197. How Eating More Plants Can Impact Your Life & Business in a Big Way with Kathy Davis

It's not about being perfect. It's about being intentional and really using food to fuel your goals and really using food and leveraging the power of these whole foods to allow you to show up.

Welcome to the Three day Weekend Entrepreneur Podfest, where we help you create the personal and professional life you most desire, impact more people and make more money in less time. Do what you do best so you can create the life you want outside of work and better enjoy your family, your friends, and your life. Go to threedayweeknclub.com to join our community for free. Welcome, everybody. I'm excited today to have Kathy Davis to talk with us about leveraging the power of foods to increase your energy and how eating more plants can impact your life and your business in a big way. Thanks so much for joining us today, Cathy.

Thanks for having me. Wait. I'm really excited to be here and share with everybody the way to make plants help you with your goals.

My pleasure. Cathy is a plant based accountability and empowerment coach, the CEO of Veg Inspired, and the author of three cookbooks, the 30 minutes whole food plant based cookbook, the super easy plant based cookbook, and the budget friendly plant based diet cookbook. She empowers high achieving professionals to elevate their energy by adopting healthy living habits so they can step into their genius and crush their ambitions. I really like that. And as somebody who's been eating vegetarian, wow, at least nine years and like, 90% vegan, for me, it makes a huge difference. I'm really excited to hear about this. So would you mind sharing a little bit about how how you got started? How did you get introduced to this? Were you always vegetarian? Did you grew up on the people? I think people stereotypes. Did you grow up on a hippie commune or were your parents hippies or how did you get started and what led you here?

Oh, wow, that's a loaded question. So I actually did not grow up eating plant based. My dad is a hunter. I grew up on the animals from the hunting that he did. And I was introduced to plant based eating as a way of life by my husband. He read a couple of contradictory articles and he was like, I think we should look into this. And I was really resistant in the beginning. I really didn't want to give up the foods. I didn't want to give up the foods that I'd love. The burgers, the buffalo wings, the blue cheese dressing, just cheese in general. And the more I started to eat plant based, the more I realized it wasn't actually what I thought it was. And I wasn't actually giving anything up. In fact, I eat more of a variety now than I ever ate before. And it took about eight months to really adopt it as a lifestyle. But once I did, I started to see the benefits right away.

And so one of the things that like, you, I mean, I also think about when I started we happen to be living in Peru at the time, and there were not all these beyond meat and beyond burgers. So it was a lot harder. And I started what some people call it. I was a pizza pasta vegetarian. I slowly eased into it. I went from, I don't know, I would do one day a week vegetarian, then two days a week vegetarian. So I kind of eased my way into it. But I became very aware of noticing how I felt after I ate food. And that's one of the things I'd heard one just person say the difference between a healthy diet or a person who eats healthy and a person who doesn't is a person who eats healthy is more concerned about how they feel after they eat something. The person who's less concerned just wants to know how they feel while they eat something. What was that like for you? How did you sense shifts in either your energies or what changes happened and maybe even narrate a little bit what you experienced? Because I know a lot of people have told me, wait, I want to do this, but I can't do it, or, oh, you're so strong on this and that.

And first of all, I'm like, look, there's a lot of really actually tasty vegan junk food out there if you need a kind of a crutch to get started, and I'll still have some of that sometime. And different people have different reasons. Some people do it for health. Some people because they believe they want to be kinder to the animals. And I just heard something recently. It was a show. Oh, gosh, this is called Yellowstone or something with Kevin Costner. And he's talking to this girl who's doing a veggie or a vegan protest. He's like, do you know how many frogs and worms we have to kill to till the soil? I was like, oh, jeez. So even the people that are saying, okay, it's for that reason, so I try not to make it a yes no thing, I'm better than you thing, I stand on a soapbox thing. And when I actually got past that and some of the people that for me are too fanatical about it were like, oh, my God, you have to do this. I couldn't handle that. I was like, that's too much in anything, politics, religion, food, whatever.

But I just looked at how did I feel, and in my case with younger kids, I'm like, I want to be able to keep up with them. And I did start to know shifts. What shifts did you notice? And what can somebody perhaps expect if they start going down more of this path?

That's a great question. And we hear all the benefits. We hear that it's going to help your health, and it's going to give you energy and productivity and all of that. But until you really start to experience it, oftentimes, you don't believe it. And I always tell people, I didn't know how good I could feel until I started to feel good. I didn't know that I could have more energy. I didn't know that I could have more mind clarity from not eating the processed foods and the high inflammatory animal products. And what I found was I had this overall sense of lighter feeling where I just felt lighter and cleaner and more energized. Every day my sleep got better, which means that I was able to wake up with more energy because I had a better night's sleep. I experienced a 40 pound weight loss, really cleaning up the way that I ate and really looking at and leveraging the power of whole plant foods. So it was more about what foods as close to nature could I eat to give me the energy and really allow me to experience this level of energy that I hadn't had.

