#163: Cindy Thompson - Extinguishing the Raging Fires of Chronic Lifestyle Disease…with a Fork!
We are "fired up" to welcome a plantstrong firefighting sister, Cindy Thompson, to the PLANTSTRONG podcast.
I was so moved by Cindy’s background of why she chose firefighting as a career, but it’s her journey to plants that makes her a true hero in my book.
In this male-dominated, meat-loving profession, she boldly took agency over her own health and, along the way, inspired others (including those macho male firefighters) to take a second look at their own plates and take the plantstrong journey with her.
Today, even though she’s retired from firefighting, she is still extinguishing the flames of disease and illness as a health and lifestyle coach, and, among many other credentials, is a licensed Food for Life Instructor for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
Her business is called Tri-Mazing because, yes, she does triathlons for fun now, but when you are making food and lifestyle changes to benefit the health of the planet, the animals, and yourself, you are Three Times Amazing!
And, we get a bonus surprise today because she whips up an amazing queso dip and shares that recipe with us today.
Enjoy!
Episode Timestamps
10:10 Why did Cindy want to become a firefighter?
18:15 Cindy’s favorite food (it’s a weakness for most of us!) and why she could never keep weight off
19:50 Cindy’s relationship with cancer and how new information changed everything for her
24:30 At the Firehouse, FOOD is everything. How did her firehouse react to Cindy’s change?
30:00 Did the crew come along with her journey?
33:00 A challenge accepted by the senior firefighter!
39:40 As a fire captain/paramedic, what percentage of calls are medical vs. actual fire calls, and what conditions to she see most?
45:00 Becoming an adult-onset athlete after becoming plantstrong
47:04 Tri-Mazing Health Coaching - What is it and what does she teach?
50:30 Let’s Get Cooking! Tri-Mazing Queso Demo and Recipe!
About Cindy:
Cindy Thompson, retired fire captain and paramedic, dramatically improved her health and fitness through plant-based nutrition, losing 60 pounds and becoming an adult-onset athlete. She started a second career with her company, Trimazing Health & Lifestyle Coaching, to help others reach their own health and wellness goals, incorporating zero-waste and sustainable practices throughout her programs. Cindy is a Food for Life Instructor with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, Harvard Medical School Culinary Coach, Fit to Thrive Firefighter Coach, and Main Street Vegan Master Lifestyle Coach and Educator. Cindy wants YOU to be Trimazing, that is, three times BETTER than AMAZING!
Episode Resources
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Rip Esselstyn:
The lows this week in Austin, Texas have been in the 50s, temperatures that we haven't seen for literally months, which gets me absolutely giddy because it means that fall is right around the corner, which means that soup season is here. If you weren't aware, we have the most spectacular collection of organic culinary broths to help you elevate all of your homemade soups and stews. I want you to know I know how important it is to inject flavor at every stage of cooking, and so this is exactly why we created these four very unique PLANTSTRONG broths to help you level up and up your game in the kitchen.
Now, I love all of my baby broths, but right now, my current go-to is the shiitake mushroom broth. We use it to make Mommy's Mushroom Gravy or as a base for our barley soup. Last night, I used it in a broccoli, cauliflower, and seitan stir-fry. It rocked. The umami flavor is perfect. As an added bonus, all four of our broths are completely unsalted, so you can control the sodium 100%. If you're making soup this season, we've got a base for you to build on. Learn more at plantstrongfoods.com.
Cindy Thompson:
What I found was study after study after study, many studies, by your dad even, about the connection between animal products and cancer. I learned that if I could switch to a whole food, plant-based vegan diet, low in oils, it would be the best thing I could do to prevent my risk of cancer. I thought, "What have I got to lose? If all I need to do is ditch animal products, and eat fruits and vegetables, just change my diet and save my life, I'm going to do that." But what I didn't know is that I had 70 pounds to lose. My intention was to not get cancer. All of a sudden, all this weight that I had carried as an adult and had so much difficulty losing started to fall off.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm Rip Esselstyn, and welcome to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. The mission at PLANTSTRONG is to further the advancement of all things within the plant-based movement. We advocate for the scientifically proven benefits of plant-based living, and envision a world that universally understands, promotes, and prescribes plants as a solution to empowering your health, enhancing your performance, restoring the environment, and becoming better guardians to the animals we share this planet with. We welcome you wherever you are on your PLANTSTRONG journey, and I hope that you enjoy the show.
I am fired up to say the least today. The reason why I say I'm fired up is because whenever I have a PLANTSTRONG firefighting brother or sister on the show, I get fired up. Today, her name is Cindy Thompson. I was super inspired by her background and why she chose to become a firefighter in the first place, but it's truly her journey to plants that makes her a superhero in my book, especially in this ridiculously male-dominated, meat-loving profession where she was able to go against the grain, and boldly take agency of her own health because, boy, did she ever need it.
Along the way, in her very methodical and patient manner, was able to inspire the other macho male firefighters that she work with to take a second look at their own plates, and take the plant strong journey along with her. In many ways, it really reminds me of what I was able to do back in the early 2000s with the guys at Fire Station two on the sea shift. Today, even though Cindy is now retired from firefighting, she is still extinguishing the flames of disease and illness as a health and lifestyle coach. Amongst many other credentials, she is a licensed Food for Life instructor with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, PCRM, of which our good friend Dr. Neal Barnard is the founder and president.
Her business today is called Trimazing, because, yes, she does do triathlons for fun, but when you're making food and lifestyle changes to benefit not only yourself but also the health of the planet and the betterment of the animals, you are three times as amazing. Cindy whips up a special bonus recipe today. She makes a queso that absolutely knocked the socks off the guys that she worked with as a firefighter. This one is it's super personal for me. It's always fun, as I said, to have a firefighting brother or sister on the show. Let's give a nice, warm welcome to Cindy Thompson. Welcome to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast.
All right. Hey, I am here with Cindy Thompson. Cindy, you are a fellow firefighting cruciferous cousin of mine.
Cindy Thompson:
Absolutely.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes. You hail from the northwest part of the United States. Where am I talking to you from?
Cindy Thompson:
Well, right now, I'm outside of Seattle, but that's not where I was a firefighter. I was a firefighter in Gresham, Oregon, just outside of Portland, Oregon.
Rip Esselstyn:
I see. Before we jumped in here live, you were just talking about the wildfires that are going on there right now. What's the fire that's about 25 miles from you?
Cindy Thompson:
It's the Bolt Creek fire, which is on highway two on the North Cascade Highway.
Rip Esselstyn:
You said you were doing some things to your house to get it ready in case things got ugly. Is that right?
