#183: D. Anthony Evans - Embracing the Pain in Order to Live
D. Anthony Evans loves pain. Pain, you might say, is his superpower, which is a good thing because D. Anthony lives with excruciating pain every second of the day.
He was born with Neurofibromatosis (NF), a rare genetic condition causing multiple tumors to grow on the nerve tissue. He has hundreds of them on and in his body.
Unfortunately, they can become malignant and turn into an aggressive, mostly terminal, form of cancer.
In 2012, D. Anthony was diagnosed with this cancer. Doctors removed hundreds of tumors and told him he had six months to live.
Eleven years later, he’s thriving.
How in the world did he go from a death sentence to the physical specimen and motivational force that he is today? One word: PLANTS.
This beautiful soul embraces a daily rigorous physical and spiritual practice where he chooses to celebrate a birthday every day because every day is a renewal of life and one more day he gets to celebrate being alive.
About D. Anthony Evans
Adidas called D. Anthony Evans one of the world’s most inspirational athletes, and they’re not alone in being amazed at his powerful story. As a plant-based lifestyle transition coach and dynamic advocate, D. Anthony is dedicated to helping people with major health issues defy the odds and learn to thrive - because he knows how to. Despite being diagnosed with terminal bone cancer, being given 6 months to live, and having 385 tumors removed from his body over the course of eleven nine-hour operations, he has not just survived but thrived for 11 years longer than anyone in history with his cancer. He attributes all of his success to adopting an alkaline mindset and lifestyle that rest perpetually on the foundation of a positive mindset, consistent challenging physical fitness, and a whole food plant-based lifestyle.
Through his nonprofit Cheri Inspires that he founded in his mother's name, he aims to bridge the widening access gap that poor and fixed income patients face should they decide to fight for their life holistically with treatments traditional insurance just doesn't cover. This is where D, identified the need and created a solution. D didn't fight his fight traditionally because he had the help of Chef Dave. This is why this part of his mission is so important to him because understands that unless you are independently wealthy, fighting cancer holistically is really not an option.
Episode Resources
D. Anthony Instagram @danthonytrains
Cheri-Inspires.org - D’s non-profit dedicated to helping people receive holistic treatment
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Full YouTube Transcript
Rip Esselstyn:
If you've ever considered even for a second of joining one of our PLANTSTRONG retreats, I want to encourage you, now is your chance. Join us. Just do it and join us April 16th to the 21st, just outside Asheville, North Carolina in wondrous and magical Black Mountain for six days of learning and laughter in living like you have never done in your life. We're going to take morning hikes together, yoga, afternoon pickleball, stargazing. We're going to eat endless buffets of plant-based meals, hear talks from the experts in the world like Dr. Michael Klaper and Doug Lisle on how exactly to best elevate your plant-based lifestyle. Great news for healthcare professionals, we have CMEs and CEUs available for physicians, physician assistants, nurses, and nurse practitioners as part of the registration fee. Just visit plantstrong.com and click on Black Mountain for all the details, or send us an email with any questions to events@plantstrong.com. I'll see you April 16th.
D. Anthony Evans:
We all can do whatever we want to do when things are doing great, but none of us know who we are until life throws you on your head. That's a fact, Rip. I could have went along with the program and they could have chemoed me out of here like the other 200,000 people before me in the history of my disease, but I was like, "Hey, I have absolutely nothing to lose to do everything that they don't want me to do." That's how we got here, Rip, from being a hardheaded person.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm Rip Esselstyn and welcome to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. The mission at PLANTSTRONG is to further the advancement of all things within the plant-based movement. We advocate for the scientifically proven benefits of plant-based living and envision a world that universally understands, promotes and prescribes plants as a solution to empowering your health, enhancing your performance, restoring the environment, and becoming better guardians to the animals we share this planet with. We welcome you wherever you are on your PLANTSTRONG journey and I hope that you enjoy this show.
My guest today loves pain. Pain you might say is his superpower, which is a good thing because he lives with excruciating pain every second of every day. He was born with a condition called neurofibromatosis, which is a rare genetic condition causing multiple tumors to grow on the nerve tissue. He has literally hundreds of them on and all over his body. Unfortunately, they can become malignant and turn into an aggressive, mostly terminal form of cancer. In 2012, D. Anthony was diagnosed with this particular type of cancer and doctors removed hundreds of tumors and told him that he had six months to live.
11 years later in 2023, he is not only alive, D. Anthony is thriving. How in the world did he go from a death sentence to the absolute physical specimen and motivational force that he is today? One word for y'all, plants. You are going to love this conversation with this beautiful soul who embraces a daily rigorous physical and spiritual practice, where he chooses to celebrate a birthday every day because every day is a renewal of life, and one more day that he gets to celebrate being alive. Hold on to your hats and enjoy this force field that is D. Anthony Evans. All right. D. Anthony Evans is in the house!
D. Anthony Evans:
Rip!
Rip Esselstyn:
D, I got a confession that I have to make to you and it's this. Two months ago, I didn't know you existed. I didn't even know who you were. I didn't know what a phenomenal story that you have and that you're living and that you're sharing with people. What happened is I was doing some research for another person that I was going to have on the podcast, and then I was watching a YouTube video. Then, sometimes after you watch a video, other ones pop up [inaudible 00:05:20] that says D. Anthony Evans and it's about hope and it's by an organization called The Hope Project. It's eight minutes long and I was captivated, and so I ended up pushing the arrow and I watched that first part one episode that was eight minutes long.
At the end, I was in tears. I could not believe what I just saw. I watched part two, I sent it to my podcast producer. I said, "We got to get this guy on the show." I DM'd you on Instagram. You got in touch with me and said, "Let's do it." I showed my whole family, I've got a wife and I've got a son and I've got two daughters and I showed them over dinner last night and everybody was in tears and they are just so excited for me to talk to you today.
