Whole Food Plant Based Meals for Health Energy, Productivity and Success with Kathy Davis

In this episode I will have a detailed conversation with Kathy Davis, a plant-based lifestyle coach, founder of VegInspired, and the author of three cookbooks. Kathy shares her journey of adopting a whole-food plant-based lifestyle, losing 40 pounds, and experiencing a healthier mind and body. She talks about her coaching program that guides high achieving professionals to meet their personal and professional goals through plant-based diets. Kathy also busts common myths about plant-based diets, addresses the protein deficiency concern, and shares how she helps her clients remotely. Additionally, she emphasizes the role of meal planning in ensuring consistency in a plant-based diet and offers free resources for listeners.


Get your free meal plan at veginspired.com/podcast!

Transcript

Magic Barclay: 1:00

Welcome back to A Magical Life. I'm your host, Magic Barclay. Today, Kathy Davis from VegInspired joins us. Kathy is a plant based lifestyle and mindset coach, the CEO of VegInspired, and the author of three cookbooks, the 30 minute whole food plant based cookbook, the super easy, The plant based cookbook and the budget friendly plant based cookbook. Kathy empowers high achieving professionals to eat more plants and leverage the power of food to meet their personal and professional goals. She has been eating and creating vegan meals for more than eight years. Over the past two and a half years, she shifted her daily habits to follow a whole food plant based lifestyle. She experienced amazing results, including weight loss of 40 pounds, energy, a newfound sense of joy, and a healthier mind and body. Cathy's brand, Veg Inspired, is dedicated to providing high achieving professionals and entrepreneurs with the resources to make a similar transformation. She is eager to guide others on their journey so that they can make a more significant impact in the world. And here's a fun fact. Kathy and her husband, John, are living their plant based dream, while simultaneously traveling the United States in an RV with their cat. They've been to 27 states and 19 national parks so far, and have a goal to visit all the U. S. national parks. Welcome, Kathy!

Kathy Davis: 2:42

Thank you so much, so much for having me today, Magic!

Magic Barclay: 2:46

My pleasure now. Shout out. Who's the cat? What's their name?

Kathy Davis: 2:49

Eddie. Eddie is our little tuxedo cat and I wouldn't be surprised if now that I've started talking, he shows up, tries to create some havoc on my desk.

Magic Barclay: 3:00

I love it. Well, hello, Eddie. Wherever you are out there somewhere. Okay. Now, Kathy, I'm going to get straight into it because I'm really excited about the information that you can share with the listeners. So I ask a standard three questions and everyone gives me different answers and it's pretty amazing. So here's the first one. What can your expertise do to accelerate health, not just physical, but also emotional and spiritual health?

Kathy Davis: 3:30

Absolutely. So my expertise in living a plant based lifestyle and really the mindset required to make that transition accelerates people's wellness, helps them achieve, reduction in medications, weight loss, but also a growth spiritually that allows them to open up their life to more possibilities. And. You know, one of the beautiful things about working with clients and watching them grow and expand is really see them create awarenesses around how just changing the way they eat can open up new doors of Mobility, which opens up new hobbies and new entertainment for them. And I really, really thrive on the growth that my clients have in all aspects of health, as you define them.

Magic Barclay: 4:26

Fantastic. Now, just a little sidetrack here. We know that. Everything has a frequency and plants have a much higher frequency in our foods than animal products do. So what can that kind of thing do to maybe help people that are dealing with chronic illness?

Kathy Davis: 4:48

Oh, wow. There's so much power in, in plant centered eating just from, the frequency of eating these nourishing, fresh, I always tell my clients when I look at my plate and I have a combination of these raw plant foods and these cooked plant foods, there's just so much, the word spirituality is what comes to mind, but there's so much color. Vibrancy. And that really transitions into our body as we eat these foods. And I always say food greatly affects your mood. And when you look at these beautiful, colorful combination meals, there's just so much energy behind them. And it, it creates an energy within us that allows us to go after these personal and professional

Magic Barclay: 5:32

goals. Beautifully said. Now, our second standard question is around wealth. People think of wealth as just the financials, but it can also be personal and emotional wealth. So what are your top three tips to creating any wealth?

