290: Overcoming Pain And Inflammation With A Whole Food Plant-Based Diet

Speaker 1: 2:09

Hey there, sunshine. Today, jared and I are sharing something very personal with you, because we spent so many years battling chronic inflammation and the truth is we just didn't have to. So on this episode, we're going to share some simple ways that you can battle chronic inflammation with food and win. Hey sister, welcome to the Power on Plants podcast. Are you tired of staring into the fridge wondering what to eat so you can just feel better? Do you want to avoid spending hours in the kitchen making complicated meals in the name of health? Would you love to leave fatigue behind and finally have the energy to do all the things you want to do?

Speaker 1: 2:49

Hi, we're Jared and Anita Roussel, christ followers, health care professionals, parents of four and big fans of great tasting food. We, too, tried exercising more, eating natural and clean foods, but we still found ourselves struggling with what we thought were changes that come with age or bad genes, and we weren't finding answers the traditional route. So we dug into the research and created our secret nutritional weapon sustainable plant-based living. The truth is, you can eat more whole plant foods and it's not hard. You just need the way. That's realistic and delicious so you never feel deprived If you're ready to enjoy your meals no longer be held back by your health struggles and actively live your life, then you're in the right place. So grab your favorite plant-based cup of happy pop in those earbuds and let's get started.

Speaker 1: 3:40

Hey there, sunshine.

Speaker 1: 3:40

We are so happy to have you with us today because we are talking about something that Jared and I fought and struggled and dealt with for a large portion of our lives, and that is inflammation and its side effects.

Speaker 1: 3:55

And do you know that inflammation is behind many of the chronic diseases and many of the symptoms you deal with on a daily basis, much of which we thought and were trained to believe were just age-related or related to our genes or somehow normal? It's normalized to hurt and ache as you get older, or have higher blood pressure or just not feel good, so much so that some of the pain and things we didn't even realize we were having because it was so normal, we just functioned with it. We learned how to function and kind of get around and live life if you can call it living life with these things on a regular basis the pain, the brain fog, the slow movements to try to not tweak something, all these different things that we were dealing with and doing on a regular basis. That just didn't have to be, but no one told us. We didn't know. But when you finish this episode, you're going to have hope and know that this does not have to be your reality.

Speaker 2: 4:55

Now, as far as being normal, is it normal? Well, it is, if you do what everybody else around you in our society is doing.

Speaker 1: 5:02

Oh, good point.

Speaker 2: 5:03

Because it is normal when you're just in that same habit. But, like you said, does it have to be? Should it be our norm? Was that the way we were designed and created to be? And I would say no. Now you may be asking okay, inflammation, I know the word. How do I know if I have it? Do you have pain? Do you have swelling? Do you have stiffness? Are you walking slower? You mentioned brain fog. All of these things are side effects of an inflammatory process going on. Now, which one is it? Well, it depends on where the inflammation is. If it's in your brain, you may have brain fog. If it's in your knee, you may have pain and swelling in your knee. It really just depends on where it's going on in the body.

Speaker 1: 5:43

And the interesting thing is, I remember when we first started in plant-based and you really didn't have as many health complaints overall as I did, although we were both largely overweight and didn't even really recognize it, but we were way overweight.

Speaker 2: 5:58

The pictures lie, the pictures we have from that time they lie Seriously.

Speaker 1: 6:02

If you are subscribed to our email and you missed the one that I sent out not too long ago it's been within the past couple of months of our before and after picture you have to go back and see it. I hate to even say that because I don't want anybody to really see the picture, but I want you to understand what is possible when you get the wrong feeds out of your life and get the right ones in, and you learn how to do that in a way that's going to work for you, because we didn't even realize we had some of these issues. Which brings me back to the point of remembering how we started Whole Food Plant Based and then, just a couple of weeks, it was down the road. You got up, you were popping out of bed faster than ever and you were making a comment to me. I remember you were walking around getting ready to go to work and you were talking about how I'm not aching anymore my shoulders.

