The Greenprint. Marco Borges

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СКАЧАТЬ target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#fb3_img_img_a589f10f-392f-5600-9d9e-d404f86d8718.jpg" alt="image"/> Eases arthritis and joint pain

       Strengthens your immune system so that you rarely become ill

       Boosts your memory and wards off dementia

       Preserves your vision and protects your eyes from cataracts and macular degeneration

       Makes your skin, hair and nails glow

      That’s the power of plants!

      BIRTH OF A PLANT-BASED REVOLUTION

      My greenprint is about what I eat, the choices I make and how I conduct my life. As a father of four, I know that my choices now will affect my children’s health and the Earth they will inherit in the future.

      The development of the Greenprint programme is something that evolved from deep within my family history. I grew up in the 70s and have so many amazing memories of my youth. My mum raised my brother, sister and me as a single parent, and we’d see our father every other week or so.

      We spent a lot of time at my grandmother’s house. Mima, as we called her, was so funny, and it wasn’t even deliberate. She would say or do something on a daily basis that would immediately cause us to crack up. Then she’d look at us and ask why we were laughing (‘De que se ríen?’), which would make us laugh even more.

      My brother, Alfredo, whom I called Tito from an early age because I couldn’t pronounce Alfredito (it’s quite common in Spanish culture to add –ito to the end of a kid’s name to make it more youthful), would love going over to Mima’s house because he knew it would always be an adventure. I can still hear the ice cream truck driving by with its jingle playing over a loudspeaker. An almost orchestrated scream coming from the neighbourhood kids would follow – ‘El heladero!!!! El heladero!!!!’ (‘The ice cream man!!! The ice cream man!!!’) – and everyone would run outside with loose change, chasing the truck. Often, the driver would act like he didn’t see us all running behind the truck. He would drive what felt like a few extra blocks (actually just a few extra feet), then he’d laugh along with us as we caught our breath and placed our orders. What amazing times.

      Mima didn’t drive, but she loved to get out. I can remember walking for hours every day as we visited all the shops, bodegas and houses she would take us to.

      It was nonstop at Mima’s house. She’d make us a homemade lunch (usually something with chicken), and it was always delicious. Around lunchtime, she’d also always take all these tiny little pills. Mima suffered from heart problems. She used to tell me they were hereditary and that everyone in her family had them. Well, I assumed it was normal because she was old. I can remember that on occasion she’d get winded and would put a tiny little pill under her tongue, and a few minutes later she was much better. I later found out that those tiny little pills were nitroglycerin, which was for her angina, a chest pain caused by reduced blood flow to the heart.

      Mima wasn’t the only member of my family with health problems. Others were either sick or on some type of medication for hypertension, diabetes or anxiety. Watching all this as a kid triggered my desire to study medicine. I can remember telling Mima, ‘When I grow up, I’m going to become a doctor and take care of you.’

      Fast-forward many years, and despite the medications, not much improved. It actually all worsened. My grandfather on my dad’s side went blind due to his diabetes. My great-grandmother on my mum’s side died of cancer. So did my maternal grandfather. My father died of heart failure. Mima suffered a stroke and was paralysed as a result; she eventually passed away but lived in bed, immobile, for years.

      Each one of these family members lived well into their eighties – my grandfather actually made it to ninety-six – but their quality of life was poor. And that was the tragedy to me – living in poor health is not really living.

      I thought about this deep and hard. My father was on blood pressure medication from the time I was born, when he was in his thirties. Mima was only in her forties when I was born and was already taking medication she would continue to take for the rest of her life.

      Why didn’t someone tell them that changing the way they were eating could help? Why didn’t they do anything to improve their lifestyle? Why? Didn’t they care? Yes, they did – they just didn’t have the right information to help them change.

      I so desperately wanted to help Mima and my other family members regain their health. This desire stayed with me throughout high school. It was the number one reason I wanted to become a doctor. Ultimately, I chose not to attend medical school because I felt I could help more people through a preventative lifestyle rather than a reactive medical system. I wanted to touch lives and make sure people did not have to suffer a declining quality of life because of their poor choices and inherited habits.

      As I studied nutrition, I learned about the power of plants, but I wanted to know even more. I kept reading, studying, researching and talking to other plant-based advocates wherever I went. The more I learned, the more I leaned towards plant-based eating. Eventually I realised plant-based living was something I had to experience for myself. And that’s exactly what I did. First, I gave up dairy. That felt so good that I stopped eating red meat and pork, then chicken and eggs. So far, so good. The last animal product to go was fish.

      I did it gradually, but as time went on, I grew bolder. I became a vocal advocate of the plant-based lifestyle. ‘Eat plants’ became my mantra.

      What made me stick to this new lifestyle was knowing that I was, for the first time ever, truly in control of my health and impacting the planet in a positive way, while influencing others to do the same. This became the concept I eventually dubbed the Greenprint.

      Many of my relatives lived long lives. But the Greenprint isn’t just about living a longer life – it’s about living a better life. A fuller life. A life where you can continue to enjoy yourself into your sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties and beyond. Your best life. The life that my Mima deserved. The life we all deserve. The life our planet deserves.

      But where do we start? What do we have to do to make a difference? How do we transform our lives and the planet with our personal greenprint?

      INTRODUCING THE GREENPRINT

      At its heart, the Greenprint is a programme for a health transformation. It is also a blueprint for plant-based eating. And yes, it is vegan, but with a difference. A vegan diet is not necessarily plant-based. You can be a vegan and live on potato chips, pretzels and vegan hot dogs served on gluten-free bread. But these processed foods can make you just as sick and unhealthy as a meat-inclusive diet, and they are not part of a plant-based diet. When I say ‘plant-based’, I mean plants, not foods made in a plant. I’m talking about a diet that consists of 100 per cent delicious foods that come from the earth. I’m talking about a diet that your body loves.

      Ultimate success at plant-based living comes from a couple of factors that impact each other. If you want to flourish, if you want to enjoy your happiest life, there are two key components of the Greenprint: twenty-two laws of plant-based living, and the application of those laws in your life.

       THE TWENTY-TWO СКАЧАТЬ