#89: Sherra Aguirre - Life Without Heart Disease
Sherra Aguirre is a vibrant soul who proves that health and vitality has no age limit. Her new book, “Joyful, Delicious, Vegan: Life Without Heart Disease” is testament that we can all learn how to enjoy good health naturally at any age―and it starts in our kitchens by changing how we eat.
Hers is a colorful and rich story that included a 35-year career as founder and CEO of a Houston-based company that had over 1200 employees. Needless to say, it was a life of stress, travel, dinners, and plenty of unhealthy habits.
Sherra shares her own story of reversing her heart disease and high blood pressure after she realized, quite shockingly, that she was eating over 50% fat every day! Her recipe? She adopted a SIMPLE, yet beautiful, whole foods plant-based diet. Her family history was riddled with chronic lifestyle disease and Sherra's goal is to help you re-write your own family history with simple and joyful changes.
"Simple," we know, is the keyword here, and you’ll be inspired and touched by her mindful approach to life now that includes a daily yoga and meditation practice as well. Sherra is aspirational because of her approach to life - that we should all reflect on how available and simple good health can actually be - and how delicious and fun it can be if we take time to appreciate all that we have.
When you live the mantra, “Self-Care is the new Health Care,” it can and will reverse your own lifestyle disease, but by changing yourself from the inside out, it can also have a lasting effect on your families and communities in which you serve. Now that is powerful and so, so simple.
About Sherra Aguirre:
SHERRA AGUIRRE is an articulate health enthusiast, environmentalist, and food security activist. She founded and led a successful business for three decades, winning national awards for entrepreneurship, innovation, and service excellence. She sold the company in 2016 to focus on sharing her passion for a healthy diet and lifestyle.
Aguirre describes herself as high energy, in better overall health, and in many ways more fit than in her thirties or forties. She has practiced meditation and yoga daily for more than twenty-five years, and for many years has researched and read extensively about diet and lifestyle as the most important factors for achieving and maintaining good health. By adopting a whole plant-based diet, she improved her overall heart health and eliminated symptoms of hypertension despite a significant family history of heart attack, stroke, and high blood pressure. She is passionate about empowering others to maintain vibrancy and good health throughout their lifetimes.
One of Aguirre’s main goals with her new book is to make the change to a healthier diet and lifestyle more accessible, particularly to African Americans and other communities who are at high risk for diabetes and heart disease.
Aguirre writes about the healing qualities of compassion, simplicity, and gratitude, and the ripple effect vegan eating can have on individuals, families, and communities. She is married with two daughters—Tembi Locke– actor, speaker, screenwriter, and New New York Times best-selling author; and Attica Locke– multiple award-winning novelist, New York Times best-selling author and screenwriter/producer.
Episode and PLANTSTRONG Resources:
Black Mountain, NC PLANTSTRONG Retreat - September 25th-30th, 2021 - https://plantstrong.com/black-mountain/
New PlantStrong Foods Coming Soon - Hop on the list and be the first to know when they are available - https://plantstrongfoods.com/apps/coming-soon
PLANTSTRONG Meal Planner - https://mealplanner.plantstrong.com - use code: STARTFRESH for a 14-Day Free Trial. Yes, you have to enter a credit card - but you won’t be charged if you cancel before the trial ends and that’s a click of a button. Enjoy the test drive and get cooking!
Links to Episode Music:
Full Transcript
Sherra Aguirre:
Sometimes I have the same experience, just eating a fresh corn off the cob when it's really crunchy and sweet. I've just learned how to pay attention to those kinds of things, and to really enjoy them and reflect on how available and simple good health can actually be and how delicious and fun it can be if we take time to appreciate what we have.
Rip Esselstyn:
Season three of the PLANTSTRONG Podcast explores those Galileo moments where you seek to understand the real truth around your health and dare to see the world through a different lens. This season, we honor those courageous seekers who are paving the way for you and me. So, grab your telescope, point it towards your future, and let's get plant-strong drawn together.
Rip Esselstyn:
Hello, my plant-strong pals. My name is Rip Esselstyn, and I want to welcome you to another great week on the PLANTSTRONG podcast. I hope that your summer is off to a grand start. I can tell you that my family and I, we love this time of year. We're outside by the community pool. The kids are starting a swim team, the summer league. We are hitting the trails on the bikes. We are enjoying this new game called pickleball, where you play on a tennis court. It's about half the size of the tennis court, and you use a tennis court net, and you use a ball. It's like a wiffle ball, and these little smaller, hardwood rackets. It is an absolute riot, and I recommend that everybody gets out there and plays some pickleball. And plus, the pickle is a great vegetable.
Rip Esselstyn:
We also love this time of year because everything has slowed down. We like eating our dinners, instead of 6:00 to 7:000, we're 7:30 to 8:30, even 9:00. It is just a joyful, joyful time of the year. That's what this episode is all about because my guest today epitomizes the word joyful. In fact, it's even the name of her new book. Her name is Sherra Aguirre. She is a vibrant soul who proves to all of us that health and vitality has no age limit. Her new book, Joyful, Delicious, Vegan: Life Without Heart Disease, is testament that we can all learn to enjoy good health naturally at any age, and it starts in our kitchens by changing how we eat. Sherra shares her story of reversing her heart disease and high blood pressure after she realized, get this, that she was eating over 50% fat every day.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, she adopted a simple, yet beautiful whole foods plant-based diet, and you guys know how life unfolds after you truly commit an embrace to a whole food plant-strong diet. Simple is the key word here, and you'll be inspired and touched by her mindful approach to life that includes a daily yoga and meditation practice as well that I'm very curious about. Sherra is aspirational to me because of her approach to life, that we should all reflect on how available and simple good health can actually be and how delicious and fun it can be if we take time to appreciate everything that we have.