Speaker 2: 6:46

You're moving your joints around. My shoulders weren't hurting. I was getting ready to go to work and it just kind of hit me like wait a minute, my shoulders aren't aching because I had reached for something that normally would have tweaked my shoulder. Now would it have been debilitating? No, but it was uncomfortable and it was somewhat limiting because I realized if I move in this way, then it is going to cause pain and discomfort.

Speaker 1: 7:06

Yeah, when you have to map your life and your movements around how your body feels and it becomes so normal to you that you don't even think about it. It's just what you do.

Speaker 2: 7:15

It's just your programmed routine.

Speaker 1: 7:17

It's terrible. Why are we thinking that we have to live this way and this is normal? This is not normal. You do not have to go through that, and so what we wanna share with you today is what you can do to start changing this in your life. Some things you can get rid of, the most important thing, and then the thing you can add back in its place. Why? Because what we want you to understand is that what you are not eating is just as important as what you're eating.

Speaker 1: 7:44

I want to say that again, yes, what you're not eating is just as important as what you're eating. See, many times we go through life and we think, oh, I've got to start eating more fruits and vegetables and I've got to start doing this, and I've got to start doing that, instead of what we need to stop. And maybe you have dieted a lot of your life and so you think I've got to quit eating this, I've got to quit eating that. Maybe you do the opposite, but I want you to understand, no matter which side of the spectrum you fall on, it's very important that you look at both of these things both of them but I want you to look at it in the way that's going to bring you freedom in life and joy and enjoyment and excitement to live your lifestyle in a way that's sustainable because you enjoy it so much. And now you're getting all these results.

Speaker 1: 8:26

Like Jared and I did, we got freed from the extra pounds and the pain that we dealt with on a daily basis that was keeping me from being able to walk up one flight of stairs to tuck my kids into bed at night. That had me in tears, crying when I was washing my hair, because my fingers and my elbows and my shoulders hurt so badly when I was trying to just wash my hair and I was sitting there thinking you know, this is ridiculous. There are people that are washing their hair right now and don't even think about it at all. Isn't it interesting how we take for granted those things that we can easily do until we can no longer do them?

Speaker 2: 8:58

Yeah, we don't even think about it Washing hair. You just think I've got to go take a shower, wash hair, wash my body and then dry off and be done.

Speaker 1: 9:05

Right, I want to develop more thankfulness. That's something I'm focusing on this year. We all need to be more thankful for the things that we can do in this life and the blessings that we have. One of the things that we can do is we can fight inflammation, and it can be done naturally with foods that taste great and that work with our lifestyle, and so what you're not eating is just as important as what you're eating, but I don't want you to think you're going to feel deprived. Oh well, that means I can't have this food anymore, that food anymore. See some of the foods we're going to mention today that you need to stop eating.

Speaker 1: 9:36

It's very important for you to understand that there are things that you can put in the place of those foods that you're going to love just as much or even more. This is what makes what Jared and I teach very different than what a lot of other people teach when it comes to getting healthy, because we're going to show you how to make it sustainable. The only way it's going to last for you is when you find the way that you actually enjoy, because it works with your busy schedule, it's simple and it actually tastes amazing to you. Then you don't miss those things, right, it's replacement. We call it replacement foodology, that's kind of our term for it. But you replace it and you get this plant based joy and all of a sudden you're living in a way that you love and you don't miss the old things. So that's how you go out with the old and in with the new. You've got to do both.

Speaker 2: 10:24

And you never leave a hole or a vacuum.

Speaker 1: 10:26

Never leave an empty hole.

Speaker 2: 10:29

So if you have to get rid of a food, you're going to fill it with something. You just want to make sure it's a good something.

Speaker 1: 10:37

Right. Either you're going to fill it with something else that's not healthy, or you're going to go nuts on that thing because you haven't been able to eat it. Quote haven't been able to eat it. You've told yourself that, or somebody else has told you you can't have, you can't do, and so, because you've told yourself these things and you have this way of talking and speaking and thinking, now you're going to go nuts on the thing. So we don't want you to set yourself up for that. You don't have to do that. It doesn't have to be that way.

