About Carol Fitzgerald
Best Selling Author
My Story
Welcome
I am passionate about sharing my experience and offering tips, tools and real life techniques so that you can live in health, wholeness, vitality, positivity, vibrancy and joy through living fully and embracing a vegan lifestyle.
I have had a lot of challenges in my life yet didn’t let them define me. One thing I have learned is this: Living in a vibrant way makes your life come more alive. When we are vibrant and alive, we create a ripple effect that helps another person, who then helps another, then another and another. Letting the goodness flow requires each of us to shine our light, requires each of us to make a difference in others, requires all of us to be there in service to others. We have to have inside first before giving to the world outside.
Health is mental, emotional, spiritual, physical. When we have our health as a top priority, we are able to show up in every other area of our lives with integrity, joy and vibrancy. Choosing to live a plant based lifestyle can and will support your health on every single level. From living more positively, to feeling more present in your life, to having strength and sustainability in your own body and for our world are some of the benefits of plant based living.
We get to take charge of our health and well being through the way we eat, the thoughts we think, the movement we choose and the community we create around us. The medicinal properties in food are here for all of us to use, it’s a matter of learning how to tap into this in a way that enhances our life and benefits our world.
My Journey
I changed my way of eating about 15 years ago. I read a book called “Brain Trust.” This book completely changed my life; it led me on a journey of discovery, of study, of information gathering and connecting with my own inner wisdom. I learned that disease can not just be halted but can be reversed through a plant-based diet. Everything affects everything. If I was going to claim my health and live consciously, I needed to become even more mindful about what I was putting in my body. I wanted to prevent what I saw happening to people around me, both in my family and in my culture. I wanted to live a long life and have it be an enjoyable one. All of my studies showed me that embracing a vegan lifestyle was going to support this goal… and thus began my plant-based eating and lifestyle journey. What an adventure it has been!
How This Site Was Born
Once I changed my way of eating, then had to learn a new way to cook. I loved being in my kitchen! With such a shift in my eating, I needed to learn how to navigate the grocery store, my kitchen and my body. Learning how to embrace the vegan experience led me to write a cookbook so I could help others who were in this transition, too.
I had no intention of writing books on Vegan living. I’m a former freelance writer having published many magazine articles and newspaper columns as a columnist.
After I went to college in my 40s, I stepped into being a writer in my own right, having books published on various topics that really matter, Once I chose a plant based diet and incorporated it into my lifestyle, family and friends encouraged me to write a book now about vegan food. And before I knew it, that’s exactly what I did and how it happened.
The book is titled: You Don’t Have to be Vegan to Enjoy These Meals. And truly you don’t. People eat lots of vegan foods and don’t even realize it.
My Mission
I am here to support people like you, in your own health care advocate, to serve and make a difference in the lives of others through education and empowerment.
How I Serve
I am here as a guide and confidante, to support the journey into your most vibrant life yet. This happens one book, one blog post, one course, one phone call at a time.
Words from Carol
I would love to touch your life as this path has touched mine. I want to help you know you can transform your health, your life and your weight. It CAN be done.
What You Can Expect As A Subscriber To My Site
Even though my site is about vegan, wholesome, plant-based food, I will also have thoughts about life in general. There will be meanderings, travel, thoughtful reflections and other life-related tips and thoughts.
YOU WILL READ ABOUT MATTERS OF THE HEART, HOME AND HEALTH.
My Favorite Things (in food, home + life)
Some of my very favorite foods are Pasta and I LOVE to eat. My mother said once that my Irish husband eats to live, while we as Italians live to eat. I enjoy looking at food, preparing it with love, savoring it going down and have even been known to talk about it after I’ve eaten it.
Other favorites are foods with nuts in it and anything chocolate. Fudge, brownies, deep, dark chocolate cake, oatmeal, cookies, vegan cheesy risotto, split peas, and yes, potatoes. Yes, you can have lots of potatoes on a plant-based diet. Some cultures exist primarily on potatoes. They are one of the healthiest foods you can eat. It’s what you put on them and how you cook them, as in frying with oil, that’s the fattening part. So bring the potato back into your diet and shatter the “potatoes are bad” myth.
Other favorites are being with my precious grandchildren. Entertaining is one of my favorite things to do, preparing meals with love and sharing it with friends and family. A favorite thing that touches my heart is children’s laughter.
Gratitude
Gratitude is a HUGE part of my life.
A quote I once ran across says, “Each Day Offers Us A Gift, If We Will Only Look For It.” Not sure who wrote this, but I LOVE it. I have typed it up with a pretty font, glued to a colorful backing and have given it to friends to use as a bookmark.
