Stanley F. Bronstein is an attorney, CPA, broker, and author. 35 years ago, he was an 18-year-old college freshman who weighed close to 300 pounds. Roughly 30 years ago, his weight maxed out at 367 pounds. As recently as early 2009, he weighed 320 pounds.
Now, in 2023, he’s married; lives in Arizona has authored multiple self-help books. He’s become a catalyst for change who’s devoted his life to helping others to change for the better. Oh, and now he weighs 130 pounds. This was done with no drugs and no surgeries. Just hard work and determination.
Stanley used to fear change. Now he embraces it because change is a necessary element of growth. If we change, we grow. If we don’t change, we don’t grow, we stagnate. That’s the simple truth about change.
Listen to this episode of The MOVEMENT Movement with Stanley Bronstein about saving your life by walking.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How it’s never too late to begin a healthy journey in your life.
– How overcoming obstacles helps shape people into better versions of themselves.
– Why you shouldn’t change yourself for anyone else, the change should be for you.
– How “diet” and “caffeine free” products are not inherently good for you.
– Why you should create your environment to match your goals.
Connect with Stanley:
Guest Contact Info
Instagram
@wayofexcellence
Facebook
facebook.com/groups/wayofexcellence
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/stanleybronstein
Links Mentioned:
thewayofexcellence.com
Connect with Steven:
Website
Xeroshoes.com
Twitter
@XeroShoes
Instagram
@xeroshoes
Facebook
facebook.com/xeroshoes
Episode Transcript
Steven Sashen:
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 Movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body, starting feet first because 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 do yoga or CrossFit, whatever it is you like to do. And to do that enjoyably, efficiently, effectively… Wait, did 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 Steven Sashen from xeroshoes.com, your host of The MOVEMENT Movement Podcast. We call it that because we’re creating a movement, more about that in a second, about natural movement, letting your body do what it’s made to do. The first part, the movement is really simple. You can go to www.jointhemovementmovement.com. You don’t need to do anything to join, there’s no secret handshake or song you need to sing and there’s no money involved, it’s just a thing we call it. That’s where you can find previous episodes, all the ways you can find us on social media, et cetera. And the way you help The MOVEMENT move is by giving us a review or a thumbs up or a like, or hit the bell icon on YouTube. I mean, you know the drill. If you want to be part of the tribe, just subscribe.
So let us jump on in. Stanley, do me a favor, tell people who you are and what you’re doing here.
Stanley Bronstein:
My name’s Stanley Bronstein. I’m in Scottsdale, Arizona. I am 64 years old. And as Steven suggested at the beginning of the thing, walking saved my life. I have no doubt about it.
Steven Sashen:
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.
Stanley Bronstein:
We’re connected.
Steven Sashen:
In a way that’s very, very frightening. So walking saved your life. Let’s dive in, shall we?
Stanley Bronstein:
Okay. I’ll give you some of the specifics just real quick. Okay. 32, 33 years ago, I maxed out at 367 pounds.
Steven Sashen:
What, you couldn’t go higher? You couldn’t hit 368?
Stanley Bronstein:
No, not if I wanted to live, I couldn’t go higher. As hard as I’ve worked and 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 when I’ve-
Steven Sashen:
Well, I was just thinking of it from a weightlifting perspective. The first time I deadlifted 400 pounds, my first thought was, “Crap, now I’m going to have to go for 500″. And luckily, it got the better of me and I decided that that was more than enough. But 367, that’s no insignificant feat.
Stanley Bronstein:
And I’m only 5’7”.
Steven Sashen:
That is pretty outrageous.
Stanley Bronstein:
Okay. As recently, I lost 100 pounds. Then I put some back on, got back up to 320, but never got back to 367, 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 from my 50th birthday. I woke up and I had been thinking about this for a while. I woke up, I turned to my wife 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 had 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 mean, I can’t put it any more plainly than that.
Steven Sashen:
Let me ask you a question.
Stanley Bronstein:
Yeah, okay.
Steven Sashen:
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?
Stanley Bronstein:
Yeah. Yeah, I can. I like to tell people all the time, I talk about change all the time. If you go to my website, thewayofexcellence.com, we talk about change because that’s my whole story, is one to 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 it in an instant?
Steven Sashen:
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.
Stanley Bronstein:
Yeah, there you go. The answer is yes. You’re right about that. So I knew my 50th birthday was coming and I said, “What the shit am I doing?” I said, I’m an attorney, I’m a CPA, I’m a real estate broker, I was successful. Everything was going, did not have my health. I said, “I am 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 reached, as Malcolm Gladwell would put it, I reached my tipping point.
