Muscle Talk - By International Protein

Beating inflammation with plant based health

December 24, 2020 International Protein Season 2 Episode 15
Muscle Talk - By International Protein
Beating inflammation with plant based health
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, we take advice from someone who simply transforms lives. Toni Michelle conquered chronic inflammation and celiac disease - how she did it - is by mastering the plant-based diet and she is here to share her secrets!


  • Plant-Based Diet explained 
  • Why whole food
  • Bloating
  • Inflammation 
  • Plant Power Protein
  • "Carbs are our friend"



Muscle Talk - Bodybuilding podcast by International Protein

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Ash Horton:
Welcome to Muscle Talk, where you'll get world champion advice about nutrition and sticking on muscle. Our host, Christine Envall, she's a three time world champion bodybuilder and IFBB professional, a food scientist, and a founding co-owner of our podcast sponsor, International Protein. In this episode, we take advice from someone who simply transforms lives. She conquered chronic inflammation and celiac's disease. And how she did it was by mastering a plant-based diet. She's here to share her secrets.

Ash Horton:
Toni, correct me if I'm wrong, but you've had a history of health and sporting challenges, and the results you've found or the solutions you've found are in having a plant-based diet. Is that correct?

Toni Michelle:
Yes. 100% true.

Ash Horton:
Can you elaborate on this, and just give us a wee bit of detail around your journey?

Toni Michelle:
Yeah, absolutely. I've been in health and fitness for many, many years. I competed back in 2015, with the IFBB. Since then, so that's going on six years, I've been trying to get back onto stage. The issues that I've had with that have been my body just not wanting to be a part of the journey along the way. I'd have really high cortisol levels, lots of inflammation, lots of bloating. So I looked at all different avenues to find out what was going to work best for me. Low carb didn't work, Mediterranean didn't work, keto didn't work, carnival certainly didn't work for me. And then I came across plant-based eating. I spent quite a bit of time investigating what it meant to be plant-based. I also did some study around that as well, and then applied it to myself. From that application, my body's changed absolutely phenomenally for the better, in both my training and the way that I approach diet.

Ash Horton:
So ... You go.

Chrisine Envall:
I'm sorry to jump in here, Ash, because I have got a whole bunch of questions and obviously it's something that Toni said there, that I wanted to jump on before we went too far into the podcast, was you said you researched what it actually meant to eat plant-based. And I think that before we go too much further, that we really need to delve into that a little bit more and understand what does plant-based mean.

Ash Horton:
That was going to be my question too. I wanted to know, is there a difference between vegan and plant-based?

Chrisine Envall:
But that's a different question.

Ash Horton:
It's similar. Okay. Well, let's start with yours.

Toni Michelle:
I can answer both together.

Chrisine Envall:
Yes, please.

Toni Michelle:
Okay. So when we talk about a plant-based diet, essentially, what it means is plant-based, based being the key word here. It is all about whole food, plant-based food, but it doesn't mean that the whole diet is just plant-based. Someone on a plant-based diet can also have eggs and some dairy, and some meat as a small portion.

Chrisine Envall:
What kind of proportion are we talking here?

Toni Michelle:
They say 80% plant-based and 20% other. When we talk about veganism, because obviously I call myself a whole food plant-based vegan athlete. Okay. So I've got a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B going on. When we talk about veganism, it is purely plant-based food. There's no dairy, there's no egg, there's no meat. If you want to go down the ethics of veganism, it also means I don't consume honey because it comes from a [inaudible 00:03:32] bee. I also don't have any products that use animal mistreatment or animal byproducts in any form. The clothing I wear is predominantly cotton, so I'm not wearing leather. There's a lot of process that goes into what you do call yourself. It can become quite entrenched and quite a conversation all on its own. But talk about plant-based, predominantly 90% of my diet is whole food plant-based. I don't consume oils and nothing artificial.

Chrisine Envall:
So not even plant-based oils?

Toni Michelle:
No. I don't take any plant-based sources. No canola, no sunflower, no coconut oil as well. When I cook my food, I cook it in a dry pan or dry bake, or use water.

Chrisine Envall:
This is where I have to jump in, As, because I'm dying to know, what are your macros? What percentage of your calories are coming from protein and what percentage obviously coming from fats and carbs?

Toni Michelle:
This is where it's super crazy as well because previously, I was always told from all my trainers and everyone that I followed along the way, that my body was carb sensitive and insulin resistant. After changing to being plant-based, I lost all of the inflammation in my body. Now my diet being plant-based is so carb dominant that really, really thriving on it. I'm not having any of those sensitivities and inflammations, and everything before. So probably about 75% of my diet now is carbohydrates.

