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PNN Interviews:
Paul Southern

Paul Southern has an interesting background. A former Navy Hospital Corpsman and medical educator, Paul left the Navy in 1998 to become a personal trainer. A few short years later, Paul has become a health and fitness tycoon, running a private training studio, a meal preparation service, and a nutritional supplement shop- all located in Northern California. In this interview, Paul will share with you why he chose the PNN.

Dr Berardi:
What is your involvement in the sport and/or fitness community?

Paul:
I have worked with a wide variety of clients including professional athletes, high school kids, and body builders. But at present my target market and primary focus is with clients that want to aesthetically change their physique while improving their health. Mostly I’m talking about baby boomers or clients from 30-60 years old. In my local area there are an abundance of successful professional people that have accomplished great things with family and business but find themselves embarrassingly corpulent, wheezing on the stairs, and generally feeling unhealthy. That’s where I step in. I offer training, nutritional education, and even gourmet meals ready to eat. Whatever I can do to quickly and positively affect other people’s lives causes me satisfaction.

I also own a local supplement store in Pleasanton, California called Active Nutrition. Here I work with generally misinformed athletes and customers that are sold on miracle products. These people receive my single serving nutrition advice.

At present, I train clients in my private studio at my house. I have a detached building on my property that has been remodeled to a studio. It is primarily free weights, racks, and some cables. Although I like this personal setting, I will need to get a commercial building and bring on trainers if I want to grow my concepts and business. That is where you come in JB. With the PNN, you provide many opportunities for the entrepreneurial types to grow a health/fitness/training/diet business.

Dr Berardi:
How long have you been doing this?

Paul:
I was released in 1998. No, not from jail silly doctor, from the Navy. I worked as a Hospital Corpsman attached to the Fleet Marine Force. Say what? When you watch war movies and see wounded infantry soldiers squirming in the crossfire yelling “Corpsman”, I would be one of those insane guys with a medical bag and a little pistol that rushes FROM cover to help the sorry soul. Well, that’s the worst case scenario.

In garrison (on base) I trained often, attended to patients in the clinic, and was a medical educator. In the field I humped gear and a medical bag with the rest of the guys. When someone was hurt or ill I patched-stitched-juiced them up.

When I was released from active duty I spent my days personal training at a local health club and nights teaching medical assistant classes at a local tech college. I was also finishing up my prerequisites for medical school at this time. Training people showed me that instead of throwing medication down people’s throats, I could work with people to achieve optimal health. It was a proactive scenario instead of a reactive scenario. This was more appealing to me. So it stuck. I have been training clients for almost 8 years now and I opened a health food/supplement store in 1999.

Dr Berardi:
What motivated you to seek out the PNN? Why did you think it was important? What needs did your clients/athletes have that weren’t being met?

Paul:
I will tell you a quick story. Shortly after getting out of the military I was involved in Potato Gate. What, you haven’t heard about Potato Gate? I was working as a trainer in a huge local Health Club when I was verbally accosted by the resident RD. She had heard that I was speaking nutritional voodoo to my clients! The RD informed me that she was the only one allowed to broach this subject within the pale health club walls and that I had no business talking about such lofty matters.

The RD then said that she had heard through the grape vine that I told one of my clients not to eat a baked potato. I explained that this was a distortion of the conversation at best. Recently released information on the glycemic indexes of food caused me to assert to this obese client that eating the potato by itself would yield a high insulin response and this client would be better off consuming the potato post workout or with a serving of protein to mediate the insulin response. Or, I further suggested to the client, swap the potato for a sweet potato which would cause a slower release of insulin. The RD looked like a deer in the headlights. I don’t think she knew what I was talking about. Potato Gate caused me to be sanctioned and is actually a pretty long story that I can share with you over a cold mug of carrot juice sometime.

The reason why I bring it up is that I felt like a little ship in a big ocean. Where were the other like minded people trying to set a course towards nutritional enlightenment? I found the like minded people through you and then the PNN.