Rip Esselstyn:
I have a guest today who has, actually, just right up the road from me, I'm in here in Austin, Texas, and Sherra Aguirre is in Houston, Texas, and she is a kindred plant-strong spirit. I am super pleased to have her on the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. I love that you like throwing around the term plant-strong just like I do. It's in your vocabulary, but I have you on the podcast today because you have birthed another child recently, haven't you?
Sherra Aguirre:
Yes, and today is the official birthday.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
Sherra Aguirre:
Today is my release day?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes. For all of you that is out there, Sherra wrote this really incredible book called Joyful, Delicious, Vegan: Life Without Heart Disease. Everybody wants life without heart disease. I'd love to talk about the book, your journey, your struggles and how you got to where you are today, where you decided to spend some time and put pen to paper and write this spectacular book. In a prior life, you led a business for close to 35 years, which you sold in 2016. Can you tell me about that business and what that was about?
Sherra Aguirre:
Sure. It was a maintenance business and we provided facility maintenance services for mainly corporations. We did a lot of work in the oil field. I mean, I'm in Houston, so the oil industry is real strong, so we provided landscaping, custodial services, minor mechanical maintenance to a lot of refineries. We also did some universities. We were in about seven or eight States and had about, at our height about 1200 employees. It was a service business. We were able to win some recognition for like service excellence, community involvement, innovation. Those kinds of things. I was really pleased with having had the opportunity to run that business with all my employees. Actually, I started paying more attention to not only my health, but the health of my workforce at that time.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. So, you were in that maintenance business for 35 years?
Sherra Aguirre:
I was.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. Were you the like CEO and president? What was your ... Yes?
Sherra Aguirre:
Yes. I founded the business. So, I ran it for those 35 years. I had a great management team, so I certainly relied on them for all the stuff I didn't know, which was plenty, and I focused on the things that I was better at, and now they handled the rest of it, but I had an incredible team.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. So, you decided to get out in 2016, sold the business. Good for you. Wow. 35 years, that's half a lifetime for many people.
Sherra Aguirre:
It's a long time.
Rip Esselstyn:
Long time, long time. That being said, it sounds like you said you wanted to do your best to introduce a lot of your workforce to eating and living healthier. Well, when did your journey to eating healthier and living healthier begin? What was your aha moment there?
Sherra Aguirre:
Well, it actually started with my childhood growing up in a family that had a lot of heart disease, hypertension, stroke, aneurism on both sides. So, I grew up watching my parents take blood pressure medications for as long as I could remember. I just remember, as a kid and then growing up, all of these incidents that happen to people, all these illnesses and tragedies that happened around heart disease, my grandmother had a stroke at about my age. I'm 72, and that's about the time that she had her stroke.
Sherra Aguirre:
She ended up partially paralyzed. She regained some functionality, but not all. Her husband, my grandfather, again, on my mom's side, died of a massive heart attack in his 50s, mid-fifties. Then on my dad's side, I had an uncle that had five heart attacks, the last of which took his life while he also battled cancer. I had an aunt that died from an aneurysm, which caused a coma and she eventually passed. I had another aunt that had a simultaneous stroke and heart attack. There was all of this history there, and so I was concerned.
Sherra Aguirre:
That got my attention. I started pretty early to think about what could I do to maybe have another path. When it started to hit my generation, that's when I really got serious, because cousins younger than myself, and I'll give you two examples. I had one cousin who came home from work with a splitting headache, went to bed and never woke up. It's thought that he had an aneurysm. He thought his blood pressure was under control. He was on medication, but we don't really know what the causal factor was, but it was shocking, and he was in his 40s.
Sherra Aguirre:
Then I had another cousin in his 40s, also younger than myself at the time, who was on his way to a vacation, a ski vacation with his wife, who worked for an airline company. They were at Hobby airport here in Houston. He got caught in security, told her to go ahead, he'd meet her at the gate. She waited, he didn't show up. She started backtracking back to security, saw a small crowd gathering in the Concourse, and when she made her way to the front of it there lay my cousin, her husband, and it was his first heart attack and was fatal.
Sherra Aguirre:
He was also active and thought his blood pressure was under control, had been on medications. These things were really shocking. So, when it got to my generation, I really started to pay attention.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, no kidding. I think the sad thing is that, the way you just described that and all of the different chronic western disease that's on both your mother's and your father's side of the family, right? Just littered with it. Unfortunately, it's not unusual. Most people have similar chronic western disease running throughout their family lines. As you talk about in the book, I mean, this is highly, highly preventable. Who did you write this book to and for?
Sherra Aguirre:
I actually dedicated the book to my mom. As I mentioned, she had been on medications her whole life, and she actually passed away after a 12 year battle with Alzheimer's, which we now also know is food related, so I dedicated it to her. But I'm actually writing it for, I think the future generations. I have this vision of kind of rewriting family histories through changing our food traditions, because as you know, basically our genetic factors for heart disease and other chronic diseases are secondary to lifestyle and food.
Sherra Aguirre:
If we can focus on the lifestyle and food, not taking away anything, because obviously we'll take away the dairy and the meat, but not taking away the flavors and the joy of eating. That's why my book, I wanted to lead with that joyful element, because when you're talking about heart disease, that's not something that you typically associate with joy, but I think learning to live in a way that we don't have to have that is the joyful aspect of this, and it's as close as our kitchens.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well, in the book, and I know Baxter, Dr. Baxter Montgomery also gave you a really nice endorsement as well, a cardiologist from Houston, but basically how African-American women are on the front lines of a national healthcare crisis right now. Really, in a kind of proportionally higher rate than most than most Americans. If I remember reading in the book, you mentioned how we basically need to challenge the current status quo and re-imagine what our food traditions look like, which to me is spot on. Exactly right.