Steven Sashen:
First of all, I love it. Secondly, I want to dive in a little more, and there may not be an answer for this, but this is one of those things that I find really interesting, it is literally just that question of why now and why didn’t it happen the day before, the minute before, the second before? And there may not be an answer where just finally, you woke up and that just showed up loud enough that you-
Stanley Bronstein:
Time was time. It was time.
Steven Sashen:
It was time. Yeah. And so-
Stanley Bronstein:
And it was no more. I had put it off, I had procrastinated to the point where to continue to procrastinate meant death.
Steven Sashen:
Well, maybe this is, the way I’m thinking of it that I like is that many people try to fake what you just described. They try to 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 up or whatever it is where you just can’t, I mean, it’s in there. You can’t fake it, you can’t ignore it. I mean, it’s just locked in and away 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 the way you described it is like, I can’t keep playing this game anymore. How would you define the game?
Stanley Bronstein:
Okay. The game was living a life where my actions were not consistent with my words.
Steven Sashen:
So how-
Stanley Bronstein:
I was a hypocrite.
Steven Sashen:
Why? What were you saying?
Stanley Bronstein:
Okay. Now I sat 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 to get everything in order, and I’m walking around at 320 pounds.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Stanley Bronstein:
I’m complaining that I’m not getting the respect I want from people or that I deserve from people when I’m walking around showing people, I obviously don’t respect myself.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Stanley Bronstein:
I was a hypocrite. And then go to backtrack one thing that you said, people try to get to that point, try to get 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 how they say an alcoholic needs to get to the-
Steven Sashen:
Needs to hit bottom.
Stanley Bronstein:
You have to hit bottom.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
I don’t think you have to hit bottom. I mean, I think that’s when a lot of people make the change, but I think it is possible to do it. And I’ll give you an example 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 massively obese father, and we both ate ourselves into oblivion. That’s the short story of it. Now, I sat there, I talked to somebody just the other day. I just turned 64 yesterday.
Steven Sashen:
Okay.
Stanley Bronstein:
Thank you. I said, if the 64-year-old, and you should ask me what I did for my birthday memory, 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.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Stanley Bronstein:
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 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 let it go, but I don’t think you have to get to that point. With me, that’s what happened. I got to that point and 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.
Steven Sashen:
How did you come to that choice in that moment?
Stanley Bronstein:
Okay, I used to bike ride when I lived in Texas. And in Arizona, there’s lots of hills, the streets are crowded. It’s tough to get around. I said, biking is a pain in the butt. If I choose walking, I don’t need very many tools. I can do it anywhere. I figured it was easier. And since I was going to do this long-term, that was what I chose to do at least.
Steven Sashen:
Backing up a tiny bit, you may be right that we don’t need to be backed into a corner or hit rock bottom, whatever it is, but it does seem for most humans, I mean, that’s when we decide to take action-
Stanley Bronstein:
Yeah, you’re absolutely correct. Absolutely correct.
Steven Sashen:
… when there’s just no other choice. And this is why when I think about some big social change issues, I don’t want to get into an argument with people about things like climate change or whatever, but the simple thing is 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’s going to be like and so we just don’t do anything until shit and fan have had a really good meeting.
Stanley Bronstein:
And that is something, my friend, that needs to change.
Steven Sashen:
If we can, man, that is wired into us.
Stanley Bronstein:
I think we can. When I see, when I look back and I see what I have done for… Okay, I’m a pretty confident guy.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
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 that I’ve been able to keep it off. I mean, Steven, okay, I was a 320-pound couch potato. 30 plus years ago, I was 367 pounds. Yesterday, I told you what I did for my 64th birthday, I walked a marathon.
Steven Sashen:
Nice.
Stanley Bronstein:
Okay? Barefoot, by the way, okay?
Steven Sashen:
And we’ll get there.
Stanley Bronstein:
These marathons, oh, since that date, February 1st, 2009, that was my 96th marathon that I have 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 two and a half miles an hour, so it takes me 10 hours to walk a marathon. So the race course would be closed long before then, 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 on my…
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, as you pull up a spreadsheet, this is not the CPA in you. I can tell.
Stanley Bronstein:
It is the CPA in me. Okay, it is… I have walked 58,000 miles-
Steven Sashen:
Holy moly.
Stanley Bronstein:
… since that time. I have walked around… Have you take the equator of the earth, you take the circumference to the earth of the equator. I have walked around the Earth 2.35 times in the last 14 and a half years. So what I do, so obviously, I have an obsessive personality.
