Speaker 1: 0:00

And I'm just going to say there are a lot of people out there who spend their days going through life never looking around them. Like how many people, let's be real have driven by this and because they didn't stop to look around them, like this is a whole other juicy nugget you're getting right now that we didn't even plan on sharing. But I'm just thinking of it as we're talking to you. How many people go about their day and just walked right by? 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: 0:45

Hi, we're Jared and Anita Roussel, christ followers, healthcare 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. Hello friend, and welcome to another episode of power on plants, where we're making plant based living simple, sustainable and absolutely delicious, so you can stop being held back by a body that doesn't feel good and start fully living. I'm Anita, a nurse, certified integrative nutrition health coach and your plant-based mentor and friend.

Speaker 2: 1:55

And I'm Jared Roussel, a physician assistant and certified lifestyle medicine professional. My better half Well, I don't know about that.

Speaker 1: 2:04

You know what's fun I do. Do you want me to tell you what's fun?

Speaker 2: 2:08

I'm not sure about that, because you could probably take that in a thousand different directions, but where I was headed with it is finding something that's unexpected and almost hidden in plain sight. Recently we've been walking around our neighborhood. Now it's a growing development but there are a lot of empty lots and we happened to stumble upon what about a month or two ago?

Speaker 1: 2:30

He's about to tell you about the jackpot. We didn't stumble upon anything, we came upon the jackpot.

Speaker 2: 2:35

We didn't literally stumble like trip and fall, but we happened to notice there were blueberries on some of the empty lots Wild blueberries, think about how awesome that is for the girl who used to run in the blueberry patches.

Speaker 1: 2:47

If you haven't read my story, go to the About Me portion of our website at poweronplantscom and read about both of us. Jared has an About Me too and you'll get to know a lot more about both of us there. But I talk about how I grew up five miles west of like the smallest town you can imagine in northwest Georgia, really close to Chattanooga, probably about an hour away from Chattanooga. So when people ask where I'm from, of course it's Chattanooga, tennessee, but really it was this little small town where I think there was probably like one or two traffic lights, and we live five miles west of that. I think our closest neighbor was three quarters of a mile away. That's how far out in the middle of nowhere I lived and we just happen to have wild blueberry bushes.

Speaker 1: 3:26

So I grew up running through the blueberry patches eating handfuls of these things in the summer and there's just nothing like a fresh wild blueberry straight off the bush, except for cups and cups of fresh wild blueberries off the bush. So imagine my surprise when my family goes for a walk the one time I don't go with them and, lo and behold, they come back with handfuls of my childhood. Handfuls of my childhood. I lit up, I was eating them, so happy, we were all eating them. I said Do you guys understand? You're actually tasting my childhood right now, like the joys of my childhood, just running in those blueberry patches and enjoying those things fresh by the cupful. It was awesome. It's one of my favorite childhood memories, and imagine that it has to do with whole plant foods. God has the best sense of humor. Really he does.

Speaker 2: 4:12

Yes, or maybe it could be. He loved blessing you from the garden before you even knew what this way of eating was.

Speaker 1: 4:21

I believe that is it. I think you're onto something there, because he is so good to us with all these amazing life-giving foods.

Speaker 2: 4:29

But these were not your standard store-bought blueberries. These are smaller but they're packed with flavor and absolutely packed with the most nutrient density, because we were picking them fresh, when they were fully ripe off. The bush and their peak, their absolute peak.

Speaker 1: 4:44

And I'm just going to say there are a lot of people out there who spend their days going through life never looking around them. Like how many people, let's be real, have driven by this patch of blueberries and because they didn't stop to look around them, like this is a whole other juicy nugget you're getting right now that we didn't even plan on sharing. But I'm just thinking of it as we're talking to you. How many people go about their day? And just walked right by it. I mean, even while we were down there picking them, there were people zipping by us, walking by with their strollers, riding the bikes. No one stopped to ask what we were doing. Look even to see what we were doing.

Speaker 2: 5:21

I don't know that any of them waved at us.

Speaker 1: 5:23

And so that tells you. If you slow down and check out what's going on around you, you might find some incredible things to eat that are growing in areas that are not heavily sprayed, like just in the wild. Get an app that checks out this stuff. It'll tell you whether or not it's edible. Am I telling you to eat every berry that looks like a blueberry? No, because some of those are poisonous. We scanned them, we made sure I knew what they look like. I mean, I've been eating them for years.