Speaker 1: 11:03

So we're going to take one thing out and put one thing back in its place, and these are the kinds of things I'm going to be showing you exactly how to do, step by step, in our upcoming course. But today, what we want you to wrap your mind around and walk away with is the fact that the foods that you eat are just as important as the foods that you don't eat. So we're going to share the main food component that we know, based on research, is causing the inflammation. Are there others?

Speaker 2: 11:30

Yes, we're going to sprinkle some of those in there.

Speaker 1: 11:33

But there's one big thing that you need to get out of your life, and then you need to replace it with the right thing. The one thing that we know, based on research, fights inflammation.

Speaker 2: 11:43

So if you want a needle mover, this is one big needle mover for you.

Speaker 1: 11:47

This is it. So what's the top number one? Inflammation causing food component Saturated fats, saturated fats, one inflammation causing food component saturated saturated fats.

Speaker 1: 11:55

Saturated fat now where do you find that? Where is it filling the food industry? It is in the animal products. That is a meat, dairy and eggs. Now, you might be tempted at this point to shut it off because you don't want to hear it, because those are your favorite foods. I get it. I grew up in a barbecue restaurant. I used to be affectionately known as the Dairy Queen. Now I'm the former Dairy Queen because I really didn't think I could live without my cheese. Maybe for you it's meat. It's like you know. I can do without cheese all day long, but meat, oh man. I love meat or eggs. I just love great scrambled eggs, smothered and covered, right.

Speaker 2: 12:30

Yeah, we loved all that stuff.

Speaker 1: 12:33

We did?

Speaker 2: 12:33

We ate it all. But I think if we have a mindset shift here, because I had just the thought of an analogy it's not a car analogy but we're loving these foods that don't love us back, right. But if we look at this as really being a harmful relationship because you love that food, you love that thing, and maybe to you it tastes good, but it's really giving nothing back to you.

Speaker 1: 12:54

Well, it's giving something back.

Speaker 2: 12:55

Well, nothing good.

Speaker 1: 12:57

Nothing good.

Speaker 2: 12:58

Can you get some protein from it? Yes, but is it the best source? No, emphatically no.

Speaker 1: 13:03

And then it's giving all the other harmful things like the saturated fats.

Speaker 2: 13:07

Which then is a huge, huge contributing factor to inflammation.

Speaker 1: 13:12

Yes. So this leads me to the point of why were Jared and I so sick when we were, quote eating healthy according to the world's standards? Okay, we were eating healthy according to the world's standards. What do I mean by that? Well, we were eating free range, cage, free grass, fed meat.

Speaker 2: 13:29

No hormone added.

Speaker 1: 13:30

No hormone added dairy. We were eating all of these foods that people told us were the healthy way to go, but do you know that those same cage free, hormone, free-range, grass-fed meats are still meats? And guess what they still all are replete with? That means abundant in saturated fat.

Speaker 2: 13:55

Saturated fat, hormones and many other things.

Speaker 1: 13:58

Which is the number one food component that causes inflammation. So, yes, there are some benefits to eating cage-free and free-range and all this. I'm not going to tell you that there are some diseases that those things don't carry as much. So you are headed in a better direction doing that. But better can be better and still not be great for you.

Speaker 2: 14:17

It's relative.

Speaker 1: 14:18

Right, it's relative, and so what you're comparing something to is going to give you the perspective that you have. So let's just talk about it in reality. Here You're still getting the saturated fats, and that is the number one pro-inflammatory food ingredient, according to research. So you eat these healthy foods like Jaron and I were doing. Quote healthy.

Speaker 2: 14:41

Quote unquote healthy, yeah, I'm giving your air quotes here.

Speaker 1: 14:43

You can't see that, but quote healthy foods. We're eating free range and all these things and we still keep finding ourselves exhausted and hurting and unsure why.

Speaker 2: 14:55

And you know how we know they were healthy? Just kind of a side note, it's because a package told us they were healthy, the package told us yes, ooh, this is healthy or healthier, nevermind, there's no real regulation on what is healthy, but the package told us it was healthy, so it's like it must be good.

Speaker 1: 15:10

Yeah, start noticing the brainwashing on the packages. It's there for a reason. It's there to sell you a product.

Speaker 2: 15:16

To make you buy their product.

