Flirting with Veganism: How to Glow from the Inside Out with Jenny Cheifetz, The Flirty Vegan

What if eating plants could transform not just your body, but your life? In this conversation, I’m joined by Jenny Cheifetz, vegan lifestyle coach and host of The Flirty Vegan Podcast, to explore the empowering and compassionate world of plant-based living.

Jenny shares her insights on making veganism simple and sustainable, finding your “why,” and cultivating a lifestyle that helps you look and feel radiant from the inside out. Whether you’re curious about veganism or ready to make the leap, this episode is packed with inspiration, tips, and soulful wisdom to support your journey toward health, joy, and alignment.

Jenny Cheifetz is a vegan lifestyle coach and educator at The Flirty Vegan. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband, two children, and two dogs.

She supports women who are flirting with veganism and vegetarianism through plant-based nutrition and lifestyle modifications. Guiding clients to look and feel better than ever is the foundation of her work. She helps them maximize their health potential, reduce risk of disease, and glow from the inside out, all while minimizing harm to the environment and honoring animals. 

Jenny enthusiastically shows that we can thrive on plants. She shares science, recipes, simple swaps, and support so clients feel excited and encouraged to make lasting changes. 

In addition to coaching and facilitating workshops, Jenny leads a community on Facebook, and is the host of The Flirty Vegan podcast that showcases stories of inspiring vegans living with purpose. 

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Transcript

  welcome back to Worthy In Abundant. I'm so glad you're here. I never take it for granted that you're here listening to the podcast. Today I have a special guest. She's a friend of mine. She's an amazing soul. Her name is Jenny Schitz.

She is a vegan lifestyle coach and educator at the Flirty Vegan. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband and two children and two dogs. She supports women who are flirting with veganism and vegetarianism. Through plant-based nutrition and lifestyle modifications, and I personally have been flirting for quite some time.

She is guiding clients to look and feel better than ever. That is the foundation of her work. She helps them maximize their health potential, reduce risk of disease, and glow from the inside out, all while minimizing harm to the environment and honoring animals. Our precious, beautiful animals, Jenny enthusiastically shows that we can thrive on plants.

She shares science recipes, simple swaps and support so clients feel excited and encouraged to make lasting changes. In addition to coaching and facilitating workshops, Jenny leads a community on Facebook and is the host of the Flirty Vegan Podcast that showcases stories of inspiring vegans living with purpose.

I am so excited to bring you on. Jenny. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me, Linda. It's such a joy to be here. Yes. And we had a conversation not long ago where you gave me some tips and tricks around becoming more plant-based and I just loved our conversation. We talked for almost two hours, I feel like.

So this is gonna be super fun 'cause we love each other's energy. Jenny, I love the name Flirty Vegan. Can you share what inspired the name and how your journey into veganism began? Yeah. Wow. Okay. That's a big one. The name is fun. I was I have a really good friend who is not vegan but she is just really supportive and acts like my business coach, even though that's not her profession.

But we riff off each other and I had said, I really just wanna lean into. The vegan values, and this is where my heart has been since the beginning of my podcasting journey. And I didn't wanna have a vegan podcast when I first started a show. I thought it was too niche, too limiting. So I didn't I set aside the burning desire and not forced myself into another show, but just pivoted away from this.

And when I told her, this was really weighing on me, like this was the, I don't wanna say be passion. Yeah. This was the dream that needed to emerge. And she said, oh, we're just, I don't really, we're bouncing idea, what do I call it? What I had a the, this sort of tagline, the look better, feel better, do better.

It is inspired by. That is, it may Angelou when we know better, we do better. And so I had said, do I do something like that? Even though something along that line was already taken in the podcasting world, I was gonna tweak it a little bit. And she said, yeah I hear that kind of a no better do, better show, but who are you talking to?

Or who do you wanna talk to? And I thought about that. Yeah. She said, 'cause if you're talking to me, who am I? I'm someone that's dancing around and like playing with plant-based ideas, but I'm not about to jump right in. I don't wanna get married. We're just dating. I'm just, flirting with it.

And she said, what do you think about something like that, like a flirty vegan? I'm like, oh my God, that's it. And we just, yeah, we just went gangbusters with it and started talking about logos and that is a adorable. Yeah. Was there a specific moment or experience that made you decide to fully go vegan?

Or share your journey with veganism? Yeah, everyone's got their own path into it and I would say from my conversations with potential clients and just vegan comrades, the majority seem to have a more piecemeal approach as opposed to me I'm in that I think, smaller category of dove in 100%.

As soon as I decided I saw a documentary like so many people. But interestingly, I saw one about the environment. So it wasn't about health, it wasn't about factory farming. It wasn't about cruelty to animals. It wasn't about, the animals and science. It was about the devastation of the planet and the fact that we have way fewer species of birds and lizards and things in rainforest because the Amazon is a fraction of what it used to be.

And I saw that, and there was a message in that documentary that said, this is because the planet is falling apart and becoming desolate of the species that we used to know because of the animal for food production industry. And it was more educational than just that statement because I had no idea.

I like so many. Food eaters could compartmentalize really well. Like I know I'm eating a Turkey sandwich, but I'm not thinking about the turkeys that I drive past. I live in New Hampshire. I drive past turkeys every day. Wild turkeys. I'm not thinking that equates to the kill beautiful boars head and Whole Foods sliced.

