Weight Loss Strategies for Managing Hypertension

Brittany Jaroudi

I’m good. How are you?

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

I’m great.  I’ll tell you, you have an inspiring story, first of all. Could you give a little highlight of your health journey in the sense that you were a kid growing up and then how things evolved and where you found yourself ill?

Brittany Jaroudi

I pretty much lived the standard American lifestyle from the beginning. I grew up in a household where I had a busy mom who was working all the time, and so it was very quick meals, and just, I feel like, very classic of the box of cereal and different things that were processed that found their way into our house pretty often. I live that way. My entire life I thought it was normal, and I started to notice issues when I started to come out of college. Some things that I started to pay attention to was, like, my weight had continually gone up. I’m very short in real life. I’m only 4’11. I was morbidly obese on the BMI scale. It just progressed, like college is stressful, and then finding a job is a little stressful. I got married, and so then I started to pay attention to going to the doctor and taking responsibility for my health. When I went to my annual physical, I got my blood pressure taken, and it got flagged high to the point where they were concerned. Being so young, maybe I had something going on with my mitral valve, which required an echocardiogram and different things like that for screenings, everything looked perfect, and it was so high that they put me on different blood pressure medicines to go along with that. 

Also, my blood work showed that I had high cholesterol and a high C-reactive protein. then also I wasn’t feeling the best, as well, there was a lot of starting chest pain and things like that. So at the age of 23, that’s pretty alarming and something you generally don’t think about. You have to worry about it. The blood pressure was super concerning because it was something I could test daily at home, like a monitor cuff that we had. My mom was also a nurse. She would also take my readings; when you go to the doctor’s office, she can take my readings. With both of those, like daily, I would see that my numbers were very high. That is very alarming because that increases your risk for stroke and some other not-so-fun things down the pipe if you just let things go. I had very scary readings, like 160 over 110 at one point.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

That was with medications or without.

Brittany Jaroudi

That was before. Then, with the first pill, I came down to like 148 over; it was still like 199. Then they put me on a second one, which came down, and I was still just above what they considered normal. It would, and then also the side effects of being on medication. I wasn’t a fan of it, so I got lucky. I found out about a whole plant-based lifestyle through watching Forks Over Knives, and in the documentary, they talk about heart disease and cancer. Those were the two big players in my life. My dad had triple bypass surgery when I was in elementary school, has had strokes, has had a defibrillator, and a lot of other scary things on top of diabetes. My mom had a big history of cancer. I was trying to figure out, being a newlywed and already being so sick, how do I help myself? I was going the traditional route of going to your doctor and seeing what they can do to you. 

Not once did they talk about lifestyle with me, which was very upsetting after learning all of the information. But they just told me it was genetic like my dad and uncle and some other family members all went to the same doctor. So he was, and they were the patients of that doctor. They just chalked it up to genetics, like, well, you’re young; nothing’s wrong with all the scans we’ve done. This is just how life is going to be. I just didn’t want to accept that. While I took the medication, I also started to follow a plant-based lifestyle and noticed a drop in my blood pressure was one of the most immediate things that I started to do. I did focus on foods from Dr. Kroger’s research that were specifically good for lowering blood pressure, like making sure I get flax in my diet every day. I still do all of these things to this day, making sure I upped the amount of hibiscus tea I was drinking and made sure I got lots of dark leafy greens in my diet and things like that that I didn’t do prior. On top of regular exercise, I also started to meditate, which was something I didn’t do before breathing exercises. 

I found a neat gadget called The Core, and it’s like a handheld device that measures things like your stress indicator and your breathing, and it gives you a real-time data report at the end of how well you were calm throughout the whole thing. I love that I use that thing to this day just to help ground, and I found that helped me stick with a meditation practice, and you know, I started seeing it come down, and it came down pretty quickly to the point where, with my doctor’s guidance, I was able to stop all my medication. Two medications were way too much for my blood pressure to drop. I went down to one and then tapered off and did nothing. I’ve been on anything else since. Now I’m pregnant with our first child, and I’m going to our doctor’s appointments, and they’re looking at the history from eight or nine years ago. I went in with all these blood pressure issues. My blood pressure is beautiful at the doctor’s appointments, but they’re still worried about pre-eclampsia from eight or nine years ago. It’s just funny that, like, every time I go out, I’m like, see, it’s still good because my lifestyle hasn’t changed. I still do all of these things. I haven’t gone back, and it’s been such a gift and empowerment that it’s not; my genetics weren’t necessarily the reason I implemented this lifestyle. It’s changed my blood pressure, my cholesterol, and all of my other things. I’m blessed to have found this.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

That’s fantastic. What would you consider for the timeline? Let’s say that you noticed that your blood pressure was high. Did you pull off the first one and then the second one to the point that you were off all medications since changing your diet?

