Jennifer Zee - Plant-based & Happy Jennifer Zalev

As we enter into a new decade, I can’t think of a better guest to launch us into 2020 than Lauren Eirk! In this Season 2 episode of the Jennifer Zee Plant-based & Happy Podcast, I had the great opportunity to chat with Lauren all about finding purpose on her path to wellness.

Lauren Eirk, M.S., is the Founder of the Yoga Integrated ScienceTM Wellness Studio in  Louisville, KY which offers Yoga and Pilates group classes, Personal Training, Yoga Therapy  and MAT services. Lauren is a certified E-RYT 500 level Yoga Instructor with Yoga Alliance®  with over 35 years of experience in Health and Wellness. A Yoga Alliance® Continuing  Education Provider (YACEP), she is the developer of the 500-Hour Registered Hatha Yoga  School Yoga Integrated ScienceTM. Lauren is a Certified Yoga Therapist C-IAYT with the  International Association for Yoga Therapy. She is a Certified MATRx Full-Body Specialist, making her one of leading experts in the treatment of muscular Imbalances. Her training has enabled her to work with highly sensitive clients that suffer from complex, on-going neuro-muscular issues. Lauren is an International Continuing Education Provider, AFS Mentor, Brand influencer for Athleta® Brand clothing, and a member of the Body Bar® Instructor Team. Lauren has a passion for animal rights and partners her business with The Humane Society in Kentucky since January of 2013.

In this episode Lauren and I chat about:
➤ Choosing a career in wellness.
➤ Understanding how the body works.
➤ Developing healthy self-esteem.
➤ Feeling the pressure of having to look a certain way.
➤ Discovering Muscle Activation Techniques.
➤ How MAT works to improve workouts, Pilates and even our yoga practice.
➤ Why some people try yoga and never go back.
➤ When yoga becomes available to most people.
➤ How yoga heals.
➤ What led Lauren to become a vegan.
➤ The irony of a yoga teacher eating animals.

RESOURCES:

Website: https://yogaintegratedscience.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yogaintegratedscience/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZJKkPFXRKfYZlEcf0nXOgg?view_as=subscriber
Twitter: https://twitter.com/YogaEducation
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YogaIntegratedScience

For more plant-based inspiration, coaching, education and yoga, visit: https://jenniferzee.com/AND Learn from 20 world-renowned experts with my plant-based online summit: https://plantbasedmasterysummit.com

In this Season 2 episode of the Jennifer Zee Plant-based & Happy Podcast, I had the lovely opportunity to chat with Margaret Coons - Founder and CEO, or “The Big Cheese” .

Food preparation and production has been a long-time passion for Margaret. A vegetarian since the age of 12 and vegan since the age of 19, creating delicious alternatives to more conventionally available food products was a hobby that turned into a career. She didn’t grow up in a vegetarian family, so, she began to cook for herself at a pretty young age and became interested in making vegetarian and vegan dishes. Working as a chef in a vegan restaurant, Margaret spent many late nights in the kitchen creating cashew-based vegan cheeses. In 2015 she decided to try her hand at a local farmers’ market booth with the vegan cheeses she had been making for a couple of years. This was when the young chef-turned-entrepreneur combined her passion for food and the art of culinary experiences with her commitment to her dietary choices to create Nuts for Cheese. Just as she started the booth at the farmers’ market, when demand began to soar and retail requests came in, the business took off from there. Nuts For Cheese is now available in 1000 stores across Canada!

In this episode Margaret and I chat about:
➤ Choosing to be vegan (and sticking to it) even when family and friends are not.
➤ Why vegetables may taste better now than when you were a kid.   
➤ Turning your hobby into a career.
➤ Growth in the plant-based sector.
➤ How today's vegan cheeses are leaving customers with zero reasons to eat traditional cheese.
➤ Challenges and how to overcome them as a plant-based entrepreneur.
➤ Keys to being a success a an entrepreneur.
➤ Why you should spend more time on doing the things that you love.

RESOURCES:

Nuts for Cheese Website: https://nutsforcheese.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nutsforcheese/

For more plant-based inspiration, coaching, education and yoga, visit: https://jenniferzee.com/AND Learn from 20 world-renowned experts with my plant-based online summit: https://plantbasedmasterysummit.com

In this Season 2 episode of the Jennifer Zee Plant-based & Happy Podcast, I had the wonderful Marina Yanay-Triner from Soul in the Raw on.

Marina is a plant-based health coach and recipe developer. Marina creates quick, easy, and delicious vegan recipes and writes about the health benefits of a plant-based diet rich in fresh foods, focusing on evidence-based nutrition information. She helps clients go and stick to plant-based eating through her one on one and group coaching programs.
Marina went vegan over 7 years ago, inspired by her mother's incredible healing story of reversing a crippling bladder disease (Interstitial cystitis). She has been able to reverse her own PMS symptoms and encourage emotional healing from trauma as a result of this transition. She is incredibly passionate about the vegan diet for human health, animal welfare, and the well-being of our planet, all of which she envisions as holistic and co-dependent.

In this episode Marina and I chat about:
➤ Reversing Interstitial Cystitis with plant-based nutrition.
➤ The link between PMS, PTSD and poor dietary choices.   
➤ Creating quick, easy and delicious meals for busy people.
➤ Convenient meal planning ideas.
➤ Navigating a restaurant menu.
➤ Why I’m sick of talking about protein.
➤ Decoding nutrients and micronutrients.
➤ Replacing traditional meat and cheese with simple ingredients.