Sherra Aguirre:
Yes. I'm very passionate about that, and that's the journey I've been on. The statistics that you mentioned were really compelling to me and are still compelling. Almost half of all Americans, as you know, have some form of heart disease. For black women, it's about 48%, but the compounding factor that makes that picture more dire is that we're probably 60% or so more likely to have high blood pressure, and we're about twice as likely to die from the effects of heart disease and we die at an earlier age. Then we have a similar pattern for diabetes. So, it's really, it is an epidemic for the whole country and people and communities of color, we're often at the worst end of those statistics.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yep. What's at the root of that? Why do you think that is?
Sherra Aguirre:
Well, there are many reasons, Rip. As you know, obviously we talk about the food, but food is related to resources. It's related to your ability to live in a place where you have access to good food, to fresh food. In many urban communities, we have what are known as food deserts, where, and I live right next to a food desert right here in Houston, where for probably a radius of four or five miles in a densely populated area, you don't find many grocery stores that have a lot of fresh produce.
Sherra Aguirre:
When you find it, it's not that appealing and it's high priced, so ability to be able to get to good food and to have the knowledge to know how important it is. Now, what we do have a lot of access to is fast food. I mean, there's one of those on ... McDonald's or not to point to anybody because they're all here, but they're everywhere, and you have a lot of convenience stores with mostly processed, packaged food on the shelves.
Sherra Aguirre:
A lot of people just stop in and get that. That's readily available. These are our problems. Then the educational part of it is something I want to address, where people understand how important it is to feed our health and not our illness.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. I think I've heard some ... I mean, you're well aware, as is most of the country right now, that we are being swept up right now. I mean, this is really like a plant-based era that we're in right now. It's truly phenomenal how far the movement has come since my father started his research with the Cleveland Clinic in 1984 and was called a quack. Even by fellow doctors and cardiologists thinking, oh my God, there's no connection between food and heart disease. You got to be kidding me. Right?
Rip Esselstyn:
But now, everywhere you turn, it's like, plant-based for the health, plant-based for sustainability, plant-based for the environment, plant-based for compassion. Plant based, right? Hopefully, it starts to rural supreme, but I've heard that one of the fastest growing segments are African-Americans, which is like fantastic, game on, right?
Sherra Aguirre:
Yes, it is. I'm so pleased to have seen those statistics. There was one study that said, basically black Americans are about, what is it? Several times more likely to identify as vegan, a vegetarian in the US than the general population. I've actually seen that. Before I heard this statistic, I had actually noticed that, because in my business, I traveled a lot. What I would always do, I would always look for vegan plant-based restaurants. And that 10, 15 years ago, there weren't a whole lot of them, but I would find the ones that I could find in whatever City I was going to.
Sherra Aguirre:
I would look forward to that part of my trip. When I would go to these places, almost everywhere, you'd see a large percentage of African-Americans actually frequenting those restaurants or cafes or whatever. You'd see a lot of people working there and you'd see a lot of black-owned vegan restaurant. I was really a thrilled to see that early on, and now, it's more. I've got three or four right within four or five blocks and my house.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yep. No, I mean, really, it's like, we got to be rebels, like rebels against the standard American diet that is not doing anybody any favors. As we've talked about, so much so African-Americans, so let's figure out a way to band together and give the finger to meat and dairy and processed refined food and all the added sugar and all that, literally crap, that is so pervasive right now in this culture.
Sherra Aguirre:
Yes, absolutely. You mentioned your father, and I'm such a big fan of his ... I learned about him through Dr. Montgomery actually, because they were colleagues in a way. His work has been so phenomenal, and along with folks like Dr. Ornish, Dean Ornish. I quote them in my book because I'm such a fan. I love your dad's quote that says something like, we've got to learn how to turn off the faucet instead of mopping up the floor. Basically, what he means is we got to address the root cause of the epidemics of lifestyle diseases, not just maintenance and management of symptoms.
Rip Esselstyn:
Exactly. It's exactly right. I mean, everything that we're doing right now, I should say most physicians are doing, yeah, they're not turning off the faucet. Instead, they're just treating the symptoms with pills and procedures and angioplasties and open heart surgery and stat and medications, which is not turning off the faucet, not in any way, shape, or form. Let's talk about you. You had a powerful experience, I think it was about 11, 12 years ago that really kind of altered your trajectory. Can you describe that for us?
Sherra Aguirre:
Absolutely. Well, I'll just back up a few steps and say that in my early 30s, I started to notice my body changing, and I noticed that, when I'd eat my typical fast food lunch, burgers, fries, fried chicken, pizza, and you're from Texas, so you may be familiar with boudin, I love boudin, which is a Louisiana sausage. But I noticed, after that lunch, that type of lunch, I would have absolutely zero energy. My energy would flat-line about mid-afternoon. I just had to drag myself. I started to pay attention to what I ate at lunchtime and then how I felt afterwards.
Sherra Aguirre:
Little by little, I just started making changes. The first thing I could out with Shipley Do-Nuts, and then shortly thereafter, it was the fried chicken. So, over the next 20 years, I started to eat a primarily vegetarian diet. I say primarily because I still ate dairy, eggs, fish. Then in my 50s, my blood pressure started to creep up, and I'm thinking, wait a minute, this is not supposed to happen to me. I've been eating pretty good, better than most people that I know. I'm active, why is this happening? But it did.
Rip Esselstyn:
It sounds like, for you back then, and a lot of people on a vegetarian diet, the only thing you really were omitting, it sounds like, was red meat and chicken, but you still had everything else.
Sherra Aguirre:
Yeah, that's pretty much true. I still ate the fish. I loved cheese, I ate lots of cheese, and ate eggs, yes, and milk. Yes, that is correct.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Okay. Sorry to interrupt. Go ahead.
