"LaJaunie and Thibodaux first took it outdoors one particularly swampy summer day, alternating running and walking from one telephone pole to the next. "It was more jiggling thanrunning," LaJaunie says about the half-mile workout. Before long, they were running three miles at a time. LaJaunie got his business degree in December 2011, and he and Thibodaux ran the Crescent City Classic 10K in New Orleans the following spring, finishing together in 1:43. He still weighed 320 lbs."

"LaJaunie was running three days a week, but the radical change to diet — which radically changed his body — wasn't sparked until the spring of 2013, when he and B.J. decided to avoid all processed foods for the 40 days of Lent. During this time, LaJaunie also read Christopher McDougall's best seller Born to Run, where he learned about the vegan ultrarunning legend Scott Jurek. He blazed through Jurek's book, Eat & Run." I didn't know it was humanly possible for people to go hundreds of miles on their feet, and not only is this dude doing this, but he doens't eat meat and dairy," LaJaunie says. "I was totally blown away." "

"Almost immediately, LaJaunie cut out meat and dairy. He broke an hour in the Classic weighing 285 pounds and kept racing, getting faster, going longer, and getting thinner. By the summer of 2014 he reached his present weight of 190. The great-grandson of a Mississippi Baptist minister had become a true disciple of the plant-based-diet movement and, before long, was a full-fledged evangelist. Today, meals are simple: raw oats with fruit, or kale and salsa mashed into a baked potato; instead of Cajun spices, he tosses nutritional yeast onto just about everything."