Chrisine Envall:
Wow. So you're not supplementing extra protein because you'll be able to get about 15% or 25% from plants, naturally.

Toni Michelle:
That's exactly right. Yeah. When we talk about carbohydrates, we've got all of our legumes and our beans, so we've got the protein and the carbohydrate in there. Then you've got all the greens and all the vegetables, the fruits. There's a component of protein in nearly every plant product that there is. But then it's also so carb derived as well.

Chrisine Envall:
That is really super interesting because my question obviously is, obviously building muscle, because you do compete and you do weight train. Are you able to build muscle on that low amount of protein?

Toni Michelle:
Absolutely, yes. I think a lot of it comes down to, again, and I know I'm going to keep reiterating this throughout, that I don't have the inflammation in my body that I used to have. So that then allows my gut to absorb more nutrients from the food than what I had previously when I was inflamed.

Chrisine Envall:
So again, let's talk about inflammation because it's a word that gets used, and I know it's obviously not a precursor to a disease state, but what exactly was, I guess, the symptoms, or how did you know you had inflammation?

Toni Michelle:
For me, a lot of it was in my gut. So I always had a lot of distension and a lot of bloating in the stomach. It didn't really matter what I was eating or what I was doing, or how I was training. That inflammation was always there. The other thing I had was a lot of edema. I had a lot of swelling in the lower part of the leg, and then I had a lot of joint pain. Those three things changed dramatically by removing all animal products from the diet.

Chrisine Envall:
That is quite fascinating. Was it literally within a week or ...?

Toni Michelle:
It was actually days.

Chrisine Envall:
Wow.

Toni Michelle:
Within days of that change, I felt my body change, especially in the stomach.

Ash Horton:
Do you know other people that have had a similar experience?

Toni Michelle:
Many, many other people.

Ash Horton:
Because in your role now, you actually-

Toni Michelle:
Yes.

Ash Horton:
... help people make that change. Correct?

Toni Michelle:
Yeah, absolutely. Make the transition and do it the right way so that they're getting all the nutritional benefits they need. A lot of people try and do the change themselves, without seeking that advice first, and they do it the wrong way.

Chrisine Envall:
What is the wrong way and what is the right way?

Toni Michelle:
One of the wrong ways people tend to go across to plant-based is they'll go to a supermarket and they'll buy the plant-based meat alternatives on the shelf, or the package plant-based products, forgetting that the core component of a plant-based diet is all fresh food. So it's the fresh veggies, it's the fruits, it's the nuts, seeds, the legumes, whole foods. So we're talking about whole foods, not packaged food.

Chrisine Envall:
The bottom of that really comes down to the processing and processed foods, I guess, even regardless of whether someone's eating plant-based or not. And I guess you said you tried the Mediterranean, which has a very whole food based diet, but that's really the crux of modern nutrition and diet. It all comes back to staying away from refined carbohydrates, refined sugars, and highly processed foods, which is actually the question that I had down here was, is everything plant-based automatically healthy or are there hidden nasties?

Toni Michelle:
I love that question. It's such a good question. What I usually say to my clients and friends, and people who ask me about plant-based diet is, if it has a nutrition label on it, it's not whole. I mean, seriously, it's the easiest way to say it. There's a lot of products out there, which are great products, and they'll have a nutritional label on them. But that's a very small percentage.

Chrisine Envall:
Because, yeah, I look at those foods, and vegan and this, and then it's just like, sugar is a million percent and it's smooshed up dates, and a little bit of nut, and some ...

Toni Michelle:
Oh, and it tastes great, but not so great for us.

Chrisine Envall:
Would you say that you would experience the same kind of inflammation, potentially from eating something like that?

Toni Michelle:
It's really funny that you ask that question because recently, I went to a girlfriend's baby shower so I had to eat the food that was there, that was prepared. And yeah, it was vegan, but it was vegan that was prepared in a kitchen with oils and sugars. It was vegan brownies and these fancy little white bread sandwiches, and things that my body's just not accustomed to eating. I went home and suffered severe bloating again. I had inflammation from the additives.

Chrisine Envall:
That's 100% right, what you touched on there, where people, when they transition, they're almost looking to just pick up their typical diet at the moment and then just transplant that over with plant. But there're so many more things fundamentally wrong with what it is that they're trying to eat, and they should just be, like you say, looking for whole, natural, raw, unprocessed, and not trying to emulate. Like I guess where people have gluten intolerance and they look, I want to eat bread, still, so I'm going to go for gluten-free bread. I just want exactly what I've had, but just minus that thing. People, I guess, are thinking, I want to have exactly what I've had, just minus the meat.

