Original subtitles

Everything you're searching for,

you have within you.

And you can create that inner wealth

that turns into outer success later on.

That's what feeling rich is really all about.

It's strange because when I was a kid,

everybody used to always ask me

if I was gonna get into music like my father

and it became such a repetitive question,

that I almost tried to intentionally

do something different just for that.

I've worked on numerous successful multi-platinum projects

throughout my career.

But this is the most important project

that I've ever been involved with,

mainly because it has the potential to transform,

an entire generation for the better.

Over 60% of kids that group up in lower-income areas

like South Central, Los Angeles

grow up in a single-parent household

and because of this rappers take on an exaggerated influence

in their life.

They become almost like a father figure

in their own father's absence.

So what would happened if you applied

this massive influence to health.

Well, I'm about to tell you hip-hop's biggest secret.

We are in the midst of a huge transformation.

We're watching our entire culture be reborn.

So as we were being reborn and we look at this nation,

we want to go backwards and see what made the nation great.

What made the nation great was always a strong,

agricultural system.

And that technology, that expertise was then exploited.

That exploitation caused many of us to back away from

agriculture and we monetized the food

but we were dealing with free labor.

The huge inequity that that started,

it got people very angry.

It got people very sad, very frustrated

so here comes all the problems that come from that, right?

So we're moving back to the circle, spiraling back inward.

And I think it's important to note that

we're having this conversation in the midst of

what I believe is a cultural shift

that is happening in this country.

A transformation in how we live and eat.

There's a shift in consciousness about food,

about taking care of yourself, exercise.

The fact that more people are concerned with

what they do or don't eat in the hip-hop community

means that you'll hear more.

Anybody you like in pop culture,

if they're not on a health path,

they're somebody in their ear right now as we speak

telling them, you better get on a health path,

'cause that's what's poppin'.

Look outside, don't be blind.

And the people being aware of it.

The more we push it, the more we can get it out there.

Instead of telling people, let's show people.

Show people you work out everyday.

Show people what you eat everyday.

You show people everything else, when you on the red carpet,

you show people behind the scenes and do videos...

show a motherfucker when you're in the gym for two hours.

Hip-hop is truly a reflection of the community usually.

It's a reflection of what's going on in the inner cities

of America and now suburban America also.

I think as artists, we could take the responsibility to say,

this is my lifestyle and people start

gravitating towards it.

This artist is into healthy lifestyle,

this artist actually is into yoga.

And this artist, you know, actually is a vegetarian.

You know, when you find those things out, you're like,

man that person fly, and they do that?

I'm with it.

You had this big Southern migration that took place,

like in the twenties, African-Americans

were moving out of the South, fleeing the Ku Klux Klan,

they came to urban areas.

They no longer wanted to farm.

They wanted urban jobs, so it created a system.

But not only did we dismiss agriculture,

it created a system where we were no longer eating

the way we had been eating as sharecroppers and as farmers.

We were no longer sitting at the table together.

And so that Southern migration brought us forward,

but it also took us back.

You go to any hood, you know what you got.

You got the liquor store, you got the, you know...

- Chicken store - McDonald's.

Chicken store. - Yeah. fried chicken store.

Basically, the concept of food desserts

is when you don't have access to fresh produce

within like a one to seven mile radius.

And there's a lot of neighborhoods all across America

where people don't have that.

It would be almost impossible for them

to get their hands on fresh produce.

That adds anther layer of difficulty

in trying to stay healthy when all you see around you

is beer and cigarettes and chips and fast food.

Growing up in Brooklyn, the type of foods

that I ate was a lot of fried foods.

A lot of fried chicken, fried fish.

Pork chop, a fried platano maduros or tostones

or fried chicken or fried steak.

McDonald's, Jack in the Box, cookies and milk,

like I would eat that for dinner sometimes.

Mac and cheese, a lot of pasta,

fried chicken, potato chips, cookies.

Wings or you know a egg roll or some chips,

whatever's on the boulevard.

A lot of African-Americans believe that

they eat bad and that's their thing.

We are used to eating well-seasoned foods,

foods that taste good.

Back in the slavery days, you know,

they had to make dishes out of food

that the general population didn't wanna eat.

The tops of turnips, you know the turnip greens,

and the tops of mustard.

They learned how to make the best out of

all of the imperfect conditions.

- It goes back to slavery days.

When they would be out in the fields picking corn,

that's what they would get to eat.

The scraps and stuff and make cornbread out of it.

So now it's just a part of Southern culture.

I used to eat chitlins and pig feet.

I didn't know what they were, I was a kid.

And it was good, you know you just eat and just...

you don't know any better, it's what you brought up on

and then one day I walk in my mom's kitchen

and she's cleaning chitlins and I'm like,

what is that smell and she's like, these are the chitlins.

And I'm like, what is that, explain to me what this is.

And she's, well the pig's intestines.

You never told me that before.

In the South no one thinks that

you're supposed to be a vegan,

you're supposed to eat fried chicken and fried food

and pork and all of that, that's what we grew up on.

Growing up in Texas it's kinda hard

when everybody in the whole state is trying to get you

to be bigger, you know.

Oh you big, oh you gonna be a big football player.

That's what they tell you, you know?

They don't say, damn man,

you a little big to be 11, 12 years old.

They say, aw, you gonna be a big football player.

They encourage you to be bigger.

The food was always a big deal for our family.

If you cry, your grandma offered you something to eat.

You want some pie, you want some cake?

Food has always been an important part

of the African-American culture.

You know my grandmother always said

that if we can do anything for people,

we could give them something to eat.

They feel like they showing somebody love by feeding them.

So especially if you a chubby kid,

everybody wanna get on your good side of the family

and every house you go to they giving you more treats

and more treats and more treats.

Hey I got a little ice cream for you.

My mom was diabetic, so I shoulda known better.

But for whatever reason I had the sweetest tooth

known to mankind.

- We was filled with carbs.

We'd have four cans of Planters red-skinned peanuts

and four giant bars of Mr. Goodbars.

And then we'd send out for number four

of Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles.

Being in this industry is not really

being health-conscious.

You know when you're traveling from city to city,

three o'clock in the morning is the time when

you can get a meal, like the Waffle House

becomes like the mainstay.

And the IHOP becomes a mainstay.

My studio is next door to a 7-Eleven,

so when it gets 3:00, 4:00 in the morning,

you were going over there to get the Funyuns,

and you know Welch's grape soda

and then we coming back over there

and smoking and all of that.

You eating before you go the show.

You might eat at the show, 'cause now you're hungry,

you built up a appetite from running on stage.

Then from there, you're smoking.

Then from when you're smoking,

you're going to the after party.

Drinking like five bottles of Rosé.

You may not realize it at that time

'cause you young and you moving around

and you working your body still.

But as you get older, you sit still more.

All that stuff starting to take effect

when you really sit down and you look at yourself,

well damn, did get a little stomach.

You don't see it yourself until somebody start telling you.

Before you were Lil Cease, three years later people going,

yo, what up fat boy?

It's interesting because rap is such a genre

where it feeds off of eating good.

That's what it talks about,

like when you get to making money, it's like, I'm eating.

That's like a slogan in rap.

And if you eating, you getting fat.