The support the PNN offers is very unique. I have always had a keen interest in nutrition but I lack any specific academic credentials that show that I have the authority to speak on such matters. I have wanted to be able to put forth affective nutrition plans for my clients and have the backing and support of a leading expert. You offer all of this and more with the PNN.

My clients had specific nutritional needs that were not being met. My workout plans were missing a specific regimented diet. Before the PNN, I would give nutritional advice and education to most clients and only a few of my clients received documented diets. I did not want the liability nor was I 100% confident that I could provide the best plan. As a member of the PNN I have the full support of leading authorities on performance nutrition. I am no longer a small boat on the ocean being sanctioned for potato advice. Also, I am not riding with a ship of fools following the latest fad diet and wonder pill. Instead I have found a place with prudent experts getting spectacular results from plain talk and sound application of current research. I can now say that I am affiliated with John Berardi. I think that this is a pretty powerful statement.

Dr Berardi:
Be honest, did you have any reservations before you started working with me? If so, what were they?

Paul:
I had heard that you often flogged your clients with a rubber hose in order to eek out a bit more dietary compliance.

Honestly, I have been reading your work for years and I knew that hooking up with you would be a no-brainer. You’re the man! No one out there lays it down or puts it all together the way you do.

Now you do inhabit what I like to call the premium price position. There are certain entities out there that provide a superior service and/or product and thus have a price that reflects this quality. It’s the old “you get what you pay for” philosophy. As a business owner, I can appreciate this. Nothing says more about a business than the price of their products and services. Would you be afraid to train with a random trainer that said his fee was $20 an hour? I would.

It only took me a day or two reviewing your business model and materials to realize that the money I paid was nominal when compared to the amount of money I can make implementing your superior products and services. The PNN is an investment, and every investor knows that you have to spend money to make money. I can and have made a lot of money using you and your products.

Dr Berardi:
What about the distance-based nature of the program? Why didn’t you just select a local dietitian? Did you have a hard time getting your head around the fact that I wouldn’t be on site? What made up your mind?

Paul:
Once again I am scarred by Potato Gate. I have never talked with a dietician that has a fraction of your knowledge in the performance nutrition realm. It seems most RD’s are preaching the food pyramid or just not well versed in the specialized realm of performance nutrition.

For someone like me that trains people for optimal results, as quickly as possible without drugs, I need someone exactly like you that can help me peg a person’s metabolic tachometer without redlining. There is overtraining and there is under recovery. Using your system, I can push clients much harder to get better and faster results. Your system provides a compliant disciple with rapid tissue turnover for extremely efficient recovery. I have had clients using your nutrition system and my training system see double digit changes in body composition within two months!

There is no one that I know of in my local area that can help me achieve this kind of success with my clients and customers. Actually, I doubt if there are more than a handful of RD/PhD’s out there that can achieve this kind of drug free success while increasing the health of the organism. And of those people that can accomplish this, I don’t know any that have an easy to use system like yours that I can use to make lots of money for myself.

Having said all of that, if someone is reading this online, they can probably navigate well enough to handle the PNN. That is the beauty of the web. We can all have a piece of JB. Also, providing this distance service makes you produce thorough and coherent documentation. This information is downloadable, reusable, and easily implemented into my own system. Your tools have actually helped me streamline processes and provide better documentation for my clients. You wouldn’t get this from a local RD.

Dr Berardi:
What do you and your clients/athletes like best about the nutritional system?

Paul:
Followers of the 10 Habits of Nutritional success will get outstanding results, great energy, and a resurgence of health. I see disease processes stop and recede. We see health problems go away completely. Clients experience better energy levels and mood elevation. The 10 Habits seem so simple, but they elicit profoundly positive changes to the human organism that are rooted in complex biological science.

Dr Berardi:
Did your clients/athletes find the advice hard to follow?