Kathy Davis: 5:48

my top three tips. come in the form of, you know, taking that step back. What in your life is important to you? Is it family? Is it relationships? Is it being outdoors? All of those experiences create our wealth. Our health creates our wealth. If when we're healthy, we can do more things. We can enjoy the pieces of our life. You know, if you, if you see wealth only as the financial piece, but you're really unhealthy, you can't step into it enjoying the financial piece because you, you don't have the, you're not physically able. I really look at. You know, eating is close to nature intended as one tip, slowing down to look at what really brings you joy in life. What are those things that, when you're feeling down, that is something you can turn to, to kind of bring you back up, to raise that energy again. That would be number two. And number three, it goes back to the basics, drink more water. You know, a lot of times I think. When we're dried up and not hydrated enough, we lose that well being feeling that wealth feeling. And so just by adding in some water and some hydration, it gives us this new sense of vibrancy and energy. And our

Magic Barclay: 7:09

final question, Kathy, is around weight loss. You mentioned that you had managed to drop weight on a plant based lifestyle. So How exactly did you approach that and what can you offer the listeners who might be on their weight loss journey?

Kathy Davis: 7:26

This is a loaded question. It's one of the biggest shifts that I had to make in. And probably my whole life and I remember it thoroughly to this day. I was so excited. I was adapting this whole food plant based lifestyle. I was all in made the meal plan. My husband and I went to the grocery store. We bought all these amazing whole plant foods. We were all in. We were, I was on it and It was December 31st, 2019, when we decided to eat for weight loss. And I'm using these words very specifically for this story. went to the grocery store, we bought all the groceries. We're driving home. We haven't even made the first meal on our meal plan. And I said to my husband in the truck, I don't know if I can do this. I don't want to be on a diet. Maybe this is a bad idea. I don't, I don't think it's a good idea. And he said something to me, and this is what I want the listeners to take away. He said, what if you didn't treat it as a diet and you simply focused on adopting healthy habits day in and day out. We focused on making whole food, plant based eating our daily habit and didn't focus on a diet and that mindset shift, which took me a very long time to put into practice. Those words changed the outcome because I had dieted my whole life. I had yo yoed, I had measured, I had counted calories, I had done all the things. But when the shift was from restrictive dieting to intentional habits, the game changed. And I actually teach the philosophy of intention over perfection. And when I approach that with my clients, and even my community members, sometimes I get some flack. Like, they'll say things such as Well, if I'm not perfect, I might not get the results, or if I'm not, if I don't do it perfectly, I might, it might not happen as fast. And my response is always, if you don't do it perfectly, it can be your life. This is the lifestyle that we want to live. I want to wake up every day and know that I'm eating as close to nature intended, intentionally. And yes, if I want a vegan veggie burger and vegan fries, I can eat those too, but that's not a daily habit. And so I really lean into that mindset shift of eating specifically for weight loss versus adopting daily habits that align with your goals. And when you shift the focus, weight loss might only be one goal. I work with clients who want to get off medication. I work with clients who want to. feel healthier. They want to have mobility in their life. They want to reduce pain, reduce inflammation, increase energy. So if you're only eating for one focus and you're only looking at one part of the metric, we're missing all the other benefits of plant based eating. And there are so many. The bio doesn't say, you know, we didn't mention that I reduced the markers for prediabetes or that I increased my energy or any of the other markers that are really, really important and significant to living a and well lifestyle. And so that shift in thinking. Truly is a game changer, and it's hard. It takes work to shift the way your mind thinks. We have years of programming of diet culture and restriction, and people will say, but plant based eating seems so restrictive. And I say, if that's how you see it, but I see it as this amazing abundance of thousands of plant foods that we can turn into all sorts of things. It's not, I don't look at what I'm quote unquote giving up. I look at what I'm adding and the abundance of vegetables and fruits and whole grains and beans and recipes and spices and herbs and vinegars and all that deliciousness. that can turn into these amazing, colorful and vibrant meals.

Magic Barclay: 11:41

Beautiful. Now, let's get into VegInspired. How do you help your clients? Like, you're traveling around in an RV. Are you working remotely or do you go to them? Tell us all

Kathy Davis: 11:55

about it. Absolutely. We host video calls. Everything's done remotely. Video calls, voice memos. Zoom calls, live streams, I'm, it's a very high touch accountability program with me. I truly believe in guiding through the transformation, being there to celebrate all the wins, cheer them on, and then also being there and believing in them so that they can borrow my belief and run with that when they need to pick me up. So I'm, it's a very high touch, high accountability program that gets results. And our goal and measurement is really on looking at are you making plant based eating a way of life, fitting it into your life, fitting it into your busy schedule, fitting it into the parameters that you have. Maybe you have allergies that we require some workarounds with some of the plant based recipes. Maybe you have an environment Where some of the people in your house are eating plant based with you and others are not. So how can we fit your desired way of eating because you're eating for those goals and creating this lifestyle and these healthy habits around the goals that you have? How can we fit that into your life? Maybe you work nights, and so how can we fit that into the way that you're living? And we, we look at all factors, and we meet our clients where they are, and take them through this journey of adding more plants and eating more plants. So that they can become, you know, plant centered or plant focused eaters. Some may not even want to go fully plant based and that's very unique for a vegan coach or a person to coach people who aren't ready to make that full transition. But in my experience and in my own personal journey, it took me over six months to get to the point where I was ready. To make this transition eight years ago from the standard American diet to, you know, an animal product free diet or a vegan diet. And so I know everybody's journey is different and in, in the academy and through VegInspired, we want to make sure that it's very inclusive, very safe for people to be able to run all in towards their goals and really start to see results.

