Blessed By Veganism

Lisa Sisko has been a realtor based in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, for 15 years and three years licensed in South Carolina. She has been vegan for almost four years. As a mother to three now-adult sons she was very careful to raise them being aware of preservatives, chemicals, and carcinogens in food. They gravitated toward natural foods, are active, and in good health, but she and her husband Greg were still gaining weight as they aged. All that turned around through a chance encounter at an outdoor art show.

Lisa and her husband were attending the Bluffton (South Carolina, USA) Art Show in October when it started to rain. They ducked their heads into a booth and chatted a while with the artist. Lisa thought he looked to be about 48 or 50 years old but he mentioned that he was 69! He said that his artist wife had developed cancer from the toxic metals in her permanent paints. Her doctor recommended a whole food, plant-based (WFPB) diet which she adopted and eradicated the cancer. The two artists have both stayed plant-based ever since. Lisa left wondering what was WFPB. Is that like vegetarian? Vegan? She had no idea. So she looked it up on YouTube and watched numerous videos, documentaries, and read articles. It was life changing for her. Overnight she changed the way she ate and never looked back. It wasn’t hard for her since she already loved vegetables more than meat. Now she had a husband and three sons to convince.

Carla: I love that story! The artist planted a little seed, you got curious, and then you did your own research. How did your husband and sons react to you suddenly changing to a plant-based diet?

Lisa: My husband was just told that he needed to go on high blood pressure medication. Both his father and his older brother were already taking it. I suggested that he watched some of what I’ve seen online and learn about dietary alternatives to high blood pressure medication. By January he was fully vegan and got off the medication that he was on for just a very short time. His cholesterol went down from 188/190 to 144 without really even trying. About 25 pounds of weight just slipped right off his frame.

Carla: Are you mostly plant-based for your health or are you vegan in the fullest capacity for animals, health, and planet?

Lisa: We are fully vegan for many reasons. We don’t use leather, we don’t eat animals, we are passionate animal lovers, and we don’t even eat honey. I could easily be an animal rights activist if I wasn’t working 12-hour days in real estate. I have to try very hard to not be annoying talking about veganism to everyone all the time.

Carla: How have veganism and your faith intersected in your life?

Lisa: We are devout Christians and were already familiar with swimming upstream and being in the minority. Our faith means the everything to us. We are so grateful for the gift of veganism that God has put in front of us. To anyone who will listen, we love to share our faith good news as well as our vegan good news. We hope and pray for the world to embrace veganism.

I went from excited for God revealing veganism to us to insatiably curious and then to mad. Never before had I considered what I ate as having virtue associated with it. It angers me that our society has allowed the perpetuation of horrific offenses to the animals and destruction to human health just for profit.

Carla: In your faith community, how do you reconcile what so many say is our right to dominion over the animals?

Lisa: Before The Fall, God provided abundant plants and fruits for consumption. After The Fall, people started eating animals. I don’t think that God ever meant that it was okay for us to torture and murder animals by the billions as we currently do. I don’t think that is what dominion means. Afterall, we have dominion over our children, but we don’t eat them. I think dominion means to steward those who may be subject to our power. Oftentimes the ‘dominion as domination’ argument is used by those who seek Biblical justification to eat whomever they want to eat. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that we have to eat animals to honor God.

Carla: How has the reception been when you talk about veganism with people you know?

Lisa: My favorite thing to talk about with people is God. My second favorite topic is veganism. Most people are nice and listen. For example we met up with our neighbors at a little restaurant and the topic came up probably because of how my husband and I ordered our meals. She explained that she had high blood pressure. Well, that kicked off the sharing of my husband’s story and our vegan lifestyle. She is now mostly vegan. We love to share our journey and we love to share good food.

Carla: Do you like to cook?

Lisa: We make so many incredible recipes and have so much fun with it. Earthling Ed says that the best way to turn people on to veganism is to share delicious food and that’s what we do to help introduce others.

Carla: When it comes to the vegan food that you prefer to eat, do you eat mostly whole plants or do you include some of the processed taste-alikes too?

Lisa: I’m not one who really likes processed items like the Impossible Burger at Burger King. I’d eat it if I had to, but we prefer to make our own black bean burgers. With that being said, we recently bought vegan donuts at Whole Foods! (laughter)

I tell people that it’s not so much about not eating meat, dairy, eggs, and highly processed foods as it is about bringing in the other more nutritious items like spinach, kale, and arugula which are no longer just garnishes for us. Once you start to eat these more nutritious foods, your body starts to crave them and then that’s all you want. The meat, dairy, and eggs tend to eliminate themselves because they don’t feel as good in the body as plants.

We really do love our food. I think a lot of nonvegan friends think I just say that to try to convince them to give it a try, but it’s true. I just wish that we had given it a try sooner. Next to our devotion to God, veganism is the next best thing we share as a married couple. My husband follows Derek Simnett online and we use many of his recipes such as ones for meat(less)loaf, muffins, and mushroom and green lentil lasagna. Tofu is like ricotta cheese and makes the lasagna so creamy and each serving of the dish has 23 grams of protein.

Carla: Besides good vegan food, what do you like to share with others in the way of information if they show any curiosity in the lifestyle?

