Moon Days: A Period Policy Every Employer Should Consider | Kristel De Groot

Known as a plant power dietitian, Sharon has established an award winning career in the field of plant based nutrition and sustainability. One of the most widely recognized registered dietitians in the world, Sharon is an accomplished writer, editor, blogger, author, speaker, professor, and advisor. Living in the sustainability mecca of Ojai California with her husband and two dogs, Sharon enjoys tending to her own organic garden and visiting local farmer’s markets, volunteering in local environmental organizations, and cooking plant based meals for friends and family. We talk about the many false beliefs people have about different foods and the nutrients they gain from them, and then we discuss the impact that plant based eating has on the world and our ecosystem. What sparked her going into this path 1:15Writing her first book and its core message 6:11Gut nutrition 9:45Issues with the keto diet 13:20Fruit and carbs 16:01Sustainability 20:15Nutrients 30:08Her special smoothie 35:16“What I like to recommend is if you were gonna do a vegan challenge, or start your vegan diet, take a week in advance to get prepared. At least a week. Start cooking some recipes, go to the supermarket, do some research in your neighborhood. What are some favorite resources like restaurants? Like if you want to eat out, this is where I wanna go next week. Look for some of these things that can help you be prepared so that your plant based diet is a success.” 12:52@sharonpalmerrd https://sharonpalmer.com/

This is on the 3 pillars of the Your Super way of eating... we get asked all the time how we eat and we break it down in a way that everyone can make steps to change their diet with these easy 3 pillars, each having 3 principles. These 3 simple pillars when trying to understand what steps to follow are 1) Healthy, 2) Easy, and 3) Delicious. Use your common sense and look at the ingredients, paying attention to if there are a lot of ingredients in what you’re buying rather than just one or two simple ones. Pillar 1: Healthy 2:33Skip the nutritional table 4:39Exclude animal based products and limit processed foods 6:44Pillar 2: Easy 7:42Eat intuitively 10:30No pressure or perfection 11:53Pillar 3: Delicious 13:12Follow the 80/20 rule 14:28Don’t feel guilty 15:46 “It’s your decision obviously to make, but just learn what it is and make the conscious decision, ‘Do I want to put this into my body?’ because it’s just so important. Your body is gonna function better if you eat real foods.” 5:42

Dr. Gemma Newman worked in medicine for 17 years and is the senior partner at a family medical practice where she has worked for 12 years. She is a founding member and ambassador for Plant Based Health Professionals in the UK, PBHPUK, and a member of BSLM, British Society of Lifestyle Medicine, and is very passionate about holistic health and lifestyle medicine. Dr Newman was trying to help her patients get better, but she was mainly only able to curb, or lessen the amount that people got worse with their illnesses and felt there had to be a better way to treat sickness and disease. It wasn’t until she came across the plant based diet that she began to realize people really could get better when they focused their diets on plant based nutrition. Her path to plant based life 0:55Gradually changing her outlook 6:34Did she feel any changes? 12:59Lifestyle medicine 14:30Breathing exercises 22:37First tips for new patients and getting started 27:44Myths and protein 30:27Has there been a shift in lifestyle medicine? 36:36“I was completely astounded to find that his blood pressure had completely normalized. It had gone to optimal levels. 120/80 millimeters of mercury in such a small space of time. Honestly I was more surprised than he was. I kept on rechecking it, and I asked him to come back and he came back 3 times, and then I did his medical and every single time his blood pressure was perfect. I knew then how powerful this could be.” 11:51https://gemmanewman.com/@plantpowerdoctor

Bryan Guy Adams is a Canadian guitarist, singer, composer, record producer, and photographer. He has sold over 75 million records and singles worldwide, but what many may not know about him is that he lives a plant based lifestyle. He started living plant based life back before it was a well known thing and it made going on tour a bit difficult, especially when most things his crew would eat were not plant based, but when he would get tested to make sure he wasn’t anemic, everything was always really good and the positive benefits he experienced became pretty clear. When Bryan got into being vegan 0:53How things changed for his health when he changed 5:31Food combining 7:26The meat culture and myths 10:35Hoping to influence others 12:33His vegan dairy startup 14:34How is energy affected? 15:55Other health practices he’s into 20:11“The longer it takes to digest things, the more possibility that things get blocked in your system, or they stay longer, and that’s where the beginning of things that can happen to you start is in the digestion system. So the idea of food combining is to try and make your food get into your system as quickly as possible and out of your system as quickly as possible. So you don’t want to have to hold things in.” 8:06@bryanadams

Today it’s just Kristel for our first solo episode. We see so many messages out there about weight loss and people setting a goal of wanting to lose weight because we live in a time when so many people struggle with weight gain or obesity, so we want to share some tips to help with weight loss and how being plant based can really help you to be at a healthier weight. Kristel played tennis all through high school and college, which helped keep her fit, but even so she still at times would put on weight. She came across the movie “Forks Over Knives” and was so impressed with what researchers had found that she decided to change her diet overnight, which has changed her life for the better ever since. “It’s really important to start focusing on how you’re feeling and not how much you weigh.”Growing up and Kristel’s experience 1:15Going plant based overnight 7:10The benefits and changes she went through 8:56Important principles to start implementing 10:31Reading the ingredient label 14:58“The interesting thing that I really learned now, over those last [9 years], and it has been a journey, I’m really living in complete freedom of food right now. I don’t count, I don’t restrict, I don’t feel guilty and I really, really wish every woman could feel like this about food.” 9:16

