There's a lot of research about walking and the importance of walking, just getting out and moving. What if walking could save your life? Well, we're going to talk about that on today's episode of the movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a healthy, strong body starting first as you know those things are your foundation. And we're going to break down the propaganda, the mythology, sometimes the outright lies you've been told about what it takes to run or walk or hike or play or to yoga or frost whatever it's like to do and to do that, enjoyably, efficiently, effectively, wait, didn't I?
Say enjoyably trick question. I know I did because look, if you're not having a good time, you're not going to keep it up. So find something you like. I'm Stephen Sashan from zero shoes dot com, your host of the movement podcast.
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So let us jump on in. Stanley, do me a favor. Who you are and what you're doing here. My name is Stanley Brassney.
I'm in Scottsville, Arizona. I am 64 years old. And as Stephen suggested at the beginning of the thing, walking saved my life. I have no doubt about it.
Well, before we jump into the specifics, though, I have to tell everyone who's watching. Stanley and I are part of Purple Shirt Day. We both were very aware that this is an important thing to do and happy that you're part of that club. We're connected in a way that's very, very frightening.
So walking saved your life. Let's not in, shall we? Okay. Give me some of this.
I'll give you some of the specifics. Real quick. It's 32, 33 years ago, I maxed out at 367 pounds. What you couldn't go higher?
You couldn't get to? No, not if I wanted to live. I couldn't go. As hard as I were, as hard as I tried, that was as large as I was able to get.
That's the first time I've ever had somebody tell me that. Well, yeah, I was just thinking of it from a weightlifting perspective. The first time I did lift it, 400 pounds, my first thought was crap. Now I'm going to have to go for 500.
And luckily, since got the better of me and I decided that that was more than enough. But 367, that's no insignificant feat. I'm always 5% so. That is pretty outrageous.
Okay. As recently, I lost 100 pounds and I put some back on, got back up to 320. I guess I couldn't do it. Then as recently as 14 and a half years ago, February 1st, 2009, I was four months away for my 50th birthday.
I woke up and I've been thinking about this for a while. I woke up, I turned up a lot and I said, I'm done playing this game. I was 320 pounds, my feet hurt, my back hurt, my legs hurt. I hadn't had a heart attack yet.
I hadn't had a stroke yet. I wasn't on diabetes medication, but I probably should have been. I wasn't on high blood pressure medication, but I probably should have been. I was a heart attack waiting to happen.
And I told her I said, I'm done playing this game because I have realized that if I didn't get it together right then and there, I was going to be dead and I didn't want to be dead. I can't put any more plainly than that. Let me ask you a question. Because what you just said is one of my favorite things to investigate.
Can you identify what it is about that day rather than the day before or the day after where that realization popped into your brain? Yeah. Yeah. As I like to talk about that, I talk about change all the time.
If you go to my website, the way that excellence.com, we talk about change because that's my whole story is what I change. And I go that day when I decided to change, did I change in an instant or did it take me 49 and a half years to get to the point where I changed in an instant? This is Zen 101. The argument between Soto, Zen and Rinzai Zen is enlightenment instantaneous or a process.
And of course, the answer is yes. Yeah, there you go. The answer is yes. You're right about that.
So I just, I knew my 50th birthday was coming and I said, I said, what the shit am I doing? I said, you know, I'm an attorney. I'm a CPA. I'm a real estate broker.
I was successful. Everything was going and I had my health. You know, I said, I'm wasting my potential and to be quite frank with you, it pissed me off. And I said, this is bad.
I don't need to be doing this. Enough's enough. I just, I reached, I'm not going to be able to put it. I reached my tipping point.
I want to, first of all, I love it. And there may not be an answer for this. But this is one of those things that I find really interesting, is literally just that question of, you know, why now and why didn't happen the day before, the minute before, the second before, and there may not be an answer where just finally, you know, it just, you woke up and that just showed up loud enough. Time was time, the time was time.
It was time. Time was time. No, I know more. I just I put it off.
I procrastinated to the point where to continue to procrastinate, death. Well, maybe this is the way I'm thinking that I like is that many people try to fake what you describe. do go, okay, now, but they don't really have that, whatever it is, however we want to define it, that is that innate bubbling up or screaming up or a guy's wearing up whatever it is, where you just can't, I mean, it's in there. You can't, you can't fake it, you can't ignore it.
I mean, it's just like locked in and where you go. And there are people who spend a lot of their life trying to pretend or make that moment happen instead of it just occurring where it's just there. And, you know, and you know, the way you describe it, I can't keep playing this game anymore. What was the, how would you define the game?