Toni Michelle:
Yes.

Chrisine Envall:
Or minus the dairy. So I want the alternative to that. That's very interesting because I think that's probably the key thing. So moving on from there, what does your diet look like? I'm a big cereal eater, which is highly processed and very bad. But ...

Toni Michelle:
I do eat cereal, but my cereal is organic rolled oats or buckwheat, Buckinis. The less refined possible is what I'll eat as my breakfast cereal.

Chrisine Envall:
What do you have that with? With almond milk? Would you consider that?

Toni Michelle:
My number one thing that I love to eat in the world is my breakfast bowl. You're going to love this. I've got my oats. I have a apple, which is sliced and thrown in there with some blackberries. I've got my papitas for my iron, I've got my chia seeds for my Omega-3s. I've got all my nuts as well. So I've got protein and good fats in there. And then I've got a scoop of my Plant Power protein powder.

Ash Horton:
[inaudible 00:10:51].

Toni Michelle:
Which is amazing. I love it.

Ash Horton:
What flavor?

Toni Michelle:
At the moment, I've got the Anzac biscuit.

Ash Horton:
Good choice.

Toni Michelle:
I actually blend that up with water, so I don't use too much plant-based milks. Usually, that's only in a decaf coffee when I have it. Just water, and it tastes great.

Chrisine Envall:
Well, that does sound like a good breakfast bowl. I'm a big breakfast fan, and I have actually been using my Plant Power. So I do a mixture of our ISO Cuts with Plant Power because I'm coming from the perspective of, as I get older ... You're talking about inflammation. I've been fortunate not to have suffered from those kind of inflammations. But I do understand the link between cancer and animal products, and the IGF production, and needing that at a point in my life, and not needing it so much now, and transitioning over to incorporating more of my protein coming from plants. So I do actually have the Plant Power with ... I can't give up ISO Cuts. Come on. But yeah, I'm really enjoying that. And I have also incorporated more, I guess, chick pea and farmer bean, and things like that. I'm eating less chicken, say at dinner time, and incorporating more legumes to make up that protein.

Toni Michelle:
I never get all the added benefit of all the multivitamins and the fiber, folate. They really come together, don't they? Fiber, folate. So it's just a win-win situation. You just don't get that from meat.

Chrisine Envall:
No. And the-

Toni Michelle:
Or bees.

Ash Horton:
One of the common things that my mum will say, because I've got a vegan partner, right? If she's ever sick, my mum will always say, "She needs to eat some meat." In fact, my grandmother used to say that, specifically. So how do people get vitamin D, B12, iron into their diets when they are vegan?

Toni Michelle:
It's actually really easy. If we're eating a whole food, plant-based diet, we're going to get it from a lot of different areas. So everything from our seeds, like our pumpkin seeds, our sunflower seeds, our chia seeds, flax seeds, hemp seeds. They are really massive for two things, iron and Omega-3s. We've also got things like avoiding caffeine. I have organic decaf coffee because if we have caffeine around the same time that we chew a meal with iron in it, the caffeine throws the iron out of the body. Making sure we have vitamin C in the same meal again. So with my breakfast bowl, and I've got all my seeds in there with my iron, I want to have some berries in it, like some strawberries, vitamin C.

Toni Michelle:
In my Buddha bowl at lunchtime, again, to absorb the iron from all the veggies, I might want to have some tomatoes or some red capsicum in there. That vitamin C, again, is going to help that iron absorb. That's the benefit of that holistic diet. So if you sit down and you think about it, there's a lot to it, but it's not really.

Ash Horton:
So food combinations are really important.

Toni Michelle:
Definitely.

Chrisine Envall:
Obviously, that's where you can help people, because I think for someone like Ash, if he was trying to follow something like this, he would get a little bit confused about what was ... You would. Trust me.

Ash Horton:
I use the Plant Power, by the way.

Chrisine Envall:
Very good.

Ash Horton:
I do use it.

Chrisine Envall:
You do. You use a lot of our products, which I absolutely love.

Ash Horton:
And having a vegan partner for the last eight years, that made me 80% vegan for a good period of my time.

Chrisine Envall:
But you turned up with just rice for lunch, which didn't impress me at all. Are there any kind of, what do you call it? Pneumonics, so people can remember, okay, what goes with what? How do you teach that, or how can you help people who are looking at transitioning?