D. Anthony Evans:
Wow, wow, wow! Goosebumps, goosebumps and goosebumps. To me, Rip, this is just some type of celestial intervention, because my story, I've been cancer specific and just been focusing underneath in the shadows, helping cancer patients because I'm a cancer patient. But since I got, not stuck, but since I settled in Maui, my teacher just encouraged me that you got to scale it up. You can't fly around the world anymore with your compromised immune system, and that's what all these projects are about. It's about sharing the story where I don't have to put my immune system at risk, but the fact that it finally got to you and I've been trying to get on your podcast for years now, Rip. That's why I said it's divine intervention. I've been trying to get on your show because I like how you live and your style. I just like how we all talk about the same thing, the same lifestyle, but what's unique in everybody is their delivery. How you deliver the information, and I like the way you deliver the information, brother.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, I like the way you would deliver information too. I really do. Now, I want to unpack your story a little bit here.
D. Anthony Evans:
Yes, sir.
Rip Esselstyn:
As I said, it's a phenomenal one and it's a testament to just the ferocious nature that you are tackling this thing that has taken hold of you. First of all, if you don't mind, before we talk about the disease that you have, I just want to understand do you want me to call you D, D. Anthony, what do you like?
D. Anthony Evans:
Let me just, for the world. My name is Dejuan, D-E-J-U-A-N, but my first speech, the MCs called me Dejuan and it threw my whole speech off because you can't correct. You never correct anybody when they misspell your name at a speech. It was my first survivor speech, American Cancer Society, 3,000 runners on the Relay For Life. It was huge, and she called me Dejuan and I said, Dejuan is gone. D. Anthony will be created because it threw my rhythm off, but call me D, Rip.
Rip Esselstyn:
Call you D. D, tell me, where did you grow up?
D. Anthony Evans:
I grew up in a suburb on the border of Chicago called Evanston. Across the street is Chicago and the other side is the suburb Evanston, which Northwestern is the home of. My mother was from the suburbs and my dad was from the south side. I was this culmination of very, very different upbringings that created who I am in the way that I move, but Evanston, Illinois is where I was born and raised, at least till 16. Then, I'll tell you in a little bit of how I was forced to become an adult overnight.
Rip Esselstyn:
I want to hear all that. Did you have brothers and sisters?
D. Anthony Evans:
I have half brothers and siblings. But in my household, it's just me and my mother.
Rip Esselstyn:
Got it.
D. Anthony Evans:
For 16 years, me and my mom. She was my mom and my dad.
Rip Esselstyn:
Your dad was not there, is that correct?
D. Anthony Evans:
He was not there. I got familiar with the penitentiary very young visiting him. I'm past that. I was angry at him for a long time. But no, my mom was my mother and my father. Her passing devastated my life because she was everything. She was it.
Rip Esselstyn:
You were raised by your mom, it was you and your mom. What was your mom's name?
D. Anthony Evans:
My mom's name was Cheri.
Rip Esselstyn:
Cheri.
D. Anthony Evans:
Cheri Wilburn Evans. Yes. Cheri.
Rip Esselstyn:
Cheri. (singing)
D. Anthony Evans:
That was her song. That was her favorite song.
Rip Esselstyn:
And so, what happened when you were 16 that you said it was devastating for you?
D. Anthony Evans:
The reason it was devastating because most people or most children that have a sick or ill parent, they know what's coming because they've been sick or ill. The insane thing of just about my life and how it played out is that I'm born on my mom's birthday, which is December 21st. She was diagnosed with AIDS and HIV in '85, '86, found out at a blood drive through my school. I didn't know this. From '86 to '93, I didn't know any of this, but I reflect back on her behavior. She wouldn't let me drink from her pop and would get real, she want to hit me because I was trying to eat from the... and I didn't understand. I just, "Man, you're my mom." I didn't get it.
For eight years in reflection, I just think about everything we went through and her being sick and me not knowing that is AIDS, it's a death sentence, and everything she's doing is to try to prepare me for being here by myself. And so, she lived, man, successfully and without symptoms until the last year. It was Magic Johnson. It was Magic Johnson coming out that inspired her to tell me. After school, I'll never forget it. It had been her secret. She been sick for eight years. I knew something was wrong, but AIDS? That was the whole world. Everybody was just scared.
Once she had found out, she became an activist in those last 24 months of her life, we're standing in front of my high school with the megaphone, condoms, and HIV prevention literature, trying to save my generation. It was the most embarrassing thing at the time like, "Mom, you in front of the school." "Dejuan, I have to save. You're not listening." We were at church three times a day. I really didn't understand the gravity of her behavior, but it's kind of what I'm doing now, I just didn't die.
If you think about what happened, I got diagnosed with terminal bone cancer and was told I was going to die in 2012 in June. In January, told me flat out, nobody in history, the tumors on your spine, it's going to metastasize to your lungs. They're right there. Hello. Do not put your family through this. Meet with the hospice nurse, D. We love you, but why are we going to do these surgeries? Why? But when we know it's going to happen. Then, I'm still here because I did the same thing she did.
Before she got diagnosed, I remember it was card night on Friday, she's the oldest in the family. Everybody come over drinking and smoking and playing spades. It was just a great old time. Men in '88 or something, '88, '89, man, we start going to church a little too much. I was like, man, what's up with this church stuff and nobody's coming over anymore. Nobody is coming. In reflection, again, it's not like me and her could ever have this conversation. She had shared with everybody but me. I'm sick, I'm dying, but we can't tell Dejuan. I say that Rip, because we went from the party house to nobody would even pull up in front.
Rip Esselstyn:
People were scared.
D. Anthony Evans:
They were scared, Rip. We were ignorant as a country at that time and it was just categorized and these stigmas. But my point is, instead of this woman going to bury her head under a rock, she was at the school board. The laws in my city, they teach HIV prevention because of my mom went to war with the school board and won.
Rip Esselstyn:
Where do you think your mom got that inner strength to be an advocate like that and to have the courage to speak up knowing that people would maybe treat her as a pariah?
