#249: Tim Kaufman - From Booze, Food, and Fentanyl to Lifelong Freedom - Escaping Self-Made Prisons of Pain
Tim and his wife, Heather, a beautiful plant-powered couple.
Imagine a life where you are trapped…imprisoned…in a cycle of addiction to alcohol, fentanyl, and food. Now imagine escaping that prison for a life that is far better than you can ever imagine. This is the story of today’s guest, Tim Kaufman.
At just 38 years old, Kaufman’s doctor essentially left him for dead. His weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, and triglycerides were through the roof, and his self-esteem and self-worth were…well…practically six feet under.
He was ready to give up on himself, his family, and his life. That is, until one day, he started making the smallest of changes. For him, it was getting out of his chair two times. That was it. One small change at a time.
This eventually led to a little research and he found Forks Over Knives, The Engine 2 Kitchen Rescue, Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead… documentaries he credits with changing his life and his diet to a whole foods plant-based diet. Today, he is an accomplished athlete training for an IRONMAN triathlon and he just released his memoir, Escape-Breaking Free From A Self-Made Prison.
Episode Highlights
3:19 Writing this Memoir with an Openness and Honesty
5:57 His angel, His Wife
23:46 Skeletons in the Closet
27:13 Confronting the Harsh Realities of His Life
30:30 Describing the Painful Withdrawals
36:51 Final Words that Changed His Life
48:09 Starting with Chair Times Two
57:04 Tim’s Walking Journey Begins
1:05:38 Facing Surgery Without Opioids
1:08:45 Transforming Perspective
Order Tim Kaufman’s Book, Escape - Breaking Free From A Self-Made Prison
About Tim Kaufman
Tim Kaufman was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS) in his early twenties. He was in chronic pain most of his life. By the time he had reached the age of 37 he was addicted to Fentynal, alcohol, and fast food. At over 400 pounds he was unable to perform simple daily tasks and almost immobile. He had lost his interest in life and had almost given up. Tim started a journey to regain his health by changing one small thing at a time. He is now an athlete that thrives on a plant-based whole food lifestyle and leads a healthy, happy, productive, and very active life that is free of all medications he was once on. He uses his platform on social media to help others find health and happiness. You can find him on Facebook, Instagram, and his web-page at fatmanrants.com.
Episode Resources
Order Escape-Breaking Free From A Self-Made Prison
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Full Transcription via AI Transcription Service
[0:00] I'm Rip Esselstyn, and you're listening to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. Imagine, if you will, a life where you are trapped, imprisoned in a cycle of addiction to alcohol, fentanyl, and food. Now, imagine escaping that prison for a life that is far, far better than you can ever, ever imagine. This is the story of today's guest, Tim Kaufman. I'm going to bring you his harrowing story right after this message from PLANTSTRONG.
[0:38] At the pediatric age of 38, Tim Kaufman's doctor essentially left him for dead. His weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, and triglycerides were through the roof, and his self-esteem and self-worth, well, they were practically six feet under. He was ready to give up on himself. That is, until one day, he started making the smallest of changes. For Tim, it was getting out of his chair two times. That was it. One small change at a time. This eventually led to a little research, and he found Forks Over Knives, The Engine to Kitchen Rescue, Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead, documentaries that he credits with changing his life and his diet to a whole food, plant-based way of eating. Today, Tim is an accomplished athlete training for an Ironman triathlon, and he just released his memoir, Escape, Breaking Free from a Self-Made Prison. Here to share his story is my PLANTSTRONG brother, Tim Kaufman.
[1:54] Tim Kaufman, welcome to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast, my man. Rip, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. And thank you for all you do to make the world a healthier and happier place.
[2:10] Tim, right back at you. So I was part of the summit that you threw a couple months ago. And it was during that summit, you told me that you had a book that you were launching and you had spent several years on it and it had finally come to fruition. And I want you all to know that here it is. It's called Escape, Tim Kaufman, Breaking Free from a Self-Made Prison. I want everybody that's listening to know that I read this book from cover to cover over the last two days. And what you have done here, or Tim is absolutely nothing short of remarkable. And I say that because you absolutely, you don't hold back and you bear it all.
[3:02] The good and the downright incredibly ugly.
[3:07] You spare no expense fence, just exposing this raw and fragile Tim Kaufman from beginning to end. And it is such an incredible journey that you have been on, Tim. So with that being said, Are you cool if we kind of talk about your journey here today?
[3:31] Yeah, I mean, I'm open to anything, but yeah, I appreciate all your kind words about the book. And, you know, when I started writing the book, I would, the book took about six years because I kept starting and stopping. It's very hard, some of the stuff to kind of drudge back up when you think it's behind you. But I made myself a deal. I kept going back and like, no, no, that's too, I mean, I still have a job. I'm still teaching and stuff for another couple of years. it's like I don't want people to know about this I don't want people and then I said I either have to write the book like totally open and honest or not and so I went with write it open and honest and that's what I did well you did and I what I was also really impressed with is is your writing style and how well everything flowed and it was so easy to read and I and I did not want to put it down until I got to the end. Have you been journaling for a while or where, where do you feel you got your writing chops from?
[4:34] So I am not a writer. I still don't think I'm a writer, but honestly.
[4:41] Like that's kind of like part of my story. Like, I don't know what, so I was more of like a Harley, big, big dude in Carhartts and Harleys and people that, you know, even read books or wrote, you know, those were weird people in my book. And, you know, during some way, at some point in my transformation, I picked up a book, a spiral notebook, and I started just jotting stuff down, whether it was logging my food or the exercise that I had planned. And then I kind of did a recap for the day, like kind of a little, you know, how'd you do one sentence and that's kind of where i guess my writing started um but so no i don't like honestly so i'm an i teach now i teach engineering and technology but the truth is like i dropped out of high school um and seven degrees later to which are our postgraduate degrees i never really took english i took technical writing uh which is just the facts so i don't really have a writing background. Yeah. Yeah. Well, but you did start journaling. And one of the places that I want to go to today is your first entry that you made into that journal,
[5:56] but I don't want to do it yet. I think a good place to start, and especially since we have a limited amount of time here today is why don't we start at your dad's funeral? So your, your, your dad.
[6:07] Has just died. You're at his funeral and you're over 400 pounds. Can you kind of like walk us through where you're, if you can recall where your mindset was that day? Oh, that, that day, my mindset was in a terrible place. I don't like, I almost don't like saying rock bottom because I had many rock bottoms. Um, but if I guess you could say that was probably, you know, that's where I really hit hard. I had tried to clean up a little bit with the opioids. I had stopped and started and stopped. I was actually stringing together quite a few days of not taking them, actually probably for quite a few months at that point. And then, you know, when we got the news that dad had passed away, the first thing I did was go find more pills.
