Archive for constipation

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

By Jane Birch · Comments (9)
Saturday, August 22nd, 2020

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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“I told God I wasn’t going to do another diet”

By Jane Birch · Comments (3)
Saturday, June 13th, 2020

By: Tricia Braunersrither

I grew up in a large family of four sisters and two brothers. I always felt overweight because I was a bigger build than my sisters. I thought it was something that needed to be fixed. Consequently, I spent my lifetime looking for diets to shrink my body. I tried diet after diet and was never successful. After each diet I would gain more and more weight.

In 2010, I started a diet that seemed to me to be the Holy Grail to Weight Loss: hCG. I would take a hormone and eat 500 calories a day, and I would lose weight. I lost 75 pounds! For the first time in my life, I felt like I had some control over my weight. To keep that weight off, I had to continue taking the hormones and keep my diet at 500 calories. I would do that for three weeks, then I would eat low carb for the next three weeks then go back to 500 calories. I did that for eight years until finally I couldn’t do it any longer. I told God that I no longer was going to do that. I told him I was going to wait on him for an answer of what I should do because I definitely wasn’t going to do another diet.

I gained 25 pounds right away because I finally was giving my body the nutrients it needed. In July 2018, I was visiting my kids in Idaho. A family friend was there who is a doctor. I told her my frustrations with many of my health issues. She did a full bloodwork panel on me. She even did an insulin-fasting test. She came to me and told me that I was “insulin resistant.” I had never heard that term before, but I later learned it is the first stage of type 2 diabetes. She gave me Metformin and told me to exercise and to eat a low-carb diet. I told her that I had done keto for seven months, and I knew how to do that diet. She said, “Oh yes, that would be great. Go ahead and do that.” So I headed home with much hope that this was the answer from God I had been waiting for. I even had my dad give me a priesthood blessing. He blessed me that “I would be able to discern what was the best path to healing my insulin resistance.”

I went home and immediately pulled out my keto cookbooks and started watching keto YouTube videos. I thought it was interesting that keto would be God’s answer. When I ate the keto diet, which is heavy in fat and meat, I often had thoughts that this was not following the Word of Wisdom. Despite these misgivings, I knew I wouldn’t gain weight eating keto, and I would have refuge from my 500-calorie diet, so I assumed it must be healthy.

While watching one of my keto YouTube videos I fell asleep. I woke up to a YouTube video that had continued to loop while I napped. I woke up to a bald guy with no eyebrows giving a talk on how eating Whole Foods can reverse insulin resistance. I had never heard of this. It was the exact opposite of what my doctor told me. I started researching right away. I found Dr. John McDougall who had the same message. He was telling me to eat all the things that are in my Church food storage under all my kids’ beds! Oats, rice, and beans! I found that super interesting! I found one plant-based doctor after another saying the same thing. But why do they not teach this to diabetics? I was terrified to try eating this way. The things they said to eat were what I avoided my whole dieting life because “carbs make you fat.”

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“Our mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health improved so suddenly and drastically that we didn’t want to go back”

By Jane Birch · Comments (2)
Saturday, September 28th, 2019

By: Cassidy Gundersen

Starting at age 12 I began to experience a variety of concerning health conditions such as chronic kidney stones, debilitating PMS and menstrual cramps, migraines that would cause me to throw up in pain, and twice monthly bowel movements. The doctors assured me that I was in good health and “these things just happened to people,” so I was convinced that I was healthy (despite all of my pain) and continued eating like it. My staples were Oreos, Dr. Pepper, and Snickers. You couldn’t have paid me to eat fruit or vegetables other than perhaps potatoes, raspberries, and peaches. But I was extremely thin, and that was all that mattered to me at the time.

As I grew up, I lived a busy and active life and was very involved. My health began to take a turn for the worst when I was Miss Idaho in 2012. I was on the road a lot and began eating worse than I already had been. I noticed that my mental and physical health were waning, but I was determined to serve a full-time mission.

After leaving to Canada in 2013 for my mission, the complications only worsened. I was barely able to get out of bed after 12 hours of sleep, and I was in the hospital more times than I can count. I had MRI’s, ultrasounds, colonoscopies, and countless blood samples drawn in an attempt to get to the core of the issue. More than one time the mission doctor and my mission president tried to send me home to get better, but I was more stubborn than I was sick, and I refused!

