From Wall Street to Whole Food Plant-Based with Debbie Adler: Reinvent Yourself at Any Age

What does it take to walk away from a prestigious career, move across the country, and build an entirely new life rooted in passion and purpose? For Debbie Adler, it took about 28 years of living the wrong life before she finally started living the right one.

Debbie is the founder of Sweet Debbie's, a plant-based food company known for its organic, allergen-free, sugar-free, oil-free granola and baked goods. She is also a cookbook author whose second book, Sweet, Savory and Free, was published by the same press that published The China Study. But before any of that, she was a CPA on Wall Street who felt, in her own words, like she was dead inside.

On this episode of Sexy in Your 60s, Debbie and I talked about the art of reinvention, what the science actually says about plant-based eating, and how women over 50 can start shifting their food without feeling overwhelmed or deprived.

The Thread That Broke (and What Was Woven in Its Place)

Debbie grew up in a family where practicality came first. Her parents, shaped by the Depression and wartime Europe, believed in having "something to fall back on." So Debbie became a CPA. She spent four years studying, passed the exam, and worked another four years in a career she describes without sentimentality.

"I felt like I was dead," she said. "I'd rather have fallen back into my grave."

What she knew about herself, even as a child, was that she was a performer. At five years old she was cast as Lucy in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. She wrote plays and musicals. She sang and danced. None of that went anywhere for decades, but it never went away either.

At 29, she quit her CPA job and moved to Los Angeles. She started taking acting classes, auditioning, and getting small roles. She describes that period as a creative flood: "All this stuff that had been squashed my whole life until I was 29. It all came out. I was writing plays, I was writing musicals, I was writing music. It was like a creative waterfall."

The acting career gave her a foot in Hollywood. But the real pivot came in 2006, when she was hungry for a cupcake and could not find one that was sugar-free.

The Cupcake That Started Everything

Debbie went back to her apartment, experimented with ingredients, and figured it out. Friends tasted her sugar-free, dairy-free cupcakes and told her she should open a bakery. So she did. Sweet Debbie's Organic Cupcakes opened in 2006, and Hollywood came to her.

"Gwyneth Paltrow, Ray Romano, all the studios," she said. "I can go on and on." Parents who understood that sugar was not good for their children became her first and most loyal customers.

Then in 2008, her son Sean was born. When he turned one and she gave him regular yogurt, he anaphylaxed. The reaction was, as his allergist described it, "spectacular." He also anaphylaxed to flax and eggs and several other ingredients. Debbie went back to her bakery and rebuilt it from scratch to accommodate the top eight food allergens. At the time, she said, there were 13 million children in the United States with food allergies. She could serve every one of them.

"The kids were being deprived of birthday cakes and cupcakes on their birthdays," she said. "They would have rice cakes with a candle in it. That's not fair."

The China Study and the Shift to Whole Food Plant-Based

The next turning point came when a friend handed Debbie a copy of The China Study. She read it and said everything she had been living through with her son suddenly made sense.

The study, conducted over 30 years, examined the connection between diet and disease. Its finding about casein, the protein found in cow's milk, was particularly striking. Casein, Debbie explained, is what many people's bodies reject outright. It is why lactose intolerance exists.

Reading the study pushed her toward whole food plant-based eating, which goes beyond veganism. Where veganism eliminates animal products, whole food plant-based also eliminates sugar, oil, and salt. Debbie had to figure out how to make her bakery recipes work without any of those things. She did. The publisher of The China Study found out about her work and approached her literary agent. Her second book, Sweet, Savory and Free, was the result.

How to Start Eating Plant-Based After 50 Without Feeling Overwhelmed

The practical section of our conversation was the part I know my listeners need most. Debbie has helped thousands of people shift toward plant-based eating, and she has a clear-eyed view of why people give up before they start.

Her first piece of advice: do not go all in at once. Start with breakfast.

"Maybe get a dairy-free yogurt," she said. "They have everything now. Coconut yogurt, almond yogurt. It's just so easy now." Add a topping like a granola without sugar, some hemp hearts, some fruit. Make it delicious so you look forward to it.

From there, try a plant-based lunch a day or two later. Then work toward a plant-based dinner. Before long, she said, you will have five or six go-to meals you can rotate without thinking about it.

A few things she recommends keeping in your pantry at all times: a good array of spices, canned beans, brown rice, kasha (buckwheat groats), millet, and quinoa. These keep well and give you the foundation for almost any meal. Shop for fresh vegetables once a week and you are set.

Batch cooking is what makes the whole system work. Spend two hours on a Saturday or Sunday making sauces, dressings, and prepping vegetables. The easier it is during the week, she said, the more likely you are to stick to it.

What to Look for on a Label (and What to Ignore)

Debbie was direct on this topic. Sugar appears on labels under many names: glucose, fructose, cane sugar, and others. They are all sugar, and she avoids all of them. Oil is the other thing she watches for, including coconut oil and olive oil, both of which she says clog arteries just like any other fat.

"The things at the very end of the nutrition label that you can't pronounce," she said, "that's probably not good either."

Her shorthand: the fewer the ingredients, the better. One detail that surprised me: Debbie sprouts all the nuts and seeds in her products. Many whole foods contain phytates, which block nutrient absorption. Sprouting neutralizes the phytates and allows the body to actually use the nutrition in the food. "Sprout everything," she said. "That way you get all the nutrition you need."

Muscle, Movement, and Blood Sugar After 50

For women in midlife specifically, Debbie pointed to something that is not talked about enough: muscle loss. As we age, we naturally lose muscle mass, but Debbie is clear that this is not inevitable.

"If you work out and continue to build your muscle as you age, your blood sugar regulates better, because your muscles absorb more glucose," she said. Better blood sugar regulation supports better sleep and better nutrient absorption. A 10-minute walk after dinner, she added, makes a measurable difference.

What Sexy Means to Debbie Adler

When I asked Debbie what sexy means to her right now, she did not hesitate.

"Sexy is confidence. That's really what it comes down to. If I see a woman who is confident, no matter her age, that is sexy. She's comfortable in her skin. She walks a certain way, she doesn't slouch, she dresses well. Speaks with confidence."

That is the thread running through Debbie's whole story, from the Wall Street office where she felt like she was disappearing, to the Los Angeles apartment where the creative floodgates opened, to the bakery, the cookbooks, and the granola she makes today with adaptogens and intentions baked into every ingredient. The reinvention was not a one-time event. It has been a way of living.

If you have been waiting to make a change, to try something new, to choose yourself in some small or very large way, this conversation is for you.

Listen to the Full Episode

Episode 20: From Wall Street to Whole Food Plant-Based with Debbie Adler: Reinvent Yourself at Any Age

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Connect with Debbie Adler

sweetdebbies.com
The Mediterranean Plate (affiliate link — I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you)
Sweet, Savory and Free (affiliate link — I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you)

The China Study (affiliate link — I may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you)

About Dvora Citron

Dvora Citron is a Registered Nurse, National Board Certified Health & Wellness Coach, Lifestyle Medicine Practitioner, and the founder of Slant2Plants®. She hosts Sexy in Your 60s to bring women the real ingredients of vibrant aging through science, story, support, and soul. Her work helps women 50 and older create the health, confidence, and longevity they want in ways that feel realistic and sustainable.

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