My wife and I adopted a whole food plant based lifestyle a little over a year ago and have been very much enjoying this shift. Since I published my Playing Guitar Again article last fall, I’ve received a number of emails from readers looking for additional information on our whole food plant based lifestyle change,

It is important that I state upfront that there is no intention in this article to tell other people what dietary choices they should make in their own lives. These are intensely personal decisions. The objective of this article is simply to provide some information and share some images, about our lifestyle choice, and a few of our meals that we have prepared at home.

The photographs of our meals illustrate our typical approach to breakfast, lunch and dinner. You’ll notice that I have two breakfasts each morning. I’m always up before my wife so I prepare a ‘first breakfast’ for myself at about 5 AM or so. Then, about 8:30 AM she prepares breakfast for us both (my second breakfast).

NOTE: Click on images to enlarge. Readers wishing to view this article in a range of other languages can click on the Canadian flag in the upper right corner.

A whole food plant based lifestyle should not be seen as some kind of miracle diet that will magically cure all diseases. It can certainly have a positive impact, but results will vary by individual and the personal food choices someone makes. Some folks may have genetic issues like Lipoprotein a that can impact cardiovascular health.

After following a whole food plant based lifestyle for a number of months, my wife has experienced a significant reduction in her angina symptoms  (which unexpectedly started to appear about 15 months ago) in terms of both frequency and severity. Back then she had multiple angina symptoms most every day, and would begin to struggle when trying to walk more than a couple of hundred metres. While we were in New Zealand late last year she was hiking 3 to 8 kilometres every day with usually no angina symptoms at all during those hikes.

For my part, the flexibility and grip strength in my hands have  continued to improve noticeably since my Playing Guitar Again article appeared. The pain that I had experienced in both of my hands for decades is pretty much gone.

Although losing weight was never one of my objectives when I shifted to a whole food plant based lifestyle, I now weigh less than I did 15 years ago. Like many people my weight increased during the COVID lockdowns. All of that weight, and more, has been shed without any specific effort to do so.

My family health history is not the greatest. My maternal grandmother was diabetic and died of a heart attack in her early seventies. My mother was obese most of her life… and became morbidly obese in her later years. She was also diabetic and had numerous strokes… which eventually killed her. It is difficult to know if she was even aware of her surroundings during the last year or so of her life. She lasted until almost 84. My wife and I were amazed that she made it past 65. My mother lived about an average lifespan for a woman in Canada… but had little quality of life in her later years.

While in his early fifties, my father suffered from degenerating disks and had several spinal surgeries to fuse various vertebrae in his back. He also suffered from severe angina which forced him into early retirement in his late fifties. He made it to 87 and likely could have lived longer had he not picked up a drug-resistant infection during a routine hospital visit.

As a youth I was raised in a cholesterol-holic environment with an abundance of animal products like meat, fish, dairy and eggs. What vegetables we did eat for dinner were typically swimming in butter.

When I was in my late teens and early twenties I’d go camping with a couple of buddies and think nothing of eating steak and eggs for breakfast at a greasy diner in cottage country. Heck… if was still hungry I’d have a second order. I’d often joke that vegetables were what ‘food’ ate.

We were young and foolish back then. The predominate belief many of us had was that ‘real men eat meat’. Men are now learning that consuming animal products can lead to things like ED. A urologist sees those two letters and thinks erectile dysfunction. A cardiologist sees them and thinks early death. Cardio-vascular health is a systemic issue. ED is the canary in the coal mine. The reality today is that ‘real men eat plants’.

If you’re a man… regardless of your age… or how well you may think your ‘equipment’ is performing… a whole food plant based lifestyle can make a noticeable improvement. 🙂

My dietary habits began to change when I first started dating my wife. Her mother was focused on consuming a lot of vegetables, fruits, and reducing fats. They still ate animal products, but not to the excess that was common in my family. I can still remember how horrified my wife looked the first time she came to have dinner at my parent’s house when she saw what was on the table to eat.

