How to deal with doctors

My qualifications on this particular topic are based mostly on my own experience with doctor visits, which are a relatively rare occurrence in my life. My outlook is heavily informed by the the fact that my father was a doctor and our mealtimes were often mini conferences of him and various colleagues, often focused on their resistance to the formation of what we now call Pharmageddon, or the medical-industrial complex and the de-humanization of medicine. Even then, in the early sixties some doctors were seeing how the new developments in pharmaceuticals made doctors into drug pushers fighting symptoms and not helping patients heal and be healthy. My father had scathing criticism for the pharmacological inroads into psychiatry and eventually evolved into a sort of Jungian psychotherapist more than a psychiatrist because he categorically declined to get involved with psychopharmaca. He also would at times serve patients for free or on a sliding scale whenever insurance stopped covering them, he simply would not accept administrative interference in patient relationships.

The Lifestyle Medicine revolution

Lifestyle Medicine is the new form of medicine that is rooted in the Whole Foods, Plant-Based diet and the insight that nutrition is 80% of the work. In other words, acute issues aside, the first order of business is to make sure you are getting the whole benefit of the whole foods, plant-based diet, for it provides an abundance of nutrients, which puts your body in optimal shape to deal with all of the real life challenges, including preventing or reversing the chronic diseases that kill people who follow a modern, industrial Western diet. So, diet should be your first concern, but that does not mean doctors are an unnecessary luxury.

The slow evolution of lifestyle medicine means we have to be innovative in dealing with doctors. The central point is that you are now taking responsibility for your health, for you decide what goes down the gullet. How far you want to go with that is your business, but besides my wide reading in this area, I went and took the certificate in Plant-Based Nutrition from Nutrition Studies. The new relationship with your doctor, assuming he is a plant-based doctor is a partner in wellness, where he/she should be very much your personal subject matter expert, particularly if there are any challenges and together you can figure out any adjustments that may be needed along the way.

Not necessary, but it helps

In most cases, your regular doctor is in a system that pushes him one way and one way only a consultation and a treatment. Even the ones that do sympathize with the premises of lifestyle medicine and the whole foods, plant-based diet are still in that system. So when this year I had some anomalies in my regular annual physical exam, I decided it was time for some extracurricular consultation, and as it was, I went and visited Dr. Robert Graham at www.freshmednyc.com. He went and took some more extensive tests and together we figured out what was right and what was wrong and some prudent adjustments to make. We are talking about tweaking now, but sometimes it helps to not be guessing and get very specific feedback from a trusted expert who cares.

I learned a lot. Without discussing all the details here, I will highlight one element... just to illustrate why I got concerned with my physical this year.

2015: Spring physical, Total Cholesterol (TC) was 185. My diet was still fairly mixed, although for the most part I did not eat a lot of meat, probably a chicken a week and a hamburger 3 times a year. But lots of eggs, yoghurt, cheese, cheese and more cheese. Still, I always ate plenty of fruit, vegetables and whole grains. I never ate white bread or white rice in my life. I considered that rat food, or window caulking in a pinch. So I probably ate a bit above average. And 185 is not really all that concerning. I just recently read a book about heart disease, "Know Your Real Risk of Heart Disease" by the Australian physician Dr. Warwick Bishop. The book is very well organized, and offers good explanations about how the heart works and what various diagnostics do or don't mean. To him, TC level below 193 would be just fine. In America, regular doctors consider 200-239 the range for borderline concern, so 185 would be of no concern.

And then there is Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, who says below 150 is heart attack proof. Is he nuts or what? The same Dr. Esselstyn also says again and again that Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) is a paper tiger that need not exist and unless it is absolutely acute and critical, the only intervention we ever need is a whole foods, plant-based diet. He will also point out that anyone eating a Western diet and aged 60 ish will have some level of CVD. And recently, we learned that for our Southeast Asian friends, we could say above 40, for the average age of heart attack victims in e.g. Bangladesh is 43 years of age, because genetically, they have smaller veins.

