Build Muscle AfterTen Years on a 100% Raw Vegan Diet?

Chris Califano has been 100% raw for over ten years. Why eat cooked?

Can you build muscle? Absolutely. But I would not have believed it when I first went raw. I lost a lot of weight! I thought it was muscle. then I realized that what I had previously built was not pure muscle to begin with. That’s right. It was always hard for me to admit it but most of the muscle I had built before I “went raw” was mostly stored garbage in my cells. All of my cells including muscle cells. Only by eating raw for many years did I discover that real muscle is dense and built from heavy progressive work over a period of years. Of course you can build more “size” when you force feed especially taking in large amounts of animal products. The hormone action will make you “grow” but only as the body hold onto undigested protein and other useless matter. The mitochondria actually become overworked as the force-feeding continues and cannot process excess nutrition fast enough, so they hold on to it. That’s why I used to “lose” three pounds if I missed a “meal.” Now, I can fast on water for 14 days and just about lose three pounds.

Many men and women are concerned about losing too much weight on a raw diet. Much of our society is overweight to start with, even if they are not classified as “fat”, so our perception of what looks healthy is tragically skewed…

Even thin people have too much cellular waste in their tissues. When they fast or make as drastic a change to their diet as eating 100% raw, they detoxify and “dump” a lot of excess weight. In my case and with my clients, there was never any feeling of serrious hunger, appetite or fatigue in the least, even when weight loss was 35 pounds in six weeks and 100 pounds in nine months. I assume that those who are having major issues with raw are not eating the correct diet. Even those who came directly from an animal based diet had no problem other than the usual minor detox symptoms, but we always knew that slowing down or stopping the healing crisis process was simple: just eat some heavier foods.

Muscle is built with carbohydrates and just the minimum amount of protein. I learned that early on, so I did not use any of the hemp or green protein powders. They only serve to clog you up, much like the other powders on the market. If anything eat the pure raw hempnut seeds in your food. But you don’t need anything other than fruits and greens to build muscle. You just have to make sure that you eat the proper amount of calories in the proper macronutrient proportions. When I went raw I wanted to keep it pure, just as before when I was cooked. Real food always works best. MArketing is what propels people to start asking “what should I take?” as soon as they join a gym. Gyms pay their rent on the sales of these supplements, but you never need them. Those who abuse them end up bloated, with foul odor, skin eruptions and more as their systems try hard to eliminate all that waste.

It is not rocket science. There are no secrets. Building muscle takes hard progressive work on the right exercises, proper real food and adequate rest, fresh air and sunshine. It does not require long bombing and blitzing workouts nor does it work when you do “pumping” health spa style fitness routines. Leave the chrome and ferns to the spa crowd. Real fitness is real fitness. Just like real food is raw, whole, ripe and fresh!

For more information please visit my website here.

Real Muscle or Just Bulked UP Waste Products?

Is that muscle pure muscle really pure muscle tissue? Or is it “bulked” (translation: filled with waste products) that are either 1) the result of forced feeding, 2) water retention caused by inorganic sodium chloride.

When I chose the name “The Best Weigh” almost 30 years ago, I wanted to call attention to the importance of your body to be the best ratio of adipose to lean tissue. I remember seeing people at my high school reunion years later who bragged that they “weighed” the same than when they were 18! Little did they remember that they had become “inverted vee-shapes” since then. Sure, they weighed the same but now their muscle sites had shrunk while their fat sites had increased. They sported twig-like thighs, sunken pectorals and flat backs yet they weighed the same as when their body composition was more appealing, injury-resistant, and health-supporting. The scale is not a good measure of your body composition in terms of fat to muscle.

