"Engine 2 Diet"

The New York Times bestseller, "Engine 2 Diet" by Rip Esselstyn is a book I have checked and rechecked from my local library but a few weeks ago I decided to really sit down and read, study, and make notes from it.

My desire to acquaint myself with this book is for a number of reasons:

a)  I have an adult daughter who has vascillated between vegan and vegetarianism since she went to college but for several years now she has been "plant-strong" feeding herself and her family a plant-based diet.  When we visit, we eat what she prepares and I was surprised when my husband didn't complain and actually liked the food.

b)  We've been on a successful weight loss/lifestyle change plan over the past 4-5 years.  While the plan itself has been successful, our attempts to change our lifestyle has not and we gain some or all of the weight back.

c)  We've watched videos like "Forks Over Knives" and read articles about the plant-strong diet and I am at a point where I want to pursue it seriously for both my and my spouse's long term health.  As we age, I want us to be healthy and strong - not infirm and suffering from disease.

As I studied "Engine 2 Diet," I found plenty of solid health reasons to follow a plant-based diet.  I have started down the path but I am not successful every day.  One thing that has made it easier has been getting an organic weekly delivery of fruits and vegetables.  Since I don't want them to go to waste, I found myself looking for new plant-based food recipes to try in addition to adding a couple of serving of fruits daily to my snacking.  The more I have eaten plants and a lot less meat, dairy, and cheese, the more energy I've had and the healthier I've felt.

My goal is to have my cholesterol and blood pressure down by the time I see my doctor for my annual checkup in about one month.  I still struggle and order meat when we dine out so dining in would be a healthier option!  My spouse and I are about to spend a week away in a condo in Oregon and I look forward to having time to prepare more of the recipes from the "Engine 2 Diet" book.

The health information and facts that Esselstyn presents in this book should be enough to keep me on the path away from eating anything that has a face or comes from a product that has a face -- no meat, no dairy, no cheese, etc.  However, the mind is willing but the flesh is weak at times and Esselstyn acknowledges that it is a journey and I may not be perfect in the beginning so I'm cutting myself some slack while continuing to reinforce the reasons I want to eat plant-based.

Rip was a firefighter and this plan is "The Texas Firefighter's 28-Day Save-Your-Life Plan that Lowers Cholesterol and Burns Away the Pounds."  Rip is also the son of Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. who shared a report at a medical conference in 1991 on his "dramatic results on reversing and curing heart disease."  The forward to Rip's book is written by T. Colin Campbell, PhD who is the co-author (with Thomas M. Campbell II) of "The China Study."

In his own acknowledgement at the end of the book, Rip thanks "the brave and courageous giants in this field"...his father as well as T. Colin Campbell, Dean Ornish, Neal Barnard, John McDougall, Joel Fuhrman, and Jeff Novick.

Rip's book is well researched and well written and based on actual results of a group of people who were his "guinea pig" group following the E2 diet.  After Rip explains the "why" behind the E2 diet, he goes on to give us a plan to follow and a number of recipes.  If you want to turn your health around and are looking for motivation, I strongly recommend this book as well as his other work and work or books by any of the doctors he acknowledges in the book.  Here's to better health for us all!  pazt