From The Heart #8: Rethinking Plant-Based: Progress Over Perfection

Perfection isn’t the point, progress is. 

We open the mic for an unscripted, science-grounded conversation about what “plant-based” actually means, why success lives on a spectrum, and how small, low-friction changes can flip your health trajectory without blowing up your life. Rather than chasing a 100% label, we focus on the dose-response benefits of eating more minimally processed plants and cutting back on ultra-processed foods and red and processed meat. The takeaway is clear: your long-term average matters more than a perfect week.

We break down the umbrella of plant-forward patterns, from Mediterranean and flexitarian to plant-predominant and plant-exclusive, and show how each can deliver measurable gains when the bulk of calories comes from whole plants. You’ll hear a powerful success story of diabetes reversal, then a reality check: sustainability beats short-lived extremes. We compare restriction labels to an abundance mindset, explain why planning prevents nutrient gaps, and lay out the “big rocks” that truly move the needle: more fiber, fewer ultra-processed products, less sodium and saturated fat, and smarter protein choices.

Expect practical, ready-to-use strategies: the 80–20 rule as a compass for real life, taste-bud and microbiome adaptation timelines, and low-friction swaps that meet you where you are, like upgrading your oatmeal, adding beans to staples, or batch-cooking simple plant proteins. 

We also talk about the dual role of clinician and coach, why accountability accelerates change, and how to plan for travel, holidays, and stress so curveballs don’t derail your goals. If you’re ready to trend toward better health one steady step at a time, hit play, subscribe for more grounded guidance, and share your first small swap with us. Your next meal can be the one that moves you forward.

Go check out my website for tons of free resources on how to transition towards a healthier diet and lifestyle.

You can download my free plant-based recipes eBook and a ton of other free resources by visiting  the Digital Downloads tab of my website at https://www.plantbaseddrjules.com/shop

Don't forget to check out my blog at https://www.plantbaseddrjules.com/blog 

You can also watch my educational videos on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMpkQRXb7G-StAotV0dmahQ

Check out my upcoming live events and free eCourse, where you'll learn more about how to create delicious plant-based recipes: https://www.plantbaseddrjules.com/

Go follow me on social media by visiting my Facebook page and Instagram accounts
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Last but not least, the best way to show your support and to help me spread my message is to subscribe to my podcast and to leave a 5 star review on Apple and Spotify!
Thanks so much!

Peace, love, plants!
Dr. Jules 

Transcript

Section A

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Yo familiaries, welcome to a new segment of the show that I'm gonna call from the heart.

SPEAKER_00 0:06

These bonus episodes are different.

