Revitalize with Veggies & Heal Chronic Disease with Toussaint Stewart EP#69

I am Suzi  B and welcome to the Habits and Humor podcast. We are so excited to have you guys here today. Today, we're covering a topic that is so useful, vegetables. You guys, we're going to talk all about vegetables and our guest today has a very unique perspective on how we can see vegetables differently, how we can do vegetables differently, and how we can use that to not only improve the way that we eat, but the way that we feel.

Overall long term health. We're talking here. Huge benefits. I love what you do here. So welcome to the show. Toussaint Stewart. So glad to have you

here. Oh, it's just a blessing to be on this platform and I'm just glad you have it. So we can just get all up in the wellness.

Hold up in the wellness. I like that very much.

All right, you guys. So let's go right into a little bit of learning about who you are, how you came to know what you know about all of this good stuff, and then we'll get right into the vegetables and how we can take some action, make some differences in our lives. So tell us a little bit about you Toussaint and where you come from and.

What's

your story? Absolutely. I am. My name is Toussaint Stuart. I am a holistic health and wellness practitioner and I specialize in a variety of modalities. 1 of them being whole food, plant based nutrition. That is, I guess you would call that my wheelhouse. Subject teaching people how to use food is medicine and allowing them to use that medicine is food and teaching them to be inspired about it and really motivated and doing it with a deep sense of gratitude.

I, I got into wellness. I believe. Through the lens of my mother and father they both had two different approaches to wellness. As I was growing up, my father was very much into meditation. He was a certified masseuse, so he massaged some Olympic athletes in Oakland back in the 92 Olympics, like prior, and, he was into transcendental meditation yoga. He took me and my twin brother to the gym with him all the time growing up and stuff. And and he was, he got into vegetarianism at one time too but he was also a binge alcoholic. So that was another one of his practices. And so there were times where.

One of the blessings about that is that I didn't never, I didn't never really saw my father drunk. It was just more like I didn't see him, and so people who are often going on binges they're just like, they can't be, they're just like for two weeks, we're just going to take a field trip with alcohol, and so that was a bit, you Jarring as a child and traumatic and, but I also, it made me appreciate the moments where he was so enlightened and alive and just continuously trying to reinvent himself through the wellness arts. And

that's an interesting blend of different ends of the spectrum there where you're practicing such.

Psychological health, beneficial practices, and then also at the same time suffering with the same or with this difficult I don't want to call it an addiction, but lifestyle

choice, yeah it was definitely an addiction and ultimately ended up being a disease because, when you get addicted to something, it becomes deeper than just.

Cravings. It's like your body is literally addicted to it. And but he, I understood the background of why he had acted out like that, which was really important. He was very transparent about some of his child abuse growing up. And so he was really, in a sense, really trying to.

Regulate his nervous system and he did it through the healing arts and when that didn't suffice, then he would go into this, this binge state where we didn't see him for a couple of weeks and then he'd come out of it and get back to the gym, get back to the sauna and. We'd be running around the gym with him and he'd make his comeback, so he came back a lot. He fell down, came back, fell down, came back. And that was a part of our journey with our with our dad. But my mom, on the other hand, she was a nurse practitioner for about 35 years in the emergency room. And she had these boundaries around food growing up. For one, she had a garden in the front of the house and a garden in the back of the house.

That's a lot of fresh food. And so it was like, okay, when we got our first house in East Oakland, she was just like. We're gonna use this land and we're gonna make it happen. And so she made fresh jelly from scratch, fresh salsa. , she loved making everything from scratch.

And she had this boundary, like she only made like fried chicken twice a year. She was very clear about that with the family because of cholesterol and what it could do. To you long term health wise, I'm literally in like the fourth grade learning about cholesterol. really, she never bought us sugar cereals.

I grew up in the eighties. And the seventies and so sugar cereals were huge, and so she refused to buy a sugar cereals. She never bought us fast food. I don't think I've ever set foot in a fast food restaurant with my mom and she's 83 now. Wow. And so she's just one of the original slow cookers.

