By: Brittney Moore

As long as I can remember, I have been interested in health and fitness. I remember doing aerobic videos in my living room when I was 12 years old. I got my degree at BYU in Health Promotion so I’ve always considered myself a healthy eater and regular exerciser. Health is a topic that I am fascinated with, and I continue to spend many hours reading the latest research, especially as it applies to the Word of Wisdom.

Most of the stories on the Discovering the Word of Wisdom site so far are about the physical changes that happen from following the Word of Wisdom. My story is more about the mental and emotional changes that have happened to me.

I started dieting after my first child was born in 1998. I’ve never been particularly heavy, but I always wanted to lose the last ten pounds, so I would follow whatever diet I found. Low carb, low fat, low calorie, I did them all. They all gave quick results, but then I’d start putting the pounds on again when I stopped following the diet perfectly. I felt like I was always trying to walk up a slippery slope, and I could never get to the top. The bathroom scale started ruling my life, and if I gained a pound or two, I would feel like a failure and start looking for a new diet that I could stick with. I felt like I couldn’t trust myself around food. I felt like my happiness each day depended on the number on the scale in the morning. I felt out of control and hopeless.

During this time I was an avid Crossfitter and was pressured to follow the Paleo diet, which is eating lots of meat, but no grains or potatoes or beans. I knew many LDS people who were eating this way, and I questioned them about following the Word of Wisdom. Most people just shrugged off my question or said they felt they were following the Word of Wisdom since they didn’t smoke or drink. I decided to try it for a month. I felt awful. I had no energy and wanted to lay down all day. I also had huge cravings for cookies, cakes, donuts and anything sweet because I wasn’t getting enough carbohydrates. By this time I had six children and didn’t have the energy to get through the day. This was a huge testimony to me that the Word of Wisdom is true. I would not give up my grains, potatoes and beans, because obviously they helped me “run and not be weary, and walk and not faint.”

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By: Val Johnson

I was converted to the gospel as an inactive member in 1971 when I was 17. I served a mission in Ontario Canada where my mission president was M. Russell Ballard. The Word of Wisdom was one of the concepts that you end up talking about a lot. Even though we read it and referenced D&C 89 almost daily, health problems associated with poor diet were fairly common among the missionaries. I gained nearly 50 lbs of uncomfortable weight while on my mission.

When I got home and was physically active, my weight normalized. Being 6 feet tall, I felt strong at 190 lbs, though this put me in the pudgy range. Marriage started me into a life of working with my mental and not my physical faculties. I tend to be a workaholic and could easily work 85 hours a week as an average my whole life, until just a few years ago. My only activity for the most part was golfing as often as time would allow. I seemed to gradually put on weight and kind of plateaued around 245 for several years. By the mid 90’s I was even more wrapped up in work and even golfing became a thing of the past. My weight climbed to nearly 300 lbs and stayed at that level on and off until 6 months ago.

Throughout the 45 years of being around the Word of Wisdom I have periodically ventured into the realm of trying to understand what it teaches about nutrition. I read Back to Eden by Jethro Kloss in 1979 and tried to abide by what he taught. It worked for a while but left me always feeling like I was on a diet. I tried the Atkins diet several times with varied success and justified eating meat because “in the season thereof” had to allow meat, or at least I thought that must be OK. In 1988 or so I read Fit for Life by Harvey and Marilyn Diamond and was somewhat successful but again it felt like a diet, and it leaned on high water content foods which eventually became untenable for me.

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