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Skype Interview with Jeff Pulver

We are good to go with jeff I know we've got him on skype way oh it's so great to see you welcome back from your trip you were in europe right? Yes I just got back from avalon friends yesterday. Wow well thank you for joining us first of all big congratulations ninety three hey well I am just honored to have you on the call today and what I really wanted to talk about his you know, I've been so impressed watching you over the last year and I'd love to hear a little bit more about what motivated you to make these dramatic lifestyle changes well, there are a few things that motivated me ultimately was when one by cardiologists who happens to be my general practitioner would he a year ago thought it was a good idea for me teo have gastric bypass surgery I was like oh wow, that was not exactly what I was expecting I am I watched my weight go up and down for a while it didn't help that for a long time every day I went out to dinner probably ten years straight on dh for seven days a week and...

off after I grew up I wasn't heavy it all through my early twenties I was pretty thin and so from a body image perspective I never looked at myself as being big but then into two thousand twelve as entered it I felt they and one day in april, I looked at that and I couldn't see my feet, so I knew something was wrong, and then I started to panic because I didn't know how to get control of this, and I started googling a lot and I found that vertical sleeves worthy surgery d'azure and so I figured out, this is maybe what I should do, so why I made an appointment to see my doctor, a couple of things happened, one is before I saw him with the nurse way me and in my weight was three thirty four negotiated for five minutes with her, but she felt bad for me said she wrote down three thirty two two pounds right away and, you know, I think whoever I could get it, but, you know, it was like a five minute negotiating, and all I was doing was trying to just be fair, I was thinking I said another's nowhere three thirty four. No way when reality was unsure in april, I was probably three forty if not three fifty I was watching my weight a little bit and o my doctor basically told me that look, you've been overweight for a really long time and you haven't had any secondary effects of being fat and that surgery would would extend your life, we should do it it's, like this is not exactly what I want to hear from my doctor, so so I but I felt this pressure that I had to do something because I knew myself that while I am obsessive and I am focused and driven, I simply want woke up one day and my plumbing was rewired when mean that my eating habits would have changed one day and I started accumulating books. I have now probably over seventy hard copies, suave copies of all sorts of books on health, wellness, fitness and food, and I from very, very respected authors and a lot of conflict. The the one thing I discovered is that everybody is a snowflake, that there's no one book, that about a million people can read in a million people will lose a hundred pounds, because our dna is that different and what's good for one person may not be good for someone else, but the one thing I found that was common was if you want to raise your basal metabolism, if you want to raise the amount of calories you burn by just sitting down, if you build muscle, you could do that that's undisputed, so take a month or so, and it took a few pivot points. One of them was I attend the conference each year in jackson hole, wyoming. And my two of my friends barack berkowitz and steve greenberg each day during the conference they asked who I want to go out for a bike ride in the mountains and as much they wanted tio atisanoe and finally after the third day I said, ok, I got it I got to fix this so I decided that when I get back to new york I'm going to start trying to exercise because I didn't want to do the surgery I didn't do this surgery because when I was before jackson hold my friend mel rosenberg twice or in tel aviv suggested that I if you will bypass the bypass another friend of mine monte he suggested that I should do the surgery because I'm a social leader and I'll just be depressed so between monty and and now it's like ok, so good good advice and almost a mantra for you the bypass a bypass and sounds like he really had a moment where you recognize you really needed to make change so I did and what a change had to be me but how do I actually make that happen? It was a long process and well looking back, you know, a year later I had no idea that I would be third ninety three pounds down or forty two point two kilos um in the weight you know it comes in spurts and and what was a weightless goal initially became body transformation meaning it's not so much about just losing weight but it's about rebooting how you approach living it's about what building muscle and really it's about just being and so what I started down it was a path of getting out of a world where my normal was being in pain my normal was each day to move ten feet twenty feet I mean I couldn't really it was just painful believe advil tylenol nice brands but that's what I was addicted to if I wanted to be just just just to just to exist and and from a mindset perspective you know I always knew that if they went to the movies all we had to sit on the end because I although I couldn't I couldn't have been anybody we went out to eat I always had to sit in the table not a booth and I had overall quite awareness of living large if you will and it wasn't fun and it just wasn't fun just being and so it took time the first workouts were five minutes each that's why I had this whole energy I had I had no strength, no stamina and no sense of