It was on my mission that I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease, a diagnosis that would change my life. After my diagnosis, I was downhearted and began reading my Patriarchal blessing. I became angry as I read it because my blessing spoke of the Word of Wisdom and the health I would have by obedience to it. I was confused because I never smoked, I never drank tea, coffee or alcohol, nor did I do drugs, yet I wasn’t seeing any of the blessings I was promised. I had given some thought to the Word of Wisdom since one of my companions informed me that she didn’t eat meat because of the Doctrine and Covenants 89. However, I was convinced she was extreme and was sure that I knew better.

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“I decided I would put it to the test to see if it could work for me”

By Jane Birch · Comments (6)
Saturday, November 17th, 2018

By: Dan Thieme

I remember as a youth growing up in the Church hearing many lessons about the Word of Wisdom. Inevitably, these lessons would emphasize that Joseph Smith surely was prophet, for how could he know at the time he lived in to write a document about health, teaching us to avoid alcohol and tobacco, which would save us from the ills of these substances which were so harmful to our physical bodies. I was amazed. I also hardly even noticed, or cared to notice, the other counsel that appears in that section of scripture: That is, what we should eat and not eat. I was never really taught that eating meat sparingly was part of the Word of Wisdom, and if we wanted to please Him, meaning the Lord (who wouldn’t!) that we should eat meat not at all. Has that phrase really been in there all these years? How many lessons and discussions over the years have I heard about the Word of Wisdom, and yet not one of those spoke of that second phrase?

And besides, who would be conspiring to make me eat meat? After all, protein is good for me right? Mom always told me to eat my vegetables, but she never had to tell me to eat my meat. Somehow I seemed to have an innate desire to eat that stuff—it came naturally to a growing boy, and eating lots of meat even seemed to be part of becoming a man. As men, we barbecue, we shoot or catch our own food with our own hands, bring it home and prepare it. Very manly. It seemed a natural part of the old ways that society was forgetting. What could be more healthy? What could be more social? At every family gathering we surrounded a table of the best meat, both from the land and the sea: prime roast, juicy steaks, good old hamburgers, or crab, shrimp, and fish. But even pork, and chicken and other meats are so wonderful!

As I grew, I became more manly and more carnivorous. I ground my own meat, smoked and barbecued that meat, refined my barbecue sauce recipe to perfection and had the best pork ribs you could find anywhere. I knew bacon was not good for me, so I only ate it occasionally. I worked out five times a week, ate lots of yogurt for the probiotics, and ate what I considered a healthy diet—whole wheat bread and lots of fruits and vegetables to go with my manly animal protein. With my health profession education and background as an optometrist, I thought I had a decent handle on what I should be eating, and what I should be avoiding.

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“Knowledge is more powerful than pride”

By Jane Birch · Comments (14)
Saturday, September 8th, 2018

By: Analilí Burrows (Version en español)

My search for wellness and health began long ago without much success. Conflicting information and the “false traditions” of my people darkened my understanding.

I became a mother at 28, seventeen years ago today. Birthing my first son was a grueling experience I don’t wish upon anyone. At our 20-week ultrasound, we were warned this baby’s condition was incompatible with life due to anencephaly, which means the scull is missing and the baby’s brain is floating around the amniotic fluid in a thin skin sack. He died in utero five days before my labor began.

A few months later I missed my period again. A home pregnancy test found out we were expecting, but I miscarried the very next day at 7 weeks. In 2006 with a two-year old miracle daughter, I was getting ready to pack my hospital bag at 8 months pregnant when my placenta abrupted inadvertently, and we lost our precious daughter. I almost died in the process too.

This close call with my own life and having to bury a second baby of mine gave me a new determination to find out what was wrong with me. I enrolled in medical school and was accepted, but with a 2-year old baby and a husband traveling most of the time, I had to pass this goal for a later day.

Little did I know I was learning line upon line, precept upon precept what I have come to know now.

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“I used to think people that LIKED running were strange”

By Jane Birch · Comments (8)
Saturday, October 1st, 2016

elisabeth-barlowBy: Elisabeth Barlow

My food history could be summed up by the phrase “meat and potatoes,” as long as we were talking about fried potatoes. I liked meat, dairy, chips, cookies, white bread, sugar, etc. and was a generally picky eater. As a teenager, I remember opening a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos after school and eating most of the bag by myself. I am shocked I didn’t end up with more health problems, but I was a typical teenage girl who didn’t want to eat her veggies.