D. Anthony Evans:
I think she got it from my grandmother and she got it from never really having a childhood herself and having to grow up. Now, I know my family's probably not going to like me saying this, but my grandfather was very abusive to my grandmother where when they split up, she had five kids and had to work. My mom was the oldest and she sat her down and said, "I need you to become my husband." And so, my mother co-parented her siblings all up until the time I was born.
When we look at her behavior when she had lived the life of a 30-year-old at 18, just like I've lived the life of a 60-year-old. I was paying rent at 17, I was homeless at 16. We've been faced with these extreme circumstances that have forced us to either stand up or sink. I just know her beginnings, she didn't have an option to quit. It wasn't an option. Going to quit, it was me though. To answer your question in the simplest terms, just like I fought for my kids, I didn't want to start eating plant-based food, Rip. It was disgusting in the beginning, brother. I didn't want any parts of it. My body was like, and David told, he was like you, "You're going to choose your tongue over your daughter?" That's a uppercut.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
D. Anthony Evans:
You're going to choose your tongue, the lust of your tongue over your kids. What are you talking about? But yeah, it was me that inspired her. She knew that she was going to die and that she did everything she could for her legacy. She got all her affairs in order. Then, she showed me. The education I got from just being the fly on the wall is better than anything I got from any school, any lecture I've heard, because what I learned is we all can do whatever we want to do when things are doing great, but none of us know who we are until life throws you on your head. That's a fact, Rip. That's what she showed me.
Then, when it was my turn, I could've went along with the program and they could've chemoed me out of here, let the other 200,000 people before me in the history of my disease. But I was like, hey, I have absolutely nothing to lose to do everything that they don't want me to do. That's how we got here, Rip, from being a hardheaded person.
Rip Esselstyn:
Nice.
D. Anthony Evans:
I waited for 20 years to fight cancer. They told my mom when I was 12, "You know, by 16, the benign tumors, the research says that if they're larger they will..." Tell me I'll be blind. I wasn't even looking at no life based on what my doctors at the time were saying at all. I didn't really expect too much from life because they had told me, "You're going to be blind by 21." That's no life to me.
Rip Esselstyn:
D, tell me this. We got to unpack all that. Before we do though, well actually, let me ask you this. When were you first diagnosed with this bone cancer?
D. Anthony Evans:
It's a two-pronged situation. I was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis, which is a rare neurological disorder that causes benign tumors to form on the end of your peripheral nerves. Rip, it doesn't get any worse than having things growing on your nerves.
Rip Esselstyn:
All those little skin flaps that you have all over your body, yep, see them. Would you have 230 of those right now if we were to count them up?
D. Anthony Evans:
Man, but they're internal too.
Rip Esselstyn:
Got it.
D. Anthony Evans:
Because it's on my central nervous, 84% of my body is tumors.
Rip Esselstyn:
And so, you've had those removed in the past, but do they grow back or how does that work?
D. Anthony Evans:
Before, they would say we don't do surgery because they'll come back. Prior to Barack Obama getting elected as president, they have figured out how to not cover surgery for us, getting needs tumors that are the conduit for bone cancer cosmetic like a mold. It's so much to unpack here. Just the miracle of being able to do 11 nine-hour neurological operations, that's $4 million. Nobody was doing that pro bono prior to that law being changed. I am the preexisting guide, but neurofibromatosis causes tumors to form on your peripheral nerves. Then, you wait patiently for them to become malignant into MPNST, which is malignant peripheral neurological sheath tumor, which is a rare form of sarcoma, high grade bone cancer. The only people really living are amputees. They have to cut it. They cut your arm off for what I have.
Rip Esselstyn:
How many of these malignant, you said MPSTs, right?
D. Anthony Evans:
MPNSTs, yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
How many malignant ones have you had?
D. Anthony Evans:
This is the interesting thing. I've had 385 removed over the course of 11 operations. The first seven operations were from January 2012 to November 2012. Election day. I'll never forget it. In that span, they removed 225 tumors. When the pathology came back from that excision, I had atypia cells in my head and the two-pound seven-centimeter mass that was on my spine came back malignant as well. I met David Choi in December of 2012 when the doctor said, "We're going to send you home for Christmas, seven operations in one calendar. We don't want to kill you, blah blah, blah, blah blah. We'll get right back into it the first week of 2013." That's when I met him. That's when I baking soda cleanse. That's when he came. He gave me a plant base. It wasn't even a talk. It was like if you don't do this, you're going to die basically. Had the one-on-one talk.
Rip Esselstyn:
D, David Choi.
D. Anthony Evans:
Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
How did your paths cross with David Choi, who you say basically really helped point you in this direction and save your life?
D. Anthony Evans:
You see my videos are mostly in Lifetime. All the classics I'm posting, I'm a Lifetime fitness guy. They got a video of me on their site. I'm a member story. He is a big Lifetime guy. And so, people, when I got diagnosed, they're like, "You need to talk to Chef Choi." I knew he was the vegan chef. At that time, I was 315 pounds. I wore a 44 in the waist and I could push 450, 15 times, bro. I didn't want to talk to the vegan guy, man. I'm not going to lie, Rip. I ate 10,000 calories a day, 40 pounds of chicken breast a month. I know why I got sick. I mean, I've been coached by a monk. You thought you were going to live an amazing life off of all that death?
Rip Esselstyn:
Interesting.
D. Anthony Evans:
What did you think was going to happen?
Rip Esselstyn:
But something in you realized that this guy knew what he was talking about and it resonated with you, right?
D. Anthony Evans:
Yes, sir. What it was was he made me do the baking soda cleanse. He explained, "You have 30 feet of GI and we just need to flush some of the undigested." This is his stuff. He said, "Americans don't chew. We just one bite and swallow." He said, "So, if you've done that behavior over the course of your life," and then he hit me in my stomach. He said, "You see that in there? That's what's feeding your cancer. Once we get rid of that, we're not going to kill it or cure it, but it's not going to be able to thrive. Now you're never going to not be with it, but if you hold to these principles, which are hard, which is discipline, which there are no days off. I can show y'all to stretch some years."
