isolated form, to give us what we weren’t getting in our food. We did all this while training at the
highest intensity. For bodybuilders, not much has changed today.
While I was eating that way—which is essentially a version of how most people seeking to lose
weight still actually eat—I looked great and turned heads, but I felt like a toxic dump. Why? Because
by the standards you will learn in this book, I was eating what is considered to be a nutrient-poor
diet. As a result, by the time contest day came around, I would show up looking in contest shape, but
my body would be so depleted that I could drop. My breath smelled like acid and that same smell
permeated my skin.
Following the contest, I would look great for about three days, but because of the binge that would
inevitably follow, I would gain anywhere from 20 to 40 pounds. After such nutrient deprivation,
eating was the only thing I could think about.
I never considered myself a “dieter”; I was a “bodybuilder!” Yet I can completely understand what
dieters go through and then some. I know the consequences of the macronutrient manipulation
mentality (focus on carbs, protein and fat, with little focus on the micronutrients that keep your
body functioning properly). For me, “dieting” was a “sport” at the most intense level possible.
Now I know that the focus on macronutrients alone is distracting many people from understanding
what it means to eat healthy. Understanding nutrient-rich nutrition will give you that perspective so
that you can accomplish your objectives from a nutrient-rich basis, not a nutrient-poor one.
In this old photo to the left, I was the most sculpted yet depleted and
unhealthy person you could imagine, and I wanted to feel better more
than anything else. So I was ripe for the message in that Health Reporter
article.Within six months of reading The Health Reporter and having gained a
great deal of weight, I sold my gym, took a sabbatical and went to Texas to
work for the American College of Health Sciences—the mail-order health
course company that published The Health Reporter! I wanted to read and
learn as much as possible about becoming healthy. I was that inspired!
The rest is history.I switched to a plant-based diet, and I lost almost 80 pounds while eating a pretty large volume of
food. That was new. In the past, I would lose weight through deprivation, but now I was feeling
nourished and still losing weight.
The problem was it was not yet a nutrient-rich healthy eating style. The way I was eating was
healthier, but was still unbalanced enough that I couldn’t sustain it.