ESM Podcast: Episode #5: 200lb Weight Loss Success Story — Bill Barlow Interview Part II

Welcome to Eat, Sleep, Move. A podcast devoted to helping you lose weight, get healthy and have an amazing life. Here’s your host, Wendy Wallace.

Wendy:           Welcome to the second part of my interview with Bill Barlow. In part 1, Bill talked about what life was like as a four hundred and sixty-five pound man and the day he made the decision to change his life. In this part, Bill talks about the changes he made and the results he got along the way and obviously he was doing something right because he lost two hundred pounds in one year.

                        No matter how much you weight or what health issues you are experiencing, I hope Bill’s story will show you that it’s completely possible to regain your health and you life. Here’s Part 2 with the inspirational Bill Barlow.

                        That leads to actually a question I have about myths and it goes back to the question about food preparation and what you were eating. I know you are now helping people and talking to people and I would imagine that I know for myself, I’ve done research. I remember about three years ago when I was on YouTube and I found a video about Angela Stokes-Monarch and her weight loss and that sent me on this journey of doing a lot of research. There are times that I am like thoroughly confused.

                        And so, just as an example, what I am hoping is that other people also you know have their own kind of confusion about just certain things and that may stop them from actually really embracing and doing the same thing that you did. So, for example, in my case, I really don’t like salads. I mean I don’t eat spinach and I will juice up all the greens in the world and I’ll have them in smoothies. Don’t like chewing them; don’t like cucumbers that kind of thing.

                        Then, on the one hand, you read and hear about the importance of eating foods whole and you really shouldn’t juice that much. And then you have Dan, who is advocating juicing, and so you just kind of get confused. And then on top of that you have to factor in what you like and what you don’t like and be okay with that, right?

                        There are a lot of common myths that people have that stop them. What recommendations do you have for people to get beyond those myths and then opening them up to trying to find a balance that works for them?

Bill:                 In the last year and a half, my life has been nothing but an experiment and I do want to spend some time with Wendy and tell her the things that I have experimented on. But the big picture of what I have found is that when I ingest dark leafy green juice on a daily basis rather than just having water and maybe solids, which may be fruit or salads, I have much more energy and more stamina to go through my day when I am drinking juice and having some salads rather than not juicing at all. The reason why is very, very simple.

                        The reason why is any dark leafy green juice that I prepare, I am getting a tremendous amount of nutrients that I can drink in a 15 to 20 minute period rather than taking a small portion of that because you will never be able to consume all the juices that I put in my juice in a 32-ounce you will be eating for four hours.

Wendy:           Yeah. It’s a lot of greens.

Bill:                 Yeah, it’s a tremendous amount of greens. If you were to not drink that juice and tried to consume a portion of that vegetable, your body would have to slow down, it will have to take its energy and focus some of the energy over the digestive system to break that down. As it’s breaking that down you are not getting the same level of nutrients into your blood stream as you would have if you would have just drunk the juice you made out of your juicer. So, for me, and I can only speak for me, it has been a tremendous benefit to be able to juice rather than try to consume all those types of vegetables and fruits and try to get the same benefits out of it.

Wendy:           Okay. And so then how do you find that balance? Like I said, maybe there are certain foods that someone doesn’t like or likes to juice but doesn’t like to eat in salads. What do you say to someone who doesn’t like eating salads?

Bill:                 That’s a tough thing. Everybody is different and I understand that. And so what we have to do is we have to look at our options. So the first thing that you should do is start from the basics. You need to start from the basics and so you need to spend some time talking to someone that knows about this or spending some time on the internet and really figure out, first of all, how tall I am, how much I weigh and how old I am. You put those down and there is a chart that will tell you the calorie content that you need to go through your day and keep your weight the same.

                        So now we know that number so we put that number off to the chart. Now we look at your daily intake of what you are eating at the point. It could be bad; it could be not so bad. It doesn’t matter what it is. We are not here to beat you up. We are just looking at the calorie content that you are doing to maintain and then we will see if the calories that you are putting in your body at that point are the same of what it takes to maintain you weight or your weight to come down or go up. So now we know that number, what you are bringing in.

So now we look at all the other choices that you would like to ingest, okay? That we could bring in the nutrients into your body and bring the calorie content down and we do this slowly. We don’t do it overnight where we take 3000 calories or 2000 calories away from you overnight where you start going through withdrawals and all of this. That’s not good. So we do it slowly with the people and so but we look at the things that you like.

