Reversing his heart disease, pre-diabetes and a 65 pound weight loss were just some of the changes Kelley Gilberry saw after going plant-based. But inspiring others to do what he's done may be the best outcome yet.

I'm so thrilled you're here today . Let's get started . Welcome to the show Plant-Centered Listener . My name is Ashley and I am your host today . And today I have a very special guest and story to share with you . This is the story of Kelly , who has taken pivotal , heartbreaking moments in his life and use those to spur his transition to a plant-based diet .

Kelly Gilberry , chn , is a fervent advocate for holistic wellness . He's an accomplished health coach , plant-based nutritionist , published author and an inspiring keynote speaker dedicated to guiding you towards the life of your aspirations . His expertise lies in identifying and transforming counterproductive food related behaviors , habits and beliefs .

With a philosophy rooted in straightforward methods , kelly empowers his clients to achieve their health objectives through sustainable lifestyle modifications . His debut book plants saved my life serves as a comprehensive guide to understanding how lifestyle medicine can be a catalyst for reclaiming your wellbeing .

Kelly's zeal for crafting impactful resources is particularly geared towards those grappling with obesity and chronic health issues . Kelly goes into detail about how he reversed several of his chronic diseases and lost weight as he transitioned to a plant-based diet .

Drawing on an impressive 18-year tenor in training and development , kelly harnesses the instructional strategies honed during his time as an instructor at the US Naval Academy to passionately convey the principles of health and natural healing to his audience .

Y'all this conversation was heartfelt , it was empowering , and he shares so much information that I know will help your journey . Please join me in welcoming to the show Kelly . Kelly , welcome to the show . I'm so excited to share your story and really just dive into all these things that sort of have led you to where you are today .

She passed away maybe three months prior to that , two or three months prior to that , from heart disease , heart attack , which is the leading cause of death throughout the United States , and not even the United States , but just across the world . So when I'm flying back home and I'm just like man , what the hell just happened ?

She was literally here one day and gone the next day . And then I'm flying back on the plane , I'm like I have no idea what just happened . My mom was here and now she's gone , taken by a heart attack . And then I go to the doctor and like hey , man , you got all these chronic conditions and so I'm in the worst shape of my life .

So I decided that I was going to make a change . But before I made that change , my mother came to me in a dream and told me that I had this ability to be able to help other people heal themselves through chronic conditions , through chronic . I had no idea what that dream mean .

Keep in mind when she comes to me in the dream I'm obese , I'm a pre-diabetic and I got heart disease . Like what do I know about healing anybody ? Absolutely zero , right .

So but then that dream made sense a few months later , when my uncle came to live with us . And when he came to live with us they gave him two months to live because of his cancer . His cancer came back . So he beat cancer before it went into remission and then it came back .

And when it comes back , you know , when cancer comes back , it always comes back with a vengeance . So I was his caretaker during COVID . So I saw him go from a strong person to a very weak person and then he ultimately passed away . So I was his caretaker until the last five days of his life . So I saw both sides of death .

I saw how death will take you out quickly , like that from a heart attack . Then I saw how death will take you out slowly from cancer . So then I go to the doctor and they're like you got all these conditions . And then , when he passed away , that dream for my mother made sense .

It means that A I needed to go on a mission to first transform my own health , and then once I transform my own health , and then next is the transform just like my mother said is to transform the health of everybody on this planet . That's my mission . I'm not going to stop doing that until the day that I die .

That is what I'm most passionate about helping people , let them know that they don't have to pass away 20 , 30 , 40 years later from a preventable disease .

And obviously your mom comes to you in a dream and it's like well then , how do you get to where you are today ? They didn't .

When I get back home and after they get the lab results back and all that stuff , they're like here you go , doctor wants to prescribe you this . He wants to prescribe you that .

It was actually a low moment for me because I had taken pride in the fact that I had never taken medication a day in my life , Aside from some Motrin and Advil and you know something for my tummy . Other than that , I didn't take any medication .

So when the doctor called me back and said that I actually had experienced a low moment , I thought back to when I was on a cruise .

So I was on a cruise about you know , maybe seven , eight years ago , on a cruise about you know , maybe seven , eight years ago , and then on that cruise there was a tour guide and on that tour guide someone on the bus asked the tour guide hey , where do you get your medication from here ? Uh , he said we don't get our medication from the grocery store .

We don't get our medication when we , when we need our medication , we go straight out here to the land . We go to the land , we grab a tree , a plant , bush , and we mix them together . Everything that we use to heal ourselves is from the land . So we just go out to the land and go get that and then we just let nature take our course .

