Gary Collins: Hi, this is Gary Collins, the creator of the Primal Power Method, and I’m here with Mark Eisenhart, the “Man on Fire”. He has a very interesting story where he lost over 200 pounds in a year, and I wanted to share this story with my followers out there because I think it’s a pretty intriguing one. Thanks a lot for coming on today, Mark.
Mark Eisenhart: Gary, thanks so much for having me on the program.
Gary Collins: Mark, briefly, I’d like you to tell your story, and talk about how you lost 200 pounds and how you came to that point in your life.
Mark Eisenhart: Well, I’ve been an athlete my whole life, and I’ve been in excellent shape at various times in my life, but I also struggled with yo-yo weight-loss and weight gain, an eating disorder and with being unable to remain at my ideal body weight. I played football and wrestled in high school and college, worked, for a time, as a guide in outdoor recreation leadership, and also played semi-pro football for a short time. Though I’ve been an athlete my whole life I’ve really struggled and wrestled with my demons at various times. So, about four years ago, I watched my dad beat cancer to die of liver disease. And, during that process, which unfolded over the course of about 14 months, I observed his weight cut in half, from 210 pounds down to 105 pounds, and a steady deterioration…what happened was he had advanced stage cancer in his throat diagnosed and progressed very quickly, and so a very aggressive course of radiation and chemo was successful in causing the cancerous tumor to be declared into remission but caused a pre-existing diabetic cirrhosis to essentially go into overdrive. He went into sepsis and his body started shutting down one system at a time. He became a prisoner in his own body.
It was just excruciating watching that happen to a man that I refer to as my true north; he was my best friend. So, Gary, in the spirit of the holographic universe, and everything being a reflection of something else, I took that dis-empowering experience and was able to turn it into an empowering experience. And, what I mean by that is, I was doing a bang-up job of killing myself in my mid- to late-30’s. I was a poster child for post-traumatic stress disorder, retired from the fire service where I worked with the Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue and Pacific Northwest Search and Rescue as a firefighter/medic and Wilderness EMT and at Northeastern University in Boston. I interned at Massachusetts General Hospital. I interned out of Jacobi Station in the Bronx of New York City. So, I was the archetypal post-traumatic stress/standard American diet just waiting to explode. A grenade with the pin out of it if you will. And sure enough that landed me at death’s door right around the same time of my dad’s illness. So, in the last lucid conversation that I had with him on his deathbed, I made him and myself a promise to lose the weight, to do it permanently, to do it the right way, to do it by the book, to restore myself to the kind of vibrant health that I enjoyed during my prime, to do it in such a way that it was impact-full, that honored his life and his memory, or to die trying, frankly. And, let’s ace it, at 455 pounds, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, 90% loss of feeling in both feet from diabetic neuropathy and all the other things that were wrong with me, Gary, it was only a matter of time before I didn’t even have that choice anymore. I could have had a massive heart attack, or a stroke, or a diabetic coma, who knows what. So that’s kind of how that process started.
Gary Collins: What would you say was the main contributor to your weight gain?
Mark Eisenhart: Well, I would say it was a couple of things. I had very, very, very, maladapted ways of dealing with stress. And I had what I call male immortality syndrome back then, I was convinced I was invincible. I was decorated twice during my tenure with the fire service with the Medal of Valor and a Community Service Award for Heroism, and a couple of citations for Search and Rescue operations. I developed a distorted belief system, Gary, around, you know, I don’t have to make changes, I handle stress fine, I’ve got a very healthy lifestyle, blah, blah, blah. And, I was, you know, secretly overeating and binge eating and not dealing with the backlog of emotions and all the things that come up when you work in the emergency service. It was a combination of those things. And then there was a time there in my mid-30’s where I was dealing with a lot of situational depression and adjustment disorder, and I was out of compliance with my treatment. I was on and off medications and when my dad got sick things went very quickly from bad to worse. I started abusing drugs and alcohol. So, I was building the perfect storm for myself, Gary. And I was one of those people
who knew that what I was doing was not in my best interest but I kept doing it. I became inert and I continued to do what was familiar to me instead of what was best for me.
Gary Collins: Well, I think that’s an interesting point because I believe that’s the road most American’s are on today. They know what they’re doing is bad for them, yet they continue on the hamster wheel and still do it. And, change is hard, and anytime you have to go through a difficult time in life it makes it even worse.
Mark Eisenhart: That’s right.
Gary Collins: In order to change you have to go through adversity, you have to look inside yourself and you have to actually learn about yourself all over again, to figure out what you’re made of. And, it’s very, very uncomfortable for people.