And that was. Her boundary for us. She only bought us raisin bran and corn flakes. That was it. We oftentimes felt like, oh man, we're, we don't get a chance to taste what everybody else is tasting, but we knew that it was for our own good. But, it was still like, dang.

But ultimately

good on your parents for being the transparent side of that, like where they're talking to you about it. So you don't feel as much like you're getting left out, but you feel like, okay, we're not participating in that, but it makes sense. That's really good on them for doing that.

And, this really gave me a lens around and then also my mom became a Buddhist when I was in the fifth grade. So I watched her begin to chant every day, like two days, two, two times a day. For the rest of my life. It was like, okay, she's chanting. She's a Buddhist now. And her whole life just transformed before my eyes.

And so witnessing her practice, witnessing some of my father's practices and some of his dark practices, like with the alcohol and stuff and his struggle. It made me realize a lot of things about life, what to do, what not to do, and the power of and being intentional about how you live your life, developing boundaries are not necessarily about saying no to stuff.

It's really about saying yes. To this highest version of yourself when you develop a boundary around food or even around people that you hang out with or don't want to hang out with, it's just having a standard and not going, not just going through the motions in life. My fam, my, my parents were very intentional about how they wanted to live their lives.

And I think one of the reasons why I focus so much on self care, I think. Is because the quality of my father's self care really affected the quality of our time together. And so now as a holistic health and wellness practitioner as a personal trainer as a former athlete Working out all of that was a part of my culture growing up, going to the gym, working out playing sports year round.

This was a part of my life. And so I kept that with me after college when I did make the Olympics, I wasn't going to lay Olympics, but I kept a workout with me. I stayed in the gym. I always took care of my body. It was like therapy for me. And eventually in 96, I decided to go completely vegetarian.

And as the years went on, I realized I was moving more towards veganism because I just, I completely stopped drinking milk, cut out the cheese. And then eventually I just went completely whole food plant based after checking out this documentary called What the Health. It just blew my mind. And after that, it was just like, okay, let's get to the next level and then that kind of coincided with my personal training journey when I began to work for 24 hour fitness and then I also became a full time PE teacher in high school in Oakland Unified.

And I was doing all this wellness stuff outside. Of teaching in the public schools. And I realized I'm building a side career here, and then I eventually decided to retire from teaching, to just go into wellness full time. And I began to teach meditation courses with black to yoga and now I have my own meditation course that I teach and along with several other coaching containers that I teach around holistic health and wellness.

And so it's been a journey for me to get here. But it's definitely been 1 of a calling, I was called into the classroom as a classroom teacher because I wanted to be like Robin Williams in dead poet society. He was my hero teacher that I wanted to be like, and now this calling of developing my own classroom educational setting with my passion of wellness mixed with my passion to educate people.

Now, it's both of these are coming together within my own company town wellness and, now I'm just pretty much building my wellness company from ground up and, loving every minute of it, the ups and the downs, you

know, what an incredible journey. And you've come from, two parents that sort of do different versions of health and wellness space on your own journey and in your own life as well.

It's incredible. So you talk a lot about how whole food plant based eating is a form of self care, which I think is unique. And a lot of people feel like it's a restriction, but you feel like it's a privilege and it's a how did you phrase it to me that it's a we need to change our relationship with food because, or with vegetables and with those whole foods, because it's a a sacred experience.

That's how you phrased it to me. So tell me a little bit about your philosophy on, on that and how we can start today, even if we're not vegan, even if we're not vegetarian, we all know that these kinds of foods are best for us. So how do we take a few steps in the right direction to see vegetables differently, do vegetables

differently.

Absolutely. I work with my clients first around them, unpacking their relationship to food when it comes to, their relationship to just their idea of what vegetables are, what fruits are, what processed foods mean to them, how they embody food on a mental. And emotional level, a lot of us use food to bypass emotions to stuff down.