Fancy Turkey. Yeah. It's, it, it was a beautiful cognitive dissonance moment that, oh, I like the turkeys that I drive past. I would be horrified to go hunting or watch one get slaughtered. But yet I'm, that was a favorite meal of mine was a Turkey sandwich. So when I saw that video about the planet, just the miles in my, it's hard to even wrap our brain around the size.

Of space we're talking about, but the miles of land that are just chopped down, burned and raised for crops or just feedlots, the giant I, yeah, I'm not gonna use the word pasture but the giant open spaces for these. So how long ago was this that you went? That was almost five years ago.

Oh, okay. So I'm celebrating a five year anniversary soon. Oh, great. Tell us how you began. I think you had told me that did you start out vegetarian or did you go No. Vegan? No, no real. The message in this movie was the planet is being devastated. How to fix it is we need to stop eating animals. That was the message of the movie go Vegan today.

And so I, I remember sitting there saying. Okay I've never been much for activism. I'm not the type to hold up a sign and picket anything. Even if my favorite store was closing, I would not stand outside with a picket. It's not my thing. So what can I do? And I sat on my couch saying, I have no choice.

This is not about me and my love of m and ms and whatever boars head Turkey, this is much bigger than me. I do not have a choice in any of this is how I felt. I like that. What was the name of the documentary? It was wanna say, David Attenborough?

David Attenborough. David Attenborough is the botanist documentarian, and I think it's called My Life. People could find it on, I think I saw it on Netflix. But it was fascinating.

He went through the decades of his career, like a 60 year career as a filmmaker, environmental botanist, focused career. For each decade of his career. There were facts on the screen that said this many, this much of the world, this much of the, like the world's land is available for wildlife and how it kept getting smaller over the years.

Now there's so much land is used for meat production that there's like hardly any Amazon rainforest left and there's, and this many species of animals where there used to be this many species of birds, it's now this. And so all of that was just shocking to me that that the way we eat is. So selfish.

That's how it felt. Yeah. That how dare I want to ruin the planet. What's wrong with me? Ah, yeah. So what was like the first thing you just stopped eating meat and then Yeah. Yeah, I definitely felt conflicted because my fridge and freezer were full of animal-based products. And so I honestly, I feel like I blocked out that couple weeks period in my life.

I don't remember, I don't know if we threw it all out. I don't know if I just told my family, okay, you eat this. I can't, I don't remember if I gave it to people. I really don't remember. I think that it was a combination of all of that because as soon as I made that decision, I looked in my I had, we had a giant fridge, a giant freezer, and I looked at all of this bulk and said.

I just made a decision not to eat this, so I can't now make Right. A steak for dinner. This doesn't make sense. I knew one vegan, I knew one vegan in my community. We were not friends. I just knew who she was. I knew there was this lady in town. She was a spin instructor who was vegan, and I had a friend who was friends with her.

So I reached out to my friend and I said, can you get me her number? I wanna call her. And I called her and I said, I know we're not friends. You don't know me, but will you help me? I don't even know. I don't even know where to begin. Oh, that's so nice. That's great. Yeah. Yeah. I have a few vegan friends and they're all very interesting.

But yeah, and I've been vegan before and I call myself a flexitarian at the moment because yeah. But I prefer. To be plant-based. I love that. So let's see. So how did becoming a vegan influence your personal growth and your work as a coach? It's so interesting because when I look back to where I was five and a half years ago, so I, at the beginning of the pandemic, beginning of the pandemic, I started my, really started my personal growth journey.

It had started prior to that, but not really super intentionally. But I went all in working with a coach on issues that I have been dealing with for my whole life. And I am a believer that period of time when I started working with this coach, it was the beginning of the pandemic. And when I went vegan was right around Thanksgiving.

So there was a solid like six, seven months. Of my work, my deep dive, my like excavation, work of journaling and asking questions and meditating and getting in nature and really connecting with myself that I believe paved the way for me to even hear the message in that movie. 'cause I think if I had seen that documentary six years ago, 10 years ago, I think I would've watched it and said that sucks.

Damn planet's in trouble. Not my problem. I think I would've been less conscious. Less yeah. Feeling less responsible. I think because I had done all this work and a lot of the work that I had done with a coach was centered around food issues, disordered eating. So I think when I figured this out, it was like, oh my God, this is so compassionate for all parties.

I wanna help the planet. Then I got more aware of the factory farming, and it wasn't just about exotic birds in the Amazon, but it was actually like, yeah, the hard, the hardcore cruelty. And it wasn't even until much later that it was about my health, but I just saw this as such a compassionate approach to living because I had done all of this work on myself and understanding my relationships and my attachments and all of the messed upness those inner battles that it was like, oh, this is an answer to how I can feel better at peace Nice.

On a regular basis. Nice. Do you remember how that vegan  girl from the gym? Oh, yeah. Yeah. How she supported you and helped you in the beginning? Yeah. It, it wasn't even that. Exhausting of an experience with her. It was really one lengthy phone call where she broke down, it was like, because the standard questions, it's like, what are you eating a day?