This is what I tell people, I am not cured. Every day is the first day I got diagnosed in my mindset. Because I understand cortisol, I understand the other gray areas of fighting cancer that nobody talks about. You can eat all the plant-based foods you want, but if that mind is acidic, I just, I've been doing this too long. I've mentored too many people. I've lost too many people and I have too many people that are alive because of what I'm saying for 10 years. I know all this to be true, but David Choi, once the doctors were mad at me for not listening to them and, "You're just going to make it worse..." Then I woke up in July and I was supposed to be dead in June. When I woke up, I said, "Man, I'm going to the gym." I said, "They don't really don't know."
Rip Esselstyn:
No.
D. Anthony Evans:
I had a conversation with my, I said, "Man, I'm not dying. They don't really know." Then, I got a call from CBS. They were like, "We want to do your story...." Derrick Young, he comes to Lifetime Old Orchard. He shoots it. But then, he's like, "Man, but they not going to air it unless we get your doctor." I said, "Oh, on a plant-based segment." He said, "Yeah, bro. They're not." I said, "Man, here, I'm going to call him." I got real down, Rip. I said, "He's not going on camera no matter what he knows to be true."
He's like God in the NF world, if he says what you want him to say, and I just, but the long story short, my doctor got on the air and said, "D took a different path through his diet and exercise and came up with a positive result." This is with terminal bone cancer. Then Derrick Young doubles down. "Would you say he beat it or not? Would you say he beat it or wouldn't beat it?" My doctor looked into that camera and said, "Nah, I bet he beat it." He told me I was cured. Don't tell anybody, Rip. I said, "Doctor, there's no cure." But Rip, do not tell anybody. My doctor said that I was cured. I don't believe in any of that, but there's just nobody on record who has thrived that did 20 muscle ups this morning with bone cancer. It just don't exist, Rip.
Rip Esselstyn:
Now, you are one in a trillion. There's no doubt about that. I want to go back. I want to explore. At 16, you say your mother died. Yes. You were devastated. Were you in your home by yourself? You said you were homeless. What happened that you took a downward spiral? Can you tell me what-
D. Anthony Evans:
Prior to her dying, she made it clear, "We live in poverty. This is never going to change unless you go to school and take school seriously. I know you want to be basketball, but we can't count on your basketball abilities." I've been jumping five feet since I was in seventh grade, Rip. I wasn't going to be Michael Jordan, but I was going to be Dennis Rodman. I was going to get a check. That was my mission. I just need a check. I need a check for mom however that happens. I was in all honors class. I was a nerd. I had to be home before the streetlights came on. Please, and thank you. She had a plan for me. I was our way out. And so, I lived a very disciplined, strict life in the middle of the hood. I couldn't do what any of the rest of the kids could do because I had to stay on because-
Rip Esselstyn:
What did the other kids think of you? Did they make fun of you? Did they tease you or did they-
D. Anthony Evans:
They just knew that it was my mom. Everybody loved my... that was just who she... She was the boy scout leader. When the dads went... You're not listening, Rip. When this woman, they told her we can't do boy scouts at the school because no men. Her favorite word was chauvinist pig. She said, "What do you mean no men? Why do you need men to show..." And became the den chief. My mom was the den chief. Just to reiterate who she was, so every morning was about going to school and performing. When she died, that's a lot of stress, Rip, that I'm doing for nobody no more. My feelings are hurt and I'm just destroyed. All this discipline, all this running in the morning, for what now?
Then, you have the pride and ego thing that nobody told me about. I just know you're not supposed to cry as a man as I thought. You're not supposed to share that, man, I'm hurting emotionally. You don't share that. At least that's what I thought. I internalized it. Everybody who tried to plug into me, I could have went and lived with my grandmother. I'd had to really be under the same disciplinary act. I was so angry and I felt like everybody was trying to be my mom. I was just angry.
I was like, "What kind of God takes this woman? This woman?" I was just mad, Rip, mad. I did everything she didn't want. I was mad at her. You just left me here. I didn't graduate yet, the second week of my junior year. You left me here. It did. It brought me to zero. I gave up on life in the sense that I wanted to die. That's just the long and the short of it. I wanted to die. I'll come be with you. I was born on her birthday. We did everything together. She was my best friend. She's all I knew and she was gone, and now I'm stranded here with no direction.
I got recruited by a street gang at 16 and a half. It wasn't to shoot people. They knew, "He got some brains. Oh, they let him get out." The wrong people wrapped their arms around me, but they gave me the love I was looking for and went down a very dark road and never killed anybody, but sold a lot of weed and just, I was living that fast life in Chicago.
Rip Esselstyn:
Did you ever have to go to jail?
D. Anthony Evans:
This is the craziest thing. I never got told on and the times I went to jail, it was for speeding and things. I got right out, but I never went to jail for any of the things I should have went to jail for. I used to think that was because I was some type of special thug superhero. Tupac raised me. Just think I'm listening to music. When you're 16, you're listening to music, you don't have a dad and you don't have parents. We only know what we're taught.
I'm listening, trying to become these people in these music videos. This is how it works. If for people who don't understand the lost kid, they're just impressionable. Anybody showing love, whether they're a good person or a bad person, a kid wants love. I was having, in my therapy, they say it's extreme abandonment issues. I was clinging to the wrong people, trauma bonding. That ended up in severe drug use and a suicide attempt on my 21st birthday.
Rip Esselstyn:
D, so what allowed you to pull out of that downward spiral and drug use and suicidal tendencies?
D. Anthony Evans:
I couldn't kill myself, Rip, to be as crazy, I could smile. No, I couldn't even get that right, bro. Wait, so I had this because I wouldn't deal with these feelings that bubbled up. These trigger dates were spaced out through the years just perfect. September 13th is my mom's death date. December 21st, which is like 60 days later is our birthday, and then, Mother's day. That kind of spaced out where you can't get a full year of anything because you're going get triggered.
