Inspiring Success Story and Great Website

introduction to a website of a man who has lost more than 120 pounds (and working to lose over 200) eating a low-carb, whole foods diet. His story is both inspiring and informative:

Bread and Money: one man’s dizzying journey down the rabbit hole of America’s nutrition policy.

If I was one of those rich supplement manufacturers that held ‘transformation’ contests,
I’d give this guy a Lamborghini!

A year ago, Richard Morris was big, and I don’t mean Mr. Universe-type big: as the top left photo readily attests, he was just plain ol’ BIG! After being placed on a temporary work assignment in Manhattan, where super-sizing eateries can be found on just about every corner, Morris’s weight had ballooned up to a hefty 400 pounds.

A year later, Morris has lost 120 pounds--and counting!

The new, suave-looking Morris describes how he finally achieved weight loss success by discarding the advice of the so-called ‘experts’ and doing something that all too few people do--accepting self-responsibility for his health and condition.

Morris took it upon himself to learn the truth about reigning mainstream dietary dogma, in the process learning why his previous weight loss efforts always ended in frustration and failure.

Learn more about Richard Morris’s amazing transformation at:

http://www.breadandmoney.com/docs/about.html

Here is the “my story” page from his website:

About Bread and Money
An account of one man’s dizzying journey down the rabbit hole of America’s nutrition policy.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” - Albert Einstein

Changing your life is not as simple as say, changing your motor oil, an act that for me occurs with such relative infrequency that it falls just short of being worthy of proclamation by the angels. In the summer of 2003, I changed my life forever and I owe it all to a chance encounter with a take-out order of heavenly chicken (I’ll explain later). This change represented a triumph of intellect over ignorance. To owe so much to such a common dietary staple as chicken, well, that is news worthy of the angels. This transformation has culminated in the creation of this web site and, oh yes, the bidding of a fond adieu to over 120 pounds and counting, of excess body fat, remarkably within the relatively short span of one year. I achieved this goal without the ‘benefit’ of medical intervention, cult dieting or back-of-the-magazine mail order pharmaceuticals. That this is an achievement of note goes without saying, but to say that it is in fact the least notable of recent accomplishments, well, cue the angels…

Heavenly Chicken
In 2003 I was on a temporary assignment, living and working in Manhattan from January through May. I found myself under considerable stress and ate every meal, nearly five days a week at either a sit-down or take-out restaurant. My weight, already at a level that would have garned me a salaried position with a traveling circus, rose faster than the price of a gallon of gas. I suffered the usual obesity related ills: back and joint pain, difficulty walking, shortness of breath, headaches, etc. My daily intake of food fluctuated between 5000 and 7000 calories. In New York where great eateries are as common as pigeons in the park, finding a place to eat is never a problem. Add work related stress, calorie dense foods and the heroic proportions served in most restaurants and maintaining a stratospheric calorie count is really quite easy. In addition, I drank gallons of fructose laced soda at 25 cents a can and launched nightly raids on the snack bar that haunted my hotel room. I was a walking cautionary tale for harried mothers who could point to me on the street and bark at their children, “See, that’s what’ll happen to you if you keep begging for candy.”

I realized my diet was a key factor in my declining health, so I decided, one day, to go on a 24 hour fast. I was only partially successful, as the familiar craving to eat multiplied by a series of Pavlovian responses drove me to break my vow and grab some dinner. I found myself at my favorite deli in lower Manahattan. I wanted something light, a salad maybe, but amidst the heavily sauced dishes of pasta buried beneath pounds of melted cheese, there was little to choose from. Even the solitary pan of sautéed vegetables lay in suspended animation, entombed in a vat of grease. I finally chose a small portion of roast, skinless chicken breast accompanied by the vegetables which I planned to rescue from their hot oil bath once I returned to my room. That night, I drank water with my meal, instead of soda and fell into a restless sleep.

The next morning, I felt better than I had in weeks. I had a light breakfast and skipped lunch, saving myself for what I had come to believe was chicken sent straight from heaven’s kitchen. It was tender with the airiness of sushi, infused with herbs and butter. I ordered it again the second night, two pieces this time and skipped the veggies. The next morning, I was beginning to feel like a changed man. When I walked to work, my back pain was nearly gone. I found that I had more energy and even my normally sour disposition had improved and was fast approaching something that could be described as ‘sunny.’ By the third day, I was sold on the belief that a low carbohydrate lifestyle was the life for me. I could not have known at the time, how far from the truth I was, but like Scrooge on Christmas morning, I was giddy with joy and fairly skipped to work that day.

On June 1st, 2003, I took the vow and officially embarked on a low carbohydrate regimen. I had dieted before, had even converted to the vegetarian faith once. I knew the chance of failure was very high so I decided to do something different this time. Now is a good time to pause and consider what you’ve just read. I’ll even repeat it just so you can see how important this moment was for me.

“I decided to do something different this time.”

Albert Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” For over a decade I had followed the same course of action: adopting a new diet, sticking with it for a time before collapsing into my old habits, then regaining any weight I had lost, plus a few bonus pounds for good measure. In every case, I had followed the rules of the diet faithfully, resulting in a little success in some cases and a lot of success in others, but the end result was always the same. Failure. I realized that in every case, I actually had very little understanding of why the diet worked or didn’t work, had no idea of how the human body metabolizes food. I was simply doing as I had been told by the dietary experts: “Eat a balanced diet and get plenty of exercise.” The problem with this advice was that that it had never worked for me, I mean, if I knew what a balanced diet was and was able to stick to it, I would not have had a weight problem to begin with.

