Read Online Veganist: Lose Weight, Get Healthy, Change the World by Kathy Freston - Free Book Online Page A

plant-based diet had helped some women with breast cancer. All of a sudden, a light went on. I finally connected the dots.
    Between treatments, I mustered up the energy to buy some whole grains and vegetables. I couldn’t learn enough fast enough! I happily cooked my healthy food, and it felt right. I signed up for cooking classes. I dove in. At first, many family members and friends thought I had really lost my mind because I believed this food was going to help heal my close-to-death body.
    As I was about to start radiation treatments, the radiologist took one look at me and advised me to prepare my soul to die. But I had other plans.
    I continued cooking and eating my plant-based foods, and I quickly started to feel much better. I had more energy. I didn’t need sleeping pills to sleep through the night. I was less anxious. Despite having regular radiation treatments, I felt better than I had in years—like the world was finally right-side up. After a year and a half of eating well, I was off all medications for the first time in more than a decade. My chemo and radiation treatments were over, and my health was excellent. My doctors and I were in awe. When I first switched to a plant-based diet, it just made sense in my soul, so I took a leap of faith. I grew to love the food and the healthy lifestyle I was leading. I then educated myself about the science that backs up a plant-based diet by taking classes and voraciously reading.
    As I started improving and stayed healthy, my doctors liked to say I was a miracle patient. But I knew I had, at least in part, made my own luck. It’s been twelve years, and I’ve never looked back. I consider it my life’s work now to share this message—that what
    we eat matters most, that you can maintain or regain your good health by eating a plant-based diet!
    You can get some of Meg Wolff’s healing recipes in her book A Life In Balance: Healthy Recipes from Maine. I am grateful to Meg for sharing her story. I hear stories like hers often, and they offer such hope. Just think about what is yet to be discovered about the link between foods and cancer. I strongly suspect we will soon have conclusive, irrefutable evidence that we’ve been eating ourselves to death with our high-fat, animal-based diets. But let me be clear. In no way am I suggesting that changing your diet is the only thing that will and does make a difference with cancer. As always, if you have cancer or feel a lump somewhere or notice an odd-looking mole, talk with your doctor about all your treatment options, do your own reading, and set about your journey with a well-rounded approach.
    Halting Heart Disease
    When you have heart disease, or are approaching it, it’s like there is a war going on in your body. You likely have high blood pressure, which assaults your heart, rapidly wearing it out. Quite often, heart disease goes right along with obesity, and that means you have miles of extra blood vessels going out to nourish your extra-large body, and your heart struggles to keep up.
    The exciting news is that within days of making a diet change, weight starts to drop away. Within a week, blood sugar starts to fall. Within two weeks, blood pressure improves. Within a month, cholesterol improves significantly. You see a reduced need for medications, and less risk of the complications associated with them.
    Perhaps the most widely recognized advantage of cutting out meat and dairy is what it does for your heart. Dr. Dean Ornish revolutionized cardiology when his studies indicated that the blocked arteries of 82 percent of his participating patients could be opened if they switched to a vegetarian diet (along with other lifestyle changes such as meditation and support groups).
    ----
    Switch to a plant-based, vegan diet and within days weight starts to drop away, within a week blood sugar starts to fall, within two weeks blood pressure improves, and within a month cholesterol improves significantly. Research shows that