Let’s say a person doesn’t like celery but they like lettuce. Well, we don’t have the celery right now and we have more lettuce or they really can’t take kale right now but they can take spinach. So we have some spinach. If they don’t like to have it in a salad there is other methods of making the meals so it’s appeasing to them.

I can tell you this. Here is what’s going to change for everyone. I don’t care what diet you are one or what you are eating at the present time when you change your diet on a regular basis in a very short period of time. I mean in a short period of time, in the first week to two weeks your taste buds will change dramatically. And when your taste buds today do not like the taste of celery or it doesn’t like the taste of whatever vegetable or whatever fruit does not mean that three or six months down the road you are not going to revisit that vegetable and go “you know what, that really tasted good.”

Wendy:           Right.

Bill:                 Yes, because that’s what I found and it was amazing. So I never really didn’t like anything but I sure noticed my taste buds opened up and, my gosh, my salads today tasted fantastic. It was off the hook. It was nothing special. It was just a regular salad but the tastes were just phenomenal.

Wendy:           I have this memory of something that happened to me last fall which leads to just a quick side question for you. I really started to juice a lot last summer and eat organic and I didn’t realize where I lived they actually grew organic watermelon for a few months in late summer and early fall and I started juicing whole watermelons and I loved it so much. But I actually found myself getting kind of emotional when I discovered that my watermelon season had ended and there were no watermelons. Do you notice that that you just have like love affair with food and that you never had before? Just like joyous relationship with food?

Bill:                 Oh, yes. Oh gosh, yes. Totally. That’s one of the things that I get excited. It’s not like the same excitement that I had when I was morbidly obese. It’s different; it’s a joyous excitement. You ought to see me. You guys really ought to see me like if I go into whole foods or I was just able to go a couple of weeks into the Berkeley ball which is on Berkeley, California and it was unbelievable.

                        Anyway, when I go into one of these stores, I am like a little kid in a candy store and my personality changes when I go in there. It’s just like I want to buy so much. I have to say to myself, if I buy that Bill, you are not going to be able to consume and it’s going to go bad. I just got done going to Davis, California Farmers Market and I was literally walking around just eating vegetables raw and I was having a fantastic time. So, yes, I do get euphoria when you find fruits and vegetables that are in season that taste fantastic and I want to share that with everybody. Yes, I do.

Wendy:           The thing that everyone must be wondering about is whether or not you really stuck to be 100% raw for the past year and a half. I can understand for the first few months that may be that fear was still motivating you a little bit and that you were noticing that you were feeling better, the weight was coming off and there was still that enthusiasm.

                        But what about the times, let’s say, maybe six months into it and you were thinking like, you know, I have got this down. I can handle some dinner out with friends or some lasagna or pizza pie or something like that. How did you handle that? Did you stick with it? Did you not “cheat” at all? Also, how did you handle those situations that most people find themselves in where they go to the family or a function or some sort of an event where they want to have food and they want to have a good time?

Bill:                 That’s a beautiful question. Now, let’s go back and let’s look when I got started. I started on November 7^th 2010 and you are going to say, well, Bill, petty quick there in a couple of weeks is Thanksgiving and then after that it’s Christmas. How did you handle that? Well, I am going to tell you that I made the video like I make all my videos on YouTube. I made my video and I told everybody that I went to this function that I normally go to on Thanksgiving of 2010.

                        There are 40 of us that go to this function and we all camp out in a little beach and we have a fantastic time. And they would line the tables up with all this food, right? There must be a quarter of a mile— not really, but it seems like a quarter a mile of food because there are 40 people and that food is not only for that Thanksgiving dinner but it’s also for the next day’s lunch that we partake in so there’s a mountain of food.

You know, I was already well on my way. I was 100% raw when I went there. But I had talked to Dan about this and I had also prayed about it. I don’t consider it cheating. I don’t consider it cheating. I don’t call people cheaters. We don’t look down on people for this. The people that do this are smart enough to know that that’s the path that they need to take.

When I went to this function on thanksgiving of 2010, did I have any mashed potatoes or gravy or sweet potatoes or anything like that? No. In fact, the dishes that I was told to make is in a potluck so we all participated in making dishes. I made a salad and I made a fruit tray, perfect. I made the salad the way I wanted to make the salad and I made the fruit tray the way I wanted to make the fruit tray and that’s perfect.

