Anita: 0:00

Hey there, Sunshine. Welcome to the Power On Plants Podcast, where your host, Jarrod and Anita Roussel and we're absolutely head over heels for whole plant foods, and helping you navigate this incredible plant based journey. That's because our lives have been completely changed by plant based goodness, we used to struggle everyday with excess pounds and low energy, vascular disease, joint pain and lack of sleep, just to name a few. And even though we're medical professionals, we still weren't getting practical answers that actually worked. So we dug into the research, we started living what we learned. And now we both of our lives back. And that's what we want for you to the truth is you can do this, and it's not hard, you just need a way that will bring real and lasting change. And that path, it has to be simple and enjoyable. And it's got to be delicious, too. So are you ready to live your life to the fullest, then you're in the right place, because Living without limits. That's what power plants is all about. So pull up your chair, grab a matcha latte, and let's get started. If you're in a place in your life, where you're struggling with your health, and you just don't know what to do, you have low energy, you're in pain every day, you're carrying extra pounds. And maybe you're even dealing with other health struggles. What do you do? I mean, all you want is to get some relief. I remember those days you remember those days, don't you? Oh,

Jarrod: 1:27

yeah, it's been a while. But I still remember them very clearly hard to forget, they were not pretty days,

Anita: 1:31

we've been there. We know it's a hard place to be. I remember when I had all these things that I dreamed about doing in my life, but I wasn't able to do any of them. Because my health struggles were holding me back. I was just trying to survive the day. I mean, that was our daily story, I remember that I would be in tears, just stand in trying to wash my hair, and it hurts so bad, and my elbows and my shoulders, that I would just cry. Because putting the pressure with even my fingertip joints, putting the pressure on my hair to wash my hair. I remember one time I talked to this new friend of mine. And she shared that with me that she had that same thing. And I started crying again, I thought I wasn't alone, you know, I'm not alone. Other people are going through the same things. And there's a reason for that. And all I wanted to know is what was that reason I wanted somebody to give me a diagnosis. And

Jarrod: 2:24

that was our mindset in the very beginning is what's the diagnosis? So then we can define the condition. And then maybe there's a medication for it. Just give me a medicine. I just wanted to get back very early on, we went through tons and tons of different supplements. I mean, we're still kind of that same mindset of is there a pill? Is there a capsule? Is there just some some kind of medicine? Or in that case, we were thinking a supplement, which really functioned a lot like a medicine. But really, I think one of them, you said might have helped a little but the rest of them, they really didn't do anything. Because that wasn't our problem. Now,

Anita: 2:59

don't you think a lot of times that the thing is, is we get in this mindset of have have something going on, I have this thing and if somebody will just give it a name, usually medical professional, and we're both medical professionals. So we get that we totally get that we're not against Medicare, not hating hating on them, we're not against them now are them we just know they're ever used. And so this is a thing medications get to the root, they don't get to the root cause of your problem. You're wanting them to get to the root, but they don't they treat the symptom, exactly a symptom, right. So that can start kind of covering up which actually what's actually going on underneath. And again, that's not to say you don't need medications for certain things. If you're diabetic and you have blood sugar issues, you need to be taking insulin until you can get to that root cause of what's causing the insulin to be off, you know, if you have type two diabetes, what's causing those problems, those issues that you're having, having. And that's what we wanted to know, in our own life. I just wanted the answers. But in my mindset, because I had been trained in nursing and Jarrod have been trained to disappear. A physician assistant, you know, we wanted to know a diagnosis, we wanted a name because we wanted a medication. And at that time, I wasn't thinking I would just treat the symptoms. I heard some Isay and I can't remember who it was, but you know, you always hear food is your medicine and Let food be that medicine. And I heard somebody say not too long ago, food isn't your medicine. You don't want it to be your medicine, because medicine never gets to the root issue, the core issue of the problem that you're having, so you don't want food to be your medicine, you want it to be something even better. You want it to get deeper. You want to reach the cause so you can get out of the situation you're in and that's what I really wanted. I just thought I wanted a diagnosis and medicine.