September 13th had come, I get a big pile of cocaine and whiskey. I just got to get through these three days. These three days. I'm going to lock myself in a hotel. I'm going to get through these three days, look at these pictures, light these candles... That worked. I did self therapy for six, seven years from 16 to 21. I thought I had it under control. When these dates come, you go party, and then you come back and you're fine. Nobody knew anything even happened. Man, my 21st, I don't know, I must have went a little too hard, Rip, because I took everything in the medicine cabinet at my house and woke up in Alexian Brothers Behavioral Help Center strapped to a gurney, angry, strapped to a gurney like, "Mr. Evans." I said, "Where the..."
I'm not going to make a joke and be like this ain't happening. It's funny now because I'm here, but I'm like, "What?" He said, "Mr. Evans, you had a long night." And so, I'm talking, because I obviously slept off wherever I was at when I came in there. Well, however it went, I slept off and I'm calm because I think I can talk my way out of this restraint. And so, he's like, "What happened?" I was like, "It's my mom and my birthday, she died." Then, I go through these things. He said, "But you tried to hurt yourself." I said, "I don't remember that but I'm fine now. You see I'm fine. It was a rough night." It was like, "Mr. Evans, no. I want you to stay for..." I said, "No, I don't think that's necessary."
Then, they drew blood. I had so much cocaine in my body that the blood wouldn't... I had no water in me. They couldn't pull the blood on my arm, Rip. That's where I was at. He was like, "You're not high. You're just in no shape to go anywhere." I'm getting agitated. I said, "But I got things to do." He said, "Mr. Evans, you tried to hurt yourself." I said, "I know, but it was my birthday." He said, "I know it's your birthday." I said, "So what do you want me to do?" He said, "I'd like you to stay for a few days and go to a group." I said, "What?" He said, "Yeah, I want you to just participate. We got some..." I said, "Sir, I don't think you're listening. I got to leave."
Then, I start getting firm. And so, he got firm and he said, I said, "Look man, you need to let me out of this." I didn't realize I'm on the psych ward. Even if I got out the restraints, the floor is locked but I'm just... He said, "Look, Mr. Evans, in Illinois to become your dad to take power of attorney, all I have to do is call this judge, this number right here, call this judge and say you came in here combative and you tried to hurt yourself. Those are two prerequisites I need, Mr. Evans and you did both of them. That's why you're in the restraints. You tried to take everybody." I said, "So I'm not..." He said, "Mr. Evans, just trust me."
Once I figured out that I wasn't leaving, I told him to go F himself, Rip. He said, "Take him to his room." It took three weeks to break me. On the third week, I was on the side of the hospital with the at-risk youth, the manic depressives, the drug addicts. They're bad but it's like a party over there. They didn't want to go to jail. That's why they're there. They ain't there to get help. They just didn't want to go to jail.
Then, you have the side, the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest side. He put me over on that side. It took three days, Rip, where I was like, you crazy but you ain't really crazy. People were talking to napkin holders. They were throwing things and I was forced to raise my hand and page my doctor. He's like, "You ready?" I was like, "I'm ready." I say all this to say because people need to hear it. As strong as you see that I am, it wasn't until I got some therapy and talked and communicated and actually grieved for the loss of my mother. Masking and grieving aren't the same things. I'm the perfect testament. I just happen to wake up.
But when you internalize things, I don't care who you are or how strong you think you are, that other side of your brain is going to push you to the surface because it's not natural. It can't become harmony with your spirit because it doesn't feel right. It's your problem. You can try to keep it in there but it's coming out because it's uncomfortable. In one way, for me, it was popping the pills. I don't even remember doing it, but my body and mind behaved without me and I almost died. It is like the greater lesson here of dealing with what you got going on, because my life, that's the single event that changed the trajectory of my life.
I started a marketing company. I started brokering airtime for Clear Channel and CBS, the small businesses through geotargeting. You spend 10 grand who just project you to the people that are actually going to come get an oil change from you. I found my little niche in marketing and my mentor in Chicago, his name was Butch Stewart. He did all the McDonald's commercials, Oprah's theme music. When we were 12, he came to our school and he showed me how to make jingles. That's why my videos look like that. He showed me how to make commercials. He's like, "You can make 30 grand for 30 seconds." I said, "What?" "Yeah, 30 seconds, it's called a jingle." I said, "Those commercials, they're not commercials. They're jingles."
I didn't realize what he gave me. He gave like a fishing pole. Right now, I go work for a media house. If I wanted to, I know how to do all. It's not why I'm here though. I'm here to do these videos to inspire patients, but that's what changed my life was that hospitalization. That was the single event. That counselor, God bless him, I don't even remember what he looks like, but God blessed that stranger angel guy that would not let me out.
Rip Esselstyn:
You were 21, that was when you were 21, is that right?
D. Anthony Evans:
Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
And so, D, how old are you today?
D. Anthony Evans:
I want to guess you, I want a guess, Rip. I want to see if my plant-based pumpkin mask is working.
Rip Esselstyn:
You're 42.
D. Anthony Evans:
I'll be 46 on the 21st. Rip is my new best friend. He says 42.
Rip Esselstyn:
D, I want you to talk about, because in that video that I saw that was so absolutely crushingly moving, you talked about three things that you focus on every day, the fitness, the nutrition, and the positive mindset. I think our listeners would love to hear about how you live every day and how those three things are really your guiding light.
D. Anthony Evans:
That's an amazing question. The three pillars are based on, they're specific to that because it is all about the cortisol, it's all about acidity. My lifestyle is about controlling my brain. The behavior of eating plant-based is one thing, but the entire message for me to people who are in my shoes is that if you don't control your brain and empty your cup out every day through exercise, meditation, communication, reading, if you don't do something to perspire and get the toxins out of you emotionally, spiritually, and physically daily, they will fester and build acidity.
This is just my teacher's way. He's saying everything that everybody else says, but in his Buddhist way, it's all about controlling your mind and then coupling the control of your mind with good deeds through gratitude, through service, and then the exercise. But it's very important to note that to be where I'm at, you have to do all three of those things perpetually. That's what's hard. It's hard to respond positively when negative things are happening to you. But how do you know that? I can say this is because I wake up every morning to a body that is attacking me, stabbing me, burning me. The pain is equivalent to aluminum foil on a filling and it just wakes me up just out of nowhere, or sitting here, it starts shocking my foot. That's why you see me moving because it's actively tumors right now, shocking my foot.
