Venetta GeVena Kalu, ND, MPHA
Start Here is a step between where you are and where you want to be.
Start Here is about helping you make simple changes to improve your health through lifestyle tips one path at a time.
The focus of Start Here is on taste and quality. Dr. Kalu promotes that to eat healthfully you do not have to sacrifice taste and fun. You can still have the pleasure and joy of eating a tasty meal well prepared.
Twelve years in the making, Start Here brings to you a creative, familiar cuisine in a relational lifestyle guide.
If you’re like Dr. Kalu, you tried many ways to improve your eating habits. Therefore, she knows that good intentions will not build health. So, Start Here is her baby and a better eating plan for being a vegan and loving it.
With Start Here you will learn to:
Practice healthier habits
Learn how to eat on a schedule
Learn how to be a vegan successfully
Learn how to prepare traditional favorites in a healthy way
Learn how to eat in a manner that will help you lose weight without sacrificing taste
Venetta G. Kalu, originally a New Yorker, is a naturopath currently in Hyattsville, Maryland. As a teenager, she showed a high aptitude for cooking. After teaching herself how to cook, she earned the title of natural born chef. A naturopath, lover of good food, and promoter of eating food as medicine, she had to find pleasant ways to make this medicine go down. So, with her love for experimentation, this natural born chef has accomplished this goal in her latest innovative task of publishing Start Here. Start Here has solved two problems: helping people eat better and feel better with food they can really enjoy, and recognize reaching as wide an audience as possible. She wrote Start Here, a practical vegan diet, lifestyle, and recipe guide drawing on her work as a naturopath. After several years of inquiries for putting her recipes in a book, she decided to take that challenge. Then she turned to AuthorHouse for editing, cover design, back cover copy self-publishing. Family and friends call her the vegan Martha Stewart. Critics called the book “A TREMENDOUSLY HELPFUL AND USEFUL GUIDE, a rare practical guide and user friendly introduction to the vegan lifestyle.”
Dr. Kalu (director Path of Life Wellness Center, president of Ghova Institute, Inc., and creator of Dr. Kalu’s Oyls & Sope) is a health speaker, educator, lifestyle coach, and inventor with fifteen years of professional experience. She regularly speaks on a variety of topics including lifestyle skills, detoxification, nutrition, and women’s issues. Dr. Kalu is available for book signings, large and small lectures, and cooking classes. You may reach her by writing, calling, e-mailing, or faxing her office.
THE PATH OF LIFE DIET
The Path of Life Diet is a lifestyle diet. This dietary plan is useful for all individuals as a preventive for disease, weight maintenance, and general purposes. Anyone on the Path of Life Diet will not feel that they are missing out on one of the most enjoyable parts of life—that is, eating an enjoyable meal whether alone or with friends.
We at Path of Life Wellness Center in Hyattsville, Maryland considered socializing when creating this diet plan, which is quite nonrestrictive. It is based upon God’s original diet and takes into consideration the natural laws of health, food combining and balancing the basic components of metabolism. To help you, the related charts are in the appendices and the foundation of the diet is stated below:
Making the Path of Life Diet Work for You
Path #1: Fasting
We eat our way to disease. Therefore, we must rest our stomachs at times to promote health. A rule of thumb, is to fast every evening to give the digestive organs time to finish working. Thus, the last meal should be taken about 3:00 p.m. Also, fasting one day per week is good for you.
Path #2: Cleansing
A high water intake is very cleansing to the body. It acts as a solvent to transport nutrients into your cells and waste out. Raw vegetable and fruit juices are filled with vitamins, minerals, and natural organic distilled water to help accomplish this task perfectly. Don’t neglect pure water.
Path #3: Exercise
Movement is necessary to assist in the transporting of nutrients into your cells and waste matter out. Walking is the best exercise, especially when taken in the open air. It stimulates the immune system, brings oxygen into your body, and relaxes your mind. Try walking thirty minutes daily. Additionally, include stretching and weight-bearing exercises to improve muscle tone.
Path #4: Meal Times
There are some good rules to follow for meal times, and I am sure you tried many of them. However, try these rules: 1. Chew about thirty to forty times before swallowing; 2. Allow four to six hours between meals without snacking; 3. Eating two meals per day is better than one or three; 4. Eat breakfast like a prince (generously), lunch like a king (heartily) and dinner like a pauper (sparingly) or leave it alone. Also, eating when relaxed is the best thing for your digestion.
Path #5: Balanced Nutrient Ratio
The diet should include fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, grains, and legumes to get all the nutrients you require daily. In looking at the chemical composition of these items as well as the ratio supplied in nature, one can pattern his or her meal after this: Each meal will do well to be balanced with 55-75 percent carbohydrates, 15-20 percent fats, and 10-12 percent proteins. To make it easier, imagine your plate as a pie chart divided into these sections and group your food accordingly.
To work it, use the recipes contained in this book. Memorize the charts, follow the outlined schedule because the body loves regularity, and just work it. More than anything, it is a lifestyle.