Once I was married, the pounds started to creep on. By the time I was pregnant with my first child, I was 10-15 pounds heavier than when I got married. After the baby was born, I had a lot of weight to lose, but I didn’t do anything until my baby was almost two years old and I realized I was as heavy as I was when I was full-term pregnant. I joined Weight Watchers online because I thought it was a safe and effective way to lose weight. I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight after a few months, but I quit once I reached my goal and wanted to stop paying a monthly fee and obsessively track everything I ate. I went through the same cycle with each successive pregnancy until after my fourth baby which is when I found a better way!

I started thinking about my relationship to food after watching the Overcoming Addiction series that was put out by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. One of those videos was about a woman that overcame food addiction. I had never thought I had a food addiction, but I often felt like if I started eating a package of cookies or chips, I could never stop with just one or two! Many times I felt like the only thing that would relieve my stress was chocolate or a bakery item high in fat and sugar. I craved meals heavy in cheese and bacon. Although I knew I wasn’t eating the healthiest foods every day, I was resistant to anything that said to stop eating meat. I had read the Word of Wisdom before and knew that I could eat meat sparingly and that animals are for our use.

However, I was also worried about my health. I had a yearly blood draw coming up as part of our insurance requirements, and I wanted to be able to improve my numbers and not have to pay a surcharge if I had worse results than the year before. My post-baby weight loss had stalled, and to top it off I got sick with a horrible stomach virus or food poisoning and had to take two days off of work to recover. So, in March of 2016 when I found Forks Over Knives on Netflix, I was determined to try a whole food, plant-based diet. Now that I have been eating that way for 6, going on 7 months, I want to recap everything that has changed for me.

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“Our life will never be the same again!”

By Jane Birch · Comments (12)
Saturday, February 13th, 2016

Markus and Caroline GappmaierBy: Caroline Gappmaier

I always thought we ate fairly healthy. Baking our own bread from grains I milled, eating only a little meat, and then basically no red meat, no drinking of soft drinks, etc. Of course, I did have a sweet tooth and liked cheese very much (you know, I’m Swiss, and those of you who have tasted our cheese and chocolate will understand!). Then, our family experienced an extended period of existential stress which brought me health-wise to a point where I hardly could eat anything anymore. I had suffered from severe rheumatism before, with chronic pain mainly in my shoulders, but with all the other joints suffering also (which meant never being without pain day and night). But now with this added stress, my skin had turned so yellowish that even strangers would address me about it. Around my eyes were deep, dark circles. I kept losing weight. I had random itches all over my body all the time. I started feeling as if my body could stop working at any given moment. My thighs had white marble lines on them and going to the toilet smelled like walking into some of those old folks’ rest rooms. I had to leave early for everything because hurrying was too much and got me out of breath. All the while I had no strength to deal with any kind of extra stress. I felt depressed constantly instead of being happy and easygoing, as would reflect my personality. I was always worried and feeling bad. It was miserable!

Realizing things could not go on like that much longer, I adjusted my diet. I had already let go of all refined sugar products. When I realized that cheese caused feelings of anxiety, I stopped eating that, too. Finally, I started eating only the things I digested well and made me feel physically good afterwards: fresh produce (fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds). For one year, I ate nothing else. Fruits in the morning (usually a fruit smoothie with some flax seeds, brown millet and pure honey in it) and a mixed salad of vegetables and lettuce with some seeds and nuts in the afternoon. Today I think this saved my life. As I got better, I started to reintroduce other foods again. A few years later, as my husband, Markus, also struggled with his health, we felt we should change to a whole food, plant-based diet. Our health improved slowly, but surely. I was able to go back to a more normal life style in general again, feeling less depressed and having more physical energy and no pain. Happiness came back and in the (early!) morning I started to be fully awake again. No more lead in the bones or short breath.

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“I believe that health is our birthright.”

By Jane Birch · Comments (25)
Saturday, January 23rd, 2016
Lara Johnson 1

My Russian father and Venezuelan mother on the day of my Russian Orthodox christening.

By: Lara Johnson

I was raised eating the Standard American Diet (SAD). I was often sick with colds and flus and constipation. As a teenager I suffered from acne and depression, and I struggled to manage my weight, which led to bulimia.

Lara Johnson 2

My face covered in acne on my wedding day.

When I got married I wanted to be a good wife and homemaker so I would make all kinds of delicious SAD meals for my husband. We had dessert every night. I developed painful ovarian cysts and frequent urinary tract infections (UTI’s). They were very painful and when I would have one I would have to miss work because I could not get off of the toilet because of the discomforting urge to urinate.

