The Hardest Part....

...is the nearly constant lack of support and/or understanding.  I feel like a bullied school kid.  I can easily say 'no' to certain foods or processed food products, that much I know.  Now that I know how I *feel* eating clean, I'm not sure I want to go back.  The food comas, the lack of energy (which was always slight for me), the yucky feeling the next day.  It just doesn't interest me any more.

I think back on my father and his clogged arteries, especially those going to his legs.  He had poor circulation and pain in his early 60s, but I suspect he did for quite some time.  He finally went in for a femoral bypass which back then was a big deal here on the Cape.  The bypass was a "success", but his kidneys failed and he also was infected with a bug.  Three weeks later he died from sepsis and other complications.  A one way trip to the hospital, the morgue and the ground, and it didn't have to happen.  His disease, I am very confident, could have been stopped and even reversed without surgery.  This is one of the reasons I believe so strongly in Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn's approach and his son, Rip Esselstyn's Engine 2 Diet (I HATE the word diet!).

I don't want to wait until I exhibit symptoms.  In fact, most people Americans in their late teens and/or early 20s already have disease in their arteries, so I am probably well on the way.  Heart disease is the number one killer in the US and the solution is so easy and delicious.

So, I guess I am on my own, despite the love, support and encouragement I have given others in the past.  I should be used to it by now.