And when I'm faced with this , hey , take these medications . I remember what that tour guide told me . He said take the medicine from the earth and mix them together , make some type of concoction , then you just let nature take its course . So that's what I decided to do .

I decided that , yeah , you can just prescribe me the medication , but I'm saying to myself I'm not going to take it . So I didn't take it . So I just I went on a crazy mission to again to transform my own health . So my mother told me , the more research I did , the more I kept pointing back to it's the food , like it's the food , it's the food .

So I'm putting in things into Google like why don't people die ? Because I wanted to know why my mother passed away . I wanted to know where heart disease came from . I wanted to know where cancer came from . I wanted to know where every stinking disease came from , because I was going to go to war with it .

And once I made that decision , I decided oh okay , yeah , it's all about the plant , because Mother Nature is perfect in her design . There's a reason that there's over 250,000 edible plants on this planet , and that reason is called variety , and that's where you get the medication from . So the food is the medicine and the medicine is the food .

So that's the philosophy that I use to transform my own health .

I mean , we don't often look at food as a form of medicine or think that we have all these different plants that we could use to heal , cure , prevent certain diseases 100% .

So how did you go from what I'm guessing is eating sort of like the standard American diet to a plant-based one ? How did those first few steps sort of start for you ?

So what I did is I just started saying , okay , I'm not , I'm cutting out all animal products . I did that for a few days and then , once I got used to juicing , then I started getting into variety of , like fruit bowls , let me try . Okay , what's this different type of fruit bowl ? Then I started doing so

. I would hear someone talking like my sister would say something about a tabbouleh bowl . Like her husband went vegan one time before and he was like he started eating a . What are tabbouleh bowls ? So I looked those up and then I started figuring out about Buddha bowls . Like what's Buddha bowls ?

Buddha bowls are just a bunch , a whole bunch of deliciousness just tossing together in one big old pot , and that's how you eat it . Because the reason where Buddha bowls came about is because back in the day , buddha used to go through all the towns and and the people didn't have anything to give him .

So they were like , ok , buddha , he just had this big basket . So they just fill his basket up with a whole bunch of different foods . Right , that was their gift to him for coming and doing what he does . So he would just have this big bowl of deliciousness and he called it Buddha bowl .

But the thing about a Buddha bowl is you got to make a delicious sauce so you can put non-starchy vegetables , starchy vegetables , whole grains , you can put beans , you can put leafy greens , you can put anything that you want in there , and you just top it off with a delicious sauce . Then I would make a recipe .

So I'd make a recipe and then one week and like , okay , I learned that recipe , and then I would make it again and then I would kind of put my own spin on it . So that is kind of how I started .

What did you notice , just in how you felt physically ?

So when I'm being a corporate trainer , I'm teaching a class , and this is in 2021 . So I'm teaching the class and I'm like hey , students , it's time for a break . They're like well , we just had a break . Like , yeah , I know it's time for a break , but I got to go .

When you got to go , you got to go because you're changing up your microbes , right , you're changing up . You're going from eating hot dogs and hamburgers and double cheeseburgers and gummy worms and all that stuff with no fiber to a diet that's filled with fiber and when that happens , your , your gut's going to notice it's going to take notice .

So you just , there are times that I had no control over . So I'm just like man , if I don't go right now , then it's going to be a bad situation right here . So that's kind of what the first thing that I noticed was my digestion .

Then after about a month I say three weeks , after about three weeks , I started to get a hold of my digestion a little bit and like , ok , I'm able to control . It's still going to be this time to go , but I can control it a lot better than what I did before . So that's kind of the first thing I noticed .

But in the first five months I lost about 45 pounds . I was obese , so I lost about 45 pounds within the first five months . I went from an extra large to a medium shirt within the first five months . Ultimately I'm in the small . But after about the first five months I'm like man . There's probably another 20 to 25 pounds that I could lose .

So by the end of the year I had 11 months . So by the end of the year I lost about 65 pounds . So I reversed all my chronic conditions . I reversed heart disease , I reversed pre-diabetes and I was back to my high school weight Once you get to be 40 , that's it , bro . Give it up . You're destined to have a dad bod .

You're destined to have all these chronic health conditions . You're probably going to die pretty soon . That's what they say when you turn 40 . Well , I'm here to tell you that that is so far from the truth . Health is not determined by your age .