That's one of the statements that you hear people say,

you guys got fat when I was gone.

You know what I mean, that's like the mafia thing.

I actually took a lot of pride in being a fat guy

and I embraced the image and the Fat Joe name.

You know we got this thing of like,

as more successful as we are,

we think we're better because we can eat more.

We was like the fat society.

- When Paul and I first met,

he would eat any and every thing.

My highest weight was 320 pounds.

That's when I was just too embarrassed to get on the scale,

after that I was, man I ain't getting on the scale no more.

This where I'm 320.

You know it's embarrassing when you ride on the plane

and you gotta ask for the seatbelt extender.

Don't nobody wanna do that, that's not playa,

you know what I'm saying?

That's not playa at all if you gotta ask

for the seatbelt extender.

And I would just think, man,

if I died just from being fat and falling out.

I didn't think we'd live past 35.

I really didn't.

Charlie Parker died at 35,

our idols didn't make it you know.

One of the saddest days of my life

was when he passed away.

He caught a heart attack.

He died too young, he was beyond talented.

Like one of the greatest rappers ever

and besides that I lost a best friend and a brother.

He was always big.

And uh, Pun liked to eat.

You know and he eat all the wrong things

Kentucky Friend Chicken, lot of Chinese food.

Big Pun was one of the biggest rappers in the game

but he couldn't really move around like that.

He was just so big where if we walked through the hotel,

he would run out of breath before we get to his room.

If we did a show, we would make sure we did all the words

to make sure he could breathe.

It was just sad man, his health was deteriorating.

And we tried man and he just gained that weight

and before you knew it, he passed away.

I shoulda learned then, but you know I was still young,

I was still wildin'.

I still was thinking, you know, it is what it is.

You know I got depressed for two years and I didn't care.

I started eating a lot and drinking

and just, and then I just got so big.

It wasn't 'til recently that

I lost a bunch of my friends to being overweight.

They caught heart attacks, all of them.

And just last year alone I lost like six, seven friends.

Young guys, 34, 32, all overweight.

You know, and these was all good guys, and funny guys,

and make you laugh and the coolest and you never thought

they would die and they were all too young.

First time I heard that Heavy D passed,

it was just a shock to us, it still kinda shocking us.

Just trying to come to grips with it.

- It's too soon.

He's too young and doesn't make sense.

It doesn't matter what age you are,

you're supposed to check yourself out,

you gotta maintain yourself.

It's the most important thing to take care of your health

early on because you get up there in age

and you got all these problems,

and at a certain point it's too late.

The age of people passing away is getting

younger and younger.

We cannot assume if we're young that tomorrow's promised.

So it's a day to really reflect on a great young man.

He was inspirational, he was a friend, he was a brother.

He's a genuine dude, he's gonna be well-missed

but he's gonna be remembered.

It was an extension of who he is.

It was love and lot of joy, lot of tears,

but tears filled with joy.

That's why I love Heavy D because Heavy D,

he put love and family first and foremost.

Heavy did it and he did it like a king.

You know he felt it was very important

to give a positive message in his music

and he always stuck to that.

His love still lives on through all of us

that were touched, influenced by him.

I think those who were influenced by him, carry the love.

It allows him to live on forever.

We would talk about something called the barbecue

and what the barbecue represented was coming

to a place in life where we didn't have to

worry about bills and health and all of that.

He got to the barbecue sooner than I did.

But that's where he's at right now,

so he's gonna be missed...

uh, sorely missed.

- Hip-Hop loses Heavy.

You see this?

Yo that's the craziest thing man,

Heavy D inspired me, I mean,

to the highest levels.

He was a big guy like me, he liked the girls,

he liked being fly.

We never seen a big guy dressed fly like that before,

dance and have fun like that.

Just a classy guy, a stand up guy, a beautiful person

and it's really, really, really sad.

This childhood obesity epidemic right now

cost our nation about 15 billion dollars a year.

The adult obesity in America costs upwards of

150 billion dollars a year.

You know when I talk to pediatricians

who were trained in the sixties and seventies,

they tell me that they never learned

how to deal with diabetes, because they didn't have to.

Children didn't have diabetes.

At the time, type II diabetes was called.

adult late-onset diabetes.

And your grandmothers or your elders would all go

to a doctor at some point in their life and find out,

oh, you have diabetes.

Well now we have children presenting with

adult diseases at this point in time.

If a child is overweight or obese,

they are 30-40% more likely to have diabetes

in their lifetime, have hypertension in their lifetime,

have a stroke in their lifetime,

have heart disease within their lifetime.

As Surgeon General I have the challenge

of being America's doctor.

One of the areas that we noticed where there were

disparities is in minority populations.

African-Americans and Hispanics, Native Americans,

things like obesity and childhood obesity,

diabetes and hypertension and strokes.

These populations are the fastest growing

populations in the country.

So the fastest growing populations in the country

are living sicker and have the potential of dying younger

than other populations in our country.

If you are an African-American,

you're nearly twice as likely to suffer a stroke

than your Caucasian counterparts.

In this country, there are 75 million children, okay?

23 million of them are overweight or obese

at this point in time.

That's one-third across the board.

If they're African-American, born after the year 2000,

two out of three.

If they're Latino, 2 out of three.

- But if these trends continue,

this could be the first generation of children,

not to live as long as their parents.

The nature of spiritual evolution is very simple.

It's like being on a train,

and you're riding uptown

and you know the place you're going is downtown.

You have to get off the train, go to the other side

and go the other way.

And that's an individual's choice,

because everybody on the train is riding the wrong way.

You gotta get the fuck off the train

and go the other way.

And then make choices from the inside out

rather than the outside in.

We don't have to have to be sheep.

We don't have to be any of these things,

but each individual has to make that choice.

If you don't make that choice on your own,

it's never gonna work.

Because they'll make a choice for you.

I'm gonna eat this nasty-ass, fat, uncomfortable shit,

and you eat it, and you get the little high

but then what do you do?

Eventually you feel sick and fat and weighted down.

You go out, you sniff coke and you drink

and you think you're having fun

and you wake up in the morning

with an extreme fucking headache and then most of the day

you're trying to clean up your head

and then you go back and do the same shit.

Paul Wall, he was losing it at one point,

I ain't gonna lie.

Paul was looking big.

I used to always tease Paul, every time I seen him,

I was just like, wow, you're getting fat,

you about to be out of there.

I started noticing the promethazine at the studio

all the time, sipping drank,

they're mixing it different ways.

That was like the drug of choice at the studio.

The more he sipped, the more he drank, the bigger he got.

The syrup just tears your metabolism up,

'cause it slows your heart rate down, slows your body down

and it puts you to sleep, and has you feeling groggy.

You know after 10 plus years of dranking it,

I'm pretty slow.

Paul Wall, that's all he used to drink.

When I made the song "Grillz,"

he was the person who gave me my first taste of lean.

He explained to me, what that syrup

and that soda could do to me.

He was like, JD if you notice all the dudes

that's leaning and drinking this, they all big.

And he wasn't trying to get that big,

but if you stay on that pace,

you definitely gonna get there.

You'll see people out here, who sipping on that syrup

just blow up real fast man and get real fat fast.

It ain't just the drug itself,

you know it's a lot go with it.