When I went completely vegan in 1985 I did it to increase performance, health and better “weigh”, realizing that the fat to lean ratio was only the beginning. Going raw more than ten years later made a much greater difference, but low fat raw vegan 80.10.10 gives the best health and fitness results by far.
This next step involves getting the actual cells to be of good quality, since anyone can gain muscle “size” by eating more “food” no matter whether it is cooked, animal, processed, vegan or high fat raw. The poorer the quality the food, such as bread, rice and pasta, dehydrated “raw treats” and the like… the easier and more convenient it is to bulk the muscles (and fat cells) full of garbage. But this is not functional muscle. Even those who consume raw rice “protein” powders and so-called “superfood supplements” will hold undigested garbage that their cells can not utilize. This extra smooth size is the result of the body’s catabolic metabolism becoming unable to eliminate waste products fast enough. You can usually tell by their bloated stomachs and even faces. Not to mention those who consume animal protein such as milk and eggs which disrupt the hormonal function so much as to cause artificial overgrowth. Of course strength only increases with progressive resistance training. The muscle fibers strengthen and get slightly thicker, as do the tendons to a much lesser extent. But the mitochondria enjoy the “greatest girth” as they become unable to process waste. As a result, your cells in general hold on to more waste material. You appear bigger, but you are not stronger due to the excess waste, only weaker.

Each ounce of ANTIbiotic inorganic salt must be suspended in a solution of about six lb. of water in order for the body not to die. (Even an ounce of salt taken at one time will kill you.. salt solutions are injected to cause abortions…) Salt is poison and your body dilutes it in order to survive. The typical American is carrying four ounces of salt in their bodies, thus they have 24 lb. of excess salt water stored in their tissues.

My wonderful wellness and fitness experiment continues as I see the results of consuming no salt for the past six months. For years I have lost more excess waste from my cells, resulting in my getting proportionately stronger and healthier. It is interesting to see the creation of real, hard, pure muscle that is not “padded” in any way. Next time you see your favorite movie actor, keep in mind that about 24 pounds of that “muscle” is water.

Pad Thai Experiment

Here’s a dish I designed for my chefs to make yesterday for our transitional raw athletes and Best Weigh Ultimate LIfe clients.We also made some for the good people at Rising Ride Natural Market of course.

I never had Pad Thai before, cooked or raw, (never liked the blandness of it- too many worthless bean sprouts and non-nutrition-desnse food I thought…), so I researched the authentic recipes plus asked a few of my native Asian clients and friends for some tips and came up with this. I made the noodles the traditional raw gourmet way of spiralizing zucchini and then lightly salting and pressing it to make it like al dente pasa (I am quite expert on that being from a continental traveling Italian household as I grew up!! lol) and coating it with an almond-chil sauce I made, then adding fresh herbs and the proper slicedm dices or matchsticked vegies with some lime.

Surprisingly, many saidt it was the best Pad Thai they ever tasted. I do not eat this way anymore, but I had to have a serving but on top of a half pound of fresh baby spinach, since this dish is so creamy rich.

I have no idea how this should taste but I like to make things taste good, so I guess it turned out okay!

First Attempt Raw Pad Thai by Chris

Biggest Deception In The Raw Food Industry

Some people would make it seem as if it is “healthier” to add some cooked food to a raw food diet. But when investigating their evidence it shows them adding only about a ten percent addition of cooked food to the diet to get this “extra nutrition”. They can’t get enough calories to combat their “malnourishment” so they add some cooked food. Ten percent. If all they needed was ten percent, then it is not a major problem. If they needed forty or fifty percent or eighty percent then it would be a problem. They also say that eating a high sweet fruit diet provides too much sugar and will cause problems. They also said in one person’s experience that after two years of eating a high fruit diet they had some problems. Well, I have been raw or ten years (vegan for 25) and it does take time to transition. I would not have been ready for a 100% raw primarily fruit diet right away, coming from a standard American diet, albeit vegan for 15 years before I went raw. I would no sooner make such a drastic diet change as I would add a hundred pounds to a weight training exercise suddenly!

In addition, you can easily cut and balance the sweet content of a fruit meal by adding celery or lettuce, or make sure that you are eating enough of these other foods at another meal. Eating ten percent more or even twenty percent more cooked greens or vegetables is not an option if genuine health is your goal.

Experience has taught me that transitioning to a good thing is key. Moving forward on a regular basis is what striving is all about, a respected quality in our society. To say that eating cooked food can somehow improve your health does not take into consideration those people who are actually improving their health, and moving our society slowly forward to better health in the generations to come. Why must we fall victim to mediocre? Good, honest and intelligent raw foodists are not in denial. Those who say that adding cooked food are. Of course, those who are fanatical about cooked or raw, in my opinion are defined as those who are not following the fundamentals of nutrition but instead bring “morality” or “culture” into the argument instead of the basic biological framework that creates the best diet for humans past or present. We should eat according to our original design principles, not based on opinion.

