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The Plant Centered and Thriving Podcast
Welcome! If you're looking for plant-based inspiration, you've come to the right place! This podcast is here so you don’t have to feel alone on your plant-based journey. You'll hear from individuals who have taken the leap to go plant-based, why they did it, the struggles they faced, their words of wisdom for you, and how they're thriving now.
The Plant Centered and Thriving Podcast
What is the secret to a plant-based diet? Our guest says structure, conviction, and prioritizing your health
"I think if we were more in tune with what our bodies need it would make sticking to this way of eating much easier."
Prepare for an eye-opening conversation with , LaShonda, as she shares her overnight transition to a plant-based vegan lifestyle. Shocked into action by documentaries highlighting the gruesome reality of our food systems, she embraced a new journey into health and nutrition in 2006. Join us as we navigate the choppy waters of change, explore the tools and strategies that helped LaShonda maintain her new lifestyle, and gather tips on how to uphold your vegan convictions in today's world. With the introduction of her business, Primarily Plant-Based Vegan, LaShonda steps up as a beacon of support for those seeking a healthier, more ethical path.
Resources from this Episode:
PPB Community
FREE 5 day PPB Vegan Challenge
The Raw Vegan RAWvolution
Planner (Amazon)
*Use this special coupon code and link for a free preview of the planner: ASHLEY10
If you want to connect with LaShonda, visit the following:
Instagram: @primarilyplantbasedvegan
YouTube: @primarilyplant-basedvegan
Website: www.primarilyplantbasedvegan.com
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WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!
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Plant Centered Nutrition Essential Resources:
Welcome to the Plant-Centered and Thriving Podcast. I'm your host, ashley Kitchens. I'm a plant-based registered dietitian and virtual nutrition mentor. I was raised on an Angus Cattle Farm, grew up with a lot of GI issues and used the power of plant-based eating to promote healing. Here you'll find inspiration, ideas and encouragement for your own plant-based journey. I'm so thrilled you're here today. Let's get started.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the show Plant-Centered Listener. My name is Ashley. I get to be your host today, and today I have with me a guest and a friend from Durham, north Carolina. She no longer lives here, but that's okay. But before we get into our interview together, I want to shout out a few countries and a few cities. So if I end up calling out your country or city, I would love for you to send me a DM and just say hi. So if you're living in France, finland or New Zealand, thank you so much for being here with us today.
Speaker 2:If you're in Birmingham, alabama, dallas, texas we talk a lot about Atlanta today, so I have to shout out my people from Atlanta, georgia. Thank you so much for being here today. I have a wonderful guest with me. We talk, actually, about how we met, which was several years ago when they were doing a vegan challenge here in Durham, but I won't give too much away. So today I have with me Lashanda, who is currently living in Florida.
Speaker 2:She is an attorney, wellness coach, business owner and lover of all things health and nutrition. She began her journey before, I would imagine, most of you began your vegan journey, so she shares what that day was, or what that year was, so I'll let you figure that out if you were before or after her. Let's just say there were not a lot of options back when she started, and then in 2013, as an outlet for grief after losing her grandmother, she created a Facebook group and started sharing some of her own journey. Health, nutrition, holistic living and community has been a huge part of her life for the last I won't say how many years, but for a good chunk of time, and it just brings she says it just brings me so much joy to help others with their journey through education, cooking and exercises. She's hosted challenges, grocery store tours, meal prepping sessions over the years, but she looks at it more as a hobby until her business coach asked her why she wasn't coaching people or doing vegan cooking classes or transitioning her own business, and so she took her advice and she launched primarily plant based vegan in 2019. Today she's here to share her story, her lapses, her hacks, her tricks, her recipes. We talk about going out to eat and how to navigate that whole situation.
Speaker 2:It was just a great conversation of LaShonda's journey and the tools that she has used over the years the many years to help her get to where she is today, which is more in a rhythm with her plant based vegan journey. So please join me in welcoming LaShonda to the show as we jump right in. I met you briefly, yes, at this event, and I obviously have been connected with you like via Facebook and social media and stuff. But I'm actually curious to hear your like plant based vegan story because I mean, we don't only talk about that when we're in a meeting. So, but like, take me back to kind of like what life was like pre going vegan, plant based and yeah, take it away, I'm excited well, I officially became vegan, plant based, in 2006.
