I fell in like with Meghan Telpner and her creed a few years ago, after taking a couple of classes with her.

Full of spark and contagious energy, she’s a straight talker who is on a mission to change the world. Meghan recently released her first book, UnDiet: Eat Your Way to Vibrant Health, a revolutionary book about changing how we live, for the benefit of our own health—and for the health of the planet.

She’s as green as they come (her about-town transport is a bright, bicycle, covered in flowers) and if you don’t follow her on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, then hop to it because her words are golden and she offers much to the world.

Meghan has inspired me by leaps and bounds; my copy of the book is lovingly dog-eared and my mornings now start cayenne pepper, lemon and warm water; I use coconut oil for everything and I’m not sane or grounded without one juice a day.

Plus, the book is stuffed with information that we all need to know; creative and simple recipes for your insides (as well as your outside) and inspirational tidbits sprinkled throughout.

Thankfully, some time ago, she took some time out of her busy days to sit down with me and answer a few questions.

So let’s jump in:

BW: I’ve come to a bunch of your workshops and it’s always amazing to me the group of women, the variety of ages and how new all of this information is to them. To watch them have their Aha! moments as you start to break things down is magical.

MT: That’s why it’s so important for me—you forget that not everyone is in the “bubble”; and then I go into corporate, and they ask, “So are you saying that Tropicana orange juice and Danone yogurt smoothies aren’t good for me?” I realize that that’s where it’s at still. Even at the yoga conference, the disgusting drinks they were giving out and Triscuit as a sponsor.

BW: Do you feel like this learning came in layers for you?

MT: The transition for me was strange, because I’d gotten sick and tried to get better in a really unhealthy way, first. I’d gone for these food allergy tests, which said I couldn’t eat anything and so I was eating margarine and rice cakes, because they weren’t tested. I had no protein (and you need to protein to literally restore the tissue of your body). Instead, I was eating trans-fats and hydrogenated oils and puffed rice which is a bio-chemical experiment of how you turn a grain of rice into a puff of air, starch.

That was when my hair started falling out and other stuff started happening—I was so malnourished.

It was when I moved to California that things started to change—cause when you are in Southern California, you eat kale and it’s normal. I would go to these health food stores and go to Whole Foods, which was the closest grocery store to where I was staying and spend hours walking down the aisles and reading packages and looking at stuff and going home and researching it.

It wasn’t until I was in nutrition school that I really started to dive deep. Lunch time was my favorite time—it was when I talked to people about what they were eating. Learning about vitamins is important but not vital to eating healthy. That progression was gradual to the food and as I continued to learn stuff, I would apply it. I was surprised that not many people in my program were doing that; they were learning it like it was school, for a job and not a lifestyle. I didn’t know what I was going to do with the knowledge—I thought there was a small chance I’d go back into advertising.

I took a course called Nutrition and the Environment, based on the theory that every aspect of our lives affects our health. I wrote my thesis paper for that course on Tampax tampons; Toxic Sticks of Death.

It was about the dioxin that we’re inserting into our second mouths, in highly absorbable tissue.

And that’s was when I realized that everything we think is ok, is not ok. So I did swing to the other extreme and you know, I’ve learned that there are things you can do, like sauna’s, getting fresh air, getting sun without sunscreen and all those thing you don’t think are that important or are told are bad for you—it’s the complete opposite.

BW: Wait—no sunscreen?

MT: There’s no sunscreen, except zinc oxide, that doesn’t have a potentially carcinogenic hormone-disrupting chemicals in it. They have studies that show direct correlation of the increase of skin cancer with the increase of use of sunscreen. It’s because people think they can put on sunscreen and then go and not pay attention; but if you think about it, we are creatures of the earth and it’s a relationship.

So, when we present our bodies, full of bad fats, trans fats, hydrogenated fats and chemicals, to the sun, there is going to be a negative reaction.

If we present healthy bodies to the sun, it’s a positive reaction. It’s not about lying in the sun at 12:30 in the afternoon with tanning oil all over, expecting it to be of benefit for you—for the most part, you need to be without sunscreen of any kind to get that Vitamin D production—otherwise the sunscreen blocks it and it comes off in the shower. The Vitamin D will wash off if you use soap in the shower, within 48 hours.

It’s all these things that we think make sense.

I got a lot of flack about a blog post that I wrote that said my choice of sunscreen is to drink a lot of blueberry juice in the summer, cause the antioxidants will protect me from the free radical damage from the sun, repair my skin and then it becomes this symbiotic relationship, as opposed to presenting a french fry/hamburger bodies to the sun.

