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Porter Freeman, Body-for-Life Challenge Director and one of the most popular EAS Physique Transformation Champions of all time, lends his personal insights and fitness advice in his unique, indelible style. The following is a question and answer session between Eric Shrieves and Porter Freeman. Eric Shrieves - Porter, it's been awhile my friend. We really need to catch up.I understand that you have some very exciting and recent news to share with everyone. Porter Freeman - Well...things stay pretty
exciting here at EAS. The 1st of December we were bought by Abbott
Laboratories. They are a world leader in Health Care. We come under the
Direction of Ross Pharmaceuticals. Everyone here is pretty excited about this
new adventure. And, after 55 years in the making and 4 years in the writing,
my book "FinallyFit at 50 " is published and on line at eas.com. I included
your routine for staying under 200 pounds for the last 7 years. I wrote about
some of the other Champions and how they did it. I wrote about some tragedies
and some triumphs......I wrote about Life its' self. You know Eric it would be
hard to improve on the Body for Life program and that's not what this book is
about. It is about why we can not throw our lives away, we don't have the
right to do that. PF - Well since I no longer spend the night in
bars, I seem to get a lot more accomplished when I go home at 5:o'clock! As
you know I travel a lot and spend a great deal of time in airports and hotel
rooms. Over the past few years I learned so much from other Challengers and
Champions. I looked back and saw we had a pretty common reason or fall which
landed us in bad shape. I began to see a pattern. So, when I had a free minute
I wrote about a thousand pages longhand and got it down to 200 pages for this
book. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you "make it a priority". PF - I can't remember exactly but I think you
are mentioned somewhere in the book....Concerning the 2005 BodyforLife
Challenge, you got it right. We are going to have the same 12 weeks, the same
essay portion and it is open to everyone in the world who wants to finally get
fit. This time we are doing something a little different: we are going to
award one Grand Champion "One Million Dollars" It is a winner take all
Challenge. We always had 10 Champions each years since 1997 and this year we
decided to take it up a notch. One best of the best and one million dollars.
Maybe I should dye my hair and shave the moustache and try to enter! Just
kidding. My reward every year is seeing the outstanding accomplishments from
the Challengers. PF - Your right, it is real and it stays real. If someone reading this is out of shape and unhealthy, all they have to do is apply real effort and reap real results. The real truth is "FinallyFit at 50" is for anyone any age looking for a way out of the rut. They just have to really want out. I didn't do anything they can't do. I love coming back to Orlando and visiting. The spirit is willing but the timetable is a tad weak. I have to visit new Champions and have several world tours coming up. We were working on a trip with truck loads of supplements to Iraq but it just could not happen. I hope all the young men and women are home safe this time next year or sooner. Give my best to everyone and keep doing what you are doing. Your pal, Porter ES - Appreciate your time to share some thoughts and updates with me. Have a safe and happy holiday, my friend. Archive Eric Shrieves - More than a few people are asking just what your life is like now, five years after being one of the winners of the 1997 EAS Physique Transformation Challenge (Wow, has it been five years!) Will you share that with us? Porter Freeman - It is hard to believe it's been 5 years. Time is moving on.......Thank goodness I have been healthy for these 5 years. The only sad part is realizing each day how many days I wasted being unhealthy. My Life changed in every way possible after the 84 days. Notice I didn't say after winning the Challenge, although that is true, but it changed during the 84 days and has stayed changed since day 85. I am now the Director of the Body-for-Life Challenge in Golden Co. I get to read, see and submit my scores on the packets that come in each year. There is a group of us here at EAS that have the primary responsibility to narrow the Challenger kits down to the top few hundred each year. What a job! I also get to travel all over the world and meet success stories from everywhere. I could go on and on but to sum it up, I used to sell liquor, now I sell Myoplex. Pretty big difference. PF - True that sometimes because of travel, it is difficult to train like I want to. I am gone about 3 weeks out of each month. Good thing I don't have a family or a dog. They neither one would understand. I work out where I can, when I can. Sometimes it's only pushups and sit ups in my hotel room. Sometimes I run the stairs in the hotel but I do it quietly. Regardless, I can usually get some sort of a blood flow going if there is a gym nearby or not. The most important part of the question is the nutrition. It is the key for me. I refuse to eat poorly regardless of where I am. It just isn't going to happen. If I can't get a workout, all the more reason to eat healthy. I have made myself a promise to never go over 200 pounds again in this life. I may have to stop exercising one day but I (nor you ) have to eat crap. I just refuse to do it. Also having a supply of
low-carbs handy doesn't hurt anything. I can name a hundred hotels across America that put out a free breakfast in the morning. I go past the donuts, the
