Archive for Married-2 WFPB

“I decided if I wanted to see change I needed to commit to something”

By: Claire Cragun

My family was a cream of chicken soup eating family . . . and for the soul!—but definitely not for the body. Our food was very rich. We ate cream of chicken poppy seed casserole, beef roast and mashed potatoes loaded with butter every Sunday, and we loved quesadillas, cheese crust filled pizza, and ice cream! My sister had always said “A balanced life is a cookie in each hand!” and so we ate sugary, buttery, dairy desserts every week. Costco supplied us with never-ending hot pockets, burgers, hot dogs, and bulk size shredded cheese!

My health was generally okay for being a 22-year-old. I had returned home from a mission in Oklahoma (the land of the best BBQ!) having gained about 20 pounds from when I started. I thought that was not bad considering all the food I had eaten. However as I started college my face broke out in terrible acne. It left scars all over my face that I couldn’t cover with makeup and as I sought to date people it took a hard blow to my self-esteem.

I began feeling desperate. I had tried lotions, medication, face masks, you name it to try to solve this problem. As I researched I learned that possibly my acne troubles could be caused by diet. Websites proclaimed things like quit all dairy! And don’t eat foods that raise your blood sugar! etc., etc. I eventually landed on a book from twins Nina and Randa Nelson called The Clear Skin Diet. I decided that if I wanted to see change I needed to commit to something, so I decided I would strictly eat what this book promoted. Very quickly I learned that this diet was a vegan, whole food plant-based diet (created with principles from Dr. McDougall author of The Starch Solution), and I balked! No way is a vegan, ONLY plants and grain, diet going to cure any of my problems. I found myself concerned about nutrients, protein, and in general liking the food I was going to eat.

But I moved forward anyway. And for the first month or two . . . it sucked! I didn’t know how to cook well and was disappointed with some of my attempts at gravy not filled with meat, or pastas and pizzas not covered in cheese. I tried to decide if the black bean brownies I was making were truly worth it anymore. As I stuck with it however, my acne showed some slow minor changes, but I began losing weight, I felt awake and alert unlike I had ever felt before, and my food began tasting delicious! I found myself wondering . . . what’s happening here? I feel really great for the first time in a long time.

And that’s when it dawned on me: “I wonder what the Lord thinks about what I’m eating and if maybe there’s some messages about health that I could be missing. Maybe He can help me figure this out.” I went to D&C 89 and quickly focused on verses I feel I had never read before like that it’s pleasing that meat only be used in times of famine or cold. So many things clicked into place that I wanted to run to my family and show them what I had learned! I quickly found the Discovering the Word of Wisdom book and website shortly after because I had a lot of questions I typed into Google!

However my family was still very used to their standard way of eating and when I announced to my dad that I was thinking of continuing my weird new way of eating he responded with surprise, “You’re going to eat this way FOREVER?!?!” And I responded “I think so?” With a shy smile. I continued on my own for months and eventually had lost about 15 pounds. My mom in that same time had progressively gained weight, and I could overhear her on the phone telling her sisters, “I’m at the highest weight I’ve ever been, and I feel so discouraged” as she put her emotions into eating a large bowl of ice cream while watching a TV show every night.

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“I consider myself so fortunate to discover this way of living so young”

By: Dustin Martinsen

While preparing for the nursing program at BYU-Idaho, I took my favorite class which was the Essentials of Human Nutrition. Probably because of my love for food, I became enthralled with the topic of nutrition. I was confused though because of the ongoing debate about fats and carbs being bad for us, which essentially only left lean meat, low-fat dairy and vegetables being safe and healthy to eat.  But the question remained, “What about the Word of Wisdom? What about grains being the ‘staff of life’ and eating meat sparingly?”

At the age of 26, I discovered that studies had been conducted on what are called the blue zones, which are where clusters of many of the oldest people on earth live. Something they had in common was a mostly unprocessed, plant-based diet. There was my proof that the diet proposed by God in the Word of Wisdom was fueling the healthiest, longest living populations in the world. But I thought, “How can that be? I thought you can’t be healthy without meat.”

I soon found there was a whole slew of old and new research on the topic, and that this way of eating was not only unlikely to cause nutrient deficiencies, but that it is the most nutrient-dense diet possible per calorie and contains completely adequate amounts of protein. Furthermore, it has been proven time after time to heal people to varying degrees from most chronic illnesses.

