Author Archive for Jane Birch

“I was amazed at what I was learning about the power of a WFPB diet to reverse many diseases I had seen as an ICU nurse”

By Jane Birch · Comments (7)
Saturday, October 19th, 2024

By: Jessica Clark

My mom took me to an OBGYN when I was 15 years old because I had not started mensurating. I was diagnosed with PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome), and the doctor recommended I take birth control and metformin. My mom didn’t feel good about having me take metformin, but I did take birth control for 6 months.

Since PCOS can be associated with the development of type II diabetes, and my grandma had this disease, my mom and I also went to a doctor who specialized in diabetes management. He suggested I follow a low-carbohydrate diet.

While this doctor had good intentions, I found the advice difficult to follow. I learned to count carbohydrates but found it challenging to stick to the 30 g and 15 g recommendations for meals and snacks, respectively. I have always had a hearty appetite, and I wondered how I would ever be satisfied with this dietary recommendation. I discovered that meat, cheese, eggs, and peanut butter were all high-protein, low-carbohydrate foods, and I primarily relied on these foods to get full. I largely avoided fruit, as I believed it had too many carbohydrates.

The advice wasn’t all bad: I stopped eating most foods with refined sugar and increased my vegetable consumption. I ate lots of salads (all with animal protein), and most people said I had a healthy diet.

The diabetes doctor also recommended I engage in 30 minutes of intense exercise daily. I did some sports in high school but did not enjoy regular exercise out of season. Looking back, I realize I did not generally feel great or consistently have energy for regular, high-intensity exercise.

I went to a naturopath for several years, who reinforced the diabetes doctor’s recommendations to avoid sugar consumption. She also said my thyroid health was not optimal, although it was not bad enough to show problems on conventional blood tests (my thyroid labs were low and barely within the normal range). I believe this may have contributed to my general feelings of sluggishness. Between the naturopath and my efforts to consume a healthy diet, I did okay for many years.

While in college, I studied nursing. I remember one lecture discussing atherosclerosis (plaque buildup in the arteries). The teacher said this buildup could not occur if one didn’t eat fat.

His statement made me reexamine and reevaluate my diet. As mentioned, all the foods I relied on to get full and stay satisfied were high in protein, and I realized they were also high in fat. I thought it was weird that the diet I had been recommended for diabetes prevention (low carbohydrate) could be bad for heart health. Nevertheless, I stopped buying the blocks of Costco cheese and tried to eat more chicken instead of beef or pork. I also ate some legumes (beans and rice or split pea soup) because they were cheap, which I appreciated as a college student.

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Categories : Single Adult, Stories
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“From sedentary to marathon runner and over 200 pounds lost”

By Jane Birch · Comments (3)
Saturday, January 27th, 2024

By: Liz Derry

Looking at me today, people are shocked when they hear that I have lost and maintained over 200 pounds of weight loss, eliminated multiple health problems, including diabetes, and went from sedentary to marathon runner, all through healthy eating and exercise, without pills, surgeries, shots, weighing and measuring foods, or counting calories. The affects of my change to a whole food plant based diet were not just physical, but emotional, mental, and spiritual.

At the start of 2020, at the age of 44, I weighed almost 400 pounds and was suffering from many health problems including chronic reflux, poor wound healing, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, depression, poor sleep, chronic fatigue, high blood pressure, menstrual problems, and general despondency. I had lost and gained large amounts of weight multiple times in my life, including over 100 pounds 2 other times. I had been on many different diets and none of them were working for me anymore. I was only able to lose 30-40 pounds and then would quickly gain it all back. After a recent family vacation in which I spent most of the time sitting on benches, while my family explored the sites, I had reached an all-time low. I felt so old and run down physically and wondered what type of life I had left, unable to enjoy time and activities with my children, and eventually grandchildren, and likely facing an early death.

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

By Jane Birch · Comments (4)
Saturday, October 7th, 2023

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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Categories : Married-2 WFPB, Stories
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“I consider myself so fortunate to discover this way of living so young”

By Jane Birch · Comments (6)
Saturday, March 4th, 2023

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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Categories : Married-2 WFPB, Stories
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“An angel of the Lord appeared to us in the form of our daughter”

By Jane Birch · Comments (8)
Saturday, January 7th, 2023

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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Categories : Married-2 WFPB, Stories
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“My life was managed from headache to headache.”