Steven Sashen:
Well, and imagine what that would’ve done if you walked around the perimeter of the flat earth, that would’ve been even bigger.
Stanley Bronstein:
Yeah, there you go.
Steven Sashen:
So-
Stanley Bronstein:
I’d have fallen off the edge.
Steven Sashen:
No, you can’t fall off the edge. I’ve been assured of that. That’s just not possible. So there are a couple things that I want to dive into here. First of all, this is just totally amazing, but I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this story. There was some marathon where the winner ran 205, 206, something crazy, and stayed around for the person who was last and it was nine hours and said to that person, “I can’t do what you just did. I can’t-”
Stanley Bronstein:
And you know what I call that? Class.
Steven Sashen:
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 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 for you, at two miles and change per hour-
Stanley Bronstein:
Per hour, yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, two and a half. I mean, for 10 hours, I can’t think of anything I like to do for that long.
Stanley Bronstein:
Well, I also, I have a computer hooked up to my treadmill and a keyboard so I can sit there and do stuff, I’d listen to the Steve Sashen podcast while I’m on the treadmill and I can get work done and do things like that.
Steven Sashen:
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, the vegans go crazy about the carnivores and the people who are omnivores just go crazy about everybody. So-
Stanley Bronstein:
What do I eat?
Steven Sashen:
Well, I want to know what you were eating before and then what the change was.
Stanley Bronstein:
Okay, I’ll-
Steven Sashen:
Also look, but here’s the other one. I want to know what this is like for your wife and if you have a family, your family because look, just emptying out your cupboard and your pantry and your refrigerator from stuff you don’t want to eat, that could upset people.
Stanley Bronstein:
Okay, this is good. Okay, yeah. Okay, yes. I have a wife, no kids, but I do have a wife, okay. First of all, on that day, February 1st, 2009, and before I tell you this story, I’ll tell you that we’re still married and we get along better now than we did then.
Steven Sashen:
Good.
Stanley Bronstein:
So I’ll preface it by saying 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 because that’s how set I was on that day. And I told her, “I hope you don’t. I hope you stay”, and she did.
Steven Sashen:
I’ve got something similar. My wife told me if I cut my hair any shorter than it is right now, she’ll leave me.
Stanley Bronstein:
Well, it’s funny you say that because I’m going to catch some shit tonight. My wife is out of town. I’m picking her up at the airport tonight, and every so often, I like to shave my head. And the minute I dropped her off at the airport on Friday, the first thing I did when I came home was shave my head. And I know I’m going to catch some when I pick her up in the car tonight, but anyway, but that’s fine. I don’t care.
Steven Sashen:
Okay. So you gave her the I’m changing ultimatum and then?
Stanley Bronstein:
Okay. And first thing I did, I stopped eating red meat. Mine was in progression.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
I stopped eating beef, kept eating pork because that was white meat.
Steven Sashen:
The other white meat.
Stanley Bronstein:
Yeah, the other white meat. Okay. I gave up beef and I gave up soda pop. And the soda pop I was drinking, you know those two-liter bottles?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
I was drinking two or three of those a day-
Steven Sashen:
Holy mackerel.
Stanley Bronstein:
… of diet, caffeine-free Pepsi. Now it’s diet, it’s caffeine-free. Surely, it must be good for you. Not. So anyway, I quit drinking those and that was probably harder to give that up than the beef. So I stopped doing those things. About three, about four years later when I started losing weight, about four years later, I went vegetarian. I gave up chicken, and that sucks because I make the most fantastic chicken you ever wanted to eat.
I eat, I mean, but that’s fine. And I still will cook it for guests, although I don’t like to, but I will. Okay. Anyway, because one of the things I did was my wife, she will bring stuff in and no, she’s not, she doesn’t eat like me, although she’s better than she used to. We’ll 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 loves gourmet bread and gourmet… And here, she’s living in her son-in-law’s house so she wants to buy him stuff to make him happy. So she’s bringing all this stuff in the house. This went on for a week, and I turned around and I said, “I can’t do this”.
So I decided right then and then that I needed to exercise self-control. And that 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 who she is?
Steven Sashen:
I don’t.
Stanley Bronstein:
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 that I had to do. So about four years into this, I went vegetarian. Gave up the chicken, still ate eggs and then stuff like that, and I would still eat ice cream and milk and butter 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, 220, 190, 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 at 220 pounds. So I said, I must be doing something wrong. And so I’ve been thinking about this, and at the time, I was… You know what Rolfing is?