Chris Califano

After ten years raw and 25 years vegan, Chris is raw living proof that you do not become emaciated from a high fruit, zero supplement natural hygiene diet.

For more information please visit my website here.

No Such Thing As So-Called Food Addiction

There is no such thing as emotional food addiction as most people understand it. The interesting thing is that once you change your diet to the proper one as designed by nature, any deviant behavior goes away just as chronic illness is eliminated. People think that the mind is separate and requires extra meditation, motivation or medication when in actual practice these things, as mildly helpful as they can be in certain cases, never get to the root source. The clients I have worked with for the past 30 years prove this, not that it is not common scientific knowledge. It is a shame that this truth is twisted 180 degrees into marketing products and services that are, at most, useless in all but the most important situations. The health crisis is not solved with money, drugs, supplements or “treatments”.. I know for a fact (and it happens to be a fact even if you have never experienced it) that only a proper diet creates proper health. It works every time. Of course few people know what a proper diet is.. they have all sorts of “ideas”….. the proper diet must consist of a minimum of 80% carbohydrate (fruit is the absolute best), no more than 10% fat total protein (dark green leaves are the absolute best source of protein and minerals by the way) and no more than 10% fat (best sources are avocado, and some nuts and seeds) It just so happens that fruits are your number one source of vitamins; number two best source of minerals and vegetables are your number one source of minerals and number two source of vitamins. And dark greens of course are the best “vegetable” – they are in a class by themselves (compared to lesser vegetables such as carrots, or potatoes which have almost no nutrition, just starch calories. What most people do not realize is that even with the so-called degradation of our soil and the added agricultural practices to make more food profitable and abundant for the masses, WHOLE FRESH RIPE fruits and the proper selection of vegetables are still the number one source of nutrition on this planet and are the source of human calories. Unfortunately, brainwashing, culture, habits and mass media has caused people to doubt the 54 million year old common sense of eating. They try to get health out of a bottle and when they get sick they turn to drugs or “supplements”. Of course in the 50 years of “holistic” health, disease has only skyrocketed. Still, most people insist that they are healthy. I am heart broken at how many suffer needlessly due to the brainwashing that is prevalent even with so-called intelligent people.

If you would like more information please visit my website http://www.thefirstsupper.com

Genetic Misunderstanding

Fact: Cancer, heart disease and all major chronic diseases are affected by your genes about 1%, if that.

Fact: Your bone structure, body type, hair color, eye color, skin color and physical attributes are 100% genetic.

Yet, people have been led to believe that they can not do anything about their chronic dis-ease, but they can do everything to significantly alter their body type!

As Luther Burbank reminded us, “Heredity is nothing more than stored environment. We now know this to be true since it is common to reverse cancer, heart disease, and chronic life-threatening diseases in as little as eight weeks. Even main stream science and medicine is all over the news the last ten year with reports on how, for example, men’s prostate cancer markers went down 95% in eight weeks due to significant diet change.

Anyone who is unaware of the significant and superior (actual disease reversal instead of temporarily treating symptoms as drugs and supplements do) benefits of diet has been living in a vacuum.

Unfortunately, the misinformation about “genetics” stems from simple misunderstanding, and thus, dangerous lifestyle choices. The fundamentals of genetics are known, yet the information that filters down to the public is completely twisted.

The New England Journal of Medicine stated that, “There is no controversy in nutrition, it is only how it is interpreted FOR the public. The same holds true for genetics. Marketers “interpret” the fundamentals for us, twisting them completely around until they are actually in reverse. It is difficult to discover the truth if one relies on “research” since, “The truth is so precious that it… is surrounded by a bodyguard of lies”, as Winston Churchill so eloquently put it.

The best and only way to determine what is truth, is by experience. Most so-called “professionals” and “experts” are very myopic in their chosen field. Few know how to put it all together. “What does it all mean? is the question only answered by each individual. It will always lead to the exact same conclusions, but we must make our own mistakes in order to trust ourselves.