Toni Michelle:
I guess, when I'm helping people specifically, I've got a PDF of information which really breaks it down for them, which makes it super easy, which they stick on the fridge. But for anyone else, what I would say is just eat every single color of the rainbow that you possibly can. If you're doing that, essentially, you're going to be getting all your phytochemicals, phytonutrients, antioxidants, your vitamins, your minerals. Everything that you need to compliment each other is going to be there.

Ash Horton:
You brought that up in the past, on a different episode, haven't you? I like rainbow.

Chrisine Envall:
I have. I can't remember if it was in this episode. I know I've definitely talked about it on my own lives, about taking something from every color of the rainbow. As I said, not to the degree that you are, but I definitely believe that what was put on this earth is everything that we need-

Toni Michelle:
Correct.

Chrisine Envall:
... and in the form. We don't need to mess with it. Well, obviously certain things like some of your legumes need to be heat treated to inactivate some of the [inaudible 00:15:11]. And there're certain components, which will actually lock up the amino acids and be a little bit poisonous. So yeah, you want to make sure you're cooking those things. But apart from that little bit of heat, you can eat them in the form that they are. Do you have, I guess, a favorite go-to product. It sounds like you take a whole range of different things. Or is there something which is a go-to if you don't have time to make everything else? What do you do?

Toni Michelle:
I'm not saying this because I'm sitting in front of a International Protein camera right now. Okay, but I do use Plant Power and it is my go-to when I don't have time to create something else.

Ash Horton:
Why do you use Plant Power above any other vegan protein? Because it's only new. Is it just because you know it's additional protein-

Toni Michelle:
It is only new.

Ash Horton:
... and it's new? [crosstalk 00:16:01].

Toni Michelle:
No. I have been using plant proteins all my life. I just don't do dairy. My gut doesn't do dairy, just as 90% of the population is lactose intolerant. So plant works. The good thing with the International Protein is that it mixes well, it tastes amazing. It's got the right ratio of the pea and the rice, so you're getting all the nine essential aminos. Plus it's got all the added extras that we need, like the digestive enzymes. Two big things that's really important for me, and very not so readily available on the market, is it Stevia-free?

Chrisine Envall:
I think a lot of people find that the sweeteners do tend to play havoc. So yeah, obviously when we found that we could do this without having to use sweetener, it was like, yeah, this has to be the thing. I think we also have a couple of other little goodies, like the Maca powder. I'm a huge fan of Maca, just as a, what do you call it? An adaptogen to help the body deal with stress. And also, I think we have a bit of Sacha Inchi, which I think also has your Omegas in there as well.

Toni Michelle:
That's amazing. And I have not even know of that product before I read it in the International Protein blend. It's a fascinating thing, nut.

Chrisine Envall:
It's a nut.

Toni Michelle:
It's phenomenal. I love it.

Chrisine Envall:
I think, like all things we know we talked about in one of the earlier podcasts, why we do products. And when we do something, we always try to make it different to something else that's on the market, but also beneficial. It's got to add value to people's diet. It's easier to stick a pea protein out there. Everyone's done it. Stick a whole bunch of creamer in it and off you go, it's a vegan protein.

Chrisine Envall:
That was not what we wanted to do. We wanted to make it something which was actually something you could eat, and know that we're getting all of the amino acids, all of the essential amino acids in, plus a whole bunch of other stuff, and what you're not getting, which is ... We actually tossed up. Do we go and fortify with B12 and vitamin D, and things like that? I think we couldn't have made as good a product if we started to try to mess around with that. So we went off the thought that petite people who are vegan, that we spoke to, who aren't necessarily following whole food, would supplement separately with those things.

Toni Michelle:
Correct.

Chrisine Envall:
Because they ensure, I guess, a security blanket.

Toni Michelle:
That's correct, and that's something that I do myself. I use the BioCeuticals B12 spray every day. Even though I'm getting some of it from the likes of the tiny shot, got 40% of the B12 in there every day. Then I've got NUTR, so four to five nutritional yeats. That's got the B12 in it as well. So I'm getting more than enough. Really don't need to add it again, too.

Chrisine Envall:
And that, I think, was the concern because ... And again, I know I spoke to your partner about that. The concern she had was, am I now getting too much? Because people do go a little crazy and then start to fortify everything, but people who've been following plant-based diets or vegan for a while already have that stuff sorted. So we didn't want to be tripling up. And particularly, I guess, with your vitamin D, where it is a fat-soluble. So it can build up even though, not sure on your thoughts on it, but I think the RDI is very low for everyone, particularly females over 40. So I'm not quite sure if you're of that same belief, that what they recommend we have is way under what we actually need.