Here is my personal experience (I wrote about this before when I turned 65):

2015: physical (spring) TC=185
2015: May, re-read Esselstyn's Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. I decided to quit fooling around and jumped in with both feet.
2016: physical in spring: TC=151
2017: physical in spring: TC=146
2018: no physical
2019: physical in spring: TC=168???
2019: retested three months after my physical, with a more elaborated test (June) TC=145

That was one of a few things that seemed off, and I could not explain except I was probably more religious about going to the gym in 2016 than recently, so time to step up my game, but still.
With further testing and consultation as indicated above, this time TC came back at 145, just two months later. That simply makes more sense given the history, and what I know I am doing with my diet. By the way there was absolutely NO sign of inflammation. Nice to know the diet works, but with the information at hand we figured out I could add another scoop of chia seeds, hemp seeds, (milled) flax seed, or walnuts, to slightly increase my Omega-3 intake. This becomes one of those areas where we're all different, and some may need a bit more than others, but it is important to know that more is not always bettter. It is about the ratio between Omega-6 and Omega-3.

In short, I learned a lot from a very specific consultation that allows me to tweak my lifestyle. It pays not to become complacent. As to diagnostics, initially, here is the only diagnostic you need:

https://4leafsurvey.com

It is a simple self-test for how well you eat based on whole foods, plant-based nutrition criteria. It give you a rating from 1-leaf (slightly above average already) to 4-leaves (you are doing a Whole Food, Plant-Based diet completely) and it is excellent for handholding so you can gradually improve your diet.

Conclusion

If you are doing a Whole Foods, Plant-Based diet, talk about it with your physician. If they ignore it, it may be worth looking for another doctor. That is what happened with me in 2018. I switched away from my old doctor, because he did not know or understand enough about lifestyle medicine and the whole foods, plant-based diet. Of course as soon as I switched my new doctor moved to another state, and I changed doctors again this year.
In terms of doing this diet, for yourself, or for others: don't try to practice medicine without a license, but you can confidently rely on the fact that if you are following the #WFPB diet properly, minus Sugar, Oil and Salt, and plus some natural Omega-3 sources, and your B12 supplement, you are giving your body the optimal chances to heal itself, and many common issues will pass you by unnoticed. Against that background your medical requirements should be extremely modest, and if anything comes up, at least you know you are helping yourself to the maximum.
That latter point is really the theme of the movie The Game Changers, which premieres on Sept 16th (don't miss it!!!). The lead character is a martial arts trainer for the military and he found the whole foods plant-based diet because he wanted to help himself recover from a very serious injury and in his research he stumbled on the fact that the gladiators in Rome ate mostly barley and veggies. That is where his journey started.

Vegetable Lasagna - our January 2018 Suppers/#WFPB meal at St. Helena's

This time around it was all chaos, as one of the organizers was not feeling well, but we made it work regardless.

The plan was vegetable lasagna, based on a recipe from the book The Vegan Cheat Sheet by Amy Cramer and Lisa McComsey, with a side dish of spinach, and a mixed green salad with Dr. Barnard's Roasted Red Pepper Vinaigrette. (Note: the book underestimates the amount of filling you need, in my view, so below I upped the amount of cauliflower relative to the book. We found out the hard way that we ran out of the white filling too soon.)

This is a very lovely #WFPB (Whole Foods, Plant-Based) dinner. And the #not62 health campaign in the Bronx would not be the same without it! The people of the Bronx are learning.

The Menu - Recipes

Note: these quantities were for 9 people. You can adjust them accordingly. Out of our $15 grocery money we only spend about $9, so in all there was an $6.00 refund.

To begin with, here is the salad dressing:

Dr. Barnard's Roasted Red Pepper Vinaigrette

Makes enough dressing for 1 large salad

1 large roasted red pepper

1 clove garlic

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1/8 tsp salt

1/4 tsp pep per

1/2 tsp fresh thyme leaves

Place all ingredients in a blender or food processor. Serve and enjoy.

For the salad we used:

1 head of red leaf lettuce

1 head of green leaf lettuce

1 head of romaine lettuce 

1 green pepper

1 red pepper

1 yellow pepper

1 red onion

6 cloves of garlic

6 sundried tomatoes

4 fresh tomatoes

2 tablespoons of Chia seeds

2 tablespoons of milled flax seeds

(Confession, we ran out of time, and we ended up making a 3/2/1 dressing with red pepper - 3 measures balsamic, 2 measures dijon mustard, and 1 measure maple syrup), so we'll do this recipe again some other time. In fact I will make it today.)