Magic Barclay: 14:12

I think that's a really important distinction to share with the listeners. I was vegan. I'm not now. I am majority of my diet is plant, but what I found in the support groups and the chat groups and things like that to keep you going, people can be quite vicious and it's like, well, if you have honey. You know, you're less of a person kind of thing. So I think that's really important that you give that support and accountability with a supportive framework, because so many others out there are not.

Kathy Davis: 14:48

I experienced the same thing. I evolved personally through my journey when I first. was introduced to the idea of plant based eating, I was extremely resistant. I didn't want to give up what I knew. I grew up in a, in a home where eating meat was, was standard. It's the norm. You know, my dad was even hunted animals. Like I grew up in a very different world than I currently live in it, you know, as far as the way we eat. And I knew early on, the more conviction I had about. The way that I was eating and tried to share it with people, I could see how resistant they were, but I knew that resistance, I was the same way I was. I mean, I remember saying, I'm not giving up Buffalo wings and burgers with cheese. Like you're nuts. If you think that's going to happen. And my husband, he, he's always the. Calm, relaxed. He just shared those plant based meals. He just made cashew sauces, and cheeses made from cashews, and pastas with veggies, and rice, and really used familiar foods. And it opened me up to the idea that maybe it wasn't so bad. Maybe it wasn't what I thought it was going to be. But I experienced the, Oh, you still eat dairy? You still eat eggs? kind of Nonsense in those Facebook groups or those support groups and then I went through that transition to being vegan and ethical vegan Um, it was a pivot moment for me after six or more months of considering it and then I started to learn and the more I learned the more I was like maybe It is the right way, but I knew that the only way I was going to help empower people to eat more plants, inspire them to eat more plants and educate them through Veg Inspired was if I did it from a place of inclusion, because if you turn people off to the idea, that's when they stop listening. And that was really why we created the Academy with that focus of eating more plants. So it's the Eat More Plants Academy. And we created that because we wanted that inclusive, safe place. And we have people on all ends of the plant spectrum, brand new plant based eaters, vegans that have been vegan for a while that are looking to change their habits around food. We have long term plant based eaters that are looking to change their habits around food. And we have people that are just dabbling in plant based eating. And by creating this community and this environment, Where everybody can grow and learn at their pace, it really makes very good discussions, very good community, very interesting comments about recipes. And what does cheese still, you know, what does it taste like? Does it taste like cheese? Because for like, for me, I've been vegan for eight years. I haven't eaten cheese in over eight years. I don't know if that brand new cheese on the market actually tastes like cheese anymore.

Magic Barclay: 17:52

I think something I found was I was traveling a lot when I was vegan and I don't do soy because I don't think it has any health benefits for me whatsoever. And so I would go to places and every meal. Was soy based, it was either tofu or they only had soy milk, not almond milk. People just assumed that we're vegans, so we can just load your meal with soy. What do you find? And do you have people that have needs like that to avoid things like soy? How do they find a workaround?