Instead of getting angry, which most people get angry when they feel pain, it's a natural fight or flight response, but think about monks and people who are masters in their craft. They push the body past what the body thinks the body can do over a course of time to where that craziness or that amazingness becomes normal. What looks extreme to everybody else, it's kind of normal for me. It's not because I'm special, it's because of the repetition. I'm in my 11th year of the lifestyle January 4th, but every single day is about waking up for your birthday. I die every night. This is the key right here. This is the key right here. I hope you guys lean in and listen.
Rip Esselstyn:
No. All right, listen. You guys go to D's Instagram because you actually, you give us the opportunity to watch this.
D. Anthony Evans:
I do. That's right. Just go there. Listen to Rip. Go, but dying every night, when you die every night, I'm not going to spoil it, just know every morning's your birthday and it's pretty hard to have a crappy birthday every day. It's a mindset.
Rip Esselstyn:
But I'd love for you, before we hang up today to say goodnight to yourself. Show us how, because so many of us, to me, I feel we don't love ourselves. We don't like ourselves. We look in the mirror and we're not happy with what we see. We're not happy with what comes out of our mouths. I think we're really hard on ourselves. And so, in my little voyage into the world of D. Anthony, you have cracked open a world that I want to explore because I find it to be absolutely fascinating.
D. Anthony Evans:
Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's do it. The pain though, Rip, it's what keeps me whole in a crazy way. What I go through every day, it makes me smile because like my teacher said, you used to look at it like you were a victim of this disease, until he showed me how to look at it like God only knew, or whoever you believe in, only knew that you could lose your mom at 16, try to kill yourself, get a terminal diagnosis, have 11 nine-hour operations, 385 tumors removed, live for 10 years and then be able to communicate how you did it without quitting or complaining, D. He said, "You're looking at what happened to you the wrong way." When he said that, and I started looking at it, and my mom used to say that these are superhero things. That's what she tell me. "Your tumors are superheroes." That's why I'm trying to kill myself. I was tumor boy, Rip. I used to get bullied till she told me there's something wrong with them and I just believed her, I believed her, I believed her. I believed her, Rip.
But the pain, I got to stay on the pain because the pain is the reason why I can do what I do. When I don't have any more pain, it gives me no reason to try to build relationships around the world to get my plant-based medicine for free through my nonprofit to people, because they see me in pain training. I leave everything on the table, and I got an inbox on all my platforms full of people around the world, around the world, man. "How can I do it like this? I've done this for this long." They're saying the same thing that you're saying. I'm just thankful for you allowing me to opportunity for more listeners to really hear what this lifestyle. It won't cure or kill anything, but then it'll definitely extend your life. I know that for a fact. I can say that definitively that my lifestyle behavior consistently is why I'm here. It's the bottom line.
Rip Esselstyn:
That pain that you mentioned, that pain you said is what grounds you and centers you?
D. Anthony Evans:
Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
Every day, without that pain, do you feel like you'd be lost now?
D. Anthony Evans:
Yeah. The pain gives me a sense of urgency in my spirit because I know somebody else is going through it. When that's my mission to try to alleviate somebody's pain without them becoming a drug addict, that's the other part of it. Most people who have what I have are addicted to Norco, Percocet, OxyContin, Neurontin, Celexa and Remeron. That's what people who have what I have. That's what we're supposed to take three times a day forever.
Rip Esselstyn:
Are you touching any of that stuff?
D. Anthony Evans:
No. I made my own stuff, Rip. I made my own stuff. I've been in the closet. I've been in the closet for 10 years. My teacher said, "Look, it's time." That's part of what we're doing in Hawaii. We're about to start growing it and producing it and creating jobs. I have a relationship with the Tutus in South Africa. We're doing it there, but it's about providing high milligram pain relief that's non-addictive. And yeah, it's going to be lucrative, but it's really so I don't become a drug addict. I have to take something. It's figure it out or do the prescriptions. But I don't know anybody could just sit and go through sitting on hot coals, walking on hot coals, laying on hot... I don't know a person, Rip, nowhere that'll sign up for that life every day.
Rip Esselstyn:
No. When I showed my family your video, my wife looked at me and she said, "I want to know how he can stay so relentlessly positive, because most people, they exist in a negative state." The dialogue that we have with ourselves, in our mind is, let's just say we have 10,000 thoughts during a day, I bet you 8,500 of those 10,000 are negative.
D. Anthony Evans:
Negative. I got goosebumps. You're spot on. You're spot on.
Rip Esselstyn:
What are you doing? How are you flipping the script?
D. Anthony Evans:
I'm flipping the script in the sense that I know the oldest patient before me, it was simply her getting frustrated for too long that brought back her cancer after surviving for 13 years. There are little benchmarks in my head where no situation is worth losing it when you're not supposed to be here anyway. Rip, wait and listen man, no doctor, when you look at I qualify for disability and won't take the money. You know how hard it is to get disability? That's how bad my charts look that a judge said, and I was like, "I don't want it." My family was like, "What if something happens and you go bankrupt because the cancer comes back, you're going to need to be in the system, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."
I said, "All right, we'll fill it out." We filled it out and I got disability. I qualified for it, but that's not what D. Anthony is about. My disability is my superpower. My disability has took me around the world five times from Morocco to South Africa. My disability, Rip, has made me touch tens of thousands of people and you just found me last week, two weeks ago. Do you know what that does from my brain on the scale of how much more work I got to do in the world when Rip Esselstyn just now knows who I am?
Rip Esselstyn:
We're plant-based brothers.
D. Anthony Evans:
We are plant-based brothers, brother. I'm working on this doc and I'm about to snatch you in it. I like your style, Rip, though. You laid back and I'm a energy guy. If you weren't who you say you are, I'd be able to fill it. I wouldn't tell you, but I'd be like, "Okay, yeah, this is [inaudible 00:52:56] Rip."