[6:55] So I was purposely obviously, um, not in a good place. Um, you know, the book is called escape. So, um, yeah, I had escaped reality and that's just how I dealt with anything. I didn't want to feel ups. I didn't want to feel downs. I just wanted to feel numb. Um, and I was definitely numb. Um, really like really bad. Like I had the spins, everything kind of had an echo and it was almost like I watched the funeral through a tunnel. So I was in a really bad place. And one of the weird things that I remember so vividly about that day is they had these wooden chairs that the funeral director had set up and they were on uneven ground. You know, we're out in the country here. And I remember sitting on those wooden chairs thinking I am going to bust right through one of these and I'm going to make a scene and I just don't want to deal with it. And remember, trying to hold my body up so I wouldn't put all my weight on the chair.
[7:55] And I was hurting. My legs were trembling because I was trying to take the weight off of them. Yeah. And you say in the beginning, you say, this is my story. This is my song. And when I read that in the beginning, I didn't quite get it. But once I got to the end, And I did get it. And I think another thing I'd like to talk about right now before we get too deep into your addictions, the food and the alcohol and the narcotics is your wife, Heather, and how she has been such an absolute.
[8:36] You refer to her throughout the whole book as your angel, right? And I think it's so absolutely adorable the way you first asked her out on a date. Can you recall that for us? Yeah, I can't tell you how many people read the book and that know me well, like family that never heard that story. So, yeah, so I was I mean, I was not we went to like private school. And then in eighth grade, we switched over to public. So I was kind of an outsider to begin with. I was not a very popular kid. Heather was a lot more popular than I, and she was a year older than me. And so I was really trying to, what we called back then is go out with her. I don't even know what that really meant, but, you know, have a relationship. And I had been hounding her, bugging her, and she was getting annoyed. And I picked up the phone. This is still when the phone had a big cord attached to it. And I dialed her up. She was babysitting.
[9:39] And I got her on the phone and I had played the song was coming on. Say you will. And I put the phone over the thing and the whole song went through. I picked it up, thought she'd be gone, but she goes, all right, fine. I'll see you tomorrow at my locker. And that was how we started dating over 35 years ago, believe it or not. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Um, and what she put up with is just absolutely, it's, it's remarkable to me. And it just, I guess the fact that she never gave up on you and she, as you talk about in the book, she somehow knew that there was that spark, that there was that ember that was still in there that just needed to basically, you needed to rake the coals and have it kind of breathe, breathe some life into it.
[10:26] Yeah. I mean, I feel like a lot of this, I mean, we were always like best friends, like ever since high school. So, um, it's not how it started out. You know, we had big dreams and big hopes and the white picket fence. We, I can't tell you how many times we'd come home from a date, just dreaming about the day we'd have our own home to come to instead of, you know, mom and dad. adds them. We got married really young. I had been 19 for, I think, three weeks. So we got married really young and we had the whole world in front of us, you know? And I think just little by little, those dreams just got chipped away throughout my journey. And I'm just being real, like there was no less than a hundred times she had every right to walk away and she didn't.
[11:17] And and why do you think she didn't i don't know i don't know um you know obviously we were super committed to each other maybe she saw something that i didn't i had given up you know i had gotten to the point uh when i was 38 i had just like i was just done like i was just waiting to check out i knew it was soon i just you know i was just kind of i wasn't even surviving you know i was It's just trying to get numb day after day after day. Well, and tell me, because I wasn't quite sure on the timeline of some of this stuff, because you started working in, well, you were able to get work on that farm.
[12:02] That really wonderful gentleman that gave you the job on the farm. And then you worked in the machine plant, right, that your dad worked in, correct? Right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, that's where I started having physical problems. Going from the farm, I kept, like, falling and twisting my ankles and things like that. But we just kind of chalked that up to I was a klutz. When I went into the factory, it was a very big, big equipment. I mean, I was a tool and die maker slash machinist. And so, you know, I was working over my head a lot. And that's when my shoulder started dislocating. And, you know, it had gotten to the point that just the pressure from me sneezing would actually dislocate the shoulder. So, you know, we weren't really big into doctors. You know, my mother was a stubborn German. And, you know, we don't do doctors. We don't need medicine. We're too tough for that. So I toughed it out until I totally couldn't. It was just like hanging out of me. Went to the doctor. He took some x-rays.
[13:05] And my capsule in my shoulder was actually seven times larger than it should have been. Everything was so stretched out. So he thought it was just a quick fix. Like we could cut my back open and pull all the tendons and, you know, kind of fold everything together, draw everything back in and he'd stitch me up and I'd be fine. But once he got in there, that's when I was diagnosed with this Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, which basically the collagen in my body has a genetic screw up, which causes like the glue that holds my body together. It's like bubble gum. So I like scarring. You know, we noticed like I'd get a scar and it would like fish mouth, like all this pink scar tissue. My sister also has it. And basically the prognosis, like right in my early 20s was. Go home, do as little as you possibly can. They had disability papers for me, which I tossed in the garbage. They said that I'd be in a wheelchair within five years. And this is how we started our marriage, you know, with a brand new job, but we just bought a rental property and a new home.
[14:14] And we were ready to take on the world. Like we were both hardworking people. And now they're telling me that I'm not going to be able to work. And not only that, I'm going to be in a wheelchair. chair. Along with that came the narcotics because now we have to manage this chronic pain. And that's when I started. And this is, you know, back in the early nineties and mid nineties.
[14:36] You know, I, I went the regular route that, you know, you, I took the Lord tabs till they didn't work and the Percocets, then oxys, like they were getting dispensed like candy. So once I got on the oxycontin, that was really pulled me in hard.
[14:53] And then, you know, I'm kind of going over about a decade of pills and stuff, but I would go through the same kind of things. Like they would work till they didn't work and then they'd get more, then I'd get creative to find more. And then my doctor said, I want to try this drug that's a transdermal patch. So you don't have the ups and downs. And that drug was fentanyl and I had never heard of it. I mean, it wasn't a thing. And, you You know, we know now that fentanyl is awful. It's killing just hundreds of thousands of kids and adults. But this fentanyl patch was a transdermal patch, which means I had a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week supply of it. Along with this, they said, well, keep taking the tablets because these are your brain. When I say tablets, I'm saying, like, my pills used to come in, like, Pringles can size. Like, you know, I would get 240 tablets in a prescription. It wasn't like 30, 60 or 90. These were huge bottles. And how long would a Pringle size jar of pills last you? Not long. I mean, you know, before I knew it, I was sometimes taken, you know, over 30, 40 tablets in a day or more because they just didn't have the same effect. Fact. Like if, if someone would have taken what I was taking, you know, without having a tolerance, they, they would have been dead 10 times over.
[16:17] Um yeah and you know so and i know this sounds weird well you know then so after the fentanyl fentanyl worked great like it was super super effective but it was the same exact cycle it worked great until it didn't um and we did that you know we did the fentanyl we kept going up the dosage until i hit the max so you know here i am on the max dose of fentanyl hundreds of pills in a month. By this time from not moving and finding my other greatest escape was food, right? I was eating. It was easy to get. It was just like a drug. And, you know, the alcohol came in after I couldn't sleep. You know, after I was taking the Maxosa fentanyl, all these pills, and I couldn't sleep through the night. And so I didn't know what to do. You know, I grew up in a super conservative Christian household. I never saw my parents drink. I never saw them smoke. I never hear them swear unless I did something really stupid. And I hadn't been around drinking because we got married so young, we kind of missed that whole party scene. But for some reason, about four or five nights of no sleep, I stopped at a liquor store on my way home. And, you know, that night I filled up an entire tumbler. It was a Disney tumbler glass full of vodka. And I took a handful of pills and I drank the whole glass.
