S7 E13 | A Focus on Self-Care and Healing Foods (Jeannie Fulbright with Anita Roussel)

S7 E13 | A Focus on Self-Care and Healing Foods (Jeannie Fulbright with Anita Roussel)

Show Notes:

Self care sometimes requires more than taking time for yourself each week. There are times when our body is telling us we need to change something. If you find yourself plagued by autoimmune issues, you're too exhausted to do more than the bare minimum, maybe you even feel emotionally drained beyond normal mom-hood. In this episode, Jeannie talks to her friend and homeschool mom, Anita Roussel, who has been there and found her way out and completely restored to health. By switching to a plant-based diet, she and her husband radically transformed their health. Anita believes eating healthy should be easy and taste amazing. Because of that she's created a cookbook that makes being healthy a breeze. Anita is offering our listeners a free Quick Start Guide, so you can test it out and determine if this is the answer for you. She also has a lively podcast with her husband, Jarrod, where they share testimonies, recipes, and great tips on easy peasy healthy living.

About Anita

Anita Roussel is a nurse with her BSN, a Certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach, and a homeschooling mom of 4 (ages 10-18). She’s a southern girl through and through, raised in rural northwest Georgia where her parents owned a barbecue restaurant serving downhome southern cooking. She firmly believes that no woman should ever have to miss out on the opportunities she wants to take in life just because her body doesn’t feel like it. That's because years ago when Anita’s health suffered, she and her husband (A Physician Assistant) tried to find the answer the traditional way without success. They knew there must be something that would turn things around! Digging through the research and learning solid, science backed nutritional principles led them to embrace the most nutrient-dense, healing food on the planet, whole plant food. This began Anita’s journey of creating simple, mouth-watering plant-based meals that the whole family would love. As a result, her pain, cardiovascular symptoms, and extra pounds disappeared. She and her husband were thrilled to regain their energy and start enjoying incredible opportunities that they'd been missing out on for years! Their children have also embraced the plant based lifestyle and are thriving! Today, through both Power On Plants Society and Podcast, Anita is living her mission of empowering busy women and their families to lead extraordinary lives, by sharing the simple, enjoyable way to heal from the inside out with delicious, life-giving whole plant foods.

About Jeannie

Jeannie Fulbright, a 24-year veteran homeschooler, is the author of the #1 best-selling, multi award-winning Apologia Young Explorer science series: Exploring Creation with Astronomy, Chemistry and Physics, Botany, Zoology, and Anatomy & Physiology. She is also the author of the action-packed historical time travel book series Rumble Tumbles Through Time, as well as preschool science books and activity kits, the Charlotte Mason Heirloom Planner, and many high-quality Charlotte Mason based products. Jeannie and her husband Jeff became empty nesters in 2019. All four of their children all went to the University of Georgia on scholarship (homeschooling works!). For more than 20 years Jeannie has traveled around the country speaking to homeschoolers at conventions, covering a plethora of topics from Charlotte Mason to marriage and prayer.

Resources

Anita's Power on Plants Podcast

Anita’s free quick start guide

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Homeschooling.mom | Instagram | Website

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Show Transcript:

Jeannie Fulbright Welcome to The Charlotte Mason Show, a podcast that is all things Charlotte Mason and her tried and true philosophy of education, designed to help you homeschool with more confidence, joy, and success. It is our hope that you'll find golden nuggets that will transform the way you think and the way you homeschool. I'm your host, author of the bestselling Charlotte Mason Science Curriculum, Jeannie Fulbright, and I am so glad you joined me today.

Jeannie Fulbright Here's a riddle for you parents: Homeschoolers love them. Enemies of freedom hate them. What are they? It's the Tuttle Twins books. With millions of copies sold, the Tuttle Twins helps you teach your kids about entrepreneurship, personal responsibility, the Golden Rule, and more. Get a discounted set of books with free workbooks today at TuttleTwins.com/Homeschool. That's TuttleTwins.com/Homeschool. And now on to today's show.

Jeannie Fulbright Hey, Charlotte Mason homeschoolers. I am so happy you've joined me again today. Today I am going to be talking about one of the most important things we can do as homeschoolers to really enrich and bless and enliven our entire homeschool family--all our weeks, all our days, all our years. And that is the practice of self-care. Charlotte Mason, when she talked about self-care, she put it under the category of Masterly Inactivity. She had about seven or eight categories under Masterly Inactivity, which is of course... The Masterly Inactivity, as you know, is mother not being hovering, overinvolved, and too busy, all over her children. She's letting her children experience life, letting her children discover learning, letting her children lead learning, have their own interests, and not always hovering and worrying and complaining and being upset over every little thing. And that's sort of the main thing of Masterly Inactivity. But there's all these other elements, and one of the elements is practicing regular self-care. And they say self-care is "giving the world the best of you instead of what's left of you." And really, it's giving your homeschool family--your husband, your children--the best of you instead of what's left of you. And they say that an empty lantern--another metaphor--"an empty lantern shines no light." So self-care is really the fuel that helps make our light shine more brightly. And if we don't fill up our cup with our needs, with what we need to be the best that we can be, then we're not going to be the person that we want to be--the mother that we want to be, the educator we want to be, the friend, the parent, the wife. There are so many things that just fall by the wayside if we don't choose to schedule in and practice self-care--taking care of ourselves. And it's not... A lot of people feel guilty about taking time for themselves. And the fact is that it's the best thing you can do for your children and your family. And so we must never feel guilty about practicing self-care, because so much of our homeschool journey we just find ourselves feeling overwhelmed. And a lot of times we feel defeated, we feel depleted, and we sometimes just don't feel good. We don't feel like we have the energy. We don't feel like we have the joy and the excitement and the ability to tackle all the things that we hoped that we were going to tackle throughout the year. And so I have a special guest today, a friend of mine, Anita... Roussel?