Cindy Thompson:
Absolutely. Absolutely. As you know, for wildland interface, one of the things to do for preparation for wildfire is structure protection, so we spent Saturday getting all of our summer patio equipment put away, and raking up any dead leaves that were around, and just really securing everything so that our house was fire safe. All of that firefighter training, now that I'm retired, that comes back into play unfortunately in the situation that we're in with this wildland fire.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right. You just mentioned you are retired. How long you've been retired?
Cindy Thompson:
I have been retired for six years. I can't believe. Actually, it might even be more than that. Let me think. I have to do the math. It's long enough where I have to do... Eight years.
Rip Esselstyn:
Eight years.
Cindy Thompson:
Eight years. It's gone so fast.
Rip Esselstyn:
Do you miss it?
Cindy Thompson:
I miss the people. I really miss the comradery of the fire crew. I loved my job, but I was ready to be retired for sure.
Rip Esselstyn:
How long were you a firefighter?
Cindy Thompson:
For 20 years. For 20 years. For 20 years, I didn't sleep, so that was one of the things. It's nice to be able to sleep all night.
Rip Esselstyn:
No, it truly is. Especially what we're learning now about how lack of sleep, really, what it does to your overall health and wellbeing is not good.
Cindy Thompson:
Absolutely.
Rip Esselstyn:
As firefighters, sometimes we go... We'll go a 24-hour shift not sleeping. What did your shifts look like where you worked? Were you 24 on 48 off, or what was the cadence?
Cindy Thompson:
We did 24 on 48 hours off. We could work up to 96 hours straight, so four days straight. I only did that a few times. That's very, very difficult. Even if you don't get a lot of calls, just the fact that you are on response mode and waiting for something to come in, you just don't function as well. You don't sleep as restfully, but that was our schedule.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. What was the size of your department?
Cindy Thompson:
We are just over 100 personnel strong fire department, so an urban fire department. We bordered on the east side of Portland. We had a lot of wildland interface with the Columbia River Gorge, if anyone's familiar with that, for windsurfing and all kinds of outdoor activities. We had six and a half stations. We actually share staffed a station with Portland Fire, which was really innovative approach to dealing with some mutual aid response issues. It was wonderful. We had one truck. I know they've added on some additional staffing and equipment since I've retired, but it was a really grid size department.
Rip Esselstyn:
No, that's real. You mentioned the Columbia River Gorge and windsurfing. I tell you, I went there for the first time in 2017, because we poured my wife's father's ashes, part of them, in the Columbia River Gorge. I could not believe the wind tunnel that exists there. It is phenomenal.
Cindy Thompson:
Yes. That wind just blows right through the gorge, and it ends right at the mouth of what's... There's a town called Troutdale, which is one of our response areas. It sounded like a freight train most of the year with the wind that came out of the gorge, and so we had major issues with wildland fires from the effect of that east wind.
Rip Esselstyn:
I really want to know. What inspired you to get into firefighting back in around... You were a 20-year firefighter, so back in 1994 is when you started.
Cindy Thompson:
Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
What inspired that?
Cindy Thompson:
Well, I had, as a little girl, decided that I wanted to be one of three things. I wanted to be an astronaut. I wanted to be an emergency room physician, or I wanted to be a firefighter. Over time, I just gravitated towards being an emergency room physician. That was something that really interested me. I had done a lot of volunteering as a teenager in the hospital, and learned that that was something that really resonated with me. Part of my goal, my personal goal was to make sure that that really was the right fit for me.
I went to a university that had a paramedic program, and I decided I was going to get my degree in paramedicine, which was very unusual at that time. There were only a handful of schools that did that, and then worked as a paramedic to really make sure that was something I wanted to do. I ended up through the process of that transferring to Oregon Health Sciences University to their paramedic program. Part of that program was doing ride-alongs with Portland Fire. I absolutely loved the fire service. I loved the camaraderi. I loved what we were doing.
I loved the schedule, everything about it. I decided, "I'm young. I have this opportunity. I think I'm going to pursue this. If it doesn't gel, or maybe after I retire, maybe I'll go back to medical school. I haven't got anything to lose at this point. I'm still going to be helping people, which was really my goal," and so I started testing, and was hired with the fire service. I loved it so much. I stayed my whole career.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. Were you one of the very few women that were part of the fire service there?
Cindy Thompson:
Yes. I was hired with five other women, and we were the first women in that fire department. At the time, there were only about 500 women in the whole United States in the fire service. It was very, very new.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, very sparse for women back then. I can't even imagine. What was it like? Did the guys embrace you, or did they make it tough on you?
Cindy Thompson:
I actually personally had a really good indoctrination into the fire service, but mostly because I was so young and very oblivious that it would be a problem. In my mind, I didn't think that it was an issue. I was fortunate enough to be... I spent a lot of time with my dad who was a contractor, and I worked with men a lot, and so I had a lot of experience with that banter, and proving myself, and not being afraid of that situation. I know there was consternation before we arrived. I learned about it way after I had been hired, came across things in the newspaper that...
It was a place that I didn't live, and so I didn't know about the issues, but I actually had a really great indoctrination. I really appreciated how I was treated and brought into the fire service.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, good for you. So 20 years there, tell me a little bit about your progression, because when you retired, if I'm not mistaken, you were a fire captain paramedic, right?
Cindy Thompson:
Yes. Yes. That's why-
Rip Esselstyn:
That's not easy to become a captain. Was that after several years just climbing up that ladder?
Cindy Thompson:
That was the tenacity of climbing the ladder. I actually had really no intention of promoting when I first got hired. I was just thrilled to be in the fire service, and I was happy being a firefighter. I had just finished my paramedic school, and was focused on really learning how to be the best paramedic I could be. Then over time, people started to talk to me and say, "Hey, have you thought about promoting? Have you thought about becoming a lieutenant?" That really helped when other peers were coming to me and saying, "Have you considered that?"
I continued my education and tested for lieutenant. That was the first time a woman in the department had ever tested, so that was a little awkward for everybody. I did well, and I got promoted from that position. Before that, I actually joined the training division, and was an assistant training officer for a year just to really round out my skills, and get some experience with leadership, because when you teach a class, that's leadership. It really helps you make sure that you understand all the concepts to be able to teach things. That helped me a lot.
It was about five years in when I tested and was promoted to lieutenant. It was 2001 actually when I tested and promoted to that. Then about three years later, I promoted to captain.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. Way to break those glass ceilings. Right now, do you have any idea... You said when you got in, there were five women. Do you have any idea how many women comprise the 100 strong fire department there now?
Cindy Thompson:
I don't know. I don't live nearby. I know that there's quite a few new women. Ideally, there's actually more than five or six women in that department now. I know there's other officers, so that makes me really happy. I know at least two have promoted since I left, and there may be more. So, it's getting to be really inclusive and women throughout the ranks. My mom sent me an article, oh gosh, several months ago that they had the first all-women crew at my fire department that was assigned.