[17:43] And I wish I could say I woke up the next day and had puked all over, had alcohol poisoning, and I felt like crap for two days. I wish I could say I learned my lesson, but unfortunately, that would be just my normal routine. There was no buildup for the alcohol. It was like full on. Let me backtrack for a sec, Tim. For the fentanyl, how long were you on the fentanyl before that kind of, you reached the max dosage of that and it wasn't really doing what you wanted to do anymore? So I would say years. I'm sure, you know, it's such that was such a slow cycle because it I mean, first of all, I remember putting that patch on like how it looked like a giant bandaid. It's like, how could this do anything to you? Like, I, I totally didn't respect it because of that. It just looks so innocent, like the pills I could see.
[18:35] But I remember the first time I took that, I just sat in a chair and I was like, whoa, you know, for hours. And what what happened is through the months uh the the patch was a 36 hour patch so it would kind of dwindle um and then through the months you start like about day two and a half you'd start getting like antsy like i i used to say my veins would itch you know yeah and then you know a month later at two days you're like oh man and then you start putting extra patches on and then And again, getting creative with that stuff, too, which I don't want to give anyone ideas. But yeah, so it did, you know, through the months, it was like a gradual thing. And then you'd go to the next level and that kind of fix everything for a couple months. You know, and I'm going to say within a year, it was useless. You know, it wasn't useless. It was useless to take away pain.
[19:31] Um, but it wasn't useless to not make me sick. Yeah. Addiction is weird. You first, you start to get that high or that buzz or that escape. And then, you know, in time you start taking it, you know, just so you don't get withdrawals, right? Like just because I'm, I'm starting to get antsy. I was starting to get withdrawals. So I take more. And then the last stage, and it's an awful stage. You just use or drink, uh, just so you don't feel as sick. Because you can't fill the void it's it's an unfillable void after a while yeah you you you talk in vivid detail how you just had such a string of just awful nights of sleep you just couldn't figure it out and that's why i think you initially decided to go to the alcohol store which you said you you parked in the parking lot and you just like deliberated going in because You didn't want anybody to see you. You'd never been in a liquor store before. Never. My question to you is, you went in that first time, you got the vodka, and then you started the alcoholism.
[20:41] How often would you go back to that same store to get alcohol? And what did the owner think after a while? He must have thought, wow, this guy is really... Full-blown like into it? Yeah. So, you know, people oftentimes think that addicts or drunks, you know, are these lazy people that just want to be in that position. But the reality is once you get so far in, you have to run it like a business. I mean, we have a couple of businesses now and it literally takes the same kind of skills and systems in place and inventory. So, So, you know, I'm a numbers guy. So I know that probability says the less times I go to that store, the less chance I have to get caught. So it only makes sense when I go to get six, you know, of the biggest bottles they have, which is 1.75 liters.
[21:35] So that's what I started doing. The first time I went in there, I didn't even know what I was going to get. I just knew I needed it because I didn't know anything about alcohol. So the guy's like, can I help you with something? I'm like, yeah, vodka. vodka I need vodka because I knew that was the big one and so you know he pointed to where it was I went all the way down to the bottom got the cheapest stuff I could find and yeah I probably went back like two days later to the same guy but then I would mix it up and and this is like I would go to different stores have different routines um but this is you know one of the things that you're talking about with Heather you know I started manipulating her to the point where where I would coax her into either driving to make it super easy. Cause we could drive around back of the store where the, you know, deliveries were made and I'd have her sit like off the lights. So she was right there to swoop me back up. And I kind of roped her right into helping me get pills and, and alcohol. And so, so was she well aware of the extent of your pill addiction and your alcohol addiction?
[22:44] She was aware it was bad, but I don't know if she ever knew just how bad it was. I let her see enough that she knew what I was doing, but I got really good at just showing pieces. And honestly, Rip, it's the same for food. And it's embarrassing to talk about, but even going to pick up, you know, fast food for dinner, you know, I would always order extra food and I would eat it before I got into the house, hide the wrappers. And it was that same kind of thing. She knew I was eating a lot of food, but she had no clue how much food I was sneaking. I was eating dinner before dinner. And so it was the same with the alcohol. She knew that there was some bottles coming in, but I opened that one chapter up with, I went to empty the bottles out of my closet while she wasn't home and I had a contractor bag, I literally could not pull that bag through the doorway of my closet.
[23:41] And that, no pun intended, but that was a very sobering experience for me. Yeah. And the title of that chapter was Skeletons in the Closet, very appropriately.
[23:52] So at this point, you look in the mirror and what do you see back, Tim?
[24:01] A person I hated. It was hard to even make eye contact. I would avoid the mirror. I mean, I would stand in front of it, you know, to shave and brush my teeth. But like, I did not want to look. I didn't want to make eye contact. And I think, you know, going back to the addiction thing, you know, there's no doubt that and maybe you could even say, I don't even like to say this, but maybe you could say it was even justified. I was taking pills for literally, you know, a dislocation, like my whole body dislocates. And so it's painful. I'm, you know, by the time I was 20, I was loaded with arthritis and I was in pain. So these drugs, the alcohol, the food, they were, I was escaping physical pain, no doubt about it. But early on at some point, I was not masking physical pain anymore. I was masking emotional and spiritual pain way more than physical. I had, I had went way beyond masking physical pain. And so when you can't look at yourself in the mirror you know it's this cycle it's you you you look at yourself you hate who you see you know this is not the purpose for your life you don't really know what the purpose is but this can't be it you feel worse for yourself so you go take more pills or more food or more booze to try to just cover that up because the worst thing you you can do is have a real conversation with yourself.
[25:30] You know, didn't did people in your life.
[25:34] It not pull you aside and say, Hey, Tim, I think you've got some issues that need to be, you need to deal with. Did that, did that happen or not? Or did it just, just kind of go over your head?
[25:46] Well, I, I think that because people ask this too about Heather and my kids were pretty well hidden. They were young at the time they're in, they're in the thirties now, but at the time they were very hidden. And I think that I had this perfect, the same way I was justifying my behavior. Everyone that knew me could justify it too. I mean, I had this weird disease. They were doing studies on me. They were shipping me to, you know, UB med to dislocate me and take pictures. You know, I was like a circus freak. And so it always was Tim is sick. How is Tim doing? How like there was always, I was always at the emergency room. I was at the doctor at least at least once every two weeks. Like that was a good month. It had gotten so bad. Every Tuesday, I would go get my knees drained. Like every single Tuesday, I knew that's what I was doing. I was getting, you know, these big old syringes sucked out of my knees. Like I really, you know, have a problem. I have a disease. And I think that my behavior was almost justified. So no one, I mean, would you ever go up to a, you know, you know, a sick person and say, Hey, you need to get your crap together. Like they should have. I wouldn't listen, but I hid behind this excuse really.