By Jane Birch · Comments (3)
Saturday, November 19th, 2022

By Ray Roberts

When I turned 40, migraine headaches entered my life. At first, I did not know that I had a migraine, as I had never experienced headaches. They were always on the same side of my head and lasted 36 to 48 hours, and they were devastating. They recurred about every 3 to 4 weeks. After each headache there was a two-week window where I was good and then I would start to worry.

I saw multiple doctors, had a cat scan, and started to take drugs for the pain, oral and then injections that I would self-administer. My life was managed from headache to headache.

I hated the drugs and was desperate to get off them. I scoured libraries and book sources for help and read and studied everything I could find. I tried various strategies, such as no sugar for a month (negative result) and exercising during a headache—I once went for a two-hour jog in the middle of the night (did not help).

Although there seemed to be various triggers, the only one that I could really control was what I put into my mouth, and so I would unsuccessfully change this or that in my diet. My weight started to drop from a high of 190 lb (I am 6‘1” with a medium build) to 175 lb.

After many years, a breakthrough came when I discovered a book titled Fasting and Eating for Health by Joel Fuhrman. This book was my introduction to therapeutic fasting. I had done many 24-hour fasts as an active Church member, but that was the extent of my fasting experience.

I fasted for 72 hours and then went on a strict elimination diet for 30 days, followed by another 72-hour fast. The elimination diet consisted of a limited number of foods, all whole food, plant based, although at the time I knew nothing of this type of diet. There was no headache during this period, and I was euphoric. I intended to fast for a week after the 30 days of the elimination diet, but my work was very physical, and I was forced to break the fast after 3 days.

I went 7 weeks without a headache, an amazing exhilarating experience. The headaches did return, but this success told me I was on to something. Something changed in my metabolism after this experience, and my weight dropped at one point to 144 lb within a few weeks. I started to eat differently realizing that this made a huge difference in my health and especially my battle with migraines. I felt amazing. My weight has now settled around 155 lb for last 18 or so years.

I started to study nutrition, physiology and fasting. I experimented briefly with keto diets on two different occasions, and both times had a very negative experience and felt ill. As my research broadened, whole food, plant-based (WFPB) eating came into my purview, and I spent many hours learning with diet gurus such as Michael Gregor (nutritionfacts.org), John McDougall, T. Colin Campbell (The China Study) and others.

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Categories : Married-1 WFPB, Stories
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“I want to cry out like an angel: THERE IS AN ANSWER!”

By Jane Birch · Comments (9)
Saturday, September 3rd, 2022

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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Categories : Married-2 WFPB, Stories
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“I was in pain all the time”

By Jane Birch · Comments (11)
Saturday, June 4th, 2022

By: Nancy Jensen

I suffered the effects of a debilitating, degenerative, hereditary disease for 30 years, although I had never gotten a proper diagnosis. By the summer of 2016, I could hardly walk a block because of inflammation in my tendons. It hurt my arms just to hold a book, and the three hours of sitting at church were filled with back and hip pain. My passion was teaching the piano, and I had re-entered Utah State University 5 years before, working slowly towards a Piano Pedagogy degree, but I had to drop out in the spring of 2016 because by then I could only play the piano for 5 minutes at a time. I lost all my hobbies, and many other abilities, even cleaning the house, pulling weeds, or chopping vegetables. I was in pain all the time. I was exhausted all the time. I saw over a dozen different health professionals that year for help in managing the pain and disability. As I attended the temple (painfully), I wondered why I was not enjoying the blessings pronounced there of strength, speed and endurance, despite “perfectly” keeping the Word of Wisdom.

