The Dr. Jules Plant-Based Podcast

Looking Back & Looking Forward

• Dr. Jules Cormier (MD) • Season 3 • Episode 105

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Start here if you’re craving clarity, not noise. 

We open season three by tracing a winding path from a backyard ninja gym and World Ninja Championship qualifiers to a clinic led by six board-certified lifestyle medicine physicians, and a mission to make prevention the norm, not the exception. 

The story moves from hospital lows with cholinergic angioedema to steady recovery through plant-forward eating, movement, sleep, and stress skills, showing exactly how small, consistent choices compound into real change.

We dig into what the science actually says about nutrition without fueling the diet wars. Mediterranean, DASH, MIND, and Portfolio share the same backbone: whole plant foods, fiber-rich meals, complex carbs, and a focus on unsaturated fats while cutting added sugars, excess sodium, refined grains, and ultra-processed foods. 

Some patterns include small amounts of animal products, others none, but the throughline is undeniable, plants lead to better outcomes. We also talk about Blue Zones, modern dietary guidelines, and why “dose dependent” is the most important phrase in your health playbook.

Beyond nutrition, we map out the six pillars of lifestyle medicine and how to make them stick in real life. 

Choose one behavior, start small, create quick wins, and design your environment so the healthy choice is the easy choice. Expect friction, treat setbacks as data, and let your values drive the plan. You’ll hear how our team built momentum, earning board certifications, mentoring colleagues, and shaping a residency curriculum, to scale prevention across our province. 

The goal is simple: less extremism, more evidence, and changes you can live with for decades.

If you’re ready for practical steps, updated research, and a conversation that respects nuance, you’re in the right place. Hit follow, share this episode with someone starting a health reset, and leave a review telling us the one tiny habit you’ll build this week.

Go check out my website for tons of free resources on how to transition towards a healthier diet and lifestyle.

You can download my free plant-based recipes eBook and a ton of other free resources by visiting the Digital Downloads tab of my website at https://www.plantbaseddrjules.com/shop

Don't forget to check out my blog at https://www.plantbaseddrjules.com/blog

You can also watch my educational videos on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMpkQRXb7G-StAotV0dmahQ

Check out my upcoming live events and free eCourse, where you'll learn more about how to create delicious plant-based recipes: https://www.plantbaseddrjules.com/

Go follow me on social media by visiting my Facebook page and Instagram accounts
https://www.facebook.com/plantbaseddrjules
https://www.instagram.com/plantbased_dr_jules/

Last but not least, the best way to show your support and to help me spread my message is to subscribe to my podcast and to leave a 5 star review on Apple and Spotify!
Thanks so much!

Peace, love, plants!
Dr. Jules

SPEAKER_01:

Yo, plant-based buddies, welcome to episode one of season three. We've been podcasting non-stop for over three years. And as I start season three, I wanted to take a moment to pause and to reflect. I wanted to take a look back at everything we've accomplished together over the last few years and to take a look forward to things that are right around the corner in projects we're working on. Now we've now reached 104 episodes recorded in over 75,000 podcast downloads. And although it still feels unreal to say it, I've not yet missed a week of podcasting in over two years. So for episode one of this new season three, I want to recap where this journey started. I want to talk on why this podcast even exists, and where we're going next. Now, most people who know me today, they know me through my lifetime medicine, nutrition, and health education that I put out online. But my journey actually began at a very different place. Years ago, my wife and I started sharing fitness videos online while training for the World Ninja Championships. If you've ever watched American Ninja Warrior on TV, you probably know what sport I'm talking about. And while we were watching that sport on television, we thought, well, this sport kind of suits our skills and our strengths. On a whim, we just decided to drive to Grandby Quebec to try out a ninja gym for the first time. And we fell in love instantly. We joined the Quebec Ninja League and we competed for the first time in 2018. Then something magical happened. We decided to transform our backyard and our garage into a ninja gym. We trained every night, most weekends, and we started competing in the Quebec Ninja League. 2018 was our first competition, but in 2022, we qualified for the World Ninja Championships in Las Vegas. That was one of the best experiences of my life. And so we kept pushing. In 2023, we qualified in Orlando, and again in 2024 in California. We brought our kids, they watched us compete on the big stage next to athletes that we watched on television. Now, these three experiences changed our lives. The training was difficult. We had to stay consistent, we had to change our lifestyle, change our priorities, we made a lot of sacrifices. But what really makes the story even more powerful is that a decade earlier I was in a hospital with cholinergic angioedema. That was my lowest of lows. I was unwell, vulnerable, and far from the athlete that I'd later become. My wife Mel suggested that I share our journey online. So I created the first Maritime Ninja Warrior Facebook page and Instagram page. We documented our journey or documented our training, as well as the setbacks, the training, the growth, the falls, the mistakes, the injuries. And what surprised me the most was the traction. Simply sharing our journey, our information, our experiences, and our lessons learned reached a lot of people. And that's when everything started to shift. My wife recommended that I maybe consider sharing not just my fitness journey, but also my medical journey. Now I grew up with medical conditions that had plagued me for much of my adult life, from asthma to eczema to urticaria to cholernergic angioedema. And when I started sharing my story of how my lifestyle managed to put these conditions in remission, my wife thought it might inspire a few people. And so I started talking about how plant-based nutrition and how healthy lifestyle behaviors helped me recover, helped me become more resilient, and finally put my medical conditions into remission. That's basically how my whole social media platforms were born. I decided to launch an Instagram and Facebook page focused on evidence-based lifestyle medicine. And along the way, I fell in love with sharing information online. I regularly, still to this day, get success stories sent to me almost every week. Now, along this journey, I decided to complete the plant-based nutrition certification at Guelph University. Then I got the Nutrition Studies Diploma through Cornell University's T. Collin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies, and additional training through organizations like Doctors for Nutrition. But education alone wasn't enough. Seeing patients day in, day out suffer from preventable chronic diseases, and even experiencing firsthand how powerful lifestyle change can be, this pushed me further, really convinced me that this is what I wanted to do and this is what I wanted to teach. So I set my sights on becoming board certified by the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine. Now, over the last few years, I managed to convince five other doctors to complete the exam and 13 other doctors to complete the board review course. Literally weeks ago, six of us drove down to Halifax to complete our board certification exams. We all passed. So now we are six board certified lifestyle medicine doctors at the clinic where I work. And this clinic trains most, the vast majority of future family medicine doctors in the province of New Brunswick. So now we're working on what may be the biggest accomplishment of my career, helping to create the second lifestyle medicine residency curriculum in Canada, second only to the French program at Laval University. My hope is that this work will meaningfully change how medicine is practiced in New Brunswick. It's all about creating a culture of prevention and of being proactive instead of reactive in the medical or healthcare system. Now, over the last 100 or more episodes, we've talked about everything. We've talked about exercise, sleep, nutrition, diabetes, heart disease, sleep apnea, and even fatty liver. I mean, some episodes are in English, some are in French, and we've even gone as far as discussing the realities and challenges of our own healthcare system. Now, along the way, my online platforms have grown to reach over a million people per month on average. Now, with a lot of visibility comes more responsibility, and with a lot of views comes a