BW: And you get a lot of flack for things.

MT: I do, but I’m ok with it most of the time. With most of the criticism, I feel more compassion and empathy for the world these people must live in if that’s how they react to that kind of knowledge. So that’s kind of it; sometimes it gets personal, which is not so nice. I love to read the positive feedback and I’m happy to read constructive criticism, but not personal attacks. There’s no need and it’s not useful.

BW: And it’s not about you, actually.

MT: Never, never.

BW: Two things that I thought of that just escaped my mind, as you were talking—not only have we done workshops together and we practice at the studio that I teach at, but we’ve also found ourselves side-by-side in Seane Corn’s classes several times. And so, I want to talk more about the book and your life experience, but that part of you is interesting to me.

MT: The first class I ever did with Seane Corn was in 2008, just after nutrition school and I’d just returned from St. Lucia, where I’d just done my apprenticeship and—no, it was 2009.

I’d been practicing for a year and gaining weight and feeling awful and didn’t know if it was because I was depleting myself running my business or what is was. What attracted me to her class is that it was her detox flow—and I thought, ok if I’m going to run these retreats, I want to know about the physiological connection and how yoga affects you on a nutritional level.

That was it—I wasn’t looking for anything else—and I went with my mom—and my mom had been having some major challenges with my dad at the time, because he’d just had a hernia operation that didn’t go well, and he was in California and having a secondary surgery. They did a biopsy on his prostate at that time and they said, You dodged a bullet, we didn’t find any cancer.

He went back to living the way he was living—eating burgers all the time, martini lunches and all of that. And my mom was having a huge challenge, cause she knew something was wrong—and I said to her, knowing what I know, He’s gonna have cancer. That’s where this is going.

So, she went because she needed a day off of her life and then Seane Corn started talking. First, about the physiology, but then about what all this gunk is doing to us in an emotional way. We both came out of it feeling like it was full on therapy.

I’d practiced before with Bryan Kest, and it was the same kind of thing, where I’d hear things that I’d never heard before; in a way it was cellular communication.

With Seane, what she says resonates—it’s not a physical practice anymore. I don’t find it a physical challenge at this point. I’ve never felt, generally, after class with a teacher here, that kind of experience. There isn’t that depth to the practice.

I don’t want to go and be told how to be aligned and how to have the perfect looking form—I don’t care at this point. I know how not to hurt myself and that’s what appeals to me from the more advanced teachers…and it’s hard here, because it’s often all levels classes or in the level two classes are about  how to get into handstand, which I have no interest, if that’s what my body wants to do one day, that’s great.

I don’t have goals for my yoga practice. So that was why—and every time she comes back, it’s a new, full day event and I always learn something.

There’s stuff I use from her in my book, in the section Ten Things I Learned Curing an Incurable Disease; one of them was what yoga is about. It was she something said—that yoga holds up a mirror to your life and forces you to pay attention. And it’s the things that bring you to your knees and force you to ask why that will ultimately raise you higher then you ever thought possible—and that’s what I get from it and that’s why I go.

BW: She’s coming to Toronto to do some trainings in October—are you considering doing them?

MT: I’m thinking about it—I need to learn more about it because I’m not going into it wanting to be a yoga teacher—I’m going into it to be a teacher and I think practicing yoga makes me a better teacher. And it helps me—cause, you know what UnDiet is about—is not about me being a food guru and me telling you, you can eat this and you can’t eat that—it’s about how to tune into your body.

BW: I know on this last retreat, you had Amber [Joilat] come with you—how was that?

MT: I didn’t want to teach the yoga part anymore, which would make me better at teaching at everything else. Because we had more people, I knew we could afford someone. So I emailed Amber—I met Amber seven years ago when she was teaching Power Yoga at Core—when I was in LA, that was the class I was doing, you know accomplishing something.

So she came—and it was amazing—I love her classes and I love her spirit and she’s a great teacher for non-yogi people. People don’t come on my retreat for yoga, they’re coming for a health experience. I knew that with her spirit and sense of humor, they would love her. And I knew I could hang out with her for a week, too.

BW: Yes, that’s really important! So, talking about depletion—I want to switch it over just a little cause I know that this is about health and your happy when your healthy, and your creating this life, but it’s not always sunshine and rainbows and we know that.

MT: I’ve never been more unhealthy then when I was writing this book. {laughs}

BW: If you’re comfortable touching on that, I think this is a valid and important  to talk about—it’s the flip side.