Mark Eisenhart: Oh yeah. Yeah, I couldn’t agree more, Gary. And let me just say very quickly that when people ask me that’s the most touching point that you just said. I got comfortable with being uncomfortable for the very first time in my life. I developed a willingness to slow down and finally deal with things.
Mark Eisenhart: Through meditation I learned to quiet the mind, to sit in stillness. Instead of doing what I had been, Gary, which was springing out of my chair whenever I was, you know, feeling uncomfortable and engage in whether it was overeating or abusing drugs and alcohol, and plenty of other self-sabotaging behaviors. Instead of doing that, I developed the strength and fortitude and resilience that came from being still, and from quieting the mind and from finally doing the diligence with regard to all those backlogged issues that had piled up that I hadn’t dealt with before. I am an abuse survivor and an assault victim and I had never healed from that.
Gary Collins: What was it that made you hit rock bottom, that finally you decided, okay, enough is enough, I have to change?
Mark Eisenhart: I finally landed at death’s door after my father’s transition. I had been holding on for as long as I could and when he died I caved. It got really ugly after that but I remembered the last conversation I had with him on his deathbed. The decision to turn it around came after I reflected back on that dialogue. I vowed to myself and to him to get control of my life again. There is something very decisive about witnessing someone close to you die.
Gary Collins: Now with that being said you started changing, what was the first things you started to change to get those results because losing over 200 pounds in a year is a pretty incredible feat. I mean very few people have ever done that before.
Mark Eisenhart: Thanks for the question. For the benefit of the audience understand that I made this my full time job and highest priority. I created an immersion program that got me doing all of the things that I needed to do. It became my primary focus and that created a huge acceptable loss margin. It created some areas of cavitation in different parts of my life. But that was what I felt I needed to do in order to be successful. So I would say the most important thing that I did was of course ask for help, raise the white flag and surrender and realize that at that point I was not the person who was most qualified to make good decisions about what was in my best interest. I was hospitalized and then enrolled in a partial hospitalization clinic. Later I created an immersion program to augment the outpatient therapies that I was doing. I was doing group work and one-on-one counseling. I had a lot of support from everybody from a psychologist, to a therapist, to a spiritual adviser. I also consulted a dietician when I hit a lull. I started meditating- I can’t stress how important that was and continues to be. Later I made dramatic changes across the board. I was living a sedentary lifestyle at the time and had also become nocturnal, hence my sleep cycle was reversed. That alone right there is inherently unhealthy. So lifestyle changes away from the sedentary pace to whatever exertion that I could manage, which at 455 pounds was not a lot, but I made incremental changes in my levels of activity and got to the point where I was able to exert myself more and then started walking and eventually using a recumbent bike and swimming and eventually got to the point where I was in sufficiently good enough shape that I could do body weight exercises. I then started making incremental changes in my diet over time. I did a cleanse. I started juicing. I got all the processed foods out of my diet at all costs and went to a whole foods diet. I took everything that was questionable out of my cupboards and my refrigerator and started asking everyone under the sun that I could get to talk to me about the benefits of a whole foods diet and plant-based diet. Next thing you know Gary I wound up being a raw vegan. And let me tell you something – when I did that the weight started falling off me faster than I could keep track of. It was amazing.
Gary Collins: Well and I think that’s pretty incredible too, obviously I’m a Primal guy so I’m big into the Paleo movement and Primal’s obviously a little bit different because it’s more of a mind/body/soul, more encompassing, a little more lenient on the diet as well. It’s not as strict as Paleo. So we believe in eating meat.
Mark Eisenhart: Yeah.
Gary Collins: But I tell people don’t limit yourself to one type of philosophy. You’ve got to understand them all, and people are pretty surprised when someone says to me, “Oh I’m a vegan.” And I go, “How do you feel?” and they go, “I feel great.” I go, “Well keep doing whatever you’re doing.” I mean don’t change it if it’s working. But at the same time, a lot of Vegans realize it is not a diet for the long haul and you have to integrate animal based foods to have a well-rounded healthy diet. A Veganism type diet is great for detoxing, fighting cancer, or losing weight quickly, but I never recommend it for anything other than that.
Mark Eisenhart: Right.
Gary Collins: And I know you’ve said though you’ve kind of gotten away from the raw Vegan diet recently though right?
