Eat your way to success: The health benefits of a plant-based lifestyle

There’s a lot of buzz at the moment about ‘plant-based’ lifestyles. Plant-based athletes are some of the world’s most high-achieving sportsmen and women, and those that have embraced the diet that restricts all animal meats and byproducts become almost evangelical about its purported health benefits.

But – can a balanced plant-based diet trump a regular one? It seems the experts agree, that whether you’re going full vegan or omnivore, eating a diet rich in the nutrients your body needs does affect your wellbeing, alertness, energy levels and overall health.

Dipping a toe into the plant-based life, CEO Middle East tried one of the newest meal plans to hit Dubai.

Root’D is the brainchild of Freakin’ Healthy, a UAE-based food company making healthy, affordable snacks that are widely sold in major supermarkets.

In addition, they offer delivery meal plans which are delivered fresh to your door daily, allowing clients the flexibility to choose a fully customisable menu plan depending on individual goals.

For example, with a busy, active lifestyle and a weight loss goal to attain, the 1,400-calorie weekly plan offers three meals a day plus two snacks.

Clients choose their dishes for the week ahead from a list of options. These include tofu scrambled eggs, overnight carrot cake oats, slow-cooked puy lentils on toast or cinnamon French toast with maple syrup.

And that’s just breakfast. Lunches comprise hearty dishes that barely seem ‘diet’ let alone ‘vegan’ lasagne, curries, stews and burgers feature heavily, meaning that even if you’ve been used to consuming more calories, you won’t feel too deprived.

Root’D offers three main plan options — weight management, balanced lifestyle and detox-refuel

At the end of the first week, we felt more alert, less sluggish – and had even managed to shift a few stubborn pounds on the scale. Alongside a sense of mental clarity, we even achieved a personal best on our running – which reflects a growing trend amongst some professional athletes who also extol the performance-based benefits of eating a plant-based menu.

Certainly there are also environmental and ethical cases for considering reducing meat, while the health benefits of eating less meat have long been argued by physicians and dieticians.

The meal plans provided by Root’D are wholesome, balanced, made fresh daily and taste delicious. There’s no sense of being deprived or fed bland forgettable salads. Instead, you can almost feel the nutrition pouring forth from the bowl and into your soul.

And actually, that’s no surprise, because the dishes are created by skilled nutritionists, so you know you’re getting just what your body needs to function optimally. After all, our bodies are our machines, and can only function on what we fuel it with.

There are three main plan options – weight management, balanced lifestyle and detox-refuel. Each comes with a five or six days a week option,and while the plans are recommended as monthly to see more tangible results, there is a trial option to do just one week.

For those who aren’t especially interested in pursuing a plant-based lifestyle permanently, this still offers a valuable reset in terms of cleansing the palate from craving junk food, processed food and fast, easy carbs – all of which can contribute to a sense of sluggishness and weight gain.