Speaker 2: 5:49

She was a blueberry expert, so we already had that, we already knew.

Speaker 1: 5:52

But Jared scanned the plant, Like we have an app that tells us, and he actually checked in on two different apps to make sure and lo and behold, they were the exact berries that I grew up with. Not the same bush, but the exact type of berries.

Speaker 2: 6:07

That would have been weird if it was the same bush, like somehow this bush got transported from northwest Georgia to Florida.

Speaker 1: 6:11

Yeah, god has done more incredible things, I am sure.

Speaker 2: 6:15

Also to your point about looking around. We can't tell you how much money our youngest son has found just simply by scanning around. I mean, it's just so much money, so much money. At one point, he found $80. Like, oh, my goodness, andrew, you are the money finder, he is the money finder. But anyway, getting back to the blueberries, so we brought them home. Anita was just wowed by this. So we've gone periodically to go and harvest these blueberries. So recently we did this. All six of us went. Everybody had a cup.

Speaker 1: 6:47

Oh yeah, mama went this time. Nobody leave until every cup was full.

Speaker 2: 6:50

That's all I'm saying, and every cup had to be full. So we went and we found a blueberry bush. We picked it as much as we could and we spread out and we were just really making it a concerted effort to grab as many as we could. I don't know how many pints or quarts of these blueberries did we end up with A lot Because we had saved some of the plastic containers that you get blueberries in at the grocery store.

Speaker 1: 7:13

I had over three of those huge ones. It wasn't the little pint containers, those must have been the quart size. They were huge, I don't know how many dollars worth of blueberries? We picked that day. It was a ton.

Speaker 2: 7:23

It was a lot, but we spread out, we picked them and as the bushes started getting sparse, we started trying to spread out and find more bushes. But some of the bushes were tall like more than six feet, seven, eight feet tall.

Speaker 1: 7:35

And some of the kids were done and their cups weren't full yet and all of a sudden I look up and I notice there are a lot of berries up there, really healthy, beneficial, great for us berries Just sitting there untouched.

Speaker 2: 7:48

And we kept trying to reach for them. I remember there was a bush where I was straining and I was trying to find my footing because some of the land was a little bit sloped and there were some other bushes around so make sure you don't hit any thorns or anything like that. So I'm reaching and reaching and I just couldn't quite reach them. And, like Anita said, we're not going home until our cups are full. So we knew these berries had to be gotten, Otherwise we were not getting out of the sun that day. So I remember thinking this isn't working. I need to get these berries. How can I do that?

Speaker 1: 8:19

But you kept trying to reach. Well, I was reaching for them.

Speaker 2: 8:21

Do we get a ladder? Well, no, the soil is sandy and angled. It would have fallen over, it, just wouldn't have worked. What if we grab the branch and then just pull it down?

Speaker 1: 8:32

Just brought it to us.

Speaker 2: 8:33

Just bring it down and then boom, grab the blueberries. And it wasn't just me. I pulled the branch down and two others I think you and Kate had started grabbing from those blueberries, and there was just tons of them there.

Speaker 1: 8:47

Big juicy ones that were untouched way up high I mean some of the primo berries and they're all falling by the handful into our cup. Picture it like I'm putting my hand underneath, with the cup underneath my hand, and just dropping them into my hand as Jared held them down.

Speaker 2: 9:02

So, as I did that, now I'm a thinker. I'm always thinking about stuff, you know, sometimes deliberately, sometimes my thoughts will take me different places, and in this moment I envision that, the blueberries and my straining, for it is like how so many people approach getting healthy, maybe losing weight, that they're reaching for this prize, those high blueberries that they can't quite reach, and they're straining and reaching for it.

Speaker 1: 9:27

And they keep trying, and they keep trying Over and over and they might try different ways. They might be jumping, they might be jumping and twirling, they might be trying to pogo stick, but they're still not reaching them. And now they're exhausted because they keep trying all these different ways to get to the thing that they want.

Speaker 2: 9:42

And never quite reaching the prize. But people trying diets are like straining, reaching for those blueberries that are out of reach.

Speaker 1: 9:50

And it might not be a diet for weight loss sake.

Speaker 2: 9:54

No.

Speaker 1: 9:54

It might be just a diet, meaning a way to eat to heal your body so you can finally feel better and do what you want to do.

Speaker 2: 10:01

And what we need is another way, a way that actually works. And so whole food, plant-based eating is like grabbing that branch and pulling it down, but this time your effort's not in vain. You're easily reaching the berries.

