Freqently Asked Questions

This isn’t a diet, and it isn’t a one-size-fits-all program. You’ll go through, step-by-step, how to start losing weight – and how to make this a long-term lifestyle shift. The accountability and support of the group, and me as your nutritionist, is invaluable in helping you stick with this long enough to see results.

To be honest, probably not. While I firmly believe that a whole foods vegan diet is an amazing way to create a vibrant life for ourselves in so many aspects (energy, skin, digestion, blood pressure, blood sugar), this program is going to be specific tactics for losing weight. If you’re looking for another result, send me an email or check out my other programs.

I design simple, quick meals on weeknights and any longer meals, or ones to be made in larger batches, are for weekends. I generally try to keep weeknight meals to 30 minutes cooking time, and weekends might be 45 minutes or an hour. I also try to keep meals to one or two pots so that dish cleaning time is minimized as well.

If you have days when you just have absolutely no time to make a meal, I have a section in the site with quick-prep meals and snacks for busy days.

I designed the meals to be as easy as possible for people who aren’t used to cooking for themselves, or aren’t used to cooking whole plant foods. I put the recipes together using as few packaged foods as possible, so you will be learning how to cook things from scratch, but you can totally do it.

Even the most beginner cooks have told me they weren’t overwhelmed, and actually enjoyed gaining confidence in their skills in the kitchen.

Your access won’t expire, so you’ll be able to go into the site as long as I continue to run it, which I plan to do indefinitely. I’m not going to say ‘forever’ because that’s a lot to live up to… That would also involve post-mortem planning, which I’m not quite ready to think about. But pretty much as long as I’m alive and getting your support and feedback on this site, I’ll keep it going.

Yes – most people don’t allow this in workshops and membership sites, but I give you the ability to download all of the videos and audio in the plan so that you can watch offline and keep them forever. I’m saying ‘forever’ here because this is more on your side, and totally out of my control but once you have a digital file it should theoretically last forever. Sometimes computers decide to crash and take all of their data with them. If such an unfortunate event should happen to occur in your life, you can just log in to the site and download everything again. You can also email me to cry about your loss of data, because it’s a horrible thing to have happen and I will most definitely cry with you.

No, you can start whenever you like. The program will be sent to you week by week, but you don’t have to start right away. You can even do a few weeks, take a break, then do the rest. Whatever works best for you, and since it will always be here, the only thing that’s time-critical is you wanting to create change in your life.

Yup, this is a 100% vegan program. It’s not to discourage my meat-eating friends, but to be honest I don’t know how to cook chicken or eggs, and since I’m vegan I do things plants-only. It’s also the best way to teach you about all of the amazing plant foods out there while supporting my vegan and vegetarian followers. Vegans and vegetarians will find this program exactly tailored to your needs, and meat-eaters can treat it as an opportunity to learn about some new plant foods.

I’ve studied – and tried – lots of different health approaches, such as Ayurveda, Chinese nutrition, raw food, and the diets of the healthiest cultures around the world, plus our western diet and popular weight loss diets. After studying to become a holistic nutritionist, I’ve taken a balanced perspective, borrowing from disciplines around the world. I’ve looked at the benefits and potential problems with all of these diets and what works long term. This is not an extreme, imbalanced diet like many fad Western diets. This is simply a healthy way of eating and living.

Oh, you’re in luck. I create a lot of chocolate-flavored recipes in my programs because I know there are a lot of chocoholics out there (myself included). I include dark chocolate sometimes, and I also show you how to make super healthy chocolate treats – I even make it for breakfast sometimes. Breakfast is my favorite time to eat dessert…

Well, ‘weird’ is a bit subjective, but I keep the ingredient list for my plans as simple as possible, using vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, seeds, and seasonings that you should be able to find at any major supermarket. There are a few things that might be tricky to find (like coconut oil, quinoa, nutritional yeast) but the good news is that those things are now really easy to find and order online. If you really can’t get hold of something, or it’s too expensive where you are (avocados where I am right now are $3 each!!!), just let me know and I’ll help you figure out an alternative.

You can do some really fun things with a $400 blender, but I would never tell you that you absolutely had to buy one. Healthy eating doesn’t require any special equipment, but here are the tools I use on a regular basis and would be used to make the dishes in the plan: a good knife, a cutting board, pots and pans, various utensils (spoons, ladles, flippers, etc), and some kind of blender or food processor. I sometimes use other tools (like a citrus zester and a garlic press) but you can get by if you don’t have them.

The only soy products I used are frozen green edamame beans (which you can easily swap for any other type of bean you prefer or even frozen peas) and tamari/soy sauce (which you can swap for a soy-free aminos or just a bit of sea salt). I don’t include any tofu, tempeh or other soy products in these plans.

I occasionally use frozen corn in a recipe, but it’s easily left out or swapped for frozen peas, red pepper or any other vegetable you like.

I do use some nuts, but they’re easily swapped out for seeds if you have an allergy or sensitivity. Any of the nuts can be swapped for seeds or maybe some avocado, and peanut butter can be replaced with sunflower seed butter, tahini or any other nut-free butter.

Only you can answer that question. But I will say that my goal is to help you understand healthy eating, and take some simple actions to create big changes in your life. You can start as small or as big as you want, and that usually dictates how well people follow through. If you try to bit off too big a chunk at once, you might burn out. My goal is to help you take small steps in the right direction, building on them one after another, so that you wind up taking a giant leap without even realizing it. And the great thing is, you can come back, listen again, and incorporate new pieces as you’re ready for them.

I generally create meals and recipes that are inherently gluten-free, but I do include some bread/pasta/flour in some of my plans to make things easy and familiar. In those cases, I will give a ‘gluten-free’ option.

I generally create meals and recipes that are inherently oil-free, but I do sometimes have meals that use it to enhance flavor for those who aren’t used to an oil-free diet. In those cases, I will give oil-free swaps in the recipe.

I didn’t design this plan for diabetics, but I don’t generally use much sweetener and I focus on whole plant foods that have a lot of fiber. When compared to a standard Western diet, this plan will be much better for maintaining fairly stable blood sugar levels – but isn’t specifically designed for that. There are some easy swaps you can make to lower the glycemic load of the recipes. Any unrefined dry sugar can be switched for coconut sugar. Maple syrup can be swapped for brown rice syrup. Bananas can be swapped for avocados in smoothies, or any lower-glycemic fruit in a snack or meal.

Absolutely not!! I take a lot of pride in the work I do, and my standards for email communication. I will never ever sell your email address, I will never give it to anyone else for any purpose, and I will only contact you for this plan or for future programs I put together that I think you might be interested in. You can always unsubscribe from any email list you’re on, and you can always email me if you have questions or concerns. I am a real person, providing real programs and services, and if you have any doubts whatsoever just send me a note and I’d be happy to call you on the phone to talk and let you know I’m really here 🙂 If you sign up for something and find that it isn’t what you were expecting, or find it isn’t useful to you, then I will be happy to refund 100% of your purchase.