SPEAKER_01 0:08

No script, no plan, just me speaking openly and honestly like listening to stories that come from real conversations with real patients. It's raw, unpolished and honest, but packed with insights that matter. Most of the time I simply open my phone camera, record a video, and this is the audio of these conversations. So if you're ready for something a little bit more spontaneous, this is from the heart, unplanned, unscripted, but straight to the point. I wanted to talk about um concepts that we reviewed in detail in season one of my podcast, but I think a good refresher is very reasonable. And the reason is because every day I see patients and they provide great ideas for content that I can discuss here. Although a lot of people here have been following me for a while, I do get a lot of new followers that kind of join in late in the game. And so I want to go back to basics today. So this morning I saw a patient, reversed her diabetes, had normal blood sugars. Great, a great success story. Lost weight, got healthier, and she said one thing, she said, it's gonna be difficult for me to be 100% plant-based. But I have included a lot of new plant-based days in my week, of plant-based meals in my days, and all of my meals contain generally more plants. But she found herself apologizing for not be able being able to be plant-based at 100% success, right? And I think this is where the internet gets things wrong, because I think most people who've been following me for a while understand that help lives on a spectrum and that success exists on a spectrum, and the goal is always to make small incremental changes that add up, because the science says that's the best way to change in a sustainable way. What good is it to be 100% plant-based if you can only do it for two to three months? Whereas your chronic disease risk, your morbidity or mortality, or the quantity and quality of the years you have, and the risk of suffering from these diseases are based on what you're doing most of the time over the long term. So you really need to zoom out and have a long-term view of whether these new habits of yours are sustainable or not. So I want to go back to the beginning where a plant-based diet is simply an umbrella term that refers to a diet that consists mostly of whole or minimally processed plant-based foods. And whether we call it plant curious, plant-centric, plant forward, plant predominant, or plant exclusive, which is the 100% whole food plant-based diet, they all have benefits. Now, one of the most studied dietary patterns that has been shown to reverse cardiovascular disease or reduce its risk and improve many different chronic diseases is Mediterranean dietary patterns. Now, these diets they make space for a little bit of ultra-processed foods and a little bit of animal products. The dose makes the poison, but the dose also makes the benefit. So it's important to know that a lot of dietary patterns could theoretically fall under the umbrella of plant-based diets. Now, vegetarian diets or vegan diets are plant-based diets, our Canadian food guide, which advocates for half of your plate being fruits and veggies, with 25% being whole grains, and the remaining 25% being high protein foods, which is special focus on vegetable protein or on plant-based protein, that's a plant-based diet, too. Unfortunately, the term plant-based has been hijacked through marketing, also through the vegan community, which leads people to think that eating a plant-based diet means you have to be 100% plant-based. Now, I eat a 100% whole food plant-based diet that contains minimal processed foods and contains zero animal products, but I do that by choice. Dietary patterns that do contain lean cuts of meat or healthy cuts of fatty fish, they've all been shown to reduce risk of chronic disease if the bulk of the calories are coming from whole and minimally processed plants. The biggest bang for your buck will be reducing ultra-processed foods and red-in-processed meats. But that doesn't mean that animal products can't fit in your diet if you choose to have them there. My whole goal, though, is to make sure that people who want to eat a 100% whole food plant-based diet know how to do it responsibly, because if diets that are more restrictive, like plant-based diets, diets that remove certain foods or certain food groups, if they're not well planned, they could potentially lead to certain deficiencies. But if plant-based diets are well planned and contain a variety of whole foods that are minimally processed, these dietary patterns have been shown to reduce cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol, pretty much all chronic diseases around the board. Now, that doesn't mean that everyone connects with wanting to do that because it does have the risk of creating friction in your life, friction at Christmas supper, friction when you're traveling, and unless that you have skills and dedicate time in the kitchen, or you batch cook or you prepare meals in advance, it could be difficult to remain 100% compliant. Now, although I eat a 100% whole food plant-based diet, I am a scientist and a doctor, and I know that nothing is black or white, nothing is zero or everything, there are shades of gray, there are spectrums, and there are dose responses. Dose responses mean that some things they happen more or less as you change the dose, and the same thing goes for the amount of calories in your diet that are coming from whole plants. So whether you are eating a vegetarian diet, a vegan diet, a Mediterranean diet, a flexitarian diet, you're following the Canadian food guide, or you're on a whole food plant-based diet, these are all plant-based diets. The difference is that vegetarian and vegan diets, they tell me what you don't eat. Whereas whole food plant-based diets focus on an abundance mindset where you're eating a lot of variety of whole plant foods that belong to the fruit food group, the veggie food group, nuts and seeds, herbs and spices, whole grains and legumes like beans, chickpeas, and lentils. So when people ask me, what do you eat on a plant-based diet? I say I eat everything. I eat a lot more variety of foods that I used to when I used to eat processed meat and eggs for breakfast. Right? So plant-based diets have been shown to reduce the risk of chronic disease when they're varied, when they meet your calorie needs, and when they're well planned, right? Whereas vegan and vegetarian diets, they can be well planned, but by definition, there are diets that describe what you're not eating. If you're eating a vegan diet, you're not eating animal products, which means that you could be eating french fries, Oreos, and Coca-Cola, which are all vegan. Same thing goes for a vegetarian diet. Maybe you don't eat red meat, but you eat eight eggs every morning and you are busting the budget for saturated fat and dietary cholesterol and putting yourself at higher risk for chronic disease. Typically, on average, people who eat vegetarian and vegan diets do have more polyphenols in their diets, more phytochemicals, more fiber. They have variety of fiber. They typically eat less calorie-dense foods, more nutrient-dense foods. They typically reduce the amount of saturated fat, trans fat, and dietary cholesterol that someone would eat on a standard diet. So, for the most part, even minimally planned vegan and vegetarian diets are healthier than the standard American diet. But what I teach is to make sure that people understand that plant-based just simply means most of your calories from plants. But I really want people to understand that when I talk about the word plant-based, I am referring to a well-planned, varied plant-based diet that contains food from all of the plant food groups in a minimally processed state, meaning as close to the way Mother Nature intended. But obviously, I've made lifestyle medicine and plant-based nutrition my life. So I also understand that people get defensive when they they're not on a 100% plant-based diet, and then we have a conversation. But that's what you that's where people get me all wrong. My whole goal is simply to have you trend towards consuming more plants, right? Now remember that the average Canadian's calories, 60% of them are coming