Toni Michelle:
That can be a conversation that goes into a lot of different vitamins and a lot of different nutrients, and a lot of different macros and micros. Isn't it?

Chrisine Envall:
Yeah.

Toni Michelle:
It's a whole new conversation in itself. Generally speaking, for me, I find I get enough vitamin D from the sun because I'm spending enough time out in the sun, which is great. But then I do get the added benefit of having it through different components.

Chrisine Envall:
I try to stay out of the sun.

Ash Horton:
You picked the right place in Australia to do that. You live in Queensland.

Chrisine Envall:
Yeah, absolutely. Queensland. Other question, are there any other nutrients that plant-based eaters should pay attention to, other than the ones that we've just talked about?

Toni Michelle:
Probably the Omega-3s are the biggest one, other than B12 being the number one. With Omega-3s, they're obviously the genetic function powerhouse of the body. So we want to be making sure we get enough. When you're not on a plant-based diet, you're told to take fish oil supplements, make sure you're having fish once a week to get your Omegas. But us, as plant-based eaters, we want to get our Omegas from mostly our seeds. Every day, what I do is I have a tablespoon of flaxseed meal. I have two teaspoons of chia seeds and six walnuts. That's pretty easy.

Chrisine Envall:
And that's just put into your bowls? Or how do you-

Toni Michelle:
Absolutely.

Ash Horton:
Sounds like a really delicious breakfast.

Toni Michelle:
I told you it's the best meal of the day. It's great.

Chrisine Envall:
I think we need that recipe. We should pop it up in the group, the Aussie Muscle Guru Facebook group, because I would love to try that myself. I'll leave the ISO Cuts out for this one.

Ash Horton:
What are the biggest challenges in eating plant-based?

Toni Michelle:
People.

Ash Horton:
People, other people perception.

Toni Michelle:
People's opinions. It's really funny. I think from every diet that I tried throughout my life, no one had as big a reaction to it or as much say in it, and what I'm doing and why I'm doing it, than when I said I wanted to go vegan, to follow a plant-based diet.

Chrisine Envall:
Why do you think that is?

Toni Michelle:
Misunderstanding. I think a lot of it is based around the fact that veganism or vegans have quite a bad perception, and that could come back to the ethical side of it. You see a lot happening with people out there, walking the streets with their banners, breaking into farms, doing all the crazy ethical stuff. And that scares a lot of people. So they think that if you're going to become a vegan, you're going to be pushing that down people's throats. You can't do this and you can't go do that. I can't eat dinner with you because you're going to eat steak. So everyone jumps on the bandwagon straight away and has an opinion about it. But realistically, it's just me trying to give my body the best source of fuel that I can do with the least amount of inflammation.

Chrisine Envall:
Isn't that incredible? If you said you were going to go on a junk food diet, people would probably just leave you alone. But there is some aspect of something which is different to the accepted norm, that really does make people feel uncomfortable. And it's almost like, but I'm not asking you to eat this. [crosstalk 00:22:19].

Ash Horton:
You know what I think? I think that's going to change over the years though. The younger generation is far more open to plant-based diets than the older generation.

Chrisine Envall:
Absolutely, yeah.

Ash Horton:
And that's, again, the history of coming off farms and [inaudible 00:22:30]. So surely that's going to change.

Toni Michelle:
The world is seeing that growth now more than ever. And I'm sure with your Plant Power product, you will see that increase in sales coming through and the demand for plant protein.

Ash Horton:
We actually do a bit of research in Google, and we can see the volumes increasing year on year-

Toni Michelle:
Absolutely.

Ash Horton:
... for people searching for it.

Chrisine Envall:
Well, that's the thing. I guess, obviously we started back in, incorporated 2001, but obviously got selling 2003, 2004. I don't even think there was plant-based proteins, not like what there is today. And even, it's probably been five or six years ago. We had our original naturals range, which again, was just natural. We still had to use the Stevia. There wasn't alternatives, and it was naturally flavored, and pea protein, and rice protein, and that more kind of natural feel. But it's really only in the last couple of years where it's really started to really grow. So it's definitely something that 10 years ago was barely commercially around in our industry. It was still in the really hardcore health food stores and places like that. And obviously, you just have to look in the supermarket now where, not that as good for you, but as you say, there's a lot of those little vegan category. But it's totally different to the whole food plant-based that you are talking about because that doesn't a supermarket.

Toni Michelle:
No. Who would've thought five years ago, you'd walk into a [inaudible 00:23:49] supermarket, and within the meat section, there would be a designated plant-based stand.

