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 Neela Sakaria: Thank you for joining us. Can you start off by giving our readers a little bit of background on what inspired you to write BODY REVIVAL?
Victoria Johnson: Well, I'm one of eleven children, first of all. Coming from a big family, we always had a great deal of energy around the dinner table at night. My parents were migrant farmers and what that means is that we would go and we would actually travel and work outside and work in the fields. So we never really had a permanent home and we were also living in extreme poverty. When you live in impoverished circumstances, you find that often times food is the determining factor of the wealth of a family. So you try to always have food around. Because of that, my family was really food focused - everything we did was around food. Living in those impoverished circumstances, I learned that food comforting, it meant family, fun, love. So I interpereted food time, or dinner time, as much more than what I now call "fuel time." Because of that I ended up being over-weight.
In the first grade we moved from Louisiana to Washington State. I walked into school and I freaked out. I ran out of the classroom and teachers were trying to get me back inside. They kept trying to assure me that just because they were all a different color, we were still all the same. I thought "color? Those guys have no legs. I have drumsticks for thighs!"
That was my first introduction into seeing my weight as something different than everyone else around me. One of my girlfriends told me that whenever her mom wanted to lose weight, she would eat just lettuce. So right there in kindergarten or first grade, was my first introduction into dieting. Most of my childhood was like that - I would gain weight, lose weight, gain weight, lose weight. When I was in high school, I ended up being a cheerleader and getting on the dance team. During the summer I would go back in the fields and hang out with my folks and I would gain as much as thirty pounds during the summer. Then all of a sudden August came and I had to gain thirty pounds in one month. I would starve and binge and purge and I picked up all these bad habits. When I got to college - by the time I was finished with college, I was no longer doing dancing and I was sixty plus pounds heavier. I had always kept my weight around 110 pounds and all of a sudden I'm 170 plus pounds. I was teaching a work out class and not even paying attention to my own weight. I passed out one day while I was teaching an actual work-out class and my students were trying to wake me up. I came to, and I hear them saying "come on wake up, we've gotta finish the class." That was the first time I realized these people weren't there for me, they were there for what I could give to them. There I was passed out and obviously ill and they wanted me to continue with the class! That was an interesting turning point for me. I went to the doctor and the nurse asks me how much I weigh. I said I weighed 130. Keep in mind I was 170 plus! Well that was the last time I had been on a scale. So I wasn't even aware of what was going on. I had blocked it out in this denial. At 170 plus pounds I jumped off the scale and totally freaked out.
Here I was teaching aerobics, I was a certified instructor, I had my own training company. I knew all about dieting, weight training. But for some reason, I wasn't walking my talk. So I went on this journey after that and the doctor calls me in and sits me down and pulls out this file and he shows me that if I don't change my diet, I'm going to become a pharmaceutical drug addict. At that time I developed type II diabetes, hypertension, high blood pressure, my arteries were starting to clog, I was having blackouts because I was going into mini-diabetic comas. All these things are going on and here I was, a physical-ed instructor!
Obviously I had information, but I wasn't working on the issues. I started taking courses, getting back into prayer, putting myself around people who were at peace with themselves -- not in denial, that's different. That's how I started to learn about food as a place of comfort -- something that made me feel peaceful but only for a moment. That's why if you don't get that spiritual place filled up, you're never going to be able to quite solve the weight issue. Weight is a result of what we're doing. It's a bi-product of our habits, thoughts, desires and actions. So I learned to separate what I was eating, thinking, doing. That's how I was able to come up with BODY REVIVAL. I learned that the weight I was carrying was a spiritual issue, not a physical issue. I was never quite full, I could never satiate my desire. I could eat bags of potato chips and still not feel full. I was trying to fill something up.
That's why BODY REVIVAL is different than other diet books. I start from the inside and have you work on that, and then I have you work on the outside. Versus just doing leg lifts. If I do leg lifts and I'm still not at peace, I'm never going to be happy. I could have all the surgery in the world but if I don't get my soul at peace, it doesn't matter.
Neela: That leads us to my next question. Can you summarize what your book offers readers? Why should someone pick up BODY REVIVAL versus other diet books?
VJ: What they are going to see that is different is number one, someone who has been there and done it. I've done every diet. I've done everything from the loofah sponges and the grapefruit diet to the fat-blocker diet. I mean, I've done every diet known to man. I have experience with dieting, and I know there is no such thing as the magic pill, but it's a process. So I've put together a process that everybody can work through. You know, even if you want to gain weight, there is still a process that has to happen - mentally, spiritually, physically - for that to happen. So I've created a program and process that helps you find out the root of what is going on in your life. Every single thing manifests from some place. You know the root produces the fruit. You can only produce what you have to start with. So if you're a lemon tree, you're only going to produce lemons. The only thing that's going to manifest on the outside is what's on the inside. So I teach you to go inside and really truly figure out, for one time, what is going on in my heart, my mind. Then I can find out what happened to my body. From that point I can design a program that is going to be a one-time, last-time program. I don't ever have to worry about my weight again.