So I brought that out and there was plenty there for that and so I had a big portion of my salad and I had a big portion of my fruit tray and I had some turkey. Did I have a lot of turkey? No. Did I taste the turkey? You bet you. Did I have fun? You bet you. Did people look down on me because I didn’t go two and three times?

I started to notice that day on November 24^th 2010 on Thanksgiving, I looked at how people were eating in a different way. I focused on it a little bit because I was new to this. And I saw people going back two or three times and did they have any of my salads? No. Did they have any of my fruit trays? Very little. Did they have all the heavy stuff? You bet you. They had the stuffing and the mash potatoes and they gravy was on everything. And there was turkey and they were going back two or three times and I am going “Aha!” That’s what got me in my situation but I don’t look down on those people.

Wendy:           Right.

Bill:                 No, I don’t. No way do I look down on them. They are in their transitional period and I am in mine. Now, I have to say something to you. I went back this last year November Thanksgiving 2011 and I was a lot lighter, I’m telling you that right now. They looked at me and went “Oh, my gosh! What did you do?” You know, it was traumatic for them. And I told them. I shared it with them.

                        But, now, what did I do this thanksgiving? I did the same identical thing that I did last thanksgiving. I didn’t go over the edge. I had a little bit of turkey and I mostly had salad. No desserts. There were 20 deserts there and I didn’t even touch them, no way. So I have stayed 100% raw for every single week in the last year and a half? No, I haven’t. Have I lost 200 pounds in the last year and a half? You bet I have.

I have to say one thing. Have I stayed mostly raw every single day? Yes, I have. One thing that has really gotten tough was this winter. Where I live it got down to 13 below, that cold. It’s hard to stay warm. Do you want to have a 45-degree-salad when it’s 13 below outside? No, it’s tough. Do you want to have a juice that’s sitting in the refrigerator that you’ve just made and you chill and it’s 45 degrees? It’s very tough.

Wendy:           Right.

Bill:                 So one of the things that I did starting this winter, and I haven’t done it every day, and I haven’t done it every week, but I do it every once in a while is, I take the pulp from my juicer that I have made the dark leafy juice, and I take that pulp and I put it in a crack pot, not on a stove. I put in a crack pot for a reason so that I can adjust the heat so that I’m not going to raise the heat and boil it.

                        I put the pulp in the crack pot with some water and some other vegetable and I make a warm soup and I have that to warm my body. And it’s good, it’s wholesome, you are getting nutrients out of it. You are not eating a cheese burger; you are not eating a taco from somewhere. It’s okay, people.

I am the kind of person that I am not a fanatic about this. I know the tricks now. I was taught the tricks by the best in the industry. Dan is one of the people and I know how to change my body. I will tell you some more about where I have been and through the things that I have done, not just juicing, not just eating salads and fruits. There were some other things that I did to heal my body.

But my body reacts now. See, before, it responds. See, before, my body never responded. I would stop eating bread. Would it respond? No, my body would not respond. When I had stopped eating cheese, would my body respond? No. Now my body responds and it responds within a day.

Wendy:           Wow!

Bill:                 Yes, my body is in full mode now. All the organs are working. Are they working 100%? No. It takes a lot longer to heal your body than a year and a half over the period of time that I have misused it. And I know that. But my body is responding now. When I make a change I can feel it right away. Right away I can tell. So I can tell if it was the right change or the wrong change and that’s important.

                        Yes, I have experimented. Like I said, it’s a year and a half and it’s been a total experiment. There are times in segments in my life you bet you I am 100%. During the summer months, when I am in full swing, you bet you because I love salads, I love fruit’s and I love smoothies and I love juice and I love water. Water is such an important factor of what I am doing; it’s incredible.

In fact, I literally spent hundreds and hundreds of dollars on my water system to emulate another location that I went to that I did water healing. I did a water-healing for 21 days at the True North Health Center, one of the things that Dan McDonald told me to do. And the results were unbelievable! Unbelievable. I know you didn’t ask me about that, Wendy. I am sorry I went over it onto that area.

Wendy:           No, because you’d said you wanted to share the other things that you did besides juicing and eating raw. So water fasting was one of those things?