You know, taking that drug make you not wanna go work out

or eat healthy or you just be chilling

and it just get bad man, everything get slow.

- You feel irritable.

I don't wanna be fussing at my kids.

But I'm fussing at my kids

'cause I ain't slept in two weeks.

I don't wanna be bothered by being a dad,

I wanna lean right now.

This is the cycle, the same negative behavior.

But one night you forget to get high or you fall asleep

and then you wake up the next morning refreshed

and you find out, that morning meditation is better

than late night drinking.

But then you have to be committed to

remember to remember what this gives you.

And then you have to make it your habit

and that takes personal strength.

Went to my man's funeral, and I seen his daughter,

his daughter was like four years old,

same age as my daughter and I looked at her and I was like,

yo I don't wanna do that.

I don't wanna leave my daughter like that.

The obligations, responsibilities as a man,

make you realize, I need to put my kids before my pleasures.

That's where I found a lot of motivation

and the wanting to get my life together.

Wanna be a man and be a father to my kids instead of

just living life for my own pleasure.

Now I wanted to live for my kids.

I would love him regardless to how big he got,

it was just really unhealthy and I worried

about how long he would be around and I didn't like

how unhappy he was with himself.

To me, he seemed depressed.

The results you wanna see in your life,

the successes you wanna see, whether it's through your work,

whether it's in your relationships.

It starts with like who you are

and how you feel about yourself.

I had surgery in New Year's Eve of 2010,

and I had did everything I could do up to that point

to try to lose weight and I felt like this was

my last resort, having the surgery.

'Cause I wasn't just overweight, I was morbidly obese.

And the doctor told me that if you're 50 pounds overweight,

it takes 15 years off your life.

That's real time, 15 years is a long time.

So I said man, this is an investment for my life,

for my family, it's something I really need to do.

I can either wait 'til it gets too bad and I have no choice

or I can get on it now so that I will be here

'til I'm 70, 80, 90 years old.

We were very supportive of him,

because we were all worried about him.

You know we love him, we want him to be around

forever and ever and ever.

We have children, like you know, that's my soul mate.

When I went in to get my surgery,

I didn't want to do something that was

only gonna have me right for, you know a couple years.

It's the lifestyle changes.

Not just, well he got surgery, you know what I'm saying?

Yeah I had surgery but I also, I train...

I go hard in the gym, I eat right.

It's a lifestyle change.

Where we headed to now?

- Eaton Canyon man.

It's like my new, it's my new trail.

I did four months at Runyon.

Kinda took it over, so I figured I'd change it up

on starting my third 60 day challenge

which is pretty much gonna be my entire core.

Once you complete the first 60 days,

then the next 60 days is to rebuild the body.

And then the next 60 days is just maintenance.

So do through the hikes and the training,

and our diet and meal plans,

we're able to create a stable environment for people.

Game's awesome, he's inspiring a lot of people

to stay on their fitness and workout.

When you have other people that wanna motivate you,

it makes things a lot easier, it makes working out fun.

Once you start and you get on this fitness grind

like this, it goes forever.

Like I'm gonna have to eat healthy and workout

for the rest of my life.

So if you're not dedicated to yourself, don't even start,

because you're wasting your time.

You can't ask your body questions.

Like you do something that you're afraid of

and you ask yourself, are you ready to do this?

Well you've already killed

half of the determination in yourself

because you're giving yourself an option to say no.

What I do with myself is I was wake up in the morning

and I say, you know, let's get it.

I'm getting diesel right now.

I got the eye of the tiger, you know what I'm saying?

Quick start.

Three, two, one, let's go.

Just did like five mile run, stop, hike,

waterfall thing man.

And you know what, you would thing that after all of that,

that you would feel exhausted, but you know how I feel?

I feel rich.

That's it.

I decided to create the MixFitz Turn-Up because

in my Zumba classes the ladies were having a blast.

- Here we go!

Step.

Back.

- Class was great.

We had a blast, it was so much fun, I had a good workout.

Oh my God, it was a workout for real.

- Had a great time!

Even the white girl learned how to dance.

It's a lot of energy and we have a blast.

However, there was something missing,

I wanted to keep it authentic to Houston flavor.

To that Southern flavor.

So the ladies wanted to get ratchet.

So we decided that we were gonna start something

where we could have good, clean, ratchet fun.

You know, it's a big woman gang, everybody's Beyoncé.

Everybody's on stage when you're there,

you're on stage, you're having fun.

And so, I mean, it's like having a big old crew.

I absolutely feel like we are at the beginning

of a self-love revolution.

Like for real.

Anytime you step outside of yourself

and achieve something that you never thought possible,

I think you start looking at yourself different.

Like, goddam, you a champ.

Holistic health is not just focusing on exercise

or what you eat or meditating and doing yoga,

it's all three, so it's mind, body and spirit.

So I feel like the one person that truly embodies

holistic health like who's really the prototype

is Stic.Man from Dead Prez.

And he's pretty much dedicated his whole life now

to putting message of health out there

to the urban community.

When I went to his house, it blew my mind

because we went to Atlanta and he opens the door

and it just felt so good in their home.

And for one, it was great to see healthy black family

doing all this stuff together and picking vegetables

and cooking them right away

and they're the prototype in my opinion.

They're very much into the mind, body and spirit of it all.

There's a Buddhist story called

of the farmer who knows what's good or bad.

Farmer's horse runs off his neighbor comes over and says

ah, I'm sorry you lost your horse man

and the farmer's he's like, who knows what's good or bad?

Maybe a week later, that same horse comes back

with 12 more horses following him

and so his neighbors sees all the horses

and he's like, wow man, what a blessing.

You got all these new horses for free.

And farmer was just like, who knows what's good or bad?

Soon after that, the farmer's son ride one of these

fancy new horses that they got,

falls off and break his leg though.

So the neighbor sees that and says,

oh, I'm so sorry what happened to your son,

but the wise farmer just says, who knows what's good or bad?

The king of the province is coming to draft

all the young men for war.

And they get to the farmer's house to get his farmer's son,

but he got a broken leg, so he don't have to go to war.

So not just the moral of this story, but the moral of life.

When we decide is good or bad,

is when we attach a perception.

And that's how we can be disappointed

and that's how we suffer.

Real disease is when you have a dis-easement

in yourself and it starts here.

It starts in your brain and it sends that signal

through the rest of your body that's feeling dis-ease

and that's why they call it a disease.

A lot of diseases are like just you stressing yourself

so far out, over either something you can't control

or something that's gonna be controlled anyway.

My mom used to tell me when I was little like,

cry if you want to, you just gonna have a headache.

All right your nose gonna be running, you have a headache,

you still gotta finish your homework.

So I learned to get that part out of the way

and learned to get that stress out of the way.

Kinda take the chains off of it, let it go.

Whether you realize it, all day long,

everybody's doing this.

Even whether you realize it or not.

Being attached to anything in the world,

valuing anything in the world will cause you suffering.

So the less you hold on to this neediness,

the better off you'll be.

And it's not something that I write it in my book

because it sounds good, it's something that

Abraham and Jesus and Mohammad and Lord Buddha

and in The Yoga Sutras, it's stated over and over again

the smart people tell us this shit.

