Acknowledgments

W ith tremendous gratitude, we thank The Daniel Plan team who, under the leadership of Josh Warren and Dee Eastman, dedicated so much time and creativity to make this book come together.

Dee’s own health journey and guidance as the director of The Daniel Plan has been a tremendous blessing. Her vision and passion for helping people get healthy is an inspiring leadership example. Josh provides God-centered leadership, integrity, and insight to the entire Daniel Plan team and ministry. With his leadership team at Saddleback Resources, Josh has made what was once a dream become a reality.

The Daniel Plan has benefited from Shelly Antol’s unwavering dedication as she oversees operational support and strategic projects. Her decisive, uplifting, and God-centered approach is a pure gift. Our resident writer, April O’Neil, publishes our weekly blog and oversees our website and social media venues. Her desire to help people heal and her servant leadership breathe grace into the overall communications strategy for The Daniel Plan. Kelly Ruiten, our coordinator extraordinaire, puts her loving spirit into everything and everyone she touches. Doug Lorenzen’s creativity, innovative ideas, and dedication have been such an inspiration in offering the very best to our followers.

Thank you, Sean Foy, for contributing to the fitness portion of this book and creating an attainable and motivating 40-day fitness plan. You motivate readers with passion that will get anyone off the couch. Along with Sean, our Daniel Plan Fitness Experts — Jimmy Peña and Tom Wilson — have helped people discover movement they enjoy to get back into shape. Their passion to combine faith and fitness into our program has helped our community learn how to worship as they get stronger for the glory of God.

Our three Daniel Plan signature chefs — Sally Cameron, Jenny Ross, and Robert Sturm — have infused endless creativity into our Food Essential in offering their time and talents to create numerous recipes, lead hands-on workshops, and inspire people to get back into the kitchen and cook real food. A special thanks to Chef Mareya Ibrahim for her significant contribution in helping to create The Daniel Plan Core and Detox plans.

To our entire Saddleback Fitness Team: We are grateful for your commitment to the health of our community. Thank you to our instructors who consistently volunteer their time each week — Jim, Tony, Kimberly, Juilianne, Kinzie, Tasha, Janet, Paul, Lisa, Elizabeth, Jennifer — and to their fearless leader, Tracy Jones, who compassionately leads and coordinates the entire team.

We are grateful to Jon Walker and Keri Wyatt Kent for their creative contributions to our Daniel Plan resources. Their willingness to jump in with fresh ideas, creativity, and practical ideas has been an inspiration to our team and added so much value to each project.

This book would not have come to fruition without Andrea Vinley Converse, our gifted and dedicated editor. You gave so much to this project and were a dream to work with. Your heart and commitment are woven throughout every chapter of this book. We are grateful to the entire Zondervan team, specifically to Annette Bourland and Tracy Danz, for seeing the potential and making the book a possibility.

From the beginning, Brett Eastman provided a vision, creativity, and strategy for the foundation of The Daniel Plan and what it could become. Kathrine Lee greatly contributed to The Daniel Plan as an advisor and organizational strategist. Her love for helping people reach their God-given potential, along with her life coaching skills, has been invaluable. Tana Amen has generously offered her leadership, expertise, and passion to develop key resources for the program. Her nutrition and wellness input helped to set the stage for our current plan.

Karen Quinn is a treasured ambassador for our team, with a “can do” attitude that is unmatched. She initiated and fostered key strategic relationships and alliances, representing The Daniel Plan in several national forums.

Brian Williams has blessed us with developing key life coaching principles for our focus groups and curriculum. We are most grateful to the team of volunteer coaches who made such a significant contribution: Katherine, James, Dr. German, Georgina, April, Mareya, Renata, Darci, Joel, Carmen, Bec, Kalei, Ann, and Kenna.

To our broad community of those many, many volunteers — too numerous to mention by name — who have selflessly given their heart and gifts to The Daniel Plan, we are thankful for each of you: the workshop team led by Joann, the communication team led by Patti and Lori, the social media team with Tabitha and Jenny, and the sports/adventure team led by Ron and Tracy.

Our faith foundation has been infused with support from our pastoral team. We express our heartfelt gratitude to Buddy Owens, Steve Gladen, Tom Holladay, John Baker, David Chrzan, Todd Oltoff, Cody Moran, Dave Barr, and Steve Willis. Your faithful leadership is most appreciated.