Mark Eisenhart: Yeah, and I want to just clarify my position on that. The raw vegan diet served me very well for a rapid, dramatic transformation and weight loss and most importantly for healing and detox. Just going from the standard American diet which is high in processed foods, fats, salt, etc. to a plant based diet is a huge step. Back then I used my microwave exclusively and all the foods I was eating were devoid of any nutritional value. The cleanse helped tremendously because I suspect when I did the cleanse I was absorbing less than 50% of the nutrients that were in my diet. I was eating so few, if any vegetables before Gary. So eating living foods that were so nutrient dense was a huge shift for me. But yeah, I took that diet as far as I could. By that I mean I started to realize that I was having a tough time in the gym. I was having a problem with recombining plant based protein so I approached my coaches, trainers and my nutritionist. I took what is called a bio terrain test. The labs and overall assessment demonstrated that the diet which served me so well for dramatic transformation, healing, and detox had put me in an alkaline state which was not conducive to diseases surviving, which is good. Clearly the raw vegan diet was not best suited for my genotype long term, especially as an athlete. So this warranted research and experimentation and now I’m succeeding very well on the Paleo diet. I’m experimenting a little bit with Primal too. I’ve noticed instant positive returns. I mean obvious, observable change in terms of energy levels, my recovery time in the gym, strength gains, and more easily being able to build and maintain muscle mass. This diet is agreeing brilliantly with me right now. If you look at my background, I’m mostly Scandinavian, Norwegian and German. This is a diet and a lifestyle that I believe better suits my genotype anyway.
Gary Collins: Yeah and that makes sense, and that’s what I preach in my writings and to my clients. It gets a little tricky because our ethnic backgrounds in the U.S., we’re a melting pot, you know. So there’s a lot of different genetic factors going on in our bodies as far as different ethnic backgrounds and where we came from. It’s kind of a hodgepodge. But that being said, you can still kind of narrow it down and, you know, even though I am technical mainly from Northern Europe and the U.K. area, I can’t handle most dairy, and I’ve told people that’s just the way it is. I mean I can do organic cheese to a certain degree, but most dairy I just have a problem with.
Mark Eisenhart: Yeah.
Gary Collins: Organic or not, it doesn’t matter.
Mark Eisenhart: Dairy does not sit well with me. I don’t miss milk anyway and I never liked yogurt.
Gary Collins: And I tell people that’s me. That doesn’t necessarily mean that’s going to be you.
Mark Eisenhart: That’s right.
Gary Collins: And you’ve got to find your own path. I like to tell them, I give them the basic building blocks but you have to fine tune because every individual is different.
Mark Eisenhart: I couldn’t agree more. Let’s face it for most people I suspect it’s a little daunting for someone to really put the time and energy and the diligence around finding out what their body is telling them they need. We’re talking about customizing your diet to your genotype. So it’s a matter of finding out what your needs are and then addressing them given that criteria.
Gary Collins: During your weight-loss journey and today you use some of Julian Bakery’s products, correct?
Mark Eisenhart: I do.
Gary Collins: I use them with clients as well. I think they’re a great tool.
Mark Eisenhart: They were a godsend to me because when I was vegan I had given up bread altogether. I went gluten free before I went Paleo. I had given up altogether on things like bread, waffles and other grain based products. So I did my diligence and research. When I decided to add things like eggs, fish, meat and eventually go Paleo I wanted to do so as responsibly as I could. I wanted to respect what I call the interdependent web of creation. I wanted to make sure that I was aligning myself with an organization that was humane, that was cruelty-free, and that the animals were being treated properly. So I did my diligence and spoke with Heath at Julian Bakery about where they’re sourcing their ingredients from. I asked them about the eggs and if they are cage-free/free range. I dug into this a little bit. I was really impressed with their label, their brand, their vision and where they’re going. For that reason they’re hugely successful. I didn’t realize how big their presence was when I first picked them up as a sponsor. I’ve got nothing but great things to say about Heath Squier , Julian Bakery and his new company Paleo Inc. I was pretty much off bread for about two years and then off meat for three years. Now it’s like I can go and have an elk burger, a bison burger or whatever on sandwich bread again, which to the American public is no big deal but when you haven’t done that for a long time, it’s like, “Oh my god, I really miss this.” I’m still able to have control over macro nutrient ratios and stay within my dietary parameters and it’s fantastic.
Gary Collins: Yeah, you know, that’s a similar story for me too actually. I hadn’t eaten a bread product in a couple years. I interviewed Heath and I was able to see the facility. He explained everything to me, and I started testing his products and then I started recommending his products to my clients. I think it’s a great because I tell people it’s kind of that bridge for people just starting to get into the Primal/Paleo lifestyle.