RESOURCES:

Marina’s Website: www.soulintheraw.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soulintheraw/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarinaatSoulintheRaw/
Pinterest:  https://www.pinterest.com/SoulintheRaw/

For more plant-based inspiration, coaching and education, visit: https://jenniferzee.com/AND Learn from 20 world-renowned experts with my plant-based online summit: https://plantbasedmasterysummit.com

In this Season 2 episode of the Jennifer Zee Plant-based & Happy Podcast, I had the amazing Dana, founder of My Alkaline Recipes on. Dana has been a great inspiration for me so naturally I wanted to have her on to share her plant-based journey of how she began to benefit from an alkaline diet. She also shares her top tips on making delicious meals that everyone will love and more!

Dana is the founder of My Alkaline Recipes, an Instagram based platform with Alkaline Vegan Recipes that are based on Dr. Sebi's Nutritional guide. Dana is passionate about healthy living and love creating recipes that help change the way people perceive food.

In this episode Dana and I chat about:
➤ The benefits of eating alkaline food.
➤ Overcoming excuses.  
➤ Dr. Sebi’s Nutritional Guide.
➤ Simplifying plant-based nutrition.
➤ Raw VS cooked. 
➤ Making exciting plant-based meals.
➤ 6 fundamental food groups according to Dr. Sebi.
➤ Choosing the right cleanse for your body.
➤ The best way to optimize health with food

RESOURCES:
Dana’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myalkalinerecipes/

For more plant-based inspiration, coaching and education, visit: https://jenniferzee.com/AND Learn from 20 world-renowned experts with my plant-based online summit: https://plantbasedmasterysummit.com

In this Season 2 episode of the Jennifer Zee Plant-based & Happy Podcast, I had the amazing opportunity to chat with Jenny Kong, my very own Muscle Activation Specialist! If you haven’t heard of MAT yet, you could be missing out on the key element needed to rebalance your body, increase muscle function and range of motion, experience faster recovery time, better workouts and finally, to achieve your highest quality of life yet.

Jen is the owner of Parallel Fitness Studio, a Personal Training Studio, voted best fitness centre by the community of Richmond Hill.

She is a Kinesiologist alumni from University of Toronto and a Personal Trainer and Muscle Activation Techniques Specialist.

Jen has worked with people of all ages, from athletes, to clients with MS, Parkinsons disease, lyme disease, stroke, surgery recovery, injury, joint replacement and arthritis among others.

She has an exceptional understanding of not just physical activity, but biomechanics and human anatomy and uses all of that to create workouts that build you up instead of break you down.

As a twin mom, she understood first hand postpartum how body aches and pain can affect everyday performance and has been since an advocate of a “less is more” philosophy. She focuses on finding weak, underused muscles that aren’t firing optimally and strengthening those to create a more balanced muscular system. Every workout is dictated by the client’s body and structural needs and not based on protocols or the latest trends.

She is totally passionate about health and wellness; and has spent over a decade in this industry educating clients about their bodies and how to work smarter, not just harder.

Jen’s proudest accomplishments are her twin girls and the time she went back stage and did a MAT treatment session on Phil Collen, Def Leppard’s Lead guitarist and his wife during their concert in Toronto.

In this episode Jen and I chat about:
➤ What is Muscle Activation Techniques?
➤ Comparing MAT to other therapies.
➤ Finding the root cause of pain.
➤ Locating weakness in the body. Psst... It’s not always where you think it is.
➤ How the body begins to overcompensate for muscle weakness.  
➤ The true purpose of exercise.
➤ How an injury manifests.
➤ Workouts that focus on building you up rather than tearing you down.
➤ Comparing social media ‘mom life’ to the real thing.
➤ Dieting regrets.

RESOURCES:
Website: http://www.parallelfitness.ca/
Jen’s Instagram: www.instagram.com/trainatparallel
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ParallelFitness

For more plant-based inspiration, coaching and education, visit: https://jenniferzee.com/AND Learn from 20 world-renowned experts with my plant-based online summit: https://plantbasedmasterysummit.com

On this episode of the Jennifer Zee Plant-based & Happy Podcast I had the incredible opportunity to chat with the creator of “Trying Vegan with Mario"

Mario Fabbri hosts a cooking show called “Trying Vegan with Mario” where he is on a mission to learn the best plant-based recipes from vegan experts. Trying Vegan with Mario airs on channel 1 in NYC and is streaming on Roku.

Growing up Mario’s dad owned an Italian Sausage factory and for a long time he anticipated taking it over. The sausage factory was a big part of his family tradition. At 18 years old he moved from his home in Chicago to Colorado, and at 20 years old, started a video production company filming food commercials for television. Everything was about creating the most ‘droolworthy’ meaty, fried, cheesy food shots to entice people. Mario became interested in vegan food when his business partner lost 100 pounds by eating plant-based. After that he began learning as much as he could about plant-based nutrition. During this time, he had to stop making unhealthy commercials and learn how to spread a healthier message. That’s what inspired Trying Vegan with Mario. The viewers learn about vegan cooking and benefits through his experience. It’s about delicious food that everyone can make.

In this episode Mario and I chat about:
➤ How not being able to relate to other vegan content led him to create “Trying Vegan with Mario”
➤ The basics for going plant-based
➤ Easy and delicious plant-based food for everyone
➤ How plant-based nutrition is helping people operate at a higher level
➤ Building a plant-powered business
➤ Letting go of old habits and making room for new ideas
➤ A new approach to Veganism
➤ Constructive ways to give people the tools they need to become plant-based
➤ Following your true passion in life

RESOURCES:
On Instagram: @mariofabbri_tryingvegan
On Roku: https://channelstore.roku.com/details/224593/trying-vegan-with-mario
Mario's Website: www.tryingveganwithmario.com

For more plant-based inspiration, coaching and education, visit: https://jenniferzee.com/AND Learn from 20 world-renowned experts with my plant-based online summit: https://plantbasedmasterysummit.com