Okay, the game was living in life where my actions were not consistent with my words. So how I was a hypocrite. I was a hypocrite. What are you saying?
Okay, I said there, okay, at that point in my life, I had written six, seven, eight self-help books, telling people how to get their life together and get everything in order. And I'm walking around at 320 pounds. Right. You know, I'm complaining that I'm not getting the respect I want from people that I deserve from people.
I'm walking around showing people I obviously don't respect myself. Right. I was a hypocrite. And, and then go to backtrack, one thing that you said, you know, people try to get to that point, try to get to that point.
One of the things I do when I work with people is I tell them, you don't have to get to that point. You know, they say an alcoholic needs to get to the, you know, the hit bottom. You have to hit bottom. Yeah.
I don't think you have to hit bottom. I mean, I think that's when a lot of people make the change. Yeah. But I think it is possible to do it.
I mean, I'll give you an example. This is real real quick. My whole thing with weight started when I was eight years old. My mother died when I was eight.
I was left to live with my master wheel beast father and we both ate ourselves into a blivium. That's, you know, the short, the short story of it. Now, I thought that I told my sister the other day. I just turned 64 yesterday.
Okay. Thank you. I said if the 64 year old, and you should ask me what I did for my birthday, the 64 year old me, if he could go back and talk to the eight year old spend one day with the eight year old me, I could have saved myself 50 something years of bullshit. But had I not gone through that, I would not be the person I am today.
Right. And to be quite frank with you, I happen to really like the person I am today. And I think the person I am today is a pretty cool dude. And it's who I want to be.
So, so the answer is, would it have been nice? Can I go back and change things? Yes. Does it matter?
No, because you can't and it doesn't matter. So you just need to let it go. But I don't think you have to get to that point with me. That's what happened.
Yeah. No, I got to that point. And you know, I just I told my wife, I said, I'm done playing this game. I'm going to start learning to eat better now.
And I'm going to start exercising now, every day. And my exercise of choice is going to be walking. Well, how how did you come to that choice? In that moment?
Okay, I used to I used to bike ride when I lived in Texas, in Arizona, there's the hills, the streets are crowded, stuff to get around. I said biking is a pain in the butt. If I choose walking, I don't need very many tools. I could do it anywhere.
I just I figured it was easier. And so I was going to do this long term. That was what I chose to do. Backing up a tiny bit, you may be right that we don't need to be back into a corner or hit rock bottom, whatever it is.
But it does seem for most humans. I mean, that's when we decided to take action. Absolutely correct. They're absolutely correct.
Absolutely. Just no other choice. And this is why when I think about some big social changes, I'm not going to I don't want to get into arguing with people about things like climate change or whatever. But the simple thing is, you know, whenever we're asking a large group of humans to do something different, it doesn't even matter what it is.
Typically, we just can't anticipate what the future is going to be like. And so we just don't do anything until, you know, shit and fan had a really good meeting. And that is something my friend that needs to change. If we can, man, that is wired into it.
I think we can. I am I when I see when I look back and I see what I have done for, okay, I'm a pretty confident guy. I'm an attorney, I'm a CPA, I've written all these books, I've been successful. And I did something that blew my mind, it blew my mind that I was able to do what I did.
And then I've been able to keep it off. I mean, Steven, okay, I was a 320 pound cap for tatoe 30 plus years ago, 367 pounds. Yesterday, I told you what I was doing 64 per day. I walked a marathon.
Okay, these barefoot by the way, okay, these marathons. Oh, since that day, February 1st, 2009, that was my 96th marathon that I walked in 14 and a half years. Now these are on the treadmill, they're outside, they're not official. And the reason why is I walk slowly, I walk it two and a half miles an hour.
So it takes me 10 hours to walk to walk a marathon. So the race, of course, would be closed long before then. But so I'll never be able to do an official marathon. But I mean, I chart my statistics.
I have walked, let me see what this is right here. I'm ready. This is not just as you pull up a spreadsheet. This is not the CPA in you, I can tell.
It is the CPA. Okay, it is. I have walked 58,000 miles. Oh, we molly since that time, I have walked around, if you take the equator, the earth, the you take the circumference of the earth, the equator, I've walked around the earth 2.35 times in the last 14 years.
Obviously, I have an obsessive personality. Well, you know, imagine what that would have done if you walked around the perimeter of the flat earth, that would have been even bigger. So yeah, there you go. So falling off the edge.
No, you can't fall off the edge. I'm been assured of that. That's just not possible. So there are a couple things I want to dive into here.