Rip Esselstyn:
Hey, Carrie. Will you pull up the photo we have of D when he had that brain tumor? Because I think it's important for people to see that.
D. Anthony Evans:
Absolutely.
Rip Esselstyn:
D, was that uncomfortable or was that just unsightly?
D. Anthony Evans:
It's even worse than what it looks like. What you see, the cancer, so this part right here is not really a part. That's the stitches. I just make it look cute, but it's really stitches. What happened was there's a crater. What you think you see is not the tumor. There's a circle missing of my skull underneath this line right here. What you see is tissue expansion. The tumor in my head was in my scalp and inward. It's called a plexiform tumor. You have a subcutaneous tumor and then you have a plexiform tumor like I have on my leg that's consistent with cottage cheese that comes out like this, but the margins are in insane because it's a gel, it's alien.
And so, there's a circle that they took out. And so, for me to not get infected, they had to do this experimental tissue expansion that they had never done on a human before. They were like, "D, you have to sign these waivers, but you're going to have a crater opening in your head and we think that it's not good to have it like this. What we're proposing is we're going to pull your head up here and then we're going to pull it over and just give you a new head." Wait, Rip. I said, "What?"
Rip Esselstyn:
I don't understand how they could do that and have you look so handsome still. It's incredible.
D. Anthony Evans:
Look, this right here, you see that line?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
D. Anthony Evans:
They open up right there. They put a breast implant in right there. They sewed it back up and then there was a port on the other side. For 16 weeks, Rip, this was worse than the cancer. They injected 18 milliliters of saline over the course of 16 weeks to stretch my head to cover the hole that they created. You talk about getting up in the morning looking at something you hate. The reason I'm able to really fire the way I'm able to fire, all of my demons were forced in an elevator with me at the same time. It was basically deal with them or die.
I lived in my basement for three years putting myself back together. Most people aren't willing to do that. It was because I took Dave's help. And so, when you take the holistic help, you know the hospital how they feel. They got me on their website. They have me in their pathways quarterly report. They're using the photos you're using. But they know they better not say that I took one step in their comprehensive $8 billion cancer center because that never happened. It never happened, Rip.
Rip Esselstyn:
I love when you say that people that have NF like you do, there are no thrivers, just survivors. I think you are the anomaly, right?
D. Anthony Evans:
I am the anomaly. It's because they teach us. They just say be happy you're alive. We're the elephant man's cousin. Like the movie Mask, those are our cousins, man. The worst thing you could ever get growing up, the worst moves, I got that stuff, man. Those are my family. The people with the deformed faces and the tumors. And so, I know I wanted to hurt myself before I hurted myself, before my mom had convinced me that there was, there's really nothing wrong with you, was lying, but they're just special for you. But I didn't want to be the tumor kid. I got in my first fights because of them. People, kids being, "What is that? What is that?" I don't even know what to say.
Rip Esselstyn:
Do you remember how old you were when you got your first little things on your skin?
D. Anthony Evans:
Yeah. I was born with one on my knee and then by three years old, I had developed one on my wrist. My first fight was in nursery school at the boat table. I'll never forget it. I'm doing the boat, splashing the water, and I have the tumor on my wrist. The bully kid, he comes over and he notices the damn tumor, Rip. I said, "Oh no." I try to switch hands. He's like, "What is that on your hand?" I said, "Nothing." He grabbed me. He was bigger. "What is..." He started making a lot of noise. All the kids ran over and I punched him in the face.
That was my first traumatic experience of kids laughing at me because I was different because of these things, and it set the tone. I didn't wear shorts for 20 years, Rip. I had my social worker figure out an excuse, because in our school, if you didn't dress for gym, you didn't graduate. That's how serious they were about physical fitness. I got out of that. We had to do swimming. I have tumors on my leg. This is why I'm so happy, because I hated myself my whole life, Rip. It really took dying, man. I swear to God. I hated myself. It's like, man, God hates me. Just hurry and I'm going to get this over with. Why am I here?
Rip Esselstyn:
Now, when you look in the mirror and you wear shorts and you wear sandals and you show it all off, is that because you're just this is who I am and I'm okay with it. People must ask you questions still repeatedly and you just-
D. Anthony Evans:
Yeah, but the difference is is I understand who I am in the world. When you have emails from NF kids, like our suicide rate at one time was in a 26 percentile for NF kids. Just because nobody's ever dated you, nobody's took you to prom, nobody sat with you at lunch, nobody has ever wrapped their arms around you because you're the ill kid. When these kids who have Google, I didn't have Google, but now, man, Google got 20,000 pages of all the bad stuff that's going to happen to us. When you're a kid and you look at that, suicide is a real option today. And so, I have emails that come in, "Man, D, I was going to kill myself today." Rip, do you know what it's like to get like somebody was going to kill themselves and said just what you said, "I bumped into this crazy video and had NF on it. Then I just kept clicking and you did this and then you start on the board." Man, dude, thank you. Who gives their selves goosebumps? I'm giving myself goosebumps.
Rip Esselstyn:
D, you mentioned a lot of NF people, they're not dating, they're not married, whatever. Well you love saying this, I have the most beautifulest-
D. Anthony Evans:
Beautifulest woman in the world!
Rip Esselstyn:
How did you meet her and how did that love fester and come together?
D. Anthony Evans:
Man, you not going to believe this. Fifth and seventh grade. Hey, we went to the same elementary. I've known her 35 years.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh my gosh.
D. Anthony Evans:
Thirty-five years, Rip. It's a lot, but I got to be honest with you, when my wife and I knew each other in our old life, my wife at our school had a boy's haircut and she could beat all the guys in running and she played hockey. Now, I'm just going to keep it honestly real with you, Rip. None of the dudes, because you was in competition with her. This is a fifth grader that has the 50-yard dash record or is running the mile in... But all you hear is... None of the guys liked her because she was the overachiever athlete. Then we get to high school, my mom dies and I was doing so well for myself as a young man, Rip, doing the wrong things.
