About the author
Dr. Angie Sadeghi, known as Dr. Angie to her friends and many followers, is a diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the American Board of Gastroenterology. She has overcome several health challenges throughout her life that started in childhood. She has decided to share her story and her success so that others can enjoy the gift of true, lasting health.
Dr. Angie grew up with a mother who was obese and didn't understand basic nutrition. When Angie was in high school, she was overweight and concerned about her appearance. She talked to her mother about it, who told her not to worry, that she could eat whatever she wanted as long as she exercised.
Dr. Angie took her mother at her word and ate what most teenagers eat: Snickers bars, McDonald's burgers, and fries—all kinds of unhealthy foods. And she worked out vigorously. (In fact, she still belongs to the same gym she joined back in the '80s.) She would hit the gym hard for an hour a day, but her weight wouldn't budge. In fact, her legs were rubbing together, causing sores and lasting hyperpigmentation to develop on the insides of her thighs.
Dr. Angie was self-conscious and anxious to try any diet that came around, including the Atkins diet. "I had read the book and was so excited," she says. "I was convinced that low-carb diets worked and that I was going to lose weight before my upcoming wedding." And she did. But she also started having back pain and kidney issues, likely due to the excess protein load on her kidneys. The skin on her chin began to darken, and she developed hormonal imbalances. She couldn't concentrate. She got thin, but also unhealthy, depressed, and fatigued.
Dr. Angie knew intuitively that the Atkins diet was the problem, so she stopped. But she was now as confused about nutrition as the rest of America. She decided to stop dieting altogether and went back to eating the standard American diet. This led to more health problems, including being overweight—again.
In addition to her weight challenges, Dr. Angie had spent forty years of her life with itchy skin, calming it with Benadryl and cortisone cream. At times, it was so bad she couldn't sleep because of the itching on her legs, hands, and bottoms of her feet. The eczema also caused pustules on her hands, which made her self-conscious when she met with patients and shook their hands.
In 2014, she began researching and studying nutrition, and what she learned opened her eyes to a new way of living. She decided to make major lifestyle changes and move to a plant-based diet. The results were miraculous. In nine months, she shed weight and transformed her body. Her cholesterol went down, and after just one week on the plant-based diet, her lifelong eczema went away. That alone was life changing.
"It makes perfect sense, if you think about it," she explains. "The casein in dairy is highly inflammatory and is linked to many health problems, so it makes sense that it causes, or at least worsens, eczema. Yet most doctors will give you the standard treatment of Benadryl and corticosteroid cream instead of getting to the root of the issue, which is often dairy."
Dr. Angie realized she had come across the most incredible diet in the world. By switching to a whole-food, plant-based diet, she was eating plenty of food, wasn't worrying about portions, and never felt overly hungry. Best of all, she was getting lots of fiber, healthy proteins, and more nutrients than ever. "I wasn't limiting my portions because when you're eating plant-based, you're getting lots of fiber, and since the food is not calorically dense, you don't have to limit your portions," she explains.
Suddenly, the self-conscious chubby girl was the hot doctor. More than once, people at the gym confused her for a fitness model. "It was crazy," she says. "I had lived forty years of my life overweight, then one day I woke up and looked totally different. It was hard not to think, 'Wow, look at me.' I just wasn't used to it."