MT: When I decided that I was going to pursue nutrition as my career, I committed to never going to a job interview and never doing work that I didn’t want to do. And, I thought as a nutritionist it was my job to consult—and, as intuitive empath who has not yet learned to put myself in a capsule cause I think it doesn’t make me an affective practitioner or teacher, I would consult with people and usually I was dealing with people with issues that I’d only very recently gotten over myself.

They’d leave feeling great and I’d want to eat a chocolate bar and take a nap.

I was feeling so sick from it—and I’d wave my sage and nothing. And, I went to this business coaching class and they said the area of your business that makes the most money is really where you need to focus your energy—and I’d look at my monthly statements and  think ok, well, I’m making most of my money in consulting—I need to change that.

I’ve always broken the rules with everything I’ve done—I knew I loved teaching group classes the most, so that’s how I transitioned over to teaching the classes. They were energizing me for a long time, and then come this past fall, when I was dealing with the book, had just gotten married and was teaching two nights a week—I was getting exhausted and that’s again when we changed it up.

So, I think the important thing is never to feel like just because something is working for you, it’s the right thing for you. It can be working financially, professionally, socially, but if you’re exhausted and you don’t want to get out of bed in the morning, then it’s not working. Because you know, no amount of money or status or whatever people value is worth anything when you feel like shit.

That was an important part and then just recently, I came back from my retreat and we were working 12 hour day for six days to get the website up and the book launch going and I realized this it wasn’t good  for me, so that’s when we bought Fife on to help me, personally. Part of her job is to do the grocery shopping and food prep so that I get three really good meals every single day, because I wan’t doing that.

And it’s not because it’s a luxury that I can afford to do, it’s a necessity that I can’t afford not to.

Right now my career demands more of my time then I have in my personal life and it’s finding that balance. But it’s really always placing that fundamental value on what is going to make you feel good—and feeling good is not drinking half a bottle of wine to drown your sorrows, but on a cellular level, what is going to nourish you—and that’s how you avoid depletion.

It was like, the question I asked of Seane about when to draw the line.

I get over a hundred emails a day—we just got one two days ago that actually went to my father because he’s now listed on my site because I’m doing some work with him. It was about a woman who has gone to so many doctors and her symptoms are this and that, and she feels horrible. And he sent it to me, because he didn’t know what to say—we get those like, ten times a day.

That’s my challenge: how do I stop giving to that and starting giving back to myself—and it’s an ongoing practice.

It’s like teaching yoga—when you’re first certified you want to teach as much as you can. Speaking for six or eight hours a day is depleting. And there’s energy transfer that happens when people are releasing anything, whether it’s telling you their problems or physically releasing it.

If you tune into people’s energy, it’s there. And you know, my husband does consulting and when I did it, without fail, every single one of my clients would start crying. He’s had it happen maybe three times in five years. He just doesn’t—he detaches himself—not that he’s detached from his client, but he’s not emotional affected—as much. There are certain clients that get to him in that way, when they’ve been mistreated. T

That was something that I had to be ok of letting go of that because it’s not my strength, it’s not healthy for me to do it.

BW: You take the downtime that you need?

MT: I take it—I don’t always take weekends, but when I can, I take two weeks. This is how I found it works best. It’s hard to disconnect because I care deeply about my business and the people that I work with, but I do make a point of, I don’t want to say work hard, play hard, but it’s easier for me to take three days off and fully rejuvenate then it is to take an afternoon off and still be somewhat connected.

BW: Cool. It’s a struggle—it’s an ongoing struggle of what works. For me personally, it goes back and forth—I like the idea of taking a few days off, and it really stresses me out.

MT: I know. I’m 33 and a half, and my plan is to retire when I’m 35. I don’t know what that will look like; but that’s my focus, to be able to be earning enough that I don’t need to be involved on a daily basis. Ideally, that’s probably when we’ll  have children—I don’t know if that’s really what people would call retirement—but I have my own business, so maybe mat leave.

BW: It’s a different phase—it’s moving through these different transitions—wow…kids…{lots of laughter}…one day, maybe. That’s an exciting thought. It’s a whole different wave of…

MT: Fear. {more laughter}

BW: Fear, but also, of this life work—

MT: That’s kind of how we see it.

