fats – mainly from nuts, seeds, avocados and other whole foods – you can lower your cholesterol and triglyceride levels.
And that’s just scratching the surface!
While applying the twenty-two laws, you will significantly expand your greenprint. In fact, what makes this programme unique is that you can use it not only as a guide to plant-based eating for optimal health and weight loss, but also as a road map to actively curbing carbon, reducing greenhouse gases, saving animals and reducing global warming with your food choices. And you’ll have the tools to figure out your personal greenprint.
The first step on the journey to successful plant-based living is a shift in your mind-set: Decide what’s important to you, and what you want to accomplish. Do you want better health? A lower number on the scale? Sounder sleep? The knowledge that you’ve made a positive impact on the planet? Or maybe it’s some combination of these. Whatever your reason, the kind of person you are begins and ends in your own mind. This isn’t a new idea – it’s been around since ancient times. You become what you think about most, so if you want to be healthier or lose weight or reduce your carbon footprint, you have to change the way you think.
Focus not on what you have to give up, but instead on all the good things you will gain – which can be summed up in one word: life. A happy one. A healthy one. One in which joy is spilling over.
The choice is yours.
—MARCO BORGES
THE TWENTY-TWO GREENPRINT LAWS break down what it takes to become successful in your transition to plant-based living. They give you standards to aspire to, while providing practical suggestions for developing a lifetime of healthier eating habits. I start with laws that address food choices that can create the state of health you want for yourself. Keep reading from there, and you’ll discover more about how these laws can also help you become part of the solution to our global warming crisis.
THE LAWS ARE VITAL because they contain details that even the most health-conscious eaters have been missing – details that can save your health and are designed for long-term sustainable weight loss.
Every single law reveals critical steps to create lasting health success. My suggestion is to read the laws sequentially as they are presented, then reflect on each one. What resonates with you? What inspires you? What moves you to action?
The laws are also geared towards helping you form better habits. When I was growing up, I was curious about the behaviours that led to success in all realms of life. One question nagged at me: why can some people completely turn their lives around while others struggle with the same problems again and again?
As I continued to observe people’s behaviours, the answer became obvious: Making positive choices led to positive results. I saw the force of positive habits more and more through my work in the fitness industry. Most high achievers take care of themselves with exercise and good eating habits. Without good health, they can’t achieve.
When it comes to habits, too often we put on emotional blinders. We refuse to look at ourselves objectively because we might not like what we see. But in order to change what you do, you must observe your habits objectively, without emotion. Why do you do the things you do? Why do you feel the way you feel? Why do you think what you think? The laws will help you become more self-aware so that you can figure out who you want to be, how you want to feel and where you want to go with your health.
If you spend your energy worrying that shifting to a plant-based lifestyle will be hard, you’ll stay stuck in your old ways. Our food is changing, and not for the better, and your health depends on your ability to adapt. The more you take this new lifestyle one step at a time, the more confident you’ll become in your ability to adapt and create positive habits in your life.
The truth is that no matter who you are, how much money you have, whether you have five children or none, whether you are a man or a woman, whether you are young or old, you have habits – those little things you do every day, all the time, whether you are thinking about doing them or not. They are the actions that got you where you are and will keep you there in the future.
The laws are meant to help you forge positive habits – and make daily positive choices that will really affect you in the long run. So please, take the laws to heart. Follow the guidelines they propose to create the health you want. They can really make a difference if you follow them consistently.
In the end, following the laws will ensure that your future is better than your past.
People need to eat whole-food plant foods, primarily . . . whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. That diet supports our lives. We ought to live to be ninety or one hundred without getting any diseases.
—JOHN MACKEY, cofounder of Whole Foods Market and American business leader
YOU’VE HEARD IT YOUR ENTIRE LIFE: ‘Eat your vegetables’. Whoever said it may not have known exactly why, but that didn’t make them wrong. You know why? Plants are life! That’s why this is Law #1. Allow me to remind you: eat more vegetables, and eat more vegetables while you’re at it.
Add fruits, beans, legumes, seeds, nuts and whole grains, and the wide-ranging plant world, can easily make up your entire diet. Plants offer us such an amazing array of foods that there’s bound to be something even the biggest vegetable sceptic can love.
A plant-based diet can revitalise your body and your health in ways you may not think are possible. The results of the Holy Name study prove this: your LDL cholesterol can drop, perhaps by as much as 19 per cent, as it did in the study. You’ll lose inches from all over your body. Remember, the plant-based eaters in the study lost on average 3.5 kilos in just twenty-two days. They also reduced their blood pressure and improved their digestion, among other amazing improvements.
One of those plant-based eaters was Bridget, director of medical records at Holy Name Medical Center. She was happy that she had been randomly selected to be in the plant-based group of our study. She was not a vegan, though she’s an avowed animal lover and concerned about the ethics of animal agriculture – so much so that she and her husband take in all sorts of animals, from rabbits to goats to sheep and any animal that has been abandoned. ‘Our goal is to give animals a good life,’ she explained, and Bridget and her husband accomplish this mission on their farm.
Bridget’s