Jarrod: 4:38

When when you had mentioned that to the thought occurred to me that usually we think of medicine as being something added to a condition. And like we said we're not hating on traditional medicine we've been trained in that model in there's a time and a place for it. Absolutely. But how can food be a medicine? If really what's going on is the lack of got the right kinds of foods are causing the issue in the first place,

Anita: 5:04

right? The food and the lifestyle. I mean, it's huge. And we know that to be a fact now, we know that a lot of the main diseases that people struggle with, such as heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, high blood pressure, cholesterol, weight, extra pounds, pain, fatigue, all these things are a lot of the things I was dealing with. I mean, we were dealing with a lot of the things I just named off, I had some wacky auto immune systems, nobody symptoms, autoimmune symptoms, my system was wacky, too. But some weird autoimmune symptoms, I mean, just buzzing and some numbness going on and things like that, that, you know, those are reversing, they're still rough. I'm not exactly where I want to be. But I'll tell you what, it took me a long time to get where I was. And a lot of those have gone away. I mean, they're just completely gone. And that's not the story I was getting from doctors. That's not the story that medicine had me and the path that medicine had me on. So we kind of look deeper, like what's the cause? Because really, the truth is, is I didn't want to know what it was just so I could get medicine. What was I really after? Because my health struggles, were holding me back from something. There were all these things that I wanted to do. But I couldn't do those things that I wanted to do, because I was just trying to survive the day.

Jarrod: 6:19

Well, first off, the first thing that pops into mind is yes, the immediate concern was joint pain and fatigue. Right? What was it keeping you from doing, I was hurt so bad? Well, I was exhausted, or a year and a half, easily, maybe even longer, she couldn't go up one flight of stairs to tuck her kids in. That's hard, right? That may seem trivial. But when we were in the middle of it, because our kids were younger, a lot younger than they are now. So definitely at the age of wanting to be tucked in, but I would go up stairs and I would tuck them in, kiss them goodnight, pray with them. And tell them mommy says good night, she can't make it up because all the bedrooms were upstairs. Except for ours. Ours was downstairs. And it seems like such a simple thing. Or she might have been living on the couch for a couple years. But it seemed like such a trivial thing. But when you're in that moment in for any moms, that is heartbreaking. And it's time, it's time that you lost. And thankfully, that's not our story anymore. But it still there is some sense of sorrow that we did lose that time, right?

Anita: 7:21

Well, it does. It makes me so sad. Because why wasn't anybody talking about this? Why wasn't somebody given me some steps, simple things I could do to get out of that situation? Because the truth was, again, I didn't just want a diagnosis. I didn't just want the medicine or the supplements, or whatever it was that I thought was gonna fix it. I wanted to know what to do to get to that core core issue. So I could have my life back. I just wanted my life back.

Jarrod: 7:44

You know, and ironically, as you say that though, now we know there were people talking about it. It's why weren't we hearing it? Now? It's it was a small element, there are more people talking about it now. But back then there were less people. But there has been a certain number of people very small, talking about this for several decades. Why aren't we hearing that? Why weren't when we went through school? Hearing that in our training,

Anita: 8:12

right? And even though it's so well known now, you know, just some of the things that you can do. P fac figuring out how to piece it together. I mean, that can be so overwhelming, like what do I do? And what is yours? And what if cooking is like Latin to me, like how do I get a meal on the table that works on my busy schedule? I mean, those are the kind of questions we need to be asking. But every time I looked into stuff, I was only finding the same thing over and over. And I'm going to share what that was in a minute. And it wasn't the answer to my problems either. Just like the other things we've talked about, but, uh, just I pictured my life so different than what it was I wanted to be traveling, you know, we wanted to go places with our kids. Why? Just because I wanted to see those places. And no, I wanted to have these great memories with my kids running around chasing them. You know, twirling around blowing bubbles twirling around in the air when they were little going to the beach, going to the beach going to the park and not just sitting there watching them but actually participating? Because I felt like it. They remember those things. I didn't want to miss those years. No, I wanted to live I mean, there reached a point it was so bad. I just thought I spent time thinking about and I didn't share this with you a lot. But thinking about I'm dying. I mean, if this continues on the path I'm on, there's no way I'm going to live to see my grandkids I was so sick.

Jarrod: 9:28

And I do remember there were a number of times where she said I am this close, and I'm holding up my fingers and it's just half a millimeter this close to having you take me to the ER, because I feel that bad. I feel like I'm dying.

