I think the building blocks of good health are based around three things: the way you eat, move, and think.
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I was always overweight. As a latchkey kid of the 80s I had amazing parents who loved and supported me but didn’t know anything about nutrition. Zero things. I don’t blame them, I didn’t know a whole lot about it myself until a few years ago when I decided to finally stop making excuses about my health.
I was always an active person, I played sports as a kid and in high school. I played football for hours a day and could eat whatever I wanted. When I stopped playing football I didn’t stop eating that way though. And as I focused on my career as a filmmaker I told myself I had to put all my energy and time into that – my health wasn’t even close to being a priority. I had ballooned up to about 360 pounds at one point. I ate whatever I wanted. Partied with friends. Slept very little. Spent zero time exercising. And then I met my now-wife Emily.
Emily never asked me to change a single thing about myself, but just the nature of who she was as a person inspired me: she was a vegetarian and had been for most of her life. She was a social person, but not really a drinker. She moved a lot and she liked to go to bed early. As I write this now I realize that I needed her in a way I didn’t think about then. Her influence changed my life. I moved a lot more, slept a bit more (I’ve always been both a night owl and an early riser), and became vegetarian and ate a bit better. Just being with her I lost about 60 pounds without even trying. And that’s where my weight stayed for a long time.
I’m lucky that I didn’t have a health scare. I didn’t have a doctor telling me that I would be dead in five years if I didn’t change my ways. I had a few stints over the years where I’d join a gym for a few months, but then find a life excuse to stop going. The catalyst for my change was what I think the catalyst for all change needs to be: I changed the way I think. I woke up one morning and took a long hard look at myself and had an honest conversation. My career was going well. My family was happy and healthy. I had a big project coming up and some time before it started. I knew that if I was going to get my health in order I had to do it before I was forty or I never would. So I decided that for the next six months I would exercise for up to an hour a day, move whenever I could, and take a hard look at the food I put into my body. If I did that for six months and I didn’t see a big change then clearly I was just destined to be the way I was. Six months later I had lost fifty pounds and I knew I was onto something.
How did I do it? I calorie counted (which I’ll talk about in the nutrition section), I slowly shifted over to eating whole food plant-based, I started intermittent fasting. I meditated, slept a bit more. Within two years I was down to about 170 pounds. I had lost close to 200 pounds from when I was at my heaviest. In the end I had actually lost too much weight. It happens when you see major changes, you can get addicted to weight loss the way you do anything, and it took some honest reflections that had me finally stop being so obsessive and just start applying all of my knowledge without having to consult graphs and charts and databases and just start doing all of the things that now came naturally. And that’s where you find me. I practice mindfulness, I move as much as I can, I eat whole food plant-based and my weight seems to be steady around the 195-200 pound range. I look and feel the healthiest I’ve ever been in my life. And in the end, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.
So what are you going to find on this website? Well, you’re going to find a lot of delicious recipes. Stuff that has been tried, tested, and loved by my family and friends. My recipes don’t come with essays on the nuances of every ingredient – my biggest pet peeve with internet recipes is that I have to get the author’s life story when all I really want to do is double-check how long I’m supposed to roast butternut squash! Of course I have lots of thoughts on nutrition and food and health – but you’ll find those over in the nutrition section. All of the recipes are whole food plant-based and whenever possible I provide options that make them gluten-free and nut-free as well. I have graduated from the Rouxbe Plant-Based Professional, Plants Plus and Essential Vegan Dessert courses, so a lot of the things I learned about cooking and approaches to food and flavour are incorporated here as well.
I think the building blocks of good health are based around three things: the way you eat, move, and think. And also this fundamental truth: No one can change unless they want to – and the hardest thing you’re going to have to do is be willing to look at your life in a different way. Reprogram your brain and unlearn what you’ve learned. No one can change if they don’t ultimately want to. I’ve been successful for that primary reason: I wanted to change and I stuck with it. I fell in love with the ideas behind it, and the way I was starting to eat and more importantly the way I started to feel. I focused on the positive parts of it and just let the negative ones fall away. If you can find ways to fall in love with all the positive aspects of your life: choices, lifestyle, behaviour, you’ll automatically lose all the negative ones, or at least give them less power.
If you like the food or the articles, please let me know. Drop me a line, tag me on social media, do all the things. We’re all in this together – I’d love to know your story. I bet it’s a good one.
-Jeremy
For more information on Jeremy as a filmmaker please head to his website by clicking this link.