Sherra Aguirre:
No, that's okay. Basically, what happened was I had to go on blood pressure medications. I remember the day that I first filled the prescription from my general practitioner, because he had harassed me. I was in denial. I didn't want to do it. And I knew that I had to, and I did. I actually was depressed. I felt like a failure. I felt like everything I had done to try to be healthier had not worked.
Sherra Aguirre:
I also started to wonder if my family history was my destiny. Maybe I couldn't avoid it. So, it was really traumatic for me, but the two incidents that really made me realize that I had to go further and I couldn't give up and just rely on the medications, the first was, I was in my yard doing some yard work, got up quickly and felt like I was going to faint. That had not happened to me before. So, I wasn't sure if it had a relationship to the meds I started taking or not.
Sherra Aguirre:
But what I found out later, as I began to monitor my blood pressure, I would do it twice a day, once in the morning, once in the evening, and I noticed that my evening readings were about 10 to 15 points lower pretty consistently. Everything was predicated, in terms of the medication, on what happened in the doctor's office in the daytime, which was calibrated that way. I think that, that was part of the reason, but the one incident that was a showstopper for me, when I absolutely knew I had to make a change, was one day when I decided to take an elderly friend for lunch. It was about 15 minutes from her house, the restaurant.
Sherra Aguirre:
We got in the car, got on the freeway, we're laughing, we're talking and having a good time. And all of a sudden, I started to fade. I started to feel like I was going to actually black out. I remember gripping the steering wheel. I was in a state of panic, because I had this elderly woman in the car with me and I was trying to not let her see the terror that I was feeling. The only thing I could think of was to try to get off the freeway. That was the only thing I was focused on. So, I was able to make it to the next exit ramp I got off the freeway.
Sherra Aguirre:
As soon as we got on the surface road, it just passed. The feeling just went away like it never happened. We were only a couple of blocks from the restaurant. So, I wasn't about to get back on the freeway. So, we went ahead, had lunch, actually had a nice time and nothing happened, but I knew from that point what could have happened, what could have been the result, not just for me, but for my friend. I said, I've got to go further. Shortly after that, I got introduced, or I should say referred, to Dr. Montgomery. That was the turning point from there.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, he's the one that suggested that you kind of go all in and eliminate the processed oils and even most of the nuts and kind of more like my father and Dean Ornish's programs.
Sherra Aguirre:
Absolutely. Absolutely. He actually, as you may know, he went a step further, and I'm not sure if he's still doing that, I think he is, but he is a big fan of, for detox purposes, a raw, and for healing purposes, a raw diets. I actually did that for almost a year or so. Then, once I had improved, my readings were better. They weren't really where I wanted them to be, but they were better and getting more consistent. I started adding back in some of the cook foods. I could eat some nuts and things like that.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. We skipped over the experience that happened 11 years ago that was kind of transformational for you too.
Sherra Aguirre:
Which one?
Rip Esselstyn:
I think you were at a retreat in California.
Sherra Aguirre:
Oh yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's the love story, the love story with yourselves.
Sherra Aguirre:
Oh, thank you for asking about that. Nobody ever asked me about that, so thank you. Yes, my mom had passed away some months earlier. I was headed toward burnout at work, and so I decided to just give myself a break and I signed up to go to this little spot in the desert, nothing fancy. I mean, we were in these little cabins, it was a middle of nowhere, but the woman who ran the spa, who owned the spa, pretty much changed my life in a moment. That moment came in a session. She taught some, basically nutrition classes. She taught yoga. She was like 60 something, which seemed fairly old to me then for all the energy that she had.
Sherra Aguirre:
She was so exuberant, but she said to us, in one of the classes, she had us sit quietly and she said, I want you to picture something. I want you to picture the trillions of cells that make up your body. I want you to reflect on the fact that no matter what you do, whether it's helpful to them or whether it's harmful, they do their very best to keep you well. They work tirelessly 24/7, they've been doing this since your conception, and they will do it throughout your life. She said, this is the definition of unconditional love. It struck me, because first of all, I wasn't ever really thinking about my cells, period, what was happening.
Sherra Aguirre:
But that night, when I went back to my little cabin, I just cried. I mean, I just boohooed for maybe, I don't know how long it was. Seemed like a long time, probably was only 15, 20 minutes, but I could not, that image, I could not get that image out of my mind, of all of this energy going into my well-being and I'm just oblivious to it, and I'm doing a lot of things to make it harder for my body to work for me. Again, I think that we make changes when we have a compelling reason to do so and then when you have a compelling reason, and then you start to see the power of food, that's the joyful part, because there's a solution to these issues that we face, and it's very simple and it's accessible.
Rip Esselstyn:
We'll return to our interview in a sec, but first, I have a few updates that I want to share with you. I know that I've been talking a lot about the upcoming food launch. It seems like for, probably six to seven weeks now, and I can officially say that the last truck has been loaded and we are just about ready to open our digital doors to unveil our brand new foods next week. That's right, next week. To celebrate, and because food is so central to our community, it's what binds us together, we are excited to announce a new podcast series Plan-Strong Snackables. This mini pod will dish on all things, food, and my cohost will be Jessica Haggerty. She is the VP of product innovation here at plan strong, and we'll share what we're eating, what we're excited about and the trends that are worth watching.
Rip Esselstyn:
I hope you'll tune into this new show. It's going to launch June 15th. Also launching June 15th is our summer session of the Rescue 10X Mindset Mastery program. When I wrote The engine 2 Diet and The Engine 2 Diet Seven-Day Rescue, it was from my viewpoint as a firefighter, as a first responder. I felt an obligation to share the news about plant-based nutrition to allow people to rescue themselves from the chronic disease death traps that come from eating the standard American diet. Once you know this information, you become the fire lieutenant of your life, and you now you hold the fire hose to rescue yourself, one meal and one fork full at a time.