And you asked about the shift, and for me, it was really a mindset shift on what healthy eating looked like and felt like, and being the person who showed up as that right. Being the person who showed up at the dinner table for those healthy foods, because I knew how they made me feel. And the more I experienced it, the more I gave it a try, the more I passed on the processed foods or passed on the animal foods, the more energy, the more happiness, the more joy. And it just made more sense, and I would feel better. I wouldn't have that bloated, that tired, that lethargic feeling after I ate. And I love how you tapped into that, right? Like, having the idea of how you feel after you eat instead of how you feel while you eat. It's that difference in satisfaction and that difference in reframing what the foods really do for us.

Yeah, I remember one of my friends, I used to playing a volleyball team with Aniel, talks about asking, what do you want to eat? It's like, wait, food is just sustenance, man. I want to eat whatever is going to help me perform the best as an athlete. And I've been exposed to so many different people over the years. Like, there's a gentleman by the name of Jack Grapple. He's I think he's called the corporate athlete. He has a program and it's based on food. And it was just nutrition. It wasn't vegan or vegetarian. It's just, again, what's going to give you energy? And one of the things that really got me thinking more about this was when I saw multiple arrows pointing me in the same direction. So to your point, what you mentioned, you know, people might not say they want to start, like, hardcore, but there are certain things, like, I think most people would agree. For example, I'll go really extreme here. Most people would agree that doing drugs versus not doing drugs, you're healthier. If you don't do drugs, you say, okay, we've agreed upon that for the most part, as a society, not smoking is healthier than smoking.

We've agreed upon that as a society. I think for the most part, eating a lot of processed sugars is not as good as not eating them. And I find a lot of people get very dogmatic and then in their approach, and they want people to be completely just like them, and it makes it very difficult to be accepted. It's almost like, you know, without going into Christianity, the different forms of Christianity that people can have and get so specific. Whereas it feels to me, when we focus on a higher, like, big picture, like, let's just be nice to each other, like most religions agree upon that. Let's eat healthier foods. Let's see how we feel. Let's have some sort of internal barometer, internal measurement of how we feel. Because to your point, even if almost like you go down a continuum, when I just started eating less processed foods, like, even that was a step forward. So if somebody's, let's say, wanting to even start conceiving this idea, because right now, I don't know, for those of you all who are meters, I've been a meat eater. I'm not against it. There's a circle to nature in life, and I'm really not against a whole lot.

I do think and I think most people I know are like, I'd rather have naturally raised, humanely treated animals that happen to perhaps get used for beef as opposed to the big, you know, the things that we see on the documentaries of just all these animals crammed into place. We were just like, wow, it just feels not nice. And then I remember one person telling me, he says, well, Wade, what do you think is the vibrational energy level of an animal that's raised in that situation versus, let's say, a grass fed free room? And the real not the advertised thing. At times, I say, okay. So again, for me, it's like, okay, how do I move in a healthier direction? Not even a morally right direction. I'm not looking to go into that conversation because I don't know what's right or wrong. But when you start looking at starting to feel, the energy shifts. What is something that a person how can a person because you and I seem to be in touch with us because we've done this, what is it even like to feel the energy difference? Like, how do you do that?

Do you sort of pay attention? Do you journal? Do you just kind of notice how you feel after you eat a meal? How can a person get more in touch so that they can even find what works for them, given that there's so many diets that people will say, this works, keto works, vegan works. That works. And you're like, okay, well, if people are saying almost two diametrically, in some ways different diets work and yet there's similarities, how can a person start finding their inner measurement or their inner tool to just see how things work?

Well, so this is a really interesting question and if you dig to the root of what you're asking, it's really that mindfulness, but it's also giving yourself permission to try the different pieces. Right? As you said, we were meat eaters. I grew up eating the standard American diet. It's no hidden factor that the standard American diet is really founded on. Meat starch veg loaded with covered in animal products, covered in cheese, covered in other dairy, potatoes with sour cream. And when you think about that, and you think about the way we eat, everything in our society right now is very fast. We don't pause to see how we feel. We drive through the drive through. We eat, we eat the chickfila, which they claim is a cleaner, a cleaner fast food. We eat it. We go on to the next thing. We never really know how our food makes us feel. We might get a stomach ache and be like, that couldn't possibly be the cheese on it. I've been eating cheese my whole life. I always feel that way. But we don't actually pause to say, do I always feel that way because I've been eating cheese my whole life?

Do I always feel that way after animal products? Because they're actually what's making me not feel good. We don't take that into consideration. And one of the big AHA moments that I had was I suffered from adult acne. My skin was terrible. I did everything I possibly could to cover it up and try to just hide the way my skin looked. And when I reduced the super processed foods, the super processed oils, my face cleared up. When I reduced the dairy from my diet, my face cleared up. I would have never associated dairy with my skin because I'd been eating dairy my whole life. So it's really taking that pause and saying, how do I really feel after I eat? Are there any correlations between the different foods that I eat? And then the other side of it too is that mindfulness in a society where everything is fast and fast and fast and we're grabbing things out of boxes and we're eating things on the go, we don't take the time to say, how does this really make me feel? And then the other side of that too is we have a diet culture that pushes us towards light lunches, skipping breakfast.