Chrisine Envall:
Yeah, but that's the challenge, overall, with healthier eating is definitely people being a little uncomfortable with that because that's when I started bodybuilding, and would be eating chicken and rice, and tuna and rice, and things like that. People were like, "Why do you have to do that? Have it like they do." They literally try to, "Have chocolate, have this." Is it to see if I'll break or ...? What is it about that? But the thing that I found different there was as soon as they started doing well at competitions, people left me alone. I had a friend who was still trying to eat healthy, and she's like, "Why do people leave you alone, but not me?" I had a reason, so that was like, oh, okay, you go off and do your bodybuilding thing. But she, who just wanted to be healthier, very much got attacked for it.

Chrisine Envall:
So it's a very interesting thing. Hopefully, that does change in the next few years because I think health wise, to see people get better health as they get older, naturally deal with inflammation because obviously the alternative is taking drugs and chemicals to try to counteract that.

Toni Michelle:
Right.

Chrisine Envall:
Digestive issues. I know we had the topic of gut health, and that's a massive thing for a lot of people. So I think it would be interesting for people who are suffering from that, if they were to actually investigate less processed food, more whole foods, and just try it out for themselves.

Toni Michelle:
Absolutely.

Chrisine Envall:
Are there any tips or hints, or things that you could advise, that you could give people who are, I guess, on the fence about it, or maybe thinking about trying?

Toni Michelle:
Other than following someone who's doing whole food plant-based because you're going to get a lot of tips that way, hop on their social feeds, have a look, see what they're eating, see what they're posting, see what they're sharing, Google.

Ash Horton:
This is a perfect opportunity for you to [crosstalk 00:25:42]. So jump in there. Where can people find you?

Toni Michelle:
I'm on Instagram, toni_michelle_plantbasedhealth. And I'm also on Facebook, Plant-based Health by Toni Michelle.

Chrisine Envall:
And you have a website as well.

Toni Michelle:
I do, yes, which is plantbasedhealth.me.

Chrisine Envall:
Because I did have a bit of a look on your website, and I saw that you were offering different plans and programs, and things. So what do you actually offer? How can you help people? What can people expect to get if they were to do one of your programs?

Toni Michelle:
Well, I do have programs, like you say. But more excitingly, coming up on the 15th of January, I actually have another eight week plant-based health challenge. So for a $50 registration fee, you're going to get, not just International Proteins and our protein, you're also going to be getting lots of information from me, recipes, workouts, how-tos, wise tips and tricks. So it's not just going down the route of, hey, it's a diet. I want you to follow it for eight weeks. I'm going to give people the know-how, the understanding, and the why it is that we need to make these changes, not just for this eight week period, but for our lives.

Ash Horton:
So you're in the business of changing people's lives and making them far more healthier.

Toni Michelle:
Absolutely. If I can give back to other people what I've experienced in myself, then I've done my job.

Ash Horton:
Nice. Just changing directions a little bit, you were competing before you were vegan.

Toni Michelle:
Correct.

Ash Horton:
And you're competing after. Did you see a big change in your actual physique?

Toni Michelle:
Yeah, absolutely. I'm so much leaner now than I ever was before, which is absolutely amazing. As a general rule, I'm sitting about eight kilos under what I was pre converting across 100%. And even before I transitioned across, I was really only eating eggs and fish. So I wasn't really eating the big inflammatory meat product, dairy product. To have that big weight difference has been a really big impact to my body. So I'm not a big person, I'm only 60 kilos every day and 161 centimeters. I'm only a little shorty. That big, eight kilos did make a massive difference to me.

Ash Horton:
So you're talking body fat or you're talking muscle combination?

Toni Michelle:
Yeah, thank you. Definitely body fat and also fluid. I don't have the fluid retention, I don't have the bloat, I don't have the edema that I used to suffer previously. My muscle mass has increased. My bone density has also increased. I recently had a DEXA, and that showed an increase there, which is amazing. And also had some blood tests done too, which showed all my hormone levels were sitting so much better now than they had been previously. Cholesterol, everything was markedly improved.

Ash Horton:
So I'm guessing, based on these comments that you've given us, when they start 3D printing steaks, like they've already started testing, you're probably not going to jump into it.

Toni Michelle:
Yeah, no. I don't want-

Ash Horton:
I think a lot of vegans will, but I don't think you.

Toni Michelle:
No, no, especially not this lab created meat and everything else that's going on right now.

Chrisine Envall:
It's always like it is the total opposite of what whole food is all about.

