The Engine 2 Diet

“Take a long hard look around you. Do you see what I see? Americans are downing empty calories with reckless abandon, gorging on vats of animal-based products teeming with unhealthy fat, cholesterol, and acid-producing protein; gobbling up refined and processed foods; drizzling, swathing, and dumping concentrated vegetable oils into, over, and through everything and anything without thinking twice.

We’ve become addicted to the taste, texture, and comfort these foods give us. But unfortunately, what they also give us is a breeding ground for the ailments and diseases that are tearing at the seams of our nation’s health. High blood pressure is the norm. Constipation and irritable bowel syndrome are commonplace. Migraine headaches—and headaches in general—bring tears to our eyes. Osteoporosis is breaking us down. PMS, allergies, infections, and eczema have increased in frequency and intensity. Kidney stones and gallstones are more than a pain in the side.

All these conditions are influenced by a poor diet, and they add up to a big mess. However, the crowning blow to American health is the lineup of killer diseases taking us down like rows of dominoes: heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, obesity, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Yet there is hope—in the form of a great deal of scientific evidence showing that a plant-based diet can prevent, and even reverse, most of these diseases.”

“The Engine 2 Diet is a simple, easy-to-follow four-week program that will enable you to reach whatever goal you choose, whether it’s losing weight, becoming physically fit, or reducing the precursors to disease, such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity, blockage of the arteries, high blood sugar, insulin resistance, or all of the above.

When you follow the Engine 2 Plan, you will:

• Lose weight

• Lose body fat

• Increase lean muscle mass

• Improve your cardiovascular health

• Free yourself from the shackles of chronic Western diseases

• Have fun learning how to make new, smart, and delicious food choices

• Improve self-esteem and confidence

• Be instilled with a sense of personal power, because you, and you alone, are in control of your health

• Absolutely love how you feel”

“Doctors didn’t think smoking was bad for our health until the 1960s; in fact, they actually endorsed it until the 1950s. And there have been times when medical professionals thought cocaine was a legitimate medicine, when drilling a hole in the skull was considered a remedy for many diseases, and when a frontal lobotomy was thought to be sound therapy.

In many ways, things haven’t changed. There’s still a ton of misinformation out there, and much of it concerns plant-based eating. To make matters worse, doctors are seldom schooled in nutrition, and the ones who are tend to follow the antiquated food pyramid created by lobbyists and special-interest groups that are less interested in your health than in keeping their jobs and taking your money.

I can’t believe all the incredible things I hear about diet and nutrition, spoken by people who don’t have a clue but talk as if they did. An all-protein diet is good for you! Carbs are terrible! God put animals on the planet for people to eat! Alcohol is a health tonic! Vegetarians are weak wusses who can’t play sports!”

“Myth 1: You can’t get enough protein eating a plant-based diet.

Reality: Not only will get all the protein you need, for the first time in your life, you won’t suffer from an excess of it.

Ample amounts of protein are thriving in whole, natural plant-based foods. For example, spinach is 51 percent protein; mushrooms, 35 percent; beans, 26 percent; oatmeal, 16 percent; whole wheat pasta, 15 percent; corn, 12 percent; and potatoes, 11 percent.

What’s more, our body needs less protein than you may think. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the average 150-pound male requires only 22.5 grams of protein daily based on a 2,000 calorie a day diet. (WHO recommends pregnant women get 6 percent of calories from protein.) Other nutritional organizations recommend as little as 2.5 percent of daily calories come from protein while the U.S. Food and Nutrition Board’s recommended daily allowance is 6 percent after a built-in safety margin; most American’s however, are taking in 20 percent or more.

Doctors from my father to Dean Ornish to Joel Fuhrman, author of Eat to Live: The Revolutionary Formula for Fast and Sustained Weight Loss, all suggest that getting an adequate amount of protein should be the least of your worries.”

“Myth 4: You can’t get enough calcium eating a plant-based diet.

Reality: A diverse, plant-based diet is one of the best available sources of calcium—and lets you avoid the deleterious effects associated with dairy products.

… One reason why Americans have such a high incidence of osteoporosis (or weakening of the bones) isn’t a lack of dietary calcium, but an excess of animal protein, which leaches calcium from the bones.

In fact, did you know that the countries with the highest rate of dairy consumption, including the United States, New Zealand, Britain, and Sweden, also have the highest rates of osteoporosis? Although their citizens consume massive amounts of dietary calcium, the excessive protein in that milk, cheese, steak, fish, and eggs always trumps this important mineral, leaving them with a net deficit.

Meanwhile, people in rural China, who consume one-third the amount of dairy we do, have almost zero cases of osteoporosis. Dr. John McDougal, author of The McDougal Program for a Healthy Heart, has scoured the medical literature on the topic and has yet to find one case of dietary calcium deficiency in humans—so long as they consumed an adequate number of calories. So no milk mustache for you!”

“I think of dairy products as meat, only in a liquid, cream or solid form. After all, they contain just as many concentrated, disease-promoting, and nutritionally compromised calories.

Dairy is ubiquitous in the American diet. The milk and dairy industries have done an amazing job of propagating and maintaining the myth that we need three servings of milk, cheese, and/or yogurt a day to maintain healthy bones and overall health. We don’t. In fact, the opposite is true.”

“I hope it is now crystal clear to you how many of us are suffering from the foods at the end of our forks. It is nothing short of a travesty. Here we are, living in the great land of America in the twenty-first century, possessing the knowledge to fight off our most crippling diseases, yet we continue to consume excess amounts of toxic animal protein, fat, and cholesterol, as well as processed and refined foods.

Medical science has shown us that the American diet is unhealthy. Yet modern medicine still treats all these diseases without addressing their root cause: improper nutrition.”

“I firmly believe that your attitude is the most important tool you have in life. With the right attitude, you can achieve anything—and I mean anything. So as you embark on the four-week E2 Diet, you will need to dig deep into your emotional closet, find your best attitude, and wear it for the duration of the program. Before long, you won’t have to work at it. It will become a natural extension of your being.”

“The lesson I learned: Always finish. I’ve competed in more than three hundred triathlons over the course of my career, and I’ve never failed to finish one. I remember Scott Tinley, one of the sport’s legends, saying that he never quit in the middle of a race, because then it would be that much easier to quit the next time when things weren’t going his way.

It’s the same with this diet. Try not to surrender to your bad habits and temptations. Over the four-week period, the more you remain true to these guidelines, the less likely you are to fall back into your old ways later. Besides, you will soon see dramatic benefits, lose your cravings, and set up a successful pattern for life.”