Jan is a wellness coach and nutrition advisor who specializes in teaching Whole Food Plant Based Eating. Jan and her husband Don, live on a 27 acre off grid bush block in the mountains of the Coromandel Peninsula - how dreamy! They love growing their own food and strive to live sustainably. This lady is filled with so much nutritional knowledge and I'm so excited that she is going to be speaking at the retreat. Her story about her journey to whole food plant based eating is down below :)
“THE FIRE IN MY BELLY”
Ours is a story of lifestyle change, more specifically dietary change, spurred on by a passion and need for better health – a refining fire that helped our overall wellbeing and both of our ‘bellys’!
I grew up in a home in Auckland in the 70’s & 80’s with a typical kiwi diet of meat and
three veg, and a weekly treat of a chocolate bar when we went grocery shopping. In the
late 70’s a few vegetarian dishes started to come to the dinner table but they were
the typical lacto ovo – high in saturated fat and low in fibre.
My mum is an excellent cook and the cake tins were always full of the most
delectable cakes and slices a kid could ever wish for. I was never a fat kid but I was
certainly well built with a few extra kilos on my frame. I am a tall person and could hide it well.
Mum taught me to cook from a young age and I followed in Mum’s footsteps and became a great cook. We all cook how our Mum’s cooked and they cook how their Mum’s cook and it goes back for generations. Generations of cooking habits formed and generations of eating the same way that is basically opening the door to many of these “silent killer” Western Lifestyle Diseases.
When my husband, Don, and I got married in 1985, we decided to ditch meat and
remain lacto ovo vegetarian. I didn’t even know the word vegan and the phrase
“Plant Based” had not even been invented.
3 years after we were married, we started a family and all three of our children were
10 pounders or close to. I was the proverbial beached whale whilst pregnant and as
a new mum, didn’t have time or give thought to my eating – after all, I was eating for
two while pregnant then breast feeding and my appearance and waistline just never
featured in my thinking.
When our youngest was 3 years old, I started working at a private preschool and the
morning and afternoon teas served to the children were a piece of fruit and 2 biscuits
– any left-over biscuits were eaten by the staff, including me. Grateful parents would
frequently bring chocolates for the staff and staff birthdays were a party for all with
cake.
The mindset was, “It’s just a little bit” but that “little bit” was a weekly and sometimes
daily occurrence and my will power was weak and mostly non-existent. I just loved
my food!!
My doctor then told me she wanted me to lose weight. I was a size 14 when I was
married and now 11 years later, I found I was buying size 16 clothing and they were
starting to get tight and I was rapidly heading for a size 18. My cholesterol was rising
and although it was never diagnosed, I was mostly likely pre-diabetic. The saturated
fat, the sugar, and much of it hidden in processed food, was catching up with me
but I didn’t realise it. After all, we were eating a really healthy vegetarian diet – or so we thought.
From the day I met my husband in April 1984, I have only ever known him to suffer
frequently from migraines and mouth ulcers – really bad mouth ulcers. Three weeks
out of four, he would have mouth ulcers and many ulcers at once, and
would sometimes join up and make one big ulcer. The ooze from the ulcers would make
him feel nauseated, he would struggle to eat, he sometimes couldn’t talk properly
and he was always in pain. The doctors would just diagnose Bonjela to attempt to numb the pain and say there is nothing you can do for them other than that. He also had really bad dandruff – he
was a walking blizzard. And in an interesting twist, he would wear out his collars and waistbands on clothing very quickly. Unbeknown to us at the time, his body was simply acidic from our lifestyle.
It was February 2007, that saw our life take a massive turn around – a life changing event.
We were invited to attend a 4 day CHIP (Complete Health Improvement Program)
summit in Rotorua. We invited my Mum to come and join us. It is hard to put in to
words just what happened there that long weekend. We sat in the convention room
that first night and listened to Dr Hans Diehl, DrHSc, MPH, FACN Clinical Professor
of Preventive Medicine, Loma Linda University, School of Medicine - a stimulating,
motivating and dynamic worldwide speaker and author. As founder of the CHIP
program, Dr. Diehl has seen the priceless benefits of the CHIP program over the past 35 years.