Steven Sashen:
Oh yeah. Well, look, I was living in Boulder, Colorado, the home of Rolfing.
Stanley Bronstein:
Yeah, you know. Okay. I was going-
Steven Sashen:
Oh, sorry. For people who don’t know, it’s a body work system. Think the most painful massage you’ve ever gotten, and then multiply that by 10.
Stanley Bronstein:
The best massage.
Steven Sashen:
Well, suffice it to say, it can often be, let’s say from between mildly and excruciatingly unpleasant.
Stanley Bronstein:
Yeah. Okay.
Steven Sashen:
Now that doesn’t mean there’s not value in it. Just a heads up, take a Percocet before you go.
Stanley Bronstein:
All right, but I don’t take pills. And I also stopped drinking when I first started because 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 the night before, it was not-
Steven Sashen:
Not a good idea.
Stanley Bronstein:
… conducive to getting up early in the morning and going for a walk.
Steven Sashen:
Well, two things really quick. One, I’m not in condoning the use of taking Percocet before you get a painful massage.
Stanley Bronstein:
I know you’re not, that was your joke.
Steven Sashen:
Yes, but the other thing I want to highlight, some of what you’re talking about, 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.
Stanley Bronstein:
It is. They do.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
And we’ll get into that.
Steven Sashen:
Okay.
Stanley Bronstein:
I’m a life coaching some of this stuff, so we’ll get into that.
Steven Sashen:
And for anyone, for everyone else, and I want to keep going down the diet rabbit hole for a little while until we back up and do the walking rabbit hole.
Stanley Bronstein:
Okay, that’s fine. I’m yours. I’ve got all the time you need. So I said, so was having a session, and I used to love to go to my rolfer.
Steven Sashen:
Geez.
Stanley Bronstein:
She’s since retired. She was a former Buddhist nun. And I don’t know if there’s anything such as a former Buddhist nun, but anyway, just you walk into her office, it was just peaceful. I told 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, and I’m telling her, “I can’t lose the weight. I can’t lose the weight. And yet I’m doing all this work and 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 going to do it”. She turns and she looked at me and she says, “Stanley, what’s stopping you?”. Valid question.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
And I turned around and I said, absolutely nothing except myself. And we can put a stop to that right now. Day two later, I went full-blown vegan, or as I call it, whole I’m Whole Foods plant-based because to explain to people the difference, Whole Foods 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, vegan this and vegan that. I don’t touch those. There are a lot of people I know 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, with my clients, I do not advocate that.
Steven Sashen:
I’m not going to 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”.
Stanley Bronstein:
It’s loaded with sodium.
Steven Sashen:
Well, ignoring the sodium, he’s saying the processing of the ingredients creates, basically makes them something that is not good for your body. And-
Stanley Bronstein:
Yeah, agree. I… Go ahead.
Steven Sashen:
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.
Stanley Bronstein:
Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
So it was a no-brainer. But then I had 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.
Stanley Bronstein:
Yeah. And my whole point is I don’t need to meet. At first, you know what I tell people? I tell people I’ve already eaten my lifetime supply of meat. And your lifetime supply, probably 15, 20 other people’s lifetime supplies. I’ve already had it.
Steven Sashen:
Hey, wait, hold on. On When you were in the 350 range, what was an average meal?
Stanley Bronstein:
Okay. I would sit there and I would make… My good friend would come over and for dinner, we would make, I’d take a big wok and I’d load it with probably pound and a half, two pounds of turkey. We used turkey sausage, we stopped using beef. We used turkey sausage and… No, 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. 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 sit there and make that. And between the two of us, we would eat the whole thing. And then… Yeah.
Steven Sashen:
Holy moly. So between the two of you, you’re splitting between three and four pounds of meat, et cetera. Okay. That’s just a start, but yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
And then I would wake up in the middle of the night and I need another full meal of something. Whenever 2:00 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 up at 367?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
That was the difference, because the first time I lost a massive amount of weight, I was 367, I got down to 267 through WeightWatchers. I used to wake up in the middle of the night. I would have those WeightWatchers and Healthy Choice dinners. And don’t ask me what I think. First of all, Healthy Choice, I think it should be called Healthy-er Choice and that’s just because it’s portion control. Other than that, it isn’t healthy.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Stanley Bronstein:
That’s my opinion.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
Now, and Steven does not express an opinion on that. Okay, that’s the lawyer in me talking. Okay.