It’s just us in this episode today and we are giving you the insights on the end of year and our new goals, habits, routines for this year, and then we’ll talk a little bit about detox and meditation. We like to evaluate our year at the end by going through the calendar, looking at the highlights of every month to see where we’re at and see how much we’ve done. We then start looking at our daily routines to evaluate what things we want to adjust, for example we want to eat out less because we feel better on the days we don’t eat out. We like to make a list of all the things we want to do for the coming year, separate those things/activities into various categories, and then start inserting those things into each month so that we can accomplish those goals and desires. Closing up the year with mental health and evaluation 1:04Daily routines and setting goals 5:10Meditation 10:27Goals we can share with others 14:16We’d love to hear your goals! 16:34“What I realized in the beginning of the year is when I look back on last year, whenever I included meditation more, besides just eating well and moving, but really giving me the time like 30 minutes a day, or even just 10 minutes a day to close my eyes and just sit with myself, these were the better days.” 10:27

Today we have Kathy Freston, a New York Times bestselling author of multiple health and wellness books, notably The Lean, Quantum Wellness, and Clean Protein. Her advocacy for a more healthy, sustainable, and just food system is inspired by her concern for human health as well as animal and environmental welfare. Kathy appears frequently on national TV, including Ellen, Dr. Oz, Good Morning America, The Talk, Extra, and Oprah, and her work has been featured in Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, Self, W, Fitness, and The Huffington Post. Kathy enjoys hiking and biking, is a self proclaimed foodie, will travel almost anywhere for a good plant-based meal, and is obsessed with her adopted mutt, Trixie. Join us in this episode to hear Kathy’s story and big reasons why it can benefit us so much to develop a plant based lifestyle. Her journey 1:08Being aware of animals and slaughter 6:50What changed when she switched 13:05Biggest reasons from her book of being plant based 23:06How you should start 28:16Feeling more clear and aware 33:31Her routine and diet 37:04“I know a lot of people cringe when they say, ‘But where do you get your protein?’ because we hear that all the time, but that’s a genuine question. People really do, they’re worried because Wall Street tells them, all these companies tell them they need to eat a lot of meat and dairy for protein. They really, truly believe that, so I honor that. I take them seriously, and I answer them with as much information in a friendly way as I can because they’re not just being rhetorical.” 22:33https://www.kathyfreston.com/

Moon days are days when women are going through their period and just don’t feel like dealing with other people. The idea is to be able to talk to other people, such as those with whom you work and let them know what you’re going through so they can understand that you may be struggling. The goal is to make it easier to talk about your period, especially with the men around you, so that if you need to take a day or even just a half day off, they can understand. There needs to be a shift in the way we approach the period and make it more normal to discuss, so that’s our goal with this moon day idea.  What are moon days? 1:09 Understanding how hormones influence a woman’s wellbeing 4:31 How we can make the period more understood and less taboo 6:47 Moon balance 10:21 Having less painful periods 12:53  “If you’re listening to this and you’re like, “Yes, we totally need this in our organization.” Please, please go talk to your HR department manager. Go talk to, whether it’s the owner of the company or your manager, I think that we all should start talking about it and let’s make this rule within each organization that a moon day is something we can talk about and we can talk about periods to really truly empower women.” 10:44 

Today we have with us Julieanna Hever, also known as the Plant Based Dietitian. She has helped millions of people lose weight and achieve optimal health by following a plant based diet. As a Registered Dietitian, Julieanna has authored 6 books, including The Healthspan Solution, Plant-Based Nutrition (Idiots Guide), Vegiterranean Diet, and two peer-reviewed journal articles on plant-based nutrition, so she is the real deal and as a dietitian and nutritionist, her new book, The Choose You Now Diet, will be published in December 2021. She also has appeared multiple times on TV, such as the Dr. Oz show and so on, so we’re excited to present this interview with you guys. How she got started 1:18The beginning and experiencing change 6:14Weight loss 14:09Why plant based is healthier 18:14Some of the main nuggets of how to lose weight 21:27Strategic times of eating 31:00Fasting 34:31Hydration 37:32Myths of plant based diets 40:13How to get started 46:10Learn more 51:00“People come to me and they say ‘Please can you write me a meal plan?’ No. Another way I’m gonna answer as a dietitian. I will not because it’s the whole either you give someone a fish or you teach them how to fish. I want you to learn the foods you love and how to eat them so you don’t ever have to lose weight again, and that’s why the subtitle of my book is lose weight for the last time, because I don’t want people to do this diet rollercoaster anymore, because it’s torture.” 19:32https://plantbaseddietitian.com/@plantdietitian@julieannahever

In this episode we speak to the Godfather of vegan bodybuilding, Robert Cheeke. He is the author of several books including the New York Times bestseller The Plant Based Athlete. As a two time natural bodybuilding champion, Robert is considered one of the VegNews Magazine’s most influential vegan athletes. He’s a regular contributor to No Meat Athlete, Forks Over Knives, Vegan Strong, he’s a multi sport athlete, entrepreneur, has seen everything, and has followed a plant-based diet for more than 25 years. Robert tells us how he was able to be vegan and win bodybuilding competitions, using plants to feed his body with protein instead of animals as all the other bodybuilders were doing. We discuss what you can do to change your habits through discipline and consistency rather than trying to find a quick fix to your health or weight. What shifted Robert’s mindset to veganism 1:03Was it hard to be vegan and a bodybuilder? 9:39The anti-inflammatory benefits of being plant based 22:41Just because you’re fit doesn’t mean you’re healthy 29:49Why do so many people persist in feeling they need animal protein? 35:36How one can change their habits 41:30What Robert eats during the day 54:25“When I started performing and doing well, winning bodybuilding competitions as the only vegan in the competition, people went, ‘What? I mean I ate 6 chicken breasts a day and this guy doesn’t eat any animal protein whatsoever and he beat me?? This is unbelievable. Beans? What is going on here??’” 17:39https://www.veganbodybuilding.com/@robert.cheeke @robertcheeke@veganbodybuildingandfitness