Kind Lifer Tara recently shared her success story about overcoming UC (ulcerative colitis), and how she has almost eliminated her need for medication. Real food  is the medicine that our bodies need! Check out Tara’s story:
 
“I have had UC (ulcerative colitis) for 6-7 years. My last flare up just happened to coincide with going vegetarian. At the time a lot of people thought that the two were related although I felt it was all stress related. My doctor agreed that the stress was probably the culprit and adjusted the medicine I was on increasing one dosage and adding two other medications. After about four months I felt better and would continue to have minor flare ups and symptoms on and off for over a year and a half.

In January I decided to try becoming vegan and it was a little harder than I thought it would be. I have been 80-90% vegan and have felt much better. My last check up was two weeks ago and much to my doctor's surprise (and mine too!) there are no signs of UC at all! I am now only on one medicine and the dosage has been reduced.
 
Not only do I feel that diet is the main reason that I have no signs of UC but family members that thought that being vegetarian was causing my illness to flare up are now telling people that the diet is what has helped me to get better. I now feel much more motivated to go cut dairy out entirely.”
 
Way to go Tara! Keep us posted on your progress!
 
If anyone has a great success story to share, post it in the forum and “like” it. I’ll be sure to check it out, and your story may get featured on the blog!

Photo Credit: Shawn Laksmi

Tevia Celli-Recht is an amazing human being. She is also the very best spin instructor I've ever had. If you are in LA, you MUST run now and take one of her classes at Updog Cycling and Yoga on Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood....and she has her own over-the-top delicious vegan baking company, The Lil' Vegan Baker That Could. Connect to the previous blogs about her here and here.

Tevia is an insane athlete who also has MS (multiple sclerosis). She manages her MS symptoms through a plant-based, vegan diet and some supplements, and this combination has literally halted her MS symptoms! Among her other pursuits, she has invented a fitness machine called the E-Ryde.  It's so groovy.  It doesn't require any electricity or power to work....so it's super enviro just like a spin bike!!  

I love taking her spin classes; she is seriously the best spin teacher I have ever found. I missed her SO much when I was in NYC for the play. Her class is great and difficult, deep and wonderful. She inspires you to keep adjusting and teaches joy and wellness.  She focuses on making sure her students keep proper alignment while they are spinning. I've found that many teachers do not do this and they look so unsafe on their bikes - it makes me cringe! Tevia keeps you safe while pushing you to be your best!! She is just such a bad-ass.  Her class is really a meditation, as you are constantly thinking of keeping your shoulders down, your back relaxed, trying to make your lats touch together (I'm probably saying that wrong but you know what I mean), keeping your tummy in, positioning your butt way over the seat and opening your heart.  She also teaches not to push down with your feet but to pull your legs up into your stomach, and to wiggle your toes and relax your hands. Tevia explains this better in the class....she is sexy up there with her passion, commitment and force! Her classes are empowering, they strengthen you and make you appreciate your life. She is truly a superhero to me!

I also recently met a young woman in Tevia's class named Amanda. She said she had read The Kind Diet and had her mom read it and they are now both on our journey. She is a Kind Lifer on our site. It makes me so happy when I meet you guys!

Tevia did the MS Ride for 4 years, as well as a spin-a-thon for them, and raised $600,000 for the organization!! She says they are a great organization as far as offering services for people with MS, such as paying medical bills and providing food for those who are too sick. They also do a lot of research that one day might find a cure for MS. She is now focusing her efforts on Dr. John McDougall's research, which uses a low-fat vegan diet for MS and has shown great success. Tevia decided Dr. McDougall could use her help, so she is no longer doing the MS ride. As she is now working with Dr. McDougall, she decided to resign from the National MS Society (Southern California) Board of Trustees, as she believed it would be a conflict of interest for her to keep her post there while raising money for a particular MS study. Her feelings are that she knows this diet has worked for her, and although it might not work for all MS patients, it could benefit many. MS has so many different degrees of the disease, so those like Tevia who do not have a progressive type strongly benefit from Dr. McDougall's research.

You can learn more about Dr. McDougall's research and donate to his efforts here.

I applaud Tevia for turning her efforts toward healing instead of research and such. The food that doctors provide to sick people with MS is likely not the food that could heal them. As far as the "one day we'll find a cure" idea goes, I believe that the cure is in prevention. So yay Tevia!

