The Plant Yourself Podcast

Thoughts on the episode? Let us know.Melanie Joy, PhD is a social psychologist, vegan activist, political strategist vs all the oppressive "archys" out there, organizational consultant, and relationship coach. She joins the podcast to talk about her book Beyond Beliefs - essentially a merging of the political and relational.How can we advocate for human health, environmental sanity, and ethical treatment of animals without wrecking our relationships with family members, friends, partners, and coworkers?Click to subscribe to the Mindset Mastery Memo.Support the show

Thoughts on the episode? Let us know.Brittany Sade is a vegan entrepreneur and health coach. Her company, Prosperiteez Clothing, devotes part of its profits to combatting food insecurity in impoverished communities.Brittany wasn't always a paragon of healthy living. Thanks to meat three times a day, along with a serious cheese addiction, she suffered from skin problems, arterial blockages, and overweight.It took the suffering and death of close family members to wake her to the realization that life didn't have to be an inexorable descent into disability and disease and painful premature death.Click to subscribe to the Mindset Mastery Memo.Support the show

Thoughts on the episode? Let us know.Karen Smith is a plant-based registered dietitian, runner (sub-3 hours in the Boston Marathon, baby!), and all around good person.At Progressive Health of Delaware, which includes my Ultimate Frisbee buddy and podcast guest and lifestyle medicine superhero Dave Donohue, MD, Karen counsels patients on improving their diets and their health with a combo of skills: her RD training, her knowledge of plant-based nutrition (which she did not learn in school), and coaching techniques from the WellStart Coach Training Academy (hey, that's my school! :))Click to subscribe to the Mindset Mastery Memo.Support the show

Thoughts on the episode? Let us know.Kim Campbell is the culinary force behind PlantPure Nation and PlantPure Foods. She kindly agreed to visit the Plant Yourself test kitchen (which is just the kitchen in my home, cleaned up sufficiently for video) and make some delicious food for me, my wife, and my sister who was visiting from NYC.She also introduced us to nifty kitchen gadgets, one of which I promptly broke. This moment definitely deserves pride of place in the blooper reel of my life.Because this episode was so hands-on and visual, it didn't make sense to release the whole thing as an audio podcast. So today's podcast just introduces the videocast, which you can watch here.https://youtu.be/_6HzzJTeZT4Click to subscribe to the Mindset Mastery Memo.Support the show

Thoughts on the episode? Let us know.Margot Freitag is a coach who helps people transition to a plant-based diet successfully and sustainably. Growing up in Northwest Ontario (cue "Helpless" by Neil Young), she suffered from asthma, and made constant trips to the ER throughout her childhood.As a teen, she became a yoyo dieter, trying every variation she stumbled across in an attempt to lose weight: the apple-only diet, the "don't eat for a week" diet, low carb, etc. One plan she tried allowed her to eat cheese but not carrots, because sugar. (Sigh...)Click to subscribe to the Mindset Mastery Memo.Support the show

Thoughts on the episode? Let us know.Danny and Katherine Dreyer are the co-authors of three of the most valuable books ever on human bipedal locomotion: Chi Running, Chi Walking, and Chi Marathon.The promise of their methodology is that you can walk or run a lot farther and faster, without pain or injury.I can personally testify to its effectiveness, AND to my own ability to learn something great and totally forget about it for, like, a decade and a half.I met Katherine and Danny at their home in Asheville, where they regaled me (and now you) with tales of ultra-running and pain, and discovering how to apply the principles of Tai Chi to running, and starting a business and movement.Click to subscribe to the Mindset Mastery Memo.Support the show

Thoughts on the episode? Let us know.I interviewed Elizabeth Bell in order to record a testimonial for WellStart Health, and ended up having a conversation so compelling and instructive and inspiring that I decided - with Elizabeth's blessing - to share the whole thing.When Elizabeth first joined the WellStart program, she was more or less house-bound. A mysterious malady had taken her balance, her energy, and much of her eyesight. She was in danger of having to go on full disability, give up her professorship in astrophysics, and lose the apartment she had worked so long and hard to afford.Her beloved pastimes - reading and playing cello and piano - were also out of reach due to her dizziness, fatigue, and blurred vision.It's easy to see how Elizabeth could have felt like a victim at that point.Click to subscribe to the Mindset Mastery Memo.Support the show

Thoughts on the episode? Let us know.Caroline Webb is the author of the wonderfully entertaining and useful How to Have a Good Day, which is basically a cookbook on how to be an effective human in the world.She is an executive coach, economist, and speaker, and the book comes out of her extensive knowledge of behavioral science and its application in the real world.How to Have a Good Day has influenced my own health coaching so much, I wanted to talk with Caroline specifically about applying her tools and "recipes" to the challenges around improving diet and lifestyle.Click to subscribe to the Mindset Mastery Memo.Support the show

Thoughts on the episode? Let us know.Juan-Carlos "Carly" Asse is a fitness trainer and documentarian. His first film, Unsupersize Me, has been viewed over 3 million times, and has inspired and guided countless people to embark on their own journeys of healthy weight loss.Carly was a guest on one of the earliest Plant Yourself Podcasts. We talked about his prison transformation: his commitment to bettering himself after being incarcerated for drug charges, his encounter with The China Study, and his new career of personal fitness trainer.Carly's second film, Unsupersize Us, continued and validated the story of Unsupersize Me, this time with five participants from Carly's town of Gainesville, FL. Carly's goal was to broaden the message, and make it clear that this lifestyle and diet was for everyone, and that Tracy's transformation in the original film was not an anomaly.Click to subscribe to the Mindset Mastery Memo.Support the show

Thoughts on the episode? Let us know.Benjamin Alter, ND, treats his patients as if they actually have the power to heal themselves.This power introduces a wonderful and frustrating messiness into the scientific pursuit of truth. It's hard to control for. It's hard to randomize for. And it's hard to replicate.In fact, science has dealt with this messiness by, at best, pretending it doesn't exist, and at worst, actively denigrating people's subjective experiences of illness and healing.Click to subscribe to the Mindset Mastery Memo.Support the show