We just stuffing things in our mouths. A lot of us have food addictions, where we just literally become our cravings, so I teach first this. Really intense self reflection on okay what is my environment in my mind and my body around how I relate to food, and how did this come about.

And so I have them unpacking their relationship to food within their families, and how food was introduced to them was did they have a garden growing up were vegetables celebrated, or was it just was it forced down your throat, I don't know. What kind of relationship do you have?

And then when you begin to realize the lens that you're looking, then you begin to reflect on how you use food in your life. Are you doing the standard American diet, mostly? And are you even questioning how You know how this food is affecting your daily life, your daily thoughts your body temple in general.

And then when you get to fruits and vegetables we get to this, we get to our body and we get to fruits and vegetables are 80 to 90% water, our bodies are literally 70% water. And so when we look at fruits and vegetables, that ratio of water to, fiber and matter and all of this kind of stuff, we're literally supporting our bodies with every single bite.

We're supporting our homeostatic nature, and we're actually honoring our nature as herbivores. The human body, the human beings are naturally created to consume plants, right? I prove this like seven different ways in my book, plant based one on one whole food, whole you, where the research I did, it was, it's so dramatically points to our natural inclination to be herbivores.

And so when you eat fruits, when you are around fruits and vegetables, you're literally around things. That want to become one with you because when you eat fruits and vegetables, when you eat vegetables, they're literally still alive in your body. They're supporting every organ system in your body, the RNAs and all of that stuff, the water it, it breaks down, but it's still alive and it's literally nourishing your gut health.

It's nourishing your blood, everything. And, vegetables I let my clients understand too. When we look at vegetables, they're the ones that build us back up. They help us recover. They support so much around the building up of us, right? Fruits support the cleansing of us. They support getting, they support the natural detoxification process of our organ systems and our body, right?

They help, they're astringent. So they're going to help flush you out, right? And they digest faster than anything on the planet. But vegetables, when you begin to Get more vegetables in your system, like your leafy greens, your artichokes, your asparagus, all of these alkalinizing, all these minerals and these vitamins and these antioxidants.

Once you get those into your body, then you begin to build your body back up and you begin to fortify your gut. Your gut health, your gut microbiome as well. And I like to say that

vegetables and fruit there you, your body knows how to use them because it's made of exactly the same thing. So you can use every single ounce of vegetables and fruit.

In nutrient usage. So your body doesn't have to store anything, which is why, people, a lot of the diets out there, pretty much every diet out there has some contradictory, something except vegetables, there's only one diet in the world that doesn't recommend that you eat vegetables, but all the rest of them are in agreement that there's just no better way to fuel your body because those foods are what you are made up so your body can use every single bit of it because it's the exact same composition that you have.

Absolutely. And the thing about vegetables is that green leaf is taking in one electron at a time. So you're literally eating like a secondary source of sunlight when you eat vegetables.

Yes. I told you'd have a new perspective. I've never thought of this before, but that's totally true.

And chlorophyll green vegetables specifically that chlorophyll right is literally. Almost identical to your blood molecule. So when you eat green vegetables and when you juice green vegetables, you're literally giving yourself a blood transfusion, right? This food is really for you. And so as opposed to looking at vegetables is like this, Oh, I got to eat my vegetables again.

If you switch it to God wow, I have an opportunity to serve my body temple. Vegetables like, and these vegetables hold sacred intentions. To do you no harm to just build you up right to fortify you to sustain you to help you thrive. When you look at vegetables as opportunities to level up your wellness, then it's a shape it's a consciousness shifter, because I really feel if you don't shift your consciousness around food, you can eat the food.

But it won't be disseminated into your body the way it needs to be because you're not coming from a heart centered space. Of gratitude and appreciation, right? You need the gratitude and appreciation chemicals to help disseminate that food into the, into the best metabolic pathways that it's supposed to be in involved, right?

Mindfully eating it with gratitude and not getting. So all this is not sweet. I got to put all this salt and all of this butter on it to make it taste better. Actually, you've been trained to do that. Vegetables come with their own flavor. They come with their own they come with their own nutrients.

