Evan Money’s Reasons for Being (Pt. 2 of 4)

Kamala:                      Right. I think that’s a good point like how much your mind set to challenge your body can make your body perform harder, in almost like kind of living a split life of your body and yourself as your own coach. What made you make this commitment to living a healthy life? Did you have a particular moment that transformed you and will you share it with us?

Evan:                          That’s a fantastic question Kamala and I think a lot of times in our society, everybody talks, what’s the one thing or what was the moment, what was this…and for me it was a process and too often in our society regardless of whatever it is, “reality TV show” and all the stuff going on we never, ever get to see the process and if we do it’s always fast-forward. For example great shows like, and I watch them, I love them; American Idol and x-Factor, these guys go from unknown to superstar in 6 weeks. And so you get this unrealistic view of what it takes or how it happens. And people always think that, “Oh I went from this sad flop to P90x cover person in 3 days.”

And for me it was a slow. I was always active as a young, kid, skateboarding, surfing, doing all that, I never paid attention to nutrition. I just ate and was active. So I worked out really well when I was younger. When I was in my early 20s I started body-building. And that was my first of many AHA moments. That’s what started me on the process, and Kamala what’s interesting for me was all of my research on nutrition and health and everything wasn’t about being healthy it was about how can I get bigger muscles faster without taking steroids. And along the way, I discovered what healthy living was all about, while trying to figure out how to maximize and become a natural body-builder and that changed the way I lived my life. Just one discovery after another after another after another and it wasn’t for the noble cause of “Oh I want to be healthy!”  Hey I want to get bigger biceps, I want to get ripped abs, I want to get bigger and stronger without taking steroids that led me on this path which I still continue and it was just a gradual process.

I learned that “Hey! Chicken’s a lot better than beef for your body, for its easily digested, you know? Hey fruits and vegetables really do… because they’re pre-digested with the enzymes and everything; I can get a maximum beneficiary about eating those versus a bunch of processed food.” And I just kept discovering and understanding “Wow! Processing sugar is the worst possible thing you can eat.” One of my latest discovery is just happens to be with salt. You know for the longest time we’re told sodium is bad and salts bad and all this and that. Salt is one of the best critical things of your body; however you have to get it in unprocessed form which is very hard to do. And they’re out there things like Celtic salt and the Hawaiian pink salt is out there but salt is actually a health food if you get it processed correctly. And it’s just little things like this, just one after another, just AHA moment after AHA moment, just building on each other to be come and understand that “Hey, I just don’t want to be one like I said before. I don’t want to be these people with my body falling apart in an old-age home. I want to be like Jack Lalanne and continue to search and study and more AHA moment.” The moment you think, Kamala the moments like that, you know, there’s no arrival point. There’s just continual process.

Kamala:                      Well, Evan the continuous learning is still important for your brain and continually challenging your body is so important for your well-being. It sounds like you have a series of lessons learned. I’m wondering if there’s any else in regards to health and fitness that surprises you that maybe you thought, oh for sure we have to do this, like for salt; I mean I know for myself I believe I can only miss anti-salt and then I was training for my first marathon and I ended up having hyponatremia without even knowing what that was. You know, water intoxication, and as soon as I started drinking healthy electrolyte, suddenly I can think clearly after my workouts. I would be so ditzed out. That was something that surprised me. Is there anything else that surprises you on health and fitness along your journey?

Evan:                          Yeah there’s quite a few and another which I can keep this interview down to 24 hours. I’ll give it to you but I’ve got a long list. One of the big things for me, number one was genetic. And a lot of times in the marketing aspect of fitness magazines and everything else they will show someone genetically gifted and then lead you to believe that if you take this magic pill, you’re going to look like that. Or if you do a certain amount of exercises, you’re gonna look like that. And the reality is genetics play such a huge part in what our body is capable and what it can actually look like. And as someone who is big in the fitness industry and body building and all that, it was such an eye opener for me to finally realize – and I know there’s gonna be people reading and listening and watching this – is that a lot of people still think that, “Okay, if I lift enough weights, I can look like this guy,” or, “if I do enough sit-ups or I eat enough of this, I can look like this girl over here.”

And I give people perfect example, The View, daytime TV show, we had a chance to get to know Elisabeth Hasselbeck before she was put on The View and she’s just a little petite thing like my wife, and you look at someone who’s still on the show, I think Joy is one of her co-hosts. You know, she’s a much stockier woman and you see these two different body structures and one way to do it is to look at your wrist. Some people just have bigger, mightier wrists than other people do. And it’s a football analogy – the wide receiver doesn’t look like the lineman and it’s just that they have a different structure of their body. And so once I realized, “Hey this is what my body is capable of, I need to work with the genetics that I have” and understanding that all the lies in the fitness industry, again you do the best with what you have.

The next biggest thing that surprised me about health and fitness was – and I got two more – the less biggest thing is less is more. I used to think that if I wasn’t working out busting my behind seven days a week, I wasn’t making progress and I was falling farther and farther behind. And what I realized is that when it comes to – you can look at the two – and come on, you can agree with this – you can look at the two biggest poster children for fitness. It’s typically bodybuilders and long distance marathon runners. And people want to equate marathon running with great health and people want to look at bodybuilders and go, “Oh, they’re so healthy” and a professional body builder is the most unhealthy person on the planet and to make your body look like that, most of these guys are taking steroids, oh they’re taking a lot more than steroids, they’re taking a whole chemistry set with the stuff to get their body to do that until they’re very unhealthy. A lot of people think they look like that all the time, which they don’t, it’s in-season and when then out of season they look like big, giant roly polies. And then marathon running – a lot of people think, “Oh, you got to put on the miles, you got to run, you got to run and you hear all these stories about these guys, they’re marathon runners and just end up dropping dead because long distance running is very damaging to your body and –

Kamala:                      Yeah, three days a week, three days a week.

Evan:                          Yeah it’s about less is more.

Kamala:                      That’s because I’m gonna –

Evan:                          That was confusing for me, it’s like, “Oh, okay, your body actually grows when it’s resting, and you know when it’s resting, it’s actually doing this,” so that was a huge one to me because I was always, “Oh, it’s gotta be eight days a week or you’re not doing it”

And, the last, I think, again there’s a bazillion more but –

Kamala:                      Just one more.

Evan:                          Just one more. I’m trying to think of a real eye-opener for me. So we’ve got genetics, we’ve got less is more, I probably have to remember.