|
A Moneychanger
Interview:
RICHARD MORRIS:
“IS TODAY THE DAY I DIE?”
When Susan,
Liberty,
Justin and I sat down at the Weston A. Price Foundation Conference
banquet, a couple with two daughters also sat at our table – Richard
Morris and his family. To look at him you would never have guessed
that not he used to asked himself every morning, “Is today the day I
die?” Not too long before this man of normal size had weighed over
400 pounds, but he lost 160 pounds. Mr. Morris has chronicled his
experience – and his discovery – in a book: A Life Unburdened:
Getting Over Weight and Getting on with My Life. You can order
his book for $18.50 postpaid from Miralibri Press, P.O. Box 2452,
Woodbridge, Virginia 22195. Download an order form at
http://www.breadandmoney.com/docs/form.pdf. I read A
Life Unburdened myself on the plane ride home, and
wholeheartedly recommend it.
Moneychanger
You lost how many
pounds in what period of time?
Morris I
lost just over 160 pounds in about a year and a half.
Moneychanger
You weighed about 400
pounds when you started?
Morris At
least. I’m pretty sure I weighed a little bit more than that when I
started, but I didn’t have a scale that went up that high.
Moneychanger
I assume that you had
become that heavy over a number of years. Had you tried to lose
weight before?
Morris Yes,
it happened over a number of years. It started after college. I
have tried just about everything: vegetarianism (for about a year),
low-fat, low-carb, just about every kind of low-fat diet that you
can think of. The results were always the same, either temporary
success followed by long term failure or just failure out right.
Moneychanger
To lose this weight you
changed your diet but it’s not the kind of diet that most people
believe they would lose weight on.
Morris
Correct. I eat whole foods. I eat raw dairy, including raw
milk, cream made from raw milk, and raw cheese, whole meats, nothing
processed, and fresh seasonal produce.
Moneychanger
So butter would be
included in that list of dairy.
Morris
Absolutely.
Moneychanger
That doesn’t really
sound like a diet that anyone would lose weight on.
Morris I’ll
tell you what. It’s not a diet, and that’s its secret. Most people
have figured out by now that diets don’t work, or I should say that
diets don’t work long term. It is possible to lose weight,
and there are probably a 100 different ways to do it, but most of
those ways are not very healthy because people gain the weight
back. If those diets did work, would the national statistics show
that two-thirds Americans are overweight or obese?
Moneychanger
Do you have any idea
how many calories you eat a day?
Morris
Well, initially I was tracking my calories because it was a good
thing for me to do. My wife, who was following the same diet, did
not have to track her calories because she had more control. I was
worse off than she was. Initially I was consuming about 2000
calories on an average day. Currently I can’t tell you how many
calories I consume because I don’t count calories. It’s completely
unnecessary.
Moneychanger
What did you give up
when you changed your diet?
Morris I
stopped eating processed foods. That includes everything from
processed junk food, potato chips, fast food restaurants, everything
processed. Just about anything that’s already cooked, I stopped
eating it. Which means that now my family now cooks 99% of the food
that we eat.
Moneychanger
So, you eat fewer
carbohydrates and no white sugar or white flour, or as little as
possible?
Morris I
agree with that up to a point. Because I am not counting calories,
I am not counting carbs either. What I am doing is eating the foods
that make me feel good. To clarify that, there was a time when I
thought that, say, a Snickers or a Coke made me feel good, but in
fact, they didn’t. Half an hour later I was hungry again and I felt
pretty lousy because of all the sugar. These days I am eating food
that is far more satisfying without any sense of deprivation. I am
eating all the foods I want to eat. They’re whole foods and the
dishes are just wonderful. Thanksgiving is coming up and we look
forward to the food. Christmas is coming up and we look forward to
the food and the family experience and being around the table more
than anything else.
Moneychanger
You said that you don’t
feet deprived? You are satisfied? You are not hungry all day? You
don’t feel like you would kill for a Snickers bar?
Morris
Absolutely. People don’t understand the nature of deprivation. The
experts tell us that if we deprive our children of, say, soda, they
will turn into soda-holics at some point down the road. We don’t
say that about violence. If you deprive them of beating their
friends over the head with a bat, they will turn into murderers
later on. The nature of deprivation is this. You can only be
deprived of something that you desire. The food that I am eating
right now is completely satisfying so I don’t desire those processed
foods that I use to eat. Without desire there is no deprivation.
Moneychanger
Over what period of
time did you lose this weight?
Morris
About a year and a half.
Moneychanger
Did you add exercise to
that?
Morris
Absolutely. My wife and I had an empty space in our basement and we
converted it into a small gym. But most of the exercise that I do
is walking. Because the food I am eating now is so nourishing and
so energy dense, it enabled me for the first time to do the kind of
exercise that I actually needed to do in order to lose weight.
I am an early riser, so
some days I get up as early as 4:00 a.m. and my wife and I take an
eight mile walk. That takes an hour and a half to two hours.
We’rere not racing, it’s just a walk. There have been some
Saturdays that we have walked 16 miles.
Moneychanger
You weren’t doing that
when you weighed 400 pounds?
Morris No,
I could barely walk sixteen feet. I was in so much pain. I
was almost disabled.
Moneychanger
You had high blood
pressure, too?
Morris Yes
Moneychanger
But you didn’t have
diabetes yet?
Morris No.
Moneychanger
That’s normally the
course that obesity follows.
Morris
Absolutely. I would wake up every morning wondering if today was
the day that I would find out that I was diabetic. Fortunately for
me I was able to catch it in time.
Moneychanger
From your experience do
you think this diet would work for anybody who is overweight?
Morris I
believe so, but remember all I am talking about is eating real
food, not that processed simulated stuff that looks like
food. If it’s got red and white stripes it’s probably not food. If
it’s blue, it probably not food. If it comes in a package that looks
like some cartoon character, I can guarantee you that it’s not
food. Food looks like food, it tastes like food, and it affects
your body like food -- positively. That is the effect that
our bodies have been engineered to benefit from. Real food.
Moneychanger
And that is a high fat,
high protein diet?
Morris I
have a bit of a problem with the idea of “high fat” and “low fat”.
I would rather say that it’s the right fat, the right
protein, and the right amount of carbohydrates that’s healthy
for you. Ultimately you have to figure out what works best for
you. If someone sets some arbitrary dietary number and you are
trying to hit that number, maybe it works for you and maybe it
doesn’t. You have to find out what works best for you. So
that’s why I say it’s the :”right” amount of those nutrients.
Moneychanger
Richard, thanks very
much for your time. [End of interview]
© 2005, Reprinted from
the November, 2005
The Moneychanger
P.O. Box 178
Westpoint, Tenn. 38486
(888) 218-9226
www.the-moneychanger.com
Permission to reprint granted
provided no changes
or additions made
and full source credit given.
Back to the previous
page
|