Very few seem to question the benefits of avoiding the “don’ts” of the Word of Wisdom, including tobacco, alcohol, tea, coffee, illegal drugs, and other harmful substances. I am personally grateful to have avoided the life of addiction and personal cost that these substances can cause. However, in my research of the whole food, plant-based diet, I realized the importance of focusing on the “do’s” of the Word of Wisdom as well, including an emphasis on “wholesome” herbs, fruits, and grains, and eating meat only in times of advanced need. It became apparent to me that the level at which we enjoy the blessings promised by God in the Word of Wisdom (e.g. health in the navel, running without wearying, etc.) depends on our level of conformance to this revelation.

I began slowly, adding in meals here and there without meat or processed ingredients, surprised to find that there were many available recipes online for satisfying versions of all my favorite foods, just made with healthier ingredients. I didn’t feel tired or weak as I had expected. Contrariwise, I had more energy at the gym and was beginning to get better sleep and an improved mood and sense of wellbeing. After 3 months, I had effortlessly lost 17 lbs which I was excited about.

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“An angel of the Lord appeared to us in the form of our daughter”

By: Michael and Marilyn Clark

While preparing for our summer 2019 family vacation, our married daughter Tiffany informed us she and her family were trying something new: abstinence from animal products. (You can read her story here.) Having great empathy for her multi-year health challenges, my wife Marilyn and I decided we would support our daughter by going along with this change on our shared vacation.

Up until that time, Marilyn and I thought we understood and lived the Word of Wisdom quite well. We were highly motivated to be healthy. We had seen four out of our eight grandparents die relatively young from heart attacks and cancer, and my mother died quite young at 63 from a number of chronic ailments. Marilyn had studied nutrition in college and was an excellent cook who made most everything from scratch and incorporated lots of vegetables into our diet. You could say we ate a whole food, plant-rich diet, but perhaps we were a bit deluded thinking we ate meat “sparingly” when in reality our consumption of animal products was incompatible with a face-value reading of the Word of Wisdom. Still, coupled with a relatively active lifestyle, we carried no extra weight and thought we were in pretty good shape.

Yet we were perplexed by the health challenges Tiffany had faced over the previous decade, despite her very best, remarkably-disciplined efforts to live the Word of Wisdom according to her knowledge. We wondered, how could someone so diligent—who ate better than her dietitian (according to her dietitian!)—be subject to gestational diabetes while pregnant, have two miscarriages, lose two babies to stillbirth, contract Hashimoto’s, and experience significant weight gain? Thankfully, her constant prayers and searching led her to discover the one thing that she lacked: abstinence from animal products.

While in the midst of supporting our daughter during our summer 2019 vacation, I turned to the Word of Wisdom with a greater degree of curiosity, honesty, and real intent. What followed was a journey of insight that perhaps could be best understood by comparing our experience to that of Amulek, the missionary companion to Alma the Younger, who seemingly made an instant transformation from being an inactive member of the Church to becoming an intrepid promoter and defender of the faith.

When recounting his conversion story to the people of Ammonihah, Amulek confessed, “for I was called many times and I would not hear; therefore I knew concerning these things [the power of God], yet I would not know; therefore I went on rebelling against God.” Yes, he had no doubt received a series of promptings from the Spirit, yet he willfully chose to ignore them.

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“I want to cry out like an angel: THERE IS AN ANSWER!”

By: Jeri Franz

For the first 38 years of my life I ate the wrong foods and too much of them….foods laden with sugar and flour. As a child, I started showing signs of this at about the age of eight and went on my first diet at age 11. Being born in 1951 there were not as many heavy children as there are now and so I always felt different. I also picked up a few bad habits with other things in high school but gave those up when I joined the church at the age of 24 and was made aware of the Word of Wisdom. I just never paid much attention to the food part. When I received my Patriarchal Blessing a few months later and it read, “You have a Good Body. Keep it that way and you can through the reading of good books and the power of prayer,” I figured it was referring to diet books and was always looking for those “good books” that were going to help me maintain this “good body” that eventually got up to 225 pounds on a 5’4” frame!

Fast forward through years of dieting, binging, getting to my normal weight for five minutes, having five children and then in my late thirties I discovered a twelve-step program for “compulsive overeaters.” It was then that the rest of my journey began. I felt God had led me to a place where I could learn more of Him and turn to Him instead of to the food which was truly my “drug of choice.” This journey evolved as I recognized what I truly had was a food addiction and needed to give up sugar and flour and have a food plan, which I started doing in my late forties with another twelve-step program.

