My favorite meal is I'll make like a three-bean soup and I freeze half of it. But I'm also a big fan of meat alternatives, so I can still have my chicken and mashed potatoes and green beans, but I just have the chicken from a plant-based thing.

Nourished people, people who love and care for themselves, are also more efficient and nicer to be around. When you give yourself permission to relax, people will feel more relaxed around you; your environment will become more harmonious. Balance - between work and pleasure, giving and receiving, seriousness and levity - creates a happy healthy life.

For many of us, it's too difficult to jump in to vegan full on because it's just so different than the way we grew up eating. But if we take small steps - like replacing cow's milk with almond or soy milk, or using veggie sausage instead of sausage made from animals - we can keep enjoying the things we grew up loving, just better versions of them.

So if you serve a whole chicken to your family like grandma did, you may be serving them 10 times as much fat than the days of yesteryear. That's a whole lotta fat, and big trouble for the waistline.

You don't need to stick to tough rules or overnight changes; you need not rely on hardcore discipline that makes you hate your life. You need only focus on progress, not perfection. Lean in to the process of losing weight, and it will happen easily.

Little by little we discover that we don't need to eat animal products at all, because there are so many healthier alternatives that taste great. The trick is going easy with yourself so that you can find your way comfortably. Then you'll stick with it.

I missed a tuna-fish sandwich with mayo on toasted wheat bread more than anything. Six months after I went vegan, I snuck into a deli and took one home. And, of course, it wasn't nearly as good as I fantasized. It tasted, well, fishy.