Bill:                 Oh, my gosh. I went to the True North Health Center. Dan and I talked about this explicitly. You would never do this not under medical supervision, never; dangerous. You want to it the smart way. This whole thing you want to do smart, okay? You don’t want to get carried away; you want to do it smart.

                        So there are seven doctors at the True north Health Center. You are seen twice a day. You live there. There are different methods there though. It’s not just water fasting. There is also juice fasting and there is also meals that they can prepare for you that are raw and they can make it in your way, whatever way you want them. But I went for a water healing. I call it water healing, other people call it water fasting. It’s called water healing because that is what happened to me. I healed when I was there and it was just unbelievable.

That’s what brought my organs back—that 21-day there on water, that’s what restarted every one of my organs. Doctor Klapper, Doctor Goldhammer, they are geniuses. They are mental geniuses and they know exactly what they are doing. They have done thousands and thousands and thousands of this. They’ve never had an issue, never once had an issue. They know exactly how to monitor you. They know when to take you off. They know how your body is responding. They take urine analysis. They take blood work. They know how what you body is dong at all times.

It’s very well-supervised and it was well worth the money. I am telling you right now it was profound. Did I have some detox happening while I was there? You bet you I did. Was I well taken care of? You bet you I was. In fact, in the dorm that I lived in there, there are many rooms in this dorm and in one of the room in my dorm was Dr. Klapper himself. And there were nights I was detoxing and he was in my room taking care of me personally. That was awesome!

Wendy:           Wow!

Bill:                 I can’t say enough about that organization, what they are doing and how they are helping everybody. And I will go back. That will not be the only time that I will do that. I will go back. I am going to try to do that once a year. I did that last winter, actually fall. I did it last fall and it was unbelievable. Those videos that I did are also upon YouTube about the time that I spent there. But, another thing that I did Wendy is that I did a 69-day juice feast.

Wendy:           Right.

Bill:                 And that was fantastic too. What that allowed me to do is really hold my skills down on juice fasting and making juice and preparing juice and what should I put in juice. Remember, my body is an experiment at this point. I am doing some experimentation and finding out how my body reacts with this vegetable and how it reacts with this one over here. And I have found a combination that is stiller for my body and my chemical makeup and then energy level that I go through is unbelievable when I drink that juice and I am drinking 64 ounces a day every single day.

                        When I was in the juice feast I was drinking a gallon to a gallon and a half a day plus water. Water is important. I want to go back to the True North Health Center. The water system that they have there is unbelievable. So what I did I took that concept, I couldn’t buy that system. That system is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. I took to that concept that they have at the True North Health Center and I emulated that and I have that water system at my house. It’s a smaller version of that but I have that at my house. That is the water that I drink and it goes through a series of filters and light; it is distilled and everything that happens to water. It’s the best one that I have seen yet by far. And I think water is a main factor in your healing of your body. Main factor.

Wendy:           Well, a few questions come up while I was listening to you speak about the fasting, the water and what you have invested in you water system. You know, I remember seeing a documentary about raw food people and I remember there was one scene that stuck in my mind, when somebody was getting whole foods and they were looking at apples and they were looking at the price of apples and how they were whole foods they were a bit more expensive than your usual grocery store.

                        The person made the comment that they don’t scrimp when they come to their body. They are going to invest. And I think many of us have gotten into this especially many of us who have an experience tremendous health issues or haven’t been hit hard by something overnight. When we feel like our body is kind of lesser on our list of inquiries. So what would you say to people when it comes to the investment of spending 21 days and the money you invested in that and taking your water consumption seriously as well. How do you get into that mindset of understanding that you need to invest in your health?

Bill:                 You need a look at yourself. You really need to put the denial off to the side if people are having problems with that. I am not saying you need to talk to anybody about that you need to alone. You really need to look at your body. You need to take a snapshot of what was your body in the first 35 years and now what is body looking like now and how is it responding? And you need to think about something on the level of water healing. You might have to. But you really need to take a snapshot of it and the investment is really minimal.

                        You go on vacation and you get a hotel and whatever and you have got the travel expenses and you go see some sights and you go do this and you go do that. And then you have your meals and you go out for dinner and lunch and breakfast and you are doing all these things, all these activities on your vacation. Let’s say, it’s two weeks or three weeks.

