I write books, I write a blog on the Huffington Post, I answer emails and try to get the word out. So let’s see, what’s come up first is my Twitter account. So I’m going to tell everybody what’s happening right here: “I’m with folks from Supreme Master TV, filming, and having fun.” There we go. We have just tweeted. So that’s my life. The writing life.

Halo, peaceful viewers, and welcome to Vegetarian Elite here on Supreme Master Television. Today we travel to New York City, USA to visit a well-known American bestselling author, motivational speaker, radio host, life coach, and holistic health counselor – Victoria Moran. Passionate about life and helping others, including animals, Victoria has been writing for publications on topics such as health and spirituality since she was a teenager. Her lifestyle as a high-raw vegan reflects her compassion for animals, as well as her commitment to help people adopt a healthy and deliciously fun life habit. As Victoria so eloquently puts it:

“I live my life and do my best to be an example of what seems right to me. If people want what I have, they’ll ask what I do.”

Conveniently, Victoria also offers coaching to people worldwide by phone and on Skype. Victoria’s public appearances include being a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show – twice!, as well as on Good Morning America Now, The Today Show, and NPR’s All Things Considered. Aside from authoring 10 books (one of which has been translated to 29 languages!), she has also written for Yoga Journal, Body & Soul, Woman’s Day, Mothering, Natural Health, and Ladies’ Home Journal. She has been noted in acclaimed publications, from the Washington Post to Glamour magazine, and has had her own show on Martha Steward Living satellite radio. Let us now meet the wonderfully inspiring Victoria.

I’m Victoria Moran, I’m the author of “Creating a Charmed Life” – that’s my best known book - and some other books like “Fit from Within” and “Younger by the Day” and “The Love-Powered Diet.” And my purpose in life is I think very much in common with yours, to help make this world healthier and more humane.

Absolutely wonderful. Will you tell our viewers how you got started writing books and how you became a motivational speaker?

Sure. I’ve written my whole life. I think sometimes we really know what’s in us at a very early age, and words have always been my medium. So I started writing for publication when I was 14. I wrote for teen magazines because I wanted to meet the rock groups that were popular at that time, and I did. I succeeded pretty well – my biggest coup was meeting the Beatles!

Yes, so that was quite a deal. But as I changed my diet in my late teens, early 20s, the writing shifted as well, and I started writing for “Vegetarian Times” and an animal’s rights magazine called, “The Animals Agenda.”

Victoria’s interest in a healthy lifestyle began when she was a teenager.

I had a struggle with weight earlier in my life, in fact a 30-year struggle, but that’s overcome for over 20 years now.

Congratulations!

Thank you.

First, for me, I had to heal from the inside out. I know that you do meditation; this is so positive and helpful. When I was struggling with weight, I was maybe 18 years old. I wandered into a Christian Science reading room and the man there suggested that maybe I should learn how to meditate, and I walked out in a huff thinking, “He doesn’t know anything that doesn’t burn any calories!” And that just shows how far off base I was because I didn’t get it that I had been using food to fill an empty hole on the inside, and I needed to fill that hole with spiritual food. Once that was taken care of, I was given the gift of choice about what I would eat.

For 30 years, Victoria searched for a perfect lifestyle that she could be conscientiously happy with.

As I told you, I struggled with food for a really long time with overeating. And the way that that changed for me was taking care of the inside first. I’d been on all kinds of diets; you can spend your life going on diets. There are plenty of them out there, there’s all kinds of things you can spend your money on, all kinds of tips, if you stay up late enough at night, watch infomercials. It could just take up your life to try these various diet aids and the machines and the equipment.

But the reality is, when you heal from the inside out, when you take care of the inner longing, the inner yearning… See, this empty hole is not abnormal, and it’s not something that only people who have overeating problems have, we all come with an empty hole inside. That’s part of standard operating equipment for human beings. And that empty hole is there so that we’ll search for meaning, but we don’t know that’s what we’re supposed to do with it, so we try to fill it with all kinds of other things. Some people use alcohol, some people use drugs, some people use work.

Makes a lot sense to use food, because if the empty hole feels like it’s right about at stomach level. And that’s what I did for a lot of years, and a lot of people do that. But once you start to see that that’s what Pascal called the God-shaped hole in every man that only God can fill. The hole is there and it’s supposed to be fed with spiritual food. Once you get that piece, then you appreciate yourself more.