Steven Sashen:
I haven’t looked into them, so I haven’t-
Stanley Bronstein:
Okay. Now, I would sit there, I’d wake up in the middle of the night and I had cravings. 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, 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 to this day. My wife would go somewhere, like we went to a wedding month or two ago, and there was this barbecue, supposedly fantastic barbecue. She has her plate. And I will go, “Let me smell it”. And I always do that. And I sit there and I smell it, I sniff it and I go, “Okay. I know exactly what that tastes like” and then I don’t eat it.
Steven Sashen:
That’s great. So again, backing up to when you were around 350 or so, it’s pizza night, what’d you order?
Stanley Bronstein:
Full pizza, a full Domino’s… A full… Okay, I’ll give you an example. Okay, first time, this is actually, it’s a 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 really, really, really wanted a Domino’s Pizza. I sat there and there was a time where they all left for about two hours, they left me alone by myself for two hours. On the phone, I ordered 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 then went back inside that. That’s how bad I had it.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
Pizza would be meat lovers pizza, when I could do the whole thing. Chicken wings. I made 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.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Stanley Bronstein:
I could put that stuff away. And honestly, being that big was a lot of work.
Steven Sashen:
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 just all sugar all the time.
Stanley Bronstein:
I know. I have many friends who were vegan who eat vegan junk food. And you know what’s interesting about them? Almost all of them tell me that they want to lose 20 or 30 more pounds and they can’t figure out how to get it off. They all tell me that. And it’s funny. And a lot of vegans went vegan for the ethical reasons. Save the animals, save the whales. And don’t get me wrong, I want to save the animals, I want to save the whales. I think we would…
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, 9 billion people on this planet, and we have to do it, but that’s not why I went vegan. I went vegan for health reasons, but I enjoy all those other things and I care about those other things as a result. And what happened? I sat there and I said, I wonder if I go vegan, will I be able to get down to 180? I had kept going between 190 and 140. Can I get down to 180? The answer is no, I couldn’t. I got down to 140.
Steven Sashen:
Wow.
Stanley Bronstein:
I mean, seriously, I gave up butter, cheese, bread and ice cream. And I’m-
Steven Sashen:
Bread, of course, is vegan.
Stanley Bronstein:
Yeah, I know, but I gave it up anyway and I melted.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
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 10 pounds, eight, nine, 10 pounds back on, but it’s all muscle because I had… And the funny thing is because I lost the weight so slowly, my skin tightened. I have a, try to get me, I have a little bit of excess skin, but not bad. It’s not like those pictures you see where 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 the life you advocate. I put everything together. During a 20-day period, there was the month of October, I basically locked myself in my house and 20 days in a row, I walked a marathon on the treadmill.
Steven Sashen:
All right. Well, so let’s-
Stanley Bronstein:
And I, just hang on, and I came up with this.
Steven Sashen:
Oh, describe that for people who are listening and not watching.
Stanley Bronstein:
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 what you are until you become aware of what you are. And you can’t… Yeah, go ahead.
Steven Sashen:
Sorry, just to highlight, and what you showed me. So back up, 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 or are they different? I can’t tell from-
Stanley Bronstein:
It’s… Okay, what it is, first of all, that’s the annal CPA. I mean, you made the joke about it.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
I mean, that chart is about as annal as it gets. Okay. What it is, it’s 20 concepts.
Steven Sashen:
Got you.
Stanley Bronstein:
And that’s what the left column is, the 20 concepts.
Steven Sashen:
Okay.
Stanley Bronstein:
And they are awareness, long-term thinking, personal responsibility, embracing change, positive focus, changing your perspective, vision, attraction, things like that.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
Now, then next to it is in marketing 101, they tell you, “Tell people what the problem is and then give them the solution and then tell them the benefit if they implement the solution”. So the next three is the first one’s the problem. It’s called the 20 untils. Until we do these 20 things, like 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 you personally, your maximum potential, but also evolving as a species because that is one of my goals, is we’ll talk about that in a minute, okay? 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 basically, it’s 20 thing, 20 concepts broken out into three parts each.
Steven Sashen:
Got it.
Stanley Bronstein:
So that’s what it shows on the chart. And the chart, the chart is extremely annal and anybody who wants to see it, it’s at thewayofexcellence.com, no spaces, anything, thewayofexcellence.com, and I have a video on each one of the 20 concepts. Basically, the way I’ve got my things set up, if somebody comes there and they have no money, but they need help, they can get, find everything they need at my website for free. That’s giving back because I am grateful for the way I used, for what I used to be and what has been given to me now. I am eternally grateful, and so I want to give 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-
Steven Sashen:
Okay, so I was going to say, so we’re taking the giant step back. So for all the reasons you’ve described, you went from cutting things out to vegetarianism to, well, to veganism, which is super, 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-
Stanley Bronstein:
People are scared of it.