[27:05] Well, and I would imagine. So when you were having the knees drained quite frequently
[27:09] and all that, you were probably at 400 pounds, correct? I was getting there. Yeah. So when I was about 38, that was a, that was a terrible day for, um, standing on the scale and watching the nurse. And I swear they would start lift like one 50, like looking at me, they'd say, and they just keep moving that big weight up, slide in the small weight over. And I just, I just wanted to rip that weight and go right to the top. But, um, I remember it went to three 50 and she's sliding it. And I'm like, come on, come on, you got a tip soon. And it just got to the end and didn't move. And my heart just dropped. stopped. And I saw her, you know, put an X where the weight should be. And I'm thinking to myself, well, now he's not going to know how much weight I gained like this. You can't track it anymore. So I guess I'm free to do whatever I want. But that was that was an awful feeling. So you have a whole chapter in your book where you take people through a typical day in the life of Tim at 400 pounds with, when you're fully addicted to the, the pills and the booze, can you kind of, and the food and the food, can you kind of walk us through what a, from breakfast or waking up until going to bed looks like?
[28:27] Yeah, that's tough. I never had anyone ask me that. That's a tough one. That chapter, I think that you talk about the chapter I don't want to write. I literally didn't want to write that, and it took me forever. I can see why. I can see why. And if you don't want to go through it, that's fine.
[28:45] I'll tell you what, Rip. I'll make you a deal. You let me tell that day in the life, and let me talk about a day in the life now. Oh, no. We're going there. We're getting there. Yeah, we'll even that out. Yeah.
[28:58] Again, you know, for folks listening, this sounds so drastic, but the reality is, you know, no one is safe from what I'm about to talk about because it wasn't this like switch that goes on and all of a sudden, you know, you give up on life and you just want out. This was a very slow fade over time. And I never saw it coming until I was so far in that I didn't know how to get out. But so I typically would wake up in the morning, very, very sick, very spin. I don't think I've ever said this on a podcast before. I got in the habit of taking our biggest bath towel. I'd fold it in about four times and I put it down before I went to bed because I knew that I would lose bladder function through the night. So I would usually urinate every night. Most of the time I'd wake up with some vomit on the side of my face and spins. I just felt awful. I would make my way to the shower, try to get some hot water going on me. And, you know, the taste, the taste in my mouth is probably the worst thing in the dry mouth. And as soon as I got out of the shower, the first thing I could think of is like, I'm already going through withdrawals just from sleeping through the night.
[30:20] I'm already withdrawing. And if anyone's ever been through withdrawals, I would not wish that on my worst enemy. They're awful, especially fentanyl withdrawals.
[30:30] You'd rather be dead than go through them. And And...
[30:35] I would go to my dresser, you know, and I'd pop a handful of pills just to try to get going. Most of the time I would chew them up so they worked faster. And I would make my way down, you know, to get to work. And by this time that I'm talking to you, Heather would have to put my socks and shoes. I couldn't get dressed. Just putting my clothes on was a chore. I'd be out of breath and already sweated up. The one thing I didn't put in the book, but Heather had went out and bought me duplicates of my shirts because by the time i'd get to work i'd be so sweated wet um that i was embarrassed to change my shirt at work so she would buy me duplicates so i could take two clean shirts to work sweat one up put the next one on and no one knew that i was changing on the way to work i would stop at burger king i always got two sausage eggs and croissants with two orders of hash browns and always a large diet something, whether it's Coke or Pepsi, to wash it down.
[31:34] I'd get to work, and I just would be so tired that every one of our planning mods I teach, I would just kind of take a nap on my desk with my head slumped over. I would do what I could do to, you know, do my job. Lunchtime, I would go get two half-pound burritos from this local taco place. Most of the time, Heather would pack me a lunch, so I would eat that as well. Um, after work is done, I would leave and I would get my snack before dinner and that back to Burger King, I'd usually get about four things off the dollar menu. Two of them were always like a Whopper Junior.
[32:12] Then literally on the way, as I'm sitting in line for fast food, I'd be calling and ordering pizza and wings to eat with the kids, um, on the way home. And then as soon as I got home, it was game on to see how many pills I could drink. I could take and drinking only really happened towards the very end this changed a little bit but I was only drinking literally five minutes before I went to bed um but but by this time I was drinking you know half of that bottle I had 1.75 liter and I would drink just about half of it um you know about a two cups of it and so I wasn't really like drinking all night towards the end I I would start coming home and drinking earlier. And then I would just pass out and just repeat this process day in and day out. Did you ever tally up how many calories you were consuming a day on average? Yeah, I speak to a lot of high schools. And so the kids always want to see this very visual. So I'd actually show them what I was eating. And it was over 10,000 calories, give or take. So, yeah. Yeah. So how do the kids react to your story?
[33:29] What what like what what do they ask great questions afterwards? Are they moved? What are you finding? Yeah. So I don't know. So I show this a lot on social media because I like to remember it. But I have literally thousands of letters from kids like stacks, like two feet high. and it's really cool that.
[33:54] So the kids, so the students there now would not, they wouldn't recognize me, you know, 10 years ago. But the kids that were there for my journey, now they're almost 30 now. And they're really, they're, we're friends on Facebook. They keep in touch. We had a plant-based restaurant. A lot of them would come in and say hello.
[34:13] But the students, I'm so blessed to be able to do this because the kids in my school, we have a very big high school. Every one of them watches Forks Over Knives in health class. And then when they finish watching that film, I come in and give them a talk on nutrition. And then usually later on in the year, I give them another talk about addiction, recovery, and social, kind of social media stuff, self-worth goals, challenges, overcoming challenges, life's ups and downs. So I am so happy that I can. So every kid, thousands of kids go through our school district and I get to talk to each one. And I've done some, you know, commencement talks before at high school. So, yeah, they they you know, they're they're inspired, they're moved. But they they always ask, like, what do you miss the most? They really want to know what I eat in a day most of the time. Yeah.
[35:13] That is so fantastic that you are talking to the kids about addiction because we know that it is absolutely so prevalent in this culture. And I think just about every family has seen it in some way, shape, or form. So you say in your book, and then this is going to lead to the next place that I want to go with you. You say there wasn't a drug in the world that was strong enough to hide me from the self-loathing and bitter person that I had become.
[35:45] And you say that now you're. You go to bed with a smile on your face and a song in your heart. That is so absolutely spectacular. And so I want to, let's talk for a sec about where that, where was that pivot? And I, and I'm going to lay it out for you based upon the book. So your father died, your, your ma be, which is your wife's mother, who you just adore to the, to the moon and back and was so selfless and giving and wonderful. She is now on her deathbed right and she's on her deathbed she's got very very little energy and she says four words to you tim when you go into visit her in the hospital that basically flip the switch and change everything talk to me about that yeah that was um i tell people that perspective switch saved my life but it came with a very high price, And yeah, so Ma B, she kind of wasn't feeling good, kind of had like a cold
[36:50] flu thing, wasn't getting better. I mean, we begged her to go to the doctor. She wouldn't. She was busy working. And so finally she broke down, went to the doctor. She was diagnosed with leukemia.