You need to look at that cost and then you need to look at the cost of a True North Health Center stay because it’s less. And they are going to feed you, they are going to house you, you are not going to be able to go on any of the excursions while you are there but it’s a very peaceful, serene environment and it’s a very quiet environment to heal.

There are people that I met there. In fact, when I was there, I think there were about 45 other people there at the time. It’s a very large complex and some of them have been there before and they come there once a year and they take their vacation there. To get out of the rat race that they are in on a normal weekly basis in their life and they come down and relax and unwind and do computer work or do some knitting or whatever they reading, whatever they are going to do to relax, to unwind and let the body heal itself, so that they can go back into their life rejuvenated and ready to tackle another year.

And so I think that the investment that I made which was very inexpensive was well worth it because I not only got to relax and unwind and not have all the things that are in my life every day, the phone ringing and the people and everything else— if I was able to heal also. So I got benefits up and above some of the people that stay there. And so, I think it was well worth it.

Wendy:           So the other question that comes up about fasting, both water fasting and juice feasting is for me personally and I hope all the people can relate to this, I have wanted to do a juice feast so much and recently I thought to myself why can’t I do this? And I realized it’s because of my own past experiences that to me fasting equals deprivation. And as soon as I get this idea in my mind that I want to do a juice feast, there is a part of me that freaks at the idea of it because I am focusing more on what I can’t have rather than what I can and then I get scared and then I eat and then I just don’t go through with it.

                        So I am wondering when you do the juice feasting because I remember you did that like, if I remember that correctly, it was like late summer or early fall. Or throughout the summer I think you did when you did your juice feast into the fall. And so you were well into losing weight and would you recommend the feasting and the fasting and doing something that intense or that involved, I guess would be the best word, more a little bit down the road than starting out?

                        When I did my research over the years, I had come across a woman who has a blog for a while and she actually deleted it. But she called it her green smoothie experiment. You know, overnight she decided that she was going to drink green smoothies and she ended up losing 100 pounds. And it was just one of those things that seem monumental superhuman things that only a few people could accomplish because most of us would freak about something and sabotage.

                        What would you recommend to people who want to do something like that but when should they do that along their journey?

Bill:                 Okay. Excellent question. It’s the same method that I coached my people now. There are people on the planet that can do what I did and one day for all their sad sort of way and go raw. Also, just go from raw foods and check themselves into the True north Health Center into a 21-day water healing. Or go out of there and go into a 69-day juice feast.

                        But most of the people don’t have the strength to do that, let’s say. Let’s call it strength for lack of another word. But that’s okay because that’s the method that I chose and that’s the method that I continued to choose to target my methods. To show everybody that number one that it’s okay for me to do and number two it can be done. But that’s not sensible for most of the people so it’s okay.

What I do with most of my clients is we start very slowly. So in a juice feast or a juice fast what we would do is we could start introducing juice into their life every single day and then after a period of time when they are getting juice into their day, then we would start pulling the food a little bit. And we would do this over a period of time and it would be baby steps. And after a period of time they are noticing that their energy level is the same or more and they are not on solids at this point.

That’s the same way that it is taught at the True North Health Center. I didn’t do it that was because I was more profound and I wanted to do it my way. When you get there they feed you a little bit and they start introducing some juices and things and then you go onto your juice. And then when you are done with your juice fast or water healing you just don’t leave the complex. No, they re-feed you. They go through a series of re-feeding and juicing that needs to be done to restart the system properly.

So there is a method to this. There is a method and so that’s the method that I teach many people and that I use now that we slowly introduce these things into their bodies and so there is not this big shift. And so they say well I can’t do this or their body has an adversary condition or anything. So that’s how we do it.

Wendy:           Okay.

Bill:                 And it’s slowly put in there. So that’s the best way.

Wendy:           I wanted to ask you about exercise and then a quick question about sleep and then a final question. So all throughout you have told me about your story you have explained it that it was painful for you to move and the exercise was difficult. So how did exercise play a role over the past year and a half? And, what about now?

Bill:                 Okay. Perfect question. Remember when I first started on November 7^th 2010 I was four hundred and sixty-five pounds. Even though that the energy level shot through the roof because I got rid of the fat foods and I was feeling much better very quickly. I was losing weight; I was losing two to three pounds a day at first. And I was feeling fantastic and my energy level was on the roof. I still was fortunate because of my athletic background to know that my mind may feel better and my body may feel a little better, but I’m still carrying a tremendous amount of weight on my joints and that I need to very, very cautious so that I don’t hurt myself.