Anita Roussel Roussel. You did it! I love you, Jeannie.

Jeannie Fulbright Thank you for coming on today.

Anita Roussel I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me!

Jeannie Fulbright Well, I'm so excited about what you're going to be able to share with us because you have been a homeschooling mom for... How old's your oldest?

Anita Roussel My oldest is 18. She's graduating this year. We're graduating our first.

Jeannie Fulbright So you've been homeschooling for quite a while.

Anita Roussel Since she was little. Since she was born. Right.

Jeannie Fulbright Exactly! We start homeschooling the minute they come into the world, don't we?

Anita Roussel Absolutely. Absolutely. It has been such a joy. I would not have chosen any other way.

Jeannie Fulbright Well, I love that, and your children are adorable.

Anita Roussel Thank you.

Jeannie Fulbright So, I'm so excited because when we talk about self-care, a lot of times we don't realize that there are so many things that we can do that will improve our health. And a lot of times what we're struggling with really is a matter of just not being at our very best health-wise--physically and mentally. And a lot of that can be rectified by getting out in nature, and also realizing that God created us to live in a garden. He created us for a garden. And we should be spending our time understanding what it is that brings us the health and the joy that God designed for us. And a lot of that happens outdoors. And also, you have a lot to share about your journey. So I would love for you to just tell us... We talked about how we can feel defeated and depleted, and some of the times that is health-related. Can you tell us your story, Anita?

Anita Roussel Absolutely! When I hit 40--and that was quite a while ago, I'm now 51--but when I hit 40, I hit a wall with my health. And the amazing thing is I'm a registered nurse and my husband's a physician assistant. And so we thought we knew how to be healthy. But there's so much conflicting information out there. And truth be told, most medical professionals do not get much, if any, nutritional training. And so we were digging and trying to figure things out as we had children. Of course, that was when we wanted to start getting even healthier because we want to raise healthy children. I have a friend who always says, "You know, Anita, I want my ceiling to be my children's floor." So think about that for a minute. That's what we want for our children. We want the highest place we reach, we want that to be their starting point so they can go even farther in life.

Jeannie Fulbright Oh, I love that.

Anita Roussel Yeah. And so I've never forgotten her saying that. But when I hit 40, like I said, I hit a wall with my health. And I think you're so right, Jeannie, when you're talking about the garden. A lot of it's about getting back to the garden, and that involves even what we eat. And so we thought we were eating healthy, so we were buying cage-free meat and eggs, and we were buying free-range beef, and we were buying no added hormone dairy, not realizing that dairy by nature is filled with hormones because of what it is. And so we were doing all these things that we thought were healthy. And then I hit a wall and was at my worst and we didn't know what to do. I had no energy. I had a lot of different things going on. And I don't want moms to think as I talk and explain some of the things that are going on with my health, "Oh, well, she had so much more going on than I did." It is never too early to start. What we know now is that even children by the age of four can have fatty streaks, and it's very likely that they already do in their vessels. And so it's never too early to start, even for you as a mom. Because sometimes we have things going on. Like my problems just didn't start when I was 40. They started early on and they progressed and progressed, and my body fought it and fought it and fought it until it just said, "I can't keep up with what you're putting in and what I'm not getting." And we didn't know. But I got so bad... Things got so bad... He would come home from work, my husband, and he would say, "Okay, well, I'm home." And I know he's thinking, "What's for dinner?" And I wanted to serve him and I wanted to have something really good made. And sometimes we would even cook together. But it reached a point where I had such low energy I could not even cook without sitting on a stool. So he would pull me up a stool and I'd say, "If you have any hope of having dinner tonight, please just take the kids and I'll cook." And it got to where I was homeschooling, where I would just sit on the couch. I just had no energy. I had other things going on. I had fibrocystic breast disease. I had a bladder disease going on where they told me that... It was so painful. It was like, imagine a UTI, like a urinary tract infection, all the time that you can't get rid of. And they were starting me on steroids for that. It's called interstitial cystitis. And they told me, "You'll have this forever." You know.

Jeannie Fulbright "Oh, thanks!"