Man’s “power of reasoning” has backfired terribly on him. He has basically reasoned himself to death by ignoring natural instinct and instead running after man-made artificial knowledge. Building and maintaining a computer is one thing but building and maintaining your body is totally different. You must consult with nature or your creator (whatever belief you subscribe to) and then by trial and error we all ultimately discover the best diet and lifestyle. Some are blessed to get there quicker than the rest, and should help those who lag behind.

 

For more information please visit my website here.

Most Misunderstood Fundamental of Life

Few people would argue that what you eat plays the most major role in determining whether you suffer from disease or not, and how you feel every moment of the day including how well you sleep and how well you heal, think, perform, etc. Those who do not “believe” this are either ignorant (not a bad thing), addicted (that is easy to fix with correct diet…and check out the little known truths about taste addiction at http://www.monell.org), and emotional disorder (that can be a problem but it is mostly all about the person “wanting to” change or not… as modern psychology as proven…)

Never underestimate the power of Fundamental Nutrition. You can't argue with results. If I can actually build pure muscle JUST with whole raw fruits, dark greens and a tiny amount of nuts, seeds and avocado (ZERO refined oils, salt, supplements, mumbo-jumbo raw dehydrated bars, etc., then what can I say! And not just for a few years. Ten years!

But the biggest MISCONCEPTION about fruits and vegetables is amazingly obvious. People treat them like snacks, adding them to meals. Sorry people. Health can only be yours when you make them your entire meal. Your entire diet.

In other words, eat nothing else, or at least limit all your other “foods” (is that really a “food” or is it a manufactured product? …insert gentle, loving sarcasm here) to no more than ten percent of your diet- fifteen at most, and see what happens. If you have the male or female guts to let go of  brainwashed addictions and at least try to go 100% raw (after you detox all the garbage out from at least being vegan and sensible for a few months first, and then 85% raw for another few months, while letting your cells at least start to return to normal design specs, then you will feel what waking up in a lean healthy super awake body actually feels like!

Everyone knows that even “true blues” like the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, World Health Organization, Centers For Disease Control, John Hopkins University, harvard, Yale, Cornell, countless others (not some nutcase on a soap box in the parking lot of your local health food store…) and the entire intelligent planet have been urging us to eat at least “five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables every SINGLE day” for optimal health. YOu did not hear it here first. But why are you not doing it. Hey.. it’s your funeral. (And please excuse my seemingly insensitive anger- health has not as much to do with living longer than it does with not crapping yourself for the last few years of your life. It is a fact that at least 40% (that is conservative) of adults will suffer greatly the last ten years of their life. Heck, I know people now ten years younger than me who complain about hemorrhoids, dribbling, fatigue, stomach problems, headaches, and this is every day. But when I see their shopping cart it is more than obvious.

Your diet must be at least 70% raw whole fruits and vegetables. Few people even come close. The average American eats 7% per day. If they are lucky. And french fries and ketchup account for half so they are in essence getting 20 times less than they should. Or they eat some cooked veggies and call it even. They have no idea how much they need, as they have never figured it out by calorie.

People misinterpret the 70% or seven servings for optimal health to mean that if they only get one or two then they are going to have “some” health.

Pardon the strength of my deliverance but while my clients are living the good life, the rest of the society is getting old and sick fast. Luckily my mom (guess her age) is not on one single medication, nor does she suffer the health woes of people even twenty years younger. Check out her picture here. Guess her age and there will be a very special prize in it for you.

Your body does not work that way. Unless you enjoy sniffling, sore or dry throat upon waking up, congestion, headaches or stomach aches EVER, or any of the other “cold and flu symptoms” that most people always seem to be suffering from, or even sometimes, like once a year for more hours or even days or weeks!

This simply does not happen when you eat your entire diet made up of fruits and vegetables. In fact most people think that carrots and apples and lettuce are the main fruits and vegetables.

Nope. DARK GREENS are your mainstay, but they as a group are ten to twenty times more nutritious than carrots or potatoes, which have no usable nutrition- potatoes are just filling… they control populations and are called “staples” but they are not sustainable for health.

Only dark greens (and only when assimilated properly, not the way most people wolf them down, plus abundant fruits, not fruit juices, can provide the nutrition that your body need to be normal.

