Rebekah Heishman’s story is a powerful testament to the transformative power of faith, perseverance, and proper nourishment. Diagnosed with more than 10 autoimmune diseases, including chronic Lyme disease, Hashimoto’s, and ulcerative colitis, she was given little hope for a future beyond the age of 30. However, her journey to recovery wasn’t just physical—it became a spiritual awakening. Through deep faith in God and a willingness to surrender control, Rebekah not only reclaimed her health but also discovered a renewed sense of purpose, healed relationships, and a flourishing family life.
A Life on the Brink of Death
By May 2019, Rebekah Heishman was at her lowest point. She had lost so much weight she could barely function, and her health was deteriorating rapidly. “I was not even half my weight,” she recalls. “I had over 10 autoimmune diseases, chronic Lyme disease, chronic C. diff, and severe mood disorders. I was told I wouldn’t live past 30, primarily due to Crest scleroderma, which was taking over my internal organs.”
Despite multiple medical interventions, including three unsuccessful fecal transplants to treat her C. diff infection, Rebekah couldn’t gain weight. Doctors suggested extreme measures. “They said I needed to be hooked up to a feeding tube and to remove my colon due to the inflammation,” she remembers. The prognosis was grim, and Rebekah felt the weight of hopelessness pressing down on her.
Faith in the Face of Hopelessness
Rebekah’s journey was marked by deep despair and isolation. “Everyone thought I had an eating disorder. I had all these diagnoses. I definitely felt like, ‘Why is this happening to me?’” she recalls. While her peers graduated, married, and started families, she felt trapped in years of illness. Many friends distanced themselves, and her family misunderstood her condition. “I felt abandoned by my family and most of my friends,” she shares. Yet through it all, one constant remained—her faith in God.
“I never felt that God abandoned me, and that’s why I didn’t take my own life,” Rebekah explains. Even as she prayed for relief and dreaded the pain of waking up each day, she clung to her belief that God was with her. In her darkest moments, strangers appeared as vessels of hope. An elderly woman at the gym prayed over her, revealing truths only the Holy Spirit could know. Another woman on a nature trail prayed for her and prophetically mentioned the town where her future husband lived—long before Rebekah had even heard of it. “Alright, God, I know you’ve got me, but why am I still in this mess?” she often wondered.
In that moment of desperation, Rebekah experienced a powerful spiritual awakening. She realized she had been relying too much on the ketogenic diet and not enough on her faith in God. “I realized I had been fighting in my own strength and trying to control everything for so long, but I was getting nowhere,” she reflects. “I was digging my own grave.” This realization led her to surrender her fear and trust in God. “I had a moment of surrender, and my heart posture shifted from fear to faith,” Rebekah explains. It was a profound turning point where she let go of control and decided to rely on God’s wisdom for healing.
Looking back, Rebekah sees how fear had held her back from fully trusting God. But His presence never wavered. “There was a lot of hopelessness, but I never came to the point of, ‘Oh, God has abandoned me.’” Her faith anchored her through the darkest moments, giving her the strength to persevere when everything else seemed lost.
Discovering the Healing Power of the Carnivore Diet
Rebekah’s health transformation began when she adopted the carnivore diet, focusing on lamb, salt, and water to reset her body. Unlike her previous attempts to control every aspect of her healing, this time she surrendered to God’s guidance. “I stopped trying to micromanage everything and really just took it one day at a time,” she explains.
The results were almost immediate. Within days, her ulcerative colitis symptoms—bloody stools and vomiting—stopped. For the first time in years, she began gaining healthy weight, adding four pounds in just one week. “Even in the emergency room, they said, ‘Go home and do your weird all-meat diet,’” she recalls.
Over the following weeks, Rebekah’s energy and mood improved. “I wasn’t dragging myself out of bed anymore,” she shares. Over time, her autoimmune conditions began to reverse. She regained her period after 16 years, her hypothyroidism resolved within six months, and her digestion became consistent.