Tomato Sauce (Red)

Note: finding oil-free pasta sauce is not always easy, though there are some on the market. You can find one at Trader Joes, see this listing of OIl-free vegan products at Trader Joes, provided by Forks over Knives. Anyway, we could not find an oil-free sauce in the neighborhood, so I made it from scratch. As it was I started a bit late, but the idea was to have the pasta sauce ready when the class started at 3 PM, so that the class could make the salad, the spinach, and build the lasagna, so we just had to shove it in the oven. So we ran a bit late this time, but the meal was enjoyable.

Ingredients:

4 28Oz cans of Organic Diced Tomatoes

4 onions, cut fine

8 cloves of garlic 

10-20 leaves of fresh basil chopped fine

7 leaves of laurel

2 peppers

2 8 Oz packs of mushrooms (one white and one crimini)

1 lb of carrots shredded

Braggs Liquid Aminos to taste 

Preparation:

• Cut up the onions fine, and start dry-roasting them in the pan
• add the peppers, cut up, and stir it up
• add the garlic (first flatten it and cut it fine) and stir it up
• add the carrots (match stick cut) and stir it up
• add the mushrooms, sliced (note the mushrooms yield a lot of moisture) and stir it up
• when these ingredients start to get soft and feel cooked, add the tomatoes and stir it up
• let simmer, and finish with Liquid Aminos to taste
• make it smooth with an immersion blender

Spinach side dish

4 bundles of spinach cut in 1.5" lengths

2 onions cut up fine

7 cloves of garlic flattened and cut fine

8 chilis sliced fine

3 jalapenos, remove the seeds

(Note: the chilis were fine for most, but a bit much for a few people, but evidently, you can vary that to taste. The jalapenos are much milder.)

Again, start with dry-roasting the onlons, chilis, jalapenos and garlic, and when it is soft, add the spinach, and let it cook slowly for another 7-10 minutes.

Lasagna filling (White)

2 14 Oz packs of Silken Tofu
5-6 cups of steamed cauliflower
(Note: the original recipe suggests 2 cups of cauliflower per pack of tofu, but in practice, I find 3 cups of cauliflower per pack of tofu is a better ratio. Be sure to cook the cauliflower really soft.)

When the cauliflower is soft, add the tofu, and make a smooth sauce with a stick blender.

3 yellow squash sliced
3 zucchini sliced

Building the Lasagna

2 12 Oz packs of Whole Wheat Lasagna, or 3 packs if they are 9 Oz
some nutritional yeast

(Note: this was the fun part, doing it assembly style... We used 2 12 Oz boxes of Ronzoni Healthy Harvest Whole Wheat Lasagna - note: it is available next door, at Chang-Li Supermarket. More and more supermarkets are starting to carry it.)
Preheat the oven to 425 F

• start with a layer of pasta sauce
• layer whole wheat lasagna strips in the sauce (typically 3 strips make one layer)
• layer on the white filling
• make a layer of sliced squash/zucchini
• repeat until the pan is full, finish with a layer of red sauce on top.

 In the oven for ca 45 mins.

Serving suggestions:
The salad is obviously colorful.
The main dish is red/white, with a side of green.
For topping, you can sprinkle on some nutritional yeast

Conclusions

The above is a very complete and satisfying meal. And, it was fun to build with the group, even though this time we went far over schedule, mainly because I started too late to make the pasta sauce and the Cauliflower/tofu filling in advance.
As a reminder, why do we avoid ADDED oils? In other words, why did I make fresh tomato sauce because I could not find an oil-free sauce nearby? Because added oils paralyze our bloodvessels for 3-6 hours after every meal. The blood vessels can no longer expand with extra energy expenditure. It is tremendously important for heart and vascular health to understand that you do not want any added oil in your diet. Here you can hear it from the horse's mouth: Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn says no oil. I repeat, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. says: "No oil!" If you're still not clear, here is Dr. John McDougall saying the same thing.

Another feature: this meal really embodied 2 of our 4-6 daily portions of green leafy vegetables - a salad and a side dish of spinach. Green leafies provide massive doses of anti-oxidants, and by chewing them we are converting nitrates to nitrites and enabling our digestive system to manufacture nitric oxide, which is what keeps your endothelium healthy.