Anita: 9:42

Yeah, it was scary. And I was just sick. The real thing was I was sick of not being able to do the things I wanted to do, just because I didn't feel like it. You know? And there was a point when I realized that food health some of the beginning answers. Was there something else? I was

Jarrod: 9:57

thinking at that point when we're at the last So you had mentioned being in survival mode, we were in such survival mode. And it didn't happen overnight those changes, it was a fairly quick decline. But it was over the course of a, I think, a year or so, but just kept getting worse. And well, I was working outside the home, we had the children, we had some life changes that went on, like your mother had passed away before that, and we went through an adoption. And so there a lot of things on our plate. And these things had, we gotten to the point and we were in such survival mode that we didn't realize how bad they were, at the moment. We knew they were bad. But I think now that we're at a point where we feel great the energies there, we can go upstairs and not be winded in dry, whatever, you know, all the stuff we're talking about. We can now look back and think, wow, that we were in bad shape. I mean, it was really far worse than what I think we let ourselves believe at the time,

Anita: 10:55

right? It was not a good situation. And so what we reached that point where we realized food might be part of the answer. And it seemed kind of strange to us. Because, well, for one thing I grew, I guess one reason I would no doubt even think about that initially, was because I had grown up around a lot of family members and friends who just dieted and dealt with issues of weight issues and things like that. And so I grew up around that dieting mindset. But I knew I didn't want to diet because dieting was miserable. I'd seen what it brought people and it might bring temporary results, but it never got to that root problem really brought the healing No. And then they always ended up back in that same place where they were before. And I was at a place where I had extra pounds. I mean, we just started doing what we're doing now. And immediately, pretty much over a very short period of time, we both lost over 50 pounds together. And we weren't even trying to lose weight. And we've had this happen for clients, this is normal, this happens eating this way without doing all the crazy restrictive dieting things that you're required to do it. But you know, we had that in the back of our mind that food might be a part of the issue. But nobody was really telling us what to do. And then coming from the medical and nursing mindset we took, I took one course in nutrition that was required, but it was the basic governmental standards of nutrition. And that was it. I mean, we weren't taught, you know how diseases can not only be prevented, but reversed with food. I mean, who like that would have just blown the minds of my nursing instructors, and a lot of doctors. And now thankfully, the research that's been out there for so long, is starting to come out, people are starting to discover it. And we discovered it not because somebody came and told us, Hey, this is what you need to do. And here's the 10 step formula. And this is gonna work, we discovered it on our own because we were desperate. And we had to start searching and digging through all this research. And because we're research minded, we just didn't want anecdotal information. We didn't want to get online and listen to somebody who just said, Hey, this worked for me, it'll work for you, too. We didn't want to waste time. We didn't want to go through some particular program and not get better and not get results. Exactly, yeah, because there are a lot of people that have programs that are based on what they've done. But it's not based on research. And that was so important to us and our own healing because we, Kate, we know how the body works. And we care that this is proven, you know, it's not just work for Joe and Jane next door. I mean, you can see a lot of people get very short term results for things, but what's going on in the inside of their body? You know, we want to know, how does this walk out long term? How does this way of living march out long term? What did the study show, so that we didn't have to be the guinea pigs. You know, we didn't want to test this out on our own bodies, we wanted a proven system that worked, we wanted to know, and when we started taking steps and start doing these things, and implementing the things that we found one by one, as we pieced it together, it worked. It just worked. And it keeps working every single day for us. And that's why we just looked at each other one day and said, What are we doing? Like, why are we doing these jobs and doing these things? And why are we not sharing this with people? Because friends would come to us? What have you done? Where'd you get your energy? How are you? How are you doing this? What do you how do you cook this? How do you prepare that and, and all these different questions they had, and we were sharing it and they were getting results, you know, and then we started taking a few clients here and there and they were getting results and it was life changing for us because and honestly just in tears getting these texts, Jared, look at this, you know, this person has a mess. They weren't walking at all and now they're sending us they're walking 1000 steps or walking 2000 steps or walking 6000 steps a day. I mean that's these are game changing things actually making

Jarrod: 14:41

it back to the gym and able to do I forgot how much weight man I'm gonna go from being chair ridden to getting back to the gym, which was something that they love doing right and then