[37:02] And it seems like overnight, you know, it went from who's going to take the kids to softball to who's staying with Ma tonight. And we have a cancer hospital here that is cutting edge. It's called Roswell Cancer Center. And they do amazing things there, but I had never been there in my life. I mean, we know it because it's a world-renowned place here in the city of Buffalo. But I went up, you know, I call it the Roswell experience because I went into Roswell and I don't know what Heather was doing. And I And I don't really remember, but I know it was just me and Mabi. And she was so tired. She was waiting on a transfusion. And she would get so tired before she got transfused. And she opens her eyes super slow. And she says, how's your knee? And it just pierced me.
[37:56] It shows you how cool of a lady she is. But, you know, I had complained so much. That's all I ever did. You know, my knee hurts. My ankle hurts. My shoulder hurts. Everything hurts. I wish I had this. I don't have this. If I just had this, that I just got so consumed in everything that I needed and everything that was wrong that I never stopped to think about the things that were right. And in that day, I thought, oh my gosh, she's worried about my knee. Like she's waiting for a blood transfusion. Like, are my problems really that big? Um, in comparison, and I remember like that really, that really hurt and walking out of Roswell, it even compounded more because it was so sad leaving her, you know, she was, she just loved the life. She was just full of life and, you know, she felt really bad when we'd walk away.
[38:54] And I thought, man, you know, my niece sucks, but I'm walking away from the hospital. And I get to walk out on my own power. And there's going to be people that instead of complaining about a knee, they're going to get their whole leg amputated from a tumor. And I get to walk out of the hospital doors and there's people behind me that will never come home. And it really, it really changed perspective that, you know what? I got healthy kids. I got a wife that loves me. I got a warm place to sleep. I have no chemo in my veins. I'm not waiting for transfusions. and I don't know I just started looking for things to be grateful for and that was a huge change for me you know it was because I I do all these plant-based things and my transformation I think um you know the plant-based was certainly one of my best tools but I don't think it would have mattered if I wouldn't have found gratitude first and then after dad had my dad passed away way during that time, we found out he, he had like a lung thing. We thought he had pneumonia. So he went and got a chest x-ray. And they found out that dad had stage four kidney cancer that had metastasized to his whole body. And here, my dad is my best friend. Like we hunted together, we fished together, we built stuff together. We, you know, we had an amazing relationship and here the doctor saying he has six months to live.
[40:24] Well, my dad didn't make it six months. He made it six weeks to the day. And I lost my best friend in the whole world. Yeah. You know, I think that was the next switch that kind of flipped was, you know, life is precious, you know. And we say, you know, we pay lip service to this thing like, well, we're not promised tomorrow. But do we really understand that? You know, when you're sitting at the side of a 65-year-old man's funeral, whose life was just snuffed out so early, like life is precious. And here I am wasting days. Not only am I wasting days, I'm complaining about how I'm wasting them instead of enjoying everyone. And then, you know, after that, you know, Heather's mom would lose her battle. She had leukemia that would turn into lymphoma and ultimately a brain tumor.
[41:16] Would take her life. And, you know, here are our two most precious people in the world just gone. And it's like, they would do anything to come. They would do anything just to live one more day to spend with their family. And here I am just wasting my life, just trying to escape it and just pass time until I passed away. So yeah, those are two very important kind of switches, I guess,
[41:43] if you want to call them that. Yeah. Well, and in the book, you kind of describe it as you talked about how let's just, you know, life, your life, you die, your life gets snuffed out. And but yours wasn't quite snuffed out. And between your father and Mabi, they were able to kind of turn over a little bit of an ember that was still flickering. It still had a little life in it. And then you said that God blew on it and ignited your passion and your purpose for living again. And so what was it that you wrote in your diary on August 3rd?
[42:24] Yeah. So, so I, I think this is a good point. I love sharing my story, but I love teaching more than I like to share my story. And I think this is a good, a good point for, you know, people that are listening to this, like, I'm going to tell you, I did a lot of wrong stuff. In fact, in the beginning I did everything wrong, but looking back, it was the best thing that I could ever do because I did something. And I would like to encourage people to do, if you're stuck, do Do something, even if you don't have it figured out, even if it's wrong, just do something because it'll get you out of that rut. And so that's what I did. I this is a really weird I I don't believe in coincidence, but I have no idea why I did this. I asked Heather for a spiral notebook.
[43:10] The kids had burned up a couple of pages in it. So I tore them out and I started. I mean, I so my goal was not to be healthy. My goal was not even to get healthy. My goal was, I'm going to go back just a little bit, but I don't know what made this day special. But I sat down at the kitchen table with my socks and my shoes. And Heather, I didn't even ask Heather. She came right over, slid my sock on, slid the second sock on, and she tapped the side of my leg. Like not in a condescending way but she goes okay you're all set kind of like you would a little kid and i slid my shoes on and when i our eyes met that morning i'm like oh my gosh i'm i'm the next funeral like and i don't know why this stuff was in my head but weird things like the the funeral brunch like oh my gosh she's gonna have to call a restaurant and get that taken care of she's gonna going to have to pick out a casket. I wasn't going to make it another year. And I think my doctor knew that. I had gotten to the point where I would lay on my bed and I'll put the remote for the TV and my heart was pounding so hard that it would get air under it. You could literally see every beat. You could see air underneath the remote.
[44:29] And all I could think of was we just buried two people. I did not know all the stuff that goes in gets crammed into two days of preparing for a funeral. But I did not want Heather to have to do that.
[44:42] I wanted to literally put space between funerals. I had no interest in like getting healthy or anything. I just wanted to live a little longer. I feel like that I was playing the cards that I was dealt. I was doing okay with them. them, but I had a bad deck of cards and are a bad hand of cards. And what was I going to do about it? Yeah. So, so that's where, um, I, I grabbed a notebook and I'm like, well, first, you know, I tried to get the bariatric surgery and I was so sick. I was denied for that. I thought that would be my way out. Um, at the time I went to get the, you know, the kind of, I thought was a a rubber stamp. My blood pressure was 255 over 115. My heart rate was over 125 laying on the table. I was on almost 20 prescription meds a month.
[45:35] I mean, anything, I was on two blood pressure pills, a calcium channel blocker, beta blocker. I was on a statin. I was on all sort of stuff. They get rid of one thing and get a side effect for the other. And I was not in good shape. My kidneys had shut down about three times, probably more than that. And I knew I was in bad shape, but I was in such bad shape. The doctor wouldn't sign off on the surgery. He didn't know how to react to the anesthesia with all the drugs I was on. And he was worried about my heart. So he denied the surgery and I went home. I'm like, he killed me. This is my now it's my doctor's fault. Like all these bad choices I made, of course, are my doctor's fault.
[46:18] But I remember laying and and not not to keep going back to the that Ma B but you know I remember laying there in bed thinking what am I going to do like I'm done, And I couldn't stop thinking about the day, the last day she went to Roswell. And, you know, at this point, I don't want to get real graphic about it, but she had a very sizable, noticeable tumor coming out of her head. And I mean, she was just, you know, she was at the end of her life. And the doctor is like, Carol, why do you want to keep getting radiation?
