5 Vegan Principles That Will Keep You Feeling Amazing, Whether You're In Your 40s Or 80s

Tracye McQuirter, a vegan lifestyle expert, is in her 50s—and in her new book, Ageless Vegan, she teams up with her 80-year-old mother, Mary, to share the secrets to feeling and looking amazing, no matter what year you were born. Tracye, the author of the ground-breaking By Any Greens Necessary—the first vegan guide for African-American women—has been a vegan for over 30 years, and it’s completely transformed her health and life.  In this excerpt, she shares the five food rules she follows to feel great every day.

We make sure to eat these central types of whole plant-based foods every day: fruits; vegetables; whole grains; and beans, nuts, and seeds. Creating our meals from these foods gives us unlimited ways to enjoy healthy, great-tasting dishes that meet all of our nutritional needs.

We create well-balanced meals. Whether in a breakfast smoothie, a lunch salad, or a dinner stir-fry, we make sure to eat a main source of protein (from beans or nuts), healthy fats (from nuts), and complex carbohydrates (from whole grains, vegetables, and fruits).

We make sure our meals reflect the rainbow of colors in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, and nuts. The colors or pigments in plant-based foods come from phytochemicals. These phytochemicals are protective compounds that provide numerous health benefits1, from helping to prevent and reverse our major chronic diseases, including heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes, boosting our immune system, and aiding in digestion. So the health is in the hue—and the darker and brighter the color, the greater the health benefits.

We eat dark leafy greens two to three times a day, since they provide the most nutrition of all foods2. My mother and I each eat about one standard bunch of greens or 12 to 15 leaves per day. I believe that this is one of the keys to our health and longevity, in addition to eating whole foods.

Try to eat at least 4 cups of dark leafy greens every day—it’s not as hard as you might think. Here’s what that might look like:

MORNING DRINK: Add 1 to 2 cups of fresh or frozen spinach or kale to a fruit smoothie.

LUNCH: Have 2 cups of kale, arugula, dandelion greens, or other combination of dark leafy greens be the foundation of your salad.

We eat four to five small meals throughout the day, rather than three large meals. We've found that this helps us maintain our energy levels.

Here's what our day on a plate usually looks like:

MORNING: Green smoothie

MID-MORNING: Oatmeal with nuts and fruit

LUNCH: Soup and salad

MID-AFTERNOON: Hummus and avocado with whole-grain crackers

DINNER: Vegetable wrap or veggie pizza.