Steven Sashen:
Well, there is that, 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, and 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 day two?
Stanley Bronstein:
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, beat it before the sun. But when I first started out with the walking, I was doing a little bit of an outside, but I was still 320 pounds. My legs hurt and everything. I sat there and I said, “Maybe I’ll walk in the pool”. And so I found a gym by me that had a pool, and I started going there at 4:00 in the morning-
Steven Sashen:
Oh, wow.
Stanley Bronstein:
… because I had to get there before the classes started because I didn’t want all the people and get in the way of them and they’d get in my way. So I sit there and 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 50 stories of all these interesting people I interviewed. One of them was an artist in Honolulu named Peggy Chun. Peggy has since passed away. Peggy had Lou Gehrig’s disease. Peggy was bedridden. She could not move. She was on a ventilator. The only way she could communicate when I interviewed her was trained people would hold up an eye chart and they could read her eye movements so she could spell out words. So to do a half an hour interview, it took me two, three hours and I went to her house to do this. And now mind you, this woman on a ventilator can’t move.
And I’ll give you a little bit of history on her story. Her grandmother died from the disease and her twin sister died from the disease. And actually, it was her 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 even have to go to the doctor, she knew what it was because there is a genetic component to Lou Gehrig’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?” That I think a lot of people would think that way. This woman, who was suffering from that, she had the most incredible joy for the life of anyone I ever saw.
She sat 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. 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 going to be interviewing and she said, “Oh, that’s so much fun. I wish I could go along with you” and all these things. So fast forward to me waking up in the morning going, “Oh, I don’t want to go to the gym. I don’t want to go for a walk”.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
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’ve got her lazy ass out of bed and she’d have gone for a walk and she probably would’ve never even come back. And so I just said, screw this. And I got up and I started doing it anyway because when I’ve 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 them TS slips. They would 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 eat better today, tough shit. Go do it anyway.
Steven Sashen:
So that first time in the pool, how long did you spend walking in the pool?
Stanley Bronstein:
Probably 30 minutes, 45 minutes.
Steven Sashen:
And how was that? I mean, just so-
Stanley Bronstein:
It was fine. The worst part is I’m short, so you have to find a pool where it doesn’t get too high up on you so that you can keep walking. When I found that it worked, some people would say it’s a little monotonous, but actually it’s just back and forth, back and forth. So what I started doing was I hooked up a little rig where I put on headphones and I had a water pack with a MP3 player in it, and I would put audiobooks on there. And one of the first audiobooks I listened to, you may be familiar with this book, was a book called Younger Next Year.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah. Wait, but it sounds familiar, but give me more because it’s not quite in my brain yet.
Stanley Bronstein:
Okay. Yeah, it was written by a guy, I don’t have his name in front of me. He was getting ready to turn 50.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
And he talked to his doctor and 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, 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” where I go back and forth five hours, five hours, five hours, five hours. So I was training for it, building up to it, building up to it, building up to it. And are you familiar with Canyon Ranch in Tucson?
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
Okay. I live pretty near there. So my wife, for my 50th birthday, she gave me a week at Canyon Ranch. And I went there by myself and I sit there and I called them ahead of time and-
Steven Sashen:
Okay, hold on. Wait, hold on. Was that really a present for you or for her?
Stanley Bronstein:
Both. So anyway, hey, it’s a present for me, but if it has side benefits, so be it. Okay. So before I booked the thing, I called Canyon Ranch and I told them specifically what I wanted to do, and I said, “What are the hours of your pool? It closes up?”. I said, “Will you unlock the pool for me at two o’clock in the morning and let me walk at 2:00 in the morning and do what I needed to do?” And they said, “Okay, we’ll do those”. So the security guard got to know me, the security guard would go out there and 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 to Canyon Ranch several times before, anytime you go there, there’s always one person who everybody talks about. I can’t believe how much they exercise, can’t believe how much they exercise. This time, that was me.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
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 walk guy? Are you the five-hour pool walk guy?” and I go, yeah. So I made this whole thing that on my birthday, I was going to walk five hours. I knew when I had it in my mind, can I do it? Can I do it? And what was it, Roger Bannister with the four-minute mile, one of your heroes, no doubt. The minute some human being broke four minutes, what? 20, 30 other people did it in the next year.