And so if you just, it's nothing wrong with seasoning your vegetables, right? You can season them. I use a bunch of seasons and a bunch of seasonings in my vegetables, but I also honor the natural flavor they come with, right? And this is one quote that I talked to my clients about that I, that came out of me last year.

Don't let your relationship to your taste buds give you a divorce from your wellness. And so don't get so consumed by your 5 senses right gratitude and appreciation. This is a whole different type of sense right and so when you're mindfully eating when you understand that you're in the presence of something.

That has a holy intention to serve you right? Vegetables have an intention to serve your homeostasis. We were surrounded by a green kingdom for a reason, right? To sustain life on the planet, not just to get the oxygen because trees and plants give us our oxygen. But they also give us our fruit. They give us our herbs.

They give us our vegetables to help us thrive. And that this is the way it was created. This was what the, this was the way it's supposed to be. So you're actually going back to nature. You're honoring your nature as an herbivore. And it's really a sacred food is supposed to be something sacred and it's supposed to be like prayer.

And so when you eat vegetables, you're honoring the best version of your body temple. And when you can do it in a space of gratitude and appreciation, then you can begin to shift your perspective and shift your relationship. Brilliant.

I like this. So you're getting into the mindset shift of it and we're thinking about it and we're being grateful for it.

And we understand it a little bit differently. This is good, but when we sit down to eat a head of broccoli and we just really don't like broccoli or carrots or cauliflower, those are the three that everybody talks about all the time. How do we diversify? How do we bring more vegetables in so that it doesn't feel like we're just doing the same two or three things all the time?

I know you mentioned like juicing, you mentioned growing your own at home. What are some ways that we can. Get better access to more varieties enjoy the process more a little bit and cook them in different ways so that they, the tastes are, and the flavors are

different. Excellent. One thing is you want to have an open mind and you want to eat the rainbow.

So if you are. Eating the rainbow, then you're going to have a variety of vegetables. So I have a couple of practices in my book. No oil braise braising vegetables and no oil roasting vegetables. Now, braising is very similar to like when you make the home fries in the skillet and you're putting a little oil in there with some.

Sautéed onions. And then you throw the vegetables in there, add a little, you throw the potatoes in there, you add a little bit of water, similar concept, right? So one thing I like to do with my vegetables is I like to have a combination of cruciferous vegetables, like broccoli. Cauliflower Brussels sprouts, like these are key because they have some very healing anti cancerous compounds.

But then I also like to throw in there some purple cabbage, right? Slice that up. You can also put in there some asparagus. Asparagus is wonderful for you for blood circulation. And I like to put in about, I want to say 5 to 7 different types of vegetables. And I like to use about 5 to 6 different types of spices.

So spices are really just dried vegetables and herbs, right? And so when you mix this in a conglomeration and you practice this dietary conglomeration, you are literally benefiting yourself so much because you're diversifying your gut microbiome in a variety of ways. Because all of these variety of vegetables have different fibers, which are going to attract a variety of gut bugs, right?

And this is really important, but also the spices are going to attract different gut bugs too. And depending on what type of spices you use, you can use garlic powder, you can use thyme, you can use oregano, you can use Tony seasonings, which is really good. You can even use a Walker wood jerk seasoning, which is really good.

It's spicy, but I love that one. It's a Jamaican jerk seasoning you can use on your vegetables. And you can use white pepper instead of black pepper. You can just, you can. Experience a variety and just get curious. And when you begin to saute the vegetables without killing them, you want them to still be crunchy.

Add a little bit of veggie broth at the bottom of that pan. You want to, if you want, you can spray the pan with some avocado spray at the bottom, but you don't need to use oil because all vegetables, all of them have essential oils. Vegetables actually have their own essential oil and you can sing that out with a little bit of water, a little bit of veggie broth in the very beginning when you're braising them, then you add your spices, mix them up put the top on, take it off after about 10 minutes.