Brittany Jaroudi

I would say, like, four months to four pills. I would say that in the first month, I was starting to notice, and as you go pretty low and, a little lightheaded, you have to pay attention if you’re on. It’s important to work with a doctor, especially if you’re tapering off any medication. You’re doing this lifestyle because sometimes you can see results so quickly. But around that first month, it went down to just one, and then it just tapered, as we went a little bit less and less. then I would say three or four months I was off everything.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

I would say it depends on how, when you were young and you hadn’t been on the medications for very long, you think that the sooner we get you earlier in life, the better, especially if there’s nothing structurally wrong, like something wrong with your kidneys or your heart. Then, can we also speak a little bit about your weight loss? Because that had a significant impact as well in the timeline there as far as your weight?

Brittany Jaroudi

It took me about a year—maybe a year and a couple of months—to lose 70 pounds. When I went into it, it wasn’t like the focus was on the blood pressure and the immediate damage I was doing. I say that the weight loss is a nice bonus. It was like, I wasn’t when I found Forks Over Knives; it wasn’t a fad thing. Like I had done all prior. Like, I’m going to try this for two weeks, or my New Year’s resolution is going to be doing this for a month, and then I get the results and can slowly go back to the things that I did before I knew that this was going to be like a lifelong change. I focused on, like, the science and then seeing the results of my blood work, my blood pressure, and all of that. But I was patient with myself and had a lot of grace for myself doing this, and about a year later, 70 pounds came off.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

That’s amazing. Can we talk a little bit about what you said? You gave yourself grace and patience. How did you have a mindset going into that? Did you have judgments about yourself before? Like, where did that come from? Because that’s such an important piece of longevity and sticking to any type of health change. Where did that come from, especially someone so new?

Brittany Jaroudi

I say that like we’re our worst critics to yourselves. We’re the meanest to ourselves. Like, you would never say things that you say to yourself or a stranger, or at least I would never dare say them to a friend, and I forget where I heard them. But I read or heard someone talking about how you should talk to yourself like you’re a friend. So that self-talk ofI’m doing the best I can today”—look at all these changes I’m making. I’m not going out to eat anymore. I’m not eating processed foods. I’m spending the time to make all of these meals. I just had such faith that it would all work out because I was putting in a lot of effort. I just was gracious with myself and said, I didn’t expect everything to get fixed overnight. I also reflected on how it took me. I was young when I found this lifestyle, but it still took me like 20 years to do it the other way. being graceful that, like if my cholesterol didn’t come down, it wasn’t the perfect numbers that sometimes we see people talk about overnight, to be grateful that eventually, as I do this longer run, slowly come to where I want it. That’s what I found. The longer I’ve followed this lifestyle, it only gets better and better each time.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Excellent. You started small, and things evolved and continued. How did you find healing in the kitchen? Because this is what we do. How did you start sharing that online? But you talked maybe about some of the foods and the recipes that you hung on to that helped you move forward with your health journey.

Brittany Jaroudi

I was the only one; I was on my own island, I figured this out, found Forks Over Knives, and had a desire to go, hopefully, I plan to make this change the day before Easter. But I was the only person doing it. I didn’t know anyone else near me. This was before, and I feel like even Facebook communities blew up where they are now, way before the pandemic. We weren’t quite looking for that online. I felt like my little planet was doing this. My husband has maintained a healthy weight. He had never had any issues that I had. He comes from a Middle Eastern background. They weren’t quite as meat-and-cheese-focused as I was growing up. But I wanted to. I knew how much longevity this lifestyle would provide, and I wanted to get him on board. I started making familiar recipes, and it also helped me a bunch to make this fun and just swapping things like figuring out how to make bolognaise with lentils versus ground beef. That made me feel like I wasn’t such an outcast. I’m not just sitting here eating rabbit food all day. Also, it got my husband excited because I did the cooking, and then he liked the meals. It snowballed from there. I also made a pact with the big guy upstairs that if I got my health back, I would do everything in my power to help someone else get their health back. That was my core mission for starting our channel and website, and it still is because it was the biggest blessing. I just want to help someone else in that same regard. The kitchen has been such a beautiful place, and my playground is a safe space for all of us.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

It’s fantastic. I didn’t know about your pact with the big man upstairs. That’s great, which makes a lot of sense in your personality. because everyone who meets you is just delighted. Let’s talk a little bit about the basics. Let’s say you have someone who joins, and they want to start this and do it as quickly and as healthily as possible. What would be some of your basic guidelines or directions to help someone find a path to cooking this way, especially if they don’t have any cooking experience? They’re not eating. You’re not even doing culinary training like you did this.