[46:55] And she goes, I just want to be here for my family. And I couldn't shake that. You know, I couldn't shake that out of my head that night. And I'm like, man, just out of respect for my bees life, I gotta do something. I don't know what it is, but I gotta do something. So that's when I grabbed the notebook and I wrote down the song that I had earlier to earlier in the day. It says, this is the first day of the rest of your life. And I wrote down a menu and I knew, uh, that, you know, Turkey was better than red meat. I was eating a ton of like cheddar cheese, sharp cheese. I knew that mozzarella was supposed to be more healthy. So I wrote down some of these swaps and I thought, okay, I got the food down. So that's a start. I got to get exercise. Well, at this point, I, about a week prior to this, I had gotten out of my chair in my office and I actually broke both handles off. I was lifting myself up. I broke both handles. I was humiliated. And my colleague, you know, he came down and he He goes, oh, that chair has seen better days. And he wheeled me in a new chair. And I thought, man, get in the chair. That's what I got to do.
[48:05] If I can sit down in the chair and stand up, then I can do it twice. So my exercise literally was chair times two.
[48:14] And that was my exercise. And you know what? Looking back, I was doubling my workload. Sure, it's not an ultra or an Ironman, but I was doubling my workload, which I don't know if I could do that today. Um, yeah. And then I got home and the page looks so empty. I'm like, oh, and I also wrote something I was grateful for. And in that, that time it was my family. I wrote something I was grateful for that day. And I got home and it looked, I looked it over. I'm like, yeah, I did everything on there. And I just put at the bottom, I said, you did good. And I just flipped it. Never thought about it until I was writing my book. But the reality was you did good in the bottom of that book was the first act of self-love that I could remember in my life. And what's cool about it, writing it down, I couldn't take it back. You know, I couldn't self-loathe and say, yeah, you didn't really do it. You think you did. It was there in black and white. And it was the first time I'd ever celebrated success.
[49:18] And that success would want, you know, it would breed more success because I felt good about that. And that's kind of where my journey, I guess, started. Yeah. And then that led to you basically stopping the booze, stopping the narcotics and the fentanyl and all that. Yeah, the pills, the pills I was up and down, you know, kind of always withdrawing on them and never could get enough things like so. So then, you know, as I'm going through that, I catch this film called Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead on Netflix, which is, you know, that's how my plant-based journey started was through a 30 day juice fast. But I can remember standing over my juicer with a whole like lip full of Copenhagen snuff, sipping kale, cucumber and green apple juice. And I'm like, something's wrong. Like, I can't be trying to fix myself on nutrition while I'm poisoning myself. But yeah, the pills went first, alcohol, cold turkey.
[50:14] Again, for your listeners, go get help. There's help out there. I was too embarrassed in the public sector. I should have got help. Uh, the fentanyl was a little different story than, than cold Turkey, but the fentanyl was very hard to come off of and be, you know, using my engineering background, I, I got some dial calipers out and I made some scratches on a template and, you know, every time I'd put a new patch on, I'd, I'd cut a 16th of an inch off and, and discarded. And, man, within a few months, the patches got smaller and smaller and, you know, it got to the point where it wasn't worth putting that last one on. And, man, that was freedom right there, you know. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Congrats, Tim, on that. Huge congrats.
[51:06] You again, you know, you say you don't have to have everything figured out to take that first step. What does the date December 31st, 2012 mean to you?
[51:19] Pickled herring. Yeah. So that was so I watched Joe Cross. It was so inspiring, to be honest with you, Rip. I had no clue what this guy was doing. And I just knew he got results and he got the same results I wanted to get. And so the truth is, like, I didn't do anything heroic here because if he would have been putting steak and pizza on that machine, I would have done it. You said in the book, you said raccoon turds. Yeah, it's true. I didn't even really pay attention to what I mean. mean, I kind of knew what he was doing. The thing that I was most focused on is, you know, he felt so good. And, you know, I didn't even care so much about the weight loss, but he was getting rid of stuff that he had dealt with forever, medical, chronic illness. And plus he met a bunch of people along the way. He did a 60 day fast and it was so inspiring that I ordered a juice faster or a juice, a juicer and decided to do a fast on January 1st.
[52:23] And, you know, I went out and got some produce. And so it was, it was just about midnight and we had a tradition of raw fish. I have no idea why I don't even know what it's for, but they had toothpicks in it. And I popped one in my mouth and I still had like 40 seconds and I'm like, I'll grab another one. So I took a couple pieces of pickled herring, never thinking that that would be the last animal product I would ever consume.
[52:50] Um, but January 1st came and, you know, the first three days of the juice fast were hell. It was awful, but I know Joe had trouble too. So when I had to, I would just go to bed. And by day four, my hunger had subsided. You got to remember something, you know, with this, with this disease I have, I had so much inflammation in my joints, but you know, the fast food, the oils, the salts, the sugars, the animal products, these are all very inflammatory foods.
[53:21] And all of a sudden those come to a stop and I'm flooding my body with nutrients. It's going right into my bloodstream. So it's like a double whammy. You know, I'm getting rid of the poison. I'm getting my body, you know, the cool thing about this that I think the biggest thing that's, that just jumps out at me is that our bodies don't want to be sick. They don't want to be hurting. They want to be healthy, but we got to give him the fuel to get there and i wasn't giving my body the right fuel so day four hunger subsides by day five i get goosebumps every time i tell this and i've told this story literally a thousand times make it a thousand and one day five i woke up in the morning and i was in the same exact position falling asleep and that was a miracle to me i had It's been so many nights, a decade in pain and just tossing, you know, with EDS, every time you lay down your, your joints kind of relax. And that's when you get all the dislocation and the arthritis starts crying. And man, you know, five days, I will. And that's all I ever wanted to do was wake up with a full night's sleep.
[54:35] Six day, seven eczema starts going away. My eyes start clearing up sleep apnea goes. I'm not snoring as loud. You know through day 15 and 20 i have more energy i'm bored sitting watching tv i'm forgetting to take medicines um my skin color's coming back i just i'm feeling like a million bucks but i'm like what am i gonna do i can't juice the rest of my life because i watched fat sick and nearly dead yeah film called forks over knives i never heard of it and i was gonna say rip uh you're the first I ever heard say the word nutritional yeast and I'll never forget you climbing up, you know, that, that fireman's pole. And, um, that, what that did is showed me like, I could just consume, I could eat what I was juicing and.
[55:28] Along with, you know, legumes and grains and whole grains and nuts and seeds. And I had my my plant-based diet. I didn't really know the plant-based diet at the time, but, yeah, I had everything I needed. And, you know, I think it worked to my advantage about not having a whole bunch of information like that was all I knew. So that was all I did. And I think the start of my journey was very simple and unconfused. And now I feel like we're swimming in information out there and, you know, there was no vegan impossible burgers and all this other stuff to get confused by. I just knew that if I ate whole grains, I fell in love with lentils and kale and I learned how to use an instant pot. It wasn't really a good cook, but I knew how to jam stuff in the instant pot and it would come out tasting good. If it didn't, I'd make soup out of it. And that's how I started. I kept it really super simple. Yeah. And so food was able to do the opposite of what it did previously. Now it was able to truly transform your life. And you talk about how you watch Forks Over Knives and you talk in really great detail about that first apple that you had and how incredible that apple was. But what I want to do is I want to skip over the food part right now.