As an epidemiologist, Dr. Diehl understands the health crisis and delivers a powerful
lecture on reversing many of today’s western killer diseases. His sense of humour
and mind blowing, evidence based, presentation had us riveted to our seats right from
the start. For the rest of the weekend we sat front row and centre and listened to other
outstanding speakers on Lifestyle Medicine such as Dr Neal Barnard, Dr Caldwell Esselysten and Dr T Colin Campbell. To say we were ‘wide eyed and bushy tailed’ would be an understatement. We heard about a new way of living with food, that changed everything. It wasn’t just a light bulb moment; it was the point of no return for us. You could not argue with what was being presented. It made total and absolute sense – but why had we not heard this from our family
GP?? We had an entire weekend of trying the most amazing beautiful whole food
plant based meals and saw straight away how easy it was. We sat at the feet of
these incredible doctors who are more than outstanding in their field of medicine and
just soaked it all in – and there and then decided we had nothing to lose. Of course,
we didn’t realise at the time just what we were going to lose!
We came home after our weekend with the Doctors and started instantly to make
changes. We were going to give it a try. The first thing we did was get good quality
and nutritionally balanced plant based recipe books. From there we made a selection
of recipes that appealed to us, wrote a menu plan, then a grocery list to go with the
menu plan. We decided that we would do the grocery shopping together and help
each other stick to the list. You can go through a supermarket blindfolded and just
grab the same old things that you have grabbed off the shelves all your life, but for us old
habits needed to be broken. It only took 3 weeks and the new shopping habits were
installed; the new eating regime became part of our life. We also joined Jetts Gym.
Don has always been a tall skinny “bean pole” but he joined to support me and help
me “Stay on the Wagon”.
After eating this way for a month, Don mentioned that his mouth ulcers had all
healed and no new ulcers had popped up. At first, we wondered if it was a
coincidence but decided to keep going on the new regime. Then another 2 weeks
went by and no ulcers and no migraines. There is something to this we thought.
We kept on the new whole food plant based eating plan and life went on.
Our family is and always has been avid snow sports fans and skiing and snow
boarding was the focus of ours and our children’s life. Armed with a season pass
each and every ski season we would be on ‘our’ Mount Ruapehu on a frequent basis.
Sometimes using the family ski cottage at Owhango, sometimes staying with friends.
This one weekend we stayed in Taupo with friends we were skiing with. They too are
vegetarian but lacto ovo. We decided from the start of our new lifestyle that if we
were at friends for a meal, we were not going to make a fuss and say ”O, we don’t
eat that”. We just ate what they were eating and we really enjoyed the cheese
toasted sandwiches, the ice cream and the usual lacto ovo fare. Mmmmm…… we
really miss that cheese – or so we thought! After a Bluebird day on the slopes that Sunday, we started our drive home. Part way through the drive, Don said ”Argghh, my eyes
are going bad, I’ve got a migraine, you are going to have to drive”. This was followed
by 10 days of mouth ulcers.
Same scenario – different weekend. 6 weeks later. Having lunch and dinner with a
different set of lacto ovo friends in Taumaranui for a ski weekend and on the drive home,
Don had a migraine and 10 days of mouth ulcers.
So that solidified it for us! A Whole Food Plant Based lifestyle was the answer to
migraines and mouth ulcers for Don and he has never looked back.
For me, after 5 weeks at the gym I was not seeing any change, despite the combination of exercise and healthy plant based eating. I was getting despondent and told the gym staff member on duty that night that I was not going to continue. The staff member sat down with me to talk through what was happening. He said he wanted me to keep going for at least 3 months because it can take that
long to start seeing the results he said. I gasped and said “3 months!! Serious?” He then told
me that at the beginning I would be building muscle which I had not done for many years
and that the body was getting used to the metabolic changes going on. He then said the
one thing that changed everything for me; “The More Muscle You Build, The More
Fat You Burn”. That was exactly what I needed to hear and was the turning point for
me. I kept going to the gym and working even harder than the complacent way I was
working. And after another two weeks, I got on the scales and almost made a
complete fool of myself – I was so excited – I had lost 3 kgs! Things just kept on
going in the right direction with my weight and after 8 months I had gone down to a
size 12. I was so happy and people were noticing and making really positive
comments which was so cool to hear. We have stuck to our Whole Food Plant
Based lifestyle for 14 years and have never looked back. We were so passionate
about it, we both trained as C.H.I.P facilitators and I trained as a Community Health
Educator and certified Wellness Coach and Nutrition Advisor specializing in teaching
Whole Food Plant Based living. I have had the privilege of teaching classes in
Australia and through New Zealand.
One of the highlights of our journey in coaching others to make this lifestyle and dietary change was
working at Cedarvale Health & Lifestyle Retreat in Kangaroo Valley, NSW. There we
worked with people who had the full spectrum of lifestyle related illnesses. After
these people spent time at the health retreat, they were on their way to becoming
well and off their medications, living life to the full. It is amazingly fulfilling to help others through dietary and lifestyle health changes and having had a taste of this work is what keeps the “Fire In Our Belly” to keep spreading the word and keep teaching the way to good health.
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