What does a vegan eat besides romaine lettuce? What else could there possibly be? And so she definitely broke it down and said, you're probably eating a lot of things already, which is what I tell people, if you like spaghetti with marinara sauce and some vegetables that's vegan.

If you like bean tacos. Vegan, yeah. If you like oats and yeah, oatmeal bowl of cereal, pancakes can all be veganized. There's things that you can veganize, but things that are naturally vegan, like pasta, primavera that people don't equate. I'm eating vegan. And so she, she broke it down to me in this very lengthy phone call.

And then she just made herself available. I think I texted her a few times saying, wait, you said you make this breakfast thing with tofu. How do you do that? What is this thing called tofu scramble that I now can't imagine my life without? Yeah. But at the time it seems so foreign, like I might as well have been reading a cookbook in Vietnamese and trying to, cook with alien food.

Yeah. So you were a coach before you shifted into veganism. What inspired the transition and how has it changed your mission? Yeah, it's really funny. When I first got certified as a coach, I remember I actually started an Instagram that, I'm not gonna name it 'cause I don't want to confuse people, but it was a vegan focused.

Instagram account my very first, foray into this. And I remember telling my brother, and I love him dearly. He is a hunter, he is a meat eater. He, we're very opposite on the dietary spectrum. And I said, I think I wanna be a vegan coach. And he's no bad idea. I love you. But I think that's really limiting.

What if people come to you and wanna talk about their crappy dad or their terrible job, their bad marriage. Like now you can't talk to them because you are the vegan coach. Yeah. You're right. You're right. So I set it aside and said, let me just do general life coaching for women.

That's how I narrowed down, let's just do half the world's population instead of all of it. And then. As this year, I don't know if it was turning 50 and finally just saying, enough is enough. I need to be my authentic self that I keep telling other people they are allowed to be. This is my authentic self.

And if it narrows the world's population from 4 million women, 4 billion women to I don't know, 4,000 potential people, so be it. Yeah. Good. There are enough people out there. That's great. Good for you. When someone is flirting with veganism but aren't sure where to start, what's your best advice to make it feel fun and approachable?

Ooh. I would say get on a call with me, which I know is a hard step for people. They just want what's the easy answer, Jenny? Just how can I, okay. It depends on where you're at really. It depends on what's your hot button. For a lot of people, it might just be changing what you put in your coffee, but other pe because that might be a huge step for someone.

If someone is a diehard cream and sugar. Yeah. Then switching to an almond milk creamer or an oat creamer might sound like I've just suggested putting urine in your coffee. Yeah. But it, but that might also to someone else sound like too easy of a first step. Ah, I can do that. What else? Okay.

Yeah. That's why it really is individualized, but the first step is probably just asking yourself why, what, why? What's your why? What's motivating you to, why are you flirting with veganism? Or if it feels better to say plant-based living, what is your what's your reason? Because that will also dictate our conversation.

If it's for health, then we have a lot that we can do. If you're truly motivated to reduce your risk of heart disease or diabetes, then okay, the then our conversation's gonna be very based on nutrition. If you're motivated like I was to have less environmental impact or not harm animals, then I think that can be another entry point.

If you're feeling peer pressure from other people in your household or your community, that is gonna maybe present a slower entry, but. My goal is for people to go at the pace that feels comfortable and doable, because I don't want people to think of this as another diet. Maybe your motivation is to lose weight and that's great.

I support that. It is for a lot of people a beautiful way to lose weight. But if you approach it like a diet, when I did the Cabbage Soup diet, I knew that was temporary. You don't do the cabbage soup diet forever. That's like a week outta your life. So if you look at veganism as a diet. It's less likely to have the lasting impact.

Yeah, exactly. I have several questions for you but one is, what are some of the most common misconceptions about vegan living that you like to clear up for people? Oh, this is so fun. The biggest question in the world currently is protein. Yeah. Yeah. So the debate how does one get a protein?

And if anyone ever if any of your listeners have seen the movie, the Game Changers on Netflix, which is one of the best documentaries out there, every athlete in that movie says, I get my protein from the same place your animal protein got. Its protein. So we're taking out the middleman. So instead of eating the cow that ate.

Plants. I'm just eating the plants instead of eating the animal that ate. What made it so big and strong? The, not that we eat gorillas, But on that show elephants. Yeah. Weren't they eating the fake meats though? Like the impossible meat? I think there are a lot of people that do, and again, if that's someone's entry point, knowing that they can still have a burger that looks and smells and or not, maybe not smells, but looks and has the texture and that mouth feel of a beef burger, then great.

I was a huge fan of those faux products for a long time. But I also said to you, I wasn't focused on my health. It was completely external for me that the environment and the animals. Yeah. It wasn't until later that I said, okay, I'm consuming a lot of processed food, which I wanna. Reduce drastically. And oils like the things that make people, there's no argument that oil is a hundred percent fat.

I don't think anyone's gonna disagree with me on that One fact is a fact. And so whether you're getting your oil in the form of frying up your steak gums or in a faux cheese, either way it's oil. And I was doing good for the planet and animals, but not for my health. So that's where I tried to eliminate more of the, the replacement products. Yeah. Yeah. I bought some vegetable broth today and some muddy rice. And I was thinking about you, 'cause you taught me that you can cook in the vegetable broth or water. Yes. Frying that. Because I would eat coconut oil. I haven't, I know a lot of people that are dairy free and like dairy free, gluten-free or whatever.