Heath knows this as well, there is no perfect processed food, but it’s a better choice. It’s getting you past that hump of that processed crap that you get in your local grocery store. You can buy a healthy product made with care, made with good ingredients and if you want to go organic fresh unprocessed foods that’s great. If you want to cut out all processed, that’s fine. But I’m also a realist and realize most people cannot do that. It’s just impossible. I mean I’m an odd bird, I don’t eat a whole lot of processed food, but I know everyone can’t eat like me and live my lifestyle.
Mark Eisenhart: I agree. Julian Bakery is offering other options like wraps, waffles, and other products that don’t give you a rise in blood sugar and cause an imbalance with insulin levels. This is kind of a big deal for me. I’m really impressed with the quality of the products they have. It means a lot to me to be able to get back to some basics and know that I’m still staying within the scope of my diet. I’m not having to compromise my belief system either which is integral for me.
Gary Collins: Yeah, and that’s how I felt too. I didn’t feel like I was cheating or doing anything bad, you know.
Mark Eisenhart: Right.
Gary Collins: If you could give anyone some really good advice where to start who in a similar situation that you were in or just trying to change their health and change their diet, what would you tell them?
Mark Eisenhart: I’d say a couple things. If you have been on the Standard American Diet (SAD) I think we have to conclude that you’re going to deal with a certain amount of what I’m going to call pollution. In other words you’ve ingested antibiotics, you’ve ingested hormones, you’ve ingested insecticides, pesticides, fertilizers, etc. So I want to encourage people if you’re going to do this and get serious about it to do a cleanse, and I’m not just talking about a ten day cleanse Gary. I’m talking about go see a dietician or a nutritionist, find out what your needs are. It could be colon hydrotherapy. It could be coffee enemas. These are things people don’t want to hear, but if you have a fantastic historic building that you’re going to restore, you’re not going to leave the pipes the way they’ve been for the last 50 years. You’re going to do your diligence to whatever extent possible to take care of the plumbing problem, and I think it has to start there. Hopefully you have good guidance from your dietician or physician so that when you do make the correct changes in your diet. Then you’re able to absorb the micro nutrients the food has to offer, the phytochemicals, and all the various vitamins and minerals because I think the absorption rate for the standard American diet is probably alarmingly low. And then I would also encourage people to find out what their body is telling them they need, and that could be through a bio terrain test for example, or a body strong DNA test or just experimentation. Whatever they decide, I would encourage people to go with, if they can afford it, an organic diet to whatever extent that’s possible or at least do the diligence around talking to your farmers or the people that work in your produce section. Find out where the produce is coming from. How safe is it? Can you trust it? Verify the source. Is it organic? Is it certified organic? What happens from farm to shelves in the grocery store? Do a little research. Dig around. And then I would encourage people to experiment with the Vegan lifestyle and the Primal/Paleo lifestyle. I’m not somebody who even when I was Vegan, I wasn’t somebody who said, “I think everybody should be Vegan” because the truth is you and I both know that diet doesn’t work for everybody. Everybody’s different. I was a Vegan who said, “Find out what your body needs and then make your decision accordingly.” Maybe it’s Paleo, maybe it’s pescatarian. I would encourage everybody to go plant strong – in other words, a diet that’s abundant in green leafy vegetables, root vegetables and cruciferous vegetables. I would also encourage people to go with whole foods. Get the processed foods out at all costs. And if you’re going to eat meat, as most people are and should, I encourage them to go with grass fed. Not grass fed grain finished but 100% grass fed, and organic, if at all possible. If you have a sustainable farmer that you can go and ask questions about to see whether they’re using antibiotics or hormones, then do that. Adopt the Primal/Paleo principals, which are very much akin to the Native American beliefs in terms of not taking more than you need, not wasting what you have, and eating responsibly. Those are a few tips that I would share with people who are really ready to commit to this.
Gary Collins: Yeah, and that’s great advice. That’s a lot of what I preach myself and, you know, it’s, I always say different strokes for different folks. But you always need a starting point. Everyone needs a starting point, and I, always recommend a holistic cleanse.
Mark Eisenhart: That’s right.
Gary Collins: That’s where I started. And I agree with you, that is the most important place to start because it jump starts your body.
Mark Eisenhart: Yeah.
Gary Collins: You go through an instant detoxification and it makes you have to go out and find foods that you’ve never really eaten or had to go look for before. Mine was all organic and food based. Don’t buy one that comes in a box be pitched by some celebrity that is just pure garbage!
