Marco Borges - The Greenprint

EAT LESS JUNK

Let’s pause here to consider the second part of this law: eat less of everything else.

‘And what is “everything else”?’ I hear you asking. Well, for one thing, it’s junk food, and I’m sure you know exactly what that is: it’s foods with questionable nutritional value laced with sugar and salt. It’s soft drinks and other sugary beverages. It’s highly processed, packaged food engineered with lab-produced flavours designed to be irresistible. It’s the fast food sold on every corner of every town. You know it when you see it. When you do, don’t eat it.

A lot of junk is filled with additives and artificial flavours, too. They trick your taste buds so much that they get confused when you eat real food because you’re so used to chemicals. But when you remove artificially flavoured foods from your diet, something magical happens. After a few days, your taste buds begin to function as they should. Suddenly you experience what an orange or carrot really tastes like. Or an apple, or a mango. You rediscover what sweet is really supposed to taste like.

Also under the heading of ‘everything else’ are animal-based foods, such as meat and cheese. That massive study I mentioned on see herealso compared the diets of those in the study who eventually died and those who did not. Vegetarians and vegans had a lower risk of death than non-vegetarians. The point is that eating too much animal-based food just might cut your life short. Why risk that? When you follow this law, you will enjoy powerful results. As your new eating habits start to settle in, you will feel better and better – and learn that you actually love eating more fruits and vegetables on a regular basis. In fact, you will feel amazing, and you will begin to crave fresh, delicious plant foods.

You will notice this difference almost immediately. You will feel better and be healthier, and this will make you happier. Your amazing energy will come from those plants. When plants grow, the sun shines, energy is absorbed from the air and through the soil, and nature’s chemistry turns light into food that gives you energy – pure, natural, healing energy that will change the way you live in the world.

YOUR GREENPRINT

by Following Law #1

You will become thinner, live longer, and be healthier – a point established by our Holy Name study, as well as the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines, which state that vegetarian eating patterns, including vegan diets, may boost health by preventing obesity, slashing the risk of cardiovascular disease and lowering total mortality.

THE PLANT-BASED DISTINCTION

Many people don’t understand the differences between a vegetarian diet, a vegan diet and a 100 per cent plant-based diet.

VEGETARIAN

Eats milk and eggs, grains and vegetables, but doesn’t eat meat, poultry or fish. There are variants of the vegetarian diet: ovo-lacto vegetarians eat eggs, dairy and honey while excluding meat, fish and poultry. Lacto-vegetarians exclude eggs, meat, fish and poultry, but eat dairy and honey. Pesco-vegetarians eat fish, but not the flesh of other animals. And ovo-vegetarians eat eggs but exclude dairy from their diets.

VEGAN

Doesn’t eat meat, poultry, fish, milk, eggs or honey. Eats grains, vegetables, fruit and, often, overprocessed vegan foods.

PLANT-BASED

Eats 100 per cent plants – grains, vegetables and fruits. Doesn’t eat meat, poultry, fish, milk, eggs, honey or processed vegan foods.

LAW 2

NOBODY EVER PLANS TO FAIL

PEOPLE JUST FAIL TO PLAN

Success depends upon previous preparation.

– CONFUCIUS

WHEN YOU’RE SWITCHING TO PLANT-BASED EATING, planning is the key for success – and enjoyment! Set yourself up for success by anticipating your nutritional needs and making healthy, plant-based food accessible and convenient. Selecting healthy, life-giving foods for each of your three meals a day is possible – but just like any lasting change to your diet, it requires planning. It requires effort. Cucumbers don’t buy themselves!

Some people bounce around from diet to diet, shedding weight but then gaining it all back. It’s frustrating. It’s disheartening. If you want to stop failing, step out of the cycle of weight gain and disease and create a new cycle of vitality, planning and following through are the only way to get there. If you are looking for a get-thin-quick plan, you’re in the wrong place. If you’re looking for sustainable habits that will result in weight loss and great health, you’re in the right place, because you are beginning an incredible journey towards optimum health and wellness. You’re going to see what it feels like to take care of yourself and move towards being the best version of you.

The first step to changing the trajectory of your diet, weight and health is to be completely accountable for where you are today – good or bad. Your parents aren’t to blame, and neither is the economy or your favourite fast-food restaurant – you are. You are 100 per cent responsible for everything you do; you will never fix your problems by blaming someone or something else. You choose what to eat, how to act, where to go, when to exercise (or not) and what foods to avoid. Once you get all that straight, then you can get to the heart of how to plan for plant-based eating. When you plan, you win; when you don’t, you fail.

PLANNING TO MEET YOUR NUTRIENT NEEDS

Reminder:Plant foods provide everything you need nutritionally. But ensuring that you receive all that ‘everything’ requires thoughtful planning. Plan your meals around a variety of high-quality, nutrient-rich foods, such as whole grains, beans, legumes, vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds.

Plant-based eaters have to be a little more vigilant than most to get sufficient amounts of certain vitamins, minerals and fats in their diets. The important nutrient targets to hit include:

IRON One of the most common yet erroneous arguments against a plant-based diet is that it doesn’t provide enough iron. In fact, those eating a meat-free, plant-based diet not only tend to get more iron, but also get more fibre, vitamins and minerals. Plant-based iron, also known as non-heme iron, isn’t absorbed as well as heme iron (which is found in animal blood and muscle) in the body, but studies show that avoiding heme iron has been associated with a reduced risk of heart disease, diabetes, stroke and other chronic diseases.

A plant-based diet should include foods that are rich in iron, like kidney beans, black beans, soya beans, spinach, raisins (which are slightly higher in iron than grapes), cashews, oats, cabbage and tomato juice (which has more iron than tomatoes).

Women require 18 milligrams of iron daily; men require 8 milligrams. For postmenopausal women, that drops to the same amount as for men, 8 milligrams. Pregnant women require 27 milligrams. Getting enough iron daily isn’t difficult when you combine plant-based iron sources: a meal consisting of 225 grams of cooked spinach, 185 grams of quinoa, and 100 grams of chickpeas contains about 12 milligrams of iron. A simple salad of spinach, dried currants, almonds, pumpkin seeds and a few sun-dried tomatoes can easily deliver 10 milligrams of iron.

VITAMIN B12 Vitamin B 12is abundant in meat, eggs and dairy foods, and vegan diets get criticised because they don’t supply enough of this nutrient. But one thing most people don’t realise is that there’s not even that much B 12in beef anymore, because cows don’t eat that much natural grass (the original source of this vitamin from bacteria that live in the soil). They are being injected with B 12!