Speaker 3:So it was a long time ago, but yes, it's been. It's been a journey, though. So growing up we really didn't eat very healthy at home. I was raised outside of the country, I was raised in west western Germany, and so you know we really didn't have access to fast food. So growing up it was we are member the first pizza hut opening up and I think we had a pizza and McDonald's and we had a KFC and that was it. So fast food, junk food, all of that, you know, unhealthy foods we really didn't have access to. So that was a really great foundation for you know, young child.
Speaker 3:So by the time I got to the time I was a teen, I kind of continued that I was never a heavy meat eater. So I remember it was around around 2000 I started getting a little sick and I couldn't figure out why. I was in law school. I just figured oh, stress. Law school can be very stressful and I believe a lot of it was stressed, but it was. It always seemed like there was a little bit more and by the time I got to about 2006, I was noticing that my energy levels were down. So. So I went to the doctor. Of course, all the tests are clean, there's nothing wrong with you.
Speaker 3:And then one day I remember it was right after fourth of July I was visiting my parents and I was the only one at home didn't feel like cooking and decided to go out and like grab you know some chicken or something. Right, I remember it was chicken wings. I never ate chicken wings, but for some reason I grabbed them. I feel like two or three days, stage three, that's all I was eating. And I remember being home, bored out of my mind, and I turned on the TV and nothing was on TV but PBS. So turned on PBS and it must have been like the marathon day of food documentaries and it was one after the next, after the next, and then the one that got me was the. There was a documentary about parasites in chicken and, oh my, at that moment I went cold turkey. I decided overnight I was like, really I there was like two different documentaries on parasites it was. It was very detailed, yeah, and I just couldn't get it out of my mind.
Speaker 3:So I went cold turkey, but I believe I was prepared for it, right, because I was online back then. You didn't have a lot you know to look at other than blogs. And so I was following this young lady, england, and she was doing she was overweight, she was doing juice cleansing. So all I knew was either eat the chicken or juice cleanse. And so I figured, yep, chicken, give up the meat and I'm just going to do juicing, right? And then I started that for a little while and then I'm still following her and looking for more information, but still not finding.
Speaker 3:And as I continued to research, I found some people who were raw vegans. So I started raw vegan, so I started this. So I started this journey like on the extreme, and you didn't have the resources. You didn't have the Facebook, you know. You didn't have any of these social media pages. You hardly had any bloggers who are out there. You couldn't. You weren't running into anyone who was vegan, or hardly. You know. There were some vegetarians, but that was completely different, and so I was just trying to like, not stumble, so as long as it was a vegetable or fruit, I knew I was in the right, you know. And so I did that for about six months and it just took a toll on me.
Speaker 3:It's a big full on me, health wise that I was. Finally. I remember one day I woke up. I was trying to get out of bed and I remember my eyes were open but my body couldn't move. And so I'm sitting there like trying to get my body to move and I couldn't and it took a while and when I was fit, finally able to get up, I was slow, was a little tragic, and a friend told me go to one of these natural like grocery stores. There's usually people there. They can help you figure out, like what you need. And one of the best things happened to me when I walked in that store I let this lady know what I was doing. She understood it. She was familiar with veganism. She shared a little bit with me. She was like you don't have to be raw. And then she's eating B12, which literally saved my life. That I would take. I've been taking B12 every single morning since 2006 because of this lady.
Speaker 2:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 3:And it allowed me to wake up in the morning. For me it was a miracle drug because I figured what was happening is because I was doing raw and juicing, I was missing the B12. And it dropped from me. Yeah Right and so yeah. So that's kind of how I started my journey. It really truly was a. I tell people all the time I went vegan for health, but the truth is I started veganism because of a chicken, right?
Speaker 1:So it was really a little bit of a home Yep Chicken and parasites.
Speaker 2:Wow, that lady probably has no idea either the impact that she had on you. I mean, oh my goodness.
Speaker 3:And what it did. It allowed me to understand that look, even though I couldn't find the resources online, I could look into the community for those resources, and that opened up the door for me.