I met Josh pretty late, I guess compared to my friends who met their partners. I’d had a lot of bad relationships and kind of decided you know what, I’m good on my own. And we got together and I like my life with him—but we also do so much good work that it’s kind of like, what could we produce if we breed someone from the start from a completely holistic way? What kind of human being will they be and what could they contribute to the planet? Maybe they’d rebel and be like, pot smoking, McDonald’s eating junkies, but you never know.

BW: I love that way of thinking about it.

MT: They’ll have a lot of hair…shiny hair, curly hair…{laughter}

BW: I was going to ask—talking about the depletion—maybe there’s been once or twice when we’ve bumped into each other where I feel your energy is kinda low—but most of the time it’s up. I find that difficult to maintain—so how do you…

MT: I’m an introvert—I don’t get energized by other people. I can turn it on pretty quick and I’m a professional cheerleader, is the way I see.

No matter how tired I am, people are coming to see me. Usually when I go to yoga, I arrive right when class starts—because, people want to chat, and I’m honored that people acknowledge my work, but that’s my time.

So, it’s definitely not fake, by any means—but it takes energy to entertain. And anyone will say that giving speech takes a huge amount of energy to connect to every single person in the room and motivate but I generally feel good. I don’t get afternoon slumps most of the time and I eat well and I mostly sleep well and I move my body.

I feel honored and blessed by the work that I’ve been able to do as a full time job and I get to choose who I work with, which makes a huge difference. And, that’s just it—I don’t take it for granted.

I love what I get to do—I love getting to motivate people to fulfill their potential.

Unless I have a Meghan day.

Josh and I put a lot of effort to be happy. We meditate together every morning, if we’re both open and available—we eat good food all day long (that’s a non-negotiable) and we treat ourselves to nice experiences. We work really hard on cultivating happiness. I always get asked: are you always this happy?

I don’t get ruffled that easily.

BW: Let me see…do you have a favorite yoga pose?

MT: {laughter} Child’s pose?! It depends on the day—there are definitely ones I don’t like (chair pose)—I hate that—the whole bending and holding and arms. It challenges all of my tension points. Camel makes me want to puke a little. I like the flowing and the moving more then the holding and the breathing—but again, it’s the slowing down that I know I need to do.

BW: Let’s touch on the book—how long was this in your mind before you started?

MT: The biggest challenge of the book was to figure out what to put in it; I could have written an encyclopedia. I wrote it over ten weekends in the Fall of 2011 and it was really about the basics that people need; what are the questions that people ask when they want to do better for themselves.

So, what is the very top level stuff that will get them motivated, but also not leave out people that are already on their path—that they will get something from it too. And it evolved.

I outlined each chapter, picked some recipes; each chapter is focused on a different area of health and at the end there are five or six recipes that related to the content.

We ask the questions: what would you do to get off your medication? Would you give up your coffee maker in exchange for a juicer? Would you take a month off and go to an ashram instead of taking your anti-anxiety medication?

We’re really calling out the things we accept as normal; 45 million pounds of beef are recalled every year; the whole system is broken.

That was important to set up my message—but then I realized it isn’t just food. People can be eating the best food in the world and then they are put on their toxic cosmetics; or their buying all their organic food in packages and making at ton of garbage.

Chapter eight is There Is No Away, chapter nine is A Touch of au Naturel, all about natural beauty care produce and what to look out for. Chapter 10—Love What You Do and Do What You Love; if you hate going to the gym, then stop going to the gym and find an activity that really nourishes you.

If you’re tired all the time, take some time to sleep—one of the things is sleep til you can’t sleep no more.

10 little big game changers: flossing your teeth, skin brushing, taking on an art and crafts project—and doing your morning routine in a different direction so you can actually wake up to your life and bring mindfulness back into it, instead of  living mechanically.

I’m sure you see this in your teaching—people think they know where your going and they are on auto-pilot through the vinyasa flow.

These little big things you can do that will wake you up to your life and cost nothing. Sleep in the dark, sleep in pitch black darkness whether you have a sleep mask or black out blinds. Get rid of your clock radio and your phone—and all those things in your room that affect your melatonin production which affects your serotonin production, which affects your digestion because we make more serotonin in our guts then our brains, our disposition, our happiness levels. It’s all connected and it’s so simple.

Instead of being so concerned with drinking the right water and taking the right supplements—do the basics.

That’s 10% of the stuff; the big stuff that gives you 95% of your positive outcome is all very simple. It’s the worry about all those little details that do more harm then bad food ever would.

BW: I’ve been diving into your website—have you been reinventing it? Because it’s enormous—there is so much stuff on there.