Paul:
The advice is not hard to follow. Some people, no matter how much easy-to-follow information you give them, will not use the tools. I have clients for whom I prepare all of their meals that can’t manage to eat well. It is all about a clients/athletes level of commitment. Some have the commitment for a week, or a month, or years, and others just don’t have it. I would rather not work with these people, but I still get my fare share. These clients inevitably ask why their body is not changing like one of my committed clients.

Have you ever seen a person that had a heart attack go back to drinking and smoking? I have. I know the doctor told this person what he/she had to do to get healthier. In this day and age getting information is not a problem. In fact, the information can be overwhelming. We all have the potential to be healthy and wealthy but some of us choose not to do the work necessary to achieve these results.

Dr Berardi:
What kinds of results did your clients/athletes get when using the program?

Paul:
Let’s talk about Mike C. (a.k.a. Mikey the Bull). He’s an Italian client of mine that calls me Pauly Walnuts. If you’re thinking that my new title arose because I gave him your No Nonsense Nutrition diet that mandates walnuts twice a day, you would be correct sir. I start almost all of my clients on the NN diet. This diet teaches clients the habit of eating well in an easy to follow system. Once they learn the habit of providing real food for themselves, we can move into other diet scenarios.

Mikey the Bull started out at 199 pounds and 22.9% body fat 8 weeks ago. He has been consistently dropping one percentage point of body fat every week. Today we did a Jackson Pollock 7 site skin fold measurement (taken every two weeks as part of the PNN biweekly evaluation) and he was 13.29%! A 10% reduction in body fat in 8 weeks.

At 190 pounds, Mikey the Bull has lost a total of 20 ¼ pounds of fat and gained 11 pounds of muscle. He has maintained a goal of being 8% body fat at the 16 week mark. Originally I told him that I was flattered that he believed I could help him do this but the goal was unrealistic. Actually, I think I really told him that he would have to stop hitting the pipe if we were going to make any change at all. I no longer doubt that he can do it. The following pictures are the “before” and the eight week mark. Let’s look for an even more amazing food and exercise induced change at the 12 and 16 week mark.

Another client I put on a PNN nutrition plan was Jimmy. This is Jimmy’s before and after photos. The after photo was actually not planned. I just picked up the camera and snapped a picture of Jim several months after he started training with me. You can see that all the fat has melted off of his body. You can also see in the before picture that I need to mow my lawn.

And here is me doing 12 weeks on a PN diet. I actually won 50K dollars with some of these pictures. I know that sounds hard to believe but I have the check as proof! EAS did a Body for Life competition for people that owned or worked in stores that sold their product. I found at the time of this contest that I was putting others ahead of my own health, so I decided to stop beating the horse and, instead, start feeding the horse. In the after picture, you can see that never mow my lawn.

Dr Berardi:
What are the top 10 things you learned while working with my system?

Paul:
Hmmm. That would be the 10 Habits for Dietary Success. These are the fundamentals to your diet strategy. I have them memorized. I’m ready for the test Doc.

Dr Berardi:
No test, this time!

Ok, let’s wrap up. Describe your total experience implementing the system to date.

Paul:
See Thag eat. See Thag run. See Thag buy nice car.

Dr Berardi:
Alright, funny guy…Last question. If someone was hesitant about working with us, what advice would you give them?

Paul:
If you have not noticed from my answers to your questions, you have my full recommendation. Anybody failing on your system needs to look in the mirror.

Dr Berardi:
Any parting words?

Paul:
We are surrounded by data. Do you ever walk into a Barnes and Nobles and feel buried by the amount of information out there? How much of the information in the store is really life changing data? Every so often I come across an author within this sea of data that has found a significant truth. I focus on these sources and tune out the rest of the garbage. John, you have a true voice regarding dietary information that everyone could learn from. Thanks for the work that you have done. It has positively affected thousands of people’s lives (a modest summation). I would consider myself a success as a person if someone ever laid this compliment on me.

The PNN allows me to take your hard work, spread it around, and thus profit by it. It is a win-win-win scenario. You win, I win, and the clients win.