First of all, this is just amazing. But I don't know if you've ever heard the story, there was some marathon where the winner ran like 205 to a six something crazy, stayed around for the person who was last and it was like nine hours and said to that person, I can't do what you just did. I can and you know what I call that class. Oh, it's way more than that.
I mean, it is and it's true. I mean, look, I say the same thing as a sprinter when people say, you know, they run the 400 meters. It's like, I can't do what you just did. But I mean, for someone to stick around and be there for the people who were doing everything they could to get in before the race closed and acknowledge this thing, it's like, yeah, what you just did is a Herculean thing.
And so to for you, two miles per hour, two miles and change. Yeah, two and a half. I mean, for 10 hours, I can't think of anything I like to do for that long. Well, I also I have a I have a computer that took to my treadmill and a keyboard.
So I guess they're induced stuff like listening to the Steve Sash and podcast, while I'm on the treadmill and I can get work done and do things like that. So, so ignoring the compliment. So you had this thing, you said, all right, the game stops here, I'm going to change my diet, I'm going to start walking. I know this is going to be contentious because I know whenever I bring up diet, people lose their minds.
The carnivores go crazy about the vegans and thegans are crazy about the carnivores and the people who, you know, are omnivores, you just go crazy about everybody. So what do I what do I eat? Well, I want to know what you're eating before and then what the change was. Okay, also, but here's the other one.
I want to know what this is like for your wife and if you have a family or family, so because making look just emptying out your cupboard and your pantry and your refrigerator from stuff, you know, that could make a, you know, okay, this is good. Yeah, yes, I have a wife, no kids, okay, but I do have a wife. Okay, first of all, I'm that day, February first 2009, I'll tell you this story. I'll tell you that we're still married and we get one better now than we did them.
Good. So I'll probably say that. Okay. That morning, I told her, I'm going to make a bunch of changes in my life starting right now, because I have to do this.
And I hope you like it. And I hope you stick around. I'm not asking you to leave, but I have to make these changes. And if you like them and you stick around with me, wonderful.
And if you don't like them, I don't care. There's the front door. You can walk out right now. I told her that that's how set I was on that day.
And I told her, I hope you don't. I hope you stay. She did. I got something similar.
My wife told me if I cut my hair any shorter than it is right now, she'll leave me. Well, that's funny. You say that because I'm going to catch some shit tonight. My wife is out of town.
I'm a bigger airport tonight and every so often I like to shake my head. And I said, the minute I dropped her off of the airport on Friday, the first thing I didn't want to come home to shake my head. And I know I know I'm going to catch someone I pick her up and come home. But anyway, that's fine.
I don't care. So you gave her, you gave her the I'm changing ultimatum and then okay. And first thing I did, I stopped eating red meat. My mom was a progression.
I stopped eating beef. I kept eating pork because I was white meat. The other one, the other one, okay. I gave up beef and I gave up soda pop.
And the soda pop I was drinking. You know, those two liter bottles? Yeah, I was drinking two or three of those a day. A diet caffeine free Pepsi.
Now it's diet is caffeine free. Surely must be good for you. Not. So anyway, I quit drinking those.
And that was probably harder to give that up than the beef. Yeah. So I stopped doing those things about three about four years later. And I started losing weight.
And about four years later, I went vegetarian. I gave up chicken and that sucks because I make the most fantastic chicken you ever want to be. I mean, but I still will cook it for guests. Yeah.
Although I don't like to, but I will. Anyway, because one of the things I did was my wife, she will bring stuff and she's not. She doesn't eat like me. She all the way to the better.
And she used to get into that in a minute. But she would bring stuff into the house for there was a short period of time about four or five months where my mother-in-law lived with us because she moved to Phoenix. And she hadn't found a house yet. So she lived with us for three or four months.
And my mother-in-law was born May bread. And here she's living in her son-in-law's house. She wants to buy him stuff to make him happy. You know, she's bringing all the stuff in the house.
This went on for like a week. And I turned around and said, I can't do this. So I decided right then and then that I needed exercise self-control. And then just because somebody brought it into my house doesn't mean I needed to eat it.
And now that is something I've actually had this discussion with Chef AJ. You know, she is. I don't. Okay.
She's a vegan chef, well known on YouTube personality. She talks about your environment. Make your environment consistent with what your goals are. And I had to live in an environment that was not consistent with my goals.
But what I could control was my head. And I learned that the switch to my mouth is inside my head. And that was a big thing, you know, that I had to do. So about four years into this, I went vegetarian, gave up the chicken, still ate eggs, you know, and stuff like that.
And I would still eat ice cream and milk and butter, you know, and cheese and stuff like that. Lost some more weight. Did really well. And then about five years or so into that, I was still, my weight was hovering between 190 and 220, 190 to 220.