Kathy Davis: 18:30

Definitely. I, and that's one of the interesting pieces when, um. When I switched from vegan eating and more of this whole food, plant based eating, I started to recognize differences in ingredients and different uses. And honestly, I started to recognize my preference. And for anybody listening who may not know The difference in definitions that I'm talking about, when I'm talking about vegan and vegan eating, it's a decision to not eat products made from animals. But it also extends usually to people's lifestyle. They don't eat, they don't wear animals, they don't go to animal entertainment, things of that nature. And when I'm talking more about plant based eating, that's basically defined as just the way someone eats. Now the difference between vegan eating is when I was eating just vegan, I would eat beyond burgers. I would have considered the whopper if it, the vegan whopper, if that was available when I was still eating just on the vegan end of the spectrum. But as a whole food plant-based eater, I prefer veggie burgers. Burgers made from beans. whole ingredients. Um, I would, you know, choose the potatoes over potato chips, things of that nature where there's less processing and less strange ingredients or processed ingredients. And to answer your question about my clients, I do have clients that avoid things like gluten and soy. And the fortunate thing for them, and maybe this is how it all all really comes together, being a cookbook author and having a knowledge of recipes and balancing ingredients and things of that nature, I can pretty easily help direct them in replacements, alternatives. But when you're eating mostly whole foods, you're eating the food kind of as close to nature intended. So there isn't as much ingredient reading as there may have been with the vegan foods. You know, a lot of the vegan products will use, as you mentioned, soy isolates or soy proteins. So then you're looking at what product can I use that doesn't use soy? And when we eat more whole food, the replacement would just be beans, chickpeas. Um, they now have soy free tofu and soy free tempeh. On the market, which is very interesting. They have tofu now that's made from chickpeas. The only ingredient is chickpeas. That's been really fun to kind of test out and try with, try with my clients. And then they have tempeh, which is a fermented soy product. They actually have versions of that that aren't made with soy as well. And then my alternative for soy sauce or even liquid aminos, which is used as soy protein. Is the coconut aminos or, um, I actually have in my, my third cookbook, the budget friendly, a mushroom sauce that, it replicates soy sauce, but it's simmered down. Mushrooms makes more of like a deep umami mushroom. Sauce.

Magic Barclay: 21:43

Yum. Yeah, it's really good. It sounds fantastic. So I'm going to fire some questions at you that I heard and still hear all the time. And here's the first one. So, you just eat plants, right?

Kathy Davis: 22:03

I mean, the easy answer to that is, yep, I just eat plants. But, the more detailed answer is, yes, I eat plants, and I eat the seeds, and I eat the stems, right? I eat the, I eat the carrot, which is part of the root system. I eat the grains. I eat the, the, the fruits, which are usually the flowers. You know, we really eat such a vast A variety. And the funny part is, is we can take plants and turn them into almost anything. With some extra plant seasonings and some extra plant spices and, you know, let's call it an extract, but really vinegars and fruit citrus juices and things of that nature, herbs. It can really make plant ingredients taste amazing. So yes, the grains, the greens, the beans, the fruits. The veggies. And the seeds and nuts. That's, that's pretty much what I eat. It's just, there's so much, so much variety and

Magic Barclay: 23:02

abundance. Okay. Here's the second question that I got all the time. So if I have you over, what am I going to feed you?

Kathy Davis: 23:14

That's my favorite question. And I think people are actually embarrassed almost to ask me that question because they're probably like, I should just pull out one of her cookbooks and cook her a recipe from her cookbook. I always tell people the easiest thing to feed me is potatoes. Just don't rub them with bacon, fat pasta. Just let me put my own sauce on it and don't add butter. And I love big salads that have a bean and a grain. and that's really. Really common that people would ask that. Now, the other response that I have to that is I am so excited to share a recipe that I've made. Do you mind if I bring a dish to share? And that way you can kind of see some of the way that I eat and we can share that that dish with everybody at the, you know, that's, that's coming over and really set yourself up for that win. Now, when you take that dish, folks, you want to make sure that dish is amazing. Definitely something you've tried before. You know, it's good. Everybody loves it. A popular one that I take is, um, our rainbow quinoa salad from veginspire. com. And then deviled potatoes are another really popular recipe that I'll share and take to picnics and parties because it's a potato. So it's satiating to me. And then I actually scoop out part of the inside of the and mix it with either hummus or a cashew sauce. It's to make basically similarity to a deviled egg, um, and everybody loves it because everybody loves potatoes. And so it's really fun and it's a popular recipe to share.

Magic Barclay: 24:56

All right. And here's one that's a little bit like fingernails down a blackboard. So I apologize, Kathy, but here it is. So where do you get your protein from? I mean, you know, you must be protein deficient. Okay.

Kathy Davis: 25:13

Oh, that is the number one question, isn't it? And it's so funny because I Definitely said that early on. I remember saying to my husband, I don't, I don't know about this plant based eating, where are we going to get our protein? Why are we eating so many carbs? Right. As I mentioned earlier, I was a yo yo dieter. So carbs were scary to me. And when we first started eating this way, it felt like a lot of carbs. Like everything was paired with a potato rice or pasta. But what I've learned over that last eight years, and actually the quote unquote, magic In the way I was eating is that I actually lost all my weight following the starch solution, which is a high carb, low fat plant based approach. So I actually eat potatoes and beans and veggies and I guess starches and beans and veggies as primary staples in every meal. And so, you know, when people ask me where I get my protein, it's from the beans, it's from the nuts. It's from the seeds. For me, I do eat soy, so it's from the tofu, the tempeh, the edamame. It's from the broccoli, the spinach. There's so many plants that are higher in protein that aren't really mentioned because there's no broccoli council. And the other part of it is all of these plant foods that we eat that we can eat are perfectly packaged little nutrients. They have all the things that we need, and a lot of times in the processing, they're stripped of all those, the nourishing parts that we need to eat, and so we're, when we eat the highly processed foods, we're getting less of the nutrients, and that would make sense that people would wonder, where are you going to get your protein, if they think that the protein has to be in one thing and not the other, and that's my long answer to where do I get my protein.