Rip Esselstyn:
Over the years though, I have discovered that, for many people, it takes more than just knowing the truth and reading the information to be able to apply the principles and to put it to work. Life, as we have learned this past year, is full of unexpected obstacles that seem to get in the way of our success, and that's why we created the Rescue 10X Mindset Mastery program to help people rescue their health. It's a 10 week intensive course that takes the pillars of plant-strong living, as I wrote them in all of my books, and our coaches bundle them with the mindset tools and a tried and tested habit building system to help you finally make the lifestyle stick.
Rip Esselstyn:
It's a full menu of tools that you can customize to fit your lifestyle, how to avoid cravings, how to start and sustain an exercise routine, how to keep your motivation front and center, and how to stop the stopping and starting that is so prevalent. We only offer this program a few times a year. Our next session kicks off June 15th with the first of 10 live group coaching sessions. For details, visit rescue10x.com, or send us an email at hello@plantstrong.com. Finally, if an in-person retreat is something that you've always wanted to do, I want to invite you to join me and my family this September in Black Mountain, North Carolina.
Rip Esselstyn:
This retreat is filling up fast and it's the only remaining retreat for 2021. Come test drive the lifestyle, hear world-class lectures, eat insane plant-strong food, and enhance your life in every possible way. For details, visit plantstrong.com. Now, let's get back to Sherra Aguirre.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, everything you just said is so true. It's amazing how, since we're birthed, our trillions and trillions, trillions and trillions, I think we have right around 40 trillion cells that make us up, but you're right, they want us to be healthy. That's what they're striving for. Most of us do everything we can to basically bash them and try and abuse them and not take care of them. I think what you've described here as well is, you had the high blood pressure that was affecting you in a myriad of ways, probably had the beginnings of heart disease.
Rip Esselstyn:
And you were able to turn the ship around, but it's amazing when put the right food in your mouth and you start treating these cells properly, how quickly you can right the ship. It's been abused for literally decades and decades and decades, and it's-
Sherra Aguirre:
decades.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, and it's a testament to just the remarkable nature of the human body and its ability to, not only persevere through the storms, but also, when the weather's nice, to really come out and shine for you.
Sherra Aguirre:
And flourish. Right?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, absolutely. Can you talk a little bit more about the plan that you followed? It sounds like it was combination between Ornish and Esselstyn and Baxter Montgomery.
Sherra Aguirre:
Right, it was a lot, and lot of Sherra in there too, because one of the things that I talk about in the book is mindful eating, and that's a part of mindful living, but I had to learn how to pay more attention to my body. Because I think that our body is the final judge of what we do, whether it's working for us or it's not working for us, it'll let us know, but we just have to pay attention. We have to listen and we have to respect the messages and understand that no physician or food guru can tailor something exactly for our needs.
Sherra Aguirre:
They can give us really good guidelines, but a lot of it is, you learn along the way, and I had to learn along the way. There was a point, even after I had gotten my blood pressure to a really good level that I developed the habit of eating too many nuts, too much fat. It was healthy fat. I was eating like almonds walnuts, but I was eating too much of it. I was wondering, then my blood pressure started to creep back up again. I'm thinking, well, wait a minute now. It was kind of like the same feeling I had when my vegetarian diet was not protecting me from high blood pressure.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, I remember reading that in the book. It's under a section where you talk about healthy fats for processed oils, and how I think maybe you're like, okay, I got this. I'm a on top of my blood pressure. I'm feeling great. So, you slowly started to introduce the nuts. I think you even said olive oil, right?
Sherra Aguirre:
Yeah. I got away from it, and then I started, well, I'll just put a little bit on it. But when my blood pressure started to go up again, again, I said, okay, my body's ...Something that I'm doing is not working, the way it has been. So, I had to really start paying attention to what I was eating every day and how much, and when I did, Rip, I was eating 50% of my calories and fats, 50%.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, and that's a lot. It's a lot, but think about it. Think about it because when you're eating predominantly a whole food plant-based diet and you're consuming ... Do you know how many handfuls of nuts you were consuming, maybe three or four a day, five?
Sherra Aguirre:
I don't know, I would say a good three at least.
Rip Esselstyn:
Each small handful of nuts is a little shy of 200, so that's 600 calories. Then you add in your olive oil, which 120 a tablespoon. Let's just say, you're doing two of those per day, we're almost up to 900 calories from ... That's almost 100% fat, and that's in the olive oil. If you're consuming 2000 to 2200 calories in totality, yeah, I mean, you're easily going to be at 50%.
Sherra Aguirre:
And I was.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. That's a fascinating experiment that you did there. And it's amazing how, as you said, you were mindful to what was going on and you made the connection and you knew exactly what to do to rectify.
Sherra Aguirre:
Yeah. It took me a minute, but I finally figured it out, and I was shocked to see how much that I was actually eating. So, it was a good lesson. I think that part of what I talked about in the book is that eating plant-based is the foundation for preventing lifestyle chronic diseases. Everything vegan's not healthy. You still have to pay attention to your body and what you're eating, because obviously french fries are vegan, right? If you fry them in vegetable oil, they're vegan, but again, there are many restaurants now who are featuring a wide array of vegan food, particularly vegan comfort food. I'm really happy to see that I'm happy to see it because younger people are getting introduced to it in a way that they can relate to it and enjoy it.
Sherra Aguirre:
But as we get older, we have to modify the plan a little bit. You can't keep going at that rate, even with vegan foods, eating that much fat, for example, or salt, or sugar.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. In hearing that story about you doing the oil and doing the nuts and getting up to 50% of your calories coming from fat, it just makes me wonder, and you were eating for the most part, like super healthy, right? You just were doing a couple things, right?