Anita Roussel All these different diagnoses. Well, yeah, and this is what happens: Doctors, or someone in a white coat comes in, like a P.A. or nurse practitioner, and they give us a diagnosis and we take that on as who we are. And we think there's nothing we can do. "All I can do is take a pill or have surgery." And really, the truth is that pills manage symptoms. But food and different lifestyle practices, what we know now, can actually prevent and even reverse the most common diseases today, which haven't been around all that long. So we'll get into some of that later. But really, it just was I reached a wall. I was going to doctor's visits all the time, spending my time in the offices trying to figure out what was going on, not getting answers the traditional route, and going, "There has to be something!" And crying out to God. One day my husband got a medical journal in the mail and he came in and he started reading it and he said, "I think I may have an answer for some of your joint pain." Because we had been told that grapeseed oil was healthy-- like we're told a lot of oils are healthy--but the truth is oils are pressed out. This is what we know now after doing all the nutritional research. But oils are pressed out. We don't walk around or go on a bike ride and see bottles of oil hanging from a tree. So it is a processed food. It's also the most calorie-dense food at about 200 calories per tablespoon. But it is inflammatory; it's pro-inflammatory. And so he said, "I'm reading this research study and I just want you to try something." And up until that point, we just weren't thinking the food was the problem, because we thought we were eating the healthy foods. I mean, I would even go and buy sandwich meat and look, "No nitrate, no nitrite. Am I getting the right one in the brown box that's healthy?" And I just ended up in this situation. So he said, "Let's just try not eating the oils anymore. Let's just try kind of taking those out bit by bit." And we did that and I started getting improvement. My joints weren't aching anymore. He wasn't even hurting and he was waking up in the morning going, "I'm feeling so much better! Like this is crazy!" And that was just one thing that we did. And so that opened up our eyes to say, "Look, what else can we do? What else are we getting that's harming us? What else are we not getting that our bodies are crying out for?" And that's really what happens when our bodies hit a state of disease, they're crying out. They're saying, "You know, there's something I'm getting that's causing damage and you're not able to repair." But God made your body to be able to repair. But it wasn't able to because we were getting those things constant, constant, constant that we just didn't need. And we can talk more about that in a little bit. But we just reached this point where I just hit a wall, and I didn't know what to do. And so we started doing one thing and another thing, looking into the research. And thank God...

Jeannie Fulbright Step by step. Small changes. Little by little.

Anita Roussel Oh, absolutely! Step by step we figured it out. And if I knew then what I knew now, I would have gone all in then. I mean, if I had known that I could get reversal and prevention of these things, I would have gone all in. But I didn't know. And that's why we want people to know and that's why I'm here with you today, because it's our heart to let people know, "Look, there is something you can do!" So he went on, we just figured out one thing and another thing and another thing is started doing them. And we dug into the research, and we found other doctors had been digging into the research for years and years that had been there: what we should be eating, what we shouldn't be eating, and how it's in all these different foods. And so...

Jeannie Fulbright Well, I feel like what happens... You're in the medical community, and your husband's in the medical community, and I know that people that I know when they're doctors.... I've read the research that when doctors go into medical school, they believe food is important. They believe it has an effect. And when they leave medical school seven/eight years later, 75% of them do not believe food and nutrition has anything to do with medicine because of the way they are, I would say, a little bit brainwashed.

Anita Roussel Oh, absolutely. We do... we work with people teaching them how to do this. We have a company called Power On Plants that my husband and I started. And the reason I bring that up is because, while he's also working with people and clients in our business, he still works in the mainstream medical community. So that other day he had this patient and this patient... He's able to share these lifestyle-medicine principles that he's learned. Through my journey, he ended up going back in to get more training because we found all these different steps that we were finding worked. Oh! There was a brand new group of people getting together, doctors and nurses and different people of different medical backgrounds that had learned these things, and it's called Lifestyle Medicine. And so one of the first groups to go through to get certified, he got certified in it. So as he's working telemedicine now, seeing his patients currently, he's able to share these principles that we learned, we used on ourselves that were working--they were backed by research. And now, "Wow, there's this whole group of people that actually know this that have been looking into it. And they believe the same things. And they've seen it through their own research." And now there is this huge body of information there. So he was sharing with one of his patients--and he does this all the time--and he was saying, "Look, you can do things for your cholesterol." And he told her one thing to do and her cholesterol went down. And then he had another patient the next day and she had high blood pressure. He said, "If you're willing to do something natural..." And it was so simple, it's just like, "Add flaxseed to your life. Start taking two tablespoons of flaxseed every day." She got a 20-point drop in her blood pressure just by doing that one thing! She called him...

Jeannie Fulbright Big pharma is not going to like this.

Anita Roussel Oh! Well, that's okay. But you've got to understand that there are things you can do that are so, so simple. And we think it's got to be something so complicated or so hard. And I don't want to one-off nutrient things like we think, "Oh, well, I need this supplement, so I'm just going to take this one thing and this one thing." But God has made all of these nutrients and put them all into these beautiful packages for us to enjoy and they all work together. And when we start pulling out and changing things from the way He's created them, what we know is they not only don't work as well, they also can cause problems. And so we need to be really careful about one-offing nutrients. There are some things that that's important to do if you're really low in something, but it's also good to look at, "Where can I find it in its whole package?" And I feel that's even more important.

