5 Weird Benefits of Living a Plant-Based Lifestyle

There are so many health benefits to living a plant-based lifestyle. The benefits compound when you ditch (or greatly reduce) the animal-based foods and beverages in your life.

You may already know the big benefits:

• Weight loss
• Reducing or eliminating medications.
• Reducing joint pain and inflammation.
• Reducing cholesterol and blood pressure.

Did you know there are even more benefits?

I’ve been living a plant-based lifestyle, and I coach my clients to do the same. Here are some of my favorite benefits that I don’t see anyone talking about. They can show up in kind of weird ways.

1. Spend less time cleaning up. This is probably my favorite. I use less dish soap, and I rarely scrub any pots or pans. Nothing sticks. There are no drippings to clean up, no grease to get rid of. Most of the dishes only need a rinse in hot water. I actually love doing the dishes these days, well, as much as you can love any chore that you have to do. It takes me minutes, and my dishes are sparkly clean.

2. Get more time and money added to your day. You’ll spend less time shopping, which adds up to more time in your day and money in your pocket. Contrary to the myth that eating healthy is expensive, when you’re eating whole, unprocessed plants, you spend less money. Produce is one of the least expensive (on a per-pound basis) ways to spend your money. Grains and beans will become staples in your meals, and they last forever in the pantry, thus reducing the number of trips to the grocery store to replenish.
3. Addressing the piles that live around your home. Studies show that eating more plants results in increased energy. What’s fun with this one is that it shows up in subtle and seemingly weird ways in your life. You know that pile of clothes that you’ve been meaning to donate for weeks? It suddenly gets donated. You organize the pile of paperwork that has been growing daily on your desk for months. I’m not saying that you’ll suddenly be on a clean-up mission. I am saying that the mundane tasks that you just haven’t had the energy to tackle will get done because you have more energy.

4. Heartburn disappears. Your entire digestive system will benefit from the increase in fiber in your diet, but perhaps the most immediate effect will be the reduction in acid reflux and heartburn symptoms. A study from 2018 demonstrates this reduction, and my clients confirm it. More than one of my clients has stopped taking acid-blocking medications in favor of eating more plants.

5. You smell better. Perhaps my favorite of the benefits that I never see in any list of benefits from going plant-based is that your personal scent changes, and your poop doesn’t stink. Well, not as much. Now, don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t smell like roses either. But you can eliminate bathroom sprays, and you don’t have to worry about tooting in public. Poop is a waste product, so it does have an odor, but plant-based eating doesn’t produce the sulfurous compounds that digesting animal-based foods does. If you don’t put stink-producing food into your intestines, you don’t get stink out of them.

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If you’d like to enjoy the big benefits (weight loss and disease prevention and control), along with these lesser-known benefits and so much more, get started with my Plant-Based Recipe Guidebook and 30-Day Plant-Based kickstart.