lot of criticism. Now, I've been criticized for everything from grammar to punctuation, for posting in English, for posting in French, and I've been called a liar by members of the carnivore community and criticized by the vegan community for saying that something's very simple and scientific as you do not need to be 100% whole food plant-based to see benefits. Now, even though I personally follow a 100% whole food plant-based diet and have done so for more than a dozen years, the science is quite clear. There's a lot of confusion online, but there's very little confusion in the scientific literature. The most studied dietary patterns in the world, like the Mediterranean diet, the DASH diet, the portfolio diet, the mind diet, they all show improved health outcomes and reduced risk of chronic diseases. But what a lot of people fail to recognize is that all of these dietary patterns are fundamentally plant-based diets. In all of these patterns, plants are the star of the plate. Now, some include small amounts of animal products and some include none. But when animal foods are present, they are minimal. Now, these dietary patterns are the same ones that we see in regions of the world called the blue zones, where the highest proportion of centenarians live. And these same recommendations or themes are what formed the foundation of the 2019 Canadian Food Guide, as well as other dietary guidelines around the world. Now, even the American College of Lifestyle Medicine reviewed dietary patterns and guidelines from major medical associations and organizations globally, and they all converge towards the same conclusion. A healthy diet that is one that prioritizes whole plant foods consumed in variety within a matrix of fiber and phytochemicals. It's a diet that emphasizes healthy, complex carbohydrates that favor unsaturated fats, oversaturated and trans fats, that minimizes the amount of dietary cholesterol in your diet, of added sugars, of excess sodium, that reduces the amounts of refined grains and ultra-processed foods. And here, the key message is health is dose dependent. Doesn't need to be all out, it doesn't need to be extreme, it doesn't need to be 100%. But the more plants you eat, the better your health. And the more you move, the better your health. And the better and longer you sleep, the better your health. You don't need to run marathons to be fit. The better you manage your stress, build social connections, and reduce exposure to toxins like cigarettes and alcohol and red and processed meats, the better your health will be. The lower your risk of chronic disease. You don't need to be perfect, and this is what this podcast is all about. In 2026, my goal is to teach you that health is not about extremism. It's not about hacks or fads or trends or special diets. You don't need to pick aside. Online is always a way of creating war and polarizing people to be in different dietary camps. But real sustainable change in healthy dietary patterns and behaviors are about small incremental sustainable changes that will compound over time. Now, human behavior exists on a spectrum. And behavior is shaped by your genetics, by your environment, by psychosocial factors, and it rests on the foundation of the lifestyle medicine pillars. So if you're here to learn and to grow and to move towards a healthier version of yourself that aligns with your values and your life, then you're in the right place. This podcast is all about nuance, and although some people complain that my episodes are too long, or that my posts on social media are too long, or that my reels are too long, you cannot review complex lifestyle medicine concepts in depth in a 30-second video or a hundred-word post. Now those who still remain after years of me being on social media are typically those who appreciate nuance and kind of steer clear of extremism and polarizing views online. So if you resonate with my content, let me know. I think the people who are left on social media are people who appreciate the depth and nuance discussed in every single social media post. And if you're just starting and you're new to the podcast, my challenge to you is start from episode one because I've been podcasting for over two years, over 100 episodes, and I'm sure you'll find a lot of this content very, very useful for anyone who's on a new health journey. Right on. We have a lot to discuss in 2026, and we'll have new podcasts and we'll review subjects previously covered in past episodes. We'll make sure to update you on the science. And my goal in 2026 is to add more content from lifestyle medicine now that I'm board certified. So although my bias and passion is in nutrition, I do want to have more episodes on exercise, on sleep, on social connections, on how to manage stress, and how to kick the habits of smoking or excessively consuming alcohol. Now, although all of the six lifestyle medicine pillars are important, we do not need to be perfect. We just need to start somewhere. And my goal is to help you find your why, why you want to make these changes, and help you find your where. So help you find where to start. Now, the goal is typically to choose the behavior that you want to prioritize, and then to make small incremental changes that add up over time and put yourself in a space where you can feel success, where you can go through small wins that build positive reinforcement and the confidence you need to know how to manage and navigate those barriers and curveballs that life tends to throw at us. So thank you for being here. Thanks for listening. We'll see you at the next episode where we start officially crushing 2026.

SPEAKER_00:

Cool.com to find free downloadable resources. And remember that you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Dr.JulesCormier, and on YouTube at Plantbased Dr. Jules.

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Dr. Jules Cormier

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