Mary Cordaro is a healthy home guru and can cure "sick building syndrome" or "sick home".

She focuses on creating a healthy, green  workplace and home using the fields of Bau-Biologie (Bau-Biologie translates as "building biology", a discipline from Germany dedicated to improving how our homes impact our lives and the living environment) and Building Science with very low consumption so that you are truly living an ecological lifestyle indoors.  

It all started in 1989 for Mary, when she was working on trying to create an eco-friendly environment in her own home. She wanted to use materials that had very little effect on all of us and the planetary health. Since then Mary has gathered a team of specialist to test and eliminate contaminants, electromagnetic fields, mold and chemicals in indoor spaces. Mary continually works with architects, contractors, designers, health practitioners, and medical doctors to find more ways to improve our indoor environment.

Mary is available for consultations and she also sells water purification systems and air cleaners which are found on her online store. The water purifiers and air cleaners offered from Mary Cordaro Inc. are sophisticated and state of the art. They are more effective than most conventional filters and will do a great job at protecting your family from awful chemicals that pollute your indoor area. You can also learn more about healthy indoors in the multi media section of her website. I finally switched my water system over to one I got through Mary.  I was stubborn, and it took me a long time to do it, but I did and I’m very happy with it!  I’ll blog soon about picking out a water filter for your home, and why I struggled so much with this decision.

Mary is expensive...so private consultations are not for everyone.  But she does have great info on her website for free, and she teaches classes.

Homes can have 50 times more contaminants than the outdoors...so if you are sick, or have any suspicion that your home has mold in it, it would be very important to call Mary ASAP. It’s so worth it.  

I’ve learned some great things over the years from Mary, and I will be sharing that info with you. But for those of you who would like to have a coach for your home – someone to make your home the healthiest and most environmentally friendly you can – and you have the dough to pay for it, she is an amazing resource.  She charges by the hour, so you can get a lot of info from her if you need it!

Kind Lifer Kristin Thayer recently sent me her success story and shared the great attitude she has toward her kind diet. Check it out:

“I just weighed myself and am now 17.5 pounds down.  Tomorrow will be 7 weeks since going vegan and I am just so proud of myself.  I would have in the past been discouraged already because the weight has been coming off at a ‘snail-pace’ (at least that's how I would have viewed it in the past) but I now know that the slower weight-loss is the healthy weight-loss. I remember losing 30 pounds in 2 months before doing a low-carb diet but after I lost the 30 pounds, I gained back about 58 pounds over the next 5 years or so. That doesn't sound so healthy to me now! I just keep reminding myself that I didn't decide to turn vegan in order to lose weight. I decided to make the switch because what I was eating before was unhealthy. The weight-loss has been a super, awesome bonus!!!”
 
Kristin, your attitude is a great example for all of us! I’m so happy for you!

I get so happy when Sunday rolls around because it's my farmers market day.  But while I was running around preparing to leave for Detroit to shoot Vamps (by the way thank you to Wendy Kirchoff, Claire and Cheryl Koots for the great restaurant suggestions in Detroit), I didn't feel like doing anything, and when I went to make breakfast for myself, I just didn't feel like it!!  So I had some almonds.  Oh my gosh, almonds can be so delicious!  They're like candy!  I have to be careful with almonds though because once I start I can't stop (I sound like my mother... she always says that about nuts!)!  But I had less than a cup, 'cause let's face it - too many almonds is no bueno.  Then I made a smoothie and put it in a bowl and I was eating it with a spoon. Breakfast dessert!!! Sooo not superhero but I was happy with it at that moment.  

I feel like sharing this with you all to show how delicious something so simple can be. Also, if you are having PMS or feeling naughty sometimes a smoothie can do the trick! So instead of reaching for ice cream next time or something else with nastier ingredients, reach for something much healthier like fruit! It makes me feel like I'm getting away with something naughty while not going too crazy!

Smoothies are easy and fun -  so I went on a hunt through my kitchen to find what ingredients we had lying around...and there wasn’t much. I looked in the freezer, and discovered some Beverly Hills Juice Club Sunflower ice cream! My husband must have bought a bunch. Beverly Hills Juice Club makes a sunflower seed or almond, dairy-free "ice-cream" in tubs – and it makes a great smoothie base. So I used that...I also used strawberries from our garden, a cinnamon stick (I love the crunch and flavor!), three drops of Stevia, and rice milk vanilla flavor (no sugar). And it was the best smoothie! Like I said before, definitely not superhero but it tasted great and served its purpose. I was left feeling a little tired and spacey which is perfectly fine for a lazy Sunday.