And I couldn't get lower. And here I'm walking 10 miles a day. And I can't get lower than 190 pounds. And a lot of time I was hanging around with 220 pounds.
So I must be doing something wrong. And so I've been thinking about this. And at the time, I was you know, a role thing is, oh yeah, well, look, I was living in Boulder, Colorado, the home of Rolf. Yeah, you know, that I was quite repeat for people who don't know, it's a bodywork system.
Think the most painful massage you ever gotten and then multiply that by 10. Well, suffice it to say, it can often be, let's say from between mildly and excruciatingly unpleasant. Yeah, okay. That doesn't mean there's not value in it.
Just heads up, you know, like take a percusset before you go. All right. So, so, but I don't, but I don't take pills. And I also, I also stopped drinking when I first started, because I very, at the very beginning, I was drinking scotch every night.
And I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to get up early in the morning, drinking scotch tonight before it was not getting too soon to getting up early in the morning and going for a walk. So, well, two things really quick. One, I'm not in condoning the use of taking percusset before you get a painful massage. I know you're not.
That was your joke. Yes. But the other thing I want to highlight, some of what you're talking about, you know, when people get their panties in a wad about diets, the research is pretty clear that the fundamental thing that's causing a benefit, not saying the only thing, but the fundamental thing is calorie reduction. And so, just not having the scotch, that's a big deal.
There's an interesting thing about diet soda, where sometimes the artificial sweeteners basically trick your body into thinking that it's just like sugar. They do, they do. And we'll get into that. I mean, life coaching some of the steps.
So, we'll get into that. And for everyone else, and I want to keep going down the diet rabbit hole for a little while, till we can back up and do the walking rabbit hole. Okay. That's fine.
I'm yours. I've got all the time in it. So, so I said, so I was having a session and I used to love to go to my role for Jesus. I'm she's since retired.
She's she was a former Buddhist nine. And I don't know if there's anything such as a former Buddhist, but anyway, just you walk into her office, it was just peaceful. It was just I taught her I used to like to go to you for the mental aspects of talking, just talking with you. It was pure joy.
So we're talking and I'm having this discussion with her. I'm telling her I can't lose the way you don't can't lose the way you don't know she's working everything. And I said, I know I need to make some changes. And here's what the changes are that I know I need to make.
And sooner or later, I'm gonna do it. She turns to me and she says, Stanley, what's stopping you, valid question? Yeah. And I turned around and I said, absolutely nothing except myself.
And we can put a stop to that right now. Day two later, day two later, I went full-blown vegan. Or as I call it, whole I got I'm whole foods plant based because it's to explain to people the difference you hopefully plant based no SOS, which is no added salt, no added oil, no added sugar. You probably know what that is.
The difference between that and being vegan is you can be vegan and still eat junk food. There's a lot of vegan processed foods beyond meat burgers, vegan cheeses, veganness, vegan that. I don't touch those. There are a lot of people on who eat them.
And I'm not telling them they shouldn't eat them, can't eat them. I don't and I don't look my clients. I do not advocate that. I'm not gonna tell people they shouldn't eat the fake meat, but I will say this.
I met a guy who his job is that he's a food engineer. And I asked him what he thought about these things. He goes, I wouldn't touch them. It's loaded with sodium.
Well, ignoring the sodium, he's saying the processing of the ingredients creates that basically makes them something that is not good for your body. Well, and I have a thing where I have a weird genetic disorder where I don't taste savory flavor, so I never like meat because it just tastes metallic to me. And so I was curious about things like Beyond Beef and whatever the incredible burger, whatever. And no, I just didn't like the flavor, because again, it just tasted like metal.
So I was a no-brainer, but then I met this guy at a party and he just scared the living crap out of me with what he was describing about how these simple compounds are processed to turn them into something that tastes and fakes its way into being meat. Yeah. And my whole point is, I don't need the meat. You know what?
I tell people, I tell people I've already eaten my lifetime supply with meat. And you're at that lifetime supply. Probably 15, 20 other people's lifetime supply. You know, I've already had it.
Hey, wait, how about when you were in a 350 range, what was like an average meal? Okay. I would sit there and I would make my good friend would come over. And for dinner, we would make a big ass wok.
And I'd load it with probably pound and half, two pounds of turkeys, these turkey sauce, which we stopped using bait, these turkey sausage and turkey turkey meat. And then I would take turkey sausage and I would cut up another pound or so of that and throw that in there. You know, then I would make a big old thing of chili and a big old thing of white rice, not brown rice or grains or anything else. And so they make that.
