Whenever things get busier in my world, it takes a little extra effort to maintain a healthy diet. I’m sure it’s the same for most of you, as well. It can be challenging to eat healthy plant-based when our schedules fill up and we spend less time at home, but there are ways to make it work. For this month, I thought I would share what I try to do to simplify a relatively healthy, plant-based diet on a busy schedule.

Now that we’ve started this brand new year, we get a clean slate! Many people out there are still feeling the effects of 2020 but I hope this year is a new beginning for us all with better things ahead. I also hope this will be your healthiest year yet. At the end of each year, I try to take time to reflect and set intentions for what I hope to achieve in the upcoming year. One significant, health-related goal on my list this year is to find out how I can get better sleep.

We have finally made it to the end of 2020. It has been a pretty difficult year and most of us have been through a lot of challenging stuff. Most people are just trying to maintain a positive outlook right now and do the best we can to ride this out. After the year we’ve had, I think that is good enough. For December, I have a few suggestions for incorporating healthy habits into the holidays. My hope is that we remember to do our best to take care of ourselves, but most importantly we enjoy the many great things about the season and stay hopeful for better things to come in 2021.

Welcome back, VegMichigan friends! I can’t believe it’s November already and the holiday season is right around the corner! In November, we also see the start of the cold, dark, long, wintery months. Ugh. All around us, our animal friends are instinctively busy preparing to endure the upcoming season. This poses an interesting question for humans: should we also be doing something to prepare ourselves for winter? Let’s discuss why bracing for winter is so important.

Hey, VegMichigan friends! I hope you are all doing well and enjoying the warm Fall days and our beautiful Michigan scenery. Warm days in October always feel like a gift from nature. I hope you enjoyed last month’s post about “The Blue Zones”. This month, I want to talk about mental health.

This month, I wanted to write about some health and wellness specifics that are super important. Recently, I re-read the book The Blue Zones by Dan Buettner, and I want to use some principles from his book to guide us through this post. Dan spent years doing research on five areas around the world where people are known to live exceptionally long, healthy lives. He discovered nine common patterns that we will begin to discuss throughout this post.

Hey, veg-friends! I’m Dr. Jamie and I’m super excited to be able to have this new place to contribute some inspiring, motivating, and educational content every month for VegMichigan supporters. I thought I would use this first month to introduce myself and write a bit about my personal mission.