So the dairy isn't a giant piece for some, but it's, it's the meat, it's the beliefs, it's the stories we say about our bodies requiring this protein and oh, I'm gonna get fat if I don't eat, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. This is what the, and my question. So I want you to address that.

And then I have, I wanna know if you if you recommend any supplements for people. And with Thanksgiving coming around the corner, I wanna talk about that and about, oh, that's all good. Yeah. When you're in environments, social things and Yeah. Which I will be. Yep. So I get it.

Yes. Yeah. So what, okay so the big myth of protein proteins everywhere. Protein is in nearly every I, there's very little that I would could I made a curry last week and I believe the can of coconut milk did not have protein. That was probably the only thing that did not have protein.

Everything else, every vegetable, all the grains, all the potatoes, all of that stuff has protein. And so all of that is adding up versus the one filet mignon, the one chicken breast. So there's a lot of ways to get protein. That is a conversation in and of itself. But I just would love for people to accept the fact that plants contain protein.

Yeah. And. The amount of protein that's being thrown around that people need to consume is marketing. It is not. And there are very few people out in your audience, my audience and the world, frankly, that are legit training to be Olympic weightlifters. There's, that's just a small community of people.

Even I won't out the person, but someone I know recently started lifting with a trainer and the trainer was adamant like, dude, you need more protein. You need more protein. And I said to this person, can I just go through some meal ideas? And some, the person is suggesting to you a, an equation that doesn't make sense metabolically and scientifically so people say it's something like 0.8 times your weight in kilograms.

Most people out there are in their brains making up a new equation, which is basically a gram one gram per weight in pounds. Per body weight in pounds. 150 pounds. You need 150 grams of protein. Correct. Which is, that is nonsense. Yeah, absolute. And frankly there's problems with too much protein.

I don't wanna I'm not a doctor and I don't wanna get into a whole bunch. So would you say it's about half of your weight that you would need? I think it's closer to a third. Okay. Just so if you weigh 150 pounds, 50 grams is probably one. Great. Okay. What people in this country don't, especially, I say this country predominantly in America, we have this issue with marketing and we're also only one of two countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical, direct to consumer advertising.

Okay. So we're inundated with. Information and messaging that is telling us we're doing everything wrong and not to listen to ourselves. What we have more troubling in this country than this nonsense of too little protein is too little fiber. That's what the problem is. No one needs to take Metamucil and citrus cell and these like cilium husk added supplement things mixed in water that people have to choke down.

That's not necessary. Plants. Yeah. Eat plants. And I'll tell you, when I was in omnivore, I had bathroom problems. I did need those solutions, those mix and water solutions, because when you're eating Canadian bacon, eggs, cheese, and deli Turkey. At every meal. There is no fiber in any of that. Yeah.

Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Oh, I know. I do know a plant-based coach that does promote protein, but she does like the soy, she does the the protein bars, the protein shakes, and not all the time, but she does talk about the older we get that we need all this protein, like to build muscle because muscle burns fat even at rest.

So she's a coach and a fitness trainer, yeah. But I know that some people, including myself, are very sensitive. My gut is sensitive to things like that, but I am doing it in moderation and I've, doing different things like that. But do you take any supplements?

Do you recommend any supplements? Yes. Okay. So the. It's funny 'cause the short answer to this one is there's really only a couple supplements that are necessary if people are getting their nutrition from their food. So I can't speak to what an an omnivore needs, chances are they need a, like when I was eating omnivore diet, I was hardly eating fruits and vegetables.

Maybe I'd have a salad. I was dieting, but it was a lot of, it was probably more leaning towards carnivore than omnivore. And when you're eating that, you are missing massive quantities of vitamins and minerals. So yeah, you do need a lot of supplements if you're eating a carnivore diet. But if you're eating a whole food plant-based, predominantly whole food less processed, yes, soy milk is processed, but that's way less processed than.

Chips and cookies, right? So if you're eating a predominantly whole food, plant-based varied diet, so not only having sweet potatoes all day long, but mixing it up, then there's way less you need in the supplement category. However, all people are probably needing I guess B12 is a tricky one because I do believe if you're eating meat you can get it from meat.

But most people are lacking in B12 no matter what they eat. So that's a good thing to get. And then depending on where you live in the world. D, vitamin D. Yeah, D is a good one. And I've gone down the rabbit hole on supplements things. There's a lot of good foods out there that are fortified.

All, most milk products, a lot of cereals, things are fortified. How, however, we don't know how long things have been on a supermarket shelf. We don't know how, the strength could be way less than originally intended. And just absorption is different from food to supplement it. It's just, it's a whole thing.

But it recommend those two. A lot of people will also talk about the fish oil. That's a huge debate. The fish oil, DHA, right? Again, it's cutting out the middleman, like where do fish get their nutrition from? Algae, seaweed, things that are in the ocean. So that's what we can do too. So you can get, if you wanted a fish oil type if dementia Alzheimer's runs in your family and you're keenly aware of that, you're hyper-focused on getting your omega threes, then get yourself an algae based supplement for that.