Neela: Tell us about the success stories you include in your book. How did you find these people, how did that come about?
VJ: Well first, I do some programs for the NBPA, which is the National Basketball Players' Association so I had the opportunity to work with young men who were going through all sorts of life issues, even though they are great athletes. Again, there's a reason why a person strays from the center of who they are. I was able to gather information and put together a program for athletes. I worked with a young man who just got drafted, I saw him a while ago. He was suffering from mono, he had lost weight, motivation, and the desire to understand how he could possibly be a professional athlete when he didn't even have the emotional energy to get up out of bed and practice his sport. So we redesigned a program so he could figure out what to eat, how to think, how to move, and we put it all together in a synergistic program. He just signed his first NBA contract. So you have a person who goes from barely getting out of bed because of mono, to becoming a professional athlete. There's a process he had to go through.
Another example is a gentleman who had back surgery. He didn't think he'd be able to walk. He had a brother who had gotten into an accident and couldn't use his body either. He went through the spiritual purpose of looking at who he was as a person. Today he is able to jump and dance and move, only because we looked at the inside and then went out.
I know another woman who has lost thirty pounds, is learning how to weight train, and is finally getting married because she gained confidence to let someone get close to her. She found out who she was, so now she could find the right guy. She has someone who is going to bring more peace and joy to her life but she's not looking to them to MAKE her life.
Let me also mention Laura, because she was an anorexic. That's important because people think my book is all about weight loss. But my book is about body revival, which isn't always about weight loss. Sometimes it is about understanding how to heal one's spirit and one mind. What you speak you manifest, what you think about comes about. Laura was an athlete who trained all the time and had a sense of wanting to be perfect at everything. We had to go in and re-define spiritually, what is perfect? What is perfect for you? We decided to let go of the idea of perfect, and go for peaceful. A peaceful spirit. We worked through that and re-defined who she was. We decided, what is perfect? Let's start re-designing our own person. So we did that step by step. That's what the book offers -- a step by step process.
Neela: Would you say that your book has appeal to people who aren't at either extreme in terms of weight?
VJ: Yes. Another example is a man who is forty-plus years old, he wasn't overweight or underweight. He just wasn't content. He felt that he was walking through life and nothing was happening. That's because he wasn't making anything happen. Our work included saying, okay what is missing? Let's put it on paper. Let's think about what is missing. Let's look at the reality of where we are and what sort of help we need to manifest that. He needed more muscle because he wanted to get into water-skiing. He had a very stressful job so he had to manage depression, manage stress, manage anxiety, manage diet. So we had to come up with methods of thinking and excercise. So for him it's a continual process of looking at what's missing and what he can do to have it. Then looking at, is it really missing? Or am I missing it?
So for people who want to manifest their destiny and really live their life, it's a matter of looking at what it is you want, and then how can you make that happen? Spiritually, physically, mentally -- the whole package. If it means giving up donuts, guess what? We're not going to trade our destiny for donuts anymore. That's what I'm teaching people. Everything you eat matters, everything you think matters. We have a divine purpose, each one of us -- we cannot trade that for food.
Neela: What kind of research went into determining the "optimum food list" that you refer to in the book?
VJ: We focus on low-glycemic foods. We use the same program that consumer reports has decided is one of the best ways to lose weight. We used the American Heart Association standards, we used the American Diabetes Association standards. So I took the top health authorities and put the program together based on their guidelines and standards. We've had over 20,000 successful people in the program.
Neela: What kind of response has your book gotten so far?
VJ: I don't know as far as numbers, but we've had lines of people coming up for autographs. I don't keep track of the numbers because I'm the creative artist type. I'm on doing interviews or I'm in a gym, or training camp, but the emails that have come through have been very positive.
Neela: Are you working on any other projects?
VJ: Right now I'm working hard on putting together a gospel aerobics video. I love gospel music, it's soulful and has a good beat, and I use it in my classes. Right now I have 300 churches that are doing an urban dance praise. What that is, is a church group that meets and works out, and goes through things that are going on in their lives. It's a program that heals the spirit and body. It's just a hot program! 300 churces across the country are doing these dance praise programs.
It's an alternative to negative influences. Let's just help people get healthy using positive influences from a positive place.
To learn more about BODY REVIVAL visit http://www.hcibooks.com
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