Life seems sweeter. When life gets richer, your food doesn’t have to be so rich, and then you can start really treating yourself to the best that life has to offer in terms of your food choices, your people choices, your relationship choices, your television and movie choices – everything that you do, you get the best because you deserve the best.

We’ll be back in just a moment to continue our chat with the lovely Ms. Victoria Moran. Learn how God, a martyr fish, and the ladies room became one of the first steps in Victoria’s charmed veg life.

Welcome back to Vegetarian Elite on Supreme Master Television and our feature on Ms. Victoria Moran, bestselling author of the “Creating a Charmed Life.” Interestingly, Victoria did not choose to become a vegetarian for health reasons as we would have imagined. Instead, her decision was one that blossomed forth from within:

“I stopped eating meat when I was 18 years old because I didn’t want to kill animals. It didn’t seem like a big a deal at the time: when you’re 18, when you’re making life choices every day and this was just one more. But as I evolved from vegetarian to vegan, and I became somebody who chose not to eat or wear or use products derived from animals, it was obvious that this was a big deal, after all.”

The compassionate seeds of a meat-free lifestyle were sown for Victoria much earlier in life, when she was still in elementary school.

“When I was seven, I came home from school and proudly recited to my grandmother the four food groups, that was the gold standard of nutrition education at that time: the meat group, dairy group, vegetable and fruit group and bread and cereal group. Ever the contrarian, she retorted: ‘There are some people who never eat any meat. They’re called vegetarians. I could take you out to Unity Inn (that was a church-run semi-vegetarian restaurant in a suburb of Kansas City) and get you a hamburger made out of peanuts. You’d think you were eating meat.’”

Two more incidences had occurred at different intervals in her young life before Victoria made the conscious decision to dispense with meat entirely. The first incident was when she was nine years old. Her family had taken her to a Boat, Sports & Travel Show in Kansas City. There, she “caught” her first fish and subsequently witnessed the brutal killing:

“…the booth worker grabbed the line and smashed the fish’s head on a metal table. I was totally unprepared for the torrent of blood that gushed from this now deceased being. The woman put it in a baggie and handed to me. I had killed. I hadn’t meant to, but I’d done it. I put the plastic-shrouded corpse in a ladies’ room trash bin and asked God to forgive me. I had to go direct; this wasn’t a sin I could take to confession.”

The second incidence occurred when she was in high school. Unable to bear the dissection of worms in her biology class, Victoria asked to be transferred to a lab-free human science class. When she explained to her teacher that she didn’t “want an animal to die for me to go to college,” his profound reply was, “But you eat meat, don’t you?” A question so simple that made her question her values:

“I’d been a fraud all these (15) years, claiming to care about animals while scarfing down fried chicken and pork chops and, of course, Kansas City steak every chance I got. But what could I do? I was a kid. My parents wouldn’t stand for it. What would I eat? I couldn’t even drive yet to get to the place with the peanut-burgers. ‘I eat it now,’ I told him, ‘but I won’t forever.’”

Through the discovery of yoga when she turned 18, Victoria was introduced to the concept of a compassionate lifestyle of non-killing.

It helped me connect my awkward physical self with the spiritual part of me where I’d always felt at home. And central to its moral code was ahimsa, non-killing, non-harming. I stopped eating land animals right away, and then sea animals, too. Now, I’m not proud that it took me more than a decade to go vegan (with no eggs and dairy), but that was the common route 30 years ago. People who were sensitive to these issues became vegetarians and we worked up to vegan over time.

Victoria struggled with the addiction to eggs and dairy products before she was able to transition to a pure plant-based diet.

I was already a vegetarian; I didn’t eat meat and I wanted to be vegan. I’d heard about vegans, it made sense to me, but I just couldn’t cut out that cheese. I couldn’t do without the eggs that were in all the baked goods because I needed those binge foods. I was really addicted to food and to being able to have any kind of food I wanted at any time. And once this inner healing had taken place I had the gift of choice and was able to become a vegan, which of course has made it much easier to keep the weight where I like it and have a really healthy life.

From being an ovo-lacto-vegetarian to a vegan, Victoria took a step further: she became a high-raw vegan.

I think a high-raw diet is very doable for a lot of people. Now there are raw fooders who eat 100% raw food. And what they say is that eating only raw fruits, vegetables, sprouts, juices, nuts and seeds, you feel remarkable in a way that those of us who don’t do that could never imagine. That may be true. I know that having a high-raw vegan diet – meaning that in the summer, I probably eat 85 to 90% of my food raw, uncooked, maybe heated up to 115 degrees or so; some of those vegan raw snacks that are made in a dehydrator.