Lisa: I very clearly remember being so doubtful in the beginning about the WFPB lifestyle so I know that others are too at the onset of hearing about it. It sounds too easy and too delicious to be so effective. As I did more and more health research I was convinced that it couldn’t all be a farce. I listened to so many doctors and, as Dr. Pam Popper says, you have to listen to the preponderance of evidence. Of course there are outlier studies that say this or that, but when the majority of the studies and the majority of the evidence show that meat is carcinogenic and not good for you, then it probably is. I felt mad after a while. I’ve never been a conspiracy theory type person at all but when you dig deep into this topic, you see clearly that the food and drug industries are doing everything they can to turn a profit regardless of the long-term impact on human health.

I love to share videos because I think it’s quicker and easier for people to listen to videos rather than read something that is pages and pages long in order to start getting a sense of what WFPB eating is all about. Some of my favorites that I share often are:

• Forks Over Knives — Healing Diabetes-Heart Disease-Cancer-Obesity – Plant-Based Diet
• Dr Michael Klaper: Health Transformations from a Whole Food, Plant Based Diet
• Caldwell Esselstyn Discusses the Problems with Statin Drugs | Forks Over Knives
• What I Wish Someone Had Told Me In Medical School About Nutrition
• Calorie Density: How To Eat More, Weigh Less and Live Longer
• You Will Never Look at Your Life in the Same Way Again | Eye-Opening Speech!
• Diet Doctor VS Big Pharma – Plant Based Throwdown w/ Dr. Michael Greger
• Why To Limit Simple Sugars — Michael Klaper MD
• What Should You Eat To Stay Healthy with Garth Davis, M.D.
• A New Nutritional Approach to Type 2 Diabetes – Dr. Neal Barnard
• What the Dairy Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know – Neal Barnard MD – Full Talk
• Michael Klaper, M.D., Vegan Diet Truths and Myths interviewed by Dr. Nick Delgado
• Shopping for a Whole Food, Plant-Based Diet with Tom Campbell, MD
• Animal Protein — Meat and Dairy — Cause Cancer w/ T. Colin Campbell, PhD
• Does Sugar Feed Cancer? w/ John McDougall, MD
• Why Doctors Don’t Recommend Veganism #1: Dr Michael Greger
• T. Colin Campbell Interview “The China Study” at Hippocrates Health Institute
• Make Yourself Heart Attack Proof – Caldwell Esselstyn MD
• World’s Top Nutrition Experts Explain Scientific Proven Benefits of a WFPB Diet
• Dr. Neal Barnard: The Cheese Trap – Break the Addiction
• Why Doctors Don’t Recommend Veganism #2: Dr Neal Barnard
• Dr. Ellsworth Wareham – 98 years old vegan
• American Public Confronted by Vegan Protest

My favorite documentaries are Forks Over Knives, What the Health, and A Prayer for Compassion. The video below I think should be shown in all high schools so that our young adults can learn how to preserve their health and prevent problems from developing.

Carla: When you decided, after all your research, to go WFPB vegan practically overnight, did you feel that as you started to incorporating these changes into your life that you had to exercise self-discipline?

Lisa: I like to define self-discipline as positive daily habits. I was very determined to succeed when I first set my mind to becoming vegan. I would wake up every single day so excited about what I was going to eat that day. I was so enthusiastic about taking more steps on this path. After a while all these new choices just became effortless habit. My struggles came from having three children that I just spent 20 years teaching how to eat incorrectly and my desire to redo that with my newfound knowledge. Two of my sons were already in college and it was hard to influence them from afar. Our middle son is now fully vegan and our other two are about 70% there. Our home is definitely 100% vegan.

Carla: When veganism found you, did you feel as though you discovered a missing piece of yourself?

Lisa: Yes absolutely. Veganism has allowed me to practice more deeply my faith and my moral values. I believe God wants everyone to have compassion and benevolence for animals and I think our moral compasses are more consistent now that we are vegan. I try not to buy any cosmetics or cleaning supplies that are tested on animals so it goes beyond just food for me. I’m on the Environmental Working Group website all the time researching compassionate and safe products.

Carla: What are some of your favorite ingredients, recipes, and kitchen tools?

Lisa: We got an Instant Pot six months ago and we have a rice cooker that we love. We have a great big cast iron skillet and we use baking sheets a lot for roasting vegetables. We are very fond of lentil and nut “meat” loaf, General Tso’s cauliflower with rice, Korean BBQ made with tofu, vegan lasagna, chickpea pasta with mushrooms, onions, and roasted red peppers, tacos, and mushroom and barley stew are all in regular rotation. Minimalist Baker is a favorite website for making our own breakfast protein bars. Chef AJ has a lot of wonderful recipes. Gaz Oakley‘s cookbook is one of the first I bought and my husband loves him now too.

Carla: Did you and your husband Greg enjoy cooking together before becoming vegan?

Lisa: When my real estate business grew, Greg took over much of the cooking. He actually likes cooking more than I do. We love to talk about what he’s cooking – the ingredients, inspirations, and techniques – and I certainly love to eat what he makes. Ten years ago I could have never imagined that he’d be so proficient and successful in the kitchen. I have fallen in love with him all over again watching him embrace veganism. We are blessed that God has given us this experience.

Carla: Thank you Lisa for sharing your journey with me and my readers. It’s been wonderful chatting with you.

Readers, to access all the posts in this interview series, please click HERE.