Episode 229: Plant Power: How One Meal a Week Makes Big Health Impact With Ali Essig

By Sarah Walton | May 21, 2024

Click here to watch the video version of this podcast episode

A mother of six, Ali Essig found herself in the emergency room with her husband. He’d suffered a stroke at 37. After multiple tests, the doctors found no clear answers, and they encouraged her family to avoid saturated fats, trans fats, and cholesterol and to eat more fiber.

Ali dived deep into the research and found that eating a plant predominant diet would not only decrease her husband's risk of another stroke but also decrease all types of chronic disease.

You know I love to bring you women who have done something extraordinary with their own life experiences. They've taken their talent and their expertise and they turn it into a business. I tell you all the time, you can create a business out of anything -- today's podcast interview will show you how true that actually is.

Ali is a plant-based nutritionist and Founder of PlantWhys, where she offers busy women simple solutions to lose weight and overcome emotional eating and food addictions through positive psychology and a plant-based diet. She is also my first cousin!

Starting PlantWhys

After the birth of twins (her fifth and sixth children), Ali says she was finally starting to feel like her life was getting “back to normal.” Then, her neighbor knocked on her door. Her husband was on the way to the hospital. He’d had a stroke.

They ran tests. There was no hole in his heart, no heart arrhythmia. There was no genetic family history. There was no explanation as to why this happened.

But he was at a greater risk to have another one. The doctors said the best advice was to follow a heart healthy diet. She took the piece of paper from the hospital outlining what to eat and what to avoid; it felt like a foreign language.

“I was this insatiable person, just reading every single book; I read all of them,” says Ali. “I read anti-vegetarian; pro-plant based. I read all of them. I want to find the truth. I don't care what the truth is.”

She found most books focused on three to six months, but she wanted to go beyond that. She wanted to see the long-term studies that would reduce heart disease.

“Everything pointed to eat more plants,” says Ali. “We're not eating enough fiber, and reducing our animal consumption. And what I found too is you don't have to be perfect.”

With six children, Ali needed flexibility. When it came to figuring out how to make a plant-based diet work in her home, she chose not to buy meat and dairy from the grocery store.

It’s not a temptation unless someone else brings it over or they visit someone for dinner.

“I can control what I can control in my in my house. And after that it's like, whatever,” says Ali.

Her kids are good eaters; they’ll eat everything.

Plant-based diet transition program

Ali said she didn’t intend to start a business from her experience, but people started asking her questions. And that led to her earning a nutritionist certification, and starting a course.

“I did it messy. I built my business from like 10 p.m. at night til 2 a.m. just because that's when all the kids are in bed, you know?” says Ali.

She says for some people, it was a great fit because they had a major life event like hers. Others wanted to lose weight. There's a lot of emotional weight that we carry. There's a lot of food addictions. There are a lot of emotional reasons we eat.

She says you may know all of the reasons why you should be eating more plants, but what your actions are don't always fall in line with your knowledge. And so how do we get people to really change? Over time, that’s where Ali says her business transformed into looking at what people need to change and let go of for an emotional reset.

What to know about plant-based diet

Ali says her favorite statistic is that if you were to switch out 3% of your animal protein with plant protein, that’s one meatless meal a week, it will decrease your risk of dying from all causes by 10%. That small little change can decrease so many things from cancer, heart disease, diabetes, you name it.

Ali says what breaks her heart is when people say they went vegan for three months and it was too hard and they gave up. She says, why did you give up? Why can't you just keep it two meals a week? It doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

Surprises from the American diet

Ali says when it comes to the paper she was given in the hospital, saturated fats were the biggest surprise for her family. For the average American, cheese is the number one source of saturated fat in the American community. Cutting out cheese was huge.

She says even if you were to switch out regular cheese for vegan cheese, while it’s better for the environment and the animals, it doesn’t make a difference for your health when it comes to saturated fats – it’s the same amount on the nutrition label.

“I could talk about fiber all day,” says Ali. “You know, only 5% of Americans are eating fiber. Most of us are eating plenty of protein.”

A lot of the benefits you get from eating more protein, you also get from eating more fiber. You're feeling more full. You're feeling more satiated. You're not going to overeat. Ali says the beauty of fiber is it reduces your risk of dying from all causes and other things.

She says the biggest ‘Ah ha!’ moment was learning that fiber not only comes from plants. Eating whole plant foods such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and seeds will help.

“It's all about adding in and less about taking away,” says Ali. “Maybe we can take away some of that cheese, but let's just add in more plants and then everything else will get naturally crowded out.”

Free gift for listeners

Ali is offering a free 30-day trial to the PlantWhys membership. Get access to the weight loss emotional eating reset and strong core, pelvic floor, and healthy gut success path.

You can also follow Ali on Instagram and YouTube