I don’t own a dehydrator, I keep life simpler than that. But that’s pretty much what I eat. In the winter time up here in New York City, winters are long and cold, and then I’ll eat maybe 70, 75% of my food raw and have steamed vegetables, some cooked beans, some warm soups. And this is a lovely, lovely way to live because it gives you all the benefits of raw – meaning that you’re getting your food live with all the enzymes intact with that wonderful life energy that the yogis called “prana” that the martial arts people call “chi.”

Victoria Moran’s bestselling books, including Creating a Charmed Life, Fit from Within, Shelter for the Spirit, and The Love-Powered Diet can be found on BN.com and Amazon.com Say “Hi” and learn more about Victoria Moran at www.VictoriaMoran.com

Compassionate viewers, it is a pleasure to have you with us on Vegetarian Elite today. Join us again next week for part 2 of “Victoria Moran: A Charmed Life of Kindness.” Coming up next is Between Master and Disciples, here on Supreme Master Television. May all beings on Earth live together as one family, in laughter and joy.

I’m going to tell everybody what’s happening right here: “I’m with folks from Supreme Master TV, filming, and having fun.” There we go. We have just tweeted.

Halo, and welcome to Vegetarian Elite here on Supreme Master Television. Today we continue with part 2 of our show, “Victoria Moran: A Charmed Life of Kindness.” Currently residing in New York City, USA, Victoria Moran is an American bestselling author, motivational speaker, radio host, life coach, and holistic health counselor. Well-known for her work, Victoria had been invited as a guest twice on The Oprah Winfrey Show,

as well as on Good Morning America Now, The Today Show, and NPR’s All Things Considered. Moreover, aside from authoring 10 books (one of which has been translated to 29 languages!), she has also written for Yoga Journal, Body & Soul, Woman’s Day, Mothering, Natural Health, and Ladies’ Home Journal. She has been noted in acclaimed publications, from the Washington Post to Glamour magazine, and has had her own show on Martha Stewart Living satellite radio. From the last episode, we learned that there were incidences during her childhood and young adult life that had a profound impact on her, which eventually led to her adoption of a meat-free diet at the age of 18.

I became vegetarian and vegan when I was still living in Kansas City. When I became a vegetarian we started to have a little vegetarian group there, and we got about four people week after week. But when this idea touches you, it’s not going anywhere, and it doesn’t matter if you are the only one in your town or if you are a part of a huge powerful group, if it’s in your heart, it’s something that you’re going to do.

So what I see now when I go back to Kansas City is there are very active vegetarian groups there. There is a vegetarian restaurant, there is actually a vegan restaurant, and when I ate at the vegetarian restaurant last time I was there, they actually had on the menu a raw strawberry pie, and I thought: “You know what, I never would have thought back in the 1970s that I would be sitting here in my hometown having raw vegan strawberry pie.” The world is changing.

We also learned in the previous episode that as a result of her love for animals and aversion to seeing them harmed, Victoria made the transition from an ovo-lacto-vegetarian to a high-raw vegan.

And this is a lovely, lovely way to live because it gives you all the benefits of raw – meaning that you’re getting your food live with all the enzymes intact with that wonderful life energy that the yogis called “prana” that the martial arts people call “chi.” You get that in all of its great wonderful vitality, and yet you also get some grounding with some cooked foods, you can fill in some of the nutrient needs, certainly you can meet all your nutrient needs on a raw diet.

There is a wonderful book called “Becoming Raw” by two dieticians, Vesanto Melina and Brenda Davis – excellent for any questions people have about that. And yet, if you don’t want to just look at it real closely and have to pay close attention all the time, having some of those other cooked vegan foods every now and then helps. It’s also good socially.

Victoria’s healthy and compassionate lifestyle also has had a lasting effect on her daughter.

My daughter is a lifelong vegan, but she’s not raw; I didn’t raise her that way. I didn’t know about raw the way I do now when she was growing up. And she loves to go to a Chinese restaurant. I would never say, “Oh, no, I can’t do that, because they don’t have raw food there.” I’d say, “Okay, what time?” And I know that I’m going to get steamed vegetables, brown rice, maybe a little tofu, some black bean sauce on the side. And it’s fine, because I’ve got that 20% or so of leeway.

And that’s how you are able to incorporate an urban lifestyle with a high raw vegan lifestyle?

