Catherine Holdway fights high cholesterol, Type II Diabetes and high blood pressure with whole food plant-based
In this week’s Eat Real to Heal podcast we have a very special guest, Catherine Holdway. She is a healing hero and an inspiration to members of her family and her greater community. Catherine is a former nurse and worked for years in public health as a nurse educator. She then became a licensed couples and family therapist and family psychiatrist in Montréal before going on to start her own private therapy practice. Catherine was already a health renegade in her career, but her healing hero story goes even further.
“When [my kids] were little and there was 4 of them and I had cookies in the house, they were there one minute and gone the next. So if i bought a box of cookies I put up a sign out sheet for them to sign out how many cookies they were taking each day... It was the only way for them to take some charge of their own behaviour around sweets and carbohydrates. ”
Catherine is now retired, is a mother, a grandmother and is still inspiring healthy living in her own life and in her community in so many ways after being diagnosed with high cholesterol, Type II Diabetes which runs in her family, and high blood pressure. She tracked down a copy of ‘Diet for a Small Planet’ by Frances Moore Lappé and this one book has since changed the way she thought about food. That's where her story really begins. Her children came home and announced they were vegetarian and vegan so Catherine let the turkey live that year and she prepared the first ever 100% vegan Thanksgiving meal. Already on the vegan-train, she committed to eating whole-food plant-based for 6 months to see if she could lower her triglycerides which were extremely high. Sure enough, within three months her triglycerides had dropped to perfect healthy levels.
Catherine is 68 years old now leading this amazing vegan lifestyle and she has proven that you can learn how to develop new cooking techniques, new shopping techniques, new recipes and it's never too late to turn your health around. Do what Catherine did – try something new for 6 months and see what happens. What have you got to lose? Maybe a just a few pounds, a bunch of unnecessary medications and low energy. What have you got to gain? Your health and your life.