We were lucky to catch up with Joya Wesley recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Joya thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you share a story with us from back when you were an intern or apprentice? Maybe it’s a story that illustrates an important lesson you learned or maybe it’s a just a story that makes you laugh (or cry)?

Now that I’m a certified weight-loss coach, five years into maintaining a healthy body weight nearly 200 pounds below my peak, I can consider all the years I tried unsuccessfully to reverse obesity as one huge preparatory apprenticeship.

Beginning in 1977 at age 11 when my sixth grade school picture captures the first appearance of pudge on my pretty little face, I studied under dozens of diet doctors, workout instructors and other experts.

As and after my body grew into my adult 5’4”, small-boned frame, I carried excess.weight due to compulsive overeating. Although widespread now, it was still a relatively rare thing in the early days of what I like to call my SAD years — the years I was addictively eating the Standard American Diet, before I learned about whole food plant-based living and got HAPPY, to use Rachael Brown’s cool acronym for Healthy And Plant-Powered, Yay!

In the early 1980s it was lonely, hard and scary being the only fat girl, especially in Los Angeles, where I grew up surrounded by beautiful beach bodies. Fighting fat was more important to me than anything, and with early assistance and support of my mother and grandmother, I gave that cause tremendous amounts of my energy and effort.

I counted a total of 38 different diets followed during decades focused on weight-loss research that I didn’t even begin, but was born into. In the ‘70s I remember my parents being on a fad weight-loss protocol that required regular injections of some animal’s urine!

I celebrated success and felt skinny when I got down to 180 pounds my senior year in high school, but slipped into massive failure after going to college and gaining a “freshman fifty” and continuing up from there. I was driven to seek in-patient medical help after reaching my top weight of 329 pounds at age 25. After dropping 100 pounds, I spent years more on a yo-yo, mostly over 200 pounds, before I found my answer.

What kept me trying was my strong desire and the sense that once I found and fixed whatever it was that was wrong with me, then the weight would just fall off. What I ended up finding was that the problem wasn’t in me. The late Dr. John McDougall stated the truth in his oft-quoted line, which also explains why obesity now is exploding worldwide: “it’s the food.”

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I wear a lot of hats but I identify mostly as a writer. I am a former journalist and the author of the mini book “The Easy Breezy Whole Foodie: Opt Out of the Standard American Diet in Seven Steps.” I also am a certified weight-loss coach and offer consultation, coaching and a blog at www.easybreezywholefoodie.com.

In writing the book and creating my weight-loss protocol for clients I used the hard-won experience I gained reversing the obesity that afflicted my own body for more than four decades.

As a born foodie who now only eats whole plant foods, it gives me great pleasure to explore their mostly untapped delicious possibilities, which I get to do worldwide thanks to my other job as manager and tour manager for my dad’s funk and jazz band.

My dad, legendary trombonist and bandleader Fred Wesley, is my favorite success story. He adopted a whole food plant based lifestyle in 2020, a year after I did. He quickly dropped 70 pounds and regained the vitality to continue enjoying touring the world at 81 years old and counting.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The biggest thing is the big lie that Big Food has a vested interest in perpetuating: Everything in moderation.

I know from my own experience and from the testimony of legions more HAPPY people that what actually works is complete abstinence from SAD foods. To keep it easy breezy for myself I define SAD foods as all animal products and — with a few consious exceptions — all processed foods, including all processed sugars, flours and oils. I don’t eat any CRAP, which are foods Dr. Michael Gregor defines as “calorie-rich and processed.”

When people hear me say that they immediately think I’ve just made a deal with misery and decided to bear with dry, bland food forever to satisfy what my sister once disparagingly called my “obsession with being thin.”

What they don’t understand and can’t understand without experiencing it for themselves is the endless variety of delicious flavors and copycat expieriences that whole plant foods offer to tastebuds that have recovered from a lifetime of SAD assault.

For 44 years I pumped enless energy into trying and frustratingly failing to control my weight by “moderating” my food intake. I felt whatever diet regime ended up being the charm surely would allow me to continue exercising what I considered my God-given right to enjoy whatever I liked, as long as I did it in moderation. No matter that what I liked required slaughtering animals for meat and torturing them for dairy products, fouling more and more of the planet in the process. No matter that the saturated fats were clogging my blood vessels and the refined carbs were making a hopeless addict of my brain.

It was a shock to discover that I could let all those foods go without dying or wanting to die, and live effortlessly thin in a joyfully delicious new world (after a short period of physical and mental detox).

Today it’s my honor to help others get free of the SAD food matrix with a clear understanding about health-promoting foods versus those that are promoting the standard American diseases (starting with heart disease and diabetes) around the globe.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

Books, documentaries, essays and especially interviews with other HAPPY people have been central in my journey to freedom from the SAD food matrix. My mini book digests dozens, many of which also are listed on my website.

The most important ones I recommend are “The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force That Undermines Health and Happiness,” by Alan Goldhamer and Doug Lisle, and “Rezoom: The Powerful Reframe to End the Crash-and-Burn Cycle of Food Addiction,” by Susan Peirce Thompson.

Another book that has more recently helped me develop a deeper and wider appreciation of food’s power and importance is “The World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony,” by Dr. Will Tuttle.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.easybreezywholefoodie.com
• Instagram: @easybreezywholefoodie
• Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/joya-wesley-a92b341
• Youtube: @easybreezywholefoodie