They're getting softer. So they're going to be a little easier to digest, but you don't want to kill them and make them completely brown. A lot of people when they steam their broccoli, they steam it to death and you don't want to do that. You still want it to be crunchy. You still want that structured water to be in place, but you want it to be soft enough to where it's going to be easy to digest.

So your digestive system doesn't have to do so much work. Okay. And when you have this dietary conglomeration and you're using a variety of spices, then you can have your quinoa on the side, right? Because ultimately what you're going to create is this broth, right? With the spices and the natural flavor, natural juices that flow from the vegetables, you create a broth.

And so when you have your quinoa or your brown rice on the side, you can. You can pour those vegetables over that. And then you have this amazing complete protein dish, right? Because one thing, when you mix your vegetables, you develop a complete protein, right? A lot of people think, Oh man, I can't go vegan.

I can't go vegetarian because I'm going to have a complete protein. That's not true. That's false information, right? All vegetables have amino acid chains. And when you mix the brain bowl. That's a complete protein, but even still, if you put it over some quinoa, you have even more of a complete protein. So don't allow that fear of, Oh, I'm not getting my protein.

The idea is to just get curious with your spices, get curious with your vegetables and begin to braise them. And you can do the same thing when you broil your vegetables or when you when you roast your vegetables in a pan in the oven,

right? How do you roast them with no oils? I'm curious.

One thing I like to use there's so many different ways you can do it without oil.

Cause a lot of people are like, wait a minute, I got to get the oil in one of those. So I didn't hear about coconut milk, right? Mixed. I like to mix coconut milk and vegetable broth together with, and that'll you want to fill up the bottom of the pan only. So that way you're not just boiling your vegetables in the oven.

But this is going to add to the flavoring, because you're going to have all these spices right while they're in the oven. And all these juices that are going to be flowing from the vegetables and so they're going to mix with that veggie broth or that coconut oil or that coconut milk right into where it's literally you're creating your own curry.

And you just use that to flavor the whole process and you still maintain the flavor of the vegetable themselves, because remember where we're roasting not to kill, but to cook. In a way that the vegetables are still slightly crunchy, slightly juicy, and they have this broth, right? So I suggest without using any oils, because one reason why you don't want to cook oil, because when you cook oil, it turns it into a carcinogen, right?

Actually, you actually create this free radical that flows through the air and flows through the food. So you can literally be. Getting that free radical down your lungs because it's

all oils or is it just like vegetable oils and canola oils?

I'm just a, I'm just a firm believer in you don't heat any oil.

I don't really

even animal fats like butter and bacon grease and things like that. Yeah,

I honestly, we really, the thing is that we really don't need it. It's really unnecessary. It's really about if it's just the flavoring thing. One thing my wife likes to use is she likes to use some of the vegan butter substitutes to, to make to use as a flavor enhancer.

You can use that. But in general, people who are. More susceptible to type 2 diabetes. It's very important that you don't use oil or cook with oil because it is the oil that is going to block your usage of your own insulin, right? It's the bad fats because when you cook oil and you roast oil, you actually turn it into a bad fat because you free radicalize it.

With the heat. And some people say, Oh, you can use this oil. You can use it's no I'm not, I just, and and I realized, once I started using coconut milk. A little bit and veggie realize I don't even have to use this. I don't even have to use regular oil because coconut milk is fine.

The veggie broth is fine. Even just using veggie broth without the coconut milk is fine. Perfect. Where do you

get a coconut milk? That's not loaded with sugar.

No, no coconut like Thai coconut milk in a can. That doesn't have any sugar. Yeah, that's just straight from a coconut.

Absolutely. What's the difference between coconut milk and coconut water?

Coconut water is like when you cut open a coconut and you pour that water in there. That's the coconut water. That's directly. Unprocessed bam, but the coconut milk, this is coming from the flesh of the coconut themselves when they pound that coconut flesh, they create the coconut milk.