We had times where we had all women on the crew for the day based on overtime or trades or whatnot, but this was the first completely assigned regular duty station crew. That was fantastic.
Rip Esselstyn:
How many personnel are on a crew? Is it three, four, five? How many?
Cindy Thompson:
We have three when I left. It might be different now, but we had three. National standard is four. We just didn't have the budget to allow for that, so we had three per engine.
Rip Esselstyn:
Got it. I want to come back to firefighting here, but I want to take a departure right now. I want you to share with us where you grew up.
Cindy Thompson:
I grew up in southwest Washington in a town called Longview, which is on the Columbia River. It is a moderate-sized town. It's really came to being from timber and the lumber industry. That's where I grew up.
Rip Esselstyn:
Am I correct in doing my research that you... Did you also grow up on a farm or near a farm?
Cindy Thompson:
I didn't grow up on a farm, but we had a family farm down in Oregon. My family were homesteaders that came out and got a section of property first starting in central Washington, and then moved to Oregon in the Willamette Valley, and had a homestead there. They had that farm, gosh, until... I was still in the fire service when the last people moved off of that farm, so we don't have that in our family anymore. We have a lot of farmers in our family.
Rip Esselstyn:
Gotcha. What was one of your favorite foods growing up?
Cindy Thompson:
Oh my gosh, my favorite foods growing up was cheese. We have family that were dairy farmers for the Tillamook Dairy, so cheese was just that wholesome food that we ate. That was my comfort food. It was what I snack on, and that's what I ate. That was my favorite food.
Rip Esselstyn:
Did you have any weight issues as you were growing up?
Cindy Thompson:
I wasn't overweight, but I was heavier than I want to be my whole growing up and into my adolescence, and struggled with my weight. Even as a firefighter, I struggled with my weight. I yo-yo dieted as an adult, tried every different diet, would lose the weight, gain it back, and then some. That was a problem for me.
Rip Esselstyn:
Why? What was it about those diets that you tried that made them unsustainable?
Cindy Thompson:
Well, there were things like... It wasn't Atkins, but that was similar to that very low carb, high fat, high protein. It's just not a sustainable way of eating. I never felt... Even though I lost the weight, I never felt like I had a lot of energy. There were other diets that were shakes and powders, and those aren't sustainable. You have to go back. After you lose weight, you have to go back to eating real food. None of those diets taught me how to eat real food, and so I would go back to the way I was eating prior, and of course the weight would come back on.
Rip Esselstyn:
Back to you being a firefighter, so you're a firefighter. Tell me about your relationship with cancer, because I think that that is what led to your discovery of a whole food, plant-based lifestyle.
Cindy Thompson:
Absolutely. Cancer was the thing that made the change for me. My dad gotten on Hodgkin's lymphoma when I was a firefighter, and he actually struggled with that twice. He went into remission after three years, and then it came back, and he died from that. But because of my dad's death, I was terrified I was going to get cancer. Soon after my dad died, the Oregon State legislature passed a law called the Presumptive Cancer Law for firefighters. Almost every state in the country have a Presumptive Cancer Law for firefighters now, but this was very new. On that list of cancers was Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Now, my dad had not been a firefighter, but I didn't know if that was hereditary or not. Now, it was on a list of presumptive cancers for firefighters, but also on that list were two other cancers that scared me. Both blood cancers was multiple myeloma and leukemia. My dad's mother had died from that. I was terrified. I thought, "Oh, is this hereditary? Am I destined to get blood cancer?" Now, my job got these risks for causing blood cancer as well. I actually did not want to tell my mom. I didn't tell her about it. I thought she just lost my dad. She's going to be afraid she's going to lose her daughter.
So, I dove into the research... Coming from Oregon Health Sciences University, I had access to the library. I was in grad school. I thought, "I'm going to take my time and really dive into the research, and see what I could do to reduce my risk of cancer." What I found was study after study after study, many studies by your dad even, about the connection between animal products and cancer. I learned that if I could switch to a whole food, plant-based vegan diet, low in oils, it would be the best thing I could do to prevent my risk of cancer.
I thought, "What have I got to lose? If all I need to do is ditch animal products, and eat fruits and vegetables, just change my diet and save my life, I'm going to do that," but what I didn't know is that I had 70 pounds to lose. My intention was to not get cancer, and all of a sudden, all this weight that I had carried as an adult and had so much difficulty losing started to fall off.
Rip Esselstyn:
What year was this that you made this discovery?
Cindy Thompson:
This was 13 years ago.
Rip Esselstyn:
13 years ago. We're 2022 now. It's roughly 2009.
Cindy Thompson:
Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
2009. All right. That's interesting. That's when I wrote my first book, the Engine 2 Diet. Did you ever see that, or did that ever cross your path?
Cindy Thompson:
This is so funny. Basically, people ask me all the time about that, and I actually did not know about your book. It was years before I knew about your book, and I had met your dad. He came to Portland with Dr. Campbell when Forks Over Knives came out. I remember going in Portland to the showing of Forks Over Knives. I had my firefighter shirt on, not knowing the connection other than I'd seen you in the movie Forks Over Knives and Your Spot. He says, "Oh, you're a firefighter."
I said, "Yeah, I'm a firefighter." I said, "I'm plant based, and this saved my life. I know that this way of eating is saving my life." He said, "Well, are you strong?" I said, "Well, yes, of course, I'm strong." He looked at me, and I looked at him. He's like, "No, but are you strong?" I was like, "I'm strong. I'm eating this way, and I'm strong." I totally... He signed my book. I went on my way, and I was so puzzled. It was after I discovered your book and learned about PLANSTRONG, I finally realized what he was asking me. "Yes, I am plant strong."
Rip Esselstyn:
That's funny. Very funny. So 2009, you make this abrupt 180 pivot in the way you view food. As you and I both know, at the fire station, food is it is sacrosanct.
Cindy Thompson:
Everything.
Rip Esselstyn:
I mean, it is everything.
Cindy Thompson:
It is everything.
Rip Esselstyn:
What did the other guys and maybe a few of the gals, how did they view you basically saying, "No thank you," to the spare ribs, and the steaks, and the burgers, and the cheese?
Cindy Thompson:
Yes, and the cheese. First of all, everybody knew my dad. They had grown with me through the last six years of my dad's cancer struggle, and so they knew how impacting my dad's death from cancer was. They also knew that I was very afraid when I learned about the presumptive cancer law. We all were afraid. All of us had been touched by cancer. I was very quiet at first about the research, but I started to share, "This is what I'm learning, and I think I'm going to try it." My fear was not home, was not eating out. My fear was about the fire station, because everything happens around the kitchen table.