Sherra Aguirre:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
That were not in your favor. Imagine the typical American and what they're doing to themselves. I would imagine that the average American is eating well over 50% of their calories from fat.
Sherra Aguirre:
I would not doubt that at all. When I see the commercials for the double cheeseburger with cheese in the bread and cheese on top, and the pizza with the stuffed cheese, and then you've got the meat on top of all of that, it's a lot.
Rip Esselstyn:
It is a lot.
Sherra Aguirre:
It's a recipe for the epidemic of heart disease that we're seeing.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well, and I just heard a quote this morning that we're now, as a nation, we're up to 43% of Americans are now considered, not just overweight, but considered obese. I think, as you allude to here in your book, but African-American women are really taking the brunt of this right now. I think I saw that close to 82% or 83% of African-American women are now considered obese. It's not sustainable.
Sherra Aguirre:
It's scary, isn't it? The communities of color are challenged with access to healthcare. That is another reason for health disparities. So, you combine the lack of access to quality health care with a diet that a typical low income person would probably default to because it's available, it's cheap, it's engineered to taste good, that's a recipe for disaster. You find that also in most low income communities, not just African-American. One of the hardest hit communities is really are native American community.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well, it's interesting. You have some really fantastic quotes in your book. One of them, you started out chapter one, and I'll just read it right now. It's, "The greatest medicine of all is teaching people how not to need it." I mean, how not to need medication. We literally, we live in a country right now, we don't have a healthcare system. We have a sick care system. We got to teach people the principles that are in your book so that they can avoid the doctor, the doctor's office and medications and hospitals.
Rip Esselstyn:
Literally, I don't know about you Sherra, but I can't remember the last time that I was in a hospital for ... Well, that's not true. I broke my ankle about a year and a half ago, but other than that, I can't remember the last time I was in a doctor's office for anything more than just an annual checkup, you know? Yeah.
Sherra Aguirre:
I mean, that's what I would call good self-care. I think self-care is the new healthcare. I think I heard that from Jane, your sister.
Rip Esselstyn:
Sounds familiar.
Sherra Aguirre:
At one of her conference. At a conference, a really wonderful conference for women in 2019. But that phrase struck me because I think that's so true. I think the pandemic has made it more obvious, because we now see the frailties of our healthcare system. I think it's incumbent upon us to do everything we can to stay healthy on our own. Yes, we still want good health care, but we want healthcare not sick care.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. But you absolutely just hit on it when you said the COVID-19 pandemic has absolutely exposed, I think, down to the core, the fragile state of our healthcare system. Even more than that, the fragile state of of how we as a culture have gotten it wrong when it comes to healthcare and we need to embrace self-care and whole plant-based goodness. What's so crazy is the answer is so simple. It's so simple. So simple.
Sherra Aguirre:
But you know what the problem is, right? Well, it's time, but it's also money. Our food system is probably the biggest piece of our economy. There's so much money on the status quo with the subsidies to the meat and dairy industry, for the Food and Drug Administration's slow ability to change kind of even the basic food information that goes out. So, they're very slow to criticize anything that will shake up the economic order of the food industry. That is part of the problem too.
Sherra Aguirre:
Then you look at the pharmaceutical industry, similar problem. It's hard to get people to focus on telling the physicians that distribute their products, to just tell them to go eat food. That's not a good business model for them. I think there's going to have to be some public, in the public arena, advocacy for changes that are really, would address kind of some systemic problems with just our whole food economy.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, no, that was very well said, Sherra, and you're right, and it is. It's very systemic. It runs very deep. We need to shake it up in a big way, but it is a big ocean liner that is just going, cutting through the water right now and needs to be righted. Can you talk for a sec? Because I love the way in your book you talk about, not only eating food mindfully, but also your appreciation of simple whole plant-based foods and how wondrous they truly are. Can you talk to me about that?
Sherra Aguirre:
Yeah. I think one of the examples that I talk about in the book is my little persimmon.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes.
Sherra Aguirre:
I grew up in East Texas, and they grew wild. There was a patch of persimmon trees between my house and my grandmother's house, and I would walk down there and I passed them. I learned that the variety that that grew wild there, you'd had to wait till it was really ripe, because if you didn't, you bit into it, it would just make your mouth pucker and it was not pleasant. So, I bought this one at a grocery store and I didn't realize it was a different variety.
Sherra Aguirre:
So, I was waiting for it to soften to get to that perfect a place where I could eat it, but it was so pretty, sitting ... I have this little basket, I keep fresh fruit on my counter, and every day I'd look at it, it was so pretty, and I touch it. It was still too firm. But eventually, I said, you know what? This has been sitting here now for maybe three weeks. I said, I'm not going to let this persimmon go bad on me. So, I cut it. It was perfection.
Sherra Aguirre:
I mean, it was perfection. When you slice it, you know how the little star pattern is in the middle? That was so just pretty and the color was beautiful, and I took a bite of it. Oh my God, Rip, it was so good. Part of it, I think was because I had waited so long to taste that persimmon, that when I finally did, it was just wonderful. I also said, this little persimmon didn't need anything. It didn't need to be sugared, it didn't need to be baked. It didn't need anything. It was perfection. I think there are moments like that with ... Sometimes I have the same experience, just eating a fresh corn off the cob when it's really crunchy and sweet. I've just learned how to pay attention to those kinds of things, and to really enjoy them and reflect on how available and simple good health can actually be and how delicious and fun it can be if we take time to appreciate what we have.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. No, I couldn't agree with you more. I, too, have come to appreciate like the nuanced sophistication of something as simple as Cara Cara orange, or a champagne mango that I cut in half and I peel it and I eat it, and I'm like, there's nothing in the world that can compare to this. I mean, I'm just right now, I am immersed in this experience and love it more than anything else. You mentioned in the book, and I couldn't agree with you more, like a great salad with all these different greens and arugula, and the bitterness, and how they just all meld together. Pretty wonderful.