Jeannie Fulbright Exactly. Yes. And all that goes round to the idea of Vitamin D. It's best to get it from the sun without sunscreen. For what, 15 minutes? I don't know. Something like that.

Anita Roussel Yes. Depending on where you live, about 15 minutes or so. If you're farther up north latitude, you would want to stay out a little bit longer. But yeah, you don't want to burn. But if you put sunscreen on before you go out, it's going to block a lot of your ability to produce Vitamin D, so we have to have that. You know, I learned something the other day. I've got to share this with you too. Just from greens, from eating green vegetables, you think, "Oh, I'm getting all these nutrients." Now this I've known for a while, what I'm going to share with you first, but most of us don't. I didn't know it for a long, long time. There are over 100,000 nutrients that they found in whole plant foods, many of which have not even been named yet. Yet we're worried about the little vitamins and the little minerals and all these little things we worry about. And there's so many in there that we're not getting when we one-off those things.

Jeannie Fulbright I am convinced that there is so much in fruits and vegetables that we haven't even discovered yet. I mean they've only recently discovered some of the stuff we take as common knowledge now. We are really new... This whole medical research is really... We're on the very beginning phases of it, and we don't know hardly anything. The chemical compounds and all of that... It's beyond us. We don't even know.

Anita Roussel You are so right. And that's why honestly, I don't even know that we have to know all of them. I think God's way is so simple and we try to make it so complicated. But I think it's awesome that we know that they're there. There's so much in there. But do we need to know how every little molecule works together? Or can we just make it simple on ourselves because we're busy moms and just eat what God originally fueled our bodies to eat?

Jeannie Fulbright Well, and that brings us to the point of why I was so excited to have you on here, because you're... And every time I've talked to you, you've always talked about, "It's got to be simple. It's got to be easy." And for the homeschool mom, even more so! And thinking about changing the way we eat, changing the way we feed our children, that sounds like too much. That sounds too hard. It just sounds like, "I can't add that on to my already over-scheduled and defeated day."

Anita Roussel Right. It can seem so overwhelming. Number one, because we don't know what to eat. Just make it simple. I'm going to make it simple for you. There are five power foods. There are five groups of power foods. It's fruits and vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds, and legumes-- which are things like beans, peas, there's so many. And we think, "Oh, I'm going to be limited. All I can do is eat salad, or rabbit food, or bird seed." Right? It's not true! And what you've got to wrap your mind around is, these things that I believed about nutrition, many of them are just not true. For instance, let's take protein. "Oh, well, how am I going to get my protein?" It's natural for us to think that because we're bombarded with ads, we're bombarded with bars and shakes and protein powders and all these things... And there's so many places that we're really wasting our money and at the same time making it harder on our body, and protein is one of them. Because it's amazing that God put protein in every plant food. Okay, there's a name for protein deficiency. I would bet that most of you have never heard of it. And there's a reason for that, because in developed nations where we get enough calories, even eating completely 100% vegan or plant-based, you don't get it. You just don't get it. Because God put protein in every single plant. So there's no need to worry about protein. But we spend our time like, "Am I giving my kids enough protein? Am I getting in enough protein?" And all these worries and all these things that we've been programmed to believe because someone wants to sell a product to us is really distracting us. It's so distracting from what we really need to understand about nutrition. And it's focusing on those five fruits and vegetables... Well, the five key power foods. So I call them the five power foods, which are: fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, legumes. And I left out the bonus category, which is herbs and spices, because it has got to taste good. So when you're doing things like eating salads, you've got to get it stick-to-your-ribs. If you're going to eat salads, which I really like them. Some people may not. That's okay. You can get your greens, get those five power foods, in another way. The key is making your food stick to your ribs. So if I'm going to eat a salad, it's got to have potatoes, and or beans, and or avocados, and nuts and seeds. Things that make it more of a meal, that are going to make it stick to your ribs. And this is the same thing with any food. But I think the huge thing is, "Okay, Anita...." I like nuts. I like... Let's see what do I like to typically eat? Pizza, pasta, burgers. I like shepherd's pie. I like my mom's down-home, southern potato salad. I like pasta. I like pizza. We eat all those things. Biscuits! I'm a Southern girl. My parents owned a barbecue restaurant. I grew up... You know, I've got to have that. Right? Isn't that funny, though? Really! You think about that. Like if a Southern girl who grew up on fried foods and now eats no oil and eats all these power foods and still eats those same things... I still eat barbecue sandwiches. I've got to have cheesy things. I was the dairy queen. Like if somebody had told me back in the day before I had my health problems, I would never even wanted to listen to them. "Cheese. Are you kidding me? Milk, cheese, cream?!" I like creamy soups. I like... Everything had to have cheese in it. Well, I still eat cheesy things. I still eat creamy things. So I eat those same dishes. But what you've got to learn is to have the same food you love, most of them... And I feel like this is kind of a biblical principle. You're not going to come into your life... and this is one of the reasons diets don't work. You come into life and you think, "Oh, well, if I'm going to get healthy, I got to go on a diet. I've got to lose weight. I've got to..." Or maybe you're not overweight and you just think a diet is still the way to go. So you're going to restrict yourself and you're going to have small portions, while somebody next to you is eating a plateful of food that you want to rip out of their hands and dive into. Right! That doesn't even make sense. These foods that God gave us to eat originally--look at Genesis 1:29--they're the plants that are seed-bearing and they're trees that make seedy fruit. So when you start eating all these five power foods that I've named off, you've got to learn how to get them and make those same foods you've loved. But now you're going to make them in a way that they love you back, because you're going to be using the five power foods to replace the foods that have been causing problems. And we know, we know, we know that long-term animal products cause problems in our bodies. They are full of cholesterol. When they hit the heat, cancer-causing things are produced. So what we know is that is true. But our bodies... And our bodies should be able to fight some of that off if we eat just a little bit, but we're bombarding them with it all the time. We used to eat it at every meal. We had meat or cheese or all of the above. Meat with cheese on it, right? And then we'll have our little side of veggies and we think we eat a lot of veggies, but our bodies need that. So animal products all have cholesterol. What's one of the major problems people have today with their health? High cholesterol. What do we see reverse on a regular basis with our clients and our patients? Their cholesterol. Because when you start eating this way, it goes down. It's not normal to have high blood pressure as you age. But what do we see happen as we age in this society? It goes up and up and up. So we just think, "Oh, well, that happens." So somebody comes in in a white lab coat and tells you, "You've got a diagnosis. You've got high blood pressure. You're going to have to deal with this for the rest of your life."

