346: Thriving Against the Odds: Sally Lipsky's Plant-Based Journey to Wellness

Sally Lipsky  00:00

I'm Sally Lipski. And I'm with plant based Pittsburgh here at the National Health Association. And it's just so wonderful to see you in person.

Maya Acosta  00:09

What inspired you to explore his whole food, plant based lifestyle and how has it impacted your overall health and

Sally Lipsky  00:15

well being what inspired me is that I was diagnosed with late stage a Varian cancer and went through treatment, surgery, chemotherapy, and I was told to expect it to come back and probably 24 months, and because it's very resistant to chemotherapy. And so I was always waiting for it. I went in no evidence of disease, but you're waiting, I believe. And then I just happened to read something an article in the local paper about about food and disease. And it's sort of like clicked for me, Oh, I thought I was eating a healthy recommended what was right, standard American diet, lots of dairy lean, you know, animal meats. And that's when I started to explore, you know, and the more I explored, the more it was like, Whoa, powerful, powerful connection between what you eat and disease. And so that's how I, you know, over time, within the next two years, I was fully hopefully plant base. And it has been 15 years without I mean, my originally my idea was keep cancer thing. And so it has been 15 years and no evidence of cancer. But then you get all the axillary benefits of feeling, no other chronic disease and feeling energy and connecting with people that are so wonderful. Yes, wherever you are, whether it is a conference like this, with our group back home, it's our tribe

Maya Acosta  02:08

in his search, right? It is. And now you run a very successful group in Pittsburgh, right? Yes. Tell us a little bit about that, in case someone is interested in joining.

Sally Lipsky  02:17

So this started, I started, originally I was doing when I found out about whole food, plant based diet powerful. It's like, I was right trade. My my real career was a professor of education. And so I felt compelled, I had to educate people, you have to you people get that compulsion. So I was just doing some classes at Deloitte education to various schools and libraries. And at one time, someone said, after a series of classes, like what now? And I was like, yes, you're right. We needed to support each other. So that was 2014. And I started meeting at a local library, I had 12 people on my initial who wanted signed up. And now well, there's 2000 People that get the newsletter and probably another 70 1800 who get it online. So it has, it's really the idea of creating a community of health, but with each other, sustaining it. Yeah, you know, keeping that sense of camaraderie, having meetings, cooking demos, restless recipes. Feeling like there is a place where you can connect with people we know. And based lifestyles.

Maya Acosta  03:41

And as we know, from watching the film yesterday, from food to freedom, that's what people need. They need the continuous support to stay on that journey.

Sally Lipsky  03:49

Absolutely. It is the heat. I really I tell people, it's up to sustaining the whole food plant based lifestyle because you are. You're swimming upstream without a doubt. Well, Sally,

Maya Acosta  04:02

thank you for sitting down with us. Is there anything else you'd like to share? Like your links, your group,

Sally Lipsky  04:08

just go to plant page pittsburgh.com. And you are welcome to contact me to sign up for our news to do anything because that's the thing when we were taking a break from zoom speakers for June in July, but once we do zoom, we have people that can come and zoom in, wherever you are. That's right. Yeah, we open it to anybody. All right.

04:29

Thank you so much again,

Sally Lipsky  04:30

it's been a real pleasure mine