Speaker 1: 15:17

yes, Make you feel better about what you're doing. But you know what we did. We stopped getting those things into our lives that had the saturated fat in them, those better saturated fat foods. There's no better saturated fats Well, not in the meat world anyway. We'll talk about that later. But what I want you to understand is saturated fats in meats are harmful to you. They are pro-inflammatory In dairy same thing. In eggs same story. So we drop those things and we start replacing it with whole plant foods, and I'm not just talking about some plain plants in a bowl. You can't start your plant-based walk that way. Trust me, down the road you'll find some joy in that, believe it or not. It's hard to believe where you are right now, but I'm telling you you're going to taste things in these foods down the road that you did not taste before. I've shared this before, but I didn't know broccoli was sweet. Have you ever tasted sweetness in broccoli? There's so many different things I taste in foods now that I wasn't able to perceive were there before.

Speaker 2: 16:18

And that's just the sweetness aspect of it, though. But the flavors? There's just a lot of flavors in the different foods, thinking of zucchini and squash, eating those raw, because growing up we had it cooked, steamed, fried. But just eating them raw, dicing them up and putting them on a salad, has a nice crunch and a lot of flavor to it as well, and there's just a couple of examples.

Speaker 1: 16:41

Right, and so now we've taken out the saturated fats and we're replacing it with whole plant foods. We're getting some amazing things in there, which we're going to talk about in a second, and so we don't find ourselves getting sleepy after meals. That is not normal. If you find yourself getting sleepy and crashing midday after you eat, that's not normal and you can't figure out why. Because you're eating the healthy meats and you're eating the healthy dairy and you're eating the healthy eggs.

Speaker 2: 17:07

Or maybe you see nothing wrong with it because that's just how it's always been. But, like you said, it's not normal.

Speaker 1: 17:13

Yeah, like your shoulder pain. You didn't recognize it right. You didn't recognize really that you had shoulder pain. You just kind of dealt with it. You didn't really think about it on a regular basis until it was gone and you were free basis until it was gone and you were free. It's the same thing with the sleepiness we don't get sleepy anymore. We don't have the brain fog after meals anymore. We're living life. We have the energy, like a lot of our members do, where now they're planning businesses that they wanted to start for so long but they just didn't feel like it. They didn't know how they would do this thing.

Speaker 1: 17:41

There's so many different things. I'm out traveling. I'm out riding my bike. I'm out exploring nature and seeing things in creation that I would never been able to see before. I had to ride in my car and see it from the window with my spouse driving me around. Well, now I'm out walking all the paths and seeing all the things that I would have missed along the way. Within just four hours of eating one meal with these saturated fats, your blood vessels start getting inflamed. You lose elasticity of those vessels just after one meal. I'm not going to talk about everything else that's happening in your body. That's negative. As a result of this, I just want you to think about blood flow for a minute. Where does blood go in your body? It goes everywhere. This is going to affect everything in your body.

Speaker 2: 18:23

And those effects actually start sooner than four hours, but they reach their worst at the four hour mark after you eat that meal. Then your body starts to clear it out and it gets better over the next few hours, but then what typically happens? Again Boom. Next fatty meal Right.

Speaker 1: 18:39

And that's what I was going to say. Just like what we did. We weren't eating just one quote healthy meat, dairy and egg meal a day, and we weren't just eating it one day a week, we were eating it day after day after day. So our body remained chronically inflamed. The ingredients kept coming in over and over again, these pro-inflammatory ingredients that were keeping us stuck, keeping us sick, and we didn't understand why, because, according to the world's ways, this was healthy.

Speaker 2: 19:05

We were choosing the healthy meats, the healthy dairy, and these ingredients weren't sneaking in. We had the front door unlocked and open. It was like come on in, because again, we thought they were friendly, we thought they were healthy. So we were actively participating in getting these ingredients, getting this food component into our bodies, just ignorant to the fact that we were doing probably one of the worst things that we could do.

Speaker 1: 19:27

And now let's talk about the top, the primo, the number one ingredient that's found in whole plant foods. That is anti-inflammatory. It actually fights inflammation. There's many things in plant foods that fight inflammation. We're going to mention some other ones, but you need to understand the number one ingredient.