[56:48] You know, you were able to lose 200 pounds. You were able to get off the 20 prescription meds that you were on. You were able to bring your cholesterol down from 300 to 107 without meds. I think it's 103 now, but yeah. Oh, okay. Okay.
[57:04] But what I want to talk to you about right now is the walk and that flutter that you got in your stomach when your wife basically asked you to go on a white walk with your kids and how that really has led to your athletic endeavors yeah so so heather you know she she.
[57:28] She was walking with the kids quite often. The kids were younger. And she was getting ready to leave. And she goes, hey, do you want to go for a walk? And I'm like, what did you do to the car? Why would you walk when there's a vehicle in the driveway? It didn't make sense to me. And so I was kind of so, I don't know. I wasn't nasty, but I was kind of like so sarcastic. I felt bad because I could just see that look in her eyes. And I'm like, hold on, I'm coming. At the time, I was in these things called immobilizers. So the doctors thought it was the best thing to do to brace everything up so it would stop falling apart. My knees were awful. So they put me in immobilizers. And what an immobilizer is, if you ever, like, really injure your leg acutely, they lock your whole leg. It's almost like you have a log. And they had me in two of these things. So if you can imagine, you know, I was pretty big. And I got these two, like, tree trunks that I'm walking on. And so the goal was to walk about, we didn't know it at the time, but it was to one street turnaround, but after I clock it, it's three quarters of a mile out and back, and I didn't make it.
[58:36] I was so excited to be with them and be back a part of the family because I was always left behind. We got to the point where we couldn't even get in the car for more than 40 minutes. I'd be vomiting all over the place. My knees couldn't handle it. So it was really nice to be part of the family. and I got a little less than halfway through the walk and I was done. I just couldn't go anymore. And I felt awful. So Heather kind of made a game out of it, like, hey, let's go rescue daddy. Let's go get the car. So they came back, picked me up, and I put a bunch of ice on my knees. I almost went to the emergency room. But the next weekend, man, I just had a burn to go. I was mad that I didn't finish because I really wanted that. And I went back and I finished that walk. And then the next weekend, you know, we'd walk a little longer. And from there, the doctors told me to never walk on uneven ground. I ended up picking up a pair of really solid hiking boots, and I started hiking. And, you know, one mile turned into two, and then two turned into five. And, yeah, that's kind of my activity journey started there. It sure did. And you went from that to... I mean, doing triathlons, doing a half Ironman in Lake Placid, and doing what?
[59:58] Doing, what was it, 46 peaks? Or what was it? No, I did have my eyes on that. But after I climbed my first viewless peak, I decided it wasn't for me. But yeah, I did climb. So we call them the high peaks. So there's 46 high peaks in the Adirondacks. That's kind of a really funny story. My cousin comes over and he shows me this picture he took with his phone. And he said, you know, he said the typical, oh, you know, the picture doesn't do it justice. You got to see it with your own eyes. And then he said something that was literally life changing for me. He said, do you realize how few people stand on top of that mountain and see it with their own eyes? and I'm like, I got to be one of those people. So I call my doctor, the same doctor that denied me the bariatric surgery. I said, Hey doc, I'm going to be climbing mountains soon. So I got to get out of these immobilizers. What are we going to do about it? And Rip, he didn't laugh at me. He said, I'm going to send you to a prosthetic place. They casted my legs. They made me these really fancy carbon fiber braces. And I just started walking stairs, five, 10 stairs turned into 20 turned into 30, to eventually hundreds of stairs to where I would actually just time myself. And that led to, in 2012, I climbed my first high peak and it was magical.
[1:01:25] I'm supposed to be in a wheelchair and I'm standing 4,700 feet climb on top of the world. Yeah, yeah.
[1:01:35] I want to talk to you for a second about grace the grace race and conquering the hill and because to me in reading all about everything that you've done all the ultras and the the triathlons and the 5ks and everything it sounds like that 5k, Was it maybe it isn't, but in my, from my perspective, from reading the book, it seems like that was the most heartfelt accomplishment that you had with your wife, Heather. Yeah, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. That was the most special thing. I think what made it extra special is we didn't know what we were doing. You know, we had, we had no, I didn't even know what a bib was. I'm like, what is this piece of paper? I watch everyone like sticking pins in themselves. I'm like, what are you guys doing? And so we really didn't know what we were getting into. And in fact, I'll tell you what, when I asked Heather if she'd want to do a 5K, she had no idea how long a 5K was. And my daughter chimes in and she goes, do you realize that's for real people?
[1:02:40] I'm like, well, we're real people. She goes, no, like real runners. And I'm like, well, we could do it. So it's funny because I live on a third of a mile loop. Right. And I went around and I put about five water bottles out. So like every hundred feet, there's a water bottle. Yeah. Yeah. And because we didn't know what we were doing. But yeah, so we trained really, really hard. And my only goal was to run it without stopping. And I forgot about this hill at the end. But, you know, we started out together and we just made a deal that we were going to do our own thing. And then someone actually someone someone read the book and they they went back and investigated. And I think Heather was about 40 seconds ahead of me. So I got to watch her finish and we got so emotional at the end of that. People thought we got really bad news. Yeah. No, you know, you said you guys were just sobbing. Yeah, it was bad. It was bad. You know, Tim, you say that a journey worth traveling has no end. Can you tell me what that means to you?
[1:03:44] Yeah, I think as I get older, it changes. And as I get further in my journey, not only does it not have an end, but we work on different parts of ourselves. I've had a rough, I've had a rough couple. In fact, that book was supposed to end at my half Ironman Lake Placid. That was the culmination of the book. And I, I hired a book coach and I said, look at, My story fell apart after that. Everything went to crap.
[1:04:15] Most of the things that I had to undig through were because I made bad choices, right? Then all of a sudden, I'm doing everything right and everything starts falling apart. I lose function on my legs. I had a failed ankle surgery. I had a tumor. I had an ulnar nerve surgery. I had a muscle reattachment. Then they tell me that they got to amputate my foot or fuse it, but they didn't know if the fusion. So, I mean, I've been, these past couple of years have taught me a lot. So the point I'm trying to make is our journey isn't just one linear path. It's got multiple facets to it and it shouldn't have a destination. You know, I look behind me at all these metals and, you know, the eight minute at miles and stuff, and I'm never going to get back to there. I'll still log miles because I enjoy doing it. But, you know, the biggest thing with your journey is not to compare yourself to other people, which a lot of people know that. But what I'm learning now is not to compare myself to who, where I think I should be or where I was five years ago. And I think the idea to this is, you know, keep the blinders on in your journey and you just keep moving forward. word. And the biggest takeaway is to do the best you can with the tools you have available now.