But I am not, I'm not totally convinced on that. If you just have some walnuts, have a, brazil not, yeah, I was trying to think of the green when I was dealing with my health condition in 11 and 12, I was taking some green tablets. They actually tasted amazing spirulina. Yeah. Something like that.

Something like that Helps detox the box. Yeah. Stuff. Yeah. It was like that. Yeah. I actually enjoyed those. I just, I know women, especially women over 50 who are taking handfuls of supplements. I don't think that's necessary. If you change your diet, I would prefer to get my nutrition from food. But there are people, look Linda, there's people who would rather take their Lipitor and keep having french fries and onion rings and fried calamari.

Than we're on different paths. And you do you. But I, geez. Again, I don't know if it was turning 50, but I had a massive awakening that I want to live as vibrantly in as little pain, little what do you call it? Needing as little assistance from Right. From Walker and devices and the things that I see people using.

I live in a neighborhood with a lot of elderly and everyone's got the walker, the rollator, and it's, yeah I would like to avoid that if I can. Yeah. How do you navigate social situations, family dinners, travel, eating out without feeling deprived or judged? Okay. I don't feel deprived.

That's something I typically don't experience because I love what I eat and I think that the options for. Within the plant, whole grain world are plentiful. So I don't feel deprived. What I feel is sometimes stressed out because not everywhere, not most places understand this. So I could very well be in a social situation or at a restaurant, and there is nothing.

There is nothing. And I'm giving a tutorial to the waiter, or can I please speak to the chef? Like I notice on the menu you have potatoes, rice, pasta, vegetables. Can you put all those on a plate for me? Like it's really, as my kids say, it's not that deep. Like it, why is this so earth shattering that I'm suggesting just a different arrangement of things that are already on your menu.

But unfortunately, I, it does feel like I'm speaking another language when I. Go out into the world beyond my house. Social situations depends on where I am, if I'm going to my, you probably have mastered it all because you've been doing it for five years. Not necessarily. Yeah. I was assume like the new person that's trying to be vegan, they're gonna have the yeah.

All of those. Thanksgiving and Turkey. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I'm going to a bat mitzvah soon. I asked my friend, the host, will there be anything vegan at this event? Not trying to be pushy. I just wanna know if I should bring some things eat before, so there's that going to Thanksgiving, I'm going to someone's house and it will be a traditional Thanksgiving.

I will bring things that I want to eat, and this is where the distinction between being health focused versus. Welfare oppression advocacy focused differ because if I was just focused on my health, I could probably withstand the event emotionally neutral. This, now I am. So I, I see harmed animals everywhere I look.

So keeping in mind that I will be at that point, five years into it, I have the emotional stamina to tell people I'm not sitting at the table. I shouldn't say, I haven't told the hosts yet, but I told my immediate family, don't give me a hard time. Have my back. Don't be a jerk to me.

Don't call me don't call me names. Don't give me a hard time for not wanting to sit at the table while everyone else is consuming animals that I'm trying to preserve. My own fam, my own nuclear family is on board with that. They don't eat vegan, but they're on board with me. But when I'm at a restaurant or when I'm navigating an airport or something, it's tricky.

It's tricky. But I also wanna be clear, there are so many things out there that people don't realize. Look, I gave blood the other day, and on the table afterwards, there's all the snacks, there's the little mini chips of Hoy, and there's the, the Cheez-Its and Goldfish. There's all the things. There was also mixed nuts.

Mixed nuts, or vegan. Yeah, so I, I got my post blood giving snack just like everybody else. It's fine. Like most situations or fruit? Yeah, fruit. Yeah. Most convenience stores. Most airports you can find stuff. It's, it just might be your favorite restaurant. If you're used to going to the local pizza joint, you might be outta luck.

Yeah. How does eating plant, now, I know the answer to this, but I wanna hear your answer. How does eating plant-based impact not just the body, but the mind and the spirit? Yeah. Yeah. It is so interesting. And unexpected. And I actually just interviewed someone from my podcast who wrote a phenomenal book.

I highly recommend it to anyone who is flirting with veganism. It's called The Vegan Transformation and written by a psychotherapist, Angela Crawford. And what's amazing about that book is it really not that I'm telling your listeners they have to go read this book to get the answer but she interviewed hundreds of people and compiled responses in this book.

So things like, what was your transformation? What benefits have you reaped? They're so extensive. For myself, I feel more connected to the world. I feel like I see beauty. I'm looking out my window right here. I see beauty that I never saw before. I feel more connected with the living creatures on this planet.

I walk my dogs at a farm. There's a farm nearby me that has trails. They have animals. It's a working farm, and it was always fun to see the cows and the chickens and, the sheep running around. It was always fun. I've been doing it since I've lived, for almost 20 years. But now that I'm vegan, it's just so different.

It's maybe you can relate to this. When you became a mom, your connection to other babies and children changed. I imagine. I know for myself, I've always, I was always a fan of Law and Order Special Victims unit. I know. It's it's a heartbreaking show to watch, but it's gritty.

It's good. As soon as I became a mom. I would see child victims on that show and feel differently than I did before having children because there's this, all of a sudden, I feel like every child is my child when I'm watching that show. Yeah. That's how I feel about animals. I liked animals before cows and pigs.