The point of the exercise however, remains, that in the spirit of the Suppers program, this is all about home cooking, and about creating a mutual support mechanism on a local level. Audelle has been doing Suppers meetings at her home in Throgs Neck for a long time, but doing this at the St. Helena's school cafeteria enables a slightly larger group.
Meanwhile, the idea of sharing the grocery bill, also teaches us that a very healthy and abundant Whole Foods Plant-Based meal can be made on a budget. In this case, we came out to $9 per person. The highest we ever did was $11.50 per person, but it seems that we can typically do these productions for under $10 pp in groceries. You can do it for less, or you can spend more. In the long term you are reducing your medical expenses and nearly completely eliminates the need for any supplements. In this case we added chia seeds and milled flax seed to the salad for Omega-3s and as long as you keep that in mind, the only supplement you should ever need is a vitamin B12 every other day.
If you think about it, the degenerative diseases which consume 86% of our healthcare expenditure, are diseases of affluence and can largely (ca 75%) be prevented or largely reversed with the Whole Foods, Plant-Based diet. It produces such nutritional abundance that the mere thought of supplements is silly. On top of that, there is more and more evidence that isolated supplements are not absorbed as well by the body, or even absorbed at all, as nutrients which are consumed as part of a whole foods diet. In some cases, supplements can even be toxic.

About Omega-3 and Omega-6: It's the #WFPB Paradigm, stupid...

The correct balance of Omega-3 to Omega-6 is hard to get, nutritionally, except if you are following the #WFPB program. This is just another way of realizing that #WFPB, or also the "plant strong" and "plant perfect" diets, as Rip Esselstyn likes to call them are not "diets" per se, but more variations within a new nutritional paradigm.

The point was driven home to me rather forcefully again the other day, when I ended up facilitating an exchange between T. Colin Campbell and a biochemist friend. The said biochemist is a researcher who knows a lot about different nutrients, and often from first hand research. He is also a great critical thinker. Among other things, he made me aware of the ignominious start of the Harvard nutrition program under Frederick Stare, one of the seriously compromised researchers in the health field, who essentially was a paid promoter for the Standard American Diet, which we now know is making people sick. Nevertheless, on this occasion he was limited by the paradigm he spoke from, i.e. the Standard American Diet, and various diets that are variations on it.

The standard advice to vegans is to get some vegan EPA/DHA supplements, but it turns out that if you eat a reasonably balanced Whole Foods Plant-Based diet, you end up with Omega-3 and 6 in the proper balance almost automatically. Understanding this underscores again the fact that #WFPB is a nutritionally complete paradigm, with almost the sole exception being some B12, and maybe some D3 in winter.

Here it is in the words of Colin Campbell (in private correspondence):

quote
When one consumes a truly whole food plant based diet, without added oil (it is the added oil not the high fat plant foods), the ratio will be around a very healthy 1:1, to 3:1 (omega 6 to omega 3). The problem with people speaking about this ratio out of context is that they are grossly omitting the myriad effects of other dietary component and, worse, the underlying biochemistry. 

unquote

In short, don't mess with success. If you're doing #WFPB, things take care of themselves nutritionally, it is within the SAD and its dietary variants where one is constantly at risk of not getting sufficient intake of one nutrient or another.

The Paradigm Shift

I remember growing up, when my parents became vegetarians, my mother was always concerned about:  but how are you going to get your proteins. And her cooking pattern for two decades largely was potatos, vegetables, and something in the place of meat. That last piece would be the protein source. There was zero knowledge or awareness that vegetables and grains have proteins, let alone enough proteins, but the truth is that spinach is 51% protein, and the lowly potato or brown rice each have about 9% protein. Plus, of course, we know now, since the China Study, that we want to beware against over consuming protein. The ideal range is 5-10% and not the more typical 15-25% which we see in SAD. More importantly, we want our proteins from plant sources, not animal sources.

What really is scary about this paradigm shift, is how long it has remained a secret, or, in the words of T. Colin Campbell:
quote
The research in "The China Study" was handsomely funded by NIH (a very competitive process, 70 grant years of funding), was published in the very best nutrition and cancer journals and I have since presented this material to well over 150 medical schools and their conferences (over 700 total invited presentations since the book was published).
unquote
It is now forty years since Campbell began publishing papers, followed by the first edition of the book in 2005. Still, this information is not well known, although that is rapidly changing.





