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From: The Sioux Falls Argus Leader 7/15
A new diet developed by a Rapid City doctor that focuses on traditional Lakota food and helped a Pine Ridge man lose more than 60 pounds is the focus of an upcoming documentary.
By By Jarett C. Bies
For the Argus Leader
A new diet developed by a Rapid City doctor that focuses on traditional Lakota food and helped a Pine Ridge man lose more than 60 pounds is the focus of an upcoming documentary.
A Rapid City doctor developed the program, and it caught the interest of filmmakers Sam Hurst of Rapid City and Larry Pourier, also of South Dakota.
Their film, “Good Meat: How the Lakota Got Fat and Beau LeBeau Changed His Life,” documents how LeBeau adopted “The Dakota Diet: Health Secrets from the Great Plains,” a book written about a diet developed by Dr. Kevin Weiland.
The diet focuses on eating foods from this area: buffalo and wild game, fresh fish, soy and flax seed.
LeBeau has lost more than 60 pounds. “My goal isn’t a weight but to be alive in 15 years,” says LeBeau, 35, of Thunder Valley. “The way I was going, I wasn’t going to be around much longer.”
The film focuses on 200 days of LeBeau following the diet.
“The results, so far, have been shocking,” Hurst says. “It’s been good for his self-esteem and his knees, but it’s been much more.”
LeBeau is 5 feet 9 inches tall, and he weighed 333 pounds at the start. He admits he had less-than-healthy habits. “Sweets, chocolate, Snickers bars, Twin Bings, that was the hardest,” LeBeau says. “I replaced them with bananas and grapes. Actually, I crave them now.”
On July 3, he weighed 269 pounds, a loss of 64 pounds.
Weiland, an internal medicine doctor at the Rapid City Medical Center, says the story is more than weight loss.
“He was eating not just to lose weight, but to maintain health,” Weiland says. “When we started, he couldn’t run for six minutes on the treadmill.”
Changing his life
Since changing his habits, LeBeau’s good cholesterol numbers rose, while his bad ones dropped. Weiland says it also has helped with his diabetes and liver problems. The point isn’t to be thin but to make positive changes, Weiland says.
Hurst, who has won Emmy Awards for his TV work, says making the documentary also showed him that traditional culture is returning to reservations.
As June ended, LeBeau took part in his 18th sun dance at Thunder Valley with members of his family. He felt the difference during the grueling ceremony.
“My brothers commented on how strong I looked, and I attribute that to the buffalo,” he says. “They said, ‘You never got weak; we were waiting for you to get weak.’ I could tell I was stronger.”
Native American Public Television, a component of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, provided funding for the project, Hurst says. Rapid City Medical Center, along with Weiland, who is a Madison native and an associate professor at Sanford School of Medicine, provided the health care services – estimated at $12,000 – for free.
LeBeau has received support from his girlfriend, Angie Big Crow; his stepsons Walter and Joseph; his daughter Tangerine, 17; and his son, Jeffrey, 10. He knows he’ll be healthier to watch as 17-month-old daughter Trinity LeBeau grows up.
“What I did was make a choice. I hate calling it a diet. It is a way of life, a change,” he says. “This change is allowing me to be here for my family.”
The food
Sanaa Abourezk, owner and operator of Sanaa’s 8th Street Gourmet Mediterranean restaurant in Sioux Falls, contributed recipes to Weiland for the book.
“He took an approach where he wanted gourmet cuisine that was good for the body,” Abourezk says. “It’ll be good that the foods of the state get natural exposure, and to show the state is as curious, and talented, when it comes to nutrition as anywhere else.”
As owner of the Lazy RRse Buffalo Ranch, Rick Knobe of Sioux Falls says the nutritional facts of buffalo’s low-fat, high-in-Omega-3-fatty-acid meat are getting wider exposure.
“It is happening, but we are still a niche market,” he says. “We had a 25 percent increase in one year (in sales), but still the numbers are so small. We’re not making beef people nervous."
Weiland says his diet is about creating healthy lifestyle habits that stick.
“It’s a look not just at the vanity of weight loss but at the prevention of disease,” he says.
Licensed nutritionist and registered dietitian Nikki Ver Steeg of Avera Heart Hospital of South Dakota says the approach makes sense.
“We don’t do much in the U.S. with heritage or traditional diet, so it’s fabulous to hear about this idea,” she says. “For the subject to have lost as much weight as he has, it’s dramatic.”
Movie release
Hurst will start crafting the narrative as the 200 days are coming to a close. The film will premiere this fall in the Black Hills, then air on public broadcasting.
“It’s not a preachy movie. It’s a soft-sell,” he says. “You watch a man undergo change. But the lessons – if applied more widely – could change many lives, and not just on the reservation.”
LeBeau hopes to inspire and has no plans to take it easy when the cameras go off.
“I went from being on the edge of being a full-blown diabetic to being healthy,” he says. “I hope those who see this are inspired, especially my own people. I hope it shows it can be done.”