Speaker 3:So at the time I was living in Atlanta, which there's a lot of vegan restaurants there were a lot of vegan restaurants back then, some that were what did they call like idol vegans. They were kind of like a Rastafarian type of vegan, and so I was able to taste some really great vegan creations early in the process, even though the stuff in the stores was horrible. All the processed foods were terrible, all the protein powders had horrible aftertaste. Yeah, processed vegan food was not great.
Speaker 2:No, no, not back in 2006, that's for sure. I mean OK, and I think Facebook I don't know if it had been invented yet, or it was like just because You're just starting to come around.
Speaker 2:Yeah, ok. So technology and having resources or information at your fingertips back then was so much more challenging to find, whether it was, like you said, like through a blog or through a forum where you're reading post after post. I mean, sometimes you had to go to your library or your encyclopedia to find something. Yes, I remember that. This is why we talk about supplementing with vitamin B12 all the time, because when you're eating a plant-forward diet, our modern farming practices and just the way we sanitize our produce nowadays, vitamin B12 isn't as of a reliable source from the foods that we eat compared to many, many years ago, and so I'm so glad that you found that. Lashonda. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's amazing because the days that I did not take it Now, during that time I was studying for the bar exam, so I didn't have a choice but to be able to be awake and alert, like it was really a challenging time. But the liquid B12 every morning it was like I guess I don't drink coffee, so I guess I look at it kind of like it was kind of like my coffee in the morning, but it sustained me throughout the day and if I didn't take it then I went right back to that lethargic state and so, yeah, I make sure.
Speaker 3:I have bottles with me when I travel, Like I have it all the time and I look back at it now and I'm like, wow, I had a lot of challenges in the beginning that should have deterred me. I would say for the first four years I was very, very diligent with being 100% compliant, like extremely diligent. I looked at one of your other podcasts. You had a young lady on who was talking about PCOS. So I also had PCOS and part of the reason why I stuck to the diet is because of the PCOS, Because one doctor mentioned at some point in time that I could get to the point where I'm pre-diabetic or diabetic and I was like that's unacceptable. So I knew I could see the end and I was like, nope, I'm going to have to stick this thing out because I know that this helps me. All the symptoms, all the issues that come along with that I had all of them and the majority of them were just they had died down because of the diet, Exercise and all that helped me keep my stress levels down.
Speaker 3:But the diet has had the biggest effect overall, especially hormonally.
Speaker 2:So how have you found your rhythm? Because we do talk about this a lot and I was just sharing with someone recently about how it took me about three years to fully figure out what it was like to be plant-based, to be vegan, and for my body to adapt, and also that connection with your body, because I feel like you're kind of learning along with your body, as it's adapting on what works best for you. So how did you finally find that rhythm for yourself after trying several different things?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so just full disclosure. I was like the first four years I was strict, 100% compliant with all of the stuff that was trying, but then around that fourth year, I started being a little more social again and so I believe this. So the way in which I approach my food has always been intentional. I don't believe in just randomly eating the wrong foods. So I've always put it in my mind that if I'm going to eat something that's not compliant to the current eating regimen that I'm following, or that's not compliant to being vegan, that I have to intentionally eat it and I need to make sure that I know what's in that dish. And so anytime I didn't eat, I ate something that wasn't vegan, either I made sure that I watched it being made or I ensured that I knew all the ingredients in it. So it's still a healthy meal, but it wasn't, you know. So it was always planned. If that makes sense, it was always a planned thing.
Speaker 3:So for me, you know, being social started bringing that up because at the time I was in an area where there really wasn't any vegan food, and so when people wanted to go out for dinner I didn't know better at the time I would look at the menu and like, okay, what's the cleanest thing I can eat. One thing I was definitely not eating was chicken. Right, I would go to fish. I would never be for pork eater either, so I would go to fish and that's what I would eat, and I always I never felt great afterwards. You know, I did the social thing, but just it never really satisfied me the way my other foods did. And I'll also find out over time that some of the best vegan food I've ever had was things that were from a restaurant that wasn't a vegan restaurant and it was not on the menu.
Speaker 1:And so like today.