Magic Barclay: 27:09

So we've covered a fair bit. What haven't we covered that you feel the listeners need to hear?

Kathy Davis: 27:16

Oh, I love this question. So I also consider myself a meal planning expert. And one of the, my philosophy on meal planning is. When you meal plan, you create intention. You are able to remove those in the moment decisions that might lead you astray from your goals, right? The takeouts, the convenient foods, the drive thrus, but also you remove the disorder around meal times. And when you create that order by using a meal plan, you are able to execute the meals and the intention that you had. Now, I'm a full believer that we meal plan simple meals. We meal plan according to our calendar, and we meal plan meals that we actually enjoy and want to cook. So I always tell my, I always tell my clients and my community members, when you sit down to meal plan, that's not the time to try and get inspiration from Every cookbook you own. I've been there. I've done it. I've sat the cookbooks on the desk and I start at breakfast. It's consuming hours. It takes me to go through all those cookbooks. So when you meal plan, I want you to sit down with your calendar. I want you to look for the gaps in your evening in the time that you prepare meals, where you can fit in maybe batch cooking some ingredients. I'm not saying you have to prep everything, but can you put on a batch of rice that you can use for A stir fry tonight and maybe fried rice tomorrow. Can you put on, you know, a sheet pan full of roasted veggies that you can toss half of them and taco spices tonight and then tomorrow toss the other half. Maybe in your favorite Italian dressing and serve it over, uh, potatoes or serve it alongside potatoes and maybe a portobello mushroom that you grill out. So how can you fit in the foods into your busy schedule so that you're not pulled? And if you find that there's certain days of the week that you need to have leftovers or you need to have a prepped meal, you can see that on your calendar. So you look at that calendar, you plug in the times that you can prepare the meals and then you look, okay, I need a 30 minute recipe here. I need a one pot recipe here because I won't have time to do all the cleanup. I need a no cook recipe here because we're all running in 100 directions. And that really allows you to create some order around those meals. And I don't know about you all. I love my husband, but I don't want to talk for 45 minutes about what's for dinner. I just want to know what's for dinner so I can eat. Because the longer I go without eating, the angrier I get. And a meal plan really helps to alleviate that dinnertime conversation around what's for dinner. I just wanted to share that with the audience because I think that's one of the gaps that people have is that we think when we sit down a meal plan we need every recipe cookbook. And what I really teach is even as a cookbook author, go to the back and find the taco recipes and plug them into taco Tuesday, go to the back and find the soup recipe that maybe you want to do a super a chili on, you know, a Sunday because that's a day you have a lot of time to cook and it can simmer all day. Use your cookbook as a resource and not as. You know, where you have to read it cover to cover. I

Magic Barclay: 30:28

love that. Now we do freebies here for our listeners. Quite a, an important part of this podcast is sharing as much as we can for free. So what can you offer the listeners

Kathy Davis: 30:41

and where can they find it? Absolutely. So as a meal planning expert, I have a free meal plan for all the listeners. You can find it at veginspired. com slash podcast. And what I love about this meal plan is it has recipes the whole family will love. So it's not vegan recipes with weird vegan ingredients that nobody can eat. It's simple recipes with common ingredients, familiar foods that everybody likes that you can kind of implement into your schedule. Now it says Sunday through Monday at the top, but you can move the meals around and stick them in. And I'm not just the planner. I will, I give you the recipes. The plan and the grocery list, because there's nothing worse than having to try to decipher what you should buy at the grocery store from somebody else's plan. So I've done all the hard work for you, and you can find that@vengeanceby.com slash podcast. So I'm excited to give that away to all the listeners.

Magic Barclay: 31:43

Great stuff. Now people can find you on Facebook and Instagram at Veg Inspired, and your website is www.veginspired.com. Thank you so much for joining us today, Kathy.

Kathy Davis: 31:59

Thanks so much for having me, Magic, and I hope that the list of the listeners, I hope this inspires you to eat some more plants and just soak up the joy and the energy that the plant foods will give

Magic Barclay: 32:11

you. Very much so. And listeners, thank you for your time. Please do go ahead and get your meal plans. Shopping lists are all done for you. Make your life easier and healthier. And for now, go forth and create your magical life.