Speaker 2: 19:49

And again, we're talking about a big needle mover here. So if you had one thing that you wanted to start with first, this would get you a huge impact, a huge improvement, and it's fiber Fiber. Yes, Okay.

Speaker 1: 20:00

So what do you need to eat to get your fiber? Whole plant foods, because all of them have fiber. All of them have fiber. God built them into the food. Guess what has zero fiber, zero zilch? Nada. Animal products. Dairy eggs and meat there is no fiber in dairy eggs meat. All these things that we're told are healthy, that we need to be strong, which is not true.

Speaker 2: 20:25

All these things that we're told are healthy, that we need to be strong, which is not true. That's why people that go on these carnivore diets they totally wreck their gastrointestinal system. I mean, they have bowel movements once a week. Oh my word, I know.

Speaker 1: 20:37

I don't even want to go there, but I'm just saying people that do this they totally wreck their gut health and that's a huge, huge component of it, right, Not the only, but gut health, and that's a huge, huge component of it.

Speaker 1: 20:47

Right, because we know we're not even going to go into gut health. But if you've been around for any length of time listening to anything about health, you'll understand that gut health affects so many different areas of your body. Get into our free group podcast insiders experience powerplantscom forward slashP. I E powerplantscom forward slash pie. What I want you to do is use the magnifying glass in the lower right hand corner in there and begin doing this on a regular basis, searching the topics that you want to know about in this case. Get in there and type in the word fiber. We have talked so much about fiber or gut health. Just type in gut and you're going to find lots of information about why this works, why it's so important, why your gut thrives when you're getting it and why it doesn't when you're not. So we're not going to go into that here, because this isn't an episode about fiber, but you get in the group and get that information you need. But consider this you have fiber in all whole plant foods.

Speaker 1: 21:43

We worry about these one-off things we need to talk about that soon but we worry about oh, what do I need to get. What do I need to do? You need to eat whole plant foods. Quit worrying yourself with all these little specifics. Eat whole plant foods. Eat lots of them. Fill your plate with them, fill your life with them. Go back and learn how to do that. We've talked about it on the podcast. I'm going to be walking you step by step through how to do that inside our course.

Speaker 1: 22:04

It's super important that you learn how to find your new favorites, the ones that are going to not only make you smile because you love the way they taste and they're simpler to make than anything you've ever made before, but they're actually going to love your body back. The joint pain is going to go away. The sleepiness midday will not be an issue anymore. You're going to have a new problem. It's the problem I have now. It's fighting yourself about going to bed at night so you can get up in the morning and enjoy the day. Because I have so much energy and so many things I want to do and so many more ideas because I can think clearly. So much energy and so many things I want to do and so many more ideas because I can think clearly. I'm up raring to go late at night. Ask Jared. I mean it is absolutely unbelievable.

Speaker 2: 22:44

Sometimes I have to remind her what time it is, because I'm still practicing medicine. I still do it full time, so I still have to get up in the morning and see patients.

Speaker 1: 22:53

It's like Anita, I've got to see patients in the morning.

Speaker 2: 22:54

It's getting kind of late. Do you know what time it is? Oh no, I thought it was two hours earlier than it is.

Speaker 1: 22:59

Yeah, because I still feel so good and before it was just a constant battle to keep my eyes open.

Speaker 2: 23:05

You're pretty much done by 5 pm.

Speaker 1: 23:07

It was awful, I was checked out.

Speaker 1: 23:09

Yeah, it was exhausting, absolutely exhausting, and you to ever have to live that way. We care about you. This is so important. God has put into these foods, according to Genesis 129, the foods that our bodies were created to eat from the very beginning. And isn't it interesting that, time after time, the research shows these are the foods that fuel our body. Well, why? Because they're filled with fiber and they don't have saturated fats in them. Okay, at least not the saturated fats that cause our bodies to have these sorts of problems. There are only a couple of whole plant foods that have saturated fats.