Everything happens about breaking bread. We all take turns cooking. You don't get out of the cooking rotation. In fact, the people who try, it's really not good for camaraderie if you try to do that. It's really important to eat together. It's huge for team building, and so I did not want to destroy the integrity of my team. I knew how very important it was. I sat down with my crew, and I shared my why. I said, "This is what I'm doing. As you know, my dad. You knew about the presumptive cancer law. I have three cancers on there. I need to do something. This is what I have learned."
"I am making this change for me, and it doesn't need to affect you. This is my choice for what I'm going to do for my way of eating, for my health. So here's what I would propose it would look like. First of all, I'm not going to leave the cooking rotation. When I cook, I'm going to cook whole food, plant based. It's going to be delicious. I've already been trying it at home. I've tried some of the recipes. You just haven't noticed it, and you've liked them. It will not hurt my feelings if you want to put something with it. If you wanted to make something on the grill, or add to it, that's fine. It won't hurt my feelings."
"This is my journey, not yours, so I promise you it's going to be fantastic. If you don't like it, tell me, and I will make adjustments. This is a learning experience. That's the first thing. Second, when it's not my turn to cook, I'm going to make enough to have leftovers. I'm going to throw some stuff in the fridge for next shift. I'm going to put some stuff in the freezer, so you don't have to worry about cooking for me." The great thing about the culture of my department is that we always had a giant salad on the table for lunch and dinner. I mean, the bowl was this big.
You would dip your bowl into it. It's probably very similar at other fire stations, but we always had a big salad. I asked them if they would make it without adding dressing or cheese or meat. That way, I always had a big salad. I had some leftovers, and I could feed myself. Not a problem at all. I said, "This is my journey. If you decide to eat differently, if you decide to add something, I'm not going to hold any grudge. This is what I'm doing, and you can continue doing what you're doing. Then we'll reevaluate. If this isn't working, we'll come up with something different, but I would really, really would like to try this."
You know what their one thing that they said was?
Rip Esselstyn:
No idea.
Cindy Thompson:
You're not going to be able to do this. You're addicted to cheese.
Rip Esselstyn:
You showed them, didn't you?
Cindy Thompson:
I did. I had always said I was addicted to cheese. I didn't know that truly, you could become addicted to cheese. It wasn't till several years after I had gone whole food plant-based that I read The Cheese Trap from Dr. Neal Barnard, and realized, "Oh my gosh, what I felt inside was totally true." I was the kind of person that if I couldn't sleep, I would go the refrigerator. I would cut a piece of cheese, and eat that, and I could go back to sleep, even at the fire station. There were times that I would wake up with a stale piece of cheese with one bite out of it on my shoulder. That's how bad it was.
I would make not... The joke at the station was, "Oh, Cindy's having nachos without the chips." All that means is you grate cheese. You put it on a plate. You throw it in the microwave, and you eat melted cheese with a fork. I was terribly addicted to it. 13 years ago, there weren't cheese substitutes. I just had to cold tofu it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes, you did.
Cindy Thompson:
I struggled through the first couple weeks, but then soon, I realized, "Oh my gosh, I don't have that craving for cheese. I don't miss it." Even at the station, I'm not sneaking it, and I don't miss it at all. We had some recipes that we created at the station to help with the cheesy taste. I've got a great Trimazing cheese sauce that I'll share with you at the end-
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, fantastic.
Cindy Thompson:
... that we developed and played with at the fire station. That really helped. I really lost that craving for cheese, and I didn't need to have those cheese alternatives. In fact, I don't even eat them today. They're just not even something that's in my mind that's necessary.
Rip Esselstyn:
Were you able to get everybody on board with eating this way while you were there?
Cindy Thompson:
The crazy thing is at that same time, we were participating, my station, in fact my crew, in a voluntary program called Flame, which was from Oregon Health Sciences University. They were looking at the effects of nutrition and health training for firefighters to help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. So along with cancer, cardiovascular disease is super high in the fire service as I know you know, Rip. But for a lot of people, they don't realize that the number one line of duty death for firefighters is cardiovascular disease and sudden cardiac death. Of course, that came out before the Presumptive Cancer Law. That never caught my attention. It was cancer that caught my attention.
Anyway, we were doing this program at the fire station, and I had just only been a couple months of changing how I was eating. We had an exercise from this Flame program looking at dietary fat in food. I will never forget this exercise. I think this is a fabulous exercise. If you or in your family, or you have friends that are struggling with, really, how important is it to cut oil out of your diet or fats, this exercise had nutrition facts for hamburger, milkshake, and fry meal, and it had a tub of Crisco vegetable shortening.
On this recipe, they had the fat grams, also had a scale. Our task as a crew was to look at this recipe for hamburger, milkshake, and fries, take a plate, put it on the scale, and then measure out the amount of Crisco that measured the same amount of fat grams that are in this meal.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
Cindy Thompson:
It's disturbing, because we ended up having this huge pile of Crisco on a plate, and all of us sat there with our hands over our mouth just thinking, "Oh my gosh, seriously, we would never sit down and eat a plate of Crisco, but that's what we're doing when we're eating this." Huge impact.
Rip Esselstyn:
Give me an idea if you can remember, because I'm fascinated by this Flame study. Are we talking... Was it two tablespoons of Crisco or three or four, or how many are we talking?
Cindy Thompson:
It was cups of Crisco, because it had a hamburger patty, and it had cheese. It had mayo. The fries were cooked in oil-
Rip Esselstyn:
Milkshake. Did you say milkshake?
Cindy Thompson:
... and the milkshake. It was a lot. I mean, it's disturbing. I should probably recreate that because I can't tell you exactly how much, but it was a pile.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
Cindy Thompson:
The most senior person on my crew said, "Cindy, that's all well and good, but don't you ever just miss a hamburger, milkshake, and fry meal?" I said, "No, because I can make that plant based, and it tastes fantastic, and I won't have all of that oil." They all looked at me. He said, "You know what, Cindy, I tell you what." You know, Rip, that the senior firefighter in the crew is everything. What they say-
Rip Esselstyn:
Are you the senior?
Cindy Thompson:
I was not. I was not the senior. This is the senior firefighter on my crew. It's a man very well respected in the department. He says, "Tell you what, Cindy, if you can make me a hamburger, milkshake, and fry meal that I like, I'll go vegan." You could have knocked me over with Feather. I had never saw this coming. I said, "Game on. Let's go to the grocery store right now." Most fire departments, you take your engine everywhere with you. We got in the engine. We went to the grocery store, which was normal for us.
It wasn't my turn to cook. We'd already been to the grocery store that day for someone else to cook, but I was not going to let this opportunity miss. I picked up what I needed, and made portobello mushroom burgers that I grilled on the barbecue. We did bake sweet potato fries, and I did a strawberry smoothie with plant-based milk. They loved it. The senior firefighter said, "You know what, I'll do it. I'm going to go plant-based with you. Just don't tell my wife. She's been trying to get me to eat vegetarian for years."