They were fun before. Now I feel like they're all my responsibility and I'm connected to all of them, and I wanna save and love them all. S and not in love. Sometimes I am heartbroken. Sometimes I do have a hard time walking through the world and seeing, I was just shoe shopping. Yeah, go ahead.

I was shoe shopping today. I needed to get something for my daughter, and I'm like what isn't leather? I can't support buying leather. Can I find a manmade material here to use or a natural fiber? And it exists. It does it, it is readily available when we look for it. But sometimes I get sad when I see the leather shoe.

But then there's this other side that's so beautiful and connected and loving and compassionate. So I can walk through the world a better, kinder, nicer person. Except when I see, the big steak on someone's plate then I become nasty. No, I'm just kidding. Do you still use honey or your total?

Okay, that's a good, that's a good one. So up until recently, I, as a vegan was still able to compartmentalize. Honey from all the other animal products. Oh honey, what's the big deal? I did hear something recently about bees and just and what they do for the world and how we as honey consumers contribute to more devastation.

It was, I thought it was not a big deal the same way I previously thought, huh, eggs aren't a big deal. Milk isn't a big deal. So it's in that category of if yeah. And it's, when we love a certain food product, it's so much easier to stick our fingers in our ears and la, the universe.

And that works for a lot of people until it doesn't. I truly believe that. The pain the mental health crisis, the anger that so many people are walking around with. I believe I am not a scientist and this is very hard to scientifically prove, but I believe it is exacerbated by what people are eating.

Yeah, no, I agree. And if you're consuming death Yeah. Trauma, fear. Yeah, trauma. Exactly. The heart the heart wrenching pain of a mother cow being stripped of her baby. When you eat that, I do believe unknowingly it's within you. And again, this is where that it's easier not to know and not watch the movies, but you're still suffering.

You're suffering either on a health basis or you're having a compromised life. That, that I believe is due to what you're eating. Yeah. No, it's true. There was a guy I met at the gym a while back, and he told me that he went vegan for a while, and when he went back to eating meats, he noticed he was angrier, he was more aggressive, and he was in sales and he thought that he needed to eat meat to have his his dinner with but that is what I feel a lot of things when I consume animals. Yeah. And I it's so in. Yeah. Yeah. It's very interesting. Like I feel fear, lack, scarcity. I feel angry. I feel a lot of things and I don't feel it as much when I am, and I don't feel as connected to my dog, like you said, connected to, like life and seeing a flower.

Yeah. And loving that flower and being so aware versus like, when you're just consuming animals, like you just don't pay attention as much. It's weird. Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny that you brought that up about the anger because when I interviewed Angela Crawford, she told me she had just recently learned this, so she was excited to share it with me that there is a study.

That recently? No, it's it didn't recently come out. It recently came into her awareness. So this is not recent information, but people can look it up. Apparently there was a study done in a prison with giving some inmates the traditional prison diet and some, a plant-based diet. And the researchers and prison staff noticed that the people eating the plant-based diet were less problematic, less aggressive, less instigating, the hubbub at the prison.

I thought that was so interesting because it's all energy. It's all we're living in 99% energy slash spiritual. And so I love that you're awake in this way. I would love to hear you talk about helping women glow from the inside out. What are some of your favorite foods or rituals that support that glow?

Oh, thank you. Yes. I, and I like to be clear that as a vegan lifestyle coach, I say lifestyle because it's not just the food. As there are so many aspects to living a healthy, vibrant life. We need to move our bodies. We need proper sleep, we need to have stress reducing practices.

These all create a glow and a vibrancy and a and compassion that they all nurture each other. But we can't ignore the food because we all need to eat. And we do it multiple times a day, every single day. So some, gosh, woo, I love apples. I live in the northeast. I apple pick. I love apples. I love a lot of fruit.

I love the tropical imported stuff. I'm happy to, I know there's all, I try my best for it to be. It's so wealthy when I'm eating fruit like berries. I love fresh organic strawberries or Yes, blueberries. Yeah. It's so beautiful. It's so interesting how I think that's what we're really supposed to be eating, but Oh, for sure.

And it's it's fascinating when you cut out a lot of the processed, because remember I said I started off a junk food, vegan, having my foam meats, Oreos, non-dairy ice cream. So you're still getting a lot of sugar, a lot of processed ingredients. When you cut that out and then have a strawberry, it's like the earth cracked open, if you're eating a lot of candy and junk food and have strawberries, you're gonna feel like you need to put sugar on your strawberries because your palate is conditioned to a chemical level of sweetness. But when you get rid of that and then eat a mango or strawberries or cherries, you're like, what on earth is going on?

Where did this delicious food come from? I love that. I love, last night I had a purple sweet potato for dinner. I am it is interesting and maybe your listeners will be excited to hear this. When you eat predominantly whole food plant-based, it's very filling. So I used to think of myself as a big eater.

I would get the massive salad at the, at, the whole food salad bar. I'd have these massive plates of food probably because I mean salad that should have been filling me up with all that veggie and, but. What I eat now is very filling. So I eat a lot of potatoes. I love that. I love tofu. I freaking love tofu.