Rip Esselstyn:
You have a quote too that I want to just read because I love your attitude about being vegan and eating mindfully and eating healthfully. You say, "This is not about being a purist, it's about having the healthiest, most enjoyable food possible in whatever situation we find ourselves. That's exactly how I look at it too. It's like this adventure, right? So, if I'm traveling, I figure out a way to game the system and make it work. You actually have a whole little section in your book on gaming restaurant menus. What's your system? Can you share that with us?
Sherra Aguirre:
Yeah, it's simple, but it was fun to discover. Again, in my business life, I often had business lunches. So, I would have to take people to lunch that did not eat the way I did. I wanted them to enjoy themselves, so I had to base the choice of the restaurant on what they would want, but I also had to figure out how I could have a nice meal. I went to this chain, I guess I shouldn't mention brands, but a steak house. Not a high end steak house, but a nice steakhouse. So, what I've learned to do is I scan the menu for ingredients.
Sherra Aguirre:
I look at the salads, I look at the, what they call the sides, which are for me, the mains, and in the steakhouse, every salad had either chicken or fish or bee for shrimp on it or in it, or some were involved. What I do, and what I did in that case, when the waiter came over, there's a way you have to do this because waiters aren't used to people like re-inventing the menu. They just want you to take number one or number two. I always let my guests go first because they're going to be easy. Then what I did was I said, I see the spinach salad, I really would like the spinach salad, but can you up-size it, can you supersize it for me? Because that's going to be really my entree.
Sherra Aguirre:
And I see you have some avocados in this other salad. Could you add those? And I see there's some nuts over here. At that time, I was, I still eat nuts, but so I had them put some, I think they were pecans. And I said, you know what? Pico de Gallo. We live in Texas, we know what Pico de Gallo is. It's a Mexican kind of a salsa, or a dish that's used for dipping. But I said, I'd like some of that on my salad, because basically, it's tomatoes, it's onion, it's some jalapeno pepper. I said, I'd love that. Basically, when I got my salad, my business friend says, wow, that looks pretty good, because it was so colorful. Plant-based, whole fresh foods are just so beautiful with all the colors.
Sherra Aguirre:
But when I finished that meal, I was so satisfied because with the ... I had the protein I needed, I had nuts, it had avocado, it had flavor, it had everything I could have asked for. That's what I advise people will do is just scan for ingredients. Start with the base menu item that's the closest to what you want, and then take away what you don't want and add stuff that you find from other items to it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yup. Brilliant and it's easy. As you said in your book, you've done this and created some masterpieces that have them scratching their head going, I think we should add this to the menu.
Sherra Aguirre:
I've been told that. I was actually told that about that salad at the steakhouse.
Rip Esselstyn:
Nice. It's hard for me to believe that you're 72. It really is. I mean, you look so remarkably vibrant and healthy and youthful. What else do you do kind of on a daily basis besides eat plant-strong?
Sherra Aguirre:
Well, I started meditating and yoga about 25 years ago, and I have to say that, that routine that I do in the mornings when I wake up is the most important part of my day. Even when I travel, even when I was running a business, I still stuck to that. I have probably more frequent flyer, meditation miles than anybody I know, because if I had to get on a plane and fly somewhere, I would get up do my yoga, but to save an extra 30 minutes, I would just meditate on the flight, and people would leave me alone because they thought I was napping.
Rip Esselstyn:
Can you tell me this? So, you've been doing this, you said about 25 years, and it sounds like you've got a great routine that you've embraced. What does it typically look like? Like how long do you meditate? How long do you do yoga? What time do you wake up?
Sherra Aguirre:
Well, I usually get up around 8:00 or so, because I'm writing now and doing other things, so I don't have to get up and jump on a plane. The first thing I do is meditate for 30 minutes.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, Sherra, you're a meditator, you love meditating. I don't meditate. I want to start to meditate. I've heard so many fantastic things about it. How do I begin? What do you recommend I do?
Sherra Aguirre:
Well, I think find someone who is a meditator and let them kind of give you their method and maybe meditate with you. There are places you can go to find coaches. I mean, you can find, there's different traditions of meditation. Transcendental meditation is the tradition that I was trained in, and it is really effortless. I think it fit me because it's not a matter of concentration or a lot of effort to it. The biggest thing starting is to be able to sit quietly for five minutes, 10 minutes, and then you build your way slowly up to a longer period.
Sherra Aguirre:
But I remember it was hard for me to sit still for five minutes when I started, and over time, you get into a rhythm of it. The other thing that's been very useful is it's really good to kind of book in your day with it. Like, if you're going to do five minutes to start in the morning, do another five minutes between 8 and 12 hours before you go to bed or before you have your dinner or something like that, because you get into a rhythm that's really helpful as well.
Rip Esselstyn:
Do you ever go a day anymore where you don't meditate or is it just something you have to do, like brushing your teeth?
Sherra Aguirre:
You know what? I would not brush my teeth before I would not meditate. That would not be good. No, because you know what? Here's what I will say. After 25 years of meditating, and even when I was five or 10 years into it, it really changed the way that I move through the world. I mean, it changes the way I look at things. It changes the way that things look to me, and the world didn't change. So, the change happened on my side, but it's just a different way of being. I think meditating gives you a space to make those decisions. A lot of times we just react to situations. With meditation, you start to realize there is space for you to make choice.