I am now 71 years old and have been free of the 100 extra pounds I carried on my body. I have been at the weight of 127 for 10 years now, and I’ve been sugar and flour free for 18 years. So, I felt pretty healthy. I had energy, although usually I required an afternoon nap.  I didn’t have any obvious health problems thankfully, but I was eating 8 ounces of yogurt every morning for breakfast and 4 ounces of protein or 2 ounces of cheese at each meal. This was also augmented at each meal with 6 ounces of cooked and 6 ounces of raw vegetables and a couple of pieces of fruit; I never ate in between meals. I strictly adhered to this plan and because of it experienced a great amount of spiritual, emotional, and physical recovery.

My husband and I had come across the book The China Study about ten years ago, and he began to make a few changes like giving up red meat. I considered it, but I didn’t feel ready even after reading the book and watching the documentary Forks over Knives. I mean, I took supplements, I ate healthily, I felt good, I was just fine and loved my meat and my yogurt. I also complained about not enough energy. When we went to serve our 18-month mission in 2016 in Germany my husband started eating red meat again, and I continued on my food plan with my yogurt and meat, never eating any beans at all. We had a friend in our ward who would not eat meat in the summer, only in winter because of the Word of Wisdom, part of only consuming meat in the times of cold or famine. But I just never got on board with that.

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“When I realized that whole food plant-based eating is completely in-line with the Word of Wisdom, there was nothing left to think about”

By: Jeannine Winkley

When we first married, a great meal was frozen spinach ravioli with Alfredo sauce. Over the years, I incrementally improved our family’s diet. I stopped buying items with certain ingredients and made other improvements.

We began our plant-based journey when a friend recommended watching Forks Over Knives soon after it came out in 2011. It was very convincing! We didn’t change our diet immediately, but it planted a seed. We continued to watch other documentaries and read about and researched this way of eating. I knew we should do it and began to call myself a “wanna-be-vegan” because I WANTED to eat that way. I just didn’t want to EAT that way.

I tried at least once to switch to meat substitutes, but that was doomed to fail because they just aren’t that tasty or good for you. I switched my breakfast to a Rip’s Big Bowl somewhere along the way. I loved it so much that if I missed it for breakfast, I’d have it for lunch or dinner.

Six years ago (2015) between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, I watched a YouTube video called “Return to Sparingly.” That was the final straw. When I realized that whole food plant-based eating is completely in-line with the Word of Wisdom, there was nothing left to think about. I made the change immediately, which was awkward with a refrigerator filled with Christmas leftovers. My husband was completely supportive and made the switch with me.

It was hard enough to figure out what I was going to eat the next day, but I was also feeding a family of nine. Read More→

“My depression and anxiety slowly cleared up”

By: Elise Dunlap

I grew up in a household divided by food. One parent was more focused on healthy eating than the other, and it was always a subject of contention in our household. Like most Americans, I have a family history of cancer, autoimmune diseases, strokes, heart attacks, diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Growing up, everyone I knew considered our family to be healthy. Fruit and egg burritos for breakfast, salad with our “real” dinner every night, but donuts and pizza on the weekend. You know, “balanced.”

The first time my health took a dive was when I was in high school (around 2013). I started dealing with lots of tension, especially in my shoulders and neck, sometimes to the point of tears if they were even lightly touched, so I started seeing a chiropractor, which seemed to help quite a bit. I also started experiencing fatigue and intense depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. After an intense episode of depression where I laid in bed all day and skipped school without telling anyone, I went to see a therapist and got put on some typical antidepressants (Wellbutrin and Prozac). I didn’t feel like myself at all. The medications seemed to suppress my emotions and make things feel really one-note, but it was enough of an improvement that I wasn’t feeling as suicidal as I had been.

Feeling overwhelmed by school, I dropped out of two of my three Advanced Placement (AP) courses. At this time, I was exercising pretty intensely. I would wake up and do P90x with my parents in the morning, and I had swim practice after school. I was very fit. Despite the brightness of my future everyone was always telling me about, I always dreamed of something better than how I was experiencing my day-to-day reality.

After graduating, I left for college at Southern Virginia University. Living in a dorm, I was required to have a meal plan. I’ve always been a big eater and a binge eater if there’s desserts within a ten-mile radius, and the college buffet was now all mine for the taking. I ate plenty of fruits and vegetables, but I also indulged in all kinds of sweet treats and fried foods, including the ice cream bar after every lunch and dinner. I would gorge on three breakfast scones and smuggle three more of them out of the cafeteria for later.