Don't attach yourself to things

that have nothing to do with your happiness.

A business guy, they're so funny like,

they get some money and they excited for a second.

They get happy because the stock exchange goes up

and their heart gets down 'cause the stock goes down.

And their happiness is manufactured.

People are literally killing themselves

trying to attain material wealth.

Cause they thing that's what's gonna make them happy.

It's all about how you feel inside

that motivation that keeps you confident and all that.

Some people buy the material shit

because ain't nothing else good about them.

Those outer things really can come and go.

But what you have inside is yours.

That yours forever and that's what you have

to nurture for the rest of your life

and that's what will sustain you when you don't have

the change because material things will come and go.

You will be the hottest artist at one point

and then at some point,

people be trying to remember your name.

The human mind and the subconscious mind

they're the strange pieces of our equipment too.

Your mind is gonna take you to that next level,

on where you trying to go.

When you in the playoff game seven, so to speak,

you really can't depend on your body.

You have to depend on your mind.

- Know how powerful you are.

Women, we are powerful.

Running in general is certainly a time

that your thoughts make or break that run.

If you have a day where you feel like,

I'm tired.

I'm hot.

This is far.

If you let that pattern of thoughts go,

you're not having a good run.

And then another day, your same body, your same mind,

your same road that you run on,

oh, I feel like I could run for days.

I had energy and I was just thinking

and it was just beautiful and your thoughts fed that

but our perception is what gives us that experience.

Negative or positive or whatever, it's just perception.

Most of the time when we don't feel good,

it's because of our thoughts.

We wake up in the morning, we just have a bad feeling,

a icky feeling or something like that.

How we react to those feelings is up to us.

And I think that's what meditation helps you with.

Is it helps you clear away sort of the artificial thoughts

and it brings out the organic thoughts.

That's why we meditate to practice so the mind can be

slowed down so we don't have the noise, mind is settled.

This is the kind of stillness,

this kind of focus that promotes bliss.

The difference I've noticed with meditation is

we're more peaceful in ourselves, like we just...

it's a time, that you can take for yourself

to just be still.

And it allows the Universe to just open up

and just have things for you that maybe you weren't able to

see clearly if you weren't meditating.

It's something about being in tune with yourself

when you meditating and just communing with yourself

that is like one of the most purest things you can do,.

It's nothing outside that can disturb your world

and it's all you dealing with you.

The whole idea of hip-hop in popular culture

or whatever is about cool.

Being under pressure, having your composure,

nothing can move you and you just that solid.

Meditation though is a way to cultivate that real cool.

That actual cool under pressure.

And I think a lot of times, we carry around a lot of noise

in our head and when you meditate,

what you're doing is you're breathing in

and just focusing on breathing in,

if any other thoughts come, you say thank you

but no thank you and you try to just focus on breathing in

as deep as you can and breathing out.

But what happens is when we're stressed,

we're taking a breath in, and as soon as you think about that

stressful thing, you breath out again

and you're breathing really shallow

and that's bad for your health.

It makes you more stressed.

Right, breathing shallow is a fear response.

So, when you're taking deep breaths

and just focusing on one thing,

a lot of that other noise and stress just falls away.

Breathing though life, is the solution to everything.

If we all took a deep breath before we made a poor decision,

you know maybe we wouldn't make it.

When you use meditation along with eating a whole foods

plant-based diet, some walking and moderate exercise

and spending more time with your loved ones.

That these simple changes can not only help prevent,

but even reverse the most common and serious conditions.

It can lower your blood pressure,

it can lower your cholesterol levels even.

What we're finding is is that transcendental meditation

when offered in underserved urban schools,

that's there's a dramatic transformation in that school

when now every child or teenager in the school

has the ability for 10 minutes twice a day

to close his or her eyes as part of the school day

and just experience a state of rest and relaxation.

Deeper than sleep.

The child is alert, calm, wide-awake and for education,

they call learning readiness the most important thing

in education and for learning readiness,

what they want is restful alertness.

Kids, rather than having all the distractions and noise

in their mind need to be free to act accordingly.

A kid becomes a better student, becomes less violent,

anxiety disappears.

You know it's so many issues that youth deal with

that I don't think they have an outlet for that sometimes.

Meditation can help them to just be centered, you know.

It gives you a confidence, it gives you a sense of peace.

The need for transcendental meditation or quiet time

in schools is absolutely unequivocally apparent.

10 million children suffer from depression

and they're on antidepressant medication.

Five million children are diagnosed with ADHD

and other learning disorders and the number three cause

of death in America among teenagers is suicide.

So they actually did a study

that showed that a 10 year old kid that grows up

like in the distressed urban neighborhood

is dealing with the same level of post-traumatic stress

as a man or woman coming back

from combat in Iraq or Afghanistan.

You also know that when a child doesn't graduate,

they enter the prison pipeline to the tune of

a two million dollar per child bill to society.

And there's like 40% drop out rate now

in our inner-city high schools.

And you can't medicate that away,

and you can't give every child in-depth counseling,

but what you can do is equip them with a simple tool

that anyone of them can learn easily, instantaneously.

- So pick a sound.

There are lots of sounds that people meditate on,

the om, shalom, salaam, amin, amen, it can be anything.

Close your eyes and do that.

And let it fill up your whole breath.

So take a breath in.

Om.

'Til you run out of air.

Do it again.

Stop, do it again.

Now, what's gonna happen, your mind will wander,

you'll start to think about, I gotta do this,

I forgot to do that.

Soon as you become aware you're thinking

about something else, bring it back.

Over and over and over again.

That's meditation.

So you start seeing an improvement in test scores,

studies that were done in San Francisco public high schools,

the worst schools have become among the best schools

in the district, test scores for example for English

and Math 40% improvement in test scores.

There are so many thousands of kids,

who you would never think would meditate,

once they learn it, they never wanna stop.

I think people would be shocked what a big difference

three minutes of meditation can do for your life.

Especially single mothers who have sold custody

of their kids and there's a lot of stress 'cause

they're working and then they come right home to their kids,

meditation would change their life.

- Poverty makes you very angry.

It's very hard to work everyday and still can't afford

transportation, it's very hard to work everyday

and not afford decent housing.

It's very debilitating to you emotionally and physically

at times and I became a single mother by choice,

my son when I was in high school,

I adopted my son from the community because my grandparents

took care of me and so I was doing something that I knew

needed to be done, but I didn't have the resources to do it.

And that did make me angry, it made me angry to struggle

day in and day out, despite working full time

and still be living in poverty.

And so many people who are single mothers

in disadvantaged situations,

don't feel very powerful at all, you feel helpless.

'Cause you don't feel like you have much control.

Meditation gives you a way out of that.

It gives you a sense of being in control again.

Of empowering yourself.

You know, before the kids wake up,

before anybody's up before you have to do

any of your motherly duties,

just take your moment.

Your five, ten minutes and just.

If you going through some struggle and you're upset

or you're angry and if you take the time,

you will settle and you'll say, wow,

you don't have to be at the mercy of these emotions

and things like that.

They reminded me that I had potential,

and I had the ability to achieve.

It seems improbable that I could come from poverty

as a single mother to become a PHD holder.

But it's very possible when you're willing to

invest in yourselves and in your children

and you set the limits to how far you can go.