And between the two of us, we would eat the whole thing. And then, yeah. Mully, so between the two of you, you're splitting between three and four pounds of meat, etc. Okay, that's just a start.
And then, and then, I would wake up in the middle of the night and I need another full meal or something. When it was two in the morning, I need a full meal. And that was how, remember when I told you I was 367 and I got down to 320 and I never went back into 367? That was the difference.
Because the first time I lost a massive amount of weight, I was 367. I got down to like 267 with three weight watchers. I used to wake up middle of the night, I would have those weight watchers and healthy choice dinners. And don't ask me one of the first of all, healthy choice, I think it should be called healthy or choice.
And that's just because it's portion control. Other than that, it ain't healthy. Right. That's my opinion.
Yeah. Now, and Steven does not express an opinion on that. Okay, that's the lawyer I've been talking. Okay.
I just had a look in those. I would, I would, now I would sit there. I'd stop waiting in the middle of the night and I'd crave and I would go to the freezer. I would pull one of these things out.
I would look at the picture on the front. I would visualize in my head, visualize in my head. I would imagine what it tasted like. I would go yum yum, that was good.
And then I would put it back in the freezer and I'd go back to sleep. And that was like, that is actually a trick I still used in this thing. My wife goes somewhere like we went to a wedding, you know, mother Jojo and there was this barbecue, supposedly fantastic barbecue. She has her plate and I would go, let me smell it.
And I said, there's nothing. I said, I sniff it and I go, okay, I know exactly what that takes like. And then I don't eat it. That's great.
And again, back up to you, you know, when you were around 350 or so, it's pizza night, what do you order? Well, pizza, a full Domino's bit, a full, okay, I'll give you an example. Okay, first time, this is actually to Colorado story. The first time I ever went to Colorado, it was my older brother.
He had driven up there with some friends. I had heard about Domino's pizza. And I've really, really, really wanted a Domino's pizza. I sat there and there was a time where they all left for about two hours and left me alone by myself for two hours on the phone.
I ordered a Domino's pizza, got it delivered to me, went into the stairwell at the place where we were staying, ate it in the stairwell because I was hiding, left the empty box in the stairwell and went back inside. Well, you know, that's how bad I had it. Yeah. You know, pizza would be, you know, meat lovers pizza.
You know, when I could do the whole thing, chicken wings. I mean, chicken wings, I could eat 18 chicken wings and I don't mean 18 chicken wings pieces. I mean, 18 whole chicken wings with all three of the pieces. Right.
You know, I could put that stuff away. Yeah. And you know, honestly, being that big was a lot of work. Yeah, that's why I was curious.
Well, so now so you made the vegan switch. And I appreciate making the distinction between eating well as a vegan versus not. I actually knew someone who was vegan. And basically, everything she made was just dessert.
Now it was wonderful. But it was all sugar all the time. I know I have many friends who are vegan, vegan junk food. And you know, it's interesting, nothing.
Almost all of them tell me that they want to lose 20 or 30 more pounds. We can't figure out how to get it off. They all tell me that. And it's kind of funny.
And you know, a lot of vegans went vegan for the ethical reasons, say the animals, say the whales, and don't get me wrong. I want to say the animals are going to save the whales. I think we would, you know, you talk about long, you talk about long term change, I think for sustainability reasons, it's something that we eventually as a collective human society need to do. If we want to exist with eight, nine billion people on this planet.
And we have to do it. But that's not why I'm not vegan. I want vegan for health reasons. But I enjoy all those other things.
And I care about those other things as a result. And you don't have them. I said, I wonder if I go vegan, will I be able to get down to 180? I can't get down to 180.
The answer is no, I could. I got down to 140. I mean, seriously, I gave a butter, cheese, bread, and ice cream. Bread of course is vegan.
Yeah, I know, but I gave it up anyway. And I melted. Yeah. I mean, I absolutely, I mean, I literally melted the weight came off of me so fast.
It was almost scary. And since that time, I've put like 10 pounds, eight, nine, 10 pounds back on, but it's all muscle because I had to, I had to, and the thing is, because I lost the weight so slowly, my skin tightened. I have a little bit of excess skin. Yeah.
But not bad. You know, it's not like, you know, those pictures you see, when they just have folds and folds of skin hanging off, I did it so slowly and so gradually it kept it off. And since that time, I like to advocate for people. Since that time, I took all my materials and everything.
I realized that Stanley, you're no longer a hypocrite. You're now living a lot if you advocate. I put everything together during a 20 day period. They were the month of October.
I basically locked myself in my house and 20 days in a row, I walked in marathon on the treadmill. All right. Well, so let's. And I came up with this.
