Location: Danville, Ohio
Nearest major city: Columbus, Ohio
Background:
I was born in Mansfield, Ohio, and grew up in “Amish Country”. My dad was a hunter, and enjoyed raising beef to feed the family of seven children. I attended Clear Fork High School, and for my Junior and Senior years attended the Knox County Career Center as a Cosmetology student. This is where I met my husband, Mike, who was enrolled in the welding class. A year after graduation from high school, I married my sweetheart to fulfill my only desire: to be a wife and mother. Our first daughter, Jacinta, was born in nine months after our wedding, and it took another nine years to have another child, Andrew. By the grace of God, three more children, Patrick, Anna, and Regina, were born over the next 10 years. I was almost 42 years old by then! (There are 22 years between Jacinta and Regina.)
We have lived in central Ohio most of our married life, except for a short bout in Oregon in 1983 when Mike was laid off work, and five years at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico while Mike was in the Air Force. We now live in the heart of “Amish Country”, enjoying life in a small town.
We chose to home educate our children when Andrew was in Kindergarten, and continued this for the rest of the children. Patrick, being rambunctious and in need of more activity than I could give him, enrolled at the Knox County Career Center as a sophomore, and graduated in 2015. Anna and Regina are continuing their education at our local public school after completing grades 6 and 8 at home. This was all quite a change for all of us. After 20 years, I no longer considered myself a home-schooling mom!
Reason for becoming a Certified Food Over Medicine Instructor:
During most of my life I have had various health issues, including infertility, two miscarriages, and severe heart palpitations for which I was prescribed Atenenol (through three of my pregnancies: Patrick, Anna, and Regina!!). I had Multiple Sclerosis like symptoms; numbness in my hands, feet and face. I also experienced constipation, acid reflux, and skin problems. No one could explain any of these problems to me, and I was constantly told I needed this medicine or that, which I did not want!
Finally, in 2009, I was told that I needed to wear a heart monitor so I went to the hospital to get it fitted. When I got there, they informed me there that I had to have $500 up front, which I didn’t have. I told them to “forget it”, and left, determined I was going to solve my problems on my own. I was sick of it all! I started researching food and how it effects our health. My journey had begun, and I followed many trails, some so them not so good.
In some ways my health was improving (I had adopted a vegetarian diet with lots of eggs and cheese), and it was during this time that my heart kept telling me that I needed to share what I learned. One day my husband me that I should help other people with their health problems to which I told him that I had no credentials to do so. Shortly after that, while reading on Dr. Andrew Weil’s website, an advertisement for The Institute for Integrative Nutrition went across the top of my computer screen, and I shouted with excitement, “Here is what I can do.” After enrolling, however, I was very disappointed because I really didn’t learn what I was wanting to learn about nutrition; I did learn some important coaching and business skills, though. In the long run, the best thing was that I found Dr. Joel Fuhrman who did a class on a Nutritarian Diet. To me, he was a man who made perfect sense. I began following his recommendations, and thus began my whole-foods, plant-based diet. I was amazed how quickly my problems began to disappear. I enrolled in The Nutritional Education Institute and there I did learn about nutrition and its direct impact on health, one way or the other. It was during this time that I also began following Dr. John McDougall, and I read The China Study by T. Colin Campbell. In January of 2015 I took the certification program on Plant Based Nutrition from T. Colin Campbell’s Center for Nutrition Studies.
All this time I couldn’t figure out what I was going to do with all my learning. Sure, I had coached a handful of people using what I had learned, but didn’t have a “set” program that I could follow. It was also in January of 2015 that I joined Wellness Forum Health. I can’t tell you the excitement I felt when I found that there were people in Columbus, Ohio, just 60 miles away, who were doing (with success!) what I was longing to do: teach people that they don’t have to be sick, on medication, and stuck in the “medical mill”. So, here I am, with so much gratification!
Email address: cathyworley@hotmail.com
Phone number: 740-398-3779