MT: The blog content—I think we are at over 1400 posts over five years. There is nothing brand new on there, it’s just reorganized.

We want to make it easy for people to come into the world and join the community and find what they need. It’s also why we’ve developed these online courses—all the workshops that you’ve come to will soon all be available online. We film them live with a full production team so they are all in real time, as if you were here.

Ideally, and for sure I’m not the best person for everybody, but for those who are seeking my guidance, I want them to have as much access to at least everything I know—and be able to decide what they want to do and what they don’t want to do—but to have that knowledge out there in way that I believe I’ve constructed to be practical and applicable and logical.

So, that’s the idea with the website. You can buy a meal plan, you can buy an online course, you can come away with me for a week; you can pick and choose what you want to do. There is loads of free content to really empower people—to take something on.

One thing—if you pick one thing up, then it’s worth it. We worked tirelessly to organize all of that content.

BW: It’s a treasure. You need hours to sit and pick a part the site. I love that it’s accessible because not everybody will ask for help or is face-to-face.

MT: We’ll get emails from people, especially with the book, saying I’ve been following you for years—and I think, you’ve never posted about product, you’ve never taken a workshop—I didn’t know you were there! Thanks for letting us know you are there.

It’s nice to know that we’re speaking to people.

And social media has been helpful as well, to connect and engage and answer people’s questions.

BW: I remember reading briefly and I think this comes up every year—The Crohn’s & Colitis Fundraiser and M&M Meat Shops. Do you want to touch on that at all?

MT: The Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of Canada does a fundraiser with M&M Meat Shops—they are their gold sponsor.

It’s conventional feedlot food, processed with preservatives—and the premise is that you can go and buy a hot dog or a hamburger, a bag of chips and a soda (which is predominately corn), in the name of a “cure” for Crohn’s Colitis.

You are consuming the cause—that is 100% the cause of the disease.

Canada is a hot spot for inflammatory bowel disease—mostly in the prairies—and that’s where they are growing the most GMO grain.

As Jeffery Smith, who is a pioneer in bringing this to life, says: there is a direct connection between bringing genetically modified foods into our diet with the increase in autoimmune inflammatory conditions.

They defend it every year by saying, well we’re not trying to sell the food to the people with the disease—and my point is that they are communicating it to the families—it’s a genetic disease, so everyone in the family has something—whether it’s presenting or not, it’s there and this is not part of the solution.

If it’s not part of the solution, it’s part of the problem.

The Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation has a silver sponsor, which is Abbott Laboratories—they produce Ensure—the food that is recommended to those suffering from Crohn’s Colitis. Ensure has an ingredient called carrageenan—it’s used to promote inflammation in rats so they can test anti-inflammatory drugs.

Abbott Labs also produces humera, the number recommended drug for people with colitis.

So, it’s a huge problem—and then they have their Heal-and-Wheel-athon, where in the past they’ve served deep fried twinkies.

You can’t even make it up—I keep pitching to make a documentary about these fundraisers that are selling the cause of the disease at the fundraiser.

It’s 100 % the equivalent to selling cigarettes at a walk for lung cancer.

Completely.

BW: And do they respond to you?

MT: No, they don’t—they’ve avoided me. I’ve posted my letter publicly, but they don’t respond. They’ve done things like book meetings with me and when I email to confirm the time, I don’t hear from them.

When I call, they put me through a rigamoral. I tried to interview their scientists, to get their reaction to this carrageenan thing because they recommend Ensure. Nothing.

They have a nutritional guide that has an image of a little girl in a hospital gown pouring syrup over pancakes—that’s in their guide!

They don’t recommend getting rid of dairy (even though most people who suffer from the disease are lactose intolerant) because people who are lactose intolerant are malnourished, so they think that dairy is nutritional food. If it’s raw milk, maybe, otherwise it’s disgusting udder pus.

It’s a huge problem—and actually, Josh has spoken at The Crohn’s and Colitis Symposium—I went with him and he a signed me up under a different name.

What I found out at the symposium is that patients are given 10 minutes with their GI, and there is a sign up that says you are permitted to ask one question. So, people going in before they are going to have a section of their intestines removed and have a colonoscopy bag to collect their poop outside their bodies are permitted to ask ONE question.

So, I raised my hand when the doctor was speaking and I told my story—this was my situation—what is your advice for patients who want to work and take an integrative approach? He did not answer—he said patients need to decide the best approach—and I said, You are the expert.

Nothing.