what I was doing you know grow as you mentioned him radio it's nice for a social network but it was also it was as a teenager I had things like a ham radio and they're not going to write writing code software in the university I started accounting. Well, these are things you do sitting down. I did not have any activities that engaged me to get up, and what I know complicating was the fact that when I was in high school, I dislocated my left shoulder going into eleventh grade, which gave me a gin passed for two years, and then when I was, like, twenty three, I dislocated my shoulder again, which we really took me out of the gym until last september. I had no incentive whatsoever, and I worked out in a local park for five weeks until one too many times the local authorities saw me doing steps by stepping over a park benches, and then and then they said, you know, get a gym, you know, when one thing, jeff, that we've been doing an exercise here have been talking about with the class called old conversation new conversation, and I'm hearing kind of your old conversation was that you, you know, didn't love working out? It wasn't part of your life, and I just saw you post that you actually went on a bike ride with your friends in jackson hole list, right? So that your new congress, your new conversation, is you're into fitness, and you've got a whole so what's the old conversation and the new conversation for jeff well, the old conversation is I don't want why should I exercise? I exercise judgment. You know, I get fat by gaining quite bite size much or lose that these weight by exercising just know I know how to exercise my judgment and that's what I do when someone told me that I should go ahead and go to a gym because I feel better. I had no idea that what they were released, I thought they're meant that I have more self esteem. Not that maybe I got addicted to adore fins and that I really would feel better but new jeff well, a year later, I am actually pretty much addicted to exercise. I I am, uh, you know, I did two things. I spent six months building my body, so I have standing. I had I had strength and and I started to cry myself in the new conversations really about what to do today, how can engage myself. When I went back to jackson hole a year later, I got even. I went for two bike rides one for nine miles, one for ten miles and then ended a two hour hike in the woods. And in the twenty times this past weekend when I was in france, I went on a two hour, ninety minute kayak canoe trip where we did about eight kilometers never would I go kayak canoeing I never do that for you know what I discovered old jeff did not know what muscle memory was new jeff is still discovering it but he suffers from muscle amnesia because my mom muscles were never really pushed tom one thing that first of all it's amazing and you're such an inspiration that I have because I am your facebook friend thankfully everything I had everything I do I feel like I know everything and I've been watching pound by pound by pound your progress and you know I've been very impressed that you've been so authentic sharing your story with people and your community's been rooting you on so tell me a little bit more about the importance of your network in your community and helping you achieve this goal well, one thing I did not even appreciate in the beginning was the community I this was really more of a personal journey one where I took myself and said, you know, do something and so I was very quiet from july twenty fourth through september I didn't tell anyone people no one knew what was going on although I start to lose a little away in october I did it made a very bold statement of what on facebook I shared a note I showed photographs of my working out and unbelievable I got over five hundred likes on one photo of me just doing a lap pool down which kind of like changed my approach to facebook because what I realized people and even think where my friends, they like this photo and all of a sudden people started to open themselves up and share with me their journeys in their struggles and their daily aspirations, and it really was connecting at a level I've never felt for never seen but continue to feel. And while my one of my nieces believes that I overshare uh, people with me uncle selfie, I'll just mention that she doesn't get the private messages or get to see the people who have been opening up and sharing with me their stories. So facebook for me has been a place of encouragement, a place where people have been really been positive, positive and negative a little bit, but just, you know, I'm not trying to be a zealot e I'm just trying to share and encourage other people that you know, what I recognize is that, you know, I know mark twain said that quitting smoking is easy, he did it over a hundred times, but he was talking about dieting I'm sure you say the same thing that you could you know, dieting is easy, he's dead it over a hundred times, but but I'm not on a diet right? I rebooted my life I took six months focusing on building muscle at least that the ability to build muscle I changed my diet and december thirtieth and I gave up eating wheat and he gave up sugar and I basically gave a process food and so done on a few other things but that has changed that has changed how I eat that's changed how I live combined that with an addiction and obsessive addiction to feeling good um I've done in the most positive thing I can do and so I know workouts typically six days a week you know, in october when I was on facebook I told the world I'm going to go one on push up in june if you storm in october, how the heck can you do this? I didn't hire a trainer until february, but I found someone who told me to sit up straight toward me about muscle memory told me