What a Whole Foods, Plant-Based Diet Can Do For You

Confusion abounds when it comes to what you should eat. What is healthy? Is fat good or bad? Are carbs ok? I have spent the better part of 12 years looking at these questions and I can tell you that If you want to lost weight, lower your blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar, clean out your arteries, improve your digestion, prevent heart disease and stroke, reduce your risk for many cancers, prevent (and possibly reverse) type 2 diabetes, improve symptoms from chronic illnesses such as rheumatoid arthritis, gout, inflammatory bowel disease, and multiple sclerosis, lower your risk for Alzheimer's, have clearer skin, less hot flashes, and beat osteoarthritis, reduce your dependence on pharmaceuticals and much more then congratulations on landing here. You've come to the right place!

Yes, a whole foods, plant-based diet can do all those things and more.

What is a whole foods, plant-based diet? Whole food describes natural foods that are not heavily processed. For the most part they look pretty much like how they grew from the ground. They can be peeled, chopped, mashed, cooked but are generally not processed more than that. Plant-based means food that comes from plants and doesn’t contain animal ingredients such as meat, milk, cheese, cream, or eggs.

Consider potatoes versus potato chips:

Potatoes are a whole, plant food.

Comes from a plant, but not a whole food.

Back to our original question. What can a whole food, plant-based diet do for you? Let's look at some of the most common benefits.

72% of Americans are overweight or obese.

Weight Loss: In 2018, 49% of Americans attempted to lose weight. But diets don’t work, because 98% of the people who go on diets gain it all back within about 2 years and often they gain back even more weight than they lost. Diets are always based on some type of deprivation - counting calories, counting carbs, counting points, eating thimble sized portions, weighing food, and not eating to satiation - and that is why they don’t work. Plant-based diets can help you lose weight and keep it off because they are packed with fiber, which helps fill you up, without adding extra calories. A Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine study tested a plant-based diet in a group of 64 women. At the start of the study, all of the women were moderately or severely overweight. Participants followed two simple rules: They set aside all animal products and kept oils to a minimum. They lost about a pound per week, without calorie counting or exercise. After two years, they maintained the weight loss.

45% of Americans have hypertension.