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“My depression and anxiety slowly cleared up”

By Jane Birch · Comments (6)
Saturday, July 10th, 2021

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 feel like I found the fountain of youth!”

By Jane Birch · Comments (9)
Saturday, April 10th, 2021

By: Sandy Larson

In 2012, my mom died suddenly from a major heart attack after decades of heart disease, diabetes, and being overweight. She was 69 years old, and my five kids were young. They didn’t get enough time with their sweet grandma. Her health had not been good for many, many years. She would get out of breath climbing a flight of stairs and have to stop and rest. It was rare to ever see my mom eat fruits or vegetables. She ate a lot of fast food, drank a lot of soda, and took a ton of medications and pills. It was hard to watch her health get worse over time, and heart-breaking to lose her when she passed away.

A few years ago, in the spring of 2017, I wasn’t sleeping well and felt exhausted during the day. I had gained weight and had a closet full of clothes that didn’t fit. The idea of buying all new clothes in bigger sizes was very depressing for me. Logically, I knew I should eat less and exercise more, but it was extremely hard to avoid or limit my favorite foods, and I didn’t have the energy or desire to exercise. I found myself getting out of breath climbing stairs too, just like my mom, which was scary.

I felt like I needed to get in shape and start eating better, but it was really hard to do. We were eating lots of meat with every meal, plus lots of cheese, butter, eggs, ice cream, and desserts every day. Cutting down on portions or trying to count calories didn’t seem to work, and I felt like a failure. While we cooked most of our meals at home and we did eat fruits and veggies, we loved to get pizza or fast food several times a week and go to restaurants and ice cream shops to celebrate birthdays and any kind of special occasion.

I wanted to lose weight and have more energy, but I wasn’t sure where to begin. Everyone I knew was on a different diet, and I felt confused about what was healthy and what was not. There were just too many conflicting opinions. It reminded me of Joseph Smith’s words, as he was searching for the truth about religion. He said, “In the midst of this war of words and tumult of opinions, I often said to myself: What is to be done? Who of all these parties are right; or, are they all wrong together? If any one of them be right, which is it, and how shall I know it?” (Joseph Smith History 1:10.) I started praying for guidance and understanding. I needed to know how to get healthy and help my husband and kids be healthy.

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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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“This whole experience has been guided by an angel”

By Jane Birch · Comments (6)
Saturday, April 18th, 2020

By: Ellen Bench

I was born on the island of Mauritius, surrounded by the Indian Ocean (1,200 miles east of Africa). Our diet there was mainly grains, fruits, and vegetables. We ate meat or fish on the weekends only.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was not in Mauritius when I lived there, so none of my family were members. I went to England when I was 18 years old to study nursing. I met the missionaries there and joined the Church. Three and a half years later I was called on a mission to Tahiti. After serving in Tahiti, I moved to America. I married at age 28 and had my first child at age 29.

I started having serious health challenges in my late thirties, some of which included hay fever, insomnia, pre-diabetes and a tumor in my uterus! Those health challenges were not fun. I just did not feel good most of the time.

I prayed to know how to get healed, and it was given to me slowly and surely. I first felt impressed to give up carbonated drinks. Then God guided me to be vegetarian. My diet changed even more when I met Tom Rodgers. He was a vegan who gave lectures weekly at the Bountiful, Utah library. I prayed to know if it was true and right for me. I decided to be totally vegan too. Fortunately, it was not hard for me to eat this way. Slowly and gradually, my health challenges dissipated.

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Categories : Married-1 WFPB, Stories
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“I received a very strong personal revelation, telling me that this is the answer to my prayers”

By Jane Birch · Comments (2)
Saturday, June 8th, 2019

By: Patricia Gausnell

My husband and I joined the church as newlyweds when I was 18 years old. I had a strong testimony as soon as I started studying the gospel, and when I learned about the Word of Wisdom, it was not hard for me to accept it. But the parts about meat didn’t mean a lot to me then. I realize that I had never in my life thought for a moment that our diets might have something to do with our health.

One day when I was 24 and going through a difficult time in my life, I happened to pick up two Prevention magazines (a publication devoted to good health practices.) I read them from cover to cover, and was amazed. It was like a bright light went on in me, opening up a whole new world. I became obsessed with nutrition and natural healing. I studied everything I could get my hands on about health. I spent hours at the supermarket, reading labels.

At that time we had two children who had been raised on Carnation Milk and antibiotics. We went on to have 6 more, including a set of triplets, none of whom ever needed an antibiotic. The triplets were born healthy and we took two of them home at 3 days old, and the other at 11 days.

I bought a wheat grinder and used only whole grains in cooking. I grew a large organic garden every year and preserved as much of our food as possible. We also raised some of our own meat, milk and eggs. In the back of my mind, I always wanted to eat less meat, but my husband and I were both from families of macho hunters and farmers. So I didn’t always try very hard. For a period of time, I did try to be more vegetarian. I remember one time my son said, “Mom, I am a 125 pound quarterback; I need steaks and roasts.”

