When I started yoga as a teenager, it was not offered at every health club and YWCA like it is now. In fact, it seemed very foreign. Suspect. People confused it with yogurt and both were just weird. Things have changed, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a health-conscious person...

I am an obesity survivor. I spent the first 30 years of my life either bingeing or dieting; each of those states was sufficiently unpleasant that I'd revert to the other out of desperation. I was not uneducated about food and nutrition. I had, after all, been trying to "fix"...

As a kid, Christmas Day was a letdown. When the packages were opened and the dinner eaten, there was an awful, barren sense that the best time to be alive wouldn't be back for nearly a year. It's not like that now. For me, Christmas is a season that starts...

Last Saturday night my husband put on a tie. This doesn't happen nearly as often as I'd like -- I've long thought someone should publish a Cosmo-style magazine for women called Men in Suits -- but I can count on it once a year for the Farm Sanctuary Gala. Even...

I had a birthday recently. I took the day off and worked out in the morning, and a friend treated me to lunch at Pure Food and Wine, a luscious raw-food restaurant here in NYC. I got a manicure and pedicure in the afternoon and dined that evening with my...

Four times a year, I'm on the receiving end of a wonderful gift: three or four days of heaven at the New Age Health Spa in the Catskill Mountains of Upstate New York. I'm there right now, in fact, sitting before a crackling fire with a friendly beagle lounging beside...

We've come a long way towards overcoming the grass-and-granola image long held about a plant-based diet, and we're now making inroads into that citadel of self-interest: the world of fashion. Thank goodness! I adore clothes. I was brought up this way. My grandmother told me, "The Bible says your body...

In 2009, the abortion rate in New York City was 41 percent of all pregnancies -- twice the national average. That's a lot of abortions. So many, in fact, that New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan has joined with other religious leaders in an effort to decrease the number. The fact...

This has been a banner week for plant-eaters. Dr. Gupta of CNN sang the praises of a vegetarian or near-vegetarian diet for the prevention of coronary disease. A report came out on a Mesa, Arizona, man, Bernado LaPallo, who is a raw-fooder celebrating his 109th birthday (he's writing his second...

I didn't know it was possible to feel this good.

I woke up not long ago thinking, "This is the craziest thing: I'm well past 50 and I feel sensational." I knew it was what the eccentric health advocate, Arnold Ehret, 100 years ago called "Paradise Health." I had...

I suppose I am one: an activist -- for animals and a vegan lifestyle. I hear that word, however, and look around to see if someone is indeed referring to me. I don't have the activist temperament. I like listening to divergent points of view and hearing people out. I...

The ally relationship can be an odd one. I remember my shock in third grade, learning that the Soviets had been our ally in World War II. "How could this be?" I wondered. "Our arch-enemies, the reason we have to crawl under our desks and prepare for The Bomb, were...

I am an urban vegan. I love the glossy pages of Vogue, even though I won't purchase the leather shoes and bags I see there, and being reminded that the fur trade even exists breaks my heart. It simply feels right to me to blend the glittery delights of New...