French toast and syrup, the pastry and get a bowl of oatmeal and an apple. That's just the way it is. PF - Lord that's a tough question......I have been so fortunate and have so much to be thankful for, where do I begin? I spoke at the First Unity Church in Raleigh North Carolina last year and that was a blessing. I was invited to Franciscan University and spoke to hundreds of beautiful young people who are dedicating their life to the Church. What a joy that was. I guess if it got down to it, it was the night last year in Auckland New Zealand when Jared Haromona came across the stage on his crutches and hugged my neck. I get chills writing about it now. I also just returned from NYC. Read about that in the March issue of Muscle-Media. PF - Well, I just became a Reserve deputy sheriff out in Colorado, after Sept. 11th, I felt that we should all do something, anything to help each other. We do a tremendous amount of charity work here but I wanted to do something on my own. The Sheriff was kind enough to allow me in the academy. Also I wrote a book. It is a from the heart, down and flat out, tale about finding the spark to turn your Life around. We all can do it, I just had the right attitude and right friends to do it right! ES - Do you keep in touch with any of the other past EAS Transformation Champions? PF - Yes....I love all of them and part of my job is to stay in touch with most of them. Some have moved or gone to other adventures but for the most part I speak to them throughout the year. ES - I am pretty sure I know the answer to this, but do you ever miss your old livelihood and surroundings? PF - You know Eric, I do miss my old livelihood and surroundings. Not like most people would think. It is more the people I miss. I had a lot of friends in Orlando and I miss my friends all the time. I sure don't miss the work, but my pals and the real friends I have in Florida will always mean the world to me. I couldn't go back to the life style I had, I don't want to be 260 pounds again and I quit drinking 5 years ago. All of that is still there waiting on me but I just can't do that again. I know in my heart that the work we are doing out here is more important then anything I could be doing in Florida right now. I see thousands and thousands of people change their life for the better every year. I didn't see that in the bar business. It would be real hard to be in a business now that wasn't about helping people get well. There are a few girls I miss, a lot!!!! ES - To wrap up this first installment of "Porter's Corner", any advice to those who are a little curious about the Body-for-Life Challenge, but still hesitant to try it for themselves? PF - Yes, it would be like losing a tooth because you are scared to go to the dentist. Then you lose another tooth cause your still scared to go to the dentist and eventually you don't have any teeth and eat mush the rest of your life. There is no difference. If you are under weight or over weight or on drugs or drinking too much, do something about it. Do it now! Remember at the beginning of this chat I agreed I can't believe it's been 5 years. What in the hell was I waiting on all those other years? I don't know. Listen, I have been unhealthy and I have been healthy. Take it from me, HEALTHY IS BETTER. Stop stopping. Don't wait on the weight. I better go now, I get too excited when I start trying to preach. Please read Freeman's Word in that same March issue of Muscle Media. It says it all. Thanks Eric, I'll call you. July 1, 2002 - Question and Answer Session ES - Since we last spoke, you have had more wonderful opportunities to travel and witness both incredible successes (new Body-for-Life Champions) and unbelievable horrors (the after-effects of September 11). Please share that with us. PF - Nothing will ever be the same since September 11th. I went to Ground Zero and wrote a article for the #98 issue of Muscle-Media. I think it's the March issue. Anyway it did change my Life. The one thought I can't get away from is this: If any of those innocent people could get up and walk out of that sacred ground, I bet they would never again sit around and watch TV all day. Something tells me they would live every second of every day to the fullest. They wouldn't waste another minute doing anything unproductive. I really feel like we have to accomplish everything we can in their honor because they aren't able to. I hope I'm saying that right - it's a little hard to explain ,but in good conscience, I can never again waste another minute of this precious Life. That could have been any of us in those towers. We have to do it for them. Concerning meeting the new Champions and sharing in their successes, it is the most rewarding job I could ever imagine. It gets better and better. Each time I meet a new Champion or get to do a story on someone like Paul Sullivan, I walk away with all my batteries charged and ready to convince more people that this is the answer. PF - New supplements at EAS? I need to stay home more and try a few of them. Yes there are new supplements and new flavors and a new magazine (Energy for Women) and a new warehouse and more and more. We have 2 new bars out, Cinnamon Bun and Key Lime. There are several new supplements, but I honestly have not tried them. For years I have used Phosphagen, Betagen, Cytovol and Myoplex. They just keep on working. ES - Since you have also added the title of Reserve Deputy Sheriff for Jefferson County, Colorado to your resume, how has that impacted your life? PF - Muscle Media Magazine was kind enough to put my Reserve Deputy picture in the 100 issue of the publication. What an honor. Bill even showed up for the graduation. It has been a privilege to serve this community as a Deputy Sheriff. Florida will always be my home but I live out here now, and feel I owe something in return to this place and these people. It is all about giving back and contributing to the betterment of where we live and who we are. The Jefferson County Sheriff's Dept. is made up of as fine a group of men and women as anyone could ask for. I am very fortunate. PF - You know Eric, I wrote a book that may or may not see the light of day but I devoted an entire chapter to sayings or "Porter-ism's" as they are called. Let me give our readers one that I don't think they have heard. "In this Life, you can set the bar high or, you can sit at a bar and get high. The choice is yours." I really like that one because I've done both. I just did them backwards, I sat at the bar first. Never again....how about this one, "Don't wait on the weights, they are waiting on you!" Sometimes these are funny and sometimes silly, and sometimes they hit a nerve and hopefully you will remember them in the gym. PF - Where can people see me? In any airport in America...I think I am coming up on 200,000 sky miles in the next few weeks. I don't mind at all. It is never an
inconvenience to travel about 20 days a month because I absolutely love what I am doing. The next trip is to Chicago and then I do believe I am in Dallas with you and several Champions in August. They have a Body-for-Life club there that is at about 1,000 members. Then again isn't everything bigger in Texas? I am going to try to get home to Orlando in September. |
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Porter's
Corner