Brittany Jaroudi

I just switched my mindset of thinking about, like, when you would have meat in a meal, think about a bean or, even, a legume. Those two are our foundation blocks. sweatshop, if it’s soy-based or if it’s black beans, and I change it up all the time so it doesn’t get boring. then, we had our greens, and instead of buying white pasta, we bought whole wheat pasta, or we bought pasta, and then I experimented with all the different grains that I was very familiar with. Rice, but it would be like white rice prior. Now you have brown rice, forbidden rice, or something different.

I love playing with all the different grains I’ve never known before. I like to commute, stuff, and all those things. same with the vegetables. I suggest eating things you enjoy. There’s no reason to stuff things down that you don’t enjoy. There is such a variety. If you don’t like Brussels sprouts, you don’t have to eat them. You can find something else. But it’s endless, just like with fruits and everything. I just packed my meal, which would be greens or vegetables. I would have our starch, I would have our fruits, and I would belt our meals around that. It just doesn’t have to be as complicated as people make it out to be. It can be very simple, too. It can be as gourmet or as simple as you want, just like all of cooking. That mindset shift helps a lot at the beginning.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

Someone is busy and they’re working, and they’ll say they already have kids at home. What would be some of the tips that you would give them to help them transition to an effective specialty if they don’t have anyone to help?

Brittany Jaroudi

I got it. It’s all quick, and I do think that putting in some effort for the results you want makes a big difference. It’s just a similar thing when we spend money: we spend money on things that we value. We spend our valuable thing. For me, like raising our first child, having family meals is very important too, so I have plans to have us all have dinner together, make that a core value, and teach them to cook young and enjoy things in familiar areas. Instead of making chicken nuggets, you can make chickpea nuggets, and you can still own ketchup, there are even some low-sodium to no-sodium ketchup on the market that you can buy. It doesn’t have to be things that are so foreign that you aren’t familiar with, like lasagnas, soups, stews, and things like that that are fun. You and your kids can enjoy it; it doesn’t seem like it’s so out there. My suggestion, and nowadays, like with whole harvests, we both like whole harvests. You can buy meal kits sent to your home. They didn’t have that eight or nine years ago.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

It didn’t have one two years ago.

Brittany Jaroudi

It’s nice to have a lot of those options to make it work for whatever lifestyle you have.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

That’s perfect. cooking, and then let’s say that you make something. What are some of the bold ideas or leftover ideas some people would get bored quickly and others maybe you’re like, “Hey, it doesn’t matter to me. I just want to make something easy for the rest of the week.” What would be some batch cooking ideas?

Brittany Jaroudi

I love batch cooking in the sense of much like making triple amounts of a recipe, but batch cooking is like grains and starches and having those ready to go in your refrigerator so you can quickly pull them out and assemble whatever you’re in the mood for. like, potatoes are great, and sweet potatoes are great. You can cook them in the oven, in a pressure cooker, or however you’d like it, and have them saved for the week. You can cook up a big batch of different whole grains and pull those out. You can even make your vegetables if you want to cook them and have them available. That’s a big thing, too. It’s like having the foods that you want to eat available for you, just like we have fruit out. I’m quick to grab an apple or something else, which makes it helpful. That’s the same in our fridge. If you open my fridge today, it would be all the things that I’ve cooked up ahead of time. then I just make whatever we’re in the mood for. If it wants to be a soup, we could add grains to the soup, vegetables to the soup, or broth. If it wants to be a grain bowl, I can make a sauce out of green, or chopped salad. Whatever I’m in the mood for it.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

How do you approach flavor? Because a lot of people like it, you know. It’s going to be eating carrots and lettuce all day, eating a plant-based diet where there’s no flavor. Can we talk a little bit about how you approach flavor and find success in flavor?