So a large number of people did it. Once we realized it was possible, 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, blah, blah, blah. The next day, I was back out at the pool again and they have Canyon Ranch, there’s this thing called 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 in the pool. And I went over to him and I started talking to him and I told him what I was doing and I said, “Just walk with me”. And I had already done four hours that day and I had not had in my mind that I was going to do five hours again a second time. And I sat there, I said, “Just get in the pool. Just walk with me”. And we walked back and forth in separate lanes, just talking and talking and talking for an hour, hour and a half. And I said, “Wasn’t that easy?” So not only did I 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”.
Steven Sashen:
There you go.
Stanley Bronstein:
And so I started walking outside early in the morning and the street I lined, it’s on an incline going uphill, coming back. And the guy at the guard gate, he used to tell me, 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’d get bored walking my own neighborhood. At one time, I’d 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 in here?” and I told him what I was doing. He said, “That’s amazing” and that was all that. And I said, “If you…” 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 there if you want”. And I said, “No, I probably shouldn’t because obviously, I’m causing this lady some distress and so I don’t need to be doing that”. So I stopped doing that and I started just walking further because I live over a canal, so the problem was I had to walk over the canal and it was harder to cross the street, but I started doing it anyway. And I started walking to other neighborhoods.
And one of the things I learned when you walk for, and when I’m doing this whole program, the very beginning, I remember when I was 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 sat there and I said, “Bullshit”. And I’ve timed it out. When I walk, they say, “When you run, you should get up at least to do cardio”. You should get up for what? 60%? 80% between 60% and 80%. I get up to about 50%.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Stanley Bronstein:
When I’m out walking. But I do it for… But I-
Steven Sashen:
Yeah, of your max heart rate.
Stanley Bronstein:
Yeah, but I do it for hours and hours and hours and hours. And lo and behold, my weight went from 320 to 140. My blood pressure went from the 180s. My blood pressure today is 98 over 55, no drugs or anything. I didn’t do any surgeries or anything, and all these experts told me what I was doing was wrong.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Stanley Bronstein:
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.
Steven Sashen:
Hold on. Do you know the snail joke?
Stanley Bronstein:
Go ahead.
Steven Sashen:
Guy’s sitting around watching TV hears a knock at the door, goes and opens the door, doesn’t see anything. Just as he’s about to close the door, he glances down and there’s a snail sitting at the door and he’s like, “Oh”. And he picks up the snail and toss it out in the garden. Two years later, the guy’s watching TV, hears a knock at the door, goes up to the door, opens it up, doesn’t see anything. Just as he’s about to close the door, he looks down and sees the snail. And the snail says to him, “What was that all about?”.
Stanley Bronstein:
Yeah, there you go. Yes. And then there’s another one, which, what is it? The snail gets on the back of the turtle and the turtle goes off walking and the snail’s going, “Wee”.
Steven Sashen:
So all right, so we could do snail jokes all day.
Stanley Bronstein:
Yeah, I know many of them.
Steven Sashen:
So when you got out of the pool and started going for walks on dry land, a couple things. One, just how long were those first walks? What was the transition? What was the evolution, if you will, in your walking, just in terms of time?
Stanley Bronstein:
It was tougher. I started out doing, I would try to do an hour or two in the morning. And then I started getting this thing where I worked from home so I can do these kind of things. I started saying, I wonder if I can do a second session in the afternoon if I meditate or take a nap for an hour or two to give my body a little bit of time to recover.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
I mean, I would be sore in the beginning because I’m still carrying quite a bit of weight. I have a lot of this charted actually, so I mean, on an Excel spreadsheet, the accountant in me again, so you could see all this stuff. And it took time and it was 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 all sit there and the trend is if you do 10 minutes a day of really intensive cardio, that’s all you need. And the answer is that might be all you need, but they’re leaving out the psychological aspects of long duration exercise. And any marathoner will tell you this.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
Okay. When I walk for two, three, four, five, six plus hours at a time, you meet some very interesting people. And would you care to guess who the most interesting person you meet?
Steven Sashen:
You.
Stanley Bronstein:
Is yourself.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
And that was how all these ideas for my books, all my thoughts, and I would just carry my smartphone with me and ideas would pop into my head. They would just come flowing into my head and I would write them down, write them down, write them down, write them down, and save all these thoughts. And I have a massive database of all this information and all these thoughts and all these things I want to do. And it was just sticking with it.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
But go ahead.
Steven Sashen:
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?