While I waited 5 months (!) for an appointment to see a rheumatologist, my youngest daughter convinced me to watch a documentary she saw in high school, Forks Over Knives. The documentary was about whole-food plant-based eating and how it could prevent or relieve many chronic or deadly health conditions, among them, arthritis. I contacted one of the doctors in the documentary, Dr. John McDougall, and he told me to try eating 100% plant-based for just a week. He said I’d quickly know whether it would help. Since I could see that whole-food plant-based eating matched the Word of Wisdom, I decided to try it. It was really tricky to learn to cook without meat, eggs, and dairy, but on day four, I experienced a massive drop in pain!

I read The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, The Starch Solution by John McDougall, Discovering the Word of Wisdom by Jane Birch, and How Not to Die by Michael Greger. Once I realized that this was a perfect match with the Word of Wisdom, I wondered why I had never had the faith to eat the way the revelation recommends without reading about all the science behind it.

As I changed my diet to strictly contain only those foods recommended in the Word of Wisdom in their most wholesome forms, mobility, energy, digestion, and immunity improved markedly. Muscle, joint, and headache pain dropped dramatically within that first week. Morning stiffness became minimal.

Since I had switched to a plant-based diet during the 5 months I waited for an appointment, I already had experienced enough healing to know it was the food making the difference. By the time I got my turn to see the rheumatologist in January of 2017 and finally got the correct diagnosis of Ankylosing Spondylitis with Enthesitis, I did not need expensive arthritis drugs with unpleasant side effects. He wanted me to go on a biologic like Humira (regular injections with a co-pay of $6,000 a month). I didn’t want another bunch of problems that they would bring me. I told him I’d take Aleve and just keep eating vegan. The Word of Wisdom had nearly healed me.

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Categories : Married-1 WFPB, Stories
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“I dove into a study on the Word of Wisdom like I never had before”

By Jane Birch · Comments (3)
Saturday, April 23rd, 2022

By: Janeen Burke

My name is Janeen Burke. I’m 42 and a stay-at-home mom of four. We recently moved to Provo from Grass Valley, California because my husband got a job teaching at BYU.

My journey has been long, so I’ll try to keep this as short as possible. I gained a fascination for nutrition and health during a nutrition class in high school. I became fascinated about how what we eat determines so much of our health and how certain foods did certain things. Growing up in the Church, I always knew about the Word of Wisdom, but it hasn’t been until about the last four years that I’ve realized what it’s really saying and how important it is to follow it. I know now that it is truly all we need for health, but coming to know that has been a long and slow process.

When my oldest son (now 20) was four years old, he was diagnosed with “high functioning autism.”  I quickly dove into researching treatments that were natural as I didn’t want to medicate him. Coming to that personal revelation is a whole other story, but completely intertwined with this journey and story. In my research, it became clear that my son was an excellent candidate to try the GFCF (gluten free/dairy free) diet due to digestion issues he chronically had. My husband and I noticed immediate improvement in his behaviors, so we were confident we were on the right course. There began to be other things and other diets that we tried as we were going through ups and downs and with each diet, we saw different improvements and I learned different things.  Sometimes progression, sometimes regression, but I never gave up on researching, trying new things all the while seeking guidance from God. Time went by and I had twins, they each had their own issues that were helped with the knowledge I gained.

Then I had my fourth child, and it was a very traumatic emergency c-section to save my son’s life. My recovery was horrible, and I had pains that weren’t going away. I was using the knowledge of nutrition and essential oils that I had gained over the years and there was some improvement. But, I was still dealing with pain that wouldn’t go away. A chiropractor recommended a Paleo diet and I gave it a try. I was on it for a few months and noticed that there was improvement, but new problems started rising. I had horrible ringing in my ears that kept me up at night, heart palpitations and dizziness and then about two years later and worst of all . . . I started having depression and anxiety. I even started having suicidal thoughts out of nowhere and for no good reason because my life was good! I knew it had to be something physical/medical affecting my mental health.  I did not want to be on medication.  I knew there had to be an answer through nutrition, so I prayed earnestly to find it.  Then when my youngest son was also diagnosed with autism at age two, my prayers became even more frequent and passionate in finding an answer for both of us.

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Categories : Married-1 WFPB, Stories
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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 Jane Birch · Comments (10)
Saturday, January 15th, 2022

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→

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