As soon as he said that he was going to do that, the other people on my crew did as well. My whole crew on my shift went plant based. We loved it, and they all had fantastic effects. They lost weight. Their blood pressure reduced. Their blood cholesterol fell. The one big thing that happens now when I tell this story, people say, "You could have written the Engine 2 Diet." I said, "If I had thought about it, I could have written the Engine 74 Diet," but it never even crossed my mind because we did. We all did fantastic.
We all needed to get new uniform sizes. I, in particular, I had to get three new sets of turnouts over the course of a year, which is a huge impact on your fire station budget.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
Cindy Thompson:
They're $1,500 a set. Finally, after I was getting my third set, the chief came to me and said, "We're really proud of you. You're doing great, and your crew is doing awesome, but we need to know if you plan on losing any more weight so we can budget because we haven't budgeted for all these turnouts."
Rip Esselstyn:
That is hilarious. Well, good for you for leading and showing what's possible, and showing everybody at your station how tasty and delicious it can be to eat this way and eat healthy. It's funny, because I was at a station. It was fire station two. I think we had... Let me just think for a sec. We had about 15 fire stations in our battalion. The battalion chief was stationed out of fire station two. He was a pain in my ass. Guess what his last name was. Thompson.
Cindy Thompson:
Thompson. No relation.
Rip Esselstyn:
Chief Thompson. He gave me more flak for eating the way I did, and the guys, because we know we all jumped in. We were doing this from 2003 to really 2009. The book came out in 2009, and he secretly started doing it, right, with his wife, and his cholesterol dropped from 235 down to 136. I mean, he lost 20 pounds. I ended up... It's funny how I went from like, "Oh my God, I just can't stand this man," to really all of a sudden having a lot of admiration and respect for him, especially when he manned up and he told me that he needed to lose some weight, and wanted to drop his cholesterol and all that.
We departed as good friends, which was nice, because I retired in 2009.
Cindy Thompson:
You know what, there were people that gave me flak, and there were people that gave my crew flak. They would go on trades or overtime, and take with them the way they were eating. Guys would tease them. They just had a lot of resolve for it. You let that stuff roll. You make jokes about it on yourself and, "Oh yeah, I'm eating all this rabbit food." I just didn't let it turn into a big issue. I didn't make it an issue. I was quiet about it when I went to other crews, or if I had people that came in to work in a vacant spot that day, we would talk about, "Hey, this is what we're doing. You don't have to eat this way. We're going to go to the store. If you want to have something else, you're free to buy. We're going to eat together. You can just cook that, and we'll eat at the same time." I think that helped, just making it less intrusive, but the big thing is people saw what was happening to me, what was happening to my crew for our health, and that quickly brought more curiosity than anything.
The only flak I really got that was a little out of control was from neighboring departments when they would hear about it. They don't know my story. They don't know the history, and they found it as a good way to make a dig on a neighboring mutual aid captain, but whatever. It's just... As my dad would say, it's water off duck's back. I was very committed to what I was doing, and it just didn't bother me.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, it's a real art form, figuring out how to integrate this lifestyle with family, friends, and coworkers.
Cindy Thompson:
Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
It sounds like you've figured that out beautifully. It took me a while obviously of getting in shouting matches with Chief Thompson.
Cindy Thompson:
I think because I was already different. Being a woman, I think that it was just par for the course. I think that might have helped me in that regard. It was like, "Oh, well, this is a woman thing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Then when the guys got on board, that helped. But I think the fact that I had always been different in the fire service, in my department, that I had learned ways to broach the topic like that.
Rip Esselstyn:
Now, so as a fire captain paramedic, what percent of your 911 calls would you say were medical calls?
Cindy Thompson:
Oh my gosh, probably 85% if not more. That's the amazing thing is to see... We were the primary healthcare for a lot of the area. We are one of the few medical professions that still make house calls, and so we got to see the effect of lifestyle on disease. It's puts us in a very fortunate position. Now that I've since retired, I'm a health coach, and I am thrilled to be able to help prevent disease, reduce the risk of those diseases that I responded to, and had to treat emergently. If I can keep people from going down that path, that have that medical emergency, that's just my goal.
Rip Esselstyn:
I would love to talk to you more about the health coaching you're doing. Before we do, so what would you say... What did you see most on your 911 emergency medical calls? Was it difficulty breathing? Was it diabetic emergencies? Was it lifting assistance calls? Was it... What was it?
Cindy Thompson:
Oh my goodness. All of those above, lots of diabetes. I was noticing through the course of my career that diabetes was growing dramatically. At the beginning, we would do a little bit of diabetes calls, but by the end, majority were diabetic calls, cardiac, chest pain calls, shortness of breath calls. Then we started to get into the lift assist to the point where we had to actually have a bariatric unit in our county that the ambulance would bring out with a large cot with extra tools. We had extra new equipment that we carried on the engine in the last five or six years of my career for helping with very large patients.
That became very, very common. I mean, we even cut sides out of houses to get people out of their homes at times. It's just had turned into quite a problem.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, you know what, you're bringing up a lot of memories for me here. Before I left, it was a new thing called the MegaMover.
Cindy Thompson:
Yes, the MegaMover, it saved all of us.
Rip Esselstyn:
Basically, this very, very well-fabricated piece of nylon, and it had handles, eight sets of handles on it.
Cindy Thompson:
Yes. Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
Literally, eight people could carry somebody that weighed 600, 700 pounds out of the house because the stretcher wasn't going to do it. Then the stretchers that we got by the time that I left were these hydraulic stretchers, so you wouldn't totally ruin your back, which so many firefighters and paramedics have over the years. I think these hydraulic stretchers were good up to 750 pounds, but absolutely crazy. We never had to cut out the side of a house. I can tell you that.
Cindy Thompson:
We had. I know two situations where we had to do that. That was before we even had the bariatric unit. We had to disassemble the locking mechanism for the cot in the ambulance. We had to take all of the equipment off the floor, unscrew it so that we could put that person on the floor of the ambulance. It was terrifying for all of us.
Rip Esselstyn:
No, that is the harsh reality of, unfortunately, how the extent to which this food addiction affects some people. Before they know it, they're just like... They're trapped, and as Doug Lisle would say, the pleasure trap, right?
Cindy Thompson:
Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Rip Esselstyn:
Those are some of the results. Well, so before I get to your coaching, I just want to say that... Did you finish your career in the health and wellness division at your fire department?
Cindy Thompson:
I didn't. We didn't have a health and wellness division, but I was given special assignment to run our firefighter health and fitness initiative program before I left. So as you know, around 2010, maybe even a little before that, the International Association of Fire Chiefs and the International Association of Firefighters, so union and management, got together to determine what they could do to help reduce the risk of cardiovascular death for firefighters. They came up with this wellness fitness initiative, which is a voluntary program throughout the United States and Canada to help improve the fitness and wellness of firefighters.