Brittany Jaroudi

I think one of the first things you should do to be healthy and plant-based is to find a couple of sauces that you like because that’s such a driver. You can put sauce on anything. If you love that sauce, it is going to make it more enjoyable. There are so many great cheese sauces where you can make cheese sauce out of butternut squash, potatoes, or red peppers. There’s a variety of that online. Same with pesto or green sauce. You can make it spicy or not spicy, depending on your preference. finding a couple of different salad dressings. It doesn’t have to just be balsamic vinegar. I love balsamic vinegar, but you might want that, and something else is an option. There are a lot of different creamy and zesty things. I just think that if you put that on your broccoli, zucchini, or something else that you want to eat, it can bump up the enjoyment factor a bunch.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

I would say that’s important. I have a patient who has been troubled, having struggles with the plant-based diet over and over again. She’d go into it, and she’s trying to be hard on herself like I have to be 100% of the time. When I finally met with her, she was like, “Listen, I will eat plants, but can I still have my Chick-fillet sauce?” I’m like, “Sure,” Because she put her potatoes in, as she put it on things, she doesn’t eat an excessive amount, but it was enough to keep her consistent. We start seeing that she’s lost 30 pounds, and her blood sugars are improving. She’s reducing her blood sugar just by eating those. But you’re exactly right: sauces are so important. With that in mind, what are one or two of your favorite sauces that you make that you have in your fridge?

Brittany Jaroudi

One is a salad dressing that I make all the time, and it does have balsamic vinegar in it, but I love it. There are so many different flavors of balsamic vinegar, like California balsamic in particular. They have a great, zesty Italian one that I love during the summer. I buy tons of them in the summertime because we love to mix that with a little bit of hummus and then some Dijon mustard for a little bit of zest. It just makes the creamiest, easiest salad dressing or dipping sauce. I just changed it up. Sometimes, if I don’t want that Italian wine, we’ll switch it up with a pomegranate wine, a cherry wine, or a fig wine. It just changes the flavor slightly so that it stays interesting. that takes, like, two seconds to make.

Another one that I love is TGT sauce. We’ll chop up some dill, and in the summer, we’ll also refresh amazing cucumbers, and it will make a creamy sauce. You can make a creamy sauce with some extra white beans in there to pump up some protein and sneak in some if you’re not used to having white beans. It’s a great way to sneak it in. You can’t taste that. There are beans in there, and that’s fun. We love to do that with different pita meals, potato meals, or all the things we love to dip in sauce. I’m always experimenting, making recipes, and testing out different things. But those are the two that are around at our house.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

That’s a great way to start this first part of the conversation. Thank you so much for joining us today. I hope you found this conversation insightful and helpful. If you’re a summer purchaser, stay here because we’re about to dive even deeper into this lovely discussion. If you’re not, click on the button below or to the side and get access to the rest of the conversation. 

If you’re watching this, thank you for being a valuable member of our community. Let’s continue this talk with Brittany. I want to get to, like, breakfast, lunch, and dinner options, maybe a couple that you are with or your go-tos, just so that we have some concrete. What do I do tomorrow if I’m starting this diet?

Brittany Jaroudi

Breakfast. I stuck to two things for breakfast, especially when I was losing all the weight. One was simple: I like the little breakfast cookies I would make, and they would just be rolled oats and a smashed banana. then I would add in, you could add in just a couple raisins, maybe some shredded carrots, some carrots like carrot cake, spices that you would have, maybe like ginger, cardamom, things like that, cinnamon. That was fun. then sometimes I would add in some apple pie spice or pumpkin pie spice depending on the season, and some chopped-up apples to that. That was fun. I would make, like, three good-sized cookies out of that. I felt like you were eating cookies for breakfast, but you’re not.

I would also add that flax which was non-negotiable. I’ve been eating flax every day since I started this, and I like to get it for breakfast because it’s an easy way. You can sprinkle in some flax, and sometimes I’ll do chia seeds that are ground or hemp seeds, but I make sure to get that flax, especially for blood pressure lunch. I like to make a big, chopped salad, but I wouldn’t make it more than a salad. I would add in half a cup of some grain, and that would be a green I pulled from my refrigerator. That would be cold, and I just like it in there cold. It could be cold farro that I throw in. If it’s not a grain, it would be starch. It could be some sweet potatoes. I’m very lucky to have the grocery store, and it’s not like a fancy grocery store down the road that has purple sweet potatoes that are beautiful. So I will be so sad if they stop selling those.