Yes, I am an urban vegan. In fact, I write a blog on Huffingtonpost.com, called “Veg in the City.” I love being vegan, and I love this city. And they work so well together. When I first moved here 10 years ago, I had a chiropractor’s appointment close to Grand Central Station, and it ran really long. So by the time I got out to get some lunch I was starting to feel faint, so I went into the food court at Grand Central and thought, “Well, this is going to be one of those times when I’m really going to have to go for some vegan junk food,” because I didn’t think I could get anything else.

And there happened to be a pizza place there that had something that they called “The Mother Earth Slice,” which was a vegan pizza with whole-wheat crust, and actually tears welled up in my eyes. I thought, “This city was saying to me: ‘We have accommodated everybody for so long, all kinds of religions, all kinds of lifestyles, all kinds of diets, I can take care of you.’” So it felt good. It was a good baptism into New York City.

Victoria passionately believes that an animal-free diet will have a constructive impact on the nation’s economy, as well as at the global level.

I remember when I was growing up, poor people ate vegetables and rich people ate meat, and now that’s turned around. And as we saw in the film, “Food Inc.” the family that didn’t have a lot of money, couldn’t buy their little girl a pear. That just broke my heart. That here was a child wanting something healthy, and the parents said, “No, that’s too expensive.” Something’s wrong here. Now we know that there are government subsidies to animal agriculture that are making some of these things different. We need to switch this around somehow, because eating in a way that is healthy is an economic necessity for our entire country and for the world. Because as long as anybody is not getting good food, all of us are paying for that.

We’ll be back in just a moment to continue our chat with the radiant Ms. Victoria Moran. Find out about her up and coming new book for year 2012. You are watching Vegetarian Elite on Supreme Master Television.

This is my laptop with a vintage vegetarian bumper sticker that says Love Animals, Don’t Eat Them. This is a gift from Mark Matthew Braunstein, author of the vegetarian classic Radical Vegetarianism. I highly recommend Mark Braunstein’s book.

Welcome back to Vegetarian Elite on Supreme Master Television and our feature on Ms. Victoria Moran, bestselling author of the “Creating a Charmed Life.”

There’s more information out there about being vegetarian and vegan than there’s ever been. Now, obviously there has been information around for a long time. As early as 1960 there was an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association that stated that a pure vegetarian diet could eliminate 90% of coronary disease and 98% of coronary occlusions.

Now 1960, that was 50 years ago, that we knew these things! But now it’s coming out in profusion. The truth is: eating a vegan diet is absolutely wonderful. It’s creative. It’s colorful. It’s healthy. There’s just nothing wrong with it. Once you get passed the fear factor of, “My mother didn’t feed me that.” And so you just have to grow a little bit on the brain level first and then your taste buds and your digestion will catch up real fast.

In her bestselling beloved book “Creating a Charmed Life,” Victoria “unveils practical, spiritual secrets for expanding your capacity to love, know, and experience a fuller, richer life. Her insight, humor, and unassailable wisdom shine through each page to illuminate the magic in all our lives.” For Victoria, serendipity, joy, and prosperity aren’t just things that happen by luck – you can create your own charmed life! Meditation and a compassionate diet have a lot to do with it.

“Creating a Charmed Life” is my little sweetheart. It’s done very well, 29 languages around the world. I’m very grateful that that book chose to come through me. What I would tell your viewers, or my own friends or my own daughter, is pick one thing: what is speaking to you right now? Maybe it’s the diet change. And that doesn’t seem like a life changing kind of decision to make, but it really is. If that has you interested, read some books about going vegetarian or going vegan, take the cooking classes that are offered here on Supreme Master TV.

Learn how to work with some of this food. There’s a lovely spiritual saying that says, if these ideas, these spiritually uplifting ideas touch you anywhere, they touch you everywhere. So maybe it’s taking the food route that’s going to do it for you. Maybe it’s meditation. Maybe it’s just committing that every morning, even for 10 minutes, before you start your day, before you jump into the world, you’re just going to take a little time and be still.

And sometimes that’s so scary to people, because we’re not still in our culture. You go in any restaurant, any drugstore, there’s music playing, there’s a television going – we’re so stimulated all the time. But if you can step back from that stimulation and just go inside and start to see the depth that you carry with you, the magnificence that you are. It’s a tiny thing to start with, but it can change your whole life.

During our interview, Victoria gave us never before revealed insights on her new and upcoming book.

You have an exclusive here! (Wonderful.) You are the first people to know about this. It’s in the very, very early stages, so I imagine this book won’t be out until probably January 2012, I would say. But my working title is, “The Good Karma Diet.” (I love that title.) Thank you. I feel that it’s blessed. I really feel that it’s a gift from God.