Oh, it's right. That for people who are listening and not watching. Okay. It is called the way of excellence.
The way of excellence is my system for building personal excellence. It's made up of 20 concepts starting with awareness because you cannot change which are until you become aware of which are and you can't. Yeah. Sorry.
Just to highlight what you showed me. So backup show again, again, because for people who are watching. So you have this thing on the wall. It says the way of excellence.
So it's this color coded. Is that just four of them in a row? Are they different? I can't tell from you.
It's okay. What it is, first of all, that's the anal CPA. You made the joke about it. I mean, that chart is about an anal to get.
Okay. What it is, it's 20 concepts. Gotcha. That's what the left column is, the 20 concepts.
Okay. And they are awareness, long-term thinking, personal responsibility, embracing change, positive focus, changing your perspective, vision, attraction, things like that. Yeah. Now, then next to it is in marketing one on one, they tell you, tell people with the problem.
And then give them the solution and then tell them the benefit of the implement, the solution. So the next three is the first one is the problem. It's called the 20 untils. Until we do these 20 things.
The first one is until we wake up and pull our heads out of our rear ends and admit what's going on and start taking action consistent with what we want. We're never going to achieve our maximum potential and evolve as a species. So it involves not only involves you personally, your maximum potential, but also evolving as a species. Because that is one of my goals is, and we'll talk about that in a minute.
Okay. And then the next one is the 20 laws. These are the solutions. The 20 things that if you do these things, you will change.
And then the 20 benefits. Those are the things we will gain if we implement the solutions. So it's basically, it's 20 concepts broken out into three parts each. Got it.
So that's what it shows on the chart. And the chart is extremely anal. And anybody who wants to see it, it's at the way of excellence.com. No space is like on the way of excellence.com.
And I have a video on each one of the 20 concepts. Basically, the way I've got my thing set up, if somebody comes there and they have no money, and they can't, but they need help, they can get it. Everything they need at my website for free. That's giving back because I am grateful for the way I used for it.
I used to be in what has been given to me now. I am eternally grateful that I'm going to get back. And then if somebody wants to work with me one on one, they can work with me one on one. That's different.
But so go ahead. You were about to say so. So we're taking the giant step back. So for all the reasons you described, you went from putting things out to vegetarianism to, well, kind of to veganism, which is super interesting.
Let's go into the walking part. So making the dietary changes over time, I mean, people have done things like that. They have some idea about what that could be. But to start, people are scared of it.
Well, there is that for many for a number of reasons. In fact, it's funny when I was living in New York, easiest place in the world to be vegan because there's somewhere you can get vegan food on almost every block, not even just vegan restaurants, just exclusively vegan restaurants. But anyway, let's do the walking part. So what was it?
So on day one, you went, okay, I'm going to walk. What happened next? What was what was day two? Okay, okay, when I started walking, it was only February, but still in Arizona, it gets hot.
It starts getting hot early. So you got to go out early, you know, beat it for the sun. But when I first started out with the walking, I was doing a little bit of an outside, but I was still all 320 pounds. My legs hurt and everything.
I sat there and I said, maybe I'm walking the pool. And so I found a gym by me that had a pool and I started going there at four in the morning. Oh, well, because I had to get there before the classes started because I didn't want, you know, all the people getting the way of them and they get in my way. So I said, I'd go there early in the morning and I started walking.
And sometimes I didn't want to go walking, but I had a motivator. Back in 2007 in my hypocrite days, I wrote a book and it was like 50 stories of all these interesting people I interviewed. One of them was an artist in Honolulu named Peggy Chun. Peggy is since past a while.
Peggy had Lou Gerd's disease. Peggy was bedridden. She could not move. She was not even a ventilator.
The only way she could communicate when I interviewed her was train people with a whole lot of an eye chart and they could read her eye movements and she could spell out words. So to do a half an hour interview, it took me like two, three hours and I went to her house to do this. And they'll mind you, this woman on a ventilator can't move and it may have to give me a little bit of history on her story. Her grandmother died from the disease and her twin sister died from the disease.
And after I was older sister, not twin sister died from the disease. She woke up one morning and her legs were weak and she said, oh shit, she knew what it was. She didn't have to go to the doctor. She knew what it was because there was a genetic component to the Gerd's disease.
So she knew about it. If this were me back in my old days, I would say, would somebody please take a pillow and put it to my head and take me out? You know, that's I think a lot of people would think that one. This woman who suffered from that, she had the most incredible joy for the life of anyone I ever saw.
She's out there and she told me, my grandkids are coming over later today. We're going to paint together. We're going to do this. We're going to have fun.