Speaker 1: 23:45

We're going to talk about that in an upcoming episode and how it does not affect your body in the same way, but right now, I want you to understand that the saturated fats and the proteins and these other things that are in animal products we know are the most pro-inflammatory food ingredients in the world. So if you are sick of hurting and you want to start feeling better and you want to gain energy and you want to be able to calm down the inflammation that's behind the chronic diseases that you're dealing with inflammation that's behind the chronic diseases that you're dealing with, jared, and I see patients and clients reverse chronic diseases the most common ones of our time, all the time. That includes type 2 diabetes, it includes hypertension, that's high blood pressure, it includes high cholesterol without medication. Now are we telling you to stop the medication you're on? No, we are not. We will never tell you. Just stop medication without a doctor's supervision, because some medications need to be weaned off and you need to be able to be watched when you start eating whole plant foods. So be followed by a doctor, because some of your levels can come down rather quickly and then plummet or bottom out, and that's not healthy either. So you need to be weaned off these things under doctor supervision as you're getting healthier on whole plant foods, and it is going to happen. That absolutely is going to happen. It happens 100% of the time for the people that do this 100%. I'm going to say that again it happens 100% of the time for the people that do this 100%.

Speaker 1: 25:12

We have never worked with a client or a patient who does not get better when they're actually invested and doing the stuff, learning how to find the foods that they love, getting in the community and being active, instead of just coming in, actually posting a picture and a little bit about yourself and then asking your questions as they come up, sharing what you're eating. It takes like two seconds to snap a picture of what you're eating and share it inside the community. It's going to help you because you're going to get ideas from other people or encouragement about what you're doing, and it's going to keep you on this path. And that is even more important for you if you don't have people around you who are supporting or understanding the decisions you're making about eating whole food, plant-based. But it's important no matter what, because you're going to get the encouragement and the inspiration you need to be able to come off of the saturated fats that are harming you the animal-based saturated fats, the meats, the dairy, the eggs that you think I could never do without these things. You're going to learn to change your thought processes and your words from I can't to how can I. All of these things that are going to change your life can't do, how can I All of these things that are going to change your life? So, if you want to feel better, it is super important that you learn how to fight inflammation, and we have given you two of the biggest keys here today, and that is getting the animal based saturated fats out of your life and to replace them. To find the ways that you enjoy replacing them with whole plant foods. Stop worrying about which ones you worry about so many things that don't matter Just start finding one thing and another thing that you can replace and enjoy. Replace and enjoy, and that's what we're going to be walking you through in our upcoming course. That's what you're going to get ideas for how to do inside our free community right now.

Speaker 1: 26:59

Come inside Power on Plants. Come inside Podcast Insiders. Experience at poweronplantscom forward. Slash P-I-E. Meet your new friends, meet your family. Learn some ideas. Get some inspiration.

Speaker 1: 27:11

What are other people cooking? What's working for them? What have they fought and reversed? We see it happen time and time again. You are no different. You think somehow your case is different. Somehow you've got a different genetic kind. Somehow it's so much harder for you because of the hands you've been dealt. Listen, you will not believe what can change for you when you start getting the foods that your body was created to thrive on and that research shows time and time again. Reverse, calm the inflammation and reverse the most common chronic I'm doing air quotes again the most common chronic diseases of our time, which aren't so chronic when you can get the things out that are keeping you inflamed and get the things in that'll cool down the inflammation and help you to thrive.

Speaker 1: 27:57

Now listen, we've only talked about one benefit of whole plant foods right here, and that's fiber. There are flavonoids, there are anthocyanins. There are things in there that act like natural aspirin Natural aspirin. There are so many things in these foods that we haven't even discovered yet, and yet we're worried about a couple of little vitamins and minerals. Our enemy is so sneaky he loves to get us distracted on things that don't matter. Quit worrying about all that stuff. Get the whole plant foods. Surround yourself with a community where you're going to learn how to eat these things in a way that you'll absolutely love, and before long you will not believe how fast it happens Before long you'll have a new lifestyle that's sustainable, that you love, and it's going to allow you to do all these things that you only dreamed about doing before. We have loved having you with us. We cannot wait to hear your success stories as you get more of these life-giving foods into your life. Have a great week, sunshine, and we'll see you next time on Power on Plants. Thank you.