After my delicious smoothie, I felt I needed to balance myself out for the rest of the day, so for lunch I made a big soup using lots of ingredients from our garden.  We didn't have much food in the house so I just worked with what I had.  I started with celery and leek from our garden. The leek was so sweet and yummy.  Then I added the following:

• leftover kabocha
• frozen corn and peas
• some leftover onion
• a little garlic
• a little miso (both dark and lite)
• little organic shoyu (had a packet from M Cafe I wanted to use up)
• ginger juice squeezed from fresh ginger
• a little veg stock...I used a little cube

Along with some rice, that fed me for the rest of the day!  It completely balanced out the smoothie effects, and it made for a very happy Sunday. After some lunch we went on a walk with our dog The Pig (pictured), then I did some dancing to prep for Vamps... and did some other work - all thanks to the soup and rice that fueled me for the day!  

So, see how easy it is to throw some quick, tasty meals together using what little ingredients you have sitting around the kitchen or garden!  What meals do you throw together like this?  

PS – This got me wondering...why are too many nuts no bueno? Let’s see...they throw the body out of balance. For me, personally, I notice that they make my skin break out if I have too many of them. They are great, and an important part of my superhero diet when they are used as flavoring tools, but when I make them the main attraction (i.e., more than one cup), I usually notice some weird reaction. The thing about nuts is not that they are not in any way unhealthy, but the fat and calories can be problematic if eaten in excess.

Almonds have powerful cancer fighting compounds in them and are valuable to us in maintaining daily robust health, but it seems that if you eat more than a cup in a sitting, which is a lot, then the body struggles to assimilate the protein, fiber and fat in that volume. That would be true of all nuts, not just almonds. On the other hand, our digestion is made to handle nuts in any quantity, so feel free to enjoy them; the volume depends on our individual digestive capacity and ability to assimilate fats and protein.  

I remember back in my raw food days I ate so many nuts, and it kept me a bit chubbier than I like, and my skin was fully broken out all the time. Since nuts are calorically dense, they can keep us chubbier than we like to be...but they are an important source of fat and protein and so need to be enjoyed...you just have to figure their calories into your daily intake. If nuts make you break out, like me, well that could be one of 3 things: poor digestion of the protein, which turned to fat and discharged as pimples, or poor digestion of the fat – or if you have too many nuts in one sitting it could make for poor digestion of the fat AND protein. A sort of rule of thumb is to only have 12-15 almonds or other nuts in one sitting (but who can do that? once I start I can't stop! Yum!) and that can be daily, but that amount seems to go without reaction in people.

So except for my fun nut splurges...I try to use them as enhancers to dishes and as ingredients in a dish...that keeps me superhero. And I try not to dig my hands into the bag. But hey, every once in a while, you gotta do what you gotta do! So don't fear nuts. Just be wise about where they fit and how they feel to you!

Like many cosmetics, most band-aids are made by companies that test their products on animals. Included among the companies that test on animals are recognizable brands such as Johnson & Johnson, Proctor & Gamble, Bausch & Lomb, and many others. (You can see a complete list here).
 
The materials used to make band-aids are also bad for your body and the environment. Johnson & Johnson brand band-aids are made from nylon, cotton, and an epoxy adhesive. Epoxy resin contains the chemical BPA, which is an endocrine disruptor that disturbingly has also shown up in canned food recently. Nylon is a non-biodegradable synthetic that produces nitrous oxide when it is manufactured. Nitrous oxide, the same chemical the dentist gives you as an analgesic, is more damaging to the Earth's atmosphere than carbon dioxide.
 
The good news is that animal lovers and conscious consumers have an alternative! Eco-Guard makes a great band-aid that is not tested on animals, and is made from recycled PVC, a water-based adhesive, and natural food-grade colorings. They also make a colorful kid-friendly variety. So cute!
 
If you'd like to know more about which of your everyday products are vegan and which are not, you can find a list of commonly used animal-derived ingredients here, then check those ingredients against the labels of any products you buy.

