns to the podcast for a fifth (?) time, for a conversation about our relationship with nature. We talk about the beauty and grandeur of nature, and the ways human beings benefit and grow from being exposed to that loveliness. And also about nature’s dangerous and scary and yucky and itchy and hot and humid and freezing and soaking and uncomfortable aspects - and how we need those experiences in equal measure with the pleasurable ones. Our sport, ultrarunning, is an invitation to both faces of nature. To the beauty and grandeur, and to the hassle and discomfort. To the nurturing and the threatening. We also explore the lessons nature holds for us; in trees and eddies, in cycles of live and death, growth and service. The post We are Nature with Josh LaJaunie: PYP 328 appeared first on Plant Yourself.

Emma Passé is Chief Operating Officer at E-Powered Benefits, one of the renegade benefits brokers challenging a bloated and broken healthcare system. I first met Emma a year ago at a healthcare conference, where she brought down the house with a spirited, entertaining, and incisive look at how health plans negotiate prices with providers. You might not think that the topic of "reference-based pricing" would be all that interesting to the non-wonks in the room, but Emma has a way of making it relevant and fun. And, when you discover how you've been overpaying for healthcare all these years, you might become outraged as well. When I found out that Emma was going to be in Charlotte, NC for the day, I drove for a couple of hours with my portable podcasting studio and met her for an interview.  The post Fixing Health Insurance with Emma Passé: PYP 327 appeared first on Plant Yourself.

Philip Shepherd is the author of Radical Wholeness: The Embodied Presence and the Ordinary Grace of Being.  I was introduced to Philip's work by my friend and teacher Mark Leuchten. About 12 pages into Radical Wholeness, I felt my entire worldview shift. Some of the cultural blinders that had blocked my understanding of wholeness were revealed, and I began to understand where I was in conflict with myself, and why, and what I could start to do to harmonize myself. I needed to know more. The post Rediscovering Radical Wholeness with Philip Shepherd: PYP 326 appeared first on Plant Yourself.

Ramona and Dustin LaJaunie are part of a family that has lost over a thousand pounds through plants and running. The mother and brother, respectively, of Josh LaJaunie, Mona and Dustin are now the cooks in the family.  And one of their biggest challenges was abandoning all the classic southern recipes that they loved and took pride in making and sharing - gumbos, jambalayas, turnip stew, cabbage rolls, and all the delicious desserts - in favor of low-fat, plant-based fare. They decided that there had to be a way to have the best of both worlds - their cherished traditions, and their health. The post Honoring Tradition While Charting a New Course with Ramona and Dustin Lajaunie: PYP 325 appeared first on Plant Yourself.

Olivia Kelly is CEO and co-founder of WellStart Health, the fabulously amazing startup that I also co-founded. So everything I'm going to say about her is totally unbiased. Olivia and I have been jetsetting this spring, attending healthcare-related conferences in exotic locations like Washington, DC, and Raleigh, NC. And because we're trying to take a "systems approach" to solving our chronic-disease fueled healthcare crisis, the conferences we attend are quite diverse in goal, scope, and attendees.  In fact, I'm almost positive that Olivia and I are the only elements in the intersection set of the World Health Care Congress (WHCC) and the Plant-Based Prevention of Disease Conference (P-POD).  The post A Systems Approach to Fighting Chronic Disease with Olivia Kelly: PYP 324 appeared first on Plant Yourself.

Dr Wayne Jonas is a pioneer in integrative, healing-based, patient-centered healthcare. He was director of the NIH Office of Alternative Medicine from 1995-1999, and led the World Health Organization's Collaborative Center for Traditional Medicine.In our conversation, we look at the triply oxymoronic "Health Care System" (produces about 20% of public health, doesn't provide much quality care, and is not an integrated system), and what it's missing and how to reimagine healthcare. The post Dr Wayne Jonas on the Science of Healing: PYP 323 appeared first on Plant Yourself.

Our lives have changed dramatically since 2007, when the first iPhone was introduced.As today’s guest, Glenn Murphy, points out, if we handled any other object over 1000 times a day, we would be considered severely OCD, or addicted, or certainly life-impaired in some way.Yet that’s exactly how many times most of us reach for our smartphones in a typical day.And this behavior pattern is not just weird - it’s damaging to our productivity and mental health. The post The Martial Art of Tech-Proofing with Glenn Murphy: PYP 322 appeared first on Plant Yourself.