Anita: 14:51

we hear we hear these being you know, the text would come through and I pick up my phone again and it would be oh my goodness. You know, this person had these amazing digestive issues, I couldn't even hold down her food when she ate for any meal, no problems at all now gone, you know, and went away very quickly, severe neck. These joint pains like I was having, you know, they're they're writing it a nine to 10 out of 10. And now it's two. Now it's one now hardly ever have it at all. I mean PMS going away skin problems is on and on and on, and we're going, this works, it just works. And it's more than that. It gives you the life you're after. And that's what we found to be true for us, for our clients, for our friends, and so many other people around the world, you've just got to know how to do it, you've just got to know the steps that will get you where you want to go. And they've got to work with a busy life. And it's got to be enjoyable, you just have to even know that that reality, reality exists. And well, that's the first step right? You got to know, hey, there is something I can do and that you can, and that's one of the big mindset shifts, but we're not gonna go there, we might actually drop a little secret here, we've got a big training coming up that's free for you guys. It's a four part video training, nobody else knows about it. So you're the first to hear. And that's going to be coming out very soon. It's only going to be available for a short time. But we cannot wait to get that out there to you. But back to what we're talking about. So what do you need to heal? You know, when you need results? And you don't know how and you're feeling overwhelmed? Like we were? Where do you even start? So like I said, we just one day, we just had this ID if you had gotten a magazine,

Jarrod: 16:31

then one of my PA journals had talked about omega three fatty acids versus omega sixes. And I just started looking at the oils. And really, I think we'd looked at it before. And we were eating using an oil that we thought was healthy. Actually, we had found it at Costco, it was grapeseed oil, and it was organic. And it was inexpensive. I mean, we just thought, well, we've racked up look at this, we found this

Anita: 16:56

one we read several random things that talked about online that talked about how healthy and how great it was for oil.

Jarrod: 17:05

And now there were certain ratios of omega six to omega threes that you're supposed to be within that, and those are okay, so

Anita: 17:14

you don't have to worry about that on regular basis. Don't drop that there. You don't have to start saying oh, well, now I need to get my nice Yes, right. There's such an easy way to do it. You don't have to worry about all that no matter

Jarrod: 17:24

no food math here. No. But that's where we were at that time. And so when we got that magazine in the mail, and I started looking at it thinking, Well, you know, let me re examine this. And it turned out that the grapeseed oil was probably one of the worst things you could use with the Omega sixes versus the Omega three. So it was very pro inflammatory with thought, Oh, my goodness,

Anita: 17:45

oils are inflammatory. What I didn't know is that you know, look around oils aren't growing on trees, there's a reason for that they're put in food naturally. They're there with a lot of other stuff. And that beautiful package they were created in that works well in your body, but you start pressing that out and eating it by the tablespoon, and you're getting an extra 120 calories a day, a proinflammatory liquid per tablespoon per tablespoon. I didn't put a tablespoon addressing all my feet in my life. And if you do way to go, you're ahead of the game. But I'm telling you like, and then that's not counting everything else it was in I mean, I could go on, like right now probably 100 episodes of worth of information of how I feel about oil and what oil has done did to my body. And what's it and a lot of other people on what they experience, when they could learn how to come off of it and still have their food tastes good. I just want to drop a little something here. When you look at oil, it is obviously pressed out of its natural package. So it's a highly concentrated form of the oil, very poor nutrients. I mean, there might be a few scattered nutrients here and there. But it's one of the lowest nutrient dense things that you can eat highest calorie, and pro inflammatory. So it's like stacked against GE, right? Well,

Jarrod: 18:54

when you eat it, it gets absorbed at a higher rate. And you can in some individuals, if you were to draw their blood before and after, you can actually visibly see a difference in their blood. And so this is what is causing the inflammation, the high concentration of those oils. If you have it naturally in food, you're not going to have that high of a concentration typically, I mean, you might have a higher fat food if you eat a ton of avocados. However, it is in the cell of the food it's in with all the fiber and all the other things. So you're not going to get that fast absorption that high. I've even heard the term sludge blood just because they have shown that the thickness of your blood increases when you're eating high fat meals like that with all the pressed out oils. So you don't have that when you're eating the oils naturally in the foods like they were made and the results of that

Anita: 19:48

are the things you're able to do on a regular basis the things you're not being held back from anymore. Now, this has been an intro to what we did what happened to us what situation where were we in Then, what are you supposed to do now with that, right? You're at this point where you realize food might be part of the answer. Now, what's the next step? So, we're going to do another podcast. Next podcast is going to be part two of this one and we're going to continue to show you once we realize food was part of the issue, what did we do?

Jarrod: 20:21

Now at that point, we didn't realize how big of a part it played and everything, but we knew that there was a spark. Okay, we had the issue with the oil we made some changes, got some improvements,

Anita: 20:34

and then we went on from there. So we look forward to hanging out with you again on the next episode, part two of this one, make sure that you tune in so you don't miss out on what happened next, because we cannot wait to share with you what changed it all for us. Hope you're having a great day sunshine, and we'll see you there.