I decided I would not commit the crime of “just following orders,” as I had done so often before. This time I was going to find the answers for myself. If a low carbohydrate diet really worked, I wanted to know why. I wanted to see the studies that proved it, wanted to uncover the metabolic processes behind it so I began to read and as I read, I discovered just how convoluted America’s nutrition policy really is. I came to see why my doctor had never been able to give me any useful advice when it came to weight loss.

I plunged into the history of nutrition politics in America and came up reeling. I read “Food Politics” and “Safe Food,” by Marion Nestle, “Fast Food Nation,” by Eric Schlosser, “Fat Land,” by Greg Critser, the New York Times article “What if it’s All Been a Big Fat Lie,"by Gary Taub and countless other articles, position papers and medical research reports. I looked to the sciences for relief, and found that in this area too, human pride, prejudice, and greed have forever tainted what has become the flawed dietary policy that millions of Americans follow. I began to see, for the first time, the illogicality of a medical industry that expends innumerable resourses on the treatment of obesity related symptoms, but adopts a hands-off approach when it comes to treating the source of those symptoms: obesity wrought by poor nutrition. I marveled at the zealous adherence to the religion of low-fat eating when there is clear evidence that, for many people, this approach does not work. I saw manipulation by powerful industry groups that influenced what I and my children ate, learned how corporations subvert parental authority by spending millions on child psychologists and sophisticated advertising campaigns in an aggressive effort to market junk food directly to our children. I saw how this influence is exerted on the people we look to for leadership, from doctors corrupted by pharmaceutical industry largesse to ethically conflicted scientists, politicians and bureaucrats—saw how economics played and continues to play a critical role in shaping nutrition policy and in misshaping us.

The Change
In time I came to realize that the mantra of personal responsibility, intoned by representatives of the food industry and their friends in government, is true, but not in the way they intended it. Real personal responsibility means looking past the dogma promulgated by industry interests for their own benefit. As a practical matter, it means learning about basic human physiology and the mechanics of food metabolism. It means adopting an unapologetically discriminatory mindset when it comes to deciding what you put into your body. It means skipping the marketing hype on the front of food packages and reading the ingredient labels on the back. It means learning to identify industry influenced “journalism” that appears in our newspapers and magazines masquerading as unbiased health and nutrition reporting. It means acquiring the language of the scientist to decipher the double-speak and disinformation often employed to hide the real results of industry sponsored studies on health and nutrition issues.

In my journey, I’ve discovered that the one size fits all model for diet and nutrition advice does not work for me. I learned that focusing on just one food group was a mistake; that the experts really didn’t know as much as I thought they did and that they were not telling me everything they did know. I realized that I needed to question all that I knew, or thought I knew, about nutrition.

Through the hard work of some courageous people and organizations, like the Weston A. Price Foundation (Resources) and through my own experimentation and research, I have rediscovered my health. That is the real change. It’s not just about losing weight, relatively speaking, that’s easy. No, the real value I have discovered are the truths about food and wellness, the ability to see nutrition in a different light and the strength to stand up to those leaders who, through ignorance, greed or fear, have led so many people astray.

The driving force behind this web site is twofold. The first stems from the fact that almost every day now, someone who hasn’t seen me in a while asks the same question, “What are you doing?” Their expectation is that I have take up the spartan lifestyle of a rabbit-food diet along with a masochistic regimen of daily exercise. I have found that a year’s worth of discovery cannot be condensed into a two minute conversation, so a web site seemed like the logical alternative.

The second and perhaps more personal reason has to do with a little boy of no more than 10 years old. I don’t know his name, but I saw him at the park one day. A nature group was sponsoring a day of discovery designed to introduce children to the wonders of the outdoors, but this boy was preoccupied with other pursuits. A local vendor had set up shop and was doing a brisk business selling hotdogs, chips and soda. The boy had purchased a hotdog and a drink. He was heavy for his age. When he passed, on the way to his seat, I could hear his labored breathing, as if the effort of walking was almost more than he could bear.

Like most people, I have been taught not to stare, but I could not take my eyes off this child as he greedily tore into the hotdog. Bits of bun fell to the ground as he attempted to cram more into his mouth than it was designed to accommodate. Even at a distance, I could tell the bun, which was little more than flavorless flour paste, was long past it’s shelf like. The boy seemed obsessed - on automatic pilot as he sought to quell an unrelenting hunger.This boy would likely not be anyone’s first choice for a spot on a team at school. I wondered what the future held for him. Would he wind up, as so many have, old and sick before he’s even had a chance to really experience life?

The boy’s mother sat a short distance away. She was decidedly heavy herself. I don’t believe anyone chooses to be fat and I have never met the parent who wants their child to suffer the physical and social trauma that comes with obesity. So why do we do it? Why don’t we just stop eating so much of the wrong foods? While the physiological drivers behind obesity are slowly beginning to reveal themselves to researchers, I believe we behave the way they do out of ignorance, pure and simple. Just like that child and his mother, I was once completely ignorant of what I should eat.

This web site exists for the purpose of sharing something of my experiences. Some will find comfort in what I have to say, while others may declare me a heretic. No matter, the information is freely given. My goal is not to provide you with all the answers. I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to because I’m still seeking answers myself. My hope is that the fire of curiosity will be stoked in you as it has been in me and that you will seek your own answers. Those who read my words can consider their weight and make their own decisions, but as for me and my house, we follow a different path and will never go back to the way things were.