This is this is not , it's not normal , everyday stuff that you've dropped your cholesterol 100 points . I mean you went from being a pre-diabetic , having heart disease , being obese , to now having a 3% chance of having a heart attack in the next 10 years . So his mind was blown . It wasn't a pre , it wasn't an original doctor , but even this doctor was .

His mind was blown . And then I go back to him again . The following year my cholesterol went down even more and I go back to him again and then you know , all of my numbers are great .

I mean , really in all the work that you were doing , you know , in the past year , with everything that was going on , I'm curious too , Kelly , in those you know , 11 , 12 months , as you were transitioning and as you're kind of going through this in the beginning stages , what were some of like the challenges that you faced ?

And then when I teach in these classes , I mean it's not like vegan or plant based options are everywhere . So I started , I found out about this app called Happy Cow and on this Happy Cow app , it just tells you all of the vegan locations , all the plant-based locations in there . And then , like I said , I'm so determined .

That's why I go by One Determined Vegan , as you can see on my name here , it's One Determined Vegan . But I was so determined , my why was so strong that again , the how is easy , just because I'm out and about and it's inconvenient for me to have to go to the grocery store to stack my hotel fridge .

Yeah , that's not convenient , that's like not normal stuff that I would years prior , before I went plant-based , or before the tragic passing of my mother . I would have just been like , bro , I'm not going to the grocery store to go stack my fridge at the hotel , I'm just going to go get whatever McDonald's , burger King , whatever's on the menu .

I'm getting Mountain Dews or whatever Jigami worms , whatever I'm getting Now , it has to be , it's deliberate . You deliberately have to plan . If you do not plan , you will fail , living this way or eating this way , because not everything is catered towards plant-based .

If you can't go that way , it's going to try to go over the top . If she can't go over the top , guess what she'll do ? She'll try to dig a hole underneath , and if that doesn't work , she will literally try to gnaw her way through that pebble to get to the other side . All right , so that's that's . And then the next thing is ants always plan ahead .

In the summertime , they're always thinking about the winter . So they're stacking so much food Like they're putting away food . They're putting away food . In the summertime , they're working , working , working , working , working . A they're planning ahead . What are they doing ? They're making assets for themselves . And what's the grasshopper doing ?

The grasshopper , on the other hand , in the summertime he's hopping around without a plan . And then , when the wintertime comes , guess what happens to the grasshopper ? He starves to death , and while the ants have plenty to eat because they planned ahead . So it's all about planning ahead . A they never quit . B they plan ahead .

And then C , when things are negative , they think positive . They know that the sun's going to come back out again . They know that this winter is not going to last forever . So what's winter ? You got winter in your life . You got the winter of when you go to the doctor and you got all these chronic health conditions .

You got a winter of the death of a loved one . You got the winter of this thing called divorce . You got the winter of when everything you just can't get it right , everything just goes upside down , but the sun always will come out again . Spring always follows winter , every single year .

And the last thing that ants are most popular for is how much food do you think an ant will put away in the summer to prepare for the winter ?

Whatever you do , do it with all your might , do it with whatever your hands chose to do , do that with all your might .

Kelly , I'm curious too , as you were going plant-based were there any misconceptions that you had about plant-based diets or anything that you encountered or like tried to do to address them ?

Only , the only misconceptions that I have is the misconceptions of society saying that we're supposed to eat animal products from the day that we're born . I mean , this is what we're designed to do . We're designed to eat animal products . No , we're

not . If you really study human anatomy , if you really just study the human physiology , you understand that no , human beings are designed to eat plants , based on everything from our our teeth and we have flat teeth to our claws I mean our hand fingers .

We don't have claws , sorry , and we have a long digestive system for for for digesting plants and then carnivores like lions and tigers . They have short digestive system for for processing rotting flesh , which is what you know carcasses . That's why it's so short , so you can get that out of your body .

So that's kind of just the misconception that I see when people ask me all of these all these different times . Like , I did all my research and I know that human beings are designed to eat plants . No one wants to admit that . No one wants to admit that like , yeah , yeah , we designed to eat plants .

The reason that people don't want to admit that is because we've been conditioned since we were six months old . As soon as your mom cracked open that chicken flavored Gerber , you said okay , and that smeared across your intestines . It was at that point .

And then when your mother gave you the bottle full of cow's milk , it was at that point when you said , okay , this is what I'm designed to have . Your cells will start acclimating to that , but that's not the way nature intended it . Like I said , mother nature doesn't make mistakes . Mother nature is perfect in her design .

