Blog
BLOG
1/22/2017
I went Vegan overnight, one week before Thanksgiving 2010 after watching the film Earthlings. I had no idea what to eat! Was I really expected to live the rest of my life on nothing but fruits and vegetables? I rarely ate fruit. I’d routinely buy a bunch of bananas at the grocery store, eat one or two before they got all spotty and gross, and throw out the rest. I ate some peaches during the summer months, but really preferred them in a cobbler. I put milk in my coffee, and in my tea (English mother), grew up on macaroni and cheese, and ate hamburgers or steak 5 days a week! How would I get enough protein eating nothing but vegetables? I’d been severely anemic a few years prior - could I get enough iron without eating red meat? "I guess I could supplement with pills," I thought. But seriously, what the heck was I going to eat?! Salad?? But I loved 1000 island, ranch, and blue cheese dressings! Not even my salads were vegan!
And it was more than just my diet. I had been a photographer on assignment with National Geographic -- chummed the waters of South Africa with fish blood to attract great white sharks so I could jump in the water and photograph them. I had a favorite black leather jacket that I wore nearly every day of the year a la Arthur Fonzarelli, and I loved making homemade ice cream as soon as the mercury topped 70 degrees.
And yet, immediately after watching Earthlings, while wiping away the tears and hating myself for being responsible for an incomprehensible amount of suffering, I purged all animal products from my kitchen, threw away my leather jacket, and called my family to inform them that I was Vegan and would not be eating turkey for Thanksgiving the following week.
Those first few weeks were a bit rough as I struggled to figure out what to eat and how much, and worried that I might become deficient in any number of nutrients that were never a concern to me all the years that I’d been surviving on unhealthy-yet-convenient processed food.
So, I turned to Google and I found Dr. John McDougall. I enrolled in his 10-day live in program and a few weeks later I was on a plane to Santa Rosa, California where I spent 160 hours learning all about how to be healthy on a whole foods, plant-based diet. I ate a lot of potatoes with Dr. McDougall, and I began my journey of education and experience that has brought me here with you today.
I’m absolutely thrilled and genuinely honored for the opportunity to help you along your Vegan journey, and demonstrate how easy and fulfilling it is to live a compassionate life.