Plant Slant Lifestyle
Shift in my health perspective
There were a couple things that happened to me in the past few years that really changed my perspective about health. First, my Dad was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in September 2015. It was so terrible to watch him decline over the next 6 months before passing away much too early at the age of 70 in March 2016. I am kind of a hypochondriac (although not as bad as my sister Lindsey), so I figured I was probably going to get brain cancer someday as well.
Second, in April 2017 after an intense cardiac workup for syncope and pre-syncope (I was passing out or nearly passing out on a regular basis) I was diagnosed with a type 2 AV block. This meant I needed a pacemaker (which makes me just like my sister Ashlyn who has the same diagnosis). I had a newly FDA approved Micra intraventricular pacemaker implanted and have been symptom free since.
These two major life experiences got me really focused on learning how to maximize my health. I immediately started studying numerous resources with a major focus on diet. Lisa was completely on board and together we found The Blue Zones.
The Blue Zones
The Blue Zones was founded by Dan Buettner, who discovered five places in the world where the people are the healthiest and live the longest. These locations are Sardinia Italy, Ikaria Greece, Okinawa Japan, Nicoya Costa Rica, and Loma Linda California. They studied the many centenarians in these regions and put together a list of similarities between the way these people live and eat. They called these similar lifestyle habits the Power 9 and now they encourage everyone to follow these habits in order to improve health and increase longevity. There are no mind blowing secrets on the list. In fact, all of their recommendations make perfect sense.
As the Blue Zones team have tried to help people and families and communities develop these improved lifestyle habits, they discovered the key was to change the environment people live in. This really resonated with Lisa and I and we have tried to make our home a Blue Zone by making it easier to make good food choices. As we instituted these changes, I lost about 20 pounds, weighing less than I have since I was a teenager. I felt good and people noticed. We heard from multiple people that I looked really skinny in my face.
But the most important thing was that I felt better. I think this is the key way to judge whether a lifestyle change (we don't call it a diet - it needs to be a lifestyle change if it is going to be sustainable.) is really working. Ask yourself how you feel once you have instituted the changes and compare it to the way you used to feel. It was obvious that the changes we made were having a positive effect on both of us and on our family.
Plant Slant Lifestyle
I want to get into some specifics, but I will only cover dietary changes at this time. In the five blue zones, they called the way those people eat a "Plant Slant". I really like this terminology. They were not vegetarian or vegan. They did eat some meat. But meat made up a very small portion of their diet with approximately 5 servings of meat per month, with serving sizes about 3-4 ounces, or about the size of a deck of cards. The more I studied and learned, the more I leaned towards becoming vegetarian with meat a very small part of my diet as well. And when we did choose to eat meat, it was usually fish or lean poultry.
I do not believe decreasing my meat intake was the most important change I made, however. I think sugar is the bigger culprit in our overall health, but that is a topic for a different post. We started to eat more beans, brown rice, quinoa, potatoes, chips and salsa, and other whole foods as the cornerstone of our diet. And we were very careful about the types of food we purchased and ate. We never ate fast food, although that was not much of a change for us. We avoided processed foods as much as possible, trying to only purchase foods that have 5 ingredients or less. We really do read the labels, count the ingredients, and put back anything that has multiple ingredients or has anything we can't pronounce or don't know what it is. I completely eliminated soda from my diet, except for occasional indulgence when on vacation. We researched all other drink options in order to find a soda replacement, but soon learned that nearly all flavored drinks are as bad health wise as soda. So I really only drink water. We changed our shopping habits, stocking our fridge with fresh fruits and vegetables. We nearly completely eliminated all dairy, replacing cows milk with almond milk. We still ate yogurt, but we only buy Oikos Triple Zero yogurt, which has only 6 grams of sugar with no added sugars or sweeteners and no fat.
All of these changes felt natural and easy. We feel better and look better and are happy with this lifestyle change. And it is pretty easy to stick to our Plant Slant lifestyle, in large part because we followed the Blue Zones recommendation of changing our environment by only having good and healthy options available at our house. We do still live a normal life. We eat treats at parties and on holidays. We have Sunday Sundaes, a tradition that we have had for a long time, but we try to limit ice cream to only that night. Lisa and I eat out, and occasionally take the whole family out to eat, but we choose establishments with healthy options and we are always satisfied. I don't miss taking the family to Red Robin.
It is always hard to talk about diet in this type of forum or in conversations with groups of people. One, the science is not perfect. Again, this will be a topic for a future post as my views have changed somewhat since our initial Plant Slant conversion. Two, I do not want to be perceived as judging anyone. I don't have all the right answers and everyone is entitled to make their own choices. I do like to share what I have learned with people who are genuinely interested, but I have no interest in trying to convert anyone else to my way of thinking. I do enjoy discussing my ideas with people who disagree with me, however, because I know I still have a lot to learn and things I can improve.