So we never really know if the food makes us feel good or the food makes us feel bad because we don't pause to think about it. We just continue to do the same thing we've always done. And until we rock the boat a little bit and we say, I'm going to try plant based for a day and then two days. I'm not asking you to go vegan. Like, I've been on all ends of the spectrum, and I agree with you. Like, until we make this an inclusive and accessible piece for everybody to really eat more plants, it becomes this almost hierarchy of rules and regulations. But if you're listening and you're like, I really want to give this a try. I want to get my energy in check. I want to see how this makes me feel. Start your day with oatmeal and berries, with a plant. Milk, maybe. Oat milk, maybe almond milk, something familiar. Don't go tried soy. If you've never had soy, like, really tap into those familiar foods. Maybe for lunch, you have a sweet potato with black beans in a big salad. Don't make it confusing. Don't go and buy the mock products that you may or may not like.

Just eat familiar foods. Leave out the animal products. And yeah, it sounds a little scary when I say don't put butter on your baked potato or don't put sour cream on it. But what if the butter and the sour cream is what's making you feel icky at 03:00 in the afternoon? And we don't give ourselves that time to adjust. My philosophy in the beginning of eating this way was just eat more plants, just eat more vegetables. Reach for the apple instead of the processed foods. Reach for the salad at lunch, reach for the side dish of veggies, or added a side dish of veggies and still have the French fries. Like, you don't have to be perfect. It's more about being intentional.

That's so awesome. That's definitely been my experience in so many different ways. I remember when I was in college, I was having a lot of food issues, and it was in my case, it was too much dairy, too much wheat, too much orange juice. So again, it wasn't this judgmental thing about meat or not or this or that. It was literally my body. Those were such staples in my diet, and I put so much of that, and I wasn't having as much, just whole fruit or vegetables. And my body was just basically like anything else was saying, like, okay, we've had enough of that. We need something different. And I remember I shifted my diet, almost the opposite of that for about three months, and all of a sudden, everything was just so much easier and so much simpler. And so now I definitely am very aware when I'm eating something, how do I feel after that? And to your point, there are some vegan foods out there that now and sometimes vegetarian, whether it's the Morning Star or the Beyond Meat or the Impossible Burger, that sort of stuff. And some of them are still kind of junk food, and they're tasty, depending on how you view the world.

But to me so I'm not going to compare, like, an impossible burger to broccoli. I mean, broccoli is broccoli. It's going to be a lot healthier. And yet at the same time, to your point, there's so many things you can eat and still have it in a way that you still get to taste something close. And at least what I've learned is if you try to compare well, two things I've learned. One is there's still no such thing as a vegan steak. A steak is a steak is a steak. You're not going to replace the steak. If you really love steak, sorry. You're not going to. At least not yet. Maybe, I don't know. But when you start seasoning things and so many of the chicken products are the burger, by the time you put the ketchup, the mustard, the this to that, it's pretty darn close. And if you're not, I feel way better after. Again, these are different body types. I'm type A. So if you've read, like, eat right for your body type in some of those books, an A, according to that book, is more of an agrarian farming grains and whatnot.

So red meat, just I like the taste. It just slows me down. It's not a judgment, just my body doesn't take to it. But I try not to compare the vegan food to its alternative. I just try to say, do I like the way this tastes? And if I like the way it tastes, I'll eat it. As opposed to, well, this tastes 82% like what I was hoping it would taste like. And that attachment, I think, is no different than the kid that's 25 years old and still only eats cheeseburgers and pasta when people are like, okay, we're going out of restaurant. We've got this really fine restaurant, and you still want chicken nuggets, chicken tenders and fries. Maybe you can expand your palate a little bit. Maybe you might discover something that you didn't realize. But I like your idea of just eat more plants, just start eating healthier. And how can somebody then start moving that direction given that things are so fast paced? How can somebody get a little more intentional and not have to give up that, yeah, right now my job, I need to be at the work or I need to be traveling.

I need to be in airports. How can somebody start in that direction without it being too difficult?

Honestly, I lean back into what are the familiar foods that you are eating? Like, how can you be most intentional in the places where you have the most control? So maybe that's not in the airport right now. When I travel in the airport, I usually look for a Mexican restaurant in the airport or a sushi place where I can get veggies and rice. I can get chips and guacamole. Maybe I can get a salad at the Mexican restaurant with black beans. And so really looking at ways that I can kind of put together some easy meals, which comes back to what I always recommend people do when they're at home. Like, what are those foods that you can cook up quick, that allow you to eat, that allow you to eat more plants, that allow you to really have that plant, that meal, be the vessel of eating more vegetables. Maybe it's tacos where you can use beans and vegetables as you're filling. Maybe it's soups, maybe it's pasta bowl with lots of veggies. Like really thinking about ways that you can swap in and out ingredients. But if you take nothing from this podcast, my recommendation is always to eat more familiar foods that are as close to nature intended.