At college, I was taking a karate class and still managed to stay “fit” with that two-hour class each week. However, my coursework was suffering, and my mental health was plunging again. I was “that roommate who was always asleep.” I would sleep ten hours at night and take a five-hour nap during the day. My depression and anxiety continued to worsen.

Realizing that I had no money, I started to rent out my bishop’s basement the next spring and got a job at a Wendy’s just out of town. I sat in on some courses, but I wasn’t getting credit anymore because I had debts with the school that I had to pay off first. I ate lots of Frosties, chicken sandwiches and burgers because of where I was working, and unknown to me, I started to gain weight. I also started having terrible seasonal allergies which were worse than I thought could exist. My depression and anxiety became crippling. I had a panic attack at work one morning after dealing with a rude customer. I soon realized that I needed to go back home. I was sick, depressed, and out of money.

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“I was so baffled I finally decided to take it to God”

By: Cindy Balling

I was a junior in high school, job shadowing at the local hospital in the outpatient clinic. The nurse asked if I wanted my blood pressure taken. I sat down in the chair, and I will never forget her concerned face. I didn’t know the numbers, but she told me my blood pressure did not look good.

I felt helpless. I was so young. I thought I was healthy! I felt fear and embarrassment, and I was too afraid to tell anyone. I tried to stay active, but I lived a pretty sedentary lifestyle. When I went to college, I decided to major in Exercise Science and minor in Nutrition. I remember sitting in my classes and learning about how exercise can improve chronic diseases, like the one I had secretly dealt with in high school. I really wanted to help people overcome these issues. While I didn’t learn as much about nutrition’s role in weight loss, my classes made me firmly believe that exercise had far more to do with our health and weight than diet ever could. I didn’t believe nutrition was important. A calorie is a calorie, and as long as you exercise, everything will balance out. Unfortunately, I taught this very wrong principle to a lot of people as a personal trainer and exercise specialist.

After spending eight months on bed-rest while pregnant with twins, I struggled to lose the baby weight. I had been lying in bed for so long and was so weak that I couldn’t even stand on one leg. My twins had serious health problems, and exercise just seemed impossible to ever have time for between all of their doctor appointments and therapies. It forced me to focus more on diet, and I did my best to follow the principles of “clean eating,” meaning as little processed food as possible.

A few years later, I became a mother to a baby girl. She was so precious to me. So healthy! It was something I hadn’t experienced yet as a mother. I remember holding her in my arms, and instead of feeling content, I would feel fear. Fear that she would develop cancer or some other horrible disease and I would have no control over it. I would lose her and there would be nothing I could do about it. I felt it every time I held my baby, and it haunted me.

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“I’ve battled depression most of my adult life and been suicidal on multiple occasions”

By: DaNae Dayley

It’s been just over a year since I started eating a whole food, plant based diet. I wanted to wait until I had spectacular before and after photos to share my story, but the main theme of my story isn’t about weight loss, that’s just been part of the journey. I feel like what I have to share is important enough that it needs to be told. Right now.

Depression is not the absence of happiness. I would describe myself as an optimistic, fun-loving, happy person—with Major Depressive Disorder. Having MDD is like wearing an invisible backpack full of heavy rocks all the time. No matter how much you want to do something, those rocks will make it a whole lot harder, and some days, they make it literally impossible. I still get emotional just reminiscing about it. For me, being suicidal was when those rocks were so heavy that I didn’t even have the energy to breathe.

In many ways, my life has been ideal. I have lots of people who love me, a beautiful home, plenty to eat, and many friends. My circumstances had nothing to do with my depression. I didn’t understand this for way too long. I have battled depression most of my adult life, and I’ve been suicidal on multiple occasions.

In my 30s and most of my 40s, I was exhausted and in pain most of the time and there was nothing medically wrong with me. Doctors weren’t helpful because all my tests came back normal. We were all mystified.

Up to that point, I felt like my diet was pretty healthy most of the time, and I was very active. I loved to be outside and exercise was a high priority for me. A list of my favorite things to do included hiking, camping, jeeping, and karate.

But the more tired I felt, the less healthy our meals became and the more weight I gained. I was devastated that my kids would have memories of me as an overweight, practically bed-ridden mother that never had the energy to do fun things with them. During this time, I actually remember looking at the Word of Wisdom and wondering why I couldn’t “run and not be weary” and “walk and not faint.” (D&C 89:20) It never occurred to me that I needed to cut down my meat consumption or even eat more fruits and vegetables. When I had the energy, I felt like I was making very healthy choices. Small servings of lean meat, veggies, and whole grains. The problem was that the worse I felt the more that turned into take-out or frozen prepared meals, and the less I even cared.