Mark Eisenhart: That’s right.
Gary Collins: When I started I didn’t know what organic really was. This was years ago, and once I found everything and shopped around and did it, I couldn’t go back. After that cleanse, I went out and ate at a Mexican food place with my girlfriend at the time. Man was I sick after eating that meal, and that’s what happens. Once you reintroduce those things that you used to consume everyday you’re body just flares up and says, “Oh no, no, no, we’re not going here again.”
Mark Eisenhart: Oh I agree Gary. I’ve had experiences that were very similar to that. I’ll be frank, where I was out with my buddies on a Friday night at 3:00 in the morning and we’re really hungry and ate at a late night place in Portland. Even though it was gluten free pizza and some of their toppings were organic, not all of them were, I felt the next day, I’m like, “Oh my god, I’m not doing that again.”
Gary Collins: Yeah.
Mark Eisenhart: But seriously, you know, when you start to do that, your body almost develops a preference or adaptation over time I think, and it will definitely tell you when you cross that line for sure. So I can relate to that.
Gary Collins: Well and you start feeling better and you don’t realize that before you felt like crap. You were just used to it because our bodies are highly adaptive and even though you’re in misery, it has the ability to kind of desensitize itself from constant chronic pain, suffering and inflammation so it kind of dulls it, but you get used to it. But once you change you realize what you were doing before, it just smacks you right in the face because I look at my lifestyle now and if I tried to regress – I actually did an experiment and I actually regressed for two and a half days with my friends on a bachelor party. I gained 8 ½ pounds in those two and half days.
Mark Eisenhart: Wow!
Gary Collins: Because I started retaining so much water from the gluten and processed carbohydrates that my whole body swelled up.
Mark Eisenhart: Yeah.
Gary Collins: And I tell people, if you want an example go read that blog post and see what my body went through and how long it took me to recover from that.
Mark Eisenhart: Right.
Gary Collins: And honestly we did not really eat that bad. For a bachelor party, we’re older guys, a little smarter, but for the experiment I said, “I’m not going to eat any of my healthy food.” I actually brought healthy food with me. But I said, “I’m just going for it. Let’s see what happens.” And like I said, it wasn’t as bad as I would say the standard American Diet is. I think we ate a little cleaner than that. But still, just flared me up big time.
Mark Eisenhart: I suspect that when you’re eating healthy and a plant-based diet and/or a Paleo and then you eat something that’s essentially going to be an inflammatory – I suspect, I don’t know if there’s any basis for it, but I imagine that your experience of it is probably going to be a bit amplified. It’s like a jolt to your system.
I hope that what’s coming out of the work of what you’re doing and other people in the field are doing for educating the American public is telling them, “Let’s talk about what means to in the inflammatory response? What does it really mean to be in an alkaline state where something like a disease can’t flourish or live?” I hope that these buzz words that are entering the consciousness of the American public are really sinking in and landing. I hope it makes people ask questions about, “Okay, you know, why is this in my diet? Why am I eating this? Am I eating this because I’m used to it, because I grew up eating it, because I have a taste for it, because it’s what my body needs, because it’s in front of me?”
Gary Collins: And that’s what I’m all about. I’m trying to educate the masses. I mean that’s the whole point behind my Primal Power Method series. I have more books that are coming out that continue to take you on a health journey in simple and easy to follow steps. I keep it short, I keep it simple. I’m a simpleton in anything that I do. I don’t think you need a 450 page book on Primal or Paleo to get it.
Mark Eisenhart: Yeah, I agree.
Gary Collins: It’s just too complicated. It’s too dense. People are not there yet, so I’m trying to give them the stepping stones so they can take this journey in pieces so they don’t get it all dumped on them at once because we all know what happens. 99% of people quit when they’re overwhelmed.
Mark Eisenhart: Yeah, I agree.
Gary Collins: Well I really appreciate you coming on. I’d like to have you on again if you’re up to it.
Mark Eisenhart: Yeah, I’d love to.
Update:
Sadly Mark was unable to win the battle with his internal demons from years of serving as a paramedic and first responder. On February 16, 2014 Mark took his own life, but I want this interview to serve as a way for all of us to remember him for his ability to inspire everyone around him. We had many candid conversations about life and the pursuit of helping our fellow human beings. Mark was a bright light in the Primal/Paleo community and he will be missed.
The post A Primal Power Method Interview with Mark Eisenhart Who Lost Over 200 Pounds in One Year appeared first on Primal Power Method.