If you like potatoes, if you like broccoli, if you like spinach, if you like nuts, if you like seeds, fruits, add more of those in. You don't have to try tofu and tempeh right away. You don't have to make this huge shift. And that's how I recommend people with children really leverage the power of food. Don't make them eat foods that are unfamiliar to them, but introduce them to new foods. So if they already like broccoli, add in some cauliflower. Now they've got two choices. If they're eating carrots and peas and corn, can you add in edamame and try a little bit of soy, a little bit of higher protein, you know, vegetable bean, because it's a bean, but it seems like a vegetable. Do they love pasta? How can you make pasta different? Maybe one night you do your pasta with red sauce and the next week you do it with a teriyaki, just giving them new flavors and new ways to eat foods that are similar. And then I love your point. Don't make it. It's not a one for one comparison. People always say, well, I can't give up cheese, I can't give up cheese.

And I truly believe if you think you can or you think you can't, either way, you're right. I believe that philosophy. So if you don't shift your mind to say, I may not be able to give up cheese as cheese, but I can use avocado in place of cheese, I can use avocados to add that creaminess instead of sour cream. So I used to travel for work and I would get baked potatoes with avocado, and that was my alternative to baked potatoes with sour cream. And then the more you eat that, the more your palate starts to say, wow, this really does taste good. This really is a good food. I feel amazing. Your recovery rate is faster if you are high energy and you're on the go all the time and you're feeding yourself these foods that really fuel your body, these high starches that break down at a lower speed in your body, you can sustain energy longer. Your recovery rate from those late nights or those long weekends, right, that allows you to have more resilience, to bounce back and be able to fulfill your commitments.

Yeah, I think there's so much that and for me, my goal has definitely become energy. That's kind of my main why am I eating for energy? And I think of even at times when I'm playing, I play volleyball at the beach on Fridays, and I'll eat a very light breakfast. I'll just eating pretty much a Lara bar, which is like a fruit and nut bar every half hour or so, every other game. Because as an athlete, if I eat too much, no different than Thanksgiving dinner or a big pasta meal, I'm going to get really tired. And I see the same thing even when I work. Like, okay, what is it that I eat that's going to keep me at kind of a nice, steady energy level as opposed to having this big blowout meal? We're now after it, my body is working so hard to digest it that it's falling asleep. And I think there's just so many connections that we don't make. Like, I remember I don't drink as much, but I used to drink rum and Coke. It's my favorite drink. And I usually thought that the next day hangover was from the rum, and I came to find out a lot of it was from the sugar.

The sugar and the rum and the sugar and the Coke. And I know that now because sometimes I would just have like three or four Cokes, and the next morning I'm like, and I love the way it tastes, but I would just wake up the next morning and for me, it's like, I just don't want to feel that way. And so then I look, okay, what's what's the yummiest food I can eat? I haven't said yummy in a lot of years, but what's the yummiest food I can eat that's going to still allow me to have energy? And like, I know, for example, chocolate cake, for me, I love it. Chocolate cake will knock me out if I'm fighting a cold. If I want to catch that cold, a piece of chocolate cake will guarantee me, and that's just me. Now, I'm not saying that's a truth, but that's a truth for my body. And part of it might be the sugar or the Coke, I don't know. But I've just learned certain things that when I'm working on something or when I'm moving towards something or if I'm going to a three day seminar, whether it's as a performer definitely as a performer.

Or a coach or even as a guest or participant. Again, I'm eating a lot of nuts and light stuff because the heavy stuff will just kind of it'll just knock me out and make my body work harder. So is that more the processed versus the non processed foods when your body is having to just work that extra bit harder?

Definitely. And the other thing that I've found, like, my truth is that when I eat those complex starches that are unprocessed close to nature, typically white potatoes and sweet potatoes. My sustained energy through the rest of the afternoon is on point. I can show up as a rock star. I can go till 10:00 at night. My energy level doesn't break down for me. If you're listening and you're like, gosh, if I eat potatoes, that makes me exhausted. What are you putting on the potatoes? What quantity are you eating? When I eat a sweet potato, I usually eat half a sweet potato and black bean, about a half a cup of black beans, and then a big side of some type of vegetable or green. My favorite is like a salad with a little pico de gallo, a little avocado that's like a chipotle bowl. But I use the sweet potato as the starch, and that really gives me the energy, because what I found, especially in the work that I do, I'm up, I'm doing all my morning routine, my meditations, all of that. And by lunchtime, if I don't have sustained energy, hangry, cathy will show up at about 05:00, digging through the kitchen, looking for whatever I can find, arguing over what's for dinner.