Few have ever experienced what it feels like to have normal health. SOme go so far as to take handfuls of vitamin pills, even going so far as to believe that the “fruits and veggies in pill form” are somehow going to “get them by”. It is a shame that they have nothing to compare it to. If they were to eat a diet that was at least 705 and hopefully 90% raw whole foods (no processed “health food” mumbo-jumbo products, then they would understand in one fell swoop what it really feels like to live the way we were designed. Try it for at least a month. Even a week or a few days will be such a “lightbulb going off” experience that you would have to be into torture to go back.

Never have an apple a day. Then go have your pasta or a bagel. The idea is to have a half dozen sweet ripe mangoes for lunch at least! Yesterday I had six peaches with four mangoes cubed in a bowl. Of course they were perfectly ripe (I am amazed at how many people eat some non-ripe or over ripe fruit and then tell me how they do not care for the “off” taste of mangoes, for example. They did not do it right!

Don’t eat like a wimp or a brainwashed civilized pale skin. Milk toast. Pencil neck. Panty-waist. Politically Correct. Whatever you want to call it. Civilize your mind if you dare… but make savage the body for best results. Eat fruit as a meal, not as a little snack (that is for baby legs…Please insert “Hans and Franz” accent here).

Sheik Schick Schtick (No Razor Bumps with Raw)

As  the civilized diet becomes more toxic, new, “sharper”, “more lubricated” and multi-bladed razors sell for increasingly exorbitant amounts of money (they almost give away the handle but the blades cost a lot).

Are we up to six blades yet?

The need for smooth shaving creams, pre-treatments, emollients and super tech razors is an interesting testimony to how rough people’s skin has become and there is no end in site (other than … face replacement?).

Bumpy skin is caused by diet. Toxins resulting from bad diet erupt out of the largest eliminative organ that we have- our skin- and enlarge and aggravate pores and follicles.

Ever since I got my skin in the right place by eliminating the source, I have been able to cut my cost on shaving about 90% plus enjoy almost 100% nick-free and certainly ultra-smooth comfortable shaves ever since. Yet one more small (large for many) benefit to eating the best way.

As you add up all the benefits it becomes clear that a 100% raw vegan diet (done the best way) is not only easy once you lose the bad habits and gain the better ones, but any effort that you put in at the start is rewarded at least a hundred fold not just in genuine health that is undeniable, but the time saving is astronomical along with saving money on al those worthless cosmetics! Treat the source, not the symptoms!

How Can I Even Describe This?

Words can not describe what incredible changes have happened to me as a result of this seemingly radical diet change. After eleven years the peaceful realization of the reality of the whole thing has set in. The first few years were rough, since my ego would not let me let go of old habits. But luckily my mind and dedication persevered. I had to do it

From three-times faster recuperation from hard workouts to triple the endurance I had when I was 19 (32 years ago), to extremely fast healing from cuts, to forgetting what a sore throat or congestion even feels like, to waking up full of energy without morning breath, to never having any of the so-called cold and flu symptoms that most people constantly complain about… this has been a wild ride, literally.

I remember my beard would get razor bumps a long time ago. That was diet too! Amazing. But it makes sense. Your skin is the largest eliminative organ, so when clogged with processed food, refined oils, cooked food and other toxins, it exudes a rough and bumpy texture. Of course. Now I can use the low cost razors and I have had perfect shaves for over a decade. (Going 100% vegan 25 years ago also helped, but raw really did it).

Of course those who are on a clean diet know that breath and body odor become a thing of the past. That “stuff that you wake up with” in the corners of your eyes never returns either. I think my last box of kleenex was purchased a decade ago? I can’t remember.

Bruises, interestingly, for myself and also for Bonnie, Scott, Barbara, and my mom are never purple or yellowish, and they heal in a day or less if there is any indication of swelling at all. Cuts heal fast of course- it blows you away the first time you notice this- in other words the body is functioning as it should.

There are so many other things- big and small- that we experience that I could go on and on. At this point the fireworks of discover are over. I just feel blessed that I am one of those people who trusted logic, nature and “god” science, and most of all, had the perseverance to keep on going even though most people were not as gung ho ten years ago or even before that when we went vegan.