Toni Michelle:
Yes. Absolutely. I mean, don't get me wrong, there're some great products that are out there on the market. Jump on my Instagram feed, I made a veef burger yesterday.

Chrisine Envall:
I did actually see that. I didn't read closely what was in that. What was in that actual burger?

Toni Michelle:
It's a frozen meat alternative patty. It's made by a great bunch of guys up in the Sunshine Coast, and that's a sometimes food. It's okay to have it sometimes, and that's what I do. 90% of what we do and how I eat is whole food plant-based. But we're here for a good time and unfortunately, not a long time, so we do also need to enjoy something.

Chrisine Envall:
Other than fruit, people who have a sweet tooth like myself, what sort of things do you have in the diet? Or is it a matter of just waning off those types of foods? Where does that fit? What do you do for a sweet treat?

Toni Michelle:
It's interesting because when I converted across to living on a whole food plant-based diet, because I was essentially now absorbing all the nutrients into my body, I lost cravings. So I don't have the cravings now that I used to have. But if I did, my go-to would be dark chocolate.

Ash Horton:
Have you ever run down the line of vegan?

Toni Michelle:
Yes and no. It's really important to have part of your food cooked and part of your food raw. There's a few different reasons for that. If you talk about broccoli, how you got the sulforaphane, always say that word wrong, by the way. Do you want to correct me on that one?

Chrisine Envall:
I have the same ... I have the notes, when we were talking about super foods.

Toni Michelle:
There's this wonderful little thing. It starts with S, which I just tried to pronounce. It's an anticancer, an antitoxin reading component of cruciferous vegetables. When you eat your veggies raw, you get that in your body. When you cook it, you lose it. But if you cook that, oh, sorry, cut that broccoli up, leave it on the bench for 40 minutes, that sulforaphane, [crosstalk 00:30:41].

Ash Horton:
Don't look at me.

Toni Michelle:
It actually increases and intensifies on the bench. And then you can cook it, and it remains there.

Chrisine Envall:
So the prepping is a big part of that.

Toni Michelle:
Yeah, absolutely. It's like lycopene in tomatoes. Eating a tomato raw, just get a standard amount of lycopene. But as soon as you heat or cook that tomato, you actually get four times the amount of lycopene.

Chrisine Envall:
And that is important to know because people don't want to be cooking the wrong things and having the wrong things raw, like the beans, which were creating a problem.

Toni Michelle:
Yes.

Chrisine Envall:
And then something else where we're missing out. And I believe that, again, this is often a little bit of a tangent, but I think garlic's similar, the component, which has obviously got all the properties of garlic. You have to crush it, but not cook it too long. And it has to be treated in quite a specific way, to get the most out of that.

Toni Michelle:
I actually eat garlic raw, so I'm not a lot of people's fan when it comes to that. Luckily for you guys, I didn't actually eat my garlic raw this morning.

Chrisine Envall:
Because you knew you were coming.

Toni Michelle:
That must be.

Chrisine Envall:
And again, is this the type of detail that you'll go into with people or is this just stuff that you know, and it comes out when [crosstalk 00:31:45]?

Toni Michelle:
It is actually stuff that I have documented. And anyone that jumps across onto my plans, this is what's in their information packs. How to prepare food, how to cook food, what to do, what not to do.

Chrisine Envall:
That is awesome. That is way more complicated than what my diet is, but I do similar kind of thing. Because I'm not down to that nth degree of needing to get everything out of plant, but I do definitely believe in certain things that need to be had raw, certain things cooked, and also just how our body digests. Some things, it needs to deal with those things in a raw form, I guess, to make the body work, work out properly, because our body's designed to process certain things. And I think a lot of what we do is, we take away its need to do that because it's all been done for us. And again, that's where a lot of those issues come from, because you're putting something in a form, which the body was not supposed to receive it.

Toni Michelle:
Absolutely. And then different bodies can react differently as well. What I eat raw, someone else may not be able to eat raw. They need to cook it.

Chrisine Envall:
That's interesting.

Toni Michelle:
That's where it goes to another level again. So generally, when I talk to clients, when they first start out, we'll see how they are after the first week. And then if they're having any reactions, especially bloating, to the raw food, we'll have a look at what those specifics are, and then go down the route of an alternative or even lightly steaming or tossing, whatever it's called, just to start breaking that down.

Ash Horton:
You said before, you were carb sensitive. If people want to eat low carb, but then you said you shifted to a vegan diet and it was 75% carbs, is there a way to make that work? Or is it just [inaudible 00:33:19]?

