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I was born in Chicago, went to grade school in Memphis, and high school in Cleveland. I spent four years in Asia with the Air Force, went to SF State on the GI bill, graduating with a BS In Political Science intent on going to law school. My hopes were dashed when I realized I had no money and was refused a school loan.
I then spent my twenties traveling and staying on friends’ couches. I started a window cleaning business with 15 dollars I borrowed from friends. I had no idea how to clean windows, but I hired experienced people.
I started drinking and smoking to dull the pain of working 16 hour days. I was soon overweight and pale as a ghost. My wife told me I would be dead in a year as she walked out of my life forever.
That was my wakeup call and I quit drinking and smoking cold turkey. Then I got on an old beat-up bicycle and started to bike up the hill from Berkeley, California. It took me three months to get to the top of the East Bay hills. I felt victorious and started to regularly bike from Orinda to Martinez, 30 miles round trip ( mostly hills) three times a week. I was chasing a dopamine high that i had created.
Gradually, I learned to balance that with a drive for peace and calm. I started a photography and design business, taught myself photography and hired a graphic designer. When that ended, I got my contractor’s license and again, knowing nothing about construction, I hired people that were experienced.
I never stopped exercising and have helped hundreds of people turn their lives around. I have no formal education in health and fitness. I am completely self-taught by seeing firsthand my body changing and then looking up on Google Scholar to find out the science behind it.
After repeatedly getting straight A’s in every creative writing class I have taken, I started to write down a motivational guide for myself to keep me on the path of exercise and fitness. That guide became the genesis of this book.
As I look back, I realized that I am uniquely qualified on the subject of fitness because unlike the so called “experts,“ I was never married to only one way to proceed. I simply observed what was happening in my body and took notice of it, thereby utilizing the purest form of the scientific method.
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