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You can contact Tami directly via email at tami@nutmegnotebook.com – for technical support on courses or videos, contact tom@nutmegnotebook.com
We all have a story – here is a glimpse at mine.
I have been happily married to Tom, the love of my life since 1979. We are both originally both from Nebraska but have lived in Northern California most of our married life. We have two amazing adult children, a terrific son in law and three beautiful grandchildren. We feel blessed beyond measure.
In 2009 I started my first food blog. At that time I followed what I considered to be a healthy version of the Standard American diet. I blogged about those recipes and my ups and downs with weight loss. At my highest weight I wore a size 16! I have spent most of my adult life yo-yo dieting. What a terrible way to live.
My plant-based journey began in 2012 after a yearly physical when my physician advised me that if the upward trend of my LDL cholesterol continued, he would have to put me on a statin drug. I expressed my concerns about taking a statin whereby he informed me that it was simply genetics. In his opinion, I was already doing everything right, exercising, watching my weight and eating a balanced standard American diet. “Imagine if you weren’t already doing these things,” he said. I left feeling a bit confused but determined to show him I would not be going on a statin drug. I didn’t know yet, what I needed to do, but I was determined to figure it out.
I have a family medical history of heart disease, hypertension diabetes, obesity and Alzheimer’s. Being in my mid 50’s at that time I was becoming more concerned with my overall health. I had already started cleaning up my standard American diet, and eliminating processed foods. Looking towards the future I wanted to prevent whatever diseases I could. Dieting had become a way of life for me. I could lose weight but maintaining the weight loss eluded me. I also wanted to get to a healthy weight and stay there.
I started doing some online research and read about a whole food plant-based diet. As luck would have it, I happened to see Dr Fuhrman on a PBS special talking all about his Eat to Live program. I was intrigued by the information he was sharing and bought his book. We were in the middle of planning our daughter’s wedding, so I set aside the notion of such a big dietary change during an exciting, but hectic time in our lives. I planned on revisiting the idea post wedding.
In 2013 I read the Eat to Live book again and started watching some YouTube videos and documentaries about a plant-based lifestyle. Watching the Forks Over Knives documentary was a big wake up call. After watching it, I knew I had to adopt a whole food plant exclusive lifestyle. When I learned about the correlation between diet and cancer, I also knew this was the best lifestyle choice for my husband, whose family medical history includes a variety of deadly cancers.
Armed with all this new exciting information I mustered up the courage to sit down with my meat-loving husband, and tell him what I wanted to do. He had always lovingly supported my weight loss and healthy lifestyle choices and this time was no different. He did however request that I not push him into a corner by insisting that he also give up animal products. He was happy to eat whatever I fixed at home, but he still wanted the freedom to choose what he wanted to eat away from home. It was a good compromise. However, he discovered that he felt so much better when he ate fully plant based that he too, chose to give up animal products all together.
I will be the first to admit that in the beginning I had difficulty wrapping my head around what our plant-based meals were going to look like. Everything I made was delicious, satisfying and filling. Our family and friends were also loving the new plant-based dishes we were sharing with them.
About a year after adopting this new lifestyle I started having some unusual symptoms. Difficulty sleeping, hair loss, lack of energy, dry skin and even some abdominal weight gain. I hadn’t changed anything about my food or exercise, so I was shocked at what was happening. My doctor ordered some tests and we discovered that I had hypothyroidism. (I am pretty sure my thyroid was malfunctioning prior to going plant based as I had some similar but less dramatic symptoms the year before, but my test results had come back within the normal range at that time.) Once I started taking thyroid medication my symptoms went away and I felt normal again. However, the extra pounds I gained when my thyroid stopped functioning properly would not budge.
It was around this time that I learned about an online program that Chef AJ and John Pierre had created to help people get healthy and achieve a permanent healthy weight. I signed up and began the program in February of 2015. The basic principles I was taught are modeled after Dr Goldhamer’s True North Health Center in Santa Rosa, CA. It is a whole plant food exclusive diet, free of salt, oil, sugar, flour and alcohol.
It was a turning point for me. For the first time I was introduced to the concept of calorie density which is a measure of the calorie content of food relative to its weight or volume. This lifestyle program promotes choosing the lower calorie dense foods such as fruits, vegetables and unrefined complex carbohydrates like potatoes, grains and legumes. The idea is that when you choose the foods that are lower calorie density and higher in water and fiber, your body will feel satisfied even while you are losing weight. These lower calorie density foods also happen to be nutrient dense and health promoting.
I read “The Pleasure Trap” book by Dr Doug Lisle and Dr Alan Goldhamer. It explained why I had been a chronic dieter – I was continually getting caught in the pleasure trap! Before reading their book, I thought I was emotionally broken because I was unable to lose weight and keep it off. Now I realize that I was trying to eat food like substances that hijacked my brain and were never intended by the food industry to be eaten in moderation. Processed foods are engineered to be addictive to promote repeat sales without any regard to the consumers health.
It was with this fine tuning of my plant-based lifestyle that I was finally able to lose the extra weight and keep it off. I weigh 49 pounds less than I did at my highest weight. I was a size 16 at my heaviest weight and now have maintained at a size 4! I still follow the principles of calorie density to maintain my healthy weight. I love the food I eat.
We have experienced many benefits from our lifestyle choices. My husband Tom and I saw significant changes in our LDL cholesterol within those first months and continued improvement over time. The osteoarthritis in my knees subsided, the weekly headaches went away, and cravings are non existent. I had a colonoscopy in 2013 and had six benign polyps removed. After adopting my new lifestyle, I had another colonoscopy and had zero polyps. Tom used to suffer from migraines, knee pain and back pain and all are now nonexistent. I can say that I have an overall sense of peace and calmness about me. It’s wonderful to know we are making choices that help the environment, cause no harm to animals and keep us healthy.
At my heaviest I could only go for about a 20-minute walk on level ground without feeling winded. Now I can hike 16 miles in the Sierra foothills in one day. I love the challenge of hiking and am grateful that our healthy lifestyle allows us to be physically fit to enjoy the wonders of nature. We have three young grandchildren, and we can keep up with them and be the fun grandparents they deserve. We want to live our life fully and not watch from the sidelines.
Our lifestyle changes had a ripple effect. Our adult children and our grandchildren are all following a whole food plant-based lifestyle, and everyone is thriving.
In our effort to help pass forward the health benefits of this lifestyle my husband and I share recipes, health tips, interviews and more on our Nutmeg Notebook blog, YouTube channel, Instagram and Facebook. We are passionate about helping people transition easily so they too can reap the benefits of a healthy lifestyle.
Our Goal is to teach people to… Get healthy and Stay Healthy, One Meal at A Time.
Tami