Each week, it feels like a miracle that I have yet another story to share on this site. This miracle depends on people like you! Please consider sharing your story in 2016 (see below). If you are not yet eating a whole food, plant-based (WFPB) diet, consider making that your goal for 2016. I’d love to help you (see below).
If you’d like to connect with other Latter-day Saints who are interested in a WFPB diet, please check out the WFPB Word of Wisdom Friends Map (see below).
Share Your Story in 2016
Each week, I rarely have more than one new story someone has sent me to share. Too often, I don’t get the new story until Friday, the day before I post them! That’s cutting it pretty close, but I’m just grateful that yet another person is willing to share. Each story is a treasure. Each one inspires me and encourages many more on their path.
If you are enjoying the benefits and blessings of a WFPB diet, you undoubtedly have been helped by the many who have gone before you. Sharing your story is a great way to give back and to encourage both those who are on this path and also those still trying to decide whether or not to make this important change.
Please consider sharing your story in 2016. Please also encourage other people you know to share their stories. I need every story!
You do not need to have a “miracle” story. Nor do you need to be “perfect” on this diet. Nor do you need to write well or have a lot of time to write. Simply write your story as you’d tell it to a friend, and send it to me. I will help with the editing and suggest additional details as needed. This is really simple, and you can do it!
For more suggestions on how to write your story, go here: Share Your Story.
Adopt a WFPB Diet in 2016
If you are not yet eating a whole food, plant-based (WFPB) diet, why wait any longer? With the new year around the corner, now is the perfect time to begin. Recently I’ve been writing some articles for Meridian Magazine to help people get started. Whether you want to take baby steps or jump in with two feet, this series of articles can help!
- Why Start Now?” — The article focuses on the reasons why adopting a WFPB diet can be a game changer in your life and why you should consider doing this now so that you can start reaping the tremendous benefits and blessings.
- Baby Steps to a WFPB diet — There are many ways to take baby steps into a WFPB diet. In this article I outline four of them.
- Why Go Cold Turkey? — While the “baby step” approach is popular, going “cold turkey” has its own, amazing benefits. In this article, I share the compelling reasons for taking this approach.
- Strategies for Going Cold Turkey — If you’d like to go cold turkey, there are ways to be prepared that will increase your chances of being successful. In this article, I share ten key strategies for going cold turkey. (This will be published in Meridian Magazine on Tuesday, December 29.)
- Maximum Weight Loss Principles — If you are already eating a WFPB diet but you want to lose more weight, following the maximum weight loss principles is a surefire way to lose additional pounds! (If you want to get started now, see The Word of Wisdom Way to Weight Loss.)
Whichever path you take, I’m more than happy to help in any way I can. Please feel free to contact me.
WFPB Word of Wisdom Friends Map
The Word of Wisdom Friends Map is designed to help people connect with other Latter-day Saints in their local area who are interested in this lifestyle.
View the map to find others living close to you. Contact them so you can find ways to help and support each other. View the Word of Wisdom Friends Map
Please consider putting your name on the map so that others living in your area might be able to find you (and you can find them). This site is public, but only those who have the URL can find it, so it is also fairly private (your name does not show up on search engines!). Add your name to the Word of Wisdom Friends Map
Thank You!
Thanks to everyone for reading and supporting this site! I deeply appreciate your stories, comments, and emails. It is great to be part of the wonderful WFPB community.
Jane Birch
Ooooo…the map thing is wonderful, although I’m still too shy with social media to connect with others. Is that weird?
Thanks for keeping up this great work, Jane.
We had a great feast of vegan tamales and spicy un-refritos for Christmas dinner. Mmmmmm, plant food is deliciously superior.
Sounds delicious. Festive Your Way 🙂
I would encourage people, if it’s okay with Jane, to share their story even if they have struggled with staying 100% WFPB. Any shift away from the standard American diet and more toward WFPB is a plus. Most of us struggle in one way or another along our WFPB journey, but we still see benefits.
Yes, Scott! I agree. All of us struggle in one way or another. This is a long journey, not just one giant leap. I encourage anyone moving toward a whole food, plant-based diet to share their journey with the rest of us!
Once again, I want to express very openly my deepest gratitude to my and her mother’s first born child, Jane Birch, for driving all the way up to Murray, Utah from her home which is not very far from the BYU Campus in Provo, Utah, where she is employed (and where I was blessed with the opportunity of graduating from that marvelously great university on June, 1,1960 there where she is now employed); on a Sunday afternoon, back just before I turned eighty years of age to teach me, her aging father who had recently gone through a series of serious illnesses, including Type 2 Diabetes and diverticulitis,etc., most of which could have almost surely continued having a debilitating effect on her ageing father, (me, John Neil Birch, Sr.) who has now, almost reached his eighty fourth birthday, and is so blessed that he could weep for joy for the miraculous health condition he is now in, and which he surely expects could continue indefinitely,or possibly even until, the Lord has brought about His promised Millennium.
I,(J. Neil Birch) continue to be blessed with such great health to the point where I can truthfully say, “I haven’t even had a cold or a headache since she, my dear oldest child, Jane Birch, tutored me, her then ageing father, who is still aging but hasn’t been sick even with a cold or a headache since that day (I’m telling the honest truth!) when Dear daughter, Jane actually got me started in eating the Whole Food Plant Based Way or the way I most prefer saying it, “Eating the Word of Wisdom Way!”
I will turn eighty four in February of 2016! Please take it from a wiser man than I was before I began to eat the right way, please continue moving forward or continue in making the greatest change you will ever have made in your life except, perhaps, in the case of some of you, when you were baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!
Brother Birch, thanks for this gentle message. Each week I read your replies with bittersweet affection. I’d say Jane is the blessed one to have such a kind, teachable father. Instead of such a blessing, I listen to my father mock my choices and watch him suffer. Only six years younger than you, my father will not hear this message even though he suffers from the maladies you mentioned and a few more like his parents and great grandparents before him. Quick to condemn other relatives for their alcohol or drug induced diseases, he will not accept or even hear that gluttonous consumption of flesh foods and processed food products have caused his issues. Abstinence from these things could cure him or at the very least relieve most symptoms. May God continue to bless and sustain you.
So sad to hear that you father doesn’t understand the blessings of a WFPB diet. But I too am having trouble getting those I love to accept the health benefits of WFPB. My sons and sons-in-law are all genetically predisposed to obesity, heart disease, cancer, arthritis, and dementia, just as I am, yet they can’t understand (or more accurately, don’t want to understand), how a WFPB diet can trump their genes and keep them strong and healthy as they advance in age. It’s a hard sell. I feel super blessed that my wife is 100% supportive.
I will be 71 in less than a month, so I am trying to follow in your footsteps–using a WFPB lifestyle to stay healthy as I advance in age. Your story is an inspiration. Thank you, as always, for sharing your thoughts and your daughter (!).
I will be doing a story for you in 2016. You can count on it and hold me accountable. I am super ready and excited.
Yipee!! Thanks so very much, Cyndee!
I’m addressing this reply to Just Me who wrote something directly to me above. I know for sure that miracles still happen and I urge you to pray for one to take place someway or another, in your dear father’s life! Thank you for asking that God continue to bless me. I’m sure He will and through your faith He can also help you help your dear father, whom I’m sure you love very much, even though right now his being open to the help he so badly needs seems impossible!
See. I told you she was the blessed one. Thanks for your kind words.