In spite of the fact that I have studied nutrition for nearly 50 years, in the past few years, I had become very confused about what we should eat. I tried nearly every diet that came along. The Atkins diet, the Slender Lady diet, the Wheat Belly diet, the Ketogenic diet, the Undoctored diet, and the Plant Paradox diet. I usually could lose a few pounds, but not nearly as much as needed. And I never felt very good about them, because none of them went along with the Word of Wisdom.

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“I have discovered the Fountain of Youth”

By Jane Birch · Comments (11)
Saturday, February 3rd, 2018

By: Jamie Douglass

My whole life, since I was 16, I have yo-yo dieted. I had a boyfriend tell me that I could lose a hundred pounds and I would still be fat. Even though I knew he was exaggerating on the amount, his message was very clear to me, you will never be skinny enough. So, I turned to the world in telling me how I should eat to look good and feel good. I have tried every diet out there, and I could never stick with any of them.

This last summer, I ordered a new diet supplement. I felt so crummy and was desperate to try anything. I had been dealing with years of chronic fatigue, chronic sinus infections, and chronic headaches. My new supplement came in the mail on a Thursday but on Friday I was starting a fast over a personal struggle and decided to wait to start the new supplement.

During my fast, I became surprised when I got an overwhelming feeling that I should not start the new diet supplement. Confused as to why I was getting these feelings when I wasn’t even thinking about that, the words entered my mind, “Jamie, the Lord has provided a Law of Health.” It was if a light bulb when on in my head, and I remember thinking, “Duh, the Word of Wisdom.” I went to D&C 89 and immediately gained greater insight into the diet portion of the Word of Wisdom and specifically the instruction on the use of meat. I was blown away that this portion of the Word of Wisdom has never really been discussed or talked about.

I grew up on a dairy farm and meat was a staple in our home. I love my parents, they are wonderful examples to me and I wouldn’t trade anything for my upbringing. There are so many benefits to growing up on a farm. Learning hard work was one of them. Anyway, two days later I was at a good friend’s home and as I was walking out the door she said, “I feel you need to read this book” and gave me the book Discovering the Word of Wisdom. I got halfway through the book and didn’t even finish it. I knew it was true and immediately transitioned over to a plant based diet. I have since been on a journey of diving deep into the doctrines and teachings of this part of the Word of Wisdom. I am a nurse and so I have also been studying the science side of a whole food, plant-based diet, as well as the benefits.

Six months later here are the results Read More→

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“It was like a huge light bulb going off in my head”

By Jane Birch · Comments (13)
Saturday, November 5th, 2016

cheri-and-david-meinersBy: Cheri J. Meiners

When I was about six years old, it was determined that I had an allergy to wheat, chocolate, strawberries and several other foods. I broke out in hives when I ate them. It was hard to cheat since my mother was careful about eliminating those foods, and all the lunch ladies at school knew what I couldn’t have on my tray!

As a teenager, I tested positive for several environmental allergies, which required weekly shots. On my mission in Italy, I gave myself the weekly injections. After my mission, I saw an alternative doctor who recommended a diet that was very close to the Word of Wisdom. I eliminated processed foods and sugar, and I ate meat and cheese only as condiments. I also took various food supplements. With these changes, I felt that my health greatly improved.

I tried to live this lifestyle when I married and had my family of six children, although we had much more “junk food” in the house than I used to eat. My greatest health challenge was during a period of great stress in my life. People asked if I had been under a heat lamp because the skin on my face and upper body spontaneously burned and peeled. My eyes, especially, were often painfully swollen and burning, and during flare-ups it was difficult to maintain my rigorous schedule with six young children. During this time I was extremely diligent about following the eating regimen I had followed earlier. After several months, the condition eventually cleared up. I also lost 45 pounds and was at my goal weight.

As time passed and I felt better, I didn’t feel the urgency to be so strict with my diet. I gained back weight, and I started to have various joint and other aches that seemed to be a part of aging. At age 49, I began going to the gym 3-5 times a week to improve my health. I never lost weight over this seven-year period, but the exercise did stabilize my weight during this time.

In November 2014, I read an article by Jane Birch in Meridian Magazine. The first article I read was a bit shocking to me. Even though I had previously tried to avoid meat and dairy (and was allergic to eggs), I had never really considered it feasible or healthy to totally eliminate animal products, much less oil. The next time I read one of her articles, however, I was convinced by the logic, and it felt right. I decided to try it.

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“I had the good fortune to get food poisoning”

By Jane Birch · Comments (17)
Saturday, September 24th, 2016

claron-twitchellBy: Claron Jon Twitchell, Sr.

I grew up with a standard American diet typical of the 1950s and 60s—certainly better than what most people eat today. It was home cooking, not fast food. There was not a focus though on how to apply the Word of Wisdom to our diet.

I remember when I first read Doctrine and Covenants Section 89, probably when I was a twelve-year-old deacon, I thought, “We have bacon for breakfast, sandwiches with lunch meat for lunch, and chicken or beef for supper. That doesn’t seem like eating meat sparingly to me. Where is the famine?” That was in the back of my mind, but I didn’t do anything about it until I was in my forties.

When I was in my mid-forties, my main fitness activity was riding my bicycle. I commuted to work two or three times a week when the weather was okay, which gave me a baseline of four to six hours of vigorous activity each week. I threw in some recreational basketball, yard work and a little hiking and such. I still had a standard American diet: meat, a little fast food, dairy, eggs, and so forth.

I felt fairly healthy, however, I was still gaining a few pounds each year after age 37. I started thinking, “I need to do something different or I am going to soon pass 200 pounds.” I drew a line in the sand to stay under 200 pounds and started thinking, “What should I do?” With a job, a family, and church responsibilities, I just didn’t want to spend more time exercising.

I started thinking that I might need to change my diet some way. My diet tended toward a “see food diet.” I pretty much ate whatever was in front of me until I was full. It occurred to me that there were a fair amount of calories in the meat that I ate. Then there was that thought in the back of my mind since my youth, that we weren’t really following the Word of Wisdom with eating meat. Now the stage was set.

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“I haven’t had a single migraine headache in years”

By Jane Birch · Comments (7)
Saturday, September 3rd, 2016

Stacey PetersonBy: Stacey Peterson

My journey to a whole food, plant based diet was a gradual process that began in 2010 and took six years to fully implement. Nights home alone plus a Netflix subscription led me to watch several food and diet-related documentaries over the years such as Hungry For Change, Fed Up, Food, Inc., and one of my favorites, Forks Over Knives. For the first time in my life I started to actually think about what I was putting into my body and how it was affecting me. I’d never struggled with my weight, but I knew that weight wasn’t the only indicator of health, and I did suffer with frequent and debilitating sinus infections and migraine headaches. I didn’t feel right about the powerful medications and their frightening side effects that doctors were prescribing for me. I really felt strongly that my body wasn’t designed to be sick and that my ailments would benefit more from prevention than from questionable medications to mask the symptoms.

As I read and researched for my own health, I couldn’t help but think about my babies—the loves of my life who I would do anything and everything to protect. When I set plates of food in front of them, I wondered if what I was putting into their bodies was helping or hurting them. What was I teaching them that “food” is? How was I training their taste buds? Since I was choosing their food, did that mean I was also choosing health consequences for their little bodies that could possibly last a lifetime, without their say in the matter?

I continued reading books on nutrition, studying, learning, and gradually replacing harmful ingredients with better choices one at a time as my knowledge increased. I think high fructose corn syrup was the first thing to go. Hey, we all have to start somewhere! One change led to another, and by the time 2016 rolled around, I couldn’t remember the last time the inside of our fridge had seen a gallon of cow’s milk, a carton of eggs, a block of cheese, or a piece of meat. They had been replaced by a wide variety of whole grains, nuts, seeds, legumes, fruits, and vegetables, and we were enjoying our meals more than ever before. We sure had come a long way since the high fructose corn syrup ban!

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“The inspiration I received was to read the Word of Wisdom”

By Jane Birch · Comments (25)
Saturday, November 14th, 2015

Candice BithellBy: Candice Bithell

For over 20 years I have struggled with stomach issues, asthma, and horrible seasonal allergies. My stomach issues and severe allergies both began when I was about 17 years old. I struggled with nausea, bloating, reflux, and diarrhea. I would get horrible hay fever every year that lasted from about April until October. I would get sinus infections. I was put on two allergy medications, including a sinus spray that I used for 26 years to prevent the sneezing, sniffling, watery eyes, and sinus infections.

I saw my first gastroenterologist at the age of 24 because I was having severe pain in my chest and food felt like it was coming back up when I ate. The gastroenterologist ordered a series of tests including an endoscopy, colonoscopy, barium swallow, nasogastric testing, etc. When I went in for my results I was told that every test was POSITIVE. I was diagnosed with H. pylori, reflux, esophageal spasm, esophageal stricture, and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS-D). I was put on a handful of pills everyday, but I still struggled with stomach problems. It was during this same time that I was diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma and began taking an inhaler everywhere I went.

I lived this way for a long time, always looking for something to help my stomach. I discovered I was lactose intolerant and stopped eating dairy, which helped a little, but not enough. Over the years I have taken pills for nausea, pills for diarrhea, pills to slow down my digestive process, pills, pills, pills. About seven years ago my doctor discovered that I had hyperinsulinemia and was pre-diabetic. I stopped eating sugar, but I replaced it with sugar-free stuff, which hurt my stomach a lot. I felt like I couldn’t eat anything!

Because I was active, I thought I was healthy, but I was very thin and my diet was lousy. I took up distance running four years ago and struggled with what is known as “runners gut.” I would run with a feeling of nausea almost everyday.

Then about two years ago, I had a powerful spiritual experience in the temple. I felt the love of my Savior very, very strongly. I was going through some difficult things, and I really needed that feeling. It got me through that time, but I wanted that feeling all of the time, so I began to pray about what I needed to change. This led me to a path that included trying to do the will of my Heavenly Father and following the promptings for changes that needed to be made.

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