how to breathe and systematically from from may to june I built the strength I needed tio to do that one on push up and I went from being able to lift you know about twenty pounds to over two hundred thirty five I mean you push up since the and anyway it's it's been crazy and amazing and and now I look in the mirror sometimes I'm saying who is this person bequests while my voice was more or less the same, I say, who is this guy? And I reflect back to feeling like I did in rice quite I'm now down to two thirty actually between two thirty nine to forty one to forty one makes me ninety three pounds down and I haven't been like this in a very long time, so I'm still discovering one post that I read or maybe it was in an email that you sent out, but I know you have kids and there was something you were sharing about playing basketball with your sons on father's day so over I'd love to hear about how this change has changed your relationships for the better both with your family and then also you're starting this new business, so tell me how the changes improving your relationships let me share this story about your kids well well with my kids, you know, they uh it was the first father's day where did anything that something athletic with them? My kids are now nineteen they're entering the second year of school university and was the first time I've ever, ever played even a shoot around best well game with them but triplets twin flames plants but be able to do something like that I never did that before and that that was I was practically in tears after that happened then then that evening we went out to dinner and my one of my sons noted that I was no longer hanging out two blocks behind them, so I was keeping pace we're staying in front of them when they were walking and it's those little subtle things that your own personal readjustment to normal that just changes everything and of course makes everything else they're so worthwhile. But it's it's living without paying it's, being able to be normal it's being able to engage in tow, act into play and have fun and live life and just tio just to be and it's just been a very different experience from the overall and from I have a new start up called zula we're launching I believe in september and as the chairman of the company being a being healthy and being being very much about myself and being able to be better at what I do and say more focused I noticed that what one of the positive effects of giving up week for me is I actually see the world differently I have just it's things are different I just feel different I active for it and I just, um and so it's ah, you know, for someone who's thinking about a journey, I believe it's, you know, that's first steps matter the most and I do believe that when you're ready for something, you can do it, but there's this floor red readiness, it says an organism is ready when it's ready until that, until you're ready or not, but it took me being, you know, feeling that need to do something to finally push myself over, and I'm I have absolutely no regrets, and I don't think I could work harder to get where I am, but I'm very happy to have gotten, and we're continue to go. My goal, my medical school, is one hundred fourteen pounds get down to one hundred kilos, wolf boy will be to twenty and hopefully down to about eighteen percent. Body fat, that's, that's what I'm looking to do beyond that, I have to figure it out. Well, jeff it's a complete honor to both have you in the book and also have you sharing your story. I'm so impressed, I guess one last question for you, because I want to be respectful of your time, but if you were giving advice to people that are trying to make some change, how important is a network or kind of the people that you're surrounding yourself with when you're trying to create change? I believe having the right network around you is very, very important and being open to the idea that you can define your network over time and it will just grow if if you put your mind to doing something and you can share with a few people and those people could bring others into it it's unbounded in terms of what can happen and I believe your network is everything and you find support when you didn't know you had support and when you fall down there will be people there to pull you up and if you allow yourself to be vulnerable and you know a lot about yourself to share, you're able tio, we're able to do almost anything and I think that's really the key is is being open the more open you are, the more you're at your network and help you and the more you were gonna be able to be able to appreciate the opportunities presented to you it's about being in your flow and allowing yourself to leverage the the energy and the people around you and let them be helpful and just let them be engaged and listen and feel and connect with them and it's a very different world and pretty amazing one. Well, congratulations if the people that are watching online want tio send you a tweet or get in touch with you, how can people connect with you uh, they can connect with me on facebook? I'm jeff kenny pullover on twitter, it's at just over uh, my email, my public emails. Jeff pulver, dot com, all available, happy to help, not a doctor. I'm not a nutritionist, but it someone is looking for a friend to join a journey. I'm happy to least share what what's worked for me, and I'm happy to connect, if not about this journey, certainly about communication technology and anything else we'd like to talk about. Wow, well, thank you so much for being here. Amazing. Yeah, next. Next time you're in san francisco, let's, go on a hike. I look forward to be there in september. Hope to catch perfect, thank you for your time. Good luck with everything, and take care. Thank you.