Toni Michelle:
You can, but I often say, why would you? Why would you want to take all of that goodness out of your diet? I know obviously for health reasons, some diabetics, some people suffering with multiple sclerosis and other health issues need to go on a low carb diet. If they came to me, I would say, "You need to go and see a dietician because I can't help you in that area." I don't have that specialized ...

Chrisine Envall:
I think it's the kind of carbs they're eating, potentially. They just spring everything into the cab category.

Toni Michelle:
It definitely can be.

Chrisine Envall:
I think there's no doubt about that, that they've got into a situation because of eating the wrong type of carbohydrates. I think what we're saying here is that they maybe need to actually go through a point, and I know with a lot of the low carb diets, it's a three to four month period that the body makes most of its changes. And then after that, there are no further improvements in the health markets. So maybe they need to go through that phase to get back to normal, and then start on. Then they could move over to plant-based because I think it that'd be a great experiment though, or great research, to see if they actually needed to, or if they could transition through, onto plant-based and still get the same results.

Toni Michelle:
Yeah, absolutely.

Chrisine Envall:
Going low carb. Because again, it comes down to when your body sees that carbohydrate and how it deals with it in terms of its insulin response, that you're getting a totally different response when you're eating whole food. That's where the problem comes from, is the way that the insulin's reacting and it's not going to react the same way. So I believe they could probably transition straight to plant-based and not have to go through that. But as you say, in a extreme case, then they do need to seek medical advice, and maybe they do need to go through that period of low carb. But exactly, carbs are our friend.

Toni Michelle:
Absolutely, yeah.

Chrisine Envall:
But we're just eating the wrong type of carbs most of the time, where people are ending up with issues because we're eating too much in the wrong form and not making our body actually process it properly. That's my 2 cents worth on that one.

Toni Michelle:
I like it.

Ash Horton:
Okay. So let's come to the end of this now, let's wrap it up. A little summary. If people want to start making a transition across to plant-based diet, what would your three best bits of advice be?

Toni Michelle:
Glad you asked that because I sat down on the weekend and had a conversation with some friends. She actually said, "I want to start transitioning. I don't want to go full into it." So I said, "The number one thing you can do is start bringing beans and legumes into your diet first, because the gut doesn't have the enzymes needed to stop breaking those down." It's used to breaking down the meats and the other protein sources. So if you can bring them in once or twice a week, every week, that way your body can start adjusting the way it needs to. And then after that, bringing in more fruit, bringing in more vegetable, especially the cruciferous vegetables, because as soon as you go across to a whole food, plant-based diet, your fiber intake's going to go from maybe 12 grams a day up to what I have, which is 70 grams a day, of fiber.

Chrisine Envall:
That's a lot of fiber.

Toni Michelle:
It's a lot of fiber.

Chrisine Envall:
That's a lot of ...

Toni Michelle:
Yeah, so you need an adjustment period there for that. You could do what I do and just go straight to a vegan, and suffer the consequences, which isn't so nice.

Ash Horton:
For other people.

Toni Michelle:
For other people, or just slowly transition those foods in.

Ash Horton:
I asked for three things. I think you gave me one.

Toni Michelle:
I did.

Ash Horton:
You got two more.

Toni Michelle:
No, no, no, I gave you two.

Ash Horton:
Okay. I wasn't listening.

Toni Michelle:
We had the beans and then we had the cruciferous vegetables. And then obviously, if they can bring across the seeds and the nuts, and start getting those beneficial Omegas into your diet as well, that's going to make a really big impact. So even if you stayed on a carnivorous diet, just making those changes to your diet is going to make big impacts to your every day health.

Ash Horton:
Really valuable stuff. Great advice. Thank you very much.

Chrisine Envall:
Yes. Thank you. This has been really, really great.

Toni Michelle:
Thank you.

Ash Horton:
Just to get your details again, if you could just let us know how we can find you.

Toni Michelle:
Yeah, absolutely. On Instagram, toni_michelle_plantbasedhealth. On Facebook, it's Toni Michelle Plant-based Health, and on the web, you'll find me at plantbasedhealth.me.

Ash Horton:
Brilliant. Thank you very much.

Toni Michelle:
Thank you.

Chrisine Envall:
Awesome.

Ash Horton:
Words of wisdom. If you like what you've heard, recognize that these tips now are free. So show your support by becoming a loyal International Protein customer, by jumping online, hunt our product down and hit that buy now button. Once again, like, share, and subscribe to our podcast so we can continue to bring you these episodes from our one and only Aussie muscle guru, three times world champion, Christine Envall.