We're going to do all that. And she told me all these wonderful stories about her life. I was that was just the very beginning of I was going to be driving around the country interviewing all these 50 people. I told her some of the people I was interviewing and she said, oh, that's so much fun.
I wish you could go along with you, you know, and all these things. So fast forward to me waking up in the morning going, oh, I don't want to go to jail. I don't want to go for a walk. Yeah.
Okay. You know the old saying, what would Jesus do? I started saying, what would Peggy Chun do? If she could?
And the answer is Peggy Chun would have got her lazy ass out of bed and she'd gone for a walk and she'd probably would have never even come back. And so I just said, screw this. And I got up and I started doing it anyway, because when I learned, I don't want to do it. And my father used to tell me in the military, he was in World War II.
He said, the sergeant would give you, he used to call him TS slips, you know, pull out a piece of paper and they write TS on it, tough shit. You don't want to go to the gym, tough shit. You don't want to go to the gym? Tough shit.
You don't want to be better today? Tough shit. Go do it anyway. So that first time in the pool, how long did you just stand walking in the pool?
Probably 30 minutes, 45 minutes. And how was that? I mean, just do this. So it was fun.
You know, the biggest, the worst part is I'm sure. So you have to have to find a pool where it doesn't get too high up on you so you keep walking. You know, when I found that it work, some people say it's a little monotonous, but actually it's just back and forth back and forth. And so what I started doing was I hooked up a little rig where I put on headphones and I had a water pack with my MP3 player in it.
And I would put audio books on there. And one of the first audio books I listened to, maybe familiar with this book was a book called younger next year. Yeah, wait, but it sounds really good to me more to them. It's not quite in my brain yet.
It was written by a guy. I don't have his name in front of him. He was getting ready to turn 50. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And he talked to his doctor. Basically, it's written for men that the original book was since then they've written it for women too. It was geared toward men getting ready to hit milestone ages 50, 60, 70, you know, telling them that you don't have to fall apart. If you do these things, you can actually get younger next year.
And it was eat a better diet. And it was build yourself up to an exercise that you can do at least three hours straight. Something and I said, I can do that. So I sat there and I made myself a challenge.
I said, my 50th birthday is coming up in four months. On my 50th birthday, I want to do a five hour pool walk. I go back and forth five hours five hours five hours for our phones. So I was training for building up to building up to it.
And you from your canyon ranch and Tucson? Yeah. Okay. I live pretty near there.
So my wife from my 50th birthday, she gave me a wiggy canyon ranch. And I went there by myself. And I sat there and I called him ahead of time. Hold on.
Wait, hold on. Was that really a present for her? You or her? Both.
So anyway, hey, it's a present for me, but if it has side benefits, it'll be. Okay. So, so before I put the thing, I called Canyon Ranch and I told them specifically what I'm wanting to do. And I said, what are the hours you're pulling?
I closed this up. I said, well, you unlock the pool for me at two o'clock in the morning. And let me walk from two in the morning and do what I needed to do. And I said, okay, we'll do this.
So I'm security guard got to know me as a security guard right there. He would unlock the main pool for me at two o'clock in the morning so I could get in. And so whenever I had been a Canyon Ranch several times before, anytime you go there, there's always one person and everybody talks about I can't believe how much they exercise. Can't be how much they exercise.
This time that was me. Yeah, I became known as the five hour pool walk guy. I would be walking around the place and people go, are you the five hour pool one guy? Are you the five hour pool one guy?
I do. Yeah. So I made this whole thing. On my birthday, I was going to walk five hours.
And you know, I had my mind can't do it. I can't do it. I can't do it. I'm like the and I was at Roger Banister with the four minute mile when your hero is no doubt.
The minute some human being broke four minutes, what 2030 other people did in the next year. So I learned large and people did once we realized it was possible. You know, so anyway, in my mind, I said, I can do this. So I sat there and I did my five hours.
I was like, great, what was about the next day. I was back out at the pool again. And they have came to ranchers to think of life extension program where a lot of people go, you can call it fat farm, whatever a lot of people who need to lose weight will go there. And there was this one guy who was massively obese.
And he was getting to the pool. And I went over to him and started talking to him. And I told him I was doing it. And I said, just walk with me.
And I had already done like four hours that day. And I had not had my mind that I was going to do five hours again a second time. And I said, just get the pool, just walk with me. And we walked back and forth and the separate lanes just talking to talking to talking for like an hour, hour and a half.
And I said, when that easy said, not only going to do five hours, I did five and a half hours. The next day. And I said, this is easy. And then when I came back home, I said, it's time for me to start walking outside.