I had a two bedroom apartment at 17 years old. I'm the kid with an apartment. My godfather signed, he's the reverend at the church and he's just enabling me because he knows I'm out of control. It's the worst thing he could've did, but I have a house to myself, and it D got a house. And so, I had this group of people, everybody couldn't come, but she was part of that group. Then, she went off to Boston College, full ride hockey scholarship, went on to play pro hockey in Switzerland. None of that picture, Rip, do not be suckered by that picture. Do not be suckered by that picture.
Then in 2015, I was on the way out of a turbulent first marriage. A person, a mutual friend that I was mentoring was asking me, "Man, you've saved my life just from your public figure page. How can I help you? I got some venture cap guys, you need money..." I'm like, "Yeah, I need all of that, but what I really need is somebody to represent me because I'm having a moral component about raising money with this God's gift life story." Rip, I was really, like most scumbags are like, how do I monetize this? I'm like, man, if I go straight into business, man, I'm dead. I was really having those thoughts.
I said, "Look, if you can find somebody to represent me, where all I have to do is eat plants and speak and that's all I got to do and they can do the business, that'd be great." Twenty-four hours, he said, do you remember Amber from school? I said, "Little bird, yeah, we used to kick them before she left for college." He's like, "You know what she does?" "No." "She runs APB." "What's APB?" That's the biggest speaking bureau in the world.... I go, "Okay. I didn't know. I didn't know." I said, "Okay."
And so, Amber text Jonny Imerman, who at that time was CNN's Cancer Hero. Me and Jonny were brothers by then. We were brothers by 2015. She's texting him, "Man, who is this D. Anthony?" She isn't putting that I'm Dejuan and I don't look nothing like I used to look, Rip. I'm just D. Anthony, the cancer guy from Evanston. She's like, "She knows all the speakers in the world. She represents Mikhail Gorbachev and Bishop Desmond Tutu." Like, who the hell is D. Anthony? I don't know. He's not in my Rolodex.
And so, she's texting the cancer community rock stars. Have you heard of this guy? Then, Jonny text me, how do you know Amber Bobbin? I said, "Why?" "She's texting me who you..." So I text, I said, "You're checking me out?" Then, she started laughing. How do you know Jonny? We had this back and forth. She flew in from Boston. We met at the O'Hare Starbucks. We sat on the uncomfortable table on the wall, the one to two chairs for seven hours, Rip.
Rip Esselstyn:
Was she plant-based then or not?
D. Anthony Evans:
She was pescatarian. Well, when you get to talk to her, she going to tell you whatever she... No, no. She wasn't.
Rip Esselstyn:
I think it's a great transition into, because you really got to talk about your plant-based and how when you first started it, like you said, when we first started talking, it tasted like dirt. You were like, you got to be kidding me. But things changed, and you like it now?
D. Anthony Evans:
I love it now. Meat smells like cigarette smoke to me like...
Rip Esselstyn:
Will you talk about that transition for our listeners?
D. Anthony Evans:
Absolutely. When Master Vegan Chef David Choi, he basically said, I can't cure you but my civilization for 3000 years. He has this Buddhist medicinal scroll that whatever is in there. But anyway, he says that we're about harmony. It is about cancer not being an external invasion. We were all born with cancer cells, but they congregate in certain people's bodies for certain reasons. But the common denominator in everybody's cancer journey is the acidic environment in their body.
I said, okay, so what do I have to do? He was like, you don't have to give up everything you love. Well, what does that mean? He said, "Meat, dairy, yeast, and sugar." I said, "Meat, dairy, yeast?" "That's everything," he said, everything. I said, "When am I supposed to eat?" He said, I'm going to bring you 21 plant-based meals and I'm going to feed you back and nourish you back to your body until your body's in a harmonious state.
I said, oh, I didn't know what I was getting into. I just knew that he wanted to help. My doctor was suggesting I go to hospice. If he would've said, "Hey, try this camel piss." I would've tried it, Rip, because I didn't want to die. I just didn't want to die, man. And so, he's like, from your mouth to your rectum, there's exactly roughly about 30 feet of GI tract that's compressed into six inches. He said, "You need to eat things that move more liquified and that break down in a eight-hour time period, which are plants." I said, "Okay." I said, "I can never eat the meat again." He said, "D, this is it. You either going to choose your tongue. What are you doing this for?"
I've said this to him. I said, I have a daughter and I can't leave her here with the men of the world yet. That's exactly what I said. I cannot leave my daughter here for the men of the world. That's why I'm going to do this with you. I'm not doing this for me because this is disgusting. I was very adamant about how horrific my body is telling me. I'm like, "There's something wrong." I put it in my mouth and it wants to come back up. It's not normal. There's something wrong. He's like, D, you got to figure out how to get it down your throat. He said, this is what's going to happen. Your palate is tainted. He said your palate has, it lusts for what you taught it to love. That's the meat and oil and acidity and it's just withdrawal.
He said, "At six to eight weeks," because I was a pretty big boy. He said, "At six to eight weeks, your body is going to go into what we call survivor shock." It's sort of like starvation for people who are starving. When you don't introduce the meat, dairy, yeast, and sugar that you've been thriving off of your entire existence, your body starts freaking out. Where's the meat, D? Where's the dairy? Where's the sugar? And it goes and finds it and hits me in my stomach. He said, "It's naturally going to go eat." I said, "Then what am I going to eat?" "You're going to eat what I give you, but your body is going to be working for you, eating all of your organ fat, your visceral fat." The fact that you can't outwork, it's just sitting there, it's a collection of sludge. The only way to get rid of it is by not depositing the same things that put it there in the first place. And so, in week four, man, it was crazy.
But he said in five or six, the dirt taste should transition. It should be more palate, I say five to six. Say, "Yes!" if you can make it to the fifth or the sixth week, your pate will begin to change and the taste will be more palatable. Whatever he says and slick monks them. And I was just like, okay. We get to the fifth and sixth week and he is right. It got