The Plant-Based Solution
A vegan diet helped Donna Pease with her diabetes problem.
Written by Vera Tweed
For Donna Pease, a vegan diet held the key to good health.
After being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2002, Donna Pease received the following advice from a neighbor who suffered from the same condition: “Just eat anything you want, and take insulin and pills.” Fortunately, Donna disagreed and chose to take charge of her health; today, she and her husband are enjoying a healthy and fulfilling life. The neighbor, who was two years younger than Donna, died a year ago.
“If diabetics will exercise and eat right, that’s mostly what they need,” says Donna, now 70. For her, regularly walking, and exercising on a stationary bicycle and other home exercise equipment are effective forms of exercise. And “eating right” turned out to be a vegan diet, consisting solely of plant-based foods, without any type of meat or dairy products. Her doctor initially viewed this approach with a great deal of skepticism, asking, “What are you going to eat, twigs and grass?”
As Donna, who is 5’ 3”, dropped from 189 to 139 lb, her blood sugar quickly fell into a healthy range and that attitude changed. “My doctor got excited,” recalls Donna. “She started telling all her diabetic patients that they could handle their condition with a good vegetarian diet.”
Meat had never been one of Donna’s favorite foods, but her family liked it. While raising her children, she tried cooking vegan meals for herself and traditional ones for the rest of the family, but the process became tedious and she eventually gave up her own preferred way of eating. After discovering she had diabetes, she initially believed that meat and dairy were a necessary part of a healthy diet, until she attended a diabetes education class at a local hospital in Florence, Ore. There she learned that a plant-based diet could be very beneficial.
“When I was given free reign to be vegan, I was so excited about it,” she says. Her husband, Dan, who likes meat, accompanied her to the diabetes classes, and to support her, volunteered to eat whatever she cooked. Donna then attended some vegan cooking classes and discovered her favorite cookbook, Weimar Institute’s NEWSTART Lifestyle Cookbook (Thomas Nelson, 1997), which is a classic on the subject. And Dan loves her cooking, although he eats eggs and dairy products as well as plant foods (a vegetarian rather than vegan way of eating).
“I don’t like to cook, but I did it anyway,” says Donna. “And there are prepared foods now in stores.” Meatless sausages, burgers, hot dogs and faux-chicken patties are among the couple’s staples, along with plenty of vegetables, beans, nuts and whole grains, such as old-fashioned oatmeal for breakfast. Treats are fruit and nut butter, or a smoothie made with soymilk and fruit.
And Dan, who effortlessly dropped 18 lb after switching to a vegetarian diet, is enjoying his meals. “He is really amazed at how good the food is,” notes Donna.
For more information about reversing diabetes with the Weimar Institute’s NEWSTART Lifestyle Program, visit ReversingDiabetes.org.
| Take 87% off Mayo Calories Classic store-bought mayonnaise has a high calorie load—approximately 180 calories in 2 tablespoons. Try this 24-calorie version, or buy a ready-made vegetarian mayonnaise that is naturally low in calories. Click for recipe |