It becomes this routine of just, I'm hungry and I'm angry about it, and I want something fast. And I know that that's common for a lot of people, because that's what I hear people say, oh, I eat light salads and I'm always hungry. I could never go vegan. I could never go plant based. My salads don't fill me up. I'm like, Phillips don't fill me up either. That's why I add a potato. That's why I add a scoop of quinoa. That's why I add some beans. Like, you're hearing me talk about these whole foods. You're not hearing me say, that's why I slap an impossible burger on it, right? Like it's really the low oil, the low processed ingredients that allow you to have that sustained energy. The other thing I found is the truth for me too, was when I eat those processed foods, it was almost like my body crashed a couple of hours after. And it's because the processing makes them easier to digest, which means that they go through your body faster. And so you eat those white, super refined, processed breads and things like that, and they don't keep you satiated long enough because there's so many sugars and all the germ and the bran and all of that that's in those natural whole ingredients, those whole grains is just pulled out and processed out, and we're just left with the flour.

And that doesn't keep us energized and sustained long enough.

Yeah, I know with ours, you mentioned something about kids and not forced in the diet. We were very, and still are very humble about that, because we said, look, we don't know. We have our hypothesis and we're adults of what we want to eat, and we weren't sure what would be best for them. But one of the. Things we noticed is our kids did not take to Balagna to, for the most part, sometimes slamming, but hot dogs, there's just so many things that they're like, we don't like that. And they would take to fresh fish, sushi, chicken that was more, and even with the red meat, they're like, okay, it's got to be a specific cut. And then first I'm like, oh, they're so uppity. No, they're like, this doesn't make me feel good with all the fat and that stuff. And again, some of it can taste really good. And for me, it's a lot about what will I eat during a work week on the days that I'm working and what will I eat on a weekend. The same way I'll allow myself to eat cake on the weekend and won't eat that much of it, especially if I'm working, because it's just, again, I just know what it's going to do to me, being able to do that.

So one of the other things that you and I talked about earlier was connecting now your food and what you're eating to how it's going to help you achieve your goals. Because ultimately, when we're coming to work, we're looking to say, okay, I want to get some stuff done. I want to impact people's lives, get results, make money, and be able to buy the stuff and do the cool things I want to do. I'll start it on the okay, let me put it this way. How can a person diagnose that, yeah, you know what, my meals are keeping me from performing, what does that look like first? And then what can they do to perhaps start moving in the direction of doing better with that so that they're able to get some better results and make some better things happen?

Well, I mean, I'd love to stand up here in a soapbox and say all the studies point to plant centered eating being the healthiest option, but we've already kind of touched on this. You have to take control of it and take personal responsibility and identify how you feel after you eat. So if you are right now eating scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast every day, and you feel like crap halfway through the morning, you feel heavy, you feel lethargic, you feel hungry, maybe try oatmeal and strawberries with a little plant milk. Maybe see how you feel after a couple of days. Maybe see how you feel after a day of eating that way. And the one study that always blows my mind, especially when I'm talking to high achievers and really thinking about my own journey, is is when we eat five to seven servings of vegetables or fruits a day. Like whole vegetables and fruits. Not processed jam or a nutrigrain bar full of whatever that strawberry goo or whatever is in the middle. But whole fruits and vegetables, it can increase our productivity up to 25%. So I ask you if you're listening.

How would your life change if you could be 25% more productive? Is it worth trying? Is it worth saying, okay, this girl might be on to something. Let me eat oatmeal for breakfast. Let me eat a salad with potatoes for lunch. Let me really lean into what this whole food, these closer to nature intended meals are and let me see how I feel because let's be honest, what's the worst that's going to happen, right? Like what if you get 10% more productive because you ate oatmeal for breakfast instead of bacon and eggs? Yes, you might feel in the beginning like you're giving something up. Yes, you might be like, I really would prefer a savory breakfast. What do you got for that avocado toast? Start there. But really thinking about it's up to you if you make these changes and knowing what these results could be. Do you want to work your butt off to not be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor? Or do you want to start these healthier habits now so that you can be more productive, so that you can take that time off so that you can say, wow, I made a bigger impact in the world.

I'm serving more people, I'm earning more money. And now bam, I can take that extra day off. Right? Here we are with the three day weekend. Is that something you want? How can you get more energy during that work day? That more focused productivity, that more focused mind function by cleaning out some of the foods that you're eating. And when you boil it down, it really comes back to what I said earlier. It's that eat more plants philosophy. Where in your diet, where in your meals can you reach for the fresh food? Can you reach for the whole food? Maybe it's substituting an ancient grain or quinoa for pasta. And I'm talking about some simple swaps here. Maybe it's a mushroom instead of a beef burger. Maybe it's a potato instead of French fries. Maybe it's adding a second vegetable or swapping out even a whole grain cereal with plant milk or nondairy yogurt with vegetables and granola. Just those simple swaps could lead to far significant increase in energy and mind production. And when you really think about it, those are easy swaps. I'm not suggesting that you rip everything out of your pantry and buy only the vegan food.