So my department, having watched me go through my journey, said, "We think that you would be perfect to run this program." They handed that to me, and I ran that program until I retired.
Rip Esselstyn:
Good for you. Good for you. In 2009, you lost the 70 pounds. You became plant strong, and then did you become an adult onset triathlete? Is that correct?
Cindy Thompson:
I mean, yes. That's my term is I became an adult onset athlete for sure.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's so adorable. That's so adorable.
Cindy Thompson:
I was not somebody who was athletic. I was in the fire service, and I was totally capable of doing that, but I didn't grow up doing sports or athletics. My mom grew up before Title IX. Athletics weren't in her school until her senior year in high school. So in her mind, athletics were not something that girls did. I didn't grow up doing that. My brother did, but not me. But once I lost all this weight, and I felt so fantastic, I didn't hurt in the morning when I woke up.
I had an excess of energy that I needed to do something with, so I started to run, and eventually got into endurance races and adventure races and into triathlon. Changing the way, it completely changed my life. I have now changed my addiction from cheese to triathlon for sure.
Rip Esselstyn:
What's the last race or event that you competed in?
Cindy Thompson:
Well, my last one was a sprint triathlon right before Covid up here in the Snoqualmie Valley area. That was my last one. This last year, I have developed bilateral frozen shoulders and some achilles tendinosis that I have worked through. I'm finally, in the last three weeks or so, been able to start swimming and running again. I feel like I'm ready to get back into my triathlon now that Covid is over and races are happening again, and I've gone through my frozen shoulder issues.
Rip Esselstyn:
Good. You're ready to dive back in that reel.
Cindy Thompson:
I'm ready to dive back in.
Rip Esselstyn:
Now, so tell me about Trimazing, when you started it, and what you do with people.
Cindy Thompson:
Trimazing actually started as a blog. When I turned into an adult onset athlete, and started doing triathlons, I joined a triathlon group in Portland. I was nervous about that. I was more nervous about doing triathlons as plant-based than I was as firefighting, because everything I had seen is all the protein needs and the fueling. I thought, "Oh, I hope I can do this as plant-based." I think I can, but there was a lot of concern with people that I would meet, "Oh, well, I don't know if you can do this as vegan."
I thought, "I want to hold myself accountable to keep going, and I want to share with other people that might be plant based that want to do triathlons to show them it can be done, and to share what I'm learning." My blog was first called Cindy T Runs a Triathlon, or Cindy... It was just a terrible blog title. I did that for several years, and I was at the fire station one night trying to think, "I need a different title for this." So, I was brainstorming words and keywords and phrases, and I kept coming up with triathlon. Triathlon is amazing, and I feel amazing. Going plant-based was amazing.
It's like it's tri amazing. I thought, "I wonder if I could morph that into trimazing." Being the beginnings of the internet, I thought, "I wonder what's available for a URL for that." I went and searched to see if tri amazing was available. When I typed in tri amazing, the Urban Dictionary popped up with the word trimazing, which is urban slang for three times better than amazing. I thought, "Aha, that is great. That's exactly how I feel." I bought the domain name at that time, and held onto it until I created my coaching business, and turned that blog, Trimazing, into my business, Trimazing Health and Lifestyle Coaching.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's fantastic. What's the logo? It looks like you've got a frog and a tomato or tomato. What's going on there?
Cindy Thompson:
I do. I do. My business is built around whole plant-based eating, fitness, and the environment. The environment is something... On the course of going plant based and learning this lifestyle and living this lifestyle, I realized what amazing impact that had on the environment. Frogs and amphibian are an indicator species of how your environment is doing, and so I've always been really... They're a spirit animal of mine, the frog. So on my logo, I knew there had to be a frog, and it's jumping, so it's something that's very actionable.
It's very into fitness. Also, on the logo is a circle. The frog is jumping towards the tomato, which is the plant based, and then that circle is also with the energy and how all those three things of plants, animals, and the environment and our health are all related.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's really great, the way that each one feeds into the other. It's this really beautiful cycle. You know what time I think it is, Cindy?
Cindy Thompson:
What time?
Rip Esselstyn:
I think it's time for you to show us how to make some kick-butt plant-based cheese. What is it, a cheese dip?
Cindy Thompson:
It's trimazing queso.
Rip Esselstyn:
Queso.
Cindy Thompson:
It's a cheese. Yes. It's cheese that you can use to pour on pasta, for mac and cheese, to pour on steamed vegetables, to help kids love to eat cheesy vegetables. It's something that we made in the fire station to really help with not having cheese. I tell you what, it's really trimazing. It's three times better than amazing.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's whole food plant, based, no oil.
Cindy Thompson:
It is whole food, plant based, no oil, not a drop.
Rip Esselstyn:
I am so excited about seeing and watching you make this. All right.
Cindy Thompson:
Fantastic.
Rip Esselstyn:
Shall we get the-
Cindy Thompson:
I will jump off my island here so that I can stand behind it. This is my kitchen studio. In addition to being a health coach, I'm also a Food for Life instructor with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. I teach a lot of cooking classes. Then during Covid, we were not able to do that in person, so I have transformed a storage room in my basement into a cooking studio. I'm going to jump off here, climb around the back, and we'll get to some cooking.
Rip Esselstyn:
Perfect. All right, Cindy, you're all set up. You're in your studio kitchen. You're going to be making a queso for us that would make just about every fire station just drool with envy. This is perfect because we're just coming off of Plant Stock 2022, and our whole theme was chef's amazing plant-based people making different recipes, their favorite recipes. Thank you. This is the perfect continuation.
Cindy Thompson:
Fantastic. Perfect. I love that. Great. All right. We are going to make Trimazing queso. I'm making a spicy version today, but you can actually make this not spicy, and serve it with pasta to make mac and cheese. You can get the recipe if you go to trimazing.com/plantstrong. I have a webpage all dedicated to the recipes for the queso and the mac and cheese so that you have that plus a little bit of extra stuff that I'll talk about as I finish up with this recipe. Yes, trimazing.com/plantstrong, and you can get these recipes, and make this for yourself.
This is something that we made in the fire station when we were missing cheese. I make this a lot. It's a great dip. It's a great spread. If I'm making a lasagna, and I want it to be cheesy, I pour this on the cup.
Rip Esselstyn:
What kind of instruments you have there you're assembling? Is that Vitamix?
Cindy Thompson:
This is Vitamix. You can use a regular blender. You don't necessarily have to have a high end, high-speed blender. I'm going to show you two ways of making this with a regular blender and cooking the cheese sauce, or you can also just cook the cheese sauce in the Vitamix if you have a high-speed blender. The ingredients for this, I'll bring them out. Very, very simple. Something that was really key for the fire station is that they needed to be simple, inexpensive ingredients.