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“I don’t ever want to go back to the way we were eating”

By: Amy Wells

I didn’t realize how sick I was.

Growing up, I ate mainly the Standard American Diet (SAD). I was aware that some foods were healthier than others, but I didn’t know why or how that affected my body. I would get sick a lot with what I now identify as chronic sinus infections. I have very early memories of my knees aching, often causing weakness and pain that stayed with me well into my adult years. In college, I visited a GI specialist because of some things I felt were off. He did some tests and couldn’t find anything wrong. So, he suggested, “Well, you could try going off gluten and see if that helps.”

While on my mission, I was overcome with such severe knee aches that I was not able to do much of what was required of me. I sought a priesthood blessing from the ward mission leader. In the blessing, he told me to look to the Word of Wisdom for answers. At the time I studied it, but didn’t change much about the way I was eating. Now I know that blessing was God trying to tell me how my body can be healed from the inflammation in my knees that was causing these life-long problems.

When I married my husband, we decided not to wait to have children. But, my menstrual cycle needed some regularity so I took metformin to deal with symptoms of PCOS. All these things I thought were just part of life and what my body did.

My husband has always enjoyed being fit but has had problems with muscle inflammation, regular ear infections and headaches for years. He didn’t enjoy broccoli or nuts when we married. But, when he found that they are “good for you,” he started eating them with great enjoyment. When he began to develop digestive issues, we really began to look for answers. I was willing to help him on his journey, but I didn’t feel like I needed to “get healthy.” I did think it would be good to lose a few pounds of baby weight after my second child was born.

Through his research, he learned about Whole Food Plant Based eating by reading The China Study which led him to other resources of knowledge. He was all on board right away. Me, not so much. I felt overwhelmed with the thought of cutting out meat, eggs and dairy from my cooking and figuring out how to  feed my family this way. However, I did believe what I was learning could improve our health. So, I was willing to start progressing this way. Continuous study from reliable resources has been a great motivator to keep trying.

We also studied scriptures and prayed specifically to know how to make this transition, especially when it comes to social situations and others who were not as supportive. As we learned more, we were excited to find other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints that have transitioned to more Whole Foods and Plants from their study of the Word of Wisdom. I didn’t fully make the connection until then. God asks us to use meats “sparingly” and “it is pleasing unto [Him] that they should not be used, only in times of winter, or of cold, or famine.” (D&C 89:12,13) Why had I not trusted in His word?

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“I love eating this way because I am not hungry ever!”

By: Tish Lambert

I have been overweight if not obese my whole life. I have been on a lot of different diets, including straight calorie restriction, Body For Life, and Atkins. I’ve also just tried eating a healthy diet (aka eating less junk food and less processed foods). I exercised regularly, biking 6-8 miles to and from schools I attended, played soccer, and was on Church sports teams.

By high school I was tired of the fad diets and just exercising wasn’t working. I remember researching the Word of Wisdom in high school. I wanted to stop doing everything man’s way and start doing it God’s way. I read it over and over. It was hard to understand all the components, like what does herb mean and what exactly is sparingly? How do I know what seasons everything grows in? So, I went back to calorie restriction/counting and trying to eat less processed food. I had success on a diet that balanced carbs and protein or meat, but I was hungry a lot, and my cheat days frequently extended to cheat weekends. I felt like that diet taught me to starve and binge.

In 2014, I stumbled upon Forks Over Knives on Netflix. It felt like the spirit was screaming, “THIS IS THE WORD OF WISDOM!” It felt like the Word of Wisdom explained with medical proof. I wanted to change right then, but my life was too crazy. In the next two years I ended up moving three times across the country, finishing one pregnancy, and starting another. I continued researching how to get nutrients like calcium, omega 3s & 6s, vitamin B12, and probiotics on a plant-based diet.

About 5 years ago, post-partum, I was obese. I needed to lose 50-60 lbs. I knew that being in the obese category meant my risk for every disease went up. I believed in the Word of Wisdom and Forks Over Knives, but I tried the ketogenic diet next as a vegetarian. I lost weight, but I was so hungry all the time, and I got sick of tofu, eggs, and cheese.

After reading The Forks Over Knives Plan, a 4-week transition program, I jumped into a whole food, plant-based or WOW way of eating sometime between July-October of 2016. I discovered I love eating this way because I am not hungry ever. I can eat as much as I want and as often as I want. My first indication that anything was happening was when my skirt fell off while I was walking around my house. I threw it out. I thought it was the elastic until I measured myself.

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