Rebekah also healed her relationship with food. “Being able to just eat meat, salt, and water without reactions was such a blessing,” she says. As her body healed, so did her trust in knowing when she was full. “I finally became leptin sensitive again.”
After two years, she reintroduced other foods, including eggs, raw dairy, and einkorn sourdough bread, signaling how far she’d come. Today, Rebekah thrives on a primarily animal-based diet but enjoys a variety of foods. “I reversed every single diagnosis,” she says. Now weighing 137 pounds, she feels strong, healthy, and thriving. “Meat is medicine, but God is the healer.”
Rebuilding Relationships with Family
As her physical health improved, so did Rebekah’s relationships with her family. During her illness, misunderstandings about her condition had caused a rift, with her family convinced she had an eating disorder. Feeling isolated and misunderstood, Rebekah struggled to communicate the complexity of her health challenges.
However, her progress became undeniable. When she gained weight and started to heal, she reached out to her family, asking for help with a loan to fund her health coaching certification. Her family, seeing the tangible changes in her, rallied behind her. “They didn’t care how I was doing it; they just cared that I was getting healthy again,” she recalls.
A pivotal moment in restoring her bond with her mother came during a beach trip, where they shared their experiences and pain from the past years. “My mom and I took a trip to the beach together, and it was just a really restorative, healing time,” Rebekah says. Over time, the distance and misunderstandings gave way to a stronger, healthier relationship. “I’m so grateful to God that He’s restored our relationships. He’s blessed beyond what I could have ever prayed for,” she reflects. Today, Rebekah’s family is fully supportive of her lifestyle and celebrates her remarkable transformation.
Finding Love and Building a Family
Amid her recovery, Rebekah found love. Shortly after a turning point in her health, she met her future husband, a kind stranger who offered her a place to stay when she was nearly homeless. “I thought he might be a creep, but he said, ‘Look at my reviews. I’m legitimate,’” she recalls.
Their relationship grew, and they both healed together. “He had a new light in his eyes,” Rebekah says. Eventually, they fell in love and married.
Now parents to a 10-month-old son, Rebekah is grateful for her family. “We’re living our dream,” she says, thankful for all that has been restored.
Advice for Beginners
Rebekah’s advice to those starting their healing journeys is simple: take small, intentional steps. “If you’re transitioning to a low-carb or carnivore diet, reduce carbs gradually over weeks to avoid drastic symptoms,” she suggests. She emphasizes the importance of eating enough protein and high-quality fats, saying, “Aim for one gram of protein per pound of healthy body weight and make fat your primary fuel source.”
Equally important is mindset. “Healing isn’t linear,” Rebekah explains. “Renew your mind with affirmations, trust the process, and seek God for guidance. Small steps lead to big changes.”
Spreading the Message of Hope
Rebekah’s healing journey has become a beacon of hope for others facing chronic illness. As a health coach, she now helps others reclaim their health through dietary changes and faith-based principles. Her message is simple yet powerful: “There is always hope. As long as you’re here, there’s always hope.”
For Rebekah, hope isn’t just a feeling—it’s a process. She encourages others to renew their minds daily by speaking affirmations, trusting God, and seeking truth through scripture. “Life has a way of tainting us, but using the word of God can wash your mind and restore your perspective,” she explains. She believes this renewal was key to her own healing journey and is something anyone can embrace. “We’re wired to create new neural pathways,” Rebekah adds. “If you say something out loud enough times, it becomes true.”
She also emphasizes the importance of faith as a foundation for healing. “You can only get so far in your own strength,” she says. “God is our only source of hope. Without Him, it’s easy to feel hopeless. But with Him, there is always purpose and a reason to keep going.”
Rebekah Heishman’s story has inspired countless individuals to trust in God’s ability to heal, whether through nourishment, prayer, or a renewed relationship with Him. Her journey is proof that healing is not just about fixing the body—it’s about restoring relationships, reclaiming one’s identity in Christ, and trusting that God’s plan is greater than anything we could imagine.
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