                        And so, for a period of time, all I did was I increased my walking just like Dan told me to do. Did I get crazy and start jogging or start to use a lot of equipment? No, because I didn’t want to hurt myself. If I were to hurt myself, it would have taken me back a step or two. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to continue to walk forward. So, as the weight came off and I am not talking five pounds, I am talking 50 pounds that came off, then I started increasing the amount of activity that I did every single day.

Where it’s gone to now, like I said, I am able to walk as far as I want to, I am able to jog, I take bike rides. I’m up in Lake Tahoe and there are videos on YouTube of me doing rides up Lake Tahoe. I love that. I can hardly wait until it stops snowing and then I can do it again. I do rebounding in everything and I come up with little tiny exercises that I tell my people to do too.

I come up with an exercise that will take and decrease and take the mid section of your body. It only takes 60 seconds five times a day. It is very simple you could do it wherever you are. I don’t care if you were in a subway or if you were standing in a store or wherever you are it can be done. And it only takes 60 seconds and you can do it five times a day and it’s fantastic. I am doing so much more activity and exercise now than I did before it’s amazing.

But, it’s not The Biggest Loser. This is not like that program where they go into the gym for six hours a day and deeply weight out of them and they have to do that because the show is only two or three weeks long or something. So they have got to have fast results in a very short period of time.

No, this is mostly with the juices, the fruits and the vegetables and the water. This does the most work after a period of time when your body gets used to that then we start increasing the movement very slowly by walking or with doing the 60-second exercise or jogging a little bit, bike riding; swimming is a big one. So that’s how we do this.

Wendy:           I’m wondering though, do you have like workout goals or exercise goals especially considering your past as an athlete. As an example, a woman that I interviewed recently after losing 150 pounds wants to start to do power lifting and it’s kind of ironic that you used to do power lifting. Do you want to get back to that? Do you foresee yourself getting back to the gym or having those aspirations when it comes to changing your body with your activities?

Bill:                 I am smart enough to know I will never have the type of body that I had before. I won’t. It’s not going to happen.

Wendy:           Okay.

Bill:                 Is my body continuing to get stronger? You bet you. Every single week, every single three days or so I notice something else that I am able to pick up. Am I power lifting now or doing heavy weights? No way, because I do not want to take that mass that I still have and I don’t want to build it into muscle. I want to lose as much weight as I possibly can, where my body level is out and then we will see what we want to do increase the muscle mass in my body. But right now I am still on a transitional stage, am still healing, am still getting rid of fat and so until that is done I won’t go into the heavy exercise that I may want to do. Wendy, I don’t have any answer for that right now because I am not in that level.

Wendy:           Okay.

Bill:                 But I know I need to do a lot of cardio and I went down and purchased the cardio watch with the band it goes across your chest that I make sure that I can raise my heart rate up to a certain level every single day and so to keep the metabolic time down where the nutrition that I am injecting is being burned off. So that’s important. But, no, right now there is no heavy lifting or anything like that’s in the future.

Wendy:           I wanted to talk to you about sleep and relaxation because you mentioned earlier you had to sleep in a recliner. And I would imagine that you wouldn’t get like a solid sleep having to sleep like that and then you have to wake up in the morning you have to function, which kind of leaves you on edge and frustrated and exhausted and maybe a little reactionary. I am guessing now that you sleep much better and I’m wondering about your thoughts about how things have changed for you because you are getting better sleep.

Bill:                 Before, my sleep habits were terrible. Now, I wake up so refreshed and it’s such a good feeling to wake up refreshed and spring out of bed rather than groan and moan and roll out of bed. It is amazing how I feel now after my 8 hours of solid sleep that I get every single night. Before I would be lucky to get may be four hours and that was not solid sleep, those four hours. I would wake up and turn and toss be in pain or whatever and I wasn’t getting any sleep at all, hardly. But now it’s amazing how much sleep I get and how relaxed I am and rejuvenated when I wake up in the morning. It’s amazing.

Wendy:           Before we get to the final question, let’s talk about the year 2012 because you still have some weight to lose. So what are your goals? What do you see happening over the next 11 months?