And I do think that's a magical soy, I think is a magical food that, again, marketing, bringing in that messed up marketing messages that women think it's dangerous. No, it is the exact opposite. Soy is protective. So if you're, and I know there's a small percentage of men that get breast cancer, so if anyone's worried about breast cancer, you should be having soy every day.

And there's so many different ways to get it. So I have multiple soy products a day, I love, quinoa and rice and potatoes. Did I know I said the sweet potatoes. All potatoes. I love all potatoes and nuts. Even things like nuts and seeds and it's, if I could just eat nuts and seeds and fruits and Right and feel.

Because I was telling you on our last call that I talked to a girl once, like a customer service person, and somehow we were talking about food and she said all she eats is nuts and seeds. That's, and she's like doing well. Like life's good, not, yeah. I mean they are higher in calories and fat, so there's that.

But dried fruit, that was something when I was dieting, I was told no, don't have dried fruit. Dried fruit's. Great. Oh yeah. Again, when you're eating whole food plant-based and you're filling up, like fiber is filling. So if you have a big bowl of rice, black beans, sweet potatoes, peppers, mushrooms, like if that's your lunch, that's very filling.

So now if you do decide to go have some dried fruit, you want some dried mango. I love dried mango. I love dried mango. Dates. Dates, nature's candy. I love you. Go to dates, you go have some of that. I promise you, you're not gorging yourself on it the way you would've if you had a Turkey sandwich. Like you are full.

So how much do you really like a couple dates? Yeah. Yeah. I was listening to a podcast the other day and she, I think she's a vegan. I'm pretty positive. Just from she's a health nutrition, everything, coach and author. And actually one of her books, she was on the Kathy Haller show, Kimberly Snyder.

Do you know her? Anyway, she's written a ton of books, but I actually have one of her freaking books here. It's called you Don't it's called you Are More Than You Think, or You Are, you're more than you think You Are. Okay. But she was talking about travel and she was saying like, hummus.

She was like, oh hummus. And she, how did I forget? Yeah. Nuts and make your own trail mix. And like really fun stuff like that. And she yeah, she was just saying how like you want to prepare because certain, but a lot of airports have good stuff. Yeah. The hummus and the little pretzel pack thing that's pretty much standard everywhere now.

Yeah. And trail mix. So I think people get caught up that something needs to be labeled vegan and that's where people think being vegan can require a lot of processed foods. And that's not the case. It's, yeah. Yeah. I mean you can have hummus and pita and falafel and there are plenty of salads at the pre-made salads at airports.

Even Chipotle, I will go, I'll go there from time to time. They have the sofrito like you can eat in familiar places. And feel very nourished. Yeah. I love that. That's great. This has been so much fun talking. What, let's see, so you shared some of your stuff. So what role does community play in supporting women as they explore vegan or plant-based lifestyle?

The dream would be for me to have a group program, a community where people can get that group support and that validation that other people are experiencing challenges, but also managing them. I'm not at that point right now. Yeah. So I. And people's community. I've struggled myself to find community because I live in a place where, like I told you, I knew the one spin instructor.

And I've since met one other vegan, so I know two, two vegans, but these aren't even close friends. So my close vegan friends are online. Yeah. It's a virtual, it's a virtual sense of community. Until I, until the world now there's vegan sites and you Yeah. The vegan rabbi and there's vegan meetups.

I've gone to some. Yeah. VegFest. Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting. And I talked to. People who say, their entire health transformed when they cut meat out of their diet. And like at one of the vegan meetups, and I also met a guy at this, we have a beautiful restaurant in downtown Sarasota called Ion's.

And it's all vegan and gluten-free, and it's all raw. And it's like art. Everything's delicious and it's all beautiful and she is so talented. But anyway, the one guy who worked there when I first came and he was telling me his whole story about how he had acne and how he had digestive and he had all kinds of issues.

And the doctors this, and the doctor's that, and nobody helped. When he went vegan, everything cleared his face, cleared his gut cleared his health issues. And he is like now, and he competes in bodybuilding. Wow. I think he does do some. Like supplements with the, the vegan proteins and stuff.

Yeah. But but yeah, he, was one of those that, and I just love hearing those kinds of stories. Because it's very interesting. Yeah. We are fed a lot of BS on, the, was it game Changers or one of, or the recent one that they did with the twins that Yeah. Yeah. On Netflix. They took twins and that's a good one.

Show. They were saying how we're, oh, got milk. Got milk. This like milk mustache that like who needs milk? Tell us who really needs dairy? Milk. A baby cup, right? Nobody wants, yeah. Who wants breast milk? The baby comes, gets it from you, but that's it, like nobody else. Do you wanna drink someone's breast milk? Like it's, when people think in those terms, like not only would you not wanna drink my breast milk. Now you're taking it from an entirely different species. Like this does not make sense when you think of it in a rational sense, right? Digest. No one, most people can't digest dairy.

It's very challenging. So right there is an indication, like if you are struggling to digest lactose or casin and then you go and take a pill, like a lactate, so you can have your lactate, you can have your cheese pizza. How about stop all of it. Like you don't need to take a pill to offset the damage done by a food that maybe you didn't need to have to begin with.

