Although I've never met William in person, I came to
make his acquaintance a year or so ago when he called to place an order for WellBean. While he has neither a computer nor an email address, he does have a smartphone, so we conduct most of our business via SMS.
Periodically, I check in with William to make sure he's happy
with his WellBean subscription, and somewhere along the way, he began responding with images—pictures of the colorful, healthy meals he makes for himself. Some of these concoctions he confessed were experimental, while others spring from recipes he mines from the internet.
As we texted back and forth, William's story began to unfurl, and I grew more impressed with his efforts to feed himself well. It turns out that, like many before him, he came to whole-food plant-based eating following a health scare.
Also like many others, he's going it mostly alone, reliant on the plethora of youtubers spreading the good word about evidence-based eating to keep himself motivated, No one in his immediate circle eats this way, yet he continues to forge ahead, learning how to cook plants without sugar, oil, and salt.
When I asked him if I could chronical his story in a blog post, he responded with this text: I really don't think I'm worth of it. I eat good but I eat too much. I'm probably about 85-90% plant based. I like my chocolate.
From my perspective, those are William's strengths--that he's NOT perfect, yet he keeps trying every day. He's a single 74-year-old man who discovered WFPB eating later in life, and I hope sharing a bit of his story and his creative culinary efforts will inspire others along this sometime lonely path of whole-food plant-based eating.
The moral of the story? Keep trying! Keep trying new recipes, new vegetables, new beans. Each nutrient-rich meal you eat reforms your taste buds a little bit more, making it easier to enjoy the healthiest foods on the planet. :-)
We'd love to hear your story in the comments below, and please let us know if you find these posts inspiring or motivating.
I find Williams story very inspiring, because I started eating WFPB later in life too. I have a large family and many of them just don't understand my eating this way. I too slip once in awhile, so his story and the Bread Stick Dilemma really hit home. The Well Bean Bars really help me make a better choice. I've been healing from a surgery, so I haven't been doing my normal cooking; the Well Bean Bars have been a life saver having to drive 1 hour back and forth to physical Therapy. Now I have others eating them with me.
Wow!. He's an inspiration.