I'm really suggesting what's the path of least resistance for you? Can you make these easy swaps? And when I tie it back to where I was two and a half years ago, eating vegan, processed foods, eating the beyond burgers, the Impossible burgers, really leaning into the takeout all the time and not planning ahead and just kind of flying by the seat of my pants. I was pretty much on the couch most of the day because I didn't have the energy to get up and edit videos. I didn't have the energy to write recipes. And when I cleaned up and really started to leverage the power of these whole foods, vegetables and hummus for snacks, oats and berries for breakfast, noodle bowls, tacos with beans, bean burgers. When I really started to use foods in their more natural state and they don't have to be hard. You don't have to be whipping up veggie burgers every day. You could literally open a can of chickpeas. Like, it can be simple. I noticed an increase in energy. I launched my international coaching business. I lost £40. I wrote three cookbooks, not one, not two, but three, because I had the energy and the productivity behind it all from eating more plants, all from eating healthier, all from choosing the healthier option.

But it came down to that decision. I was teaching my clients last night, like, that one decision to eat more plants, to eat healthier, choose healthier foods, has impacted thousands of people. What would be the impact you could make if you had more energy to show up to do the things, to be the person that your clients or the people that you're leading your audience really needs you to be?

Yeah, that's so huge. And I just think of something we talk about in internet marketing or online marketing, the idea of split testing. You're going to test something, you're going to do email A and email B. And for those who are not familiar that it's. The idea that you might say in email A, you have one headline and an email B, you have a different headline and everything else is the same. So it's meant to be scientific. And you say, okay, well, email A got opened this many times. Email B got opened that many times. Okay, that email a's header or subject line is better. And to your point, why wouldn't you at least try? Okay, I'm going to either take a week eating cleaner or more plant based or whatever words you want to use and then a week a different way. Or I'm just going on Mondays and Tuesdays eat a certain way, and Wednesdays, Thursday, it's just something that allows you to experience it. And it doesn't have to be forever. You can still have, I still will eat, and I'm aspiring to eat more whole plant based, but I have my impossible burger on the weekend because I just want to have my junk food.

But even that I can tell you, knowing that I'm going to have it on Saturday or whatever, or some food like that allows me to then not feel so deprived that I've got to rebel against the way I'm eating. It's not a diet, it's just the way I eat that helps me have more energy. So during the week I'm like, oh, well, if I want this result, if I want energy, I'm going to have carrots with hummus as a snack, not something else. I'm going to have certain things that. No, they don't necessarily taste as good. My palate, though, craves them. My body craves them more to where I start looking at foods that might I guess maybe my tongue would think, oh, this is tastier. But my body is like, oh no, not today. We got to do stuff. And there becomes almost as visceral reaction, like, no, that's junk food. And I might want and on Saturday I might be like, yeah, I got nothing to do. Give me some junk food. But when I'm producing, I need that more just clarity and focus of what I'm doing. And again, just being aware of that, it doesn't have to be judgmental.

It doesn't have to be me on a soapbox preaching at people. And just another thing. People have asked me, wait, are you completely vegan? I say no because sometimes I'm at a party and there's birthday cake or sometimes there's pizza. And for me, I'm not going to think, well, you know, here's I'm so much more involved than you, and you should be like, I don't want to be that guy, and I'm not looking to be that guy. But to your point, I found I have so much more energy. I have so much more ability to give and be productive and perform that why wouldn't I do that if I could? And in my case, I know I can't.

Well, and speaking to that, it really comes back down to that mindfulness, that intention. And I love how you said, like, you're not perfect. I'm not here to be perfect. Right? I'm whole food, plant based, mostly unprocessed most of the time. That is my day in and my day out habit. That doesn't mean that I don't enjoy a cocktail or a piece of vegan cake or a vegan burger and fries at some point. It's not about being perfect. It's about being intentional and really using food to fuel your goals and really using food and leveraging the power of these whole foods to allow you to show up. And I love that you talked specifically about your body starting to recognize what it wants and what feels good. Because a lot of times it's our mind that holds us back. We know that when we eat something, we either feel good or we don't. We know we don't know how good maybe we can feel, but we generally know that there's something off if we eat something. Maybe it's that big steak or that big pasta meal and you're like, oh, I feel so heavy. Or that Thanksgiving meal where you feel like you're never going to get all the mashed potatoes and all the things that are on the plate, so you eat as much as you possibly can.

You know, we know, but we don't actually know how good we can feel until we allow our body to feel good. And so with that intention and moving forward, just testing it, seeing what feels good, seeing what gives you the energy? Maybe it's and I always tell people, like, I was the girl that drank the coffee at 03:00 in the afternoon. My sleep was terrible. I had no business drinking coffee at 03:00 in the afternoon. But I felt like I needed something. So it was either coffee or candy. But when I switched that and I started eating maybe an afternoon salad, which sounds like a weird snack, but it actually works out because you can put a sweeter dressing on it, maybe some fruit on it. Or when I eat fruit as a snack, I would make like fruit salads. Or I would bring, you know, fruit. Fruit. Mother Nature packs it up. Easy to take with you. We have no excuse as to not bring apples, bananas, pears, all those things that just travel really well. Or I would eat veggies, like you said, carrots and hummus. When I started trying that out, that Hangry Cathy didn't show up at 05:00.