Speaker 3:I go into a restaurant, I look at the menu before I go. I look at all the dishes. I read every single dish and I pick out the ingredients that I like in those dishes and then soon as I walk in, or sometimes I'll call before and I'll ask them, you know, will the chef make me a custom dish if I ask them and majority? I've only had them say no once and they will do it. I remember a few years ago I was doing these. I used to run a lot and I put together this Ragnar race team, which is a 200 day relay race with 12 different people, over 24, over two. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So over two days, 200 miles with 12 different people, and we run constantly for two days right, and I knew we were running in the mountains of West Virginia into the rural part of Virginia up through DC, and where we would stop there was nothing but mom and pop, little restaurants where there's nothing but bacon, you know, fried foods, the only vegetable is the lettuce on the cheeseburger, like nothing. And so I knew, when I went into those restaurants, I would just ask them, you know, make me take every vegetable you have. You know, saute it, no oil, no butter, no lard, right, and they would bring it to me and it was amazing.
Speaker 2:That is so helpful. So, for you listening, I hope you're taking notes because I think, especially when you're a new plant-based eater, new vegan, however you want to label yourself, it is so important, like Lashanda saying to one, if you're, because you still want to socialize and I think that can be the most challenging piece is you still want to go out with your friends. You don't want to be, you know, the weird person that's holding people back. Or, like you know, we have to bring the vegan with us, or whatever. It's so important to one. Speak up for yourself.
Speaker 2:So, like Lashanda was saying, like, call ahead, ask the restaurant to see if they will accommodate you, or look at the menu in advance and just see if you can piece something together. Because you are so right, some of the best meals I have had to are these restaurants that are not vegan, but they're willing to go above and beyond to create a vegan dish for someone dining at their restaurant. So it is so worth asking. I agree with you 100%. And for you listening, I just want to empower you to do exactly what Lashanda was saying Do you think going plant-based has allowed you to connect with your body more especially with the PCOS component?
Speaker 3:It does two things for me it's helped me connect with my body, it's helped me be more aware of my health, especially as I'm getting older, and it's also given me an opportunity to it's kind of like my meditation right. It's an opportunity for me to just, you know, calm myself, you know, clear my mind and be really creative in a way that I don't get to during the rest of the day. I'm an attorney full time and so you know that creativity doesn't really get an opportunity to shine. So when I'm making my meals, that's the time where I'm like okay, there is that side of me that I can express and I can see the result of it, which is immediate, which I'm not used to in my day to day job. It's, it's such a nice contrast to what I'm used to.
Speaker 3:So it's, you know, it definitely has given me the opportunity to really connect better with my body, with my mind and just my just intentions itself. You know, every time I make a meal, I think about okay, what is it that I'm making? You know how is this going to help me? You know how is this going to. You know, work against me and I make the conscious decision if I'm going to. You know, eat it or not, you know, and it's not always, you know, a healthy meal. But I had those conversations with myself beforehand, so that I'm just not mindlessly just eating things.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, okay, you mentioned creativity, so I want to make sure that we touch on it, because you are a creator of many things and, for those of you who are watching, I have a couple of LaShonda's documents that she has created. So I'm very curious for you to like just share how you went from I don't say just being an attorney, but like also allowing yourself to be creative outside of being an attorney.
Speaker 3:I've been looking for an outlet and outside of my work right and you know there's always times, even though you're good at what you do, you know you kind of need a break. You know you need to find something different to you know, put your energy towards. And so for a long time that for me it was cycling, it was running, it was training for triathlons and I that was kind of taken away from me a few years ago because I got COVID and had some long haul issues with it and I needed to find a different way to, you know, express this creativity. And part of that for me has been dabbling in publications. I feel like anytime there's something that comes, I tell people all the time I think I was a twin, because I have so many ideas that come to my mind I just don't have the time to do them. But I just I was. I'm always writing down these ideas of things and I'm like, okay, you know what this is a good time really like, just put them into, you know, put them out there and see what happens, right.
