Rip Esselstyn - Plant-Strong: Discover the Worlds Healthiest Diet--with 150 Engine 2 Recipes

The Engine 2 Diet: The Texas Firefighters 28-Day Save-Your-Life Plan that Lowers Cholesterol and Burns Away the Pounds

F orty-two-year-old Nick Gravina was one of the fittest firefighters in the South Metro, Colorado, fire department. He was also a total beast at the Firefighter Combat Challenge, a timed competition that involves climbing a 50-foot tower with five flights of stairs carrying a 42-pound roll of fire hose, descending and slamming a sledgehammer into a 160-pound metal beam until it moves 5 feet, pulling a charged hose line 75 feet, opening the nozzle and flowing water and hitting a target, and dragging a 175-pound dummy 106 feet to the finish line. Nick was able to do all this in less than 1 minute and 35 seconds, all the while wearing full gear and breathing air from a 30-pound Air-Pak on his back!

But I didnt meet Nick in an athletic contest. We met because Nicks mother sent me an e-mail asking for help.

Although Nicks athletic abilities were amazing, his health wasnt. One day in March 2012, Nick, who is married and has two young kids, started to feel some chest pain that he thought was just a bad case of indigestion, but it was painful enough that he alerted his crew, who immediately hooked him up to the heart monitor to get a look at his heart. The paramedic saw an abnormal rhythm and called an ambulance just as Nicks heart stopped beating and he stopped breathinghe was, basically, dead. The firefighters immediately gave Nick two defibrillation shocks but they didnt work. So the crew started CPR, and Nicks heart barely began to beat on its own again. The ambulance then rushed him to the hospital, where for the next hour Nick went in and out of cardiac arrest while his crew and doctors tried desperately to save his life. After one hour of CPR and eighteen shocks to his heart, Nicks doctors finally were able to remove a blood clot from his heart, saving his life.

When Nick recovered, he was determined to do everything in his power to make sure this attack was a onetime event. He was a great athlete, but hed always eaten whatever he wanted, thinking he could burn everything off since he was so fit. Then his mother sent him a copy of my book, The Engine 2 Diet, which lured him into the plant-strong life.

Since going on the E2 diet, Nicks total cholesterol has come down to 83 mg/dl, his LDL is 35 mg/dl, hes leaner than hes ever been, and he feels empowered with the knowledge that he and his food choices now control his health destiny. He is now a dedicated E2er. Way to go, Nick!

Nick isnt alone. All over the country people are learning about healthy plant-based diets. In fact, things have changed dramatically since my first book, The Engine 2 Diet, was published in February of 2009. People are waking up to the fact that the current paradigm is broken. The answer is not another pill, procedure, or doctor, or more legislation. Unbelievably, the answer is right in front of our faces. But weve been blind because we had no idea the answer could be so simple. Its like Glinda, the good witch of the North, telling Dorothy shes always had the power to leave Oz and go homeall she ever had to do was click her heels together three times and say, Theres no place like home.

Its the same with eating a plant-strong diet and the wonders it can do to prevent and reverse disease. Say it three times (and click your heels if youd like): Theres no diet like a plant-strong diet.

Over the last decade more and more people are figuring this out. The plant-strong boom is on! High-profile celebrities from television hosts Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie ODonnell to NFL star running back Arian Foster, from President Bill Clinton to director James Cameron, have joined the plant-strong team. Books and documentaries on the subject are selling like healthy hotcakesespecially the documentary Forks Over Knives (starring T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., author of The China Study, and my father, Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr., M.D., author of Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease), which has become one of the top-selling and most viewed documentaries in America for the last two years.

Other parts of America are noticing too, from nutritionists to doctors, from restaurants to stores. In 2010, the natural food supermarket chain Whole Foods Market launched its healthy eating initiative to educate the companys thousands of employees and millions of customers about the benefits of eating a whole-food, plant-strong, nutrient-dense, healthy-fat diet. CEO John Mackey invited me to help the company do this, and so after twelve years at the Austin Fire Department, I jumped off the fire engine and stepped out of my bunker gear to rescue people from food instead of fires.

And yet, despite this terrific momentum, too many people are still eating terribly, and too many people are ill-informed about food. In fact, even after Nicks heart attack and brush with death, his fellow firefighters still cant understand why he doesnt eat meat or drink milk.

Thats why Nicks mother called meto ask me to support his new, lifesaving diet, but also to give him the information he needs to win over his firefighting friends. We talked for more than an hour, and I gave him all the ammunition he needed to win every argument his fellow firefighters might throw at him.