Interview and Giveaway! Happy Herbivore, Lindsay S. Nixon, Answers All My Questions!

I had an extraordinary opportunity to interview (and offer a great giveaway – more about that at the end of this post!) the Happy Herbivore herself, Lindsay S. Nixon.  You may know her from her blog, www.happyherbivore.com, or her cookbooks The Happy Herbivore Cookbook and Everyday Happy Herbivore.  Her work has been praised and endorsed by notable leaders in the plant-based movement such as Dr. T. Colin Campbell, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr. Neal Barnard, and Dr. John McDougall.

She has just come out with her 3rd cookbook, Happy Herbivore Abroad, A Travelogue & Over 135 Fat-Free & Low-Fat Vegan Recipes From Around the World.   Recipes Made with Everyday Ingredients.  She has lived in eight states, visited 46, spent a year as an expat on a Caribbean island, and traveled to more than 35 places abroad.

I really love this cookbook for so many reasons.  A big thing is that I didn’t need to buy 15 different ingredients for each recipe.  Remember, the cover promises everyday ingredients.  I found that I only needed to get 1 or 2 for each.  The ingredient lists are short and the recipes easy.  I really loved reading the little stories about each recipe, where she was, who she met.  I sat down and read this book cover-to-cover.  Great color photos of her travels are included as well.

~

The Interview:

Laura Arnold:  Let me introduce myself. I’m Laura Arnold, and I write the health/nutrition blog www.itsadecision.com. My Twitter account is @Plantcentric. I’ve lost about 100 lbs and follow Dr. Esselstyn’s no added oil, vegan, clean whole foods diet. I also follow Dr. Robert Lustig’s The Bitter Truth of Sugar, so I don’t add sugar. I believe that food is medicine. My followers are health conscious vegans, health institutes, and animal lovers. My hope is to build an entire community of bloggers and health experts that I highlight, sharing content and elevating each of our respective causes and readership together. I view my blog to be like Huffington Post or Drudge Report of health and nutrition, where the reader comes to read lots of different ideas from different bloggers and then can go to that blog to follow-up and learn more about the blogger. Please feel free to read my story in the About section on my blog.

Here are my questions for you:

1.Like so many, you became vegan due to a health scare,and now when you go for your check-ups, the doctor and staff can’t believe what your numbers are and want to show everyone! I ask my readers, “Why wait? Why wait until you’re sick to change your lifestyle?” How do you get that message out? Do you think it’s working?

Lindsay Nixon:  I’m a big believer in leading by example.

Laura:  2. I love that your parents have gone vegan. Reading about them and their adventures is so much fun. They are so cute! I give them so much credit. That’s my favorite part of your blog. You are blessed to have your family change right along with you. Whenever I go to my family’s, I have to bring all my own food. There is very rarely anything, other than maybe a veggie plate, that I can have. How did that change happen for your family?

Lindsay:  My husband sort of found his own way to a plant-based diet. My sister, she had severe allergies and no medications were working. I convinced her to try being plant-based for a few weeks “just to see” and it worked. She was an insta-convert after that. As for my parents, my Dad had a heart attack. The next day he went plant-based and my mom did too.

Laura:  3. How did you go from being a lawyer to cooking? Did your parents think you’d lost your marbles?

Lindsay:  I started blogging in 2007, when I was still in law school. It was a creative outlet for me. Even after I’d graduated and taken the bar exam, blogging continued to be my hobby. As time wore on I realized I liked blogging and cooking way more than I liked being a lawyer, but my hands were tied… until I had the opportunity to write my first cookbook.

I knew there was no way I could work as a lawyer AND write a cookbook, so it was one or the other. I decided to take a big chance, quit being a lawyer and work on my cookbook while also doing various freelance assignments to pay the bills. My husband and I also had to do some major downsizing to make it happen — selling our cars, moving from a large apartment to a teeny, tiny studio, etc. (I’m so glad he was up for it!)

In the end, it all worked out — with an insane amount of hard work 🙂

Laura:  4. So many times when I read a vegan cookbook, the recipes liberally use oil. You don’t use any added oil. Your cookbook is sorely needed. Do you find that you are constantly having to explain why no oil even more than why no animal products?

Lindsay:  I explain why I don’t use oil or animal products in the front of all my cookbooks, so if anyone was curious why, they have the information right there. Most of my fans and supporters like that I don’t use animal products or oil, so it’s not an issue.

Laura:  5. Your new book, Happy Herbivore Abroad, is coming out December 4. Congratulations! You may find this surprising, but I had never tried Indian food until last year, and I’m 50! I wanted to go out to a nice dinner for my birthday, and Indian restaurants were the only ones that I could find that had a vegetarian section on their menu! I can’t be the only one that this has happened to, so you could say that a whole new group of people are going to be open to making international, no oil, vegan recipes that never were before. Are these recipes using easy to find ingredients and easy to follow? What countries are represented?

Lindsay:  Yes. I focus on easy, no fuss recipes with everyday ingredients.

So many countries are included, I couldn’t list them all 🙂

~

Thank you so much, Lindsay.  Now to the GIVEAWAY:  In the comment section below, tell me which post on www.itsadecision.com has helped you the most.  The winner will receive a copy of Lindsay’s brand new cookbook Happy Herbivore Abroad!

Good Luck!

After Chemo or Radiation for Cancer

Many patients who undergo chemotherapy or radiation for cancer, particularly women with breast cancer, end up with damaged hearts as a result.  It’s a good news, bad news story.  Cancer patients are living longer, long enough that they can die from heart disease brought on by the cancer treatment.