Speaker 1: 10:14

But here's the thing We've worked with so many clients, so many people who have tried whole food, plant-based eating before, and they just can't make it stick. They grabbed the branch, they pulled it down and they started to pick the berries, but for some reason it just wasn't sticking. It just wasn't working for them. It took too long, it was difficult, it just didn't work for them. But what we found is that there is a way to make it stick because it's quick, it's faster, right, we need things that are fast, that we can understand more quickly, but also get done and get out of the kitchen, and simple and taste good, and when you have those three things together, everything goes great so an accelerator, the power on plants way, it's like having that extra muscle.

Speaker 2: 11:01

So maybe you grab the branch and pull and you can get it, but it's giving you a lot of resistance. Think of accelerator as that extra muscle that you pull it down and it's effortless and you're grabbing those berries quick and easy.

Speaker 1: 11:13

And I almost think of it like you grab the branch and you start to pull it down. You might ultimately get it down, but then it won't stay. It like flings back out of your hand. You know you can't make it stick, it won't stay. And then your blueberries go flying everywhere and then the whole thing's ruined.

Speaker 2: 11:28

I was thinking with the coyote trying to catch the roadrunner and he gets caught in his own trap and gets flung across the canyon. You know, the branch snaps back and it pulls you and your blueberries go flying everywhere. And then now your blueberries are lost on the sandy soil.

Speaker 1: 11:43

And it's just all so complicated, like it feels complicated and it feels overwhelming. I mean the branch feels heavy, it feels hard to drag down and once you get it down there the berries are dry, like they just don't taste good. You know, sometimes if berries stay on a bush a long time, they shrivel up and they're dry and they're hard and seedy and they're just don't taste good. So maybe you've had that experience where you've tried whole food, plant-based, and you try these recipes and they just don't taste good. So you can't make it stick for that reason. Or it's just too difficult and it keeps slipping out of your grasp because it doesn't work with a real schedule. It takes too long, the effort's too hard, it's overwhelming.

Speaker 1: 12:16

Or, like one of our clients said to me the other day. She said you know every one of your recipes I try and every food formula that you give me along the step of the framework, when I put them into practice, it actually works because it tastes good. It's simple. All the things that we've just been talking about is what she loves about what we do inside the accelerator framework. So, like Jared was saying, accelerator framework is like that extra muscle. It's what makes it quick and easy to do and it makes you be able to hold on to it Right. What makes it quick and easy to do and it makes you be able to hold on to it right? Because if you have an extra muscle and you're lifting something that requires a little effort, it makes it simple, but then it also sticks right. You can hold it there longer. If you have a big muscle, could you hold the branch a really long time, like forever? Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 13:00

Well, the power on plants way absolutely.

Speaker 1: 13:08

So our accelerator framework is that five-step system for making eating whole plant foods exciting, enjoyable and, as a result, sustainable. Over the years, what Jared and I've learned is that it's not necessary to keep requiring yourself to eat meals you don't like in the name of getting healthy. It's just not. We've done all the groundwork for you on our own journey and through helping so many clients find success over the years using this proven, enjoyable and exciting way of eating. Think about it Everything that you do works so much better when you have the right framework. This doesn't just apply to whole food, plant-based eating. It's a universal principle and when you follow those who've already gone where you want to go.

Speaker 1: 13:47

Well, that is the fast track, the accelerated path. Friend, we want you to walk away feeling super encouraged. Today, you can stop struggling with ways of eating that you do not enjoy and, for that reason, don't bring you lasting results, whether they're too time consuming or too involved or just not exciting. Our point is you do not have to deprive yourself of meals you enjoy in order to reach your goals. There's a proven, enjoyable way to have a body that finally feels good, and it doesn't require feeling sad or deprived by what you're eating, whether that may be main meals or snacks or drinks or desserts.

Speaker 1: 14:28

When you're ready to learn more about whole food, plant-based eating and the five-step system, plus coaching that's already been laid out for you, step-by-step, inside Accelerator you can find the info at poweronplantscom. Forward slash accelerator. And today we want to leave you with this. What if the breakthrough you've been searching for in your health has been right in front of you all along, but you just haven't noticed it yet? Next week, we'll show you how to finally spot what's been hiding in plain sight. In the meantime, have a fantastic week, friend, knowing that you're loved, you're prayed for and we will see you soon. Thank you.