By Randy Barber
Mom loses more than 100 lbs. after changing diet
SEDALIA – A mother at Sedalia Elementary says the school’s garden is behind a remarkable turnaround in her health.
Last summer, Jannessa and her family volunteered to help keep Sedalia’s garden growing over the summer. While she and her girls, Bryanna and Aryanna, enjoyed the garden work, it was tasting the fruits of their labor that changed her life.
“The taste is completely different. Completely!” Jannessa said. ““It doesn’t taste like the corn you buy at the supermarket. The corn was amazing and my girls were crazy about the little potatoes.”
Jannessa says her girls couldn’t stop talking about the creaminess of the potatoes and the flavor of the other vegetables that they would buy from the school’s garden.
At a dollar a pound, the family would stock up on these tasty treats.
“I would give them whatever I had and ask the teachers to give me whatever they can,” Jannessa said with a laugh. “Once we started doing that, my entire way of cooking and doing everything changed. It really opened my eyes.”
Problems with her thyroid and hormones had caused her to gain weight and before the garden, she was teetering on the edge of becoming a diabetic.
“I couldn’t sit on the floor with my kids in the gym during an assembly. I couldn’t get down and then I couldn’t get back up. Now being able to sit there with them and having them sit on me,” Jannessa said.
She finally addressed those issues and with a new focus on eating healthy, she got more active and started to lose weight.
“So far, I’ve lost 103 pounds,” Jannessa said proudly. “Having my daughter put her arms completely around me, that has been a big wow.”
She says the garden has given her the opportunity to teach her kids about being healthy.
“It has been a very big life changer,” Jannessa said.