A new diet developed by a Rapid City doctor that focuses on traditional Lakota food and helped a Pine Ridge man lose more than 60 pounds is the focus of an upcoming documentary.
By By Jarett C. Bies
For the Argus Leader
A new diet developed by a Rapid City doctor that focuses on traditional Lakota food and helped a Pine Ridge man lose more than 60 pounds is the focus of an upcoming documentary.
A Rapid City doctor developed the program, and it caught the interest of filmmakers Sam Hurst of Rapid City and Larry Pourier, also of South Dakota.
Their film, “Good Meat: How the Lakota Got Fat and Beau LeBeau Changed His Life,” documents how LeBeau adopted “The Dakota Diet: Health Secrets from the Great Plains,” a book written about a diet developed by Dr. Kevin Weiland.
The diet focuses on eating foods from this area: buffalo and wild game, fresh fish, soy and flax seed.
LeBeau has lost more than 60 pounds. “My goal isn’t a weight but to be alive in 15 years,” says LeBeau, 35, of Thunder Valley. “The way I was going, I wasn’t going to be around much longer.”
The film focuses on 200 days of LeBeau following the diet.
“The results, so far, have been shocking,” Hurst says. “It’s been good for his self-esteem and his knees, but it’s been much more.”
LeBeau is 5 feet 9 inches tall, and he weighed 333 pounds at the start. He admits he had less-than-healthy habits. “Sweets, chocolate, Snickers bars, Twin Bings, that was the hardest,” LeBeau says. “I replaced them with bananas and grapes. Actually, I crave them now.”
On July 3, he weighed 269 pounds, a loss of 64 pounds.
Weiland, an internal medicine doctor at the Rapid City Medical Center, says the story is more than weight loss.
“He was eating not just to lose weight, but to maintain health,” Weiland says. “When we started, he couldn’t run for six minutes on the treadmill.”
Changing his life
Since changing his habits, LeBeau’s good cholesterol numbers rose, while his bad ones dropped. Weiland says it also has helped with his diabetes and liver problems. The point isn’t to be thin but to make positive changes, Weiland says.
Hurst, who has won Emmy Awards for his TV work, says making the documentary also showed him that traditional culture is returning to reservations.
As June ended, LeBeau took part in his 18th sun dance at Thunder Valley with members of his family. He felt the difference during the grueling ceremony.
“My brothers commented on how strong I looked, and I attribute that to the buffalo,” he says. “They said, ‘You never got weak; we were waiting for you to get weak.’ I could tell I was stronger.”
Native American Public Television, a component of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, provided funding for the project, Hurst says. Rapid City Medical Center, along with Weiland, who is a Madison native and an associate professor at Sanford School of Medicine, provided the health care services – estimated at $12,000 – for free.
LeBeau has received support from his girlfriend, Angie Big Crow; his stepsons Walter and Joseph; his daughter Tangerine, 17; and his son, Jeffrey, 10. He knows he’ll be healthier to watch as 17-month-old daughter Trinity LeBeau grows up.
“What I did was make a choice. I hate calling it a diet. It is a way of life, a change,” he says. “This change is allowing me to be here for my family.”
The food
Sanaa Abourezk, owner and operator of Sanaa’s 8th Street Gourmet Mediterranean restaurant in Sioux Falls, contributed recipes to Weiland for the book.
“He took an approach where he wanted gourmet cuisine that was good for the body,” Abourezk says. “It’ll be good that the foods of the state get natural exposure, and to show the state is as curious, and talented, when it comes to nutrition as anywhere else.”
As owner of the Lazy RRse Buffalo Ranch, Rick Knobe of Sioux Falls says the nutritional facts of buffalo’s low-fat, high-in-Omega-3-fatty-acid meat are getting wider exposure.
“It is happening, but we are still a niche market,” he says. “We had a 25 percent increase in one year (in sales), but still the numbers are so small. We’re not making beef people nervous."
Weiland says his diet is about creating healthy lifestyle habits that stick.
“It’s a look not just at the vanity of weight loss but at the prevention of disease,” he says.
Licensed nutritionist and registered dietitian Nikki Ver Steeg of Avera Heart Hospital of South Dakota says the approach makes sense.
“We don’t do much in the U.S. with heritage or traditional diet, so it’s fabulous to hear about this idea,” she says. “For the subject to have lost as much weight as he has, it’s dramatic.”
Movie release
Hurst will start crafting the narrative as the 200 days are coming to a close. The film will premiere this fall in the Black Hills, then air on public broadcasting.
“It’s not a preachy movie. It’s a soft-sell,” he says. “You watch a man undergo change. But the lessons – if applied more widely – could change many lives, and not just on the reservation.”
LeBeau hopes to inspire and has no plans to take it easy when the cameras go off.
“I went from being on the edge of being a full-blown diabetic to being healthy,” he says. “I hope those who see this are inspired, especially my own people. I hope it shows it can be done.”
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