So again, I think that's goes to our society, that looks to quick fixes and pharmaceuticals and look, you mentioned the acne. Okay. Dairy and acne. That is common, commonly linked. But there are people who would rather have a medicine cabinet full of what do you, I don't even benzo peroxide and all salicylic acid and all these things to put on your blemishes.

Why not try a couple weeks without dairy? Just without dairy and see if you glow, see how your skin changes when you're not stuffing it with inflammation. So even if you don't care about animals, do you care about your appearance? Exactly. That's right. Yeah. And your digestion, right? Yeah. Yeah. Do you have a favorite go-to recipe that always wins people over?

Even the skeptics, I find I can't go wrong with chili, and if you can make an all bean chili. You can crumble up. Tempe. Oh yeah. You could, if you needed to, you could use the faux product, maybe even just a little of it. But you can do so many different things with a chili that make it hearty. And by hearty, I don't mean you leave feeling sluggish and bloated because you're eating plants.

So there's a way less chance of you feeling like you need to undo your pants when you've had a vegan meal. I, I'm, I do well with a chili. I like pumpkin chocolate chip pancakes. That's a crowd, please. Every time, because it's comfort food. So I have a great recipe for that on my website.

I also love, I love like chickpea curry type of meals. Again, I try not to overdo it with the coconut milk. Be, that's more of a splurge. Yeah. In the world of vegan eating, it's like you don't want handfuls of nuts but a little. So I'll when I do curries with coconut milk, those are very delicious.

Yeah. Those are, mine was like, date nut bites. Everybody loves the date nut bites and they're like, there's nothing in there. But oh I make a I got a recipe off of Pinterest. It's not healthy. It is not healthy word. It is not a whole food plant-based. Brownie. It is just plant-based, we'll call it.

It uses a lot of vegan butter a lot of white sugar. So it's processed, right? It's fatty, but it is a fudgy chocolate brownie that no one would ever know. Doesn't have traditional butter and eggs. There's so many good things out there. I've got so many vegans on Instagram's like the recipes.

I love love. Yeah. I just made apple crisp. I told you. I love apples. We go apple picking many times a season. I just made apple crisp and I, it's sitting in the oven right now and I cannot wait to go partake, especially when I know there's nothing bad about it. What's in it? What's in there? It's so I, let's see.

I sliced up the apples and mixed them with cinnamon coconut sugar. Lemon juice, like water. It became arrow root, like it became a thick kind of cinnamony. Gooey, yeah. Apple mixture. And then the topping is oats, coconut sugar, some oat flour. It does have a little oil, so it did call for a little oil, which I did use something like that years ago, like an apple crisp 'cause I have a gluten-free vegan recipe book and it was so delicious.

Yeah. Yeah. So it exactly, you don't need, there's no gluten in it, like use gluten-free oats and then make your own oat flour from the gluten-free oats. And there were some pecans in there too, and just tons of cinnamon and nutmeg. It's so autumn. Are you posting that on your social? I will, yeah.

Sweet. Yeah, I think I already did, actually. Yeah. Oh, nice. If a woman's listening today and feeling curious, but hesitant, what's one message you'd like her to take away from our conversation? Wow. I should have thought about this one ahead of time. It's all about compassion. It's about feeling more loving and genuine in the world. And so if there's any part of you that feels heavy burdened by, by life, this is a way to feel better. If, yeah, there, there's so many messages I could share, but I really just want people to feel better in the world.

Yeah. There's so much negativity, there's so much hatred and divisiveness and I feel like eating plants is such a beautiful approach to living. And so if you're feeling down, if life isn't as great as you want it to be. Go have a piece of fruit, see how you feel. That's Go have a cucumber's. Yeah. Yeah.

Fruit is the highest vibrational food you can consume. Yeah. Yeah. Go have people have told you bananas are bad. They're not. Go have a banana and enjoy your life. Enjoy and enjoy. Yes. Yes. And know that you're doing so much good for the world around you. I love that so much. So what's next for the Flirty Vegan?

What, ah, what do you have? Yeah. Workshop. Yep. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Let's see. The podcast is The Flirty Vegan, and I have so many beautiful guests coming on to share messages of veganism, but also empowerment and mission and they're just really uplifting. Stories. So even if you haven't bought into this whole vegan thing, it's very cool to hear what athletes or entrepreneurs, chefs are doing in the world.

While also caring about the environment and the animals. The business, I am focused on working one-on-one with people, so also the flirty vegan.com, the Flirty Vegan Podcast, the flirty Vegan on social, and I just wanna guide, I wanna be that supportive person that I had on the phone that one time she didn't she had a job, a real job, so she was not looking to devote all of her spare time to supporting me, which is why I wanna do this for other people, because I know how much it mattered to me to have support.

It's the Wild West out there and it's, we get a lot of confusing messages and. I can be that person to distill it and also myth bust. 'cause there's, yeah, there's just a lot of conflicting ideas out there. I love it. Thank you so much. Beautiful. Thank you for being here. I know I could continue talking. I have so much to say on this, so many questions.

But we'll let people find you and we'll put all your links in the show notes and I appreciate you sharing your mission and I love what you're doing. It's beautiful. I appreciate you, Linda. Thank you so much for this. You're so welcome.