Speaker 3:And so I started off with creating these low what do they call low budget, low content books, like notebooks and like small, smaller planners, just to kind of test it out. But what I enjoyed was like creating the covers and you know understanding the process to go from the idea, the conception, to you know creating it, you know online and then actually you know finding a place to be able to upload it to and have it printed or distributed, and creating like the marketing around. That it's even though I wasn't even selling any of these. I was just doing it because I just like the process of it and it has. It has grown, and most people don't even I don't even share that. I'm doing this like I'll just just put it out. A lot of them are on Amazon and I just like, okay, let me just I'll throw it out there. Maybe one day someone will Google something and they'll see it, and then it's exactly what they need and yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:Well, even like this, like this primarily plant based vegan planner, which I see the TM the trademark right there, Is that something that you did yourself or did you hire that out?
Speaker 3:Yes, so that's that's me, so I started.
Speaker 2:Okay, I wondered.
Speaker 3:So about a year ago I have a business coach and she was talking to me and we were talking about some other things and she was like why aren't you doing something around the interplant based eating? And I was like I don't know, it's just what I do. Like she was like, but you know this so well, you should be coaching or you know doing something, you know helping other people. You know, through this, transitioning through this process, and I didn't think of anything of it and you know I was like, okay, maybe she's right, let me try. And I just I put together this planner.
Speaker 3:About seven or eight years ago I decided to create a Facebook page, not big on Facebook, but my grandmother had just passed away and I kind of needed an outlet. I needed a positive outlet to be able to kind of get through that grief. And so I created a page. I remember it was. What was it called? Miss Green makes you lean, I think that's what it was called.
Speaker 3:And I would just pose like this you know some of my things I cook that day, or if I found a new book that I was. You know, that was interesting and I would have co workers and friends and people who'd find the page ask me okay, well, when are you going to? You know, do a challenge? And so I did a lot of the five day challenges and many challenges for people and I enjoyed it. You know, I never really thought much of it and when my coach brought it up I was like, oh, by the way, I have this little thing and you know. And so the planner kind of came out of that.
Speaker 3:And you know what I had been doing in the past and just, you know some of the conversations I've had with people who I've helped. You know we've gone to the grocery store together and I've shown them you know how to, you know, pick plant based meals and I've had them at my home and we've done meal prepping together and cooking together and all of that. And they enjoyed that, they enjoyed the process, but they never stuck to it. And so this plan to plan together was kind of my way of kind of bridging the gap and thinking how can I create something to help people become, I mean, stay accountable to themselves for what they want? Because majority of the people that I was talking to they don't want to become vegan because of the animals or it wasn't an ethical reason they truly need. They were becoming vegan for health. They needed to lose a lot of weight.
Speaker 3:They were diabetic or they had these, these issues that they knew, that I knew plant based eating and changing their food habits would actually help them and they wanted to do it, but they just couldn't stick to it. Like the willpower or whatever it is in you, it just wasn't there. And so this is how the planner came about and you know my, you know involving into this I don't like calling it coaching, but evolving into kind of mentoring people into transitioning and then sticking with it and letting them know.
Speaker 3:I think the biggest thing has been that once people like they think of it as a diet, and once they're not 100 percent compliant, they're like, ok, you know, forget it, I'm not doing anything anymore, like I'm just going to go back to my old way and I try to, you know, show them that. No, you, most people are eating one vegan meal a day, even if it's a snack, because they're eating an apple Like this was kind of my way of kind of going into the direction of you know, using my experience, not realizing it had been like 17 years now. Yeah, help them, you know. Help them do something for themselves that their future self is going to be thankful for.
Speaker 2:You know it's funny. You mentioned the like staying vegan piece because we had John Lewis, badass vegan, on end of February and he was talking about that same thing, about how you go and plant based for a week or two Isn't that bad. But staying plant based can actually be really challenging because you're thrown into the real world. Co-workers are inviting you out for dinner, you're going to these restaurants that aren't vegan friendly or going home to the way that you know you quote used to eat, and that can be really, really tough. So I'm glad to hear you say that and I'm curious, kind of for personal reason. So this book is incredible, and did you literally just start working on this like a year ago?