[1:05:39] Tim, I want to talk for a sec about, so you said that the last couple of years have been rough between the ankle, should they amputate? Should we do the fusion? You also woke up that one morning and your legs, you found out that you had spinal stenosis and you had surgery for that. And you you said the only way that you were going to do this surgery, if there was no opiates. So can you tell everybody the conversation that you have with the doctors and, around the opiates? Yeah, that was a tough one. Uh, I was in a really bad place with that. I, because I literally lost, they, they thought I might have ALS because I lost function on my legs. It was awful. Um, but so what they had to do is they had to remove, um, four of the five lamina from my lumbar spine. They made a deal not to put a cage in or not, not to fuse my back because I wanted to ride my tri bike and I didn't know how I'd do it. So he said I had a really strong core. So the surgery was brutal. 32 staples over a foot long cut up my spine. They had to move a lot of muscle, a lot of stuff. It was going to be very painful, brutal, brutal surgery.
[1:06:53] And I didn't know how to tell the doctor this, but I made myself a promise that I would never take opioids again. So we're wheeling back there. There's a team of about 12 doctors by this point. And right before they're, you ready to go, Mr. Kaufman? I'm like, yeah, there's just one thing. I do not want any opioids before, during, or after. And everyone stopped. And the anesthesiologist said, well, why is that? And I said, well, I had a really bad addiction to opioids and I don't ever want to take him again. And he kind of got down low and he says, you know, you're not going to relapse. You won't even know you have them. I'm like, that's not the point. He goes, well, what's the point? And I said, I made two promises with myself. One, I would never put that poison in my blood again. And two, I would never break that promise.
[1:07:50] And they were, they were all crying. and they made me cry and they left for about five or ten minutes and they all came back and they said okay change of plans and um so i did that surgery um and and what made this one a little more special is there's they can't do local like for my my legs they can do bone or nerve blocks, and they can really juice them up uh with the spine you can't do that, because i had to walk out of the hospital um but you know what rip.
[1:08:22] I was waiting for the pain train. I've had about five surgery with no opioids. I was waiting for the pain train and it never came. I just relax, stay grateful, listen to music, write a little bit. And I did just fine. Yeah. You say in the very beginning and the very end of this, of your book, this is a book about perspective, period.
[1:08:46] Perspective almost killed me, but it also shattered my chains and gave me a new life. Anything you want to add to that?
[1:09:21] Book is, hey, I made really bad decisions. Everyone around me paid for them, as did I. And then I got my crap together, right? But just because you make good decisions doesn't mean life is going to be a bowl of cherries. And we have to remember that we get to choose how we see the situation.
[1:09:43] And I always like to use the word, but. Like, yep, this sucks, but I got this. Or, But at least I don't have this. So and I think that takes practice, the perspective, because it's easy to get in a place where we just stew over our problems and just regurgitate them and life will suck. And I think another thing that society, I'm sorry, they call me fat man rants because I'm trying not to rant. But another thing society has kind of trained us to do is think that life is always supposed to be perfect. We look at Instagram. We see snapshots of these beautiful lives. Why can't ours be like them? Life sucks sometimes. You know, I tell students that life is going to suck, but it's okay because, one, it's temporary. Two, there's other people going through it. Find people to help you. It's not going to last forever, you know. And I think without having the lows, we can't get the highs. And when we use things like food and drugs to escape, we want to have this like flatlined life. We're missing out on all the good stuff. I wouldn't know how good it is to wake up in the morning and feel great if I didn't experience how badly I felt when I woke up on drugs, alcohol with no hope. And I think perspective, the most beautiful thing about perspective is we get to decide how we see things.
[1:11:11] Bravo. What's going on on July 21st, 2024? Something that we should be staying tuned to? Yeah. Honestly, I said it last time, ended the book with this. This is going to be my last time. I got a little bit of news in November. I got to get a new knee. I got a torn meniscus on the outside and inside, torn ACL, and there's nothing left in my knee. They wanted to replace it, And I said, let's schedule that for September because I got a long summer of training. And, you know, I've been training up to in the 80 miles on the bike, 18 miles on the run. We ran Nashville half last week. So I'm doing good. I'm doing good. But I do need a new knee. So this will be my last hurrah. Lake Placid. I can't think of a better year to do it. It's the 25th anniversary. Mike Riley is coming back to announce it. He's coming out of retirement. So it's going to be a party up there.
[1:12:09] Yeah. Tim, so many incredible gems that you have shared with people. I highly recommend that everybody go to Amazon. Where's the best place to get this, Tim? What do you recommend? Yeah, Amazon.
[1:12:29] We have a few signed copies left on our website. We went through a ton of them, but yeah, Amazon is probably the best place. The audio version is out too, and I've heard it's really good. Yeah. Are you the one that reads it? I did. Yeah. I set up a little studio here. It was a pain. Good for you. One of my biggest regrets with my books was that I didn't take the time to read them. I was like, oh, I can't take, because they wanted me to fly to New York and take five days to read, especially the first one. And I was like, oh no, I'm so regretful now. So way to go. Way to do that. Yeah. Thank you. Hey, Rip, I just want to say one more thing before we say goodbye yeah you know this lifestyle you know the the plant-based lifestyle the the overcoming challenges like there's nothing special about me i need people to understand i don't have more willpower than someone else i don't have any magic powers and you know i'm i'm just a normal guy and this lifestyle honestly it's out there for anyone and that's why i do what i do I mean, I have a really good life now. I have a great career, but we spend a lot of time, thousands of hours, just telling people that this is out there for anyone.
[1:13:43] There's no magic about this. It's just eating whole food that's exclusively plants and just having a good attitude, right?
[1:13:51] And just not quitting. And anybody can do this, really. And it doesn't matter if you have 400 pounds to lose or 10 pounds to lose or you just want to get healthy. It's all the same process. Just eat whole plant foods. That's all it is. And have a good attitude.
[1:14:09] And hooray, I cannot wait to follow you July 21st, 2024. No matter what happens, you're there and you're in the arena and you're going for it. And that's what I love. Yeah, yeah. Rip, I appreciate it. It's been a great chatting with you. Hey, give me a PLANTSTRONGvirtual fist bump, my man. Bam. All right. Hey, I'll talk to you soon. Thanks. All right. Bye-bye. Tim's memoir, Escape, Breaking Free from a Self-Made Prison, is out wherever books are sold. And I'll be sure to put a link to purchase it in the show notes for today, along with his social media channels where you can follow his journey to Ironman and beyond. Thanks so much for listening to the PLANTSTRONG podcast. And remember, there is always hope, and sometimes it just takes one small change to begin to turn it around. As always, keep it PLANTSTRONG forever and ever.
[1:15:10] The PLANTSTRONG podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, and Ami Mackey. If you like what you hear, do us a favor and share the show with your friends and loved ones. You can always leave a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And while you're there, make sure to hit that follow button so that you never miss an episode. As always, this and every episode is dedicated to my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. and Anne Crile Esselstyn. Thanks so much for listening.
[1:15:46] Music.