Right. I was able to sustain that energy. But that hangry. Cathy coffee didn't work. It would give me some energy, but then I would crash. And it wasn't sustenance, it was just, I don't know, not even drinking calories, just the caffeine just gives you the pop of energy and then you crash again when your caffeine wears off.

Yeah, something I read recently from a I forget what you meant. No, I forget the gentleman's last name. Matthew. He's a sleep expert and he talked about the half life of caffeine and coffee. And so half life is how long does it take for half of it to dissolve and to simplify it? He said, look, when you drink a cup of coffee, 6 hours later, half of the caffeine is still there. And 12 hours later a quarter of the caffeine is still there. So he says. So basically, if you have a cup of coffee at 10:00 a.m. Of 8oz, that's the same as if you at 10:00 p.m. Decided to drink 2oz of coffee right before you go to bed. And all these things that tie in, being lethargic, being sleepy, being angry, I mean, gosh, anytime I do a fast, I literally have to tell my family I'm doing a fast because they're like, you need to keep in check with me because if I start turning into a monster, you need to tell me, wait. Because I've done fast a lot of times where I'll have to bail and eat something because they're like, okay, you're turning into a jerk.

And that's not cool. And it's great that you want to fast for your health and whatever, but yeah, no, you're being mean now. So no, that's not okay. So I think it's one of those things where, like you said, if you can just be aware of it. But I think really it's reframing the conversation as opposed to like this teenager that says, what are you trying to get me to give up and you're saying, well, what else could you have? And to your point, so what if you tried for a month? You ever done anything for a month? You've ever gotten a gym membership for a month and stopped? Yeah, done that a couple of thousand times. What if you did something and what if you even just took one habit? Or what if one day you said, you know, one day a week and this is how I started. One day a week I was going to be vegan, and one day a week I was going to be vegetarian. And then I just eased my way into it, and I experimented, and I found certain things. And for me, I needed the impossible burgers and the pizza and the pasta, those were my bridge foods to help me get over it.

Because the little internal adolescent in me is like, well, I'm not doing this if I don't get some cookie at some point, figuratively or literally. So I'm like, okay, I have to have that cookie. And then that for me. And then the other thing, which I will say this, because I don't like to preach on this, but I remember I read an article once and it was a list of all these thinkers throughout history that chose to be vegetarian or vegan and just their rationale. And I'm not trying to sell it, do your own research or whatever, but it was the exact opposite of the in your face pamphlet of how nasty it is, what gets done to animals, which I agree, but I don't like the shock value thing because that feels pressure. That feels like you're a bad person if you eat meat. And I'm like, just the whole energy of that to me is like, yeah, I don't want that. But when I just saw people saying, like, why would you do that? And then what's interesting is my wife did a yoga certification, and there's a gentleman she took it from, a gentleman by the name of Fred Bush.

And he had this talk about whole foods and plants and this and that. And one of the things that he said that just stuck with me is he said, look at your if he says, if you look at the animals that are on the planet today that are closest to us and look at how their digestive systems work and I believe it was either the gorilla or the baboon. I forget which one I was confused to, but he said, look at their body. So it must be the gorilla, just like, huge, just big packs. He's like, they don't eat meat. And he said, now, what I want you to understand is he says, if you look at their diet and this was like, okay. He says, but their digestive tract, he says theirs is a lot like ours. It's like all these curves and this and that. And he says, whereas a lion has a one chamber stomach. It's meant to eat meat. No judgment. It's just like its body is meant for that. Ours is not. And he said, so here's this thing. You don't question if it lacks energy or vitality, just naturally.

It can do stuff all day long and it literally goes in the Huntsford stuff. And I was just like, okay. And then the other thing he said, which I thought was so great, is look. He says, look at your hands. Look at your feeble little hands, look at your teeth and tell me you're going to try to catch something. He says, you take a chicken out of a coop and just try to catch a chicken. We aren't made for that. Now, we found a way. We're clever, so we figured out how to work, but it doesn't necessarily mean that that's what our body is going to feed off of. So again, even if you take the whole judgment of whether it's nice or not to kill animals and all that, because you can look at that from 10 million different angles. But if you just look at how does your body respond, that's what for me was the thing. And you mentioned something earlier about needing sugary or caffeine like products, and I want to go back to that if you don't mind. Because to me, that's something that I feel is if I feel myself needing chocolate or a sugar bar or something, it almost looks like, oh, I didn't eat right today, or something.

Because why is my body like so strung out that it's like, dude, I'll take anything. Give me some sugar. Like, did I not get good sleep? You know, what was it that I'm not naturally turned into? In my case, it's if I get a horrible amount of sleep or if I do no exercise and tomorrow my body is like, well no, you're not going to get exercise from yoga or cardio. Yeah, that doesn't of course you will. But my body is like, no, we need something quicker. Or if I have a twelve hour day and I just convince myself, how can a person be aware of that? And what are some healthy alternatives that will help them perhaps not be as dependent upon that. Maybe just get to that one cup of coffee. Or maybe if you're at four cups to get to three cups and just again, not as a judgment, but as something that can help a person have that more consistent level of energy rather than the spikes, where they then feel that crash and they have to kind of re up again to where it almost feels like an addictive pattern.