So each day, I look for a few gifts and add them to my daily gratitude list. I write them down. I can enumerate them in my mind, but writing them down is more meaningful to me. Gifts and things for which to be grateful can be so fleeting and I would never think about them again other than the happening at the moment. But if I write them down, they become lasting in my mind. Besides, I can reread them and relive that moment that held meaning for me at the time.
If you’ve never done this, I encourage you to give it a try. Write at least five things a day in a notebook or journal, dating each day. It does the soul good.
One day my granddaughter, Kerigan, who was then about 9 or 10 years old, and I were enjoying doing a gratitude list together. Then, we began talking about some of the things we love. I suggested we do a love-list. It turned out to be a special bonding time for us, and gave me a glimpse into her wise little mind –– a gift within a gift!
For example, I love lake living and fall days. I love a light rain. I love the smell of freshly mowed grass. I love waking up to the sun shining in my bedroom. I love a children’s choir. I love birdsong. Things like that. We each reached into the 100s. It was great fun for both of us.
Major Change
Change is not an easy thing for anyone; however, I made a VERY MAJOR CHANGE in my life several years ago. And in my sixties, no less. I changed my entire way of eating. I wasn’t ALWAYS a vegan. I’m Italian, after all. I ate the good, old Standard American Diet that everyone else was raised on. What was even more difficult than that was that my family thought I had gone nuts. Friends did too. It was crazy, they voiced. Too radical, they said. Where do you get your protein? Where do you get your calcium? Even before I knew how to answer these questions, I was not deterred.
Do you feel better? This was another question I was often asked. Thank God I wasn’t feeling ill. I had no health problems. This might seem curious to some, but hold on! I changed my way of eating strictly as a PREVENTATIVE measure. I didn’t relish the idea of succumbing to the same diseases my relatives had, and if there was something I could do about it, well then, I certainly would.
My family background is rife with diabetes, cancer and heart disease. I reasoned that if I continued to eat what my family ate, I would get what they got. If I changed my way of eating, I would have a much better chance of not getting what they got. Not very scientific, I know. But through my research, this is what I reasoned. In making the choice to become a plant-based-vegan, I have done lots more research and this is what the studies say: Good, healthy food = good, healthy bodies in return.
I have since gone on to become certified in plant-based nutrition through e-Cornell and The T. Colin Campbell Foundation. Not only has this validated my having made the right decision, it has increased my passion for helping others.
Weight Control
I can tell you one thing. I have a huge appetite and can eat more than most people. I was full on many occasions but I was never satisfied. In an attempt to keep my weight in control, I purposely did not eat many foods: potatoes, pasta, bread, and fruit as starters. I LOVED bananas, but I wouldn’t dare eat a whole one because I might gain a pound. I know it was obsessive. But, now, I can eat any plant-based food I want and still keep the weight in check. Yea!
So, if that’s you: Not eating foods you love because of the fear of gaining weight, Stop! And take a good hard look at this.
Eating this plant-based way, I am now satisfied, eating more of what I NEVER ate, and eating not only better and healthier, but also all those foods that I liked and stayed away from for years. It’s a win, for sure!
My Goal
I would love to touch your life as this path has touched mine. I want to help you know you can transform your health, your life and your weight. It CAN be done. When I first started this new journey of mine, I was really confused. After cooking and baking for years, now I didn’t know which way to turn in my kitchen. It was somewhat of a learning curve. As I was transitioning, I still had oil and vegan butter and vegan sour cream and such in my diet and my recipes. My goal was to eventually eliminate those completely for a more organic way of eating.
We all need fats in our diet for good health. But what I’m talking about here when I say eliminate oils, is the refined oils. Oils that are stripped from the whole foods have no nutrients and are all fat going to and clogging the arteries. Good fats – good. Refined fats – not good.
Just so you know, I did eliminate them from my recipes and going forward foods posted will not contain any of those items. So if you see those ingredients in the recipes, know they were before I took them out of my own diet.
So, now that my book was out, I found myself doing things I never dreamed I’d be doing like this website and my blog, because I want to help you realize you too can improve your life and your health.
Remember, Getting old does not have to mean getting sick. Our bodies are wonderful machines and given the right foods can actually heal themselves.
I invite you to check out the content on my website. Watch my Youtube videos on food preparation, and find me on Instagram.
Carol Fitzgerald masters the art of teaching the most profound concepts in the most simple ways. Living a Vibrant Life at Any Age is a meditation. If you really absorb its teachings, you will find yourself walking around with a smile on your face and a spring in your step. You will feel connected to everyone one and everything around you. The truth is always simple, and this book delivers it.