David Flynn - The Happy Health Plan: Simple and tasty plant-based food to nourish your body inside and out

Recipes

With photography by Chris Terry
Recipe photography by Maja Smend

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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

First published by Penguin Life 2020

Text copyright David and Stephen Flynn, 2020
Photographs copyright Chris Terry, 2020
Photographs copyright Maja Smend, 2020

The moral right of the copyright holders has been asserted

Cover image Chris Terry

Designed by Saffron Stocker
Colour reproduction by Altaimage Ltd

ISBN: 978-0-241-47145-6

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

We all want to be healthy and happy. We all want to wake up in the morning with energy, feeling content and confident in our body. What we eat and our lifestyles have a huge impact on our energy levels, our weight, our confidence and almost every aspect of our health and wellbeing. Yet, in most cases, what we eat and our lifestyle habits are not supporting us.

In 2008 we put a wholefood plant-based diet (more on this on ) to the test in our caf above our veg shop in Ireland. We put 20 people on the diet for 4 weeks on what became the Happy Heart course. We didnt know if it would work, but we knew the research so far supported it. The results absolutely astounded us: all 20 reported having more energy, feeling lighter, and across the group there was an average drop in cholesterol of 20%, blood pressure was reduced to healthy levels, and there were many other positive side-effects.

After some media coverage of the results, we ended up making friends with doctors and brought them on board to develop even more medically-backed courses, centred around the power of a wholefood plant-based diet. We partnered with consultant gastroenterologist Dr Alan Desmond and NHS dietitian Rosie Martin, and together we created the Happy Gut course a 6-week course to help improve peoples digestive and gut health. Thousands of people have gone through this course and 98% would recommend it to a friend.

Since then we have created the Happy Skin course, in collaboration with Dr Gemma Newman and Jennifer Rock, aka The Skin Nerd, and also the Happy Shape Club, with Dr Sue Kenneally, NHS dietitian Rosie Martin, PT Zanna Van Dijk and yoga teacher Cliodhna Drury. To date we have had more than 35,000 people go through all of our courses from every corner of the world!

Although all our courses have a different focus, we have found that, because every part of our body is linked, when you start to heal one part of your body it will have a positive effect on the other parts too. If you have high cholesterol and follow our Happy Heart course, your cholesterol levels will most likely drop, and as your blood flow improves so too will your skin, as it gets more oxygen and nutrients. When you follow our Happy Gut course, your microbiome will start to consist of healthier gut bugs, and a healthier microbiome will mean that your taste buds change so that you crave healthier foods and it is a lot easier to maintain a Happy Shape and potentially lose excess weight. Once you start to make healthier food choices, you are more likely to get your 10,000 steps in a day, and once you are doing more walking you are more likely to meet others and connect; this will positively affect your sleep and your mental health is likely to improve too. One simple change starts a positive domino effect on your life!

The Happy Health Plan is not a diet. Its not a quick fix. Its not even a weight-loss plan (even though it can be very effective at this) it is designed to change your life and your whole body health for good.

Based on everything weve learnt across our courses, the Happy Health Plan helps improve your heart health, your gut health, your skin, and it will help you reach your Happy Shape, along with lots of other positive benefits.

This book is the culmination of more than 10 years experience of supporting tens of thousands of participants from all over the world as they positively change and transform their health with the power of a wholefood plant-based diet. Now its your turn!

If you want to focus on a particular area of your health, weve brought in the experts on our courses to give specific advice on:

• Happy Heart: improve your cardiovascular health and eat to reverse/avoid heart disease and high cholesterol.
• Happy Skin: improve the appearance of your skin and tackle common skin complaints and the effects of ageing.
• Happy Shape: lose weight and feel more confident in your body while also eating as much as you like of our plant-based recipes and following our really simple exercise tips.
• Happy Gut: aid your digestive system and tackle common complaints such as IBS, bloating and other tummy issues with our low-FODMAP, high-fibre recipes and our 6-week gut health programme.

Each section has expert advice, specific tips and carefully planned meal plans and shopping lists. You can either pick and mix across the sections or follow the plan to the letter, but either way we guarantee that you will start feeling better, have more energy and fall in love with plant-based foods. All we ask is that you do your best, choose progress over perfection and take it one step at a time.

Wholefood plant-based food is central to everything we do at The Happy Pear. Do you want to know the principles that have helped tens of thousands of people dramatically improve their health? Want to learn more about calcium and iron and why fibre is so important on our plans? It all awaits you in this chapter.

The words wholefood plant-based diet may be confusing, but basically wholefood means eating foods as you would find them in nature rather than eating processed foods from a factory and in case you were wondering, plant-based is not referring to daffodils or roses but a diet made up of:

• Fruits
• Vegetables
• Beans (kidney beans, butter beans, black beans, etc.)
• Legumes (lentils, chickpeas, split peas, etc.)