Jeannie Fulbright "And here's your pill."

Anita Roussel "And here's your pill."

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Jeannie Fulbright My husband is... He's a health... We're not plant-based. But I am interested in hearing how to get going in that direction. And we'll see how much we can move in that area. And I know that it would help us and get our health better. But my husband does eat a lot of plant-based food. And when he was diagnosed with high blood pressure, he cut out salt, cut it out completely. I always had to make two separate dinners, one for him and one for me, one with salt and one without. And his salt... I mean, his blood pressure went... It was perfectly fine and has been fine. And everybody, all the men that he's worked with all his life at his job, they're all on... They all would rather eat salt and take a pill. But the problem with taking a pill is that that pill causes other problems that you don't know about. And then you're starting to have these other problems. And the more you start adding pills to the problems that you have, the more problems that you're going to have down the road, but...

Anita Roussel And the more pills you're going to take to fight the side effects of the pills. And the foods--the natural foods we're meant to eat--have side effects, but they're great side effects. Like my energy is back. I no longer have fibrocystic breast disease. I no longer have the bladder problem that I had. It's completely gone and I take no medications for them. Now, my husband and I are not against medications. We're in the medical field, right? But there's a time and a place for them and they are so overused. It is unbelievable. And our thing is, we're not the food Nazis. We want everybody to have a choice though, Jeannie. I feel like we don't judge anybody for how they choose to eat, but what breaks our heart is that people don't know. Like they just don't know. We want to fuel our bodies well, so we can be strong into our old age. We want to feel good so we can do the things that God has called us to do in our lives, including raising our children and teaching them how to live well and how to do these things. And we're not... we're getting a lot of the things that have the cholesterol, but I didn't talk about plants. So plants have no cholesterol. Animal products are filled with it, but plants are filled with fiber. Well, you've probably heard a lot about gut and leaky gut, and that is linked to a lot of different diseases. But that's not the only thing that fiber is good for. But fiber is the food that your good gut bacteria require. They require it. And your cell lining in your gut is one cell wide. And so when it starts breaking down and opening up, things get through that shouldn't in your body sees it as an enemy. And so then you're in autoimmune. Like you're fighting, fighting, fighting all these things. Your cells, your gut has to have fiber and I... TMI, but I'm just going to say these are the things that need to be talked about: I was constipated my entire life. Did not know it! And that causes a lot of problems. That is not normal. Like two to three times a day is normal. And when you eat plant foods, you have no problem with that and you're like in and out of the bathroom in no time. But I mean I wasted so much time, and I didn't know and I was having all these problems from feeling bloated and feeling tired and feeling sluggish. And I wasn't getting the amounts of fiber I needed and I was packing my body with cholesterol. And those are just two of the things. There's so many other things in there that we could talk about today.

Jeannie Fulbright Well, one thing you said that I really.... We've talked about this, you and I before, is about how God has a calling on all of our lives. He's given every single one of us a purpose. And right now the people who are listening, one of their primary purposes is homeschooling their children.

Anita Roussel Yes. And I think it's one of the most important, one of the most critical, is a being a mother. Be a mother. Who is going to raise your children, if not you? Right? So you have things to plant into them. Well, I think about the oxygen mask, Jeannie. Okay, so talking about a airplane: So you get on an airplane and the stewardess stands up there and what does she say? In an emergency, if the oxygen mask falls, what are you supposed to do?

Jeannie Fulbright Put it on your kid first.

Anita Roussel Actually, you put it on yourself first.