How can a person identify that and what can they do with that?

So identifying at first is really starting to it goes back to tapping into how you feel, tapping into what signals your bodies are saying. For a lot of us, that caffeine or that desire is often an association, right? It's often the habit. Now of course, when you've had the habit of four cups of coffee a day, when you go down to one, you're going to have those withdrawal symptoms. So you really do need to kind of edge yourself off some of these, especially those substance type things, caffeine, sugar. You really want to make sure that as you wean yourself from that, you are looking for healthier alternatives. But first it's becoming aware. The awareness is the key. Is it an association? Do I meet my friends at the coffee thing, at the coffee stand at 03:00 every day? What's the association? It's kind of like happy hour. Do I have an association for happy hour? I go every Friday, I go every Thursday. Happy hour happens and there's this association, I'm going to have drinks and I'm going to have snacks. When you start to break those associations, that doesn't mean you don't go. You start to reframe what that looks like in your mind.

Maybe your happy hour is you eat before you go and you only go and have cocktails. Maybe your association with the 03:00 is you eat some fruit, you eat some fruit, you eat some dried fruit, some fresh fruit. Maybe it is a small piece of chocolate, maybe it's something of that nature. And you get a decaf coffee and you slowly start to wean yourself into an alternate option. Because the substance addiction there's studies that show that cheese is very dairy, is very addictive, obviously caffeine, any type of those products that it's such a habit, it's such a routine, simply changing the routine. But that doesn't mean that the withdrawal is going to go away. Maybe you switch from coffee to tea and then down to decaf and really just slowly changing what you're doing. For me, when I need a boost of energy, I always turn to a potato. I always turn to a whole food starch. Something that's naturally going to provide energy. That's why when you hear of ball players or athletes, they car blowed the night before so that they can get the sustained energy. So it's the same type of concept.

What can you eat that's going to naturally give you the energy? It's not going to give you the caffeine necessarily, but it's going to give you that energy. And you'll be able to say, okay, the sweet potato at lunchtime, that does pack in the energy. I'm not dragging at 03:00. But if you don't try it, you don't know. And that's really where it comes back to. What can you test, what can you see? What works? I love to keep dried fruit in the fridge. Dates, dried apricots, things of that nature. A couple of those are like candy to me now. It wasn't always the case. I had to reframe what I turned to. I also love to keep frozen grapes in the fridge, in the freezer and a handful of those is like an afternoon candy. So it's just kind of reframing how you look at food and what you turn to and what new association you can make.

Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, there's so much of this, and I just think it's one of those things. Again, for some reason with athletes, we agree with this. I don't think anybody would disagree with what we've talked about, the theme of it, of eat healthier, to have more energy. If you're an athlete, everybody would say, what did you eat before your big game? Did you get good rests? What are your habits? Did you stretch? And yet we think, oh, we're supposed to sit at a chair or a table all day long on a computer and not have that need. Wow. So much that you've shared. Thank you so much. Kathy, where can people learn more about the work you do in your books and how they can get started? We'll put the links below, but where can they learn more about your work?

Absolutely. So I'm very active on Instagram at Vege. Inspired. And then I actually put together a free gift for the listeners. So one of the things that I really feel is important is to have a plan. How can you execute this? We have write a business plan. We have plan for vacations. How can we execute this? So I put together a little meal plan, seven recipes that the whole family will love. All plant based, all easy. Even comes with a grocery list. You can download that at veginspire. Compodcast. And I'd love to connect. I'd love to hear from you. Just let me know what I can do to support you. Like I said, I'm very inclusive. It's not about going vegan. I don't preach the vegan thing. It's really about eating more plants and really channeling and leveraging the power of food to reach your goals. So thanks, Wade, for having me on. I really appreciated connecting with you and sharing my story and helping other people eat more plants.

Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us and for all of you listening. As always, I look forward to helping you impact more people and make more money in less time. Do what you do best so you can better enjoy your family or friends in your life. And if Ian healthy, I'll help you do that. Well, gosh darn it, let's do that. Have a good one, everybody. If you'd like help and support creating your abundant and sustainable three day weekend lifestyle, go to threedayweeknclub.com. Whether you're an employee, an entrepreneur, a freelancer, a side hustler, startup, wherever you're at, we have a free community to help you get focused on making the most out of your personal life, where you're supported and surrounded by people just like you. And then we have a premium community to help entrepreneurs who are starting their business and or growing their business to create that lifestyle. So if you're ready to help more people in less time. Do what you do best and create the lifestyle you most desire so you can better enjoy your family, your friends and your life. Go to threedayweekinclub.com. Now, I looked to meeting you in there and I look forward to serving you.