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Visit www.LoveChard.com to learn more about Bethany and Zane
There is nothing I love more than sharing inspiring stories of transformation with you.
Though the particular circumstances of each story is different, the core message is the same.
Each and every one of us has the potential to change our lives, radically transform our well-being, take charge of our health, and wake up every day looking and feeling incredible.
It’s never too late. No step is too small. It’s just about deciding to own your well-being and continuing to show up, day in and day out.
Whew, I could go for hours, but before I really launch into a sermon let’s segue shall we?
Today, it is my privilege to introduce you to Bethany and Zane.
As she describes it, Bethany had been on one diet or another for pretty much her whole life. She counted calories, watched portions, skipped meals, but nothing ever stuck. She would eventually cave and go back to her old ways.
She talks about the struggles of being overweight — how little things like tying shoes, getting in and out of the car, climbing a flight of stairs, or crossing legs at a table used to be a challenge.
Finally, in the summer of 2013, she watched a Dr. Fuhrman documentary on PBS about the power of a plant-based lifestyle and everything clicked.
She switched to a plant-based diet and quickly lost 65 lbs.
Her then fiance, now husband, Zane was supportive of the changes that she was making, but he wasn’t yet willing to jump on board.
Finally, on a drive back from Seattle, Bethany asked Zane join her for a 100-day challenge that she was about to embark on, and he agreed. He never looked back and went on to lose over 70 lbs in just six months.
They have since lost a combined total of over 150 lbs! Bethany dropped from a size 18-20 to a 6-8. Zane dropped from a size 38 waist to a size 31.
In addition to the weight loss, they report feeling stronger, more motivated, and positive. They go on mud runs and hikes, and their relationship is better than ever.
I asked Bethany and Zane to share their story, and we dive into some of the challenges they faced and how they overcame them.
There are many valuable nuggets in this interview, but I think one of the biggest lessons we can learn from Bethany and Zane is how to change your lifestyle without giving up your social life.
They share how they manage to be social AND stay on track, and Zane has an especially important insight to share on how he got his friends to support him.
Watch the interview and learn:
Show notes:
Bethany and Zane’s transformation inspired them to help others by starting the Love Chard Community.
They offer support for the transition into a healthier and happier lifestyle through coaching, pantry and fridge overhauls, offering shopping list and guides, helping you work through obstacles, setting and achieving your goals, exploring new whole foods, and learning how to prepare dishes and create recipes.
Visit www.LoveChard.com for more information.
What did you learn from this success story that you can apply in your own life? Let us know in the comments below. We read every single one.
Help inspire others with your success. Have a success story to share whether big or small? We’d love to hear about it.
We will never sell your information or spam you, ever.
Matt Jager is a wellness activist, yogi and co-founder of True Wellth. His life mission is to transform the healthcare and food system in this country, so that every single person has access to the tools and support they need to look and feel their best, control their health, own their happiness and revolutionize their well-being.
When I first changed my diet, I was SO naive.
I’d never made a concerted effort to lose weight or get healthy before. I would occasionally lift weights, but I certainly wasn’t that into fitness.
So I hadn’t read the books, perused the articles or had any idea of the Pandora’s box of dietary theories that awaited me.
My sole source of nutritional information was a handful of resources that my yoga teacher had sent me on the benefit of raw foods. (Thanks Sujita!)
And reading through those early books on raw food, I thought that I was learning “THE WAY” to health, happiness, longevity and long flowing hair (ok not the hair one).
It wasn’t until a couple months later that I headed on down to my library and checked out Rainbow Green Live Food Cuisine by Dr. Gabriel Cousens.
And alas the edifice of my previously unadulterated nutritional paradigm began to crumble.
You see Dr. Cousens recommended avoiding mushrooms, while all the raw food resources that I had read previously gave mushrooms a big thumbs up.
HOW COULD THIS BE?! WHO WAS I TO BELIEVE????!!!!
And so I was exposed to the cold hard reality of the nutrition world. Everybody, absolutely everybody, has an opinion on the right way. And they couldn’t be more conflicting.
These days, I can’t turn a corner these days without encountering extreme examples of conflicting health advice.
Maybe I’m more tuned in than I was previously, but I feel like the nutritional confusion has reached a fever pitch.