What is hard to fathom for many is that suddenly maximizing protein intake is no longer a virtue and, if you maximize anything, it is fiber. The other thing that is hard to understand is the no-added oil precept. We hear too much about supposedly healthy oils, that may be healthier compared to the worst, but the body still does not need them. As Dr. Ostfeld from Montefiore Hospital likes to put it, added oils are like inviting Mike Tyson to practice on your veins. For six hours after an oily meal, your veins loose their oompf. Along with that, adding oils the balance of Omega-3 to Omega-6 is upset, and you don't want that.

Sources of Omega-3 fatty acid for vegans

You can find ample articles online that document good sources of Omega-3 and/or how to achieve a balanced Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio. Most of it is geared to the wrong paradigm for veganism, and not to the #WFPB diet, or plant strong or plant-perfect. Often times articles point to supplements, but if you follow what Colin Campbell says above, you need not worry. Good sources of Omega-3 for vegans are Chia seeds, Flax seeds, and various vegetables. One that is especially good is Verdolaga, a.k.a. Purslane. 

https://worldcrops.org/crops/verdolaga

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portulaca_oleracea

http://www.gracelinks.org/blog/4236/real-food-right-now-and-how-to-cook-it-purslane

Purslane from Wikipedia

I recently discovered that Verdolaga grows between corn, and it was available at our Parkchester Green  Market, along with some of the sweetest corn I've tasted in years.


Simple recipe, based on the one listed on Gracelinks above: 

Potato salad with Purslane

• essentially follow their (Gracelinks') steps, except:
• If you can't get fresh dill, use dried, and reconstitute it with some lime juice and lemon juice. That will do the job very quickly.
• if you do the above, you barely need and dressing for this salad other than the lime/lemon juice. But if you need more dressing, obviously you make it oil-free. 
• That's really all, and itś finger-licking good. 

For the Potato salad, I used the leaves, with the stems I made a sauce, with onions, garlic pimentos, some turmeric, and a cup of vegetable bouillon and a bit of arrowroot to thicken it. Et voilà, that made a great sauce over a plate of long beans over rice.

You can also add the leaves to salad, and the next project will be to cook a split pea soup with the remainder of the purslane. 
 

The #WFPB Nutritional Paradigm

#WFPB, the Whole Foods, Plant-Based diet as developed on the basis of The China Study, and the clinical work of cardiologist Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr is a completely new paradigm of nutrition and health. The best known introduction these days is the documentary Forks over Knives.

Veganism is usually defined in the negative, as in: no animal protein, and some vegans do not even eat honey, because it is animal based. Motivations for veganism are sometimes environmental, or based on concerns over animal welfare, and sometimes vaguely based on health concerns. Yet, if you look around in restaurants and on food labels, "vegan" is a meaningless term, because it lacks any positive assertive nutritional concept behind it.
Perhaps the most famous proponent of veganism is Israeli activist Gary Yourovsky:

Gary Yourofsky at City College of NY

The #WFPB Paradigm

#WFPB (the Whole Foods Plant-Based diet) on the other hand is a completely new paradigm for nutrition and health. The fundamental tenets could be defined as follows:

• Focus on the quality, not the quantity of protein intake.
• Healthy protein sources are plant-based, unhealthy protein sources are animal based, be it meat, fish, fowl or dairy.
• By substituting plant-based proteins for animal proteins, you also lower your overall calories from protein to a healthy 5-15% and increase your fiber intake, which is often unhealthy under an omnivore diet.
• Use whole foods, and do not use added oils or sugar.
• "Dieting" does not exist in #WFPB, because whole foods, plant-based nutrition speeds up the metabolism and people automatically achieve a homeostatic, healthy weight.
• Nutritional supplements are meaningless for #WFPB is Nutritionally complete: the only possible exceptions are some moderate supplementation of B12 and maybe vitamin D.

The fundamental research for the #WFPB lifestyle is The China Study, which was just published in a new, updated 2017 edition, by T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. and his son Tom Campbell, MD. The clinical work that matches up to the China Study came primarily from Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr., M.D., a cardiologist from the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, which was first published in his book, Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease. many other doctors work in the same vein. Here in the Bronx, we have Robert Ostfeld, M.D. a cardiologist at Montefiore Hospital, who runs the Montefiore Cardiac Wellness program.

T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. on #WFPB

Nutritionally complete: the Omega-3, B12,D-vitamin

The key concept is that for all practical purposes #WFPB is nutritionally complete, if you eat a reasonably balanced range of plant-based foods.