The normal blood pressure range for an adult is from 90/60 to 120/80. My blood pressure has always been in the normal range. Twenty years ago when I was in my fifties my blood pressure was typically somewhat below 120/80. Back then I was walking 5 kilometres a day, about 4 days a week.

I stopped walking quite a while ago when local drivers became increasingly careless and dangerous. So, I began using exercise equipment in my home instead. Over the years I’ve worn out a number of exercise bikes and rowing machines. At the start of COVID I bought myself a combination recumbent bike and rowing machine which I have been using daily since the spring of 2020.

For the past 6 months I’ve been checking my blood pressure every day. Since late September last year through to the end of February this year my blood pressure has average 103/65. While this may appear low, it is actually in the range that is commonly achieved by lifelong vegetarians/vegans.

I have never had to take any regularly administered prescription medications for any chronic diseases… and now that I’m in my seventies I’m still prescription medication free. I intend to stay that way. As the saying goes… genetics may load the gun… but lifestyle pulls the trigger.

Shifting to a whole food plant based diet had some challenges. Much of it was getting past my attitudes about food, and the cravings caused by a diet that contained fat, salt and sugar. I always had a weakness for salty snacks, and loved things like chicken wings, pork ribs, and cheese.

In order to realign my attitudes about consuming these things I got in the habit of mentally labelling salty snacks, wings, ribs, anything else in the meat and fish sections of the store, as well as highly processed foods… as ‘poison’. Cheese was a bit harder as the casein protein in dairy has an additive quality… so I mentally labelled it as ‘coagulated cow puss’.  These new mental labels worked very well.

I also found that educating myself about nutrition and continually reinforcing that research information was critical. I began frequenting The Lancet and other well regarded, professional medical websites that contained third party, peer reviewed nutrition research. I avoided the plethora of industry sponsored, biased ‘research’… and learned that the same company that produced questionable studies for the tobacco industry, now works for the food industry.

The Government of Canada Food Guide is based on professional, peer reviewed research, and now recommends a predominately plant based diet. I learned that a large US-based company Kaiser Permanente is promoting a whole food plant based diet to their clients. There are a number of documentaries like Forks Over Knives, The Game Changers, and Eating You Alive… that I watch periodically to reinforce the importance of good nutrition in my life.

I avoid the glut of misleading and sensationalized YouTube videos promoting meat, fish, dairy and eggs that try to confuse consumers… many of which are sponsored by meat and fish companies, the dairy and egg industries, and processed food organizations.

I do follow the outstanding research and clinical work of people like Dr. Dean Ornish, Dr. T. Colin Campbell, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyne, Dr. Neal Barnhard, and Dr. Michael Greger.

My wife and I plan to continue our whole food plant based lifestyle indefinitely into the future so we can continue to experience its benefits, and further improve our health. To do that we avoid all meat, fish, seafood, dairy and eggs. We also avoid highly processed foods (including unhealthy ‘vegan’ highly processed foods) and severely limit our intake of any and all oils (and no… olive oil is not healthy).

So, to all of those readers who have been asking for an update on our whole food plant based lifestyle… you now have it! Do with it what you will.

If you are currently taking any medications you should not make any significant dietary changes without first consulting with your doctor.

Each of us makes a series of binary choices every day we live. I ask myself a simple question as I’m eating… “Is what’s on my fork going to help me eat myself to health… or is it going to lead me to chronic disease and premature death?

Some folks pursue a whole food plant based lifestyle to improve their health. Others do it to reduce animal cruelty. Some do it to help reduce their carbon footprint. And, some folks like me start this journey from a health perspective… then end up pursuing it for all three reasons.

🙂 If you happen to be following a fad diet that promotes the consumption of meat, fish, eggs or dairy products… please don’t bother trying to post a comment in support of those diets. I will not allow this website to be used as a platform for these dietary approaches. 

Technical Note

Photographs were captured handheld using camera equipment  noted in the EXIF data. All images were created from RAW files using my standard process in post. This is the 1,448 article published on this website since its original inception in 2015.

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