Plain Dealer, 8/19/12

After a Heart Attack

After a heart attack, as much as half of the heart is so damaged it stops working.  And the rest of the heart has to work harder.  It’s like having two people on a bicycle built for two with only one of them pedaling, says Dr. Marco Costa, an interventional cardiologist with University Hospitals Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute.   The person left pedaling has to pull more weight and becomes weaker and weaker over time.    

 

Plain Dealer 8/19/12

Heart Facts

Today, 2,541 people in the US will have a heart attack.

About 2,200 will die of cardiovascular disease.

Diane Suchetka/ Plain Dealer 8/19/2012

Dr. Esselstyn “If you do what I ask, your disease is history.”

‎”If you do what I ask, your disease is history. Rather than detour around it, squish it with a balloon or brace it open with a wire bracket—either of which is just a temporary angina-relieving procedure—my program can prevent disease altogether, or stop it in its tracks. All the interventional procedures carry considerable risk of morbidity, including new heart attacks, strokes, infections, and, for some, an inevitable loss of cognition. Mine carries none. And the benefits of intervention erode with the passage of time; eventually, you have to have another angioplasty, another bypass procedure, another stent. By contrast, the benefits of my program actually grow with time. The longer you follow it, the healthier you will be.” – Dr. Esselstyn

Rosie O’Donnell Watches ‘Forks Over Knives’, Contacts Dr. Esselstyn

BY MICHAEL DESTRIES AUGUST 27, 2012

After suffering a potentially fatal heart attack several weeks ago, Rosie O’Donnell has wasted absolutely no time in giving her diet a dramatic overhaul.

The 50-year-old almost immediately starting cutting animal products out of her life; claiming on Twitter to have lost 10 pounds in the process.

“this crazy summer has taken me into uncharted territory,” she wrote today on her blog. “into mornings that begin at 7. long walks and vegetables.”

Ecorazzi reached out to Rosie over Twitter earlier to ask if she had caught the awesome documentary “Forks Over Knives.” She tweeted back that, yes, she had seen it and also chatted with the esteemed Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn.

As those who have seen the doc know, Dr. Esselstyn is world-renowned for his work in showing that a vegan diet can have profound effects on reversing the effects of cardiovascular disease. His recommended lifestyle reboot, as detailed in the book “Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease,” has been extremely popular – and is one of the sources former president Bill Clinton relied upon for his own health transformation.

“For them to realize that this is not just the luck of the draw, that this is something that you yourself can control,” Esselstyn told the site FoodNotMeds.com. “You can become the locus of control for this disease that is the leading killer of women and men in Western civilization. It’s truly nothing more than a toothless paper tiger that need never ever exist, and if it does exist, it need never progress. This is a food-borne illness.”

Once again, we give credit to Rosie for listening to her body and making a concerted effort to reach out and educate herself. As someone that commands a cultural spotlight, here’s to hoping she continues to inform on the benefits she’s experiencing as well. Good luck, Rosie!

http://www.ecorazzi.com/2012/08/27/rosie-odonnell-watches-forks-over-knives-contacts-dr-esselstyn/

 

Rosie O’Donnell Now Following Plant-Based Diet After Heart Attack

Welcome Rosie!

(As I always say, why wait until a heart attack? Better late than never!)   Laura

8/25/12 she tweeted:  Rosie O’Donnell ‏@Rosie

Oh my god I lost 10 lbs already eating plant based food !!!pic.twitter.com/LwTJNa43

The comedienne revealed on via Twitter that she is committed to a plant-based diet following her recent health scare.

After her recent heart attack, comedienne and former talk show-host Rosie O’Donnell took to her Twitter last Thursday to share her new commitment to a plant-based diet, tweeting “nine days later—nine pounds lost—eating a plant-based diet #likeBillClinton.” The outspoken comic is re-evaluating her eating habits after the health scare last week, sharing on her blog that instead of heading to the hospital, she simply searched “women’s heart attack symptoms” on the internet and followed instructions provided by an online commercial. After eventually visiting a cardiologist, O’Donnell learned her left anterior descending artery was 99-percent blocked. O’Donnell had previously admitted to Dr. Oz that she did not exercise, was a closet eater, and frequently indulged in wine and diet ice cream.

Photo via premierguidemedia.com

http://vegnews.com/articles/page.do?pageId=4872&catId=8

Cholesterol Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr.

Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr.: “Cholesterol is a white, waxy substance that is not found in plants — only in animals.  It is an essential component of the membrane that coats all our cells, and it is the basic ingredient of sex hormones.  Our bodies need cholesterol, and they manufacture it on their own.  We do not need to eat it.  But we do, when we consume meat, poultry, fish, and other animal-based foods, such as dairy products and eggs.  In doing so, we take on excess amounts of the substance.  What’s more, eating fat [even as added oil] causes the body itself to manufacture excessive amounts of cholesterol, which explains why vegetetarians who eat oil, butter, cheese, milk, ice cream, glazed doughnuts, and French pastry develop coronary disease despite their avoidance of meat.”- Dr. Esselstyn

Rip Esselstyn – Scene from Forks Over Knives

I Believe That Coronary Artery Disease Is Preventable Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn

Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr.:

“I believe that coronary artery disease is preventable, and that even after it is underway, its progress can be stopped, its insidious effects reversed.  I believe, and my work over the past twenty years has demonstrated, that all this can be accomplished without expensive mechanical intervention and with minimal use of drugs.  The key lies in nutrition — specifically, in abandoning the toxic American diet and maintaining cholesterol levels well below those historically recommended by health policy experts.”

– Dr. Esselstyn

Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease by Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., M.D.