But I cook up a bag of those and have them in the fridge. So it’s just nice to chop up the filling for your salad. It’s not just greens. Then sometimes I’ll add fruit to it too. It’s like you get a little bit of, like, blueberries in there or raspberries, and then, I would do that hummus dressing on there. It’s a nice, filling meal. The salad takes me a while to eat because I try to chew all of my greens and just enjoy them. I try to take that moment for myself. But I’m not watching TV or something when I’m eating; I’m not taking a break. That stress reduction. I’m just going to sit here and enjoy my meal. That’s a good one. Then, for dinner, I did something that was traditionally like what we would have had before. That could be like lasagna. That could be we make a wedding soup going through all the ones that we’ve done recently. We do curry; we do Thai food, and I just make them whole food plant-based, you know, options.

On our YouTube channel and in the Healing Kitchen, there are so many recipes out there that I’ve done, and that’s exactly what we eat for dinner. It was just those three things, with some snacks in between. I love snacking on celery, having an apple, or something like that in between to make it enjoyable. that, I never felt like I was hungry or deprived. It taught me to eat until I was satisfied. Those were pretty much the ticket: breakfast and lunch pretty much stayed; different various things could go in there for grains and things, but those are the pretty ones that were standard. then I just liked that one meal to be our wild card meal where I could have fun. Also, doing it that way made me not think about it; I wasn’t constantly using a lot of brainpower to think about what I was having for breakfast or lunch because I already had my go-to, but it’s been helpful.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

A lot of people eat many of the same meals, eight or nine times within the same month or so. If people look at it, they are creatures of habit. Can we also speak a little bit about your YouTube channel and the resources that you offer?

Brittany Jaroudi

I made that pact. If I got healthy, I would help somebody. I started a YouTube channel. It’s Everything’s Out Of The Dirty Family. I named it that because I want my family to help my family get healthy. I came from having such sick parents, growing up, and seeing a lot of people pass away super young, from uncles to mom, and just a lot of heartbreak. A lot of it could have been prevented by some lifestyle actions. So I made this YouTube channel where it’s just sharing recipes and tips, and we have a lot of fun. We do. We have a camper, so we do camping videos, and we have tons of different recipes on there for kids and adults, small parts, and things you could take to your family holidays and people would be interested in. things that are comforting and familiar. then, so that’s our YouTube channel. We have a website that goes with it, and everything has a free printable PDF of the recipe, which is very convenient for people to find. 

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

That is wonderful. Then, with the Healing Kitchen, you and I join forces, and we meet weekly live. Brittany shares two delicious recipes. She cooks in under 30 minutes, and I’ve learned so much from her. Then I answer questions. then we are to offer expert workshops per month for free as well as part of the membership. This is fantastic. Brittany, you’re a wonderful testament to what this lifestyle can do for people with just a little investment in themselves. I like how you mentioned also being mindful of your eating. Can we just touch upon that real quick before we close it out? Because that’s one thing that so many of us don’t do. We don’t sit, myself included; we sit back to understand that the situation or the environment we put ourselves in to eat can have a drastic influence on how we eat, how much we eat, and our hunger cues. There are a lot of different things.

Brittany Jaroudi

Yes, stress. I also feel like the lifestyle medicine pillar that people don’t talk about a lot is stress. It’s such a shame. I had so much stress in my life. I was a caretaker for my mom, who battled cancer for many years. Then she passed, and there were a lot of stressful things. So I’ve learned that stress can also make your blood pressure go up and cause you to do other things like that. taking those moments to be mindful, and so I am not the best at this. I try to put my phone away. I put it in airplane mode or flip it over and put it in a different room. But when I am going to have mealtimes, I like to have everything off and sit there and enjoy my meal and focus on what I’m doing. I’ve also noticed that my digestion is better doing that because most times you’re mindlessly on your phone watching something, watching something on TV, eating, and eating a lot quicker. You’re not enjoying and savoring things. So I do try out meals as a form of meditation. It can be an act of meditation to take my time, enjoy what I’m doing and eating, and not be distracted. I’ve noticed that that has also helped stress levels for me, and digestion has been a bonus.

Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA

That’s great. It’s a wonderful time to be mindful. It can be just like a walking meditation. I like to walk and be mindful. I struggle with just sitting down. But the mindful eating piece is such a beautiful part, and just thinking about where your food came from and all the inputs that required it to be here. It also provides gratitude, which helps with so many different things. that’s fabulous. Thank you, Brittany, for being part of the summit, and I hope everyone found this very helpful. We appreciate you sharing your journey.

Brittany Jaroudi

Thank you so much for having me.