Bill:                 Oh, you know, my life has changed drastically in the last year and a half. My health has changed, my mind has changed, my soul; my focus on things has completely intensified where I can focus. My mind is so much clearer and precise; it’s like thoughts come in and it’s not like a fog. My dedication to things has completely changed, where it’s so much easier to dedicate myself to something than it was before. And my career has changed now.

                        I have literally changed every facet of my life since November 7^th 2010. So what I am doing this year in 2012 is I am trying to help as many people as I can possibly can. I am also going to a health coach school where I am going to be a professional health coach and detox specialist. I have events that I am go to around the country am about to go into Canada here in the next week and a half and take 70 people on a juice feast. Then we are going to head into Texas. And then we are going to do some other things with some other people. It’s amazing.

I am having a fantastic time doing this. The thing is that I am dedicated so less of my life now to my personal healing plus learning as much as I can about nutrition and detoxification and passing that knowledge on to as many people as I possibly can. It is my drive to that every single day to do that and it will be for the rest of my life. I have dedicated my rest of my existence to this and I am 100% committed and I will never ever go back to where I was before. Never, ever.

Wendy:           So that leads to my final question. I wanted to ask about how amazed you are that things have changed so dramatically for you, in all areas of your life for the past year and a half and how if there were things that happened that you even didn’t fathom, like it sounds like you found your “life purpose.” Did you ever think a year and a half ago that you would be telling someone that you were going to dedicate your life to health and wellness and helping people?

                        And the other thing too that I cannot but be curious about are also the experiences that you have had like meeting Dan. When I watch your videos or hanging out with other raw food people who you might not have come across you know those kinds of people who are also dedicated to health and wellness as well and educating people. So when you look back are you amazed of the things that happened that you couldn’t fathom?

Bill:                 Yes. There are so many good things that have happened. You know, before in my life when I would try and accomplish something I would try and accomplish it and you would come up on a door and the door would be closed and you would have to knock on that door or you would have to ask permission or you would have to sell your idea or you would have to tell people about it or you would have to get them excited to have them open the door. And you wanted that defining moment; you had to have other doors opened to what you wanted to do whatever you wanted to do.

                        I have to tell you that since I started this I don’t have to knock on the doors anymore. I walk up to the door and the door is already open and there is someone waiting for me on the other side of that door. And it’s amazing. It’s just mind-blowing who I have been able to meet, what I have been able to learn. They have accepted me with open arms in the raw food community and I can’t thank them enough for what they have done. Dan was the start and there are so many others that have helped me along the way that we’d have to spend another hour thanking everybody and the people that have helped me save my life.

And so that’s one of the reasons that I have dedicated the rest of my life to this to give back and to help other people that aren’t so fortunate that they may not come in contact with Dan McDonald. They may not be able to come in contact with the other people that I have been able to spend time with. But that’s okay because I want to be accessible to these people. I want them to have the knowledge that I have and so I am willing to share with anybody that is willing to listen, anybody at any time for the rest of my life.

But it has made a profound change in my life; you were right. And it’s amazing how it has happened to me but obviously it was meant to be because I really didn’t have to try that hard. All I had to do was do the footwork and do the work, and focus and listen and it all came true.

Wendy:           Well, I am so glad that you made the effort and made the choices that you did because I have watched you videos and have been inspired by them and I, like you, really admire Dan and appreciate Dan but fully couldn’t relate to him because he didn’t have the same issues that I did and I could relate to you. So thank you so much not just for this very long interview but also for your videos and your passion and just being an amazing guy with such a big heart, thank you so much.

Bill:                 Wendy, I can’t thank you enough for giving me this opportunity and the great service that you provide for your listeners and the message that you give your listeners and the message that we are giving today will not just be heard once. It will be in the internet until the internet exists forever.

Wendy:           Right.

Bill:                 And so this message that we are giving today is current today and will current 20 years from now. And so I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for allowing me to speak and tell my story and what I have been through to help others. Thank you so much. Wendy. Thank you so much.

Wendy:           You are welcome. Thank you so much to Bill for his time for being so candid and answering my many, many questions. I know this was a long interview and I thank you for listening and hope you were inspired by Bill’s story. You can find Bill at RawFoodForMyLife.com. I will have the links to his website, his YouTube channel and his Facebook page at EatSleepMove.com.

                        Now, go drink some green juice and be well.

Thanks for listening to the Eat, Sleep, Move Podcast. Find out more by visiting EatSleepMove.com.