If the mamas are out there loving themselves

and taking care of themselves and showing that

to their children and stepping up in a major way.

I think when a young man sees his mom in that light,

like it changes his world.

If you want your kid to be invested in the world

in a happy way and not an anxiety-prone way,

learn to meditate and teach your children.

As soon as you meditate and you keep your thoughts still,

then all of a sudden what really is important will surface

and I think that more people will find that self-love

through meditation and then they'll wanna eat healthier

and wanna treat people in a different way.

So I think it all starts in the mind and in the spirit.

Well this will be the last White House

Kitchen Garden planting for me.

Yeah, it was eight years ago that we cooked up this

really interesting idea that maybe we could dig up some dirt

on the South lawn, maybe somebody would let us do that,

and we would plant a wonderful garden that would be

a space for us to talk about the food we eat.

When you talk about holistic health

as it relates to the urban community

because of the homicide rates and the poverty rates

and the stress levels there,

you're gonna need different types of solutions.

My name's Ron Finley and we're in

South Central, Los Angeles.

Home of the drive-by.

Right behind us is what I like to call my urban food source.

What inspired me to create this food for us

is the lack of healthy food in this community.

I wanted people to see that you can grow your own food

and stop waiting for others to do it for you.

Grow your own food, empower yourself,

empower your community.

I wanted people to see how easy

and how beautiful it could be.

I just wanna bring back the health to this community.

So with all these food desserts,

there's also a lot of bright spots out there.

We went to Detroit and met with a company called

Urban Gardening.

I'm from Minneapolis, but I lived on a farm

for three and half years in my teens.

So when I saw all of that unused land in the city,

my mind thought, well why don't we just plant food

on that land?

So I put my recording career on the back burner

and I started Urban Farming

and we started with three gardens in Detroit, Michigan.

This is one of the very first pamphlets

that I started Urban Farming with.

Let everybody know that we were getting ready to start

planting gardens so then in 2005, we really got started,

this is the first garden planting that we did.

We grew in the second year, we expanded into Minneapolis

St. Louis, New York, Jamaica and Los Angeles.

This is a running ticker tape.

It's in real time so as soon as somebody registers

their garden, anywhere in the world this number goes up

and your garden will appear on the global map.

And again, it started in Detroit with just three gardens.

My name is Rashid Nuri, I'm the President and Founder

of Truly Living Well Center for National Urban Agriculture.

We produce over 30,000 pounds of food each year.

And we distribute it through our

community supported agriculture.

We sell it to some of the finest restaurants in town.

We give double value to folks who are on food stamps

and if someone is hungry we just give them food.

80% of Americans, live in cities.

So that's why urban agriculture's becoming

more and more important,

we are proving the economic viability

of the urban agriculture.

So it's all about deciding how we're gonna have

abundant food systems within urban settings.

Many organizations now in the United States,

schools, faith-based institutions,

non-profit organizations,

have land and due to the fact that we're having

nutritional challenges with our health

all throughout our community these organizations are trying

to revisit their missions.

We are in the Third Ward area of Houston, Texas.

At Alabama Gardens.

This property here belongs to Texas Southern University

and they let us use this property to grow vegetables.

We have 56 plots in here and what we grow

we take care of families then we take care of food banks.

I want people to be able to take the food system back

because it's been taken from us.

There's over 400 and something kinds of carrots.

You lucky if you find three of them in the stores,

it's the same thing with apples.

They narrow our food choices down,

so basically this whole food reality thing is manufactured

for us and you're just 'sposed to follow it,

so I wanna bring this whole palate,

this whole color that we used to have in food,

I wanna bring that back so that's what I'm telling people

get gangster with their parkway and grow some food.

Growing your own food, being healthy,

taking back your community, not terrorizing your community,

that's gangster to me.

Local food is being pushed throughout the markets,

and yet we don't have enough growers.

And we definitely don't have enough growers of color,

that are in a space where they are able to sustain

themselves and provide for their family.

So we wanna figure out how we can bring in our,

do-for-self attitude with the skills and the technologies

that allow us to grow abundant amount of food

on small spaces.

- You can grow food, anywhere.

You know, you can grow food in a box on your balcony,

you can grow food in buckets

and I tell people if it's some soil, put something in it.

Because food should be free.

It's like printing your own money, period.

One of the things that people said to me

when we first started is, you gotta put fences around

the gardens and I said why, they said because

they're gonna steal the food.

And I said, well there's nothing to steal,

that the food is free.

You cannot eat all of the food that you can grow,

it's damn near impossible,

you will be eating all day every day.

Just imagine if we had a place where everybody

had their parkways planted.

Now you have a community that's engaged and wanna...

I can tells somebody hey, go over to Quincy's

and get me some carrots.

I can send my son over there and you can send your son

over to my house and get some onions.

Gardens build community and that's real,

that's just period, it does.

What's important is getting people to break bread,

to have conversation, the community and the society

becomes more civil when they're able to share

and to be healthy.

- Through urban agriculture,

you can find a way to address most of the urban ills,

whether it's people overweight,

creating green spaces, giving work for community service.

We also work with returning citizens

that are coming out of jail and they need to get

community service hours, they would do that on our gardens,

but the difference was they're not making money

for somebody else, they're actually cultivating this food

for the community, for themselves,

for their family and friends.

Basically this is against the law

because the city owns this property

but you have to maintain it.

It's ridiculous because we have all this barren land

and all this space around here

that serves no purpose whatsoever.

I wanna get something out of it.

We're not cows, we can't eat grass.

Why wouldn't we plant food on that...

like why would people be going hungry?

There used to be a day and age

when people when they saw unused land,

they immediately thought about planting.

There are a lot of black folk that wanna have nothing

to do with growing anything and think what we're doing

is too close to slavery.

The older people in particular who are only one or two

generations out of slavery, don't wanna do this.

Not understanding that the earth is where

all the wealth comes from.

Yeah that legacy does exist with slavery,

you know the whole, well, we don't do in the dirt.

Oh I don't do worms and I think we have to flip the script

and let these people know.

No this is powerful.

You control your destiny, soil to me is powerful.

I hear a lot of people say when you bring up being healthy

or being vegan or being in shape and all that is

I think a lot of people under the impression that you need

to be wealthy or be rich or famous.

Our true nature going back to Africa

is to be healthy and eco-friendly, you know.

To this day, we're very eco-friendly and healthy there.

In Africa they don't really believe in eating food

that's been refrigerated, they wanna pick everything fresh,

whether it's meat or vegetables or fruits,

everything is very fresh.

So it's actually part of our nature,

but we've gotten away from that.

We have more to learn by far from them in terms of wisdom,

quite frankly just being happy, you know what I mean.

Like, I'm being serious, everybody's happy,

they're feeling good.

It's a lot of lessons I think we could learn from here.

Just seeing our essence in a different light.

They got probably far more struggles than we do,

but the way they process it, it's just so different.

So very endearing and there's a lot of love and warmth here.

We don't have good toilets, we don't have good bath house,

you know, we just maintaining.

You see always I tell myself that

I can see joy through the pain because when it comes to

the ghetto all you see is pain but everybody

just humble and cool.

Your strengths, come from Africa.