Kind Lifer Rebecca Midkiff shared this great story of her success as a flirt, and the unexpected bonus of being able to sing better than ever before! Check out Rebecca’s story:
 
“I haven't eaten meat in 18 days, and I don't miss it at all! I really thought I would. (A year ago, I was eating meat almost daily. Six months ago, I started cutting back to save money. Now I am flirting with The Kind Diet because what I've learned about factory farming and industrial food processing grosses me out.)

Last night, a friend called me up last minute and invited me out for steak. I caught my breath. Ooh, steak sounds good, I thought. But then... no, actually it doesn't because I now know what happened to it before it got on my plate! (Just finished reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals.) I went to dinner and ordered mushroom fajitas, ate them without the tortilla, and it was delicious!

I've lost 4 lbs in 2 & 1/2 weeks - at 116 lbs, I didn't need to lose weight, but okay! Still, I was a little alarmed at how fast those 4 lbs came off just by cutting back on sugar and starches, and cutting out meat. I was still eating a few pieces of cheese every day, and chocolate after dinner. But I was dizzy, and worried that I wasn't getting enough protein or iron. So I went to Whole Foods after breakfast on Saturday and stood in the produce section until inspiration struck. It was probably the first time in my whole life that my body instinctively told me what I needed to eat: dark green salad with fresh watercress, bean and broccoli sprouts, quinoa, adzuki beans, and raw cashews. It was delicious.

In fact, in the last 18 days, everything I've eaten has been delicious! I feel my body thanking me. Thanks Alicia, for putting all these concepts about healthy eating into one place! This is way easier than I thought it would be!”
 
Rebecca updated us about her progress after five and a half weeks and was doing better than ever. This is when she noticed the change in her voice!

“It's been 5 & 1/2 weeks now, and I feel great. No more dizziness. I am eating lots of protein and no sweets except fruit. My weight has evened out at 113 lbs. (I am 5'4" tall.) My waistline looks amazing! Before, I was thin but always had a puffy tummy. Now I can actually see an indent at the sides. My skin is clearer and smoother. And I feel lighter, calmer, and just plain happier!

For any singers or actresses out there: The best part is, my voice sounds amazing!!! I quit music school in 2001 because singing was just too hard. I was always a little bit phlegmy and congested, and I struggled to breathe and relax my voice muscles. I guess there was inflammation in my throat before and I just didn't realize it then. Now it's easy, my throat is always relaxed and the music just comes out, clear and easy. My voice comes out, and I can't help but think, "I sound GOOD!" It's such a delight to sing that I'm even thinking of getting back into performing!”
 
This is so great Rebecca!  I’m so happy that you are having such great success. If any of you have a great story like this, please share!  You can post it anywhere on the site and click “like”, and I will check it out!

Hey everyone – Kind Lifer Dolly Nuhfer posted her success story in the forum, titled  “Gastrointestinal Cure”, and it really is a must read!  Check it out:

“I just wanted to share my joy and newfound understanding of the ills dairy can have on one's body even after years of consuming it! After two long years of weekly doctors appointments, gastric pain, bloating and pacing the floors, my daughter (wise girl) suggested I try going off dairy as it had helped her. I did so, convinced that after 57 years of consuming it there could surely be no problem.

Within a week the bloating was gone and the pain gradually disappeared! My entire gastro- intestinal system began functioning normally without LOADS of laxatives and stool softeners (sorry if that's too much info). Shortly after getting off dairy I didn't need any gastro- intestinal medications. I was so amazed  and encouraged by my progress that  I decided there might be something to this vegan stuff and have been making meals from "The Kind Diet" for the last four weeks now with great success.

I have fibromyalgia and other health issues but have noted several improvements since starting the diet. My joints feel so much better and I no longer have swelling in my hands and feet!! My husband of 38 years is a meat lover but has enjoyed everything I have made so far! He still eats meat but I'm working on that! I love the desserts as I have always been hooked on that monster sugar. It is great to eat something so satisfyingly sweet and rich but not have that unrelenting drive for more and more. I just love it all! 

Moral:1. Listen to what your body is trying to tell you. 2. It's never too late to make healthy choices! I'm so thankful for "The Kind Diet", it really is!”

This makes me so happy!  I love your story, and I’m so happy for your success.

If any of you have stories like this one – post them on the site and “like” them.  I’ll take a look, and might feature it here on the blog!