And I think this is also other aspects of the plant too. But yeah, coconut milk is simply, it's predominantly coconut fat, predominantly. But it's it's very alkaline and it's it's just a wonderful way to to make sauces, healthy way to make sauces. And I really feel like a lot of these oils for me, I feel like.

Like for instance, olive oil is fine, but if you think about a cup of olive oil is probably about 200 olives. So when you think about it, would you eat 200 olives in one setting? Probably not, and my thing is if you want to use that oil, I always suggest to my clients. You can sprinkle some oil on your vegetables after they're done.

If you want to enhance and make it a little less, watery or quote unquote dry, you can sprinkle on the oil after, because your vegetables are still going to be hot. This way, you're not cooking the oil. You're not cooking it because when you cook it, like I said, nine times out of 10, you're free radicalizing that oil and that free radical that's a carcinogen.

And then that begins to create complications in your lungs, and it can also get implanted in the food to unfortunately. Interesting.

Coconut milk versus coconut water is, the coconut water, excuse me, the coconut milk has some of that fat content. So we get the same contents that's in the oil, the beneficial contents that are in oil.

But then like how do we, how do I phrase this? How do we make it like a flavor that we love? If you're wanting that, whatever you can manipulate the textures with the way that you cook it. But how do we manipulate flavors other than maybe spices? Is it? Does the flavor of the food change or the texture of the food, the way it's in, the way you taste it and eat it, does it change based on how we grow it or how we produce it, where we get it from, or how can you

manipulate that?

I think... The best way to like, for instance even this idea of trying to manipulate vegetables and the way they taste into something that you want to taste. I think a lot of that is hearkening back to like me, or hearkening back to something that you've done in the past, I think that, like I said, if we honor vegetables for what they are, as they are, and then when we're cooking with them.

This idea of manipulating the vegetable to, to make it taste the way you quote unquote wanted to taste doesn't necessarily have to seep into. Your intention, your culinary intention, I think if you want to create, you can actually create something completely new, which is why I put my recipes in like the braising, the no oil braising vegetables and the no oil roasting vegetables.

The reason why I put my recipes in there as recipe templates. Now you might say what is a recipe template, it's like under each. Aspect of the recipe, there are options, so you can choose. There's seven to nine different types of vegetables that you can choose from.

And you can maybe pick for here and for from here or whatever. There are different layers of the recipe. And I tell you, choose two or three of this under the recipe, under the list of ingredients. And so you literally can create. Something brand new that's never been created when you create your own version of braised vegetables, no oil, braised vegetables, your own version of no oil roasting vegetables right within that recipe template.

And then you begin to say, okay, wow, I created something completely different. And you don't have to base it off of something that you've had prior. It can just be something completely new. And so ideally roasting, I think. will enhance the flavor of vegetables because that juice comes out slower and natural in that type of heat.

And I think braising, we're teasing these flavors to come out, we're cooking without killing. And then When you intentionally add the spices and maybe add a little veggie broth, add a little coconut milk and maybe sprinkle a little oil on after it could be something that you've never created before and something that will create a give give you some different room for your palate to grow, and ideally I think spices are key using spices.

If you really want to take your culinary. Experience to a different level spices is really one amazing way to do that. And spices are a great way to diversify your gut microbiome too.

Brilliant. All right. You guys, we're going to wrap up with one last question here and then we'll open the room for Q and a.

So those of you that are here on Facebook, go ahead and type in the comments. Those are those of you that are here live on this call, go ahead and type in the chat here. And if you're catching this on the replay or any other way, please know that you can join us live. And get your questions answered in person here.

Go to Win-win Women tv or you can just join. We're all over the place. Anywhere that you can find at Susie b Habits, you can find the links to join this show. I love this information to say, I just saw you guys, I told you this would be a unique perspective. I told you it would be something new, something different.

And one last question that I wanna ask you, because this is, I don't know, it's a very cool and interesting thing that you teach about is how do vegetables. affect chronic disease? How can we heal our bodies from chronic disease? Things that, you know, things like Crohn's disease or colitis or even cancer you've mentioned, how can vegetables help heal or prevent chronic disease?