Jeannie Fulbright Oh, you put it on yourself first!

Anita Roussel Yes! That's good. That's okay though.

Jeannie Fulbright I got it backwards.

Anita Roussel That's all right! But think about it. Why would you want to put it on yourself first? Why would you want to do that? Because if you pass out, or if you're not healthy, you can't take care of your children. Who's going to take care of your children? So our heart is to help moms see, "I can feel good every day. There's a way that I can do it simply. I'm going to do that by getting these five power foods. The way I do that and get more of those, is I start with the one food, with one thing I love, like chili. Oh, I love chili! How can I get the ingredients out that are not beneficial to me? Like how can I eat chili without meat in it? What are the meaty things I could put in there?" And you start putting more of those things. "Do I like mushrooms? Could I chop those up and put them in there? Can I add more of different kinds of beans? Could I add more vegetables? Could I add some ground-up cauliflower to give me a meaty texture? Could I add some jackfruit?" Like there's so many... And you may be going, "I don't know what jackfruit is." We talk about this stuff on our podcast all the time. We've got like 200 episodes waiting for you. Go and listen.

Jeannie Fulbright Yes! Everybody who's listening to this, if you want to hear details about how you can change the way you eat, go to Anita's podcast. And also you've got a lot... Go to her website. She has a lot of stuff she's offering. And you're about to create a cookbook of... You haven't created it, right, yet?

Anita Roussel No, I have my cookbook out. It's a digital cookbook. And then we also have a membership where we work with our members. But I want them to know about the podcast because I feel like you've got to first understand why you're struggling with what you are. And this is the thing--and it's so crazy, Jeannie--but what we know is the major diseases today are lifestyle related. They can be reversed and food is a huge part of that. Like if you can get the food down, the weight comes off because these are the most low-calorie, nutrient-dense foods. So they're the most nutrient-dense, low-calorie foods on the planet. And when you eat them, you don't have to count calories and portions and macros and micros and all this crazy stuff. Your body starts shedding weight. I have a friend named Stephanie, she's lost... She's on Instagram @cleanfoodmama. She's awesome. Her testimony is amazing. You need to listen to it. She's lost 165 plus pounds now. She keeps dropping weight because she's eating whole plant foods. Jarrod and I lost over 70 pounds. We weren't even trying to lose weight. I didn't even know I was overweight. But I posted on our Instagram recently... It's embarrassing, but if you want to see it, you can see a picture of our before and after because it's unbelievable.

Jeannie Fulbright I did see that.

Anita Roussel Isn't it crazy?! And we weren't even trying to lose weight, but then we got all these other amazing side effects. I just wanted to feel good. I was so over thinking about weight or worrying about what who said I had and was going to have for the rest of my life. I just wanted to feel good so I could take care of my children. And we want that for our children too. We want to know, "How do we get them to eat these things?" And the huge key is just: One thing out, but then one thing back in its place. Remember this, this is key here: Never leave an empty hole! Okay? This is so important. And I do feel like that's a biblical principle. When you take something out... Like if you say to yourself... Like your husband, "I can't have salt." Well, he probably wanted salt. The more he thought about, "I can't have it...." But he wanted more, it sounds like, to get beyond that, to be healthy, right? So he did it. But sometimes those things have such a hold on us and we think, "Oh, I'm a bad person. I failed at so many diets. It's my fault. I have no willpower." And what we don't understand is the great set-up. We've been set up. And there's a trifecta of things that they use, plus some, in food: salt, oil, and sugar. And we crave those things. And so they load up the foods with them. I remember, we used to go to Burger King and we would order a biggie meal. And we would be so hungry afterwards. We're looking at each other going, "I want another meal." But you feel like a pig, "I've just eaten this huge meal. I have got a problem. Like, why am I still hungry?" Because your body is crying out for nutrients it didn't get. And it's got all those other things that keep bringing you back for more. And so when you can get... Those things lose their hold, and you get food freedom when you start eating this way. But that big key again is getting the foods that you love, but learning to have them in a way they love you back by one at a time starting to replace them with ingredients that fuel your body well. So like I said, we still eat chili, lasagna, all these different things, and you've got to learn how to make them... And if you just try some recipes that are vegan or plant-based and you don't like them, it doesn't mean you're not going to like it. It's just you didn't like that recipe. There's so many ways to do this.

Jeannie Fulbright And you have something that you created that our listeners can get. What was that? I can't remember.

Jeannie Fulbright I do. It's a beginner's whole food, plant-based quick start guide.

Jeannie Fulbright Oh yay! Okay, quick start guide. That's amazing.

