had them. Well, I assumed it was normal because she was old. I can remember that on occasion she’d get winded and would put a tiny little pill under her tongue, and a few minutes later she was much better. I later found out that those tiny little pills were nitroglycerin, which was for her angina, a chest pain caused by reduced blood flow to the heart.
Mima wasn’t the only member of my family with health problems. Others were either sick or on some type of medication for hypertension, diabetes or anxiety. Watching all this as a kid triggered my desire to study medicine. I can remember telling Mima, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to become a doctor and take care of you.’
Fast-forward many years, and despite the medications, not much improved. It actually all worsened. My grandfather on my dad’s side went blind due to his diabetes. My great-grandmother on my mum’s side died of cancer. So did my maternal grandfather. My father died of heart failure. Mima suffered a stroke and was paralysed as a result; she eventually passed away but lived in bed, immobile, for years.
Each one of these family members lived well into their eighties – my grandfather actually made it to ninety-six – but their quality of life was poor. And that was the tragedy to me – living in poor health is not really living.
I thought about this deep and hard. My father was on blood pressure medication from the time I was born, when he was in his thirties. Mima was only in her forties when I was born and was already taking medication she would continue to take for the rest of her life.
Why didn’t someone tell them that changing the way they were eating could help? Why didn’t they do anything to improve their lifestyle? Why? Didn’t they care? Yes, they did – they just didn’t have the right information to help them change.
I so desperately wanted to help Mima and my other family members regain their health. This desire stayed with me throughout high school. It was the number one reason I wanted to become a doctor. Ultimately, I chose not to attend medical school because I felt I could help more people through a preventative lifestyle rather than a reactive medical system. I wanted to touch lives and make sure people did not have to suffer a declining quality of life because of their poor choices and inherited habits.
As I studied nutrition, I learned about the power of plants, but I wanted to know even more. I kept reading, studying, researching and talking to other plant-based advocates wherever I went. The more I learned, the more I leaned towards plant-based eating. Eventually I realised plant-based living was something I had to experience for myself. And that’s exactly what I did. First, I gave up dairy. That felt so good that I stopped eating red meat and pork, then chicken and eggs. So far, so good. The last animal product to go was fish.
I did it gradually, but as time went on, I grew bolder. I became a vocal advocate of the plant-based lifestyle. ‘Eat plants’ became my mantra.
What made me stick to this new lifestyle was knowing that I was, for the first time ever, truly in control of my health and impacting the planet in a positive way, while influencing others to do the same. This became the concept I eventually dubbed the Greenprint.
Many of my relatives lived long lives. But the Greenprint isn’t just about living a longer life – it’s about living a better life. A fuller life. A life where you can continue to enjoy yourself into your sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties and beyond. Your best life. The life that my Mima deserved. The life we all deserve. The life our planet deserves.
But where do we start? What do we have to do to make a difference? How do we transform our lives and the planet with our personal greenprint?
INTRODUCING THE GREENPRINT
At its heart, the Greenprint is a programme for a health transformation. It is also a blueprint for plant-based eating. And yes, it is vegan, but with a difference. A vegan diet is not necessarily plant-based. You can be a vegan and live on potato chips, pretzels and vegan hot dogs served on gluten-free bread. But these processed foods can make you just as sick and unhealthy as a meat-inclusive diet, and they are not part of a plant-based diet. When I say ‘plant-based’, I mean plants, not foods made in a plant. I’m talking about a diet that consists of 100 per cent delicious foods that come from the earth. I’m talking about a diet that your body loves.
Ultimate success at plant-based living comes from a couple of factors that impact each other. If you want to flourish, if you want to enjoy your happiest life, there are two key components of the Greenprint: twenty-two laws of plant-based living, and the application of those laws in your life.
THE TWENTY-TWO GREENPRINT LAWS
Whether we think so or not, it is part of human nature to search out a set of rules by which to live. And if you have never eaten 100 per cent plant-based before, you will want to learn the most effective and most powerful rules to live by. In the case of the Greenprint, there are twenty-two. You can choose to ignore these laws, and possibly flirt with weight gain and health disasters, or you can learn them, adopt them and mould your food choices and habits around them, and live an amazingly healthy life.
I developed these laws through clinically proven science and data, by living a completely plant-based lifestyle myself, and by helping others transition to plant-based eating. If I have learned anything over the past twenty-plus years, it is that what works in a clinical setting doesn’t always work in the real world, which is why these laws are as practical as they are scientific.
A lot of people think they’re doing ‘okay’ with their nutrition choices. Others are flailing and failing. Still others are confused about what to eat or what diet to follow, because there are too many ‘flavour of the month’ diets thrown at them. These diets are hyped, but there’s little credibility behind the hype. Some people may want that secret potion, that magical weight-loss elixir, but it honestly doesn’t exist. If you believe it does, you’ll spend your life in a rabbit hole of diets, filled with empty promises that will most likely leave you weak, overweight and sick.
The truth is, diets don’t work simply because they are unrealistic and do not offer people the opportunity to develop a lifetime of healthful eating habits – ‘lifetime’ being the operative word here. Diets are a quick fix for a long-term problem, which is often poor eating habits. A diet might work for a month or two, but most people drop the diet within a relatively short period.
Because of this mess, there’s no clear standard, no boundaries, no real finish line on what to eat and what to avoid. People have forgotten how to make sound nutrition choices. This is why we need these twenty-two laws. In terms of nutrition, we live in a confusing world – how you emerge from that confusion will be determined by whether you implement the twenty-two distinct laws that I reveal to you in this book.
Learning the Greenprint laws gives you the essential knowledge you need to maintain your and your family’s health. The laws crystallise your thinking and serve as a road map to success. In part 1 of this book, I lay out the twenty-two Greenprint laws. They are a prelude to action – a real master plan for a health-altering, energy-boosting, body-strengthening and planet-saving lifestyle. Whether you are already eating a lot of plants or are more the ‘steak 24/7’ type, implementing the Greenprint laws will be life-changing. Knowing and understanding them is the first step in my Greenprint programme. If you choose to apply them, they can take you wherever you want to go.
“THE GREENPRINT ISN’T JUST ABOUT LIVING A LONGER LIFE – IT’S ABOUT LIVING A BETTER LIFE.
THE GREENPRINT DIET
In part 2, I’ll show you how to put these laws into action, with a nutrition programme that will help you start your journey in an achievable way that will yield powerful results: sustainable weight loss, more energy and protection against life-shortening diseases.
The programme is structured in three transitional tiers that allow you to progress at your own pace, experiment and learn. I ask you to approach plant-based eating one meal at a time – just like I did in the beginning – until you eventually go 100 per cent plant-based. I won’t overwhelm you on the first day. I won’t ask you for instant change. I won’t tell you to throw