Josh did a great talk on the nutritional therapies for Crohn’s and Colitis and as a gift they gave him a $25 gift card to M&M Meat Shops. {laughs} He sold it back and got $17 through a website.

A massive disconnect.

So, I won’t say I’ve been cured—I’ll say that I healed. They believe I’m in remission. But the body, all of your cells, the digestive track, replaces every three to four days—if I have no symptoms of the disease, do I have the disease?

If I was going to go get a physical right now today, full check up and had no signs of the disease, am I still sick?

There mandate is there is no cure for the disease—people who are suffering who are really sick get angry when I talk about—I can’t use the word cure—I can use the word heal and somehow that’s less aggressive.

That’s how I explain it.

The organization is corrupt.

BW: Do you think you’ll stop? Calling them out?

MT: No—I’m actually wondering if they would ever take legal action. There is nothing that I’m saying that’s not true and not based on fact. Who knows? Every year I write about it.

Until people stop—you know the walks for breast cancer or the runs for the cure—where they are serving water in plastic bottles and you’re getting your pasteurized, homogenous strawberry Danone yogurt and hard candies to keep energy up during the walk.

There are movies that call out these fundraisers—people think they are doing something good and it relieves their fears but until we put prevention before early detection, it’s useless. Even if you are detected early, you still have cancer.

It just doesn’t make sense.

Movember drives me crazy—your prostate is not under your nose. So what if men took action to prevent prostate cancer instead of growing a mustache?

BW: So what would your ideal fundraiser look like?

MT: It would be an educational symposium and I don’t think it’s about raising money—it’s about raising awareness.

What I would often recommend people—if you know someone with cancer, or dealing with a disease, don’t give the money to a foundation—ask that person what they need. Maybe someone dealing with cancer wants a massage once a week; maybe someone who has Crohn’s would want a green juice delivered to their  door every morning.

That’s what will help someone who is suffering and that is what is going to make you feel like you are doing something.

There does need to be research to prove all of this works; but there are no scientists that are going to do it. There won’t be enough money because there is no money in finding this result for anyone.

It doesn’t make sense—it’s a broken system.

BW: Who else is doing work in the world that you would point people towards? What reading have you done that continues to inspire you?

MT: It depends what people need; right now I’m reading Michael Moss’s book, Sugar, Fat, Salt: How the Food Giants Hooked Us. It’s unbiased investigative report into industrialized food, like Kraft and General Mills. They talk about how they devise the bliss point of junk food. So from toddler, from the Nestle formula, we get hooked on sugar, fat and salt.

It’s disgusting that none of it is really food and none of the CEO’s would eat their own products. So that’s a good one, if that’s one you need to convince you—they say everything in moderation but those foods are not-ever’s.

If it doesn’t build your health, it’s building your disease.

Surprisingly, Suzanne Somers—she does unbelievable interviews—if you can wade through some her stuff in there, she talks to leading, alternative doctors. One of them is Knock Out, which is alternative approaches to cancer.

It just depends on where you want to take it.

The Juicing Bible—an anthology of healing juices and smoothies is another a great place to start. What I think is good about UnDiet is that it works in conjunction with whatever else you need; this is how you then take that knowledge and apply it. And people need convincing in different ways.

Whatever it is you need, there is something out there that can help you.

BW: Do you read for fun?

MT: Yes, before bed. I just finished reading The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out The Window And Disappeared. It’s on the best seller list—it’s really funny. Before bed, it’s always fiction. I like happy, shiny books before bed. There is enough sadness in the world.

BW: I love involved your parents are so involved—it’s a beautiful thing to witness.

MT: My Mom, because of experiences with her family and the loss of her mother and brother, always had this confidence that there was something else out there.

As soon as I started learning about this, everything I told her, they did.

My parents have their lemon, cayenne pepper and water every morning without fail; she does the juicing for them both.

My Dad didn’t get it at first—coming from the advertising world where everything is about image, he didn’t get the health thing.

The first person he called when he was diagnosed with cancer was Josh and they started working together—and that’s how he came to embrace this. He lost a ton of weight, his arthritis that had crippled him for years was gone—he came around.

It ended a lot of the challenges they were having with each other—and they have been really supportive—they are happy and so excited and they both feel good.

I’m lucky.

 

Inspired by Meghan and her mission to change the world? You can find more information on her website (a vault of knowledge and inspiration), as well as in her book, UnDiet: Eat Your Way to Vibrant Health.

Likeelephant health & wellness on Facebook.