Speaker 3:I did that over a weekend. Like some people play video games, I get an idea and I don't stop until it's done. I'm very into being proactive in my planning and so if I'm able to do that you know and see what I'm doing to myself I'm able to stick with it a little bit easier because there's some structure around what I'm doing. I don't feel like it's restrictive, I just feel like there's structure and it gives me some peace of mind and less anxiety knowing that there's a plan already in place for me and I don't have to think about it. I feel like people should know why they want to. You know, have to eat a plant-based diet, right, not because it's a fad, not because some celebrity is, you know, on the train with it. Now, you know, I know plenty of people who are, you know, junk food vegans, right, and there there was a point in my journey where I was less healthy on a vegan diet than I was prior to my vegan diet, and so you know, I think that having the conversation with yourself, sitting down and just really looking at why are you doing this, why do you want to do this I look at it this way Start treating yourself as if you were your own child, right? If you were your own child and your child, let's say, had an allergy to gluten or had an allergy to, you know, to dairy, you wouldn't be embarrassed to ask for what that child needs nutritionally. So let's not do that for ourselves. Let's treat ourselves a little bit better. I think if we were more in tune with you, know what our body needs and treat ourselves a little bit, you know more gently, then you know, I think that it would make, you know, sticking to this way of eating much easier for people and they would be able to see the long-term benefits. I think a lot of people quit before they see those benefits and the truth of the matter is it doesn't take long.
Speaker 3:I've been a part of I'm not sure if you're familiar with what is it the plant? Was it plant pure nation? They have telemedicine division. So I was fortunate to be a part of plant pure nation when they were in Durham, right when they did Nice. I swear there's so much stuff that was in Durham now that I'm gone. Let's see it. Yes, they were very active there, right. And then, shortly thereafter, they created this plant-based telemedicine where you could go to them and pick out a doctor, and I ended up getting Dr Clapper as my doctor of all people.
Speaker 2:Wow, yes.
Speaker 3:And it worked out that, so our first appointment was a week after I got COVID, so it was a telemedicine appointment.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:It was a week after I got COVID I'm meeting him for the first time and Ned didn't even realize it was him. I just figured it was the same name but it couldn't be him, right, and it was him, of course not. And I'm just like, oh, I've seen you on all the documentaries, right, right. And as soon as I started to speak he was like wait a minute, we are here to talk about something else. But I hear something in your voice and he was able to pick up because of his years, of his training, his specialty. He was able to pick up that I was having issues with my breathing. He gave me some really great tools and helping me with that and did some blood work and things of that nature for me and he helped me a whole lot the first few months that I had COVID.
Speaker 3:I bring this up because the plant-based nation they have an immersion program. It's a 10-day program. You take your blood work at the beginning of day one. You eat a plant-based diet for 10 days and then day 10, you go and take your blood work again and that way you can show, you can see physical evidence of the before and after and I've done that a few times and even being plant-based at the time, there was huge, I mean, my number still improved, and that was in 10 days, right I always? I look at it like if people could stick to this for 10 days, if they could stick to it for five, they could see the difference. If you could see the difference in your numbers, I mean it will change your life.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's really hard to refute how powerful food can be on your body when you watch from food to freedom, where people are in this immersion for 10 days, they get their labs done before and they get their labs done after and you're like holy smokes. The pressure is going down. People are coming off of insulin after being on it for maybe a decade and they're cholesterol. It's just like you're, just like you get so fired up because you're like you just want everyone to know that this can have a profound impact on your life, on your health. So, lashonda, where, if people want to connect with you, where is the best place for them to do that?
Speaker 3:The best place right now is through the primarily plant-based vegan and it's just, you know, at all social medias, at primarily plant-based vegan, and everything should be there. Nice.
Speaker 2:And we'll include those links in the show notes and then I'm going to do my best to include some of these links as well Amazon links so that people can, if they want to get your planner or downloadables, they can do that. So thank you so much for coming on and just sharing your journey. Lashonda, I appreciate you and I wish you were still in Durham, but I'm okay with you being in Florida.
Speaker 3:So you can come on down here and bring some food for me. I exactly.
Speaker 2:I'll hit up the farmer's market on my way down, all right, well, thank you so much for listening. It would mean so much to us if you would leave a five-star review, because that helps us get in front of other people to help spread the plant-based message. Again, lashonda, thank you so much for being here and for you. Thank you so much for listening. We appreciate you.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening to the Plant-Centered and Thriving podcast today. If you found this episode inspiring, please share it with a friend or post it on social media and tag me so I can personally say thank you. Until next time, keep thriving.