The advantage that you have over everybody else

in the world really, is your African-ness.

When slaves ended up in America, they didn't suddenly forget

everything that they had learned, you know what I mean.

And how they treat their children

and how they treat their parents

and how they treat their brothers and sisters.

So if African-Americans didn't have that

African in the them, they'd be just like

the rest of the people, you know what I mean.

Their value in spite of all the hurdles and obstacles

and victimization and things which have been thrown in

the paths of African-Americans

they have been able to overcome.

We shall overcome.

Stabilizing the food system allows for the great thinkers,

the great musicians, the great healers, the great teachers

to come because they're being born

into a society that nourishes them.

We grew food as a communion with nature

with the understanding that everyone should eat.

The elders should eat, the children should eat,

but everyone should eat the best possible food.

So we can get the best possible results

from every member of this society.

So what happens once we monetize the food system?

The best food was being sold or distributed

to just certain people so then you had

a huge population that was malnourished.

If you're constantly worried about how you're gonna eat,

that's a file folder that never shuts down in your mind.

So, all your energy is going into that problem.

But if you can take that problem off your plate,

then you might be able to start thinking about,

oh well I'd like to get training to get a job

and I can now put my energy into that and ultimately,

people who have jobs, people who are getting training,

that's what you want in a healthy city.

I said if you can't eat, you can't think

and if you can't think, you can't learn

and if you can't learn, you can't earn.

I'll give you an example of one young man that I met,

he said to me that I used to work in these gardens,

as a volunteer and I said,

really, what are you doing now?

And he said, well I'm a male nurse and I said,

wow, that's great.

How'd you start to become that and how did that happen?

And he said well, from urban farming, from what I did

I learned how to care for something outside of myself.

It's more than a gardening organization.

Why?

We talk about healthy eating,

we talk about healthy thinking,

we talk about healthy finances, healthy fitness,

healthy families.

It's a holistic approach to healing.

- You know in terms of finding,

the healthy community wherever you live,

like finding that group of people that you can sort of

be peers with and when you're around people

that are healthy,

automatically you pick up a lot of their habits.

So this is our fridge, and so since we're vegetarians,

it's a lot of veggies.

So if you're around successful people who wanna treat

themselves well, you're gonna probably fall into that.

If you're around people who wanna do something bad

to other people and have a negative mindset,

you're gonna fall into that.

I think people don't eat healthy in the hood

because they're not hip to it

and you get caught up when you in the hood,

in just what's around you.

They don't know that the people that are living the longest

and living the best pretty much try to eat healthy.

I was tired of just eating fast food like, for me,

from me having common knowledge of how I was growing up

cause when at home I would eat veggies and fruits.

I was missing all of that because I was going with

too much fried food, too much, just too much.

So I started thinking, damn, I need to start juicing up.

To somewhat balance it out or just throw something good

in my body because it has so much bad in my body.

It just became like part of my culture

and part of my way of life

and the more I kept living like that,

I started noticing over a period of time,

I stopped eating fast food.

I start eating at home better.

I start shopping better for myself,

I start doing more baked things more grilled things.

Eating more veggies, drinking more juices,

then I started noticing the change in my body.

Then I was feeling real great about myself,

I lost a lot of weight and I was like,

wow, like this really really really works.

It's something about living healthy

that gives you a different energy.

Like you know what I mean?

And this is what people don't tell you and this is real,

this what we try to share at Juices for Life.

Something about living healthy gives your engine,

it's like cleaning it out.

Juicing up, eating right and exercising

is gonna help you in your life.

That's what it's about so we could all live right.

This is what in.

Line anybody who you like, any modern pop star you like,

any rapper you like, any athlete you like,

this is what they do.

This is the key to cool.

Juice up.

Steam your food.

Exercise.

Health is wealth.

Movement is medicine.

Feel rich.

Now I've been to Atlanta tons of times since my early 20s

I been coming to Atlanta for the last 20, 30 years

and I never knew there was a vegan urban community

within the Atlanta scene.

I didn't know that.

We are at Soul Vegetarian in Midtown Atlanta,

this is like one of the restaurants that I had to find

when I became a vegan, cause I think people,

they have misconstrued what vegans eat,

that we can't eat the same type of food

or it's not as good as the regular food.

And this place is a soul food restaurant,

that speaks to that anybody that's saying that.

They got greens, potato salad, cornbread,

rice and gravy, it's just cooked in a different way.

You can't eat organic and then go back to eating crap.

Oh, I know I'm doing wrong.

It's like I'm giving myself cancer right now,

eating this hamburger.

I became a vegan after I went on like a 22 day fast.

The way your body feels as you clean your body,

you just can put that stuff back in there.

So I wasn't really on the mindset to become a vegan,

I was thinking I had to just start eating cleaner.

But I felt so clean, I was just like, I'm not.

I'mma go all the way with it.

And the fast basically let you know

that the majority of the time when you're hungry,

it's more mental than it actually is real hunger.

People have this term that they say,

I need a comfort food.

And so many times, people turn to food for comfort.

But when I came to Project Row Houses,

you know I made a real concerted effort

to have a holistic change in approach.

And I realized that food didn't need to comfort me.

I had people, community activities to comfort me.

You know on the quest to holistic living,

I think one of the most important things is to learn

to become aware of yourself and I started to know myself

and know that I felt better when I was eating fish.

It had to be a clean, good fish you know?

Don't get me wrong, some days I still go home

an eat some catfish that my mother bought,

but that's not what I would do on the everyday.

One thing they don't tell you at the grocery store,

you go to the outer perimeter,

that's where all the good healthy food is at.

The inside on the shelves

is where all the processed food's at.

All the stuff that's bad for you, just go to the outside.

The more color you have in your food, the better.

So, I try to put tomato, onion, bell pepper,

all these things in every meal that I prepare.

You notice how low the prices are too.

And most of these prices are per pound,

and this isn't even a pound.

This celery right here, for a price of a Snicker,

this about six or seven snacks right here.

For the price of one Snicker.

I'm noticing some things that I used to eat

that I don't eat as much anymore.

I love brisket.

But brisket's not a every weekend meal for me anymore.

Other things that I always pass up,

pre-processed, pre-packaged things.

'cause I don't know what's being put on them,

I don't know what goes into cooking that,

but I know that I'm gonna put only heart-healthy

and healthy things on my meat.

I ain't even know there was a difference from

fried and bake or broil,

I just thought everything was fried.

There is a difference, there is a choice.

You can justify eating anything, you know.

I've heard some funny lines about guys

make up these lies about food.

For me to be able to say, I'm not going to eat meat,

and I'm not going to eat dairy,

it gave me a discipline that help...

that started to affect the other aspects of my life.

And I wanna make this point clear,

it's like being vegetarian or vegan doesn't

necessarily say that you are all the way healthy.

You have to find what the things are to eat

because at one point when I was vegetarian,

I would just eat french fries and salads.

And that wasn't really healthy,

so you have to find the things that are good for your body.

I wish somebody woulda told me earlier

about becoming a vegan, like when I was like sixteen.

My health would incredible.

And I can honestly say like if you run around and work

and stay in the studio and party as much as I do,

this the only lifestyle for you.

Yeah, your energy's totally different.

Your brain works different.