Anita Roussel I'm so excited to offer that. Yeah. So you just go to PowerOnPlants.com/Guide and you can get your free guide today. And then it'll give you just where you could start, like, "What can I do?" Or maybe you don't even know what whole food, plant-based is. You don't really understand it. We've talked so quickly today. I've even put a chart in there to make it super simple to understand. We eat this. We don't eat this. We avoid this. But then we add this in. Always remember, I'm never going to leave a hole. I'm not going to say to myself, "I'm not going to eat this thing." Because there's always something... Even with salt, Jeannie, I'm just going to use that as an example. Miso, we know, is a good replacement for salt. It has health benefits, and what research shows is you can use some of that and it gives you the umami flavor. Think of it like bouillon without all the mess in it. It is healthy for us, and they find that it does not cause the blood pressure and vessel damage that salt does. And so that's one way you can get a little saltiness. And maybe you think, "Nah, I don't want to eat it forever because I still have the idea that it's salty." You just back off over time. But that's a healthier option that you can put in and start implementing today. Vegetables, a lot of them are salty. Celery is salty. I mean, it's amazing. And you will taste more of those things, too. That's the other thing, your taste buds completely start changing. I never knew broccoli was sweet, and it is one of the sweetest vegetables there is. But now I can taste it, right? And I couldn't taste it before.

Jeannie Fulbright Well, that is awesome. Well, I just love this idea of making ourselves healthy so that we can fulfill the purposes that God has for us.

Anita Roussel Absolutely. And always make it quick, always make it simple, and always make it delicious. If you don't have those three things, it's never going to work. That's what we focus on when we're working with people because you've got to know how to do that as a mother. If you're spending two hours in the kitchen, that is never going to work. It's just not realistic.

Jeannie Fulbright I would call that torture.

Anita Roussel Right! Right! And Jarrod's sister... Well, yeah, his sister, my sister-in-law, her name is Laney. She's like, "Anita, I could never cook." And she's like, "I could burn water." I even had a friend tell me that the other day, she's like, "If water could be burned. I could burn it." But she is awesome now. She's in the kitchen cooking. She said, "Why did I not know this sooner? Why didn't I not know how easy this was?" And she has two teen girls who started cooking this way. They've decided to go completely plant-based, even though they started this later in life. They're loving it, thriving. It's so simple. They're coming up with their own stuff. Our kids have been cooking this way. Kate now has her own restaurant that she prints up a menu for us and sells says little treats that she made. She makes homemade banana bread. She makes all these different things. She doesn't always charge us, but it's just something fun that we let her do in the house. Because she can do it. They can cook their own meals. That's how easy it is. And I had somebody tell me the other day, "I went plant-based, but it didn't work for me because I was spending two hours in the kitchen." And all I could say to him was, "You just didn't know how. Nobody showed you how. Because it should never, ever take that long."

Jeannie Fulbright That's great. And so I'd like to close and just end on maybe some tips on how to have easy meals, how to get our children eating healthy, and how to make it easy for our families.

Anita Roussel Okay, so tips to get easy meals on the table. When you first start eating this way and you first start... We talked about a little bit, replacing things that are simple that might only have one or two animal products or ingredients in them. And that would be things like: eggs, chicken, fish, red meat, oils, added oils as well. So we show you easy ways to take the oil out of your food. It's not hard and you do not miss it, but it will greatly reduce your pain. Things like that. But you want to start with, first of all, is there something you're eating that's already plant-based? Do you have a big salad night? But maybe you're taking a side salad idea and you're not making it stick to your ribs. So start getting potatoes and beans and different things that are going to make it filling for you. Learn how to make some simple five-minute salsas. This is something we love to teach people to do. It's amazing, the flavors! And so you never would eat a plain slab of meat without marinating it and putting all this stuff on. But people go plant-based and they don't put anything on there. And then it just.... You're not going to like that. You want to put the herbs and spices and seasonings and marinades, and you're going to learn as you go to read the ingredients label. Not as much the grams of everything, more so what is in there. Because if you can't pronounce it and... Like peanut butter. Let's just take that for an example. This is a simple way to help your family start getting healthier. Nut butter should have one ingredient. Can you guess what that is?

Jeannie Fulbright The nut.

Anita Roussel The nut. Good! Right? It's simple. It's not complicated, but we make it so much so. So if you have a Costco nearby, they have Valencia organic peanut butter. It's absolutely fantastic. Valencia peanuts are grown in an area where there's less mold, so there's less likelihood of having reactions with that. They also have an almond butter that's just almonds. So, not a Costco ad, but that's just a simple tip if you've got one nearby. But to make it simple, look at things, you're already eating that are whole food, plant-based. Okay, so do you love baked potatoes? But maybe you loaded it up with sour cream and stuff, so you can learn how to make a simple cashew cream or a simple vegan or plant-based ranch dressing. I have a lot of different recipes in the cookbook, but I'm always glad to share those types of things.

Jeannie Fulbright So how can we get your cookbook? That is on your website?

Anita Roussel It's on the website. Absolutely! And so if you go to the podcast, it's PowerOnPlants.com/Podcast, and then you can find everything pretty much from the podcast. We even talk about the book on the podcast as well, because everybody wants to know, "Where do I start?" So start with the simple meals. Like if you eat bean burritos or a baked potato or something like that, that's probably going to be plant-based already. Then you go to, "What is the meal now that just has one or two ingredients?" Like chili, maybe it's just the meat. Or maybe it's just the toppings. You want to find a replacement for the sour cream because you love sour cream like I did, right? And then you just keep moving. You replace... And as you do that, keep a running list for yourself. Make it so simple. Just like a word document, and put breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks. And just type in and leave a link to where you found the one that you liked. And you're finding your new favorites. Most people only eat like ten main meals in a month. And they rotate.