Shiann Darkangelo plays professional hockey for the Toronto Furies, in the Canadian Women's Ice Hockey League.If that isn't a place you'd expect to find a plant-based athlete, join the club!Shiann is not only one of the world's best hockey players, but she's a passionate plant-based coach and mentor. The post Improving Athletic Performance Through Plants with Shiann Darkangelo: PYP 321 appeared first on Plant Yourself.

Kevin Davis is a WellStart Health “Supercoach,” and co-leader of the WellStart Health Coach Training Academy.Today we talk about his story, from being the “fat kid” in high school, to getting into bodybuilding and embracing extreme keto, to a traumatic car crash that led to years of agoraphobia, to his plant-based journey and healing of anxiety.With that as background, we cover the WellStart Health Attainment Model, the pyramid infographic that serves as a roadmap of change.If you’re a coach, or are trying to change your own habits, this will be a valuable model to help you diagnose and overcome obstacles. The post How to Really Change Habits with Kevin Davis: PYP 320 appeared first on Plant Yourself.

My buddy Josh LaJaunie returns the to podcast for his fourth? fifth? appearance. We've been busy building WellStart Health, dealing with logistics and curriculum and business development and whatnot, so we were both hungry for a slow, meandering, purposeless, deep conversation. The kind friends have, with no agenda, except with thousands of people listening in. The post Covering the Ground with Josh LaJaunie: PYP 319 appeared first on Plant Yourself.

Marco Borges, founder of 22 Days Nutrition, is a visionary social entrepreneur.From humble beginnings, Marco has partnered with Beyoncé and Jay-Z to bring plant-based health to as many people as possible, as affordably as possible.And he's one of those folks whose very presence and easy self-confidence compels others to take him seriously - in short, a powerful spokesperson and ally. The post Holding Ourselves to a Higher Standard with Marco Borges: PYP 318 appeared first on Plant Yourself.

David Sabgir, MD, is a cardiologist practicing at the founder of Walk with a Doc, a movement within the field of lifestyle medicine whose mission is to empower doctors to share the health and happiness benefits of walking with their patients.From a single walk in Columbus, Ohio in April 2005, Walk with a Doc has grown to 500 chapters worldwide. In addition to the walk itself, the free events also include education on healthy habits and lifestyle. The post Bringing Health to the People, One Step at a Time with David Sabgir, MD: PYP 317 appeared first on Plant Yourself.

Emily Lindsay, PhD, is lead author of an uber-important scientific paper on how to mitigate loneliness through mindfulness and acceptance training. Lindsay is a research scientist in the Psychology Department at University of Pittsburgh who studies how mind-body practices like mindfulness and meditation affect our physiology and ultimate health outcomes. It's an important field of study, because negative mental and emotional states can be terrible for our health.  The post Banishing Loneliness Through Mindful Acceptance with Emily Lindsay: PYP 316 appeared first on Plant Yourself.

Danny Warshay is the executive director of the Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship at Brown University, and a long-time friend. He dropped by to talk about how to apply his Entrepreneurial Process to lifestyle and habit change. Neither of us knew exactly what we would discover when we began speaking, although we both had hunches that there was direct applicability somehow, some way The post Changing Habits and Lifestyle Through the Entrepreneurial Process with Danny Warshay: PYP 315 appeared first on Plant Yourself.

When I asked Dr Monica Aggarwal to join me on this podcast, I figured we'd talk about her plant-based advocacy at the University of Florida, where she is an assistant professor of medicine and Director of Integrative Cardiology and Prevention.We got there, eventually, but took a fascinating detour into the gender politics of medicine, and cardiology in particular.  The post Finding Balance and Reimagining Cardiology with Monica Aggarwal, MD: PYP 314 appeared first on Plant Yourself.

Today's a huge departure for this podcast. For the first time, we explore the virtues of eating something other than plants.No, don't worry. I haven't gone paleo or keto or carnivore (although one of my prior guests has (SMH)). I'm not into fish oil or organic beef liver or hummingbird tongue.Today we explore an entire kingdom that can boost our immune function, mood, and possibly bring us sanity: fungi. The post The Health Benefits of the “Poor Mans’ Meat” with Jeff Chilton: PYP 313 appeared first on Plant Yourself.