I Didn’t go Plant-Based Because I was Perfect at Cooking…

August 29, 2026

About Me

I have been interested in the connection between diet and health since the age of 15 due to my own struggle with
Graves Disease, an immune system disorder resulting in the overproduction of thyroid hormone. My heart rate, blood pressure and metabolism was dangerously high, I ate constantly yet I was malnourished because my body was not absorbing nutrients from food. It can be life threatening if gone untreated but luckily my doctor was able to get it under control with medicine. However it was a wake-up call for me so at 15 I learned as much as I could about ways to improve health by controlling my diet. Based on what I learned andI coordinated with my doctor to change my diet to remove all meat. About 9-months later my thyroid normalized, I no longer needed medication, and I felt so much better that I decided to continue eating this way. So you could say that my plant-based journey began about 40 years ago.

Fast forward to 2021, on a Sunday afternoon after drive past a cow pasture in Palm Bay, Florida, my husband decided that he wanted to give up meat and dairy immediately…. cold turkey. This wasn’t a complete surprise because we had been doing some research dairy and the impact it has on our bodies and I didn’t eat a lot of meat anyway, so I jumped onboard. BUT, I knew that if I was going to make this change permanent, I had to learn how to make our food taste good.

I took my first plant-based cooking class with Rouxbe Online Culinary Schools called the Forks Over Knives Ultimate Cooking Course in December 2021, followed by earning the Plants Plus Certification from Rouxbe the following year. However, the more I learned, the more I fell in love with plant-based cooking. I decided then that I wanted to share what I learned with others. My plan was to start my own business whose purpose was to teach vegan cooking, so I established Vegan Cooking Coach L.L.C. June 1, 2023.

But then something else happened. The more I discovered about the health benefits of a plant-based diet, the more driven I was to coach others on the science and how to implement these life altering changes. I learned that most deaths in the United States are preventable, and they are directly related to what we eat. Poor diet is the number one cause of disease, premature death and is the number one cause of disability in this country. Lucky for us it is within our control to prevent and sometimes reverse these diseases. These statistics, among other things, are why I decided to study with the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and earn a certificate to become an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach in May of 2024. I then completed the Plant-Based Nutrition Certificate Program with the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies.

Veganish

As a Plant-Based Health Coach my purpose is to teach you how to apply lifestyle changes that significantly impact your health.

Veganish is a flexible approach to eating that is mostly plant-based but doesn’t require 100% perfection. A Veganish lifestyle is defined by practical, sustainable habits rather than strict rules. No pressure, simply a judgment-free approach to diet that eliminates the stress of being “perfectly” vegan.

Recipes – Veganish