Rip Esselstyn:
Why do you say inexpensive?
Cindy Thompson:
Well, because the fire department does not pay for our food when we go grocery shopping, and so we had something that was called house fund that we all pitched into at the beginning of the month that paid for staples, so like salt and flour and sugar and potatoes and onions. Then every shift, we pitched in to whoever was cooking to pay for the fresh fruits and vegetables or meat or the things that we were going to add to the staples. Our recipes had to be inexpensive. Otherwise, people complained when you had to go back to them and say, "I need more money." That just wasn't very cool.
Rip Esselstyn:
Let me just chat you in for a sec, Cindy, and echo. It was a contest to see who could make dinner for the cheapest amount so that when it came time to basically pay the person that went shopping, you didn't have to put in more than $3 or $4.
Cindy Thompson:
Exactly. $5 was the max per person, and we only had three people.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right.
Cindy Thompson:
You had $15 plus the house fund, so you actually try to find ingredients that uses as many pantry staples as possible, potatoes, smothered, and onions. That was as... That used a lot of house fund items. I'm going to change my view, so you can see what I have here. I have oats. These are just rolled oats. My original recipe, I used cashews, but I decided to switch over to oats because they have less fat. There's a spool of really fantastic fiber, and they work just as well, and they're less expensive. Cashews are expensive. I have vegetable stock and water. This is a cup and a half.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's really smart to do it with oats from cashews. It'll be interesting to me to know if you still get that similar creaminess.
Cindy Thompson:
You do. If you're concerned... What I share with people is you can try doing half and half, half cashews and half oats, and then slowly over time, because it just changes... Your mouthfeel changes over time, but I think the oats make it nice and creamy. You can also use, instead of cashews, sunflower seeds. I've done that, or other types of nuts. This is nutritional yeast. Of course, you have to have nutritional yeast for that cheesy flavor. I have some salt. Just a tiny bit. Let me grab my scraper.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm surprised you just didn't use the end of your finger.
Cindy Thompson:
Well, I'm cooking class, so I want to be mindful. This is cornstarch. You can also use arrowroot powder. That helps thicken it up. I have some lemon juice. You can also use lime juice. Works really great, especially for this queso, which is a spicy queso, Tex-Mex style. Oh, I have garlic. Put that in there, just a whole clove. This is tomato paste, just regular. You could get it in the tube or a can. If you're going to do a non-spicy version, you'll have more tomato paste than this, but this is a spicy version. To make it spicy, I'm going to use adobo sauce.
This is the liquid that's in a can of Chipotle peppers. This is my favorite brand, this Embasa. You can find it at most grocery stores anymore in the Hispanic food aisle, really delicious. In here are whole smoked jalapeno peppers, and they're in this delicious sauce called adobo sauce. You could also make your own. On that page with the trimazing.com/plantstrong, I have a link where you can learn how to make your own adobo, but it's just easy to use the can. That's it for our ingredients here. I'm just going to blend this up. I'll change my view.
Rip Esselstyn:
Would it also work if you wanted to add a, let's say, seeded jalapeno pepper? Would that have a similar effect?
Cindy Thompson:
It won't have the smokiness. It'll have the heat. You can also use salsa. Every fire station always had salsa, so I would put salsa in here. I wouldn't even worry about getting the tomato paste. I would just take salsa, and put it in, because it was using the house fund. Now, I'm going to blend this. If this was a normal blender, I'm going to blend it until it's nice and smooth, or if you have a high-speed blender like this, you'll run it for about five minutes. It will actually cook the sauce in here, and get it nice and thick.
I have... I'll show you what it looks like. I'm not going to run it for five minutes, because we don't want to stare at each other for five minutes as this runs. I'm just going to run it until it gets blended.
Rip Esselstyn:
Can you hear me?
Cindy Thompson:
I can hear you a little.
Rip Esselstyn:
If you could hear me, I am wondering, Cindy. Do you love to cook? If so, what was that journey like for you?
Cindy Thompson:
I love to cook. I was a latchkey kid. My mom worked when I was growing up. When I hit a certain age, like in middle school, my mom would leave a recipe on the counter, have ingredients in the refrigerator, and say, "Please make this before I come home." I would do that, and then I got bored of those recipes, so then I would look at the rest, the stuff that was in that recipe, the stuff in the fridge. I would go through her cookbooks to figure out what I could make instead, and surprise her with those recipes. I self taught myself how to cook in that regard. I've just always had a love of cooking.
That was a fear that people had when I went plant based is I was known as a really fantastic firehouse cook. They thought, "Oh my gosh, we're never going to eat good again." It's always been a passion of mine for sure. I'm going to show you here... This is just blended, and you can see it's really liquidy. I'm going to pour it in a pan to heat it up. This is one that I made right before we started. It's really, really, really thick. It's actually cooked in here, where I can scoop it out.
Rip Esselstyn:
The only difference there, Cindy, is that one was five minutes, and the other one was about 30 seconds.
Cindy Thompson:
Exactly. This was done for five minutes in a high-speed blender. If you don't have a high speed blender, don't worry. Don't fret. You can still make this wonderful cheese sauce. In fact, this is what we did at the fire station, because no fire department's going to buy their fire station a high-speed blender. You just get a sauce pan. You pour in your sauce. That's all blended up. I'll change my view again so we can see.
Rip Esselstyn:
This is so trick. You are...
Cindy Thompson:
Isn't this cool?
Rip Esselstyn:
You have it going on there in your little studio.
Cindy Thompson:
I wanted it to be a cooking show where people would be really interested in my classes that they'd be able to see. That was important that they could see. Even though Covid made it where I couldn't do in-person classes anymore, I wanted people to be able to feel like they were there. I've got my little stove top here, and I've got my liquid that I blended up in my blender. Now, I'm just going to bring it to a boil, and that cornstarch is going to thicken up.
I'll let that go. It's going to thicken up just like the stuff that I did in the other blender. We can still chat while this is going on, and then you'll see how quickly it is that this will tighten up. It generally takes about five minutes.
Rip Esselstyn:
Now, so Cindy, are you single? Are you married? Are you in a relationship?
Cindy Thompson:
I am married. My husband is a endurance swimmer, actually, a marathon swimmer.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh really?
Cindy Thompson:
He's one of the crazy people that swim the Hawaiian islands. He's on the Maui channel. He swam the Catalina Channel, from Catalina to Long Beach. He's a huge swimmer. We got together... Before I retired, we met. When I retired, I came up here. He was not plant based, but he had been an athlete his entire life, and food was always fuel. He wasn't a foodie. It was whatever he ate had to contribute to his fitness for his sport. He loved the way I cooked, and ate what I made. We had the same conversation that I had at the fire station.