That's a wonderful question. Vegetables are, for one, high in dietary fiber, right? This is key, right? Dietary fiber is going to get in there and it, all vegetables are prebiotic by nature. So we think about probiotics. These are the fermented foods like the kimchi, like the apple cider vinegar but prebiotic is basically all fruits and vegetables.

And so this is going to feed your gut bugs and support the diversification. Of your gut microbiome, right? Automatically as well, right? And so the prebiotic foods are just as important as probiotic food, right? And the majority of our food that we eat in, in terms of, being a whole food plant based vegan.

is prebiotic, right? And so you're really, when you have this dietary fiber that is supporting your gut microbiome, this is going to do wonders. If you can eat the rainbow of your vegetables, then what you're doing is you are not only diversifying your gut microbiome, you are going to increase the genetic Expression.

You're going to raise the level of how your genes express in real time. All your microbes in your body actually are assigned to the cells of your organ systems. So DNA. Now you can't change your DNA, but you can change the way your genes express. We have all of the healing, the unhealed energy in our genes.

We have amazing genes, but depending upon how they're being expressed. So this is where you get into epigenetics. Being. We are epigenetic by nature, right? Human beings. This means that the environment is affecting the expression of your genes, right? So your life is not predetermined by your inheritance.

So ultimately, if one of the environments that you affect your genes by is food, right? The nutrition environment you give your genes to express is huge. You can either down regulate your genes or you can up regulate your genes. Depending on the type of food you eat, you can give them directions to level up when you eat whole food, you can give them directions to level down when you eat ultra processed junk food, or if you're just sticking to a completely carnivore diet.

Things that event that immediately produce inflammation. And studies have shown. Is so much science around how genes are affected by whole vegetables and fruits, right? And so that's huge because this is where you get into producing anti cancerous aspects of our genetic expression. And a lot of this is done by diversifying your gut microbiome, because the gut is not just connected to your brain, but it's also connected to your genetic expression, which is key. And by nature fruits and vegetables are epigenetic by nature and our genes are epi epigenetic meaning that the environment that we put our genes in, whether it be how we think how we move right exercise.

How we breathe doing breath work and how we eat. If you can level up all of that then you can literally shift how your genes are expressing and you can reverse chronic illness, you can reverse allergies, you can really help. Decrease your risk of getting any type of cancer. And you can eventually cure yourself of so many different things, right?

Because when you're not producing the inflammation, then your immune system starts to work for you and not against you.

That's beautiful. Your immune system will work for you and not against you when you've fueled it with the right stuff. That's incredible. What a powerful ability to be able to do that for yourself.

So I'm going to ask this in the Q and a, but For those of us that already have, something going on that causes it to be painful when we're digesting or specific kind of vegetables or, nightshades, things like that just cause us to already have that issue. Is that something that.

If we put this in small amounts and then add more as we go, move up into making this a consistent thing, start small, just a little bit at a time, like a vaccination or something where you just get a little bit of exposure here, a little bit exposure there, then you can move into consistency.

Is that something that down the road, our body can adjust to and be able to fix that? Or is that something that we're like, all right, these are not going to be able to weigh the way that we can consume vegetables. We have to find a different way.

I think, it's wonderful to bring in vegetables, slowly, but surely, slowly, but surely.

But I think it's also about elimination. What are you going to eliminate from your diet? Because a lot of times it's the combination of introduction and it's the combination of. Elimination when you eliminate dairy, for instance, right? When you eliminate dairy, then you eliminate a key component that automatically causes inflammation and also negatively manipulate your hypothalamus.

Dairy cheese has casein. Casein elicits the same neurotransmitters. As heroin. This is why people cannot get off a cheese, right? So when you begin to take that out and you begin to add in more vegetables, more fruits, maybe a cashew cheese, right? Then you begin to see things change. You begin to feel like, wow, you can, you could be going through some withdrawal symptoms as well.