Stanley Bronstein:
Okay. Feet and footwear, okay. In the beginning, I wore traditional running shoes. Nike, I used to wear New Balance because my feet were wider, so I would wear the New Balance. And I went to this chiropractor and he made me a set of orthotics, and I wore those. He had made me those before I started losing all the weight. After I started losing weight, I noticed my feet shrunk because they were less swollen and my shoes fit differently. And so I said, “I need a new set of orthotics. These old ones don’t work anymore”. So I went back to the same chiropractor and I made an appointment with him and I said, “I need you to make me a new set of orthotics”. Guess what he told me? He said, “I’m not going to make you any orthotics. You don’t need orthotics. Go read a book called Born to Run and go buy yourself a pair of toe shoes”. Okay, so I went out in library, I got Born to Run, learned all about the Tarahumara Indians and all this stuff and everything else. That’s a book I’m sure you have memorized.
Steven Sashen:
Practically. Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
Yeah. And-
Steven Sashen:
Well, even more for people who don’t know, Chris McDougall, who wrote that book, and Eric Orton, his coach and now co-author of Born to Run 2 are our partners, I mean, Chris was our unofficial marketing department for the first year or two. Anytime he did a book signing, we got a surge of traffic. And he was always a big supporter, but he’s been footwear agnostic until just recently when we sent him some of our stuff. And he goes, “We need to talk. We got to work together”.
Stanley Bronstein:
Well, that’s one thing I want to talk to you about because I have tried your product before and the problem I had with your product when I had tried it was the sandals that you made yourself. The problem I had with them was that the laces or whatever came through on the bottom and the way I walk, it would wear them down and I’d be out on a long walk and they would pop on me, and so yeah.
Steven Sashen:
But you may be surprised to know that that’s not the only product we make.
Stanley Bronstein:
I know it’s not. I know it’s not, I’m just saying… I know it’s not.
Steven Sashen:
No, but I get it. Yeah, I totally get it.
Stanley Bronstein:
I’m intimately aware of your product. I just haven’t bought it because of the next-
Steven Sashen:
Well, so yes, ignore… This isn’t about me. So you read Born to Run and then?
Stanley Bronstein:
Okay, so I went and got myself a pair of FiveFingers. And so these are interesting. And one of the things I very learned very quickly was that I had to transition into them because you’ll get shin splints if you just willy-nilly start wearing them and you walk for as many hours as I do because they change your gait so much.
Steven Sashen:
Right.
Stanley Bronstein:
And so I always caution people if they go into minimalist footwear, transition into it, make sure that you’re handling it okay.
Steven Sashen:
Agreed.
Stanley Bronstein:
And so I kept doing that and I’d buy some more, buy some more, buy some more. Periodically, I’ll go hiking in the Arizona desert. And sometimes you need to wear something with a little bit thicker sole because you’ll get cactus needles and stuff. When I go hiking, I carry a pair of needle-nose pliers with me. And just because I can’t tell you how many times I had to pull stuff out of my feet, but I kept coming back to minimal is better, minimal is better. That was when I used to have tendonitis in the beginning and that all went away. I haven’t had it in years.
Achilles tendonitis, haven’t had that in years, had no problems with that. Feet soreness intimately better. And so basically, knees did not hurt. So all of those things, infinitely better, but one of the things I also learned was sometimes I had to take days where I walked less. Like yesterday, I walked a marathon. Today, I’ve walked 10 miles and I’ll probably call it, that’s my typical day and I’ll probably call it quits at 10 miles. Although I’ve got the energy, I can easily do more, but I’ll call it quits just because I give my body a little bit of a rest and just felt better and better and better.
Now, one of the problems with me, because the way I walk, I go through shoes very quickly and it’s probably because I tend to shuffle. And so I go through them quickly and it gets expensive, especially with FiveFingers, prices were outrageous, have become outrageous. And so I sat there one time and the other thing was, let’s talk treadmills for a second. One of the things I learned was the average treadmill. When you get on a treadmill and you walk at two to two and a half miles an hour, you know what happens to the treadmill?
Steven Sashen:
Oh, you’re putting a lot of friction into that deck. That gets hot.
Stanley Bronstein:
You burn out the motor.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
I burn out several treadmills. For my 60th birthday, I bought myself a $4,000 treadmill burning out within a year, and I was pissed.
Steven Sashen:
Have you thought about trying the non-motorized treadmills?
Stanley Bronstein:
Two years ago, I bought an Assault Fitness non-motorized treadmill.
Steven Sashen:
Love it.
Stanley Bronstein:
Love it.
Steven Sashen:
Yeah.
Stanley Bronstein:
Solution to all the problems. And I’ll tell you funny how things work. Talk about serendipity and how things ha
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free