You can tell the difference even if you go to eat a bunch of

Popeye's or you eat a bunch of grease,

you gonna be so tired once you get to the house,

or go to work, forget about it, you get lazy.

But when you eat at a certain standard,

you know it's even more fun.

It's like you found somebody who cooks it right

and it's like not oily an it's not heavy.

- I like coming to this place,

My Two Cents because I love the energy here.

The food, the people cook with love.

My Two Cents is in the community in Los Angeles

where people from the inner city can have access to it.

And I love this restaurant.

The vibe is right.

- I am chef Alisa Reynolds.

Originally from Los Angeles.

I've done events for everyone from Barack Obama,

Oprah Winfrey, Common, Reggie Bush, Matt Kemp.

You know it's an old Southern saying,

you put your two cents in.

So this is my two cents,

my version of what traditional American food

from the South is.

I saw the numbers of people that were dying of diabetes

and obesity and I wanted to do something different

but I always felt you can't change someone sharply,

it's a about changing people's mind

without changing the dish.

It's not trying to change people instantly,

it's turning them on to new things and slowly,

it could change people's lives.

See the thing is, you gotta be able to ease it by

and not tell, you have to prepare it so that people

can't tell the difference in it or automatically

your brain just shuts it out.

I had a couple come in, and he's eating the gumbo

and he's like man, this sausage is so good.

And his whole family is around and I'm like,

oh, that's vegan sausage and he just stopped chewing

and his wife, everybody started laughing.

And she's like, he's so against vegetarian anything,

he just assumed that it was meat.

It's mental, you know?

It's a mental reality that people just are stuck with

over generations and generations.

I think it's just getting the community exposed to it.

Good tasting food that is has healthy options to it.

If I tried to keep the tradition that people recognize.

And change the method, it would change the way

they'd look at it in general.

But I have to tell them afterwards.

You do it for you first, you know?

You not doing it to offend anybody,

you not doing it to prove to somebody,

like when people be like, oh are you pescatarian?

I be like, no I just eat fish.

No matter what you call it,

you know what the purpose that you doing it for.

- I say start now, start slowly,

if it's one day a week that you try something new.

Don't go home and eat a pot of rice.

Or a pot of spaghetti.

Eat some salad with that chicken

or with that steak or with that fish.

Sautéed vegetable, tell your moms I want vegetables man.

And I just ate this whole meal.

I don't feel tired, sleepy or nothing.

I just had soul food and I'm not over here like this.

I'm ready to go.

Leave here and go to the studio and get my work on,

so that's what it was for me.

I don't want nothing that's gonna slow me down.

A friend eats elephant's ass and he's happy you know?

And good, your friends a unique person with special genes.

That don't mean, oh, you could smoke cigarettes,

my dad lived to 100 smoking cigarettes.

Your fucking dad was special.

I don't know what to tell you, is that what,

what's gonna tell you.

You now if you're doing well, with a bad diet,

if you're doing well and you don't work out.

Just think you can do better.

We can all do better.

Since the last interview, we definitely got better,

Hustle Fit is a real brand in Houston now.

Everywhere you go, all around Texas

you could see people rocking the Hustle Fit brand

and supporting the movement

and being a part of the movement.

What is Hustle Fit to me, Hustle Fit is a lifestyle,

we want to always emphasize the hustle.

We put the hustle in big and the fit in small letters

so people can realize the hustle's in everything

you did whether if it was in the gym,

whether it was at work, whether it was education-wise,

you going to school, trying to get that degree,

for college, you know.

Everything you do, you have to hustle for it.

And what it is, is everyday you try to be better

than you were yesterday.

Well I can't call myself a hustler

if I ain't hustling to take care of myself also.

I think it's 50/50.

I think it's about taking care of yourself

and after you leave the gym, go and get on your own hustle

and figure out how to be successful in this world.

Not a lot of people that look like me,

make it out and get to see a different part of the world.

I got some friends that's still stuck in that circle but,

they see me doing something that's not selling dope

and I'm not locked up, I'm not dead or in jail.

And I go back and I can touch them

and show them where I'm at and inspire them

to wanna get better and do better.

And they realize stuff does exist outside of the hood

and you can make it doing honest living.

I gave up smoking, I gave up drinking

and I gave up cheating on my meal.

You know without all that, I felt lighter,

I felt like, you know, I was in a better mood

and I got a lot more stuff done.

- We inspire people.

Whether it's through social media,

through fitness competitions that we're doing.

You know the feedback that we get from people,

hey I've been watching you guys and you guys motivated me,

I've been down in life,

and it's been hard but just watching you guys

live your lives day to day, and really repping it,

it's just giving me hope and it's pushing me to go forward.

People come up to me randomly and say,

man we seen how far you came, we seen how you changed

since back in the day, and it motivate us to get in the gym

and start working on ourself and getting better.

What better service can you do than the service of

someone else helping them change their lifestyle

and once that happen man it kinda just took off

and I haven't looked back since.

- It's just like everything,

if you wanna be successful at anything,

you gotta have the discipline, you gotta have the drive

and you know it's just about challenging yourself, man.

- This is not easy.

And it takes a lot of discipline,

you have to have self-motivation,

where you have to establish that mindset,

get around the right people.

Some people that are going to push you to be

at your best and the sky's the limit.

Feeling rich is just being mentally,

spiritually physically, you know, at your best.

- My thing is this.

You know Fat Joe your whole life.

Fat Joe.

You known him for a million years.

If he lost weight, you can lose weight.

I'm not special in no way shape or form.

I am not superman.

I am just like you.

If I took you in the gym right now,

I would do the same thing you do.

There's nothing incredible, I'm not running up a mountain,

doing back flips, no I'm going on the treadmill

for a little 25 minutes, watching TV.

And you know, I'm done.

I worked out.

Since our last interview, I've lost 50 pounds in total.

Whoo.

The benefits to having a healthier lifestyle

are that your children are living a healthier lifestyle.

We really stay on them about portion control,

about vegetables, 'cause we didn't grow up with that.

We have diabetes in our family.

My father passed away from Cancer.

We're breaking the cycle with our children's futures.

You now, they'll that along to their kids.

Maybe they won't have to suffer from diabetes,

maybe they'll make healthier choices.

- I want people to know.

I don't want them to have these heath problems, knowing,

damn man I coulda stopped this 20 years ago

if only I woulda just exercised a little bit more,

drunk a little bit more water instead of drinking soda.

I think that's the thing,

people don't wanna change the lifestyle,

they just wanna look good.

Well it takes hard work to look good.

When you go work and you done working out,

you might be sore, but man you gonna feel good,

on stage too.

I'm bouncing around, jumping around,

doing thing is couldn't do when I was big.

I'm not out of breath.

I can still give my all and give a hell of a performance.

I know the hard work it used to take

into rocking the show.

And now it's almost like I'm gliding.

And I'm laughing.

Jordan game seven.

Laughing, I'm mad I'm laughing.

Ha!

Turn around whoo, I'm on the other side like what's up?

I think entertainers, especially rappers getting in shape,

50 Cent, Fat Joe, myself,

I think definitely it's gonna provide

some king of motivation to somebody when people see that,

then they can see, okay, well if he can do it, I can do it.