Sherra Aguirre:
I think that has been the most practical benefit of it, that I can be in a very stressful situation, and I can kind of step back and observe myself in the situation and make choices as to how I want to deal with it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, no, I've heard that by other people as well. I was actually was listening to a podcast that Tim Ferris had with Jerry Seinfeld, and Jerry Seinfeld is a huge proponent of transcendental meditation. Does it every day and says it ... He said, start, like you said, he said start with five minutes, just start with five minutes. And he also does the same thing with writing. He says writing is so hard, just start with five minutes, and then 10, and then 15, and 20. Interesting.
Sherra Aguirre:
It's just like a plant-based eating, right? Sometimes you just start with adding a few more veggies and then you just go from there and make these little tweaks.
Rip Esselstyn:
Exactly. Speaking of veggies, you have a really delicious recipe section as well in your new book, where you have buckwheat pancakes, you've got Indian vegetable curries, broccoli quinoa, corn bread, onion rings, I mean, that are baked. That totally speaks to us. You got a raw cashew chocolate cheesecake. I want to make that tonight. Apple crisp. You also have a dish, it's an African dish, thieboudienne. Do you know how to pronounce it, and what is it?
Sherra Aguirre:
Yeah. That's funny because you did better than I did the first time I was in Senegal to it to eat it, and it was presented, but it's thieboudienne. It's thieboudienne, is how you pronounce it. Yeah, and you'd never know that from the spelling, but it's basically plant-based because the base of it is rice, but rice in Senegal ... Senegal has a really beautiful infusion of traditional African cuisine and French, because it was formerly a French colony. Those two cuisines blended together are wonderful. So, it's a bit of rice and then the rice is infused with spices, so it's not like you're playing all white rice. Then your vegetables, no, it's like, you could just eat the rice by itself.
Sherra Aguirre:
And then you have all these vegetables, calabaza, they call it, or squash. You have carrots, you have green beans, you have cabbage. You have ...
Rip Esselstyn:
Sweet potato. The sweet potato.
Sherra Aguirre:
Yucca.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, yucca.
Sherra Aguirre:
Yeah, sweet potatoes and yucca. I mean, it's just a wonderful, and then you have like two or three different sauces. Everything's so intricate. But then, the part that makes it not vegan is that typically you would add to that on top, fish, a whole fish, or a lamb, or chicken. So, it's really easy to convert that into vegan. You just leave off the lamb and the fish or the chicken. Then some of the other tweaks I made was just to reduce, I'm not sure if I eliminated the oil initially, now I have, but to have less oil, but the flavors are just so delicious.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Well, it almost sounds a little bit like paella.
Sherra Aguirre:
A little bit. A little bit.
Rip Esselstyn:
Just for people that are listening, I'm going to spell this word and then I want you to say it again. So, it's spelled T-H-I-E-B, as in boy, O-U-D, as in dog, I-E-M-E, and it's pronounced what again?
Sherra Aguirre:
Thieboudienne.
Rip Esselstyn:
Thieboudienne. That is wild.
Sherra Aguirre:
That is wild, right?
Rip Esselstyn:
Sherra, this has been absolutely delightful. So, if people want to get a hold of you or follow you, where do they go for that, and where can they go to get a copy of Joyful, Delicious Vegan?
Sherra Aguirre:
Well, thank you so much. The release date is May 25th, which is the day we're recording, but it's available pretty much wherever books are sold. So, online, at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, most bookstores, I like to promote Indie bookstores because I think they're a really important part of the landscape when it comes to books and reading, but you can do all of that online. My website, sherraaguirre.com has links to all of those that you can go to purchase. So, you can go directly to whichever bookseller's link that you'd like to get the book.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, Sherra, this has been really, this has been delightful. You really are joyful, such a breath of fresh air, and thank you for getting this book out into the universe and for your commitment and dedication to helping others.
Sherra Aguirre:
Well, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure. I'm a big fan of again, your whole family, and I haven't met you, but having met your father was an honor, and having attended the conference was wonderful. And the work that you guys are doing, I can't tell you how much of an impact it would make, so thank you.
Rip Esselstyn:
Thank you. Hey, will you hit me with a fist bump, plant-strong, Sherra.
Sherra Aguirre:
You got it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Keep it plantstrong.
Sherra Aguirre:
Thank you so much. This was fun.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes, it was. Thank you so much, Sherra, for being such a glowing example of the far reaching effects of a plant-strong way of life. When you live the mantra, self-care is the new healthcare, it can and will reverse your own lifestyle disease, but by changing yourself from the inside out, it can also have a lasting effect on your families and the communities in which you serve. Now, that, my friends, is powerful and so, so simple. I want to share with you an interesting side note.
Rip Esselstyn:
In her book, Sherra acknowledges the support of her two daughters, Tembi and Attica Locke, both of whom are award-winning novelist themselves, New York Times Bestsellers, as well as actors and advocates. Tembi is the author of the book, From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home, which was selected as one of Reese Witherspoon's Book Club picks, and Attica is the author of multiple books, including her latest, Heaven, My Home. Both of their books have been picked up by Netflix to be made into films. That's pretty darn cool.
Rip Esselstyn:
The Apple of talent and passion definitely didn't fall far from the tree. Congratulations to all of you, and thank you, Sherra. Thank you for inspiring all of us to rewrite our family histories with lessons and stories from your book, Joyful, Delicious Vegan.
Rip Esselstyn:
Thank you for listening to the PLANTSTRONG podcast. You can support the show by taking a quick minute to follow us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts, leaving us a positive review and sharing the show with your network is another great way to help us reach as many people as possible with the exciting news about plants. Thank you in advance for your support. It means everything.
Rip Esselstyn:
Have you had your own Galileo moment that you'd like to share? What happened when you stepped into the arena and shed the beliefs that you thought to be true? I'd love to hear about it. Visit plantstrongpodcast.com to submit your story, and to learn more about today's guests and sponsors.
Rip Esselstyn:
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 true 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 Crile Esselstyn. Thanks for listening.
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