And the idea is, of course, that when we live and eat in such a way that we’re not harming these lovely, innocent, wonderful animals with whom we share this planet; that we’re placing minimal impact on the planet itself; that we’re treating our bodies like these incredible temples that they truly are, then all that has to come back to us just by natural and spiritual law. So it really is a good karma (retribution) diet. And I’ll be emphasizing a high-raw vegan diet, because I think when you add the raw to the mix, you just put a little more sparkle on it. You just give yourself a little more vitality, a little more zest, a little more extended youthfulness. You can’t lose.

That sounds good! So what would be your wish and your hope for the future, and for the future of our planet?

Yes. I would hope that our hearts can open, collectively, and on every level. If we think first about the human way of looking at things, that heart disease is the number one killer of women and men – heart disease kills more people than all cancers, accidents, suicide, AIDS, influenza, all combined – and this is because we’ve clogged our lovely arteries with the atherosclerotic plaque that comes largely from eating animal foods.

If we could open our hearts, literally, so that we would live longer and healthier, and so that old age would be a blessing and not a curse, as it often is for people. Wouldn’t that be a lovely thing? And in opening our hearts, that’s also opening up our compassion faculties. So as you choose – “You know what, today I’m not going to eat meat. And not just beef, I’m not going to eat chicken, I’m not going to eat fish. I’m not going to eat anybody that had eyes or had a mama.

Just for today I’m going to do that. And if I live through today, then maybe I can try it again tomorrow.” And then to expand and expand. As Albert Schweitzer said, that “We are called upon to expand our circle of compassion,” and when we can expand it to all who has life, then we human beings will have a shot at knowing peace. So that’s my wish: Let’s open our hearts, physically, spiritually, and when that’s going on, there’s no stopping us.

We send our many thanks and hugs to the vibrant Victoria Moran for bringing cheer and inspiration to people around the world by reminding us of our inherent greatness and benevolence.

So that’s my life. The writing life. Lots of sitting, lots of thinking, and inviting the muse. She’s pretty good. She shows up quite a bit of the time.

Victoria Moran’s bestselling books, including Creating a Charmed Life, Fit from Within, Shelter for the Spirit, and The Love-Powered Diet can be found on BN.com and Amazon.com Say “Hi” and learn more about Victoria Moran at www.VictoriaMoran.com

Thank you, amiable viewers, for your company on our 2-part special, “Victoria Moran: A Charmed Life of Kindness,” on Vegetarian Elite. Between Master and Disciples is coming up next, here on Supreme Master Television. May your heart grow ever more expansive every day.

I write books,I write a blog on the Huffington Post, I answer emails and try to get the word out. So let's see, what's come up first is my Twitter account. So I'm going to tell everybody what's happening right here: “I'm with folks from Supreme Master TV, filming, and having fun.” There we go. We have just tweeted. So that's my life. The writing life.

HOST: Halo, peaceful viewers, and welcome to Vegetarian Elite here on Supreme Master Television. Today we travel to New York City, USA to visit a well-known American bestselling author, motivational speaker, radio host, life coach, and holistic health counselor - Victoria Moran.

Passionate about life and helping others, including animals, Victoria has been writing for publications on topics such as health and spirituality since she was a teenager.

Her lifestyle as a high-raw vegan reflects her compassion for animals, as well as her commitment to help people adopt a healthy and deliciously fun life habit. As Victoria so eloquently puts it: “I live my life and do my best to be an example of what seems right to me. If people want what I have, they'll ask what I do.”

HOST: Conveniently, Victoria also offers coaching to people worldwide by phone and on Skype. Victoria's public appearances include being a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show - twice!, as well as on Good Morning America Now, The Today Show, and NPR's All Things Considered.

Aside from authoring 10 books (one of which has been translated to 29 languages!), she has also written for Yoga Journal, Body & Soul, Woman's Day, Mothering, Natural Health, and Ladies' Home Journal. She has been noted in acclaimed publications, from the Washington Post to Glamour magazine, and has had her own show on Martha Steward Living satellite radio. Let us now meet the wonderfully inspiring Victoria.

Victoria Moran’s bestselling books, including Creating a Charmed Life, Fit from Within, Shelter for the Spirit, and The Love-Powered Diet can be found on BN.com and Amazon.com Say “Hi” and learn more about Victoria Moran at www.VictoriaMoran.com