We could take the responsibility to say,

this is my lifestyle and people start

gravitating towards it.

And if they've been some kind of successful,

like let's use a Drake or even a 2 Chainz,

you look on his Instagram, he's like,

look at this Brussels sprouts.

Look at this, you know.

He's eating super healthy and he shows it on his thing.

You boast and brag to them about keeping your body right,

keeping your temple right the same way we boast

and brag about the jewels, the cars, the women.

You can't enjoy none of that if you're not in good health.

Maybe everybody's not going, yo it's cool,

because they don't see a dollar in it.

But it's not about a dollar in it.

You're your biggest dollar.

If your health is bad, I don't care how much money you have.

If you're in the hospital, you can't enjoy it.

I can enjoy $20 in good health more than

you could enjoy $20,000 in bad health.

Not gonna tell you it's the easiest thing to do,

but it's the greatest thing I've done in my life.

Now that I lost 100 pounds, I'm enjoying living.

Rather than hoping I don't die because I'm overweight

and because if the way I'm eating.

I look at my body as something that I need to allow me

to be healthy, to be whole, because my body

is now no longer a liability, but an asset.

So we did my dad's first interview for this documentary

he was a little bit overweight and he had some health habits

that his doctors had tried to talk to him about.

And he wasn't really listening and every time we tried

to get him to pay attention, he would be like,

okay well let's see if anything's wrong and every time

it turned out that there wasn't anything concrete

that we could point to to get him to stop doing

certain things, eating certain types of food

and that sort of thing, and then, um.

And then out of nowhere, he had a,

I'm not sure what you call it, but like a diabetes attack

where he went into a coma and when he woke up from that

a few days later, the doctors gave him a warning

and told him that if you do any of the things

we told you not to do, one more time, that could be it.

Like this was your, basically your final warning,

like this is, should be a wake-up call.

And my dad listened.

Since January 8th last year 2015,

I was informed that of because of my overindulgence

in sugar or sweet stuff, that I was 'sposed to die.

I got that wake-up call and I took advantage of it.

And I heard it loud and clear

and I have not had a drop of alcohol in 19 months.

And I feel like 19 years old, clear as a bell.

I've never been more creative in my life

and I will never go back, I do not miss it at all.

And it's kind of a testament to like,

once you start the momentum of getting healthier

and you realize how good it feels, you know,

it's hard to go back.

- Push now.

Push, push, push.

More, more, more, more, more.

Come on there you go, great job.

Good job, good job, perfect.

My wish is that everybody gets to at least

feel that feeling so they know what it is

so that they can get hooked on it, you know.

It's not the worst thing to be hooked on at all.

So.

For me this is one of the most important documentaries

I get to be a part of because healthy living

is very valuable to my life.

It means a lot and I feel like it's really just a way

of showing love to myself, saying I do value me.

You know some people think when you eating healthy

it's about just the way you look and the weight.

Well that just comes along with it, that's a plus.

The inside is what it really is about.

And then you get the outer with it, so why not like,

that's just a big bonus that you start looking better

just because you felling better and eating healthier.

People will be like man you're glowing.

And that glow, I love that glow.

That glow is like people think I need to put on the makeup

and I need to have the fresh haircut and outer things

but that inner glow is the beauty

and that's all holistic living.

It's complete and total wellness, meaning inside, outside,

mentally, physically, all of that, you wanna feel rich.

♪ Are we addicted to the struggle or committed to success

♪ Are we focused on the positive or holding onto stress

♪ Not saying thing's perfect but in many ways I'm blessed

♪ Learning how to take the negative and flip for the best

♪ Everyday bring challenge

♪ Every challenge is a chance to advance

♪ The power is right in our own hands

♪ From a youth full of rage, to a wise grown man

♪ Here I am, it's beautiful now, I overstand

♪ I'm looking forward through my rear view

♪ Mirror in hindsight

♪ Gotta be more than just a G if you keeping your mind right

♪ Better be ready for the battle or focused on my fight

♪ I ain't sitting on no sidelines watching them highlights

♪ I'm gonna begin the game playing to win

♪ But learning from setbacks

♪ And strengthen my weaknesses

♪ And mastering what I'm best at

♪ Power of refinement until you get right and exact

♪ It's all in the mind

♪ But that's depending where your head's at

♪ Life is a chess match and lessons come from your mistakes

♪ Try not to end up in checkmate no matter whatever it takes

♪ Long as you're breathing then you can be problem solving

♪ Staying involved, evolved, the world keep revolving

♪ For the cause be all you can

♪ From the morning to the sunset

♪ You never have no regrets

♪ Took a journey to the edge of your fate and then lept

♪ Not just understanding but overstanding is the objective

♪ Keep it open, in perspective

♪ Just let me be what I am

♪ Take my destiny in my hands

And how much of health is mind body and spirit?

Like all of it is absolutely right

it takes all three of those things.

A perspective, understanding that you reap what you sow,

whatever you put out there is gonna come back at you.

Positive or negative.

And that goes not just with what you eat

but how you treat people.

- Everything.

Everything.

And every time you have to look down on anybody

you should give them a hand up.

- That's beautiful, I like that.

Thank you man.

- Thank you super, love you.

- Love you too.

♪ Into a source that was omnipotent

♪ Had to shift my focus to my higher purpose

♪ Ain't nothing weak about broke

♪ It takes a fighter's courage

♪ People say they want a revolution

♪ But steady holding on to slave ideas

♪ Afraid of evolution

♪ In life we live and learn,

♪ It's practice, theory, practice

♪ Wisdom is organically grown

♪ Its not pre-packaged

♪ It's forward ever baby never backwards

♪ Just let me be what I am

♪ Take my destiny in my hands

♪ By my actions you can judge where I stand

♪ And I hope one day that you'll overstand

♪ We think we found the absolute truth

♪ But only to discover it's a labyrinth

♪ We go from one maze into another

♪ So many chambers and angles

♪ Peeling the onion layers

♪ Within it all I see the same gang

♪ Just different players

♪ So I rebel from the prison cell of the pigeon hole

♪ And dare to be myself original

♪ A man lives on principles

♪ I don't posture to be popular

♪ Born to be a leader not just a blind follower

♪ It's family before the dollar

♪ Your priorities in order

♪ And like Bruce Lee say

♪ Be the water, be the earth

♪ Be the wind and the fire

♪ Elevate take it higher

♪ It's instinct

♪ Fulfill your needs and your desires

♪ But we go to be compassionate

♪ Considerate

♪ A people's advocate

♪ Eradicating ignorance through experience

♪ The more you live the more you learn and you grow

♪ It has a positive effect on all the people you know

♪ It's motivation

♪ Just let me be what I am

♪ Take my destiny in my hands

♪ By my actions you can judge where I stand

♪ And I hope one day that you'll overstand

♪ Are we addicted to the struggle or committed to success

♪ Are we focused on the positive or holding onto stress

♪ Not saying thing's perfect but in many ways I'm blessed

♪ Learning how to take the negative and flip for the best

♪ Everyday bring challenge

♪ Every challenge is a chance to advance

♪ The power is right in our own hands

♪ From a youth full of rage to a wise grown man

♪ Here I am

♪ It's beautiful now I overstand

♪ And I hope one day that you'll overstand ♪