There is controversy about juicing, smoothies, raw food, coconut oil, oils in general, algaes, alternative sweeteners, saturated fat, potatoes, starch, protein, fat, carbohydrates, the correct ph of water, omega 3’s vs omega 6’s, cruciferous veggies, wine, coffee, chocolate and on and on and on and on and on.
Here is one particularly telling example:
Hmm, interesting. How about a slightly different opinion?
My aim here is not to share my individual opinion about who is right, but to point out how conflicting these messages are.
We have two diametrically opposed examples from from supposedly credible sources — an M.D. and The Washington Post.
Who do we trust? How do we know what works?
What if we invest a ton of time, energy, willpower and money into something that ends up being snake oil?
What if we spend years turning down bacon that we REALLY want to eat and it turns out that the paleo folks were right?!
Oh the horror!
What if your needling husband who thinks you are crazy for eating only veggies ends up healthier than you because you ended up following the wrong plan??!
Yes, there is a lot at stake.
And the sad fact of all this controversy is that it prevents us from making progress.
It makes us waver, it makes us question what we are doing, and it makes it a lot more likely that we’ll just say ah screw it and go tuck into a delicious dinner of pringles topped with ez cheese.
You might be hoping that I’m about to lay down the holy grail of nutritional truth — tell you who is right and who is wrong.
And though that would oh so much fun, it just ain’t quite that easy folks. (Especially since I’m neither a doctor nor a nutritionist.)
Instead, I can share with you some principles that I use to navigate the jungle of information, and give you a framework that can help you make it through unscathed.
The biggest lesson that I can impart is that this is a journey of self-discovery.
You have to learn how to think for yourself, sort good science from bad, and become your own one-person science experiment.
At the end of the day, you have to be the CEO of your health.
So let’s dive in!
In today’s landscape of sensationalist articles and opposing viewpoints, it’s so easy to lose the forest for the trees.
One of the biggest mistakes that I made as a beginner was spending so much time worrying about minutiae and controversies that I lost track of the big picture.
After six years exploring these issues, I’d guess that worrying about these details and trying to do the right thing had almost zero impact on my health.
In fact, the stress of trying to figure them out probably ended up having a greater negative impact than any physical health benefit that I would have gained from getting these details just right.
That’s right, I think I would’ve been better off just ignoring all the controversy altogether!
In Michael Pollan’s New York Times bestseller In Defense Of Food, he boils all the conflicting nutritional advice into just seven words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
It doesn’t get any simpler than this.
Now this is a tough question, because again, I’m not a doctor or a nutritionist.
At some point all these small choices do make a difference. If you are following a perfect plant-based diet and are still unable to lose weight, or if you have a chronic health condition that refuses to improve, the devil just may be in the details.
Maybe worrying about oxalates in greens and lectins in beans is important. And at some point you do have to put in your due diligence, do your research, and look at the objective measurements that we have available to us to make sure that we are on track.
More on this later on.
But my hunch is that for the majority of us, especially those in the beginning stages of moving on from the Standard American Diet, the bigger problem is worrying too much about the details.
For example, in Julieanna Hever’s book The Vegiterranean Diet, she suggests that the Mediterranean Diet has been shown to be effective in spite of the emphasis on fish, olive oil and red wine. Not because of it.
In my quest to understand which diet is best, I’ve seen amazing success stories with raw food, plant-based (no oil), plant-based (with oil), high-carb and low-fat, low-fat and high-carb.
And when I look at the common denominators of all these success stories, I see the same three things:
Done.
My (completely unscientific) hypothesis is that just focusing on whole plant foods is the big win that will get you at least 80-90% where you want to go.
I doubt a single medical professional would disagree on that general outline. Eat less processed foods. Eat more greens and vegetables.
All the controversy lies in the details.
Note: Please do not take this as a substitute for medical advice. See your doctor before changing your diet.
As I mentioned above, focusing on the “big wins” and ignoring the small controversies is the way to drastically simplify your life, and thus radically improve your chances of success.
In this case, just focusing on eating real foods that are plant-based is the big win that will get you 80 – 90% where you want to go.
This is especially important when you are first beginning the journey of changing your diet and lifestyle.
If you are just starting out, just pick a plan and go with it. Choose whatever plan resonates with you the most and seems realistic.
That last part is important. Try to pick something that feels realistic. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Set yourself up for success.
Now, follow that plan to the best of your ability for at least a month.