But I think. A lot of our health is not just about what we eat. It's about what we don't eat as well. So if you're trying to incorporate more plants into your life, that's a beautiful thing. Keep adding those leafy greens. You can juice them. You can braise them. You can roast them, right? You can make smoothies.

I like to add greens to my, all of my smoothies because greens are neutral, right? But you also want to make sure you are eliminating the processed foods, the foods that have processed sugar and meat are the number one resources for cancer cells. I'm just going to be completely honest, right?

If you are continuing to bring in the animal products and the bad cholesterol, and you're continuing to bring in. The vegan cookies, the vegan donuts, just because it's vegan, doesn't make it healthy. There are some vegan diabetics out there right now, probably listening to this going.

He's completely right. Absolutely. Because it's the truth, right? Sugar, processed sugar is a drug. They took it, they isolated it out of the sugar cane. And when you isolate anything, it literally becomes a drug, right? Because you're not supposed to be eating it outside of the fiber, right?

Outside of the minerals that go along with that sugar cane. Yes, there are minerals in sugar cane that alkalinize your sugar experience when you eat the sugar cane. So you're not spiking your blood sugar like crazy, right? White sugar is literally. Processed sugar is a drug. And so when you eliminate while you're, while you integrate new foods and slowly, but surely right within my book, plant based one on one whole food, whole you, I have nine practices that support you.

For your time in the morning for, for your lunchtime, your dinnertime and for how you want to end the day. And so nine different practices that support that whole, your whole day. And it's all whole food plant based. So a lot of times you just need a go to practice. So you don't have to be thinking like, what am I going to eat tonight?

What's going to happen? What am I, if you can just tap into these practices. That all are built around recipe templates, then you can literally create your own menu and protect your, you can begin to integrate this stuff on a daily basis. The more you do something every day, then the more your body is going to make that adjustment.

And starting slow is smart, starting slow is smart, but you want to be consistent. You want to, you don't want to make, okay, I'll eat vegetables on the weekend. No, you don't want to do that. You want to eat vegetables every single day and continuously incorporated in a variety of ways and in a variety of types.

Amazing.

Oh, I love that. Did you guys hear the consistency bomb that he just dropped there? That's what I'm all about. All right, you guys, if you're catching this on the replay, know that you can join us live. If you're here live, let's go ahead and open up the room for question answer. Thanks everybody for joining us.

Thank you to sound for your brilliant genius. Tell us one more time where we can find

your book. Okay. You can find my book. If you go to Instagram, I'm one of those people on Instagram. You can go to, iamtoussaintstewart. That's my Instagram handle and you can click on the link in the bio.

That's my link tree and then you can just go ahead and click on plant. You can scroll down and go to plant based 1 on 1 whole food whole you. It's an ebook at 74 page whole food plant based manifesto. It's also an audio book too. So you can get the audio book. Yeah. And the ebook version as well. And yeah, it's got a bunch of things in their recipes.

Whole food, plant based guidance so much, so many things. And it's not your typical cookbook. I'm going to tell you that it's literally a lifestyle book. But I encourage you to get it if you're looking to make a transition or just to incorporate more plants into your life.

Amazing. Beautiful. Guys. Okay. Go check him out on Instagram. I'm looking at it right now. And there's a good, there's a bunch of good stuff in here. There's, I love the title of this. You've got a masterclass called in gut. We trust.

I love it. We trust. Absolutely. Oh, this

is genius. Okay. You guys go check him out.

If you need more ideas, you need more ideas. I love the concept of recipe templates. I'm not a plant, a fan of meal plans because if there's something in there, you don't like, you're not going to do it. But as a recipe templates, you can personalize all of, how a big fan I am of personalizing.

So let's make this happen. Go check it out. It was plant based 101 whole food, whole you. I'm so excited about this book. It's going to be awesome. Okay. You guys, thanks so much for being here. To those of you that are on the call, go ahead and stay here and we can answer some questions in just a moment. I'm Suzi B and I'll see you next time on Habits Humor.