In this 3-year anniversary photo I was barely pregnant and didn’t know it yet.

In this 3-year anniversary photo I was barely pregnant and didn’t know it yet.

When I became pregnant with my first child, I developed a UTI that would just not go away. One of my best friends, Joylene Scott, told me about a health book entitled Fit For Life that promoted a vegan lifestyle. She said that everyone in her mission had been following it. She came home vibrant and healthy and fifty pounds lighter. I on the other hand had put on twenty-five pounds and was miserable. Read More→

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“I planted the seed to see what fruits it would yield”

By Jane Birch · Comments (9)
Saturday, December 12th, 2015

Maria FarleyBy: Maria Farley

My family has a history of high cholesterol. My father passed away in 1990 at age 54 of heart disease, and all six of my brothers are on cholesterol lowering medications. My cholesterol was also high, and I was on cholesterol, pre-diabetic and hypothyroid medications.

I’m a mother of five children and part of a blended family that added three more children to the picture. Though I was a dancer in college, I now work full time outside the home in an office sitting at a desk. In addition to family and work, I’ve always had busy church callings. I was tired and my body ached all the time. I slept poorly and was frequently constipated so I took sleeping aids and extra fiber. I wasn’t very happy and dealt with depression despite my “push through it” attitude. In 2010 I started visiting doctors more frequently to try to address this general “not feeling well” cloud that was hanging over me. I tried eating better, walking for exercise again, and started all those medications.

Despite the things I tried to get healthier, it didn’t seem to make a whole lot of difference. After four years, I had come to an “I don’t care, it doesn’t seem to make a difference” frame of mind, which included my eating patterns. Then in July 2014 a brother who is four years younger than I had a mild stroke. That really shook me up. I realized I was on the same health path that he was. I was 47 years old at the time, and at 5′ 11″ I weighed 215 pounds.

Shortly after my brother’s stroke, because of my expressed concerns, a son-in-law invited me to watch the DVD Forks Over Knives, and my daughter gave me a copy of the book Discovering the Word of Wisdom by Jane Birch. They were living with us at the time and had wanted to adopt a whole food, plant-based way of eating, but had not successfully converted fully over.

After watching and reading this information and being introduced to additional scientific evidence from Dr. Campbell and Dr. Esselstyn, the enlightenment of the truths found in the Word of Wisdom (that I had not paid any attention to previously) came to life for me. This whole food, plant-based diet lined up in my mind so well with the counsel given in the Word of Wisdom that I decided to put my faith to work and give it a try for 30 days. You could say I planted the seed and was testing it out to see what kind of fruits it would yield. I was blessed to have my daughter and son-in-law joining me in this “experiment upon [His] words” (Alma 32:27).

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“The Spirit confirmed to us that we were on the right track”

By Jane Birch · Comments (15)
Saturday, March 14th, 2015

Mantlo FamilyBy: Leslie Mantlo

My daughter Meg, now 11, has struggled with bellyaches, headaches, stiff achy joints, and troubled sleeping for many years. I have taken her to the doctor time and again, but there have never been any real answers. It has been so frustrating. When I have taken her in, the doctor would attribute her bellyaches to constipation, which was partially true, but she wouldn’t really take the problem seriously. Her “solution” was to prescribe the regular use of laxatives (to a small child?) and give her gummy fiber supplements.

We tried everything the doctor suggested, hoping for results, but we never got lasting results, maybe a day or two of relief was all. It was very trying, especially for our daughter. No matter what she ate or drank it ended in a bellyache. She wasn’t sleeping well at all. It got to the point where she was not able to concentrate during learning activities so schooling was incredibly challenging.

I finally heeded a friend’s advice to contact a doctor in Colorado Springs that she’d had great success with. I counseled with him on our daughter’s symptoms, and he immediately suggested that she likely had an intestinal yeast infection. He made many dietary recommendations that, initially, I found pretty heavy. He pulled us off of white flour, white sugar, cow’s milk, artificial colors and flavors — all five days before Halloween 2013. I was like, “What are we supposed to eat if we can’t eat any of that???” He also prescribed particular supplements, including probiotics, and asked us to faithfully keep food diaries.

For me this was “experiment upon the word” and “come and see.” We were at a point where we just needed solid answers and solutions. We needed for our daughter to get better. We needed a medical professional to take the situation seriously. It was affecting all of us. So we jumped on board, supplements, food diaries, and all, faithfully! It was very challenging, but I was amazed at how our whole family rallied around our daughter. We all did this new diet together.

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