Now I  am convinced- I own the fact  why doctors, nutritionists and so-called experts (you know- the ones responsible for the health and economic crisis) are not fully convinced that the 100% raw vegan diet (when done right, not the way the media portrays it) is the only way to prevent and reverse chronic disease. These people who are supposed to know how to help others simply have never helped themselves. There is no other explanation.

 

If you would like more information please visit my website http://www.thefirstsupper.com

Know Your Nutrition Fundamentals. Very Important!

Make Sure You Grasp These Fundamentals of Nutrition!

Most everyone fails when trying to “go raw” for two main reasons: 1) Ignorance of the fundamental laws of nutrition, and 2) Simple unwillingness to change. (You gotta wanna).

Most important is the correct proportion of macronutrients. Carbohydrates, must predominate your diet, followed by a small amount of protein and an even smaller amount of fat.

Fruit is your carbohydrate source. Dark greens are your protein source. Avocado, nuts and seeds are your fat sources. But you can thrive if you do not even add any of those. There is enough essential fatty acids in the fruits, greens and vegetables. Especially in summer you will feel, look and perform best when severely limiting your outside fat and just eating fruits and vegetables. (When I say fruit I mean sweet fruits, not the “vegetable fruits” like avocados, cucumbers, etc. We are talking nutritionally here not botanically).

Eating a diet that is eighty or eighty-five percent fruit, five to ten percent protein and five to ten percent fat! fits the basic fundamentals of nutrition proportions since the beginning of recorded history. It has nothing to do with “raw”, even though to think that cooking food is somehow “fundamental” is the direct opposite of what history proves.

When we are smart enough to apply these fundamental percentages of calories to raw vegan, and eat only whole foods then we make it simpler, easier, more convenient, and guess what? More delicious. That is correct. The only reason you are still eating bad foods that “taste good” is because your taste buds are dormant. Luckily the human animal DNA allows you to get your natural taste for whole natural foods back. If you do not know how to do this and you think it’s hard then think again. You have been brainwashed and you are also addicted. Get off that wagon. The typical gourmet raw food diet is only “training wheels” and not to be followed forever.

One of the biggest mistakes going from 100% plant-based to 100% raw plant-based is not eating enough fruit. Eliminating all grains (pasta. bread, rice, crackers) is a requirement of health. But you have to substitute fruit to make put the same amount of calories. Calories are and always have been the key to human survival and health. Unfortunately, those calories have become civilized into processed foods, in order to squeeze the most calories out of them. It is not natural. “Staples” like bread are not healthy. The so-called ” Staff of Life” is not a good thing. Only a temporary crutch or cane used until a broken leg heals. Use the “staff” for a long time and you will remain a cripple. So it is with bread and pasta and potatoes. They are the “staples” of modern civilization. Keep in mind that chronic disease began at the same time as modern civilization. The word staple is used loosely. We must learn the true meaning of what a true staple is- fruit.

These cooked grain products provide no usable nutrition but they do fill people up and bloat the cells with empty calories. A bit like fat, they “satisfy” in large amounts but do not give you anything but a feeling of fullness (and a bloated body as well. I used to think that I was building muscle when I was only adding bloated size. Year later I discovered what real pure muscle was based on real pure raw foods such as fruit and dark greens).

Fat is very satisfying. But you do not have to eat much fat at all. It is the EFA’s or essential fatty acids as they are called that you need, and fruits, greens and vegetables have enough of them to make your body look and run like a race car.

If you require, for example 2000 calories per day, then you can get most of that in the equivalent of ten bananas and six or seven mangoes. Or pears. Or persimmons. Or peaches. You only need a pound of dark greens or two per day for protein. Blend it and it is easy to consume in a fruit smoothie. The tiny bit of fat you need is built in to the fruit and greens and some vegetables. You can eat a little avocado or a bit of nuts or seeds every other day.

Gage your weight loss, muscle building, energy and health (how you feel immediately upon rising is a great indication) by fine-tuning your proportions of calories from carbs (fruit), protein (DARK greens), and fats (avocado, nuts or seeds). But stick to the fundamental 80% to 10 max to 10% max. Remember that since you are not using packaged foods, your job of figuring this out is so much easier!

When you actually do the math, you will be amazed at how little you were applying thew fundamentals of nutrition. Now get ready for the best and easiest results of your life. Do it.

