“I told God I wasn’t going to do another diet”

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.”

I knew I needed help, so I found a plant-based doctor who specialized in diabetes. He was two hours away, but that didn’t matter, I needed help! When I had my appointment, he told me he was not a plant-based doctor, but he said he understands plant-based eating enough that if I would eat plant-based, I would not need to take the Metformin. I was thrilled to hear that! I went home with a willingness to try. On my way home from the doctor’s office, I remembered words in my patriarchal blessing: “Live the Word of Wisdom.” I broke down in tears. God had been trying to tell me this my whole life, but I never believed him.

Over the next five months I lost those 25 pounds. I am now the weight that I used to have to diet to be at and now I maintain that weight effortlessly. I eat whole foods in abundance, and my weight is steady. I have found a way of eating that has given me refuge from the diet culture.

I’ve now had so many more blessings that have come beyond the weight loss. I always had chronic constipation my whole life and now I’m regular! I have always suffered from horrible PMS and that has completely gone away. I have always had horrible allergies and asthma, gone! After years of disordered eating, I had horrible thinning hair, and it’s come back in and normalized. My blood work is amazing, and my insulin sensitivity steadily improves.

Two months after I started eating plant-based, my husband was diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic. After going plant-based himself, he has now lost 40 pounds, and we see his blood sugar numbers slowly getting better. My family has eaten this way now for almost two years. I’m so grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who gave me answers.

I am not as thin as the plant-based doctors want everyone to be and that has been frustrating to me, but God has helped me see that it’s my job to take good care of my body, and the size of my body is something I need to leave to him. The blessings of eating this way don’t come when we can step on the scale and see the number we desire. The blessings come all along the way!!

Tricia Braunersrither lives in Fort Worth, Texas with her husband Dale.  She loves being the mother to four daughters, two sons, two son in-laws and a grandma to her little grandson.  Tricia also enjoys cooking, decorating, roller coasters and working with the youth in her church. 

On Tricia’s podcast Wisdom with Trish she discusses the myths woven throughout diet culture and how we can turn to God’s wisdom to learn how to treat and feed our bodies. Here is the episode where she shares a very lively telling of her journey to whole food, plant-based: How I discovered Whole Food Plant Based nutrition and how it was an answer to prayer.