Jeannie Fulbright For sure! We eat the same thing every other day.

Anita Roussel Right. So you find those nine or ten new things that are power packed with these five power foods and you will see your health change so quickly. It is unbelievable how fast it can happen. I was talking to somebody yesterday. We have patients reverse diabetes.

Jeannie Fulbright Wow!

Anita Roussel Diabetes. Heart disease. End-stage heart disease. You can see... They have x-rays and different things where they've looked at the heart. Ultra... I can't remember what the exact films are, but there are films and you can look at them, and the blood vessels open back up. It is unbelievable! End-stage heart disease. People reverse cancer, eating this way. I mean, it's amazing what all can happen when you're eating whole food, plant-based. And read Genesis 1:29 if you haven't read it lately. And it's just like you're talking about, Jeannie, and we talked about before we started, any way you can in your life, take yourself back to the garden, because not only is it simpler... And don't listen to the lies of the enemy. This is not hard. Plant-based is not hard. It is different. This is different. It's just something you haven't done before. Anything that's new seems hard. But once you know how and you have somebody show you the simple way to do it, it's just what you do, right? And so it's the same thing, like we were talking about before, getting back to the garden, getting outside. We were never meant to live in these concrete walls or in wooden structures all the time, we were meant to be outdoors. So as we get outside and we open our windows, like Charlotte Mason talks about, get the fresh air, it is so good for you! You add that to the whole plant foods and it's game on. I mean, you will not believe how much better you will feel. And that's our desire. Like I said, we're not going to judge anybody for how they're eating or how they're living their life. We just want you to know it's an option, and it's such a great option. And it works. It's proven by science and it just works. I mean, we see it every day. So that's what we want people to know.

Jeannie Fulbright Well, thank you, Anita. You have been so helpful. And I love all this information. It's a lot, but I love how you have the quick start guide. So how do we get to the quick start guide? Power on plants?

Anita Roussel PowerOnPlants.come/Guide.

Jeannie Fulbright Okay, alright. So we can quick start to get our health... Reach back and get our health back to where it was when we were children. And have the energy that we need to be able to take care of our families. And I just believe that this is really one of the first elements of self-care is health care. Getting our health back.

Anita Roussel Absolutely! Absolutely! And we have to do that. And it's so easy to do for our children as well. We're going to be talking about, on the podcast soon, "How do you make it simple for your children?" What are some things you can do to get them started? And so we'll be talking about that soon, too. But Jeanie, it has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Jeannie Fulbright Thanks for coming on!

Anita Roussel If anybody has questions, feel free to reach out to me by email also: [email protected].

Jeannie Fulbright Great. Thank you, Anita. And thank you everybody for tuning in today. And please reach out to Anita, and she is always available to help with any questions that you have. And listen to her podcast.

Anita Roussel Absolutely! Thank you so much. Have a great day.

Jeannie Fulbright Talk later. You too!

Jeannie Fulbright Hey, a couple more things: Do you wish you had a Charlotte Mason mentor? Someone to keep you focused on the things that matter--the Lord, and His word, and prayer, and habit training and living books, nature study, and of course, the most neglected thing of all, self-care? Well, I have the perfect mentor for you: the Charlotte Mason heirloom planner. It is much more than a planner. It's a guide and a mentor and a place to chronicle your treasured moments and memories--all the things you want to remember and keep sacred and special from this homeschool journey. Check it out on my website at JeannieFulbright.com, and learn about that and so many of the other Charlotte Mason curriculum and tools that I've created to make your homeschool journey the richest and most fulfilling experience of your life. Thanks again for listening to The Charlotte Mason show.

Jeannie Fulbright If you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast and while you're there, leave us a review. Tell us what you love about the show. This will help other homeschooling parents, like you, get connected to our community. And finally, tag us on Instagram @HomeschoolingDotMom. That's @HomeschoolingDotMom. And let us know what you thought of today's episode. And don't forget to check out my friends at Medi-Share because you deserve healthcare you can trust. To learn more about Medi-Share and why over 400,000 Christians have made the switch, go to GreatHomeschoolConventions.com/MediShare.

Jeannie Fulbright Have you joined us at one of the Great Homeschool Conventions? I would love for you to come! On my website, I have a special coupon code that you can use when you register. The Great Homeschool Conventions are the homeschooling events of the year with amazing speakers, hundreds of workshops to help you homeschool well, and the largest curriculum exhibit halls in the United States. People travel from all over the United States to Missouri, South Carolina, Ohio, California, and Texas to find encouragement, friendship, and curriculum. Be sure to go to my website JeannieFulbright.com for your coupon code. And when you're at the convention, please come by my booth and say hello, because I love meeting homeschoolers in real life. It's always fun to have new homeschool friends. So thank you so much for listening and I do hope to see you at the convention. Have a blessed rest of the week.

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