Paul Nison Part II: A Story of Going Raw, Immediate Healing as well as Mistakes along the Way

Saturday, October 24, 2009 by: Kevin Gianni
Tags: raw foods, health news, Natural News

(NewsTarget) This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni's Renegade Health Inner Circle, which can be found at http://www.RenegadeHealth.com. In this excerpt, Paul Nison shares on his story of immediate healing, as well as mistakes along the way, going raw.

Renegade Health Inner Circle with Paul Nison. Paul Nison is a raw food chef and educator. He is also the author of seven books including "The Raw Life."

Kevin: Paul Nison is a raw food chef and educator. He has been eating a raw food diet since he was diagnosed with colitis, many years ago. With no other choice but surgery according to the medical profession, Paul decided to stop eating all cooked foods. Today he is 100 percent cured of his so-called incurable disease. Paul, welcome to the call.

Paul: Thank you.

Kevin: No problem. Let's start with your own personal story because I think a lot of people can learn from it.

Paul: Sure. A lot of people out there have heard me and they know it but basically, to make it short and sweet, I will tell you I got diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease, which is inflammation of the colon. It is also known as ulcerative colitis and Crohn's Disease, when I was 19 years old. The doctors told me that I had to be on drugs for the rest of my life and the only inevitable was I was at a high risk for colon cancer at 20 years old. They said by the time I was 30 I would probably have it and the only complete cure was to get rid of my colon. They said, "If you don't have a colon you can't get colon cancer." The doctors told me what to do and I listened to them and did exactly everything they told me to do short of surgery. Every time I did what they told me to do I wasn't getting better; I was getting worse. So then I got wise and I started doing the opposite and got better.

One day when I moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, without knowing it I moved right next to a place called Hippocrates Health Institute. I was in the health food store one day and I saw a fellow there, his name was Brian Clement. He was giving a lecture to some people there and I was listening. He was talking about raw food. My doctor had always told me raw foods would be bad for me. When I told that to Brian he said, "Of course they would. If you were healthy they wouldn't get paid." He told me a lot more things about the food.

I asked my doctor if the raw foods are really bad for me and she said, "They are definitely the worse thing for your condition." When she told me that, I knew I was on the right track and I went on a raw food diet.

Since that day I have been completely better and helping people get better. I have to pinch myself. I enjoy every day so much.

Kevin: Now the process of healing probably did not happen overnight. Why don't you explain how you dove into it and what are some of the things that worked for you and some of the things that you found didn't work for you.

Paul: Well actually, it did happen overnight. What I found out is health doesn't begin when we add to our diet; it begins with what we eliminate. So when I found Hippocrates Health Institute and spoke to Brian Clements, the director there, he told me to eliminate everything that was contributing to my problem. He knew what it was. It was not really the cooked food as much as the dairy, the wheat, the processed food, the overeating, eating late at night, mis-combining my meals, not chewing my meals. When I stopped doing all those things... People ask me how long it took to get well; I give them two answers. One answer is "Immediately." As soon as I stopped that I actually started feeling better, even though I wasn't completely cured. The other answer is, after almost 17 years of doing this I am still healing because each day I feel better than the last. That is not an exaggeration. It is amazing. I feel better now than I did last year and I feel better than two years ago. I continuously feel better and I am learning new things.

I made some mistakes at first and I see a lot of people making those mistakes today. It's one of the things that motivates me to get out there. If I didn't change I wouldn't have been too healthy today. I see a lot of people coming to the raw food movement that are making a lot of these errors.

I was blessed to meet a man who is one of my best friends, Dr. Fred Bisci... He really woke me up and told me that it is not just about eating raw food. You can't just eat tons of fruit and you can't eat raw junk food and expect things to continue to get well. Eventually you are going to hit a road block. He really helped me understand why and how that happens.

You have to continue to change as the body changes. There is a lot of people out there in the raw food movement making mistakes. We really have to understand that raw food is great but it is not a panacea. If it is raw junk food it is just a matter of time before that is going to take its effect on your body.

It is very simple - raw, ripe, fresh and organic. We can't overeat and have got to eat at the right times...

The next book that helped as called "The Mucusless Diet Healing System" and he had something in there called the formula for life. If anyone understands that formula, they will understand what the mistakes are and how to avoid them. The formula basically is power minus obstruction equals vitality. In other words, health minus disease equals wellness. So we have to put things in our body that can contribute to our health and eliminate things that contribute to disease. Then that will determine the state of our health.