I know you are making these life changes for a very specific reason: To lose weight, to get off meds, to have more energy, reverse a serious health condition, etc.
I know you want results, and you want them fast! But even if you aren’t seeing results during this first month, do not waver.
Remember, changing your diet and lifestyle comes with a learning curve. In the early stages you are learning how to prepare healthier foods, you are learning how to navigate difficult social situations, to say no to cravings, etc.
Make this early stage about learning these key competencies and training yourself to follow through, regardless of what the specifics of the plan are.
In one study published in the Journal of the American Medical Assocation, vastly different diets achieved similar results. The most important factor in both weight loss and health outcomes was whether or not the participant adhered to the diet.
If you can learn these key skills and learn to follow-through, it’s only a matter of time before you reach your goal. This follow-through matters so much more than worrying about nutritional minutia IN THE BEGINNING.
After the initial month, if you aren’t getting the results you want, then it’s time to start looking at numbers, making substitutions, and tweaking things in order to get your nutritional program just right.
Once you’ve built the foundation and learned how to change your diet and follow through, you can optimize your diet to speed up the weight loss, or reverse a specific chronic condition.
So how do you overcome nutritional confusion in the beginning? Ignore it completely. Pick a plan and follow through to the best of your ability.
You are much more likely to fail from giving up than making some nutritional mis-step.
When starting out, the biggest foes to your plant-based success are overwhelm. That’s why I recommend just picking a plan and sticking to it.
There is a dark side to Michael Pollan’s advice to Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
The issue? I can justify all sorts of bad choices and still follow that 7-word guideline!
It’s easy to delude ourselves into thinking that we have the healthiest diet imaginable when we are within the guidelines of any given plan.
In my early days as a raw-foodist, I assumed anything labeled raw would be healthy. Even double chocolate ganache cheesecakes loaded with (unrefined) sugar.
And when the amount of (unrefined) sugar I was consuming caused lots of issues, I did a pretty good job of ignoring them because I was so committed to believing that my diet was the healthiest diet imaginable.
Which is why it is important to introduce some objective measurements into the picture.
These are the anchors that give us a measure of whether or not our diet is working, and to make sure that we are making the right choices within the confines of whatever plan we are on.
How you are feeling is of course important. Do you have more energy? Are you sleeping better? Do you feel rested, vibrant, have more pep-in-your-step?
It’s good to ask these questions, but also to back up your subjective experience with some objective data.
So yes, step on the scale, take your measurements, and make a plan with your healthcare practitioner to get your labs done regularly.
If you’d like to find a doctor that is supportive of a plant-based diet, you can find one here.
What labs to order is beyond the scope of this article, but these resources are good starting points:
Wow, that was a long post. Here’s the cliff notes version to wrap up.
Once you have established the basic habits of healthy eating, it becomes a lifelong journey of self-discovery. Understand that you are a science experiment of one and the CEO of your own health and well-being.
It’s up to you to sort through the controversies, measure your own experience with the best that science has to offer, and cultivate an open mind.
If you are more interested in the truth than defending your own position, you will find it.
Finally, it’s easy to get off track on whatever plan we are on. If I’m getting off track, then I take a step back, look at my diet and ask these questions.
Start there. Keep it simple. And good luck!
Have you struggled with making sense of conflicting health information? What is the most difficult question you have struggled with? Do you have a method of sorting through the mis-information? Share it below in the comments!
We will never sell your information or spam you, ever.
Matt Jager is a wellness activist, yogi and co-founder of True Wellth. His life mission is to transform the healthcare and food system in this country, so that every single person has access to the tools and support they need to look and feel their best, control their health, own their happiness and revolutionize their well-being.
I’ve never been much of a chef. So it drives me crazy when someone says something like, “oh, just taste it and see what it needs.”
I flashback to spending all this time in the kitchen trying to fix a sauce that wasn’t turning out.
Here’s what “just see what it needs” looked like to me:
Ah the joy of learning how to cook! Eventually I did get better, but I still lack that innate skill that others have.
And it’s funny because when you become proficient at something, you totally forget what it was like to be a beginner.
There is an actual term for this phenomenon — psychologists call it the Curse of Knowledge.
It basically means that once you learn the ropes, you lose touch with what it was like to be a novice starting from scratch. It becomes difficult to relate.
I think this is one of the reasons why so much of the health advice out there doesn’t hit home. The experts have totally forgotten what it’s like when you are just starting out!
I recently had the opportunity to interview Lindsay Nixon of Happy Herbivore fame, and she talked about the process of helping her parents go plant-based.
She said it was eye-opening to see just what it meant to completely revamp your diet at 60, and she was able to gain a whole new perspective and appreciation for what it truly means to be a beginner.
I still remember what it was like having no idea what I was going to eat, shopping for ingredients that I had never heard of, trying to figure out if I was indeed going to spend $20 on this strange substance in a jar called “coconut oil.”
And is it any different than coconut butter?!?! I’m still not sure…
Luckily, there are more resources than ever to make transitioning to a plant-based diet as easy as possible.
And today I’m thrilled to share my interview with Lindsay, where we discuss the joys, trials and travails of our plant-based journeys, and her latest book The Happy Herbivore Guide to Plant-Based Living.
Watch the interview and learn:
Show notes:
Lindsay has gained some serious wisdom over the past several years, helping hundreds if not thousands of people transition to a plant-based diet.
Her guide is the resource that I wish I had as a beginner. Heck, I might even have avoided all those painful (and pretty ridiculous) mistakes I made along the way!
I joke that she has put together the bible on plant-based living. I highly recommend it, especially if you are just starting out on your plant-based journey.
She covers all the common questions on nutrition, how to transition, traveling, etc.
But my favorite aspect of the book is the focus on how to deal with social situations. She has extremely helpful advice on how to attend or host dinner parties, what to do when your friends ask you out to eat, and what to do if your family and friends are unsupportive.
The social aspect continues to be the most difficult thing for me, so I was excited to see so much good info in the book.
If you are interested in learning more about her book, it is available on Amazon.
Lindsay and her publisher BenBella Books have been gracious enough to provide two copies of her book to our community, and you can enter to win!
We’ll be randomly selecting two recipients (see entry details below) and notifying the winners on Saturday, June 27th.
UPDATE: The give away has now ended. Congratulations to Stacy and Casey!
Here’s how to enter:
*Note: Only open to residents of the US and Canada
We will never sell your information or spam you, ever.
Matt Jager is a wellness activist, yogi and co-founder of True Wellth. His life mission is to transform the healthcare and food system in this country, so that every single person has access to the tools and support they need to look and feel their best, control their health, own their happiness and revolutionize their well-being.
When it comes to health, I believe joy is the key to sustainability.
Plant-strong works long-term because it’s not about restriction, deprivation, counting calories or other forms of socially accepted self-torture we like to call dieting.
Instead we can celebrate awesome nutritious meals and delectable dishes that are made of super fresh, vibrant, wholesome, and nurturing ingredients.
We don’t have to give up comfort food, dessert, snacks, treats, or the enjoyment and satisfaction of a hearty delicious meal.
Instead, we can “trade up,” exchanging unhealthy options for a version that supports our desire to live a healthier life.
And this helps cultivate the right relationship with food as a wonderful and important piece a balanced, joyful, and fun-filled life.
Julieanna is a nutritionist, best-selling author, and has been featured on the Dr. Oz Show among many other noteworthy accomplishments.
Her material is always extremely well-researched and succinctly presented, and she has a special gift for condensing a ton of information into one or two easy take aways.
The Vegiterranean Diet is all this and more, but what I loved most was how she channels the culture of the Mediterranean to share her passion not just for health, but for life.
Picture long dinners shared amongst friends, celebrating life, food, and friendship with beautiful ocean views.
In order to stay on plan long-term, we have to make things fun, delicious, abundant, joyful, and just a touch indulgent. This book is just the catalyst we need.
I had the privilege of interviewing Julieanna about her new book, and I know you’ll love her approach as well as the facts.
Watch The Interview And Learn:
Show Notes:
Julieanna’s publisher Da Capo Press was kind enough to offer two free copies of her book to our community.
I’ll be randomly selecting two recipients and notifying the winners on Tuesday January 6th, 2015.
UPDATE: The deadline is now closed. Congratulations to our winners Rachel and Karen!
Here’s how to enter:
*Note: Only open to residents of the US and Canada
We will never sell your information or spam you, ever.
Matt Jager is a wellness activist, yogi and co-founder of True Wellth. His life mission is to transform the healthcare and food system in this country, so that every single person has access to the tools and support they need to look and feel their best, control their health, own their happiness and revolutionize their well-being.