from ultra-processed foods, 30% are coming from animal products, and 10% are coming from whole, minimally processed plants. Whereas if we would look at what the data says, it says that to optimally reduce in most people the risk of chronic disease, we would follow the 80-20 rule, meaning that 80% of your calories are coming from whole, minimally processed plants, and the 20% that's left over can be whatever it wants. It can be animal products, it can be ultra-processed foods, but this way the amount of anti-inflammatory help-promoting compounds in your diet is well over the amount it takes to compensate for the more pro-inflammatory, less beneficial compounds you would find in animal products and in ultra-processed foods. Now, if someone eats 75-25 instead of 80-20, that doesn't mean there's no benefit. If someone eats 60-40 in terms of 60% of the calories coming from whole plant foods, with 40% coming from animal products and ultra-processed foods, that's better than what people have now, which is a standard diet of 90% of their calories are coming from ultra-processed foods and animal products, and 10% are coming from whole plants. So people are eating when you compare their ratios to the 80-20 rule, they're eating 1090. Just moving to 50-50 would be a good thing, right? So you don't have to be 100-0, just trending towards a healthier diet and towards more plants on your plate is going to make you healthier. Now, the way that people find it easier to do that is to do it by not reinventing your plate, but simply by tweaking what you're already eating. So if you're eating a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast, maybe you cook it with soy milk instead of cow's milk. Maybe you put a few tablespoons of chia seeds, hemp seeds, flaxseeds, nuts, granola, berries inside of it. Sprinkle some spices on it just to give it some more antioxidant punch, like cinnamon, for example. So in people that are eating a highly processed diet, you need to go slow. Your taste buds will need six to eight weeks to adjust, as will your microbiome. For a lot of people, depending on how bad their diet was at baseline, they may find that their taste buds adapt within a few days of simply removing or reducing ultra-processed foods in your diet. Now, my best tip to you is to divide these behaviors in low, medium to high friction behaviors. So, for example, if someone here is like, oh, I hate oatmeal, I would never eat oatmeal, well then oatmeal is probably not the first choice you should make. If someone says, you know what, I eat four eggs for breakfast, maybe I would accept removing the yolk out of two of these four eggs, I say that's a good move. If someone's gonna say, I'm at least gonna, instead of eating bacon, I'm gonna eat ham slices. Well, keep in mind that they're both ultra-processed foods, but the macronutrient distribution of ham, regardless if it's still an ultra-processed red meat, is still better than bacon, right? So it's all about making healthier swaps. Now, I would prefer people getting their breakfast from oatmeal with soy milk and granola and berries and a mix of seeds. But for a lot of people, they don't, that's not what they want to do. So the goal when coaching someone is to make sure that you know where they're coming from, to make sure they trend in the right direction slowly but surely. Now, last year I coached a whole bunch of people to good health. I had great testimonials, great results, and I'm really passionate about it. I really think that as doctors, we need to play two different roles. We need to play the role of expert, where we have the knowledge to guide people towards better choices, but we also need to play the role of coach to be inspiring and motivating and to help people find strategies to barriers and to anticipate curveballs and to plan for them. And if patients can simply trust that their coach is a credible source of information and a reliable source of inspiration and motivation, we know that outcomes get much better. I wish that I could divide myself in two and become a coach and a doctor full time. It's very difficult to do that in the constraints of the healthcare system that I work in. And that's why a few years ago I had an online platform where which I did virtual coaching to groups, group sessions. We talked about the pillars of health and how to improve nutrition to videos. And I think I'm gonna bring these back. Now, my goal is in 2026 to roll out an online platform of e-courses that people can do in their own pace while being part of a cohort that would have an online group where I would do coaching, working out the kinks, but I know for a fact that we can help more people virtually in group settings than we can by just seeing one person at a time. And having already almost a thousand patients in my medical clinic with months of wait, I cannot imagine being able to coach people unless I do it in my sleep. So if you're interested, or if you would be interested in participating to in the first groups of this online coaching e-course platform, uh let me know, and I'll make sure to keep tabs on who's interested, who's not, and to make sure that everyone gets a chance to get on the wait list. But back to the initial goal of this video is to go back to basics. Now I can talk about the benefits of pectin and of compounds in apples for a half an hour and the benefits for your microbiome and for fiber and for satiety and for metabolism. But if you don't like apples, all of that goes to waste. So the goal is simply to zoom out and see the big picture. If you're looking at what is probably going to move the needle much more, I'd say 95% of the issue that people have are they're consuming too much energy, too much from processed meats, red meats, and from ultra processed foods. They're not eating enough fiber or eating too much saturated fat, which increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. We also consume too much sodium that increases blood pressure and mortality from cardiovascular disease. So the big things that move the needle are really. Really simple. They're not easy, but they're simple. Eat less ultra-processed foods, eat less ripp meat and processed meat, and increase the amount of calories you get from whole plant foods. Maybe that means throwing a can of black beans with the rice that you're going to eat or with the chili that you were going to eat, choosing plant sources of protein instead of animal sources that come with saturated fat and heme iron and cholesterol, whereas plant protein comes with zero cholesterol, minimal saturated fat comes with unsaturated fat and fiber. We just need to make small tweaks to our diet. It's normal if you find yourself overwhelmed by going plant-based, because going plant-based is the last part of the journey. The first part of the journey is simply seeing how you can modify and tweak what you're already eating as to create minimal friction with your life. Studies show that small wins, small successes, build confidence, they build positive reinforcement, and they make the journey much more pleasant and much more sustainable. And that means that people need to find ways to create small wins for themselves. If you're trying to go plant-based, 100% plant-based in no time, you're setting yourself up for failure. Discipline and willpower can do wonders in what we call the induction phase, where you get that honeymoon, honeymoon phase where people move across the change spectrum quite quickly. But a lot of people they hit a block, they hit a dead end or a bump in the road when life throws curveballs. So make sure to start low, go slow, make small incremental changes that add up over time. Don't be overconfident. There will be curveballs, there will be barriers. Just make sure that you plan for them and you have a strategy for when they start. And just remember that failure is actually normal part of change and a teaching moment for the next time out, right? Cool. I hope this helps. Let me know if it did.

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We'll see you at our next chat.com to find free downloadable resources. And remember that you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Dr. Jewels Cormier, and on YouTube at Plantbased Dr. Jewels.