There's no way that a human being or another mammal is supposed to drink the secretions from another mammal , right ? Simply because of the protein content and how fast that animal grows . I tell people all the time if you want protein , if protein is what you're really after , forget about the cow's milk . I want you to go straight to rat's milk .

The reason you want to go straight to rat's milk is because of how much protein is within that rat's milk , because a rat only takes six months for a rat to become a full adult . It takes a cow about two years to become a full adult . So what does protein do ? It makes people , it makes things grow right .

It takes human beings 18 years to become a full adult . So that's why we don't have huge amounts of protein in case within our food . So that's just kind of some of the misconceptions that I break down to people Like . These are the laws of nature . You can't defy the laws of nature . You can try , but you're going to lose , yep .

What do you have to calm yourself down , to be at peace every day ? And then the A is for active body , your activity levels . What are your activity levels ? Are you moving around ? Are you a couch potato ? And then the C is for clean eating . What's clean eating ? I used to tell people in the beginning to eat all plants .

Now I got a lot of pushback with that . Now I just tell people to eat mostly plants . 90% mostly eat mostly plants , eat real food , not too much , mostly plants . And then the last and the E stands for energizing rest . So that's PACE . So it's peaceful mind , active body , clean eating . And then energizing rest , pace . So all of those go into play .

When I started clean eating , then I started noticing like , oh okay , I'm noticing that I'm sleeping better , or I'm noticing that my energy levels are better , or I'm noticing that I don't have any brain fog as much anymore . I can think clearer now or I don't have crazy negative thoughts like I had before . All of that stuff's being cleaned out .

So it's all about your lifestyle . So I teach people it's lifestyle medicine . So it's lifestyle first , medication second .

So I'm putting on something motivational at nighttime or I'm putting on something , something more meditative at nighttime , maybe to like the last 30 , last 15 to 20 to 30 minutes . Whatever you want to manifest , you manifest your affirmations . So when you go to sleep you have that on your subconscious . You're dreaming about that , you're thinking about that .

You're thinking about whether it's more money or whether it's losing weight or whether it's just being a stoic or being a philosopher I love philosophy and then when you wake up in the morning , you pile on top of that , you do it again , and it's morning , evening , morning evening , morning evening . So it's a day routine , morning routine and a night routine .

So that's part of my pace , that's part of my peaceful mind , like before you have tragedies in your life . I'd have so many tragedies in my life I didn't know how to handle it . Now , when tragedies happen in my life , I'm able to cope with it better because I've calloused my mind in the sense that I understand that I'm more in touch with my feelings .

I'm more in touch with who I am . So that's what meditation is . Meditation stands for becoming familiar with . I'm more familiar with myself , I'm more familiar with my emotions , I'm more familiar on how I would react to things . So that's a little bit of part of that's the P peaceful mind .

So I was a trainer in corporate America and I was a trainer at the United States Naval Academy . So I've taken everything that I've learned in the style and techniques , everything that I learned when it came to totally transforming my health within that 11 months or within that year , and everything that I implemented , even things that I've implemented afterwards .

So it's basically a guide to go from A to Z on if you want to transform your health not even if you want to transform your health , just if you want to live a healthy lifestyle . This is the book for you . And again , I don't talk about being 100% plants , even though I'm 100% plants In the book .

I give people like the 90-10 method , like 90% of your stuff okay fruits , vegetables , nuts , seeds , whole grains and legumes , and then the other 10% you can do kind of whatever you want . So that's time , that's your wiggle room time .

If you're at a party , if you're at a graduation or if you're out with friends and family , you're like oh , I can't eat , don't feel bad about that , I can't eat my plants . Okay , don't feel bad about that , use that as your emergency 10% time .

You could throw a hundred research papers at someone as to why they should go plant-based , but oftentimes when they hear a story like yours , kelly , or even read your book , that is more empowering than reading a hundred research papers , and so I think books like these can be really powerful .

Especially if you have a loved one in your life who you're trying to encourage to go plant-based maybe you yourself are trying to go plant-based this can be a great way to just kind of help , just kickstart or empower you to do that 100% , very , very , very practical .

That epiphany when that tour guide told me that the medication is from the land and then the land is the medication . So that's why I created , I'm super passionate about this , so that's why I created the MedicineFreeMethodcom and you can go in there . Your free resource is called the Ultimate Guide for Mastering Wellness .

That framework is specifically more so about eating real food not too much , mostly plants .

Punch me into Google or even on all the socials . The same thing One Determined Vegan .