By: Rachel Echols

I grew up in a typical Latter-day Saint family in Orem, Utah. We ate the standard American diet. We always had a garden and fruit trees, but we ate a fair amount of meat, cheese, and other dairy products and our vegetables were always covered in butter or cream. When I got my patriarchal blessing as a teenager, I remember being surprised that it specifically mentioned the Word of Wisdom and that I should be careful about what I take into my body. I had never had a problem with the Word of Wisdom, which I considered to mean abstinence from drugs and alcohol, and I wondered why it was specifically mentioned. It did not occur to me at that time that it might not be referring to drugs and alcohol, but to food.

I was always thin until I got married, but soon after I started having problems keeping a healthy weight. After having my two children, I struggled to get the weight off, especially after the second one, and as the years passed, I become more and more overweight. I also experienced frequent migraines, sugar addiction, and food cravings.

I knew the Word of Wisdom counseled us to eat meat sparingly and that grains are the staff of life, but I often tried diets that did not go along with that counsel. I always excused it and thought it was a short-term thing just to help me get back down to a healthy weight. Some diets worked and some did not, but whenever I lost weight, I could never keep it off. I tried Weight Watchers, Sugar Busters, the hCG diet, and eating as little as possible while exercising excessively. Over the years I started using food as a crutch. I was addicted to sweets and other rich foods and was an emotional eater. If there was chocolate anywhere in the house, it never lasted long around me. Sometimes my husband would buy treats and hide them from me because I would finish them off while he was at work.

At one point I remember following the hCG diet and I absolutely knew I should not be doing it. I had read about several women following the diet that ended up having heart problems because of it. My mother and my maternal grandmother both had some heart problems, and I knew that it was not wise for me to be following that diet. Every day these thoughts plagued me, and I felt I was doing something Heavenly Father would not approve of. But I desperately wanted to lose weight and told myself that after I got some weight off, I would stop the diet. I thought I would be able to maintain my weight loss, but that was never the case.

I decided to start a new career after many years of being a stay-at-home mom and ended up starting pharmacy school at the age of 40. I found that my weight problem got worse in grad school. I sat all day in class, then came home and sat all night to read and study. I was staying up late to study for exams, and I was stressed out. I was also working a part-time job, and we ate out often. At school, they fed us unhealthy foods, like pizza, subs, cookies, and chips. By the time I graduated in April 2017, I had gained another 35 pounds. I was at my highest weight ever.

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By: Lesli Dustin

I am grateful I grew up with a mother who cooked from scratch and fed us healthfully for the most part. My school lunches of whole wheat bread, fruit, and homemade cookies looked a lot different from my friends’ Wonder Bread, Twinkies, and fruit roll ups. I decided to try being a vegan as a teenager. Since it was more a statement than a decision, it didn’t last long, but I did remain a vegetarian for about six years. When I got pregnant with our first child and had an intense craving for meat, I took that as my body’s message that it needed meat and that was the end of my vegetarianism for many years.

I continued in my mom’s tradition and tried to cook and eat healthfully, always aware of eating enough fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and making most of our food at home. But we ate animal foods and lots of sugary desserts. I was inspired to eliminate dairy from my diet when I was in my 30’s and was excited to experience a dramatic decrease in nasal congestion that I thought was normal because it’d been there my whole life. All of a sudden, the chronic sinus infections I’d been suffering from my entire life stopped. It felt like a miracle.

Over the years I cut down on the amount of meat I was feeding my family. Shortly thereafter I decided to stop eating it altogether, except for rare occasions, but I still cooked it several times a week for my family. That year I ate turkey on Thanksgiving and discovered that it tasted awful to me. I have always been interested in health and nutrition and reading books on these subjects, and after reading The China Study I knew the lifestyle that I was flirting with had to be right. But I also wanted to be right with Heavenly Father and not get sidetracked from the gospel by following down strange paths. As a vegetarian teenager, I had a bishop who told me that refusing to eat meat was wrong and that always bothered me. I couldn’t deny the revelation I was receiving that was pushing me in this direction, but I wanted to be sure. I went to the temple and asked Heavenly Father if being a plant-based eater was right. I opened the scriptures there in the celestial room and read the Word of Wisdom and knew I had my answer.

Though my husband is an adventurous eater and would eat my vegetarian meals, he has always loved cheese and meat, and wasn’t interested at all in changing. One night at dinner, he sat down and said, “You know, if you want to cook vegetarian all the time, I’d be okay with that.” I almost fell off my chair.

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