Omega-3

A lot is often made of the difficulty to get a favorable Omega-3 to Omega-6 balance in vegan nutriton, this is a fallacy. Here are some of the sources of Omega-3 for vegans:
flaxseed, chia seed, hemp seed, mustard seed, seaweed, beans, winter squash to broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts, leafy greens, cabbage, berries, wild rice, various herbs and spices, mangoes, honeydew melon.

B12 vitamin

The only vitamin vegans generally need to supplement is B12. and that's all.

D vitamin

Supplementation of D vitamin is another issue, but that is more generic to the whole population, not just vegans. Here is a great article on vegan sources of vitamin D (note that vitamin D3 is the easiest to absorb form), and if you do not get enough sun, you may need a little vitamin D supplementation.

Beware of vegan marketing hype

Nutritional advice for vegans is usually useless if you follow #WFPB, for if your intake is reasonably varied. There are great vegan sources of iron, from raisins, to prunes, olives, avocado and dried apricots, to asparagus, endives, peas, acorn squash, dandelion greens, Kale, turnip greens, to lentils, chick peas, quinoa, wheat germ, brown rice, and sprouted beans or seeds, and lastly morel mushrooms, brewer's yeast, spirulina, and blackstrap molasses.

But by and large the whole notion that supplements are useful are part of the SAD legacy. In the context of the SAD paradigm, supplements may seem helpful, but this type of research is really silly and misleading, because it focuses on how single nutrients (or medications) improve health outcomes, without questioning the overall train wreck that is the Standard American Diet. Under #WFPB the notion of dietary supplements is silly. The body can generally not absorb them very well, so other than expensive urine, the benefits are limited. It is absurd to ask for small improvements amidst a perfectly preventable disaster. 

The health care angle

As a nation, we are spending 75% of our healthcare dollars on treating degenerative illnesses that can generally be reversed with better nutrition, specifically #WFPB. We spend more on healthcare than any other nation, but without results, for our health statistics remain bad. Here is a brilliant presentation by T. Colin Campbell that sums it all up.

These days the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) practically has become the standard bearer for the role of nutrition in medicine. And things are picking up speed at a remarkable rate. Here is some of the latest:

• They just finished up hosting the Fifth-Annual International Conference on Nutrition in Medicine, and one of the fruits of it was an impressive YouTube video about 700 doctors advocating for Prevention over Pills - a ringing endorsement of the #WFPB lifestyle.
• They reported on a recent article by Russel Simmons on refocusing the SNAP program on healthy foods, because the poor have such bad health outcomes already. It is truly criminal to use a government program to provide people more junk food that makes them ill.
• Dr. Neal Barnard's latest book, The Cheese Trap, makes the brilliant case of the correlation of our obesity crisis with the growing cheese consumption, and why cheese is literally addictive (there is a weak opioid in milk that becomes concentrated in cheese). The book also sheds light on government complicity with the dairy industry.
• PCRM came out petitioning the USDA to modify the MyPlate nutritional recommendation and to ditch dairy, and swap animal protein for legumes.
• The American College of Cardiology urges hospitals to add plant-based meals and eliminate processed meats.
• The AMA passed a resolution: Hospitals should provide plant-based meals and remove cancer-causing processed meats.
• The AMA calls for healthier foods in the SNAP program.

This list is evidence of the impressive progress PCRM is making, and they are only just getting started. They truly stand on the shoulders of giants, for it is the work of T. Colin Campbell and his associates in The China Study which is the foundation of all the further research in this area. There is also an excellent documentary on the health issue, What the Health.

Eat your heart out, dieters

The upshot is that the #WFPB lifestyle is actually easier and cheaper than the alternative - meat is surprisingly expensive. Going to a #WFPB will cost you some money in the change over. You may want some different kitchen appliances, and your pantry needs restocking, but you can do that gradually over time, though some folks need to do it all at once, lest they fool themselves and hang on to old, bad habits, such as added oils or sugar.
But since plant-based nutrition speeds up your metabolism, there is no dieting under this concept. Eat to your heart's content, as long as it is reasonably varied, and your body will automatically return to a homeostatic, optimal weight, without even having to think about it.
In short, indulge, you are eating your way to health, as long as you stay within the #WFPB paradigm.