"You can add something to it. This is my journey, not yours," but what I have found in the fire service and in real life, there's a lot of times, if you're cooking for someone, they don't generally want to take the time to make something else to go with it. They'll just eat what you've made. So over time, he wasn't making anything to go with what I was making, and he discovered that when he ate how I was cooking, his level of fitness improved, and he was already doing fantastic.
My husband is 20 years older than I am. He consistently comes in ahead of people half his age. He's always on the podium. He just came back from U.S. Masters Summer Nationals with a suitcase full of medals, first place, second place, third place. He really attributes it to eating plant based. He feels like he has a secret training tool that other people don't have.
Rip Esselstyn:
What is his first name?
Cindy Thompson:
His name is Alan.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. Where did you guys meet?
Cindy Thompson:
We had mutual friends down in Oregon that had dinner parties. The husband was a paramedic, who I knew. He was also vegetarian, by the way. The wife was a nurse, who Alan knew. We met at the dinner party, and with my love of triathlon and his love of swimming, we started talking. It just was a friendship that blossomed into now we're married. You can see that this... Look how thick this is getting.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's really neat. Really.
Cindy Thompson:
I'm going to switch to a whisk here. It's a little lumpy. He traveled for work. He's a pharmacist, and he travels for work. When he was traveling, he wouldn't eat plant-based, and then he'd come home, and eat plant-based, and he really could tell the difference. Here is my sauce. You can see it's really lovely and thick, and it took less than five minutes on the burner.
Rip Esselstyn:
That looks so good. I want to try that immediately over Yukon Gold potatoes.
Cindy Thompson:
Oh my gosh. I was really struggling. I have a plate of veggies here. We're going to pour this in the bowl. I was like, "Do I do veggies? Do I do some potatoes?" But this is so delicious. I'm even going to pour some of that other, so we fill this up. This makes a great sauce. I've done... One of my favorite things to do, and I did this at the fire station, is I would make the layered bean dip with the refined beans on the bottom with guacamole and salsa. I would pour this queso sauce over the top.
I would set it out at the fire station. People would gobble it up. People would come to visit the station, and they would see this wonderful dip. Nobody would say, "That's not real cheese." They would watch them and go, "Oh my gosh, they're eating it." This is their queso cheese. It's so delicious.
Rip Esselstyn:
I could see.
Cindy Thompson:
It's so good.
Rip Esselstyn:
I could see doing a bunch of nachos with beans and jalapenos and fresh cut red onions. Oh, that'd be so good.
Cindy Thompson:
It's super delicious. It's thick and creamy. It's got that same consistency that you look for in that nacho cheese for sure without all of the garbage. It's great. You don't have to have any guilt with it.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's it.
Cindy Thompson:
Again, on my webpage, you have the recipe at trimazing.com/plantstrong. I was wondering if I could add a couple things that's on that webpage for your listeners, Rip.
Rip Esselstyn:
Absolutely. We'll be sure to add it in the show notes of today's episode as well, What else? Yes.
Cindy Thompson:
So besides the recipes, on there is a link to my classes. I do have some... I have a in-person class in October on brain health. It's Power Foods for Your Brain, which is based after Neal Barnard's book of the same title. That's an in-person class that I'm doing in October. If you're in the Seattle area, I'd love to have you. Then in January, I'm doing a Your Body in Balance class. That'll be 100% online. So if you don't live in Seattle, and you would like some more cooking classes in my studio kitchen, we have a five-class series on Your Body in Balance covering everything from hormone-related cancers to PCOS and menopause and thyroid health, et cetera.
You can learn more about that on my website. There's a link. If you sign up for either of those classes, and at check out enter PLANTSTRONG, you'll get 10% off for being a listener of the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. There's also a way to contact me if you have questions, or if you're interested in some classes for your group. I have an extra free cookbook that I had released on Chef AJ's show, which is the Un-Seafood Cookbook, which is a labor of love that I did for my husband, who was addicted to seafood, and had a... That was his struggle for eating plant-based. You can get 20 plant-based recipes with a taste of the sea.
Finally, one last thing that's on there is a special program that I have. It's free. It's called the Be Your Own Hero Program. In that program, it's four weeks. You will learn how to put together a 72-hour emergency kit. One of the things that I observed as a firefighter was that people weren't prepared for emergencies, and they also... When I talked to people who were plant based, they struggled with, "How do I... I can't go out and buy a 72-hour kit because it's full of garbage food. It's things that I can't eat that aren't whole food plant based, not even vegan."
So, I created this program that once a week, you get an email with information. There's videos. There's a shopping list, some tasks to do for putting together your 72-hour kit. By the end of that four weeks, you will have a 72-hour kit put together for you and your family. I even have information on things to think about on where to store that. People often look at me a little cross side of, "Well, why does it take four weeks to build something for 72 hours?"
There's a lot of supplies and things that you might not have. There's things you may need to buy, and it takes time to be prepared. That is a free program that I would love for you to take advantage of. I've had thousands of people go through it and put together 72-hour kits. That is on there as well, the Be Your Own Hero program.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. You got a lot going on there, Cindy.
Cindy Thompson:
I do. I love it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Totally.
Cindy Thompson:
I have been more busy now that I'm retired. I'm sure you're the same way, but it's a passion project. I loved being a firefighter. I absolutely loved doing that. I absolutely love doing this as well. I can't think of anything better to be doing with my time now that I'm retired than to help people really live strong, amazing, trimazing lives.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's great. Well, Cindy, this has been an absolute pleasure. I can't tell you how great it is to get to meet you. I really appreciate you joining us on the PLANTSTRONG Podcast, and all the great work that you're doing in retirement. I cannot wait to make that queso dish. Thank you very much.
Cindy Thompson:
Fantastic. I hope you do, and let me know how it turns out.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, I will. So with that, will you give me a fist bump?
Cindy Thompson:
There you go, fist bump.
Rip Esselstyn:
Keep it PLANTSTRONG.
Cindy Thompson:
Absolutely.
Rip Esselstyn:
I want to thank Cindy for making the PLANTSTRONG lifestyle such a huge part of who she is today. I also want to thank her for bringing it today in the kitchen. If you want to see her cooking up that queso, you can watch the video on our YouTube channel. We'll be sure to put the link and all of her resources for you in the show notes at plantstrongpodcast.com. Until then, do me a favor. If you see an emergency first responder out there, give them a big, high five, thank you. They truly are some of our biggest heroes. Do me another favor. Always keep it PLANTSTRONG. Thanks so much for listening.
The PLANTSTRONG Podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, Ami Mackey, Patrick Gavin, and Wade Clark. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous truth seekers who weren't afraid to look through the lens with clear vision, and hold firm to a higher truth, most notably, my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr. and Ann Crile-Esselstyn. Thanks for listening.