Kevin: All right. Let's get into some specifics here. What were some of those specific mistakes? What were some of the foods and things that you were eating that were eventually contributing to you not getting the results you wanted?

Paul: Well, the first one was eating too much fruit. At first it was great. To anyone out there that has eaten McDonald's their whole life and then switched to a diet of eating fruit, they could eat all the fruit in the world and they are probably going to show some improvement. However, after your chemistry starts cleaning up and you continue to eat tons and tons of fruit, it is too much sugar for the body. At Hippocrates Health Institute people with certain illnesses they completely take off sugar, including the sugar that is found in fruit. So there is nothing wrong with fruit but it is overdoing it that is a problem. One of those mistakes I made was overdoing the fruit.

People ask me, "How much is too much?" It might vary for each person but you have to understand that the stomach is the size of our fist. So we have to use some common sense and say, "That might be a little bit too much food there. Look how much you are eating." We have to look at that. That's one of the big errors I made.

Another one was the time I ate. I lived in New York City; I had the world's biggest raw food restaurant, which is important because we have the world's biggest people in New York City [laughs]. I was working there for a while and after I got off work, late at night, I would go out and eat or I would eat my raw junk food. Most people that are visiting raw restaurants are not doing it at 11 o'clock in the morning; they are doing it at 9, 10 o'clock at night. So eating late at night, overeating, mis-combining my food, not paying attention, eating too much dehydrated food, not getting enough sleep, thinking sleep is not important. I asked a raw food leader out there once, somebody who was teaching raw foods, about sleep and he said, "Sleep is poison." It was no surprise; it was many years ago and now that person doesn't seem to appear to be as healthy as he was back then. So I wasn't getting enough sleep back then.

People aren't getting enough exercise. Some people get too much exercise. That was my issue. I was always into fitness when I got into this and I was exercising way too much. It's all the extremes. People do too little or too much. I don't like to use the word moderation because we all have our own idea what moderation is based on how we feel. That can be a very dangerous thing. But I like to use the word "balance." We have to have a good balance. Many people are doing things too much or too little. That's where they get themselves into problems.

Kevin: You said that you were finding that you were exercising too much. How do you manage now with fitness and raw food and how do you maintain your weight? That's a big question that we get.

Paul: It is definitely a big question. I get as well, especially with issues of colitis and Crohn's Disease. A lot of people lose weight. What I find is that most people when they get into a raw food diet they are fat so nobody really complains about how they look. But when they lose the fat if there is no muscle under there then they feel too skinny and they do look skinny. The key is fitness, but not too much.

Another key with putting on weight is getting enough sleep, which most people don't do. The amount of food we eat determines how much sleep we need. If we're overeating we need a lot more sleep than we actually get. Building and healing is really taking place during sleep. So we really have to make sure we're getting the proper amount of rest.

Another thing I've found that worked with me was when I went to the Ann Wigmore Hippocrates-style eating and ate more chlorophyll-rich greens and sprouts and cut out the sugar. The sugar might give people fuel or stimulation but it is the chlorophyll that really helped my body build the muscle. Nothing takes the place of good, muscle- building exercise.

I started to see signs of one of the most common things out there today, even in the raw food world, adrenal fatigue. I started to notice these things so I cut back on the exercise. I realized it is more important to take your time and do it right than to try to get as much in as possible. When I did that I just kept getting more and more. Anyone that thinks raw foodists look skinny go to my blog - I will give the address out later if I get an opportunity - and you can see me working out on there. Now I just basically do weights with my own body weight, pushups, pull-ups, the flash pike, if anyone knows what that is. I have a video on my blog about that. You don't have to be skinny if you're on a raw food diet. You can certainly look fine on a raw food diet.

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About the author

Kevin Gianni is a health advocate, author and speaker. He has helped thousands of people in over 85 countries learn how to take control of their health--and keep it. To view his popular internet TV Show "The Renegade Health Show" (and get a free gift!) with commentary on natural health issues, vegan and raw food diets, holistic nutrition and more click here.


His book, "The Busy Person's Fitness Solution," is a step-by-step guide to optimum health for the time and energy-strapped. To find out more about abundance, optimum health and self motivation click here... or you're interested in the vegan and raw food diet and cutting edge holistic nutrition click here. For access to free interviews, downloads and a complete bodyweight exercise archive visit www.LiveAwesome.com.