No way am I a bodybuilder!

I never wanted to be. Even when I started transforming myself I knew I did not have the genetics for bodybuiliding, powerlifting or even to get good results from weight training. The development that I obtained is the result of 1) knowledge 2) experience and 3) desire. Lots of desire. In fact the other two will take care of themselves when you have burning desire. I was so made fun of for looking “pale and sick” as I grew up in NYC. Moving to “the country” into a commensurate “athletically driven” high school lead to my thick eye-glasses, super skinny (when we wrestled in gym class they always called matches with me “battle of the bones”) physique being made fun of daily. Being polite to teachers only made me get beat up more. The library was this nerd’s answer and books were always my friends, so I learned the correct way to exercise to build up my “gaunt” (as my seventh-grade english teacher Mrs. Wilt) put it so eloquently as she told me to stand up to define the word in class.

Chris transformed himself by training progressively with basics, hard work, desire and patience.

Through the years I discovered that 99% of fitness and nutrition is pure fallacy and nonsense. At best it deceives well-meaning men and women into believing that they have to spend long hours with countless exercises. Even for overall fitness, a few hours a week is much more than enough. Much more. Of course cardio is incredibly easy, which is why most people do it. Believe it or not weight training is the one that will transform your life more, and for your information, DIET protects your heart more than cardiovascular endurance exercise ever will. You need both but proper weight training is the key not only to endurance (yes) but to weight management as well, and it adds contour to bodies that were not born as nice as the rest of God’s masterpieces.

But I never wanted to be a bodybuilder. Heck I never even liked them. All my friends thought that they were too hung up on themselves. (Please take no offense if you are a bodybuilder). I took the middle road: I never wanted to emulate them completely, just a little in terms of learning how they developed their bodies. I figured I would just apply a little bit.

I just wanted to look normal. I did not want to go through life at over six feet tall wearing a size 38 jacket. I ended up with a size 54 at one point. Remember too that I was not at all genetically gifted; in fact tennis was so easy for me. Soccer even. Swimming maybe. Skiing. I had that kind of a body (Well I would have had to build up my thighs for skiing but that happened anyway with squats). Gaining weight was incredibly hard. So hard in fact that when I met a famous bodybuilder years later he told me that it was a shame that I was too tall since I had build so much muscle. And naturally. No steroids. No supplements even. When I went vegan in ’85 I had not taken even a single desiccated liver tablet or even a multiple vitamin pill for almost a decade. Luckily I was in good company since all the professional coaches I met over the decades agreed: good food can never be replaced no matter how many o how “good” the pills and powders are. I learned the hard way, but thankfully I never made mistakes more than once.

I learned that transforming my body was made easier by the right diet. A lot easier. Vegan was the first step. Raw was even better. The body recuperates so much faster.

I started life coaching in 1978 after transforming my first student, Bob Jordan, who years later headed the Police Academy Fitness Program. After seeing him 25 years later, it is amazing how great he looks. He really does not look like he has aged since we used to train together. No pot belly. Arms thick. Lats flaring. Thighs developed. He kept it up all these years since he agrees that he best program is an efficient one that allows you to stay with it for life.

The only reason I ever show any pictures of myself in muscular poses is to underline the fact that eating raw and vegan for ten years does not make you weak. I also like to point out that I ate no “protein” since 1985 the way people define it. I took no supplements, pills or powders but live totally on real whole foods, not packaged products. I show my pictures to prove that it can be done. Not only that but with less then 90 minutes per week (usually less than 60 minutes per week 90% of the time) of total exercise.

The carry-over into my life from the proper efficient fitness, diet and lifestyle is beyond what I could ever have hoped for. That is why I have been a life coach for 33 years. It all stems from diet and exercise. These are the two main areas that psychiatrists and good doctors will always emphasize if you want to get ahead in life or reduce stress or solve problems. You can not sweep problems under the rug. You must face them. Being in control and strong enough to bounce back is the tried and proven way to accomplish your goals no matter how difficult. That is what life coaching is all about. Giving people the tools to deal with anything and everything that ever comes up, be it emotional, physical or spiritual.

Training yourself and feeding yourself the best way… from the ground up… is the greatest secret to success.For more information please visit my website here.