And so I started walking outside early in the morning and the street I mine, it's on an incline going up hill coming back and the guy that got used to it said, I mean, he didn't know if I was going to be able to make it up the hill or not when I was going. But I was doing all this. And I started walking in other people's neighborhoods around me because I get bored about my own neighborhood. At one time, I parked my car in that neighborhood and I go walking.
Lady called the cops on me. And cop comes up to me and he says, what are you doing here? And I told him when I was doing it. He said, that's amazing.
And I said, and I didn't have my ID on me because I left it in the car. I said, if you want to take me back to my car, I'll give you all my ID and everything. He said, no, that's okay. And he says, you can keep parking if you want to.
So no, I probably shouldn't because obviously I'm causing this lady some distress. And so I don't need to be doing it. So I stopped doing that and I started just, you know, walking further because I live over a canal. So the problem is I had to walk over the canal and I was harder to cross the street but I started doing it anyway.
That's what I'm doing to neighborhood it. And one of the things I learned when you walk for, I'm like, when I'm doing this whole program, at the very beginning, I remember when I was back back to Canyon Ranch again, some of their pool instructors and their trainers came up to me and talked to me and they asked me what I was doing and I explained it to them. And they said, Stanley, you're not getting your heart rate up enough. You're never going to lose weight that way.
This isn't going to work for you. This isn't good exercise. You're not getting your heart rate up. And I said, bullshit.
And I've timed it out when I walk. You know, they say, when you run, you should get up to at least a due cardio, you should get up to what 60% between 60 and 80%. I get up to about 50%. You know, when I'm out walking, but I do it for your own.
Yeah, of your maximum heart rate. Yeah. But I do it for hours and hours and hours right in the long before I might wait went from 320, you know, to 140. My blood pressure more from the 180s.
My blood pressure today is like 98 over 55. No, no drugs or anything. I didn't do any surgeries or anything. And the only sex first told me when I was doing was rural, right?
And my philosophy is slow and steady, which by the way, would you care to guess what my totem animal is? My totem animal is a snail. Steady diligent persistent get where they're going no matter how long it takes. Hold on.
Do you know the snail joke? Go ahead. Can I sitting around watching TV here's a knock at the door goes no, does the door doesn't say anything just about to close the door. He glances down and there's a snail sitting at the door and he's like, no, he picks up the snail and toss it out in the garden.
Two years later, the guys watching TV here's a knock at the door goes up to the door, opens it up doesn't say anything just about to close the door. He looks down and sees the snail and the snail says, what was that all about? Yeah, there you go. I guess.
And then there's another one, which one, what does it, the snail gets on the back of the turtle and the turtle goes off walking and the snail's going, whoa. So, so, you do snails all day. So, I know many of them. So that, so when you got out of the pool and started going for walks on dry land, how a couple things, one, just, you know, how long were those first walks?
What was the transition, like what was the sort of evolution, if you will, in your walking, just in terms of like, who was tougher? I started not doing it. I would try to do an hour or two in the morning and then I started getting this thing where I work from home so I can do these kind of things. I was sort of saying, I wonder if I can do a second session in the afternoon in my meditator taking a nap for an hour or two, you know, to give my body a little bit of time to recover.
I mean, I would be sore and because I'm still carrying quite a bit of weight. I have a lot of this charted actually. So, I mean, you're only going to sell scratch. It's counting me again.
So, you could see all this stuff and it took time. And it was to being diligent and persistent. And one of the things I was going to say about walking, and one of the reasons why I like walking so much, and why I like walking for long hours, there are a lot of doctors these days. They also sit there in the trend is, if you do 10 minutes a day, a really intensive cardio, that's all you need.
And the answer is there might be all you need, but they're leaving out the psychological aspects of long duration exercise. And any marathoner will tell you this. Yeah. When I walk for two, three, four, five, six, plus hours at a time, you meet some very interesting people.
And what you care to get to the most interesting person you meet is yourself. Yeah. And that was how all these ideas for my books, all my thoughts, and I was just carrying my smartphone with me and ideas and talking to my head, they were just complaining to my head. And I would write them down, write them down, write them down, write them down, and save all these stuff.
I have a massive database of all this information and all these thoughts and all these things I wanted to do. And it was just sticking with it. But go ahead. Well, I know there's a, because you hinted at it before, and I didn't even remember this part of the story.
So I'm going to prompt you for it. Let's talk feet and footwear, shall we? Okay. Feet and footwear.
Okay. In the beginning, I wore traditional running shoes. You know, Nike, I used to wear a new balance because my feet were wider. So I would wear the new balance.