Hello and welcome to my website. For the past 16 months I’ve been living a Whole Food Plant-Based (WFPB) lifestyle. WFPB is similar to a vegan lifestyle in that both refrain from eating any and all animal products—no meat or seafood, no dairy (milk/cheese/butter/ice cream/yogurt/etc.) and no eggs. But the WFPB focus is on eating whole, unprocessed plant-centered foods in addition to avoiding animal products. A person could consume Ruffles, Oreos and Coca~Cola and still be vegan, but not necessarily a healthy one. It’s the added sugar, salt, oil and other chemical additives that can cause problems with our health.
| FAT FACT: Just 1 tablespoon (0.5 oz.) of olive oil has almost as many calories (120) as a 12 oz. bottle of Coca~Cola (140). Olive oil and all other cooking oils are 100% fat. And as Dr. John McDougall says—“the fat you eat is the fat you wear.” |
For most of my adult life I’ve weighed 160 pounds and never had to watch what I ate. But when I reached my early forties I began gaining weight—an issue I’d never had before. At my heaviest I weighed 200 pounds, which according to the BMI (Body Mass Index) formula put me 5 pounds into the Overweight category for a person of my height (I’m 6’2″).
…and the last one is of me now—at 165 pounds
Back in 2018 I was dealing with severe lower back pain caused by what I now know is Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS), an inflammatory type of arthritis affecting the spine and large joints. My father suffers from the same condition, and we’ve since learned that my eldest son has it as well due to terrible flare-ups of lower back pain he would get for no reason.
During the summer of 2018 we took a family trip to New York City, Washington D.C. and the Carolinas (I was born and raised in North Carolina) and during the entire trip I was in tremendous pain in my lower back. I was rotating between three different types of painkillers, using a TENS unit in an attempt to zap the pain away and wearing a heavy-duty lower back brace the whole time, but nothing seemed to help. Since going WFPB I have not had ONE flare-up in my back, not even after loading and hauling all sorts of heavy stuff to the dump and loading and moving all of our belongings to our new home in August of 2019. I’ve not taken a single pain pill, used a TENS unit or had to wear a back brace for back pain since I became plant-powered. Just a few days ago I was bent over while standing for more than an hour pulling weeds in our new back yard. After I got done I felt fine. Had I attempted that two years earlier I would have been in bed for a whole day afterwards while popping pain pills like candy.
In December of 2019 I was discussing my back improvement with my oldest son (who was 27 at the time and struggling with his own back pain issues) and encouraged him to go WFPB for just one month, starting on January 1st of 2020—the perfect New Year’s Resolution. He did exactly that and saw great improvement in his back pain, so after the first month he continued eating WFPB. And as of this writing he is still pain-free and so happy that he found something to help end his pain at the source, instead of merely dulling the nerves with meds.
I recently asked my son this question: “Were there times prior to going plant-based that you would classify your back pain flare-ups as severe?”
To which he responded: “Absolutely! About the last 6 months of last year I had several where it just kinda put me out for the day. I would lay on the ground in pain, try and take ibuprofen to help get it bearable, take warm showers, try and massage it, anything to help, but nothing really did. It would ease it, but it would typically take about a whole day or two for it to go away.”
Since going Whole Food Plant-Based in January of 2020 my son hasn’t had a single flare-up—of either the mild or severe variety. And having two young children to play with and take care of, becoming free of back pain has been a major blessing in his life.
In the coming weeks and months I’ll be sharing my journey from overweight and unhealthy to slim and full of energy. I’ve learned that what we put into our bodies truly does make a difference in how we feel, look and act. One day a weird thought came to me—I would never dream of putting milk shakes, cheeseburgers and greasy french fries into my Mustang’s gas tank—it would ruin it. So why should consuming those things affect me any differently? And to that weird idea one may say, “Of course you can’t put animal products in a car’s gas tank!” And you’d be right. But we do put plant products in them. Ever heard of Ethanol®? 😊