BJ Fogg, author of Tiny Habits, has a method he uses called dream wanding. This is where you write what you aspire to achieve and then brainstorm a swarm of behaviors that may help you achieve that aspiration. It’s basically a way of dreaming big or waving your magic wand by writing down all your ideas surrounding a particular habit you aspire to.

My habits group and I did dream wanding exercise together one spring, likely in May 2021.  I continued to be on a mission to reduce my total cholesterol and had a goal to get to optimal levels.  My regular doctor wanted to put me on medication, but just by giving up pizza in 2020 (which was the bulk of my dairy consumption), I already had significantly reduced my LDL cholesterol and triglycerides, but I wanted to keep improving as my total cholesterol had not changed much at this point.  I declined the medication as I wanted to have a chance to first see if I could lower my cholesterol levels through lifestyle changes and from everything I read, I knew I could.  I focused on the ‘dream’ of having optimal cholesterol levels, and we each silently brainstormed and then shared with each other.

This dream wanding exercise was also an achievable way to focus on weight loss without directly focusing on weight loss. If I could focus on healthy, sustainable long term habits, then naturally the weight would come off and it did.

Once we completed the dream wanding exercise, we focused on the items that were both achievable (easy) and would make a big impact.  Those items got circled on the page and then we each created habit recipes to progress towards our aspiration.  This exercise was powerful for me and one I returned to as I was ready to add more habits in my life to support my aspiration.  I used the same dream wanding exercise to get out of debt. Looking back, it’s quite remarkable how many of the habits I wrote down in our dream wanding exercise actually stuck and made an impact.

When doing the dream wanding exercise, feel free to use google or do a bit of research to find out what habits might support your aspiration. Remember that you are just dreaming at this point, essentially brainstorming all the ideas that come to mind. Once all the ideas are out, then you can filter through what you will focus on to work towards your aspiration. You can even return to your dream wanding journal to look for new habits to add in as you achieve others or do the exercise again as priorities change.

Shannon brought up Dr. Greger again and this time, a specific tip where studies show that people who consume just 4 Brazil nuts per month have improved cholesterol levels!  This was so easy to do, I had to add it to my list of habits!  Dr. Greger makes it easy and suggests eating 4 brazil nuts on the 4th of each month. Four on the fourth! It is also worth noting, that I completely admire Shannon’s persistence with helping me HELP MYSELF back to health.

As you can see from the below charts, my cholesterol levels along with inflammation (measured by c-reactive protein (CRP) have gone down markedly.  Inflammation is said to be the root of where all disease forms so I like to track this number, though some doctors do not like to test CRP as it can be high if your body is fighting off an infection or injury so if getting this tested, go when you are feeling healthy.

I shared these results with a non-vegan friend whose doctor did put her on cholesterol medication.  She was shocked.  You lowered your cholesterol without drugs?  Why yes, I did, and I don’t think there’s a cholesterol drug on the market that would have helped me achieve these results!  THIS is the power of plants.

You can even see a ‘blip’ in the LDL chart where my LDL cholesterol crept back up.  This was in November 2021, when I had re-introduced milk chocolate (which uses dairy) back into my life with an addictive vengeance and my cholesterol promptly raised as a result. Only animal products contain cholesterol, plants have no cholesterol and your liver produces all the cholesterol you need. It’s fascinating to me that introducing just chocolate back into my life for a few weeks raised my cholesterol even though nothing else I ate included cholesterol. I clearly like to test the waters of what I can get away with! At least in the beginning. I wouldn’t touch animal products with a ten foot pole now due to ethical reasons. I do not want to consume the flesh of a soul who suffered and did not want to die.

You may recall from my bloodwork blog post it was revelated that my artery health was that of someone in their 60’s and I was in my 40s at the time. Yikes. This propelled me into learning all about preventing heart disease so I could avoid a cardiac event. A huge part of my WHY is to live a healthy disease free life and reducing my cholesterol has had such a profoundly positive impact on my health, it has been well worth the efforts. As Dr. Greger explains in this video, ‘the scientific consensus is that lowering LDL cholesterol reduces heart attacks.’ He also goes on to say that having:

‘normal cholesterol levels in a society where it’s normal to drop dead of a heart attack isn’t exactly saying much. Ideally we want to get our total cholesterol *well under 150 mg/DL since having high cholesterol levels in your blood is thought of as the only atherosclerotic risk factor. All the other things, smoking, inactivity, obesity just exacerbate the damage caused by the high cholesterol.’

I’m thankful for my resistance to relying on pills as a Band-Aid solution. My doctor only ever offered me one solution – pills. It’s not his fault though, doctor’s do not receive much training on nutrition. It is for this reason, I am a bit flabbergasted that we take our doctor’s advice on what to eat.

I wanted to get to the root cause of my cholesterol see if I could make lifestyle changes to reduce it so I didn’t have to rely upon pills (which I am not good at taking). I tried on for size what I learnt with a curiosity to see if what the research showed would be true for me and it was.

*Well under 150 mg/DL is the American target for total cholesterol. Below 3.879 mmol/L for my Canadian friends. As a non-vegan my cholesterol was at 6.54 mmol/L (252.90 mg/DL) and last I checked it was at 4.27 mmol/L (165.12 mg/DL). I am so close to getting under that 150 mg/DL target Dr. Greger referred to.

Just for fun, I wanted to point out that back in 2018, I was unable to even get a reading for my triglycerides. As noted in my bloodwork results, they were unable to calculate my LDL cholesterol due to my triglycerides being so high. Eating animals had so many negative side effects for my body. The mantra I would tell myself in the beginning days was ‘eating suffering causes suffering‘ and that mantra helped me stay on track while I was in the learning phase and working through food addiction.

I highly recommend regular bloodwork as a way to measure your own health, measure your progress and of course before embarking on any diet and lifestyle changes so you can see if the changes you made helped or hindered. Bloodwork is one of my fav tools we have available to us. When I advised my doctor that getting bloodwork regularly helped me stay on track with my health goals, he happily wrote me a standing order to check my bloodwork so I could stay on track. Ask and you shall receive!

Peace, love & plants,

Michelle 🙂

p.s. Don’t take my word for anything. This is my personal, anecdotal experiences. Do some research yourself, but ensure the research is not biased. There’s so much research out there sponsored by the meat and dairy industry (biased) or poorly conducted studies that are short term or contain small participant groups. If you follow Dr. Greger long enough, you’ll learn to look for studies that use randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials. I can’t recommend his books and non-profit website nutritionfacts.org enough. Dr. Greger and his team of volunteers have poured over the quality research that already exists and create free video summaries along with transcripts distilling the research into bite sized bits us laypeople can understand.