“I was so baffled I finally decided to take it to God”

By: Cindy Balling

I was a junior in high school, job shadowing at the local hospital in the outpatient clinic. The nurse asked if I wanted my blood pressure taken. I sat down in the chair, and I will never forget her concerned face. I didn’t know the numbers, but she told me my blood pressure did not look good.

I felt helpless. I was so young. I thought I was healthy! I felt fear and embarrassment, and I was too afraid to tell anyone. I tried to stay active, but I lived a pretty sedentary lifestyle. When I went to college, I decided to major in Exercise Science and minor in Nutrition. I remember sitting in my classes and learning about how exercise can improve chronic diseases, like the one I had secretly dealt with in high school. I really wanted to help people overcome these issues. While I didn’t learn as much about nutrition’s role in weight loss, my classes made me firmly believe that exercise had far more to do with our health and weight than diet ever could. I didn’t believe nutrition was important. A calorie is a calorie, and as long as you exercise, everything will balance out. Unfortunately, I taught this very wrong principle to a lot of people as a personal trainer and exercise specialist.

After spending eight months on bed-rest while pregnant with twins, I struggled to lose the baby weight. I had been lying in bed for so long and was so weak that I couldn’t even stand on one leg. My twins had serious health problems, and exercise just seemed impossible to ever have time for between all of their doctor appointments and therapies. It forced me to focus more on diet, and I did my best to follow the principles of “clean eating,” meaning as little processed food as possible.

A few years later, I became a mother to a baby girl. She was so precious to me. So healthy! It was something I hadn’t experienced yet as a mother. I remember holding her in my arms, and instead of feeling content, I would feel fear. Fear that she would develop cancer or some other horrible disease and I would have no control over it. I would lose her and there would be nothing I could do about it. I felt it every time I held my baby, and it haunted me.

When she was a year old, I was challenged by a yoga teacher to eat a vegan diet for 10 days. I thought, “I can do that for 10 days, but I won’t go any longer, because it’s not healthy.” I had learned in my nutrition classes that vegan diets do not supply all the nutrients humans needed (boy were they wrong!).

It took less than ten days for me to feel the effects of losing the animal-based foods. I felt AMAZING! I no longer needed afternoon naps. I had so much energy! I began exercising just to burn off my energy, and exercise suddenly came so much easier to me than ever before! I decided to keep this diet going. However, I was never really satisfied and was always hungry. It led me to wonder about diet. I knew this diet wasn’t sustainable long-term because of my constant hunger, but I wanted so badly to continue.

But wait. Why did I feel so incredible on a diet that I was told in my college classes did not provide sufficient nutrients for the human body? I became so confused. I began second guessing what I had learned. Had my nutrition classes taught me lies? Or was staying on this diet causing more harm than good? I needed direction. I didn’t believe I could trust any diet information at this point. I didn’t know where to turn.

I was so baffled and untrusting of everything, even science at that point, I finally decided to take it to God. I have never in my life prayed about something like food choices. It felt a little weird to ask God how I should eat. I was inspired to read my patriarchal blessing and came across a line that I had always just read past and never thought about: “Study the Word of Wisdom and you will be more successful therein.”

Talk about an eye-opener! I immediately began my own study of the Word of Wisdom and realized that all this time the perfect diet was right there, given to us by the Perfect Dietitian, the Creator of our very beings! And the thing that was missing from my diet was the very staff of life: grains (D&C 89:14). I suddenly knew how to stay satiated!

I soon recognized that the Word of Wisdom was a whole food, plant-based diet, and I began to read and absorb all the scientific evidence backing it. As I studied, I realized that I really was in charge of my health, and my children’s’ health. If I raised them the way the Word of Wisdom said, we would have “temporal salvation” (D&C 89:2) and wouldn’t have to suffer from most chronic diseases.

I watched the documentary Forks Over Knives as part of this study, and my husband watched it with me. Having worked for five years in heart research, he didn’t believe the claims. They were too good to be true, and in those five years, a plant-based diet had never been brought up by doctors or anyone else in the hospital. The next day, he came home from work, and told me he had done some scientific research and was going to stop eating meat. The science was overwhelmingly there, but no one was talking about it.

I decided to fully follow a high-carb, plant-based diet. To see just how far-reaching its effects could be, I completely stopped exercising for three months. In those three months, I lost 40 lbs. I was shocked at the amount of weight that I could lose! I didn’t even know I was carrying that extra weight! People noticed. Boy did they ever notice! Some people couldn’t believe that kind of weight loss was possible with such simple diet changes. Some were concerned I had developed an eating disorder. Had I not known I was treating my body so well with what I was eating, as a former exercise specialist, I would have been extremely worried myself.

More important than the weight, I recognized a greater ability to understand and receive revelation, to feel the Spirit, and to serve others. I have more endurance and strength than I did prior to my diet change, whether or not I exercised. My doctor says I am in the top 10 of her healthiest patients.

But as I began to lose all of this weight, I feared for my severely underweight son. What would this diet do to him? His dieticians in the past had prescribed heavy whipping cream in his cereal instead of milk, and asked us to sauté his snack crackers in butter because he so desperately needed every calorie he could get. I took this question to God as well. It was revealed to me that even he should eat a plant-based diet, but with more plant-based fat and protein. I put my trust in God and fed him these humble vegetables, grains, and a little more beans, legumes, and as many nuts as he could ever want. He thrived! He gained more weight on a plant-based diet than he did without! How could one diet be so perfect for people on opposite ends of the weight spectrum?

It had been five years since I discovered the Word of Wisdom and changed to a plant-based diet. One day, I was sitting in church, and suddenly had a very strong feeling that it was time for me to share this way of eating with others by becoming a health coach and helping people to lose weight, keep it off for good, and treat chronic diseases through fully following the evidence-based lifestyle found in the Word of Wisdom. Never in a million years did I think those months, those years, of studying every word in D&C 89, would lead me to this place. But it must be important enough that God has entrusted me to share it with others.

God cares about our bodies. They are gifts from Him! Gifts to enjoy life with, to serve with, to climb mountains with, to worship with. He calls them temples. Would we not treat a temple with the utmost respect? Would He not want us to take the best care of these gifts as possible? He was even gracious enough to give us a manual. You can find it in D&C 89.

Cindy Balling is 34 and is a plant-based Lifestyle Medicine Coach with a Bachelor’s Degree in Exercise Science. She helps people treat and manage chronic diseases through lifestyle modifications including diet, exercise, sleep, and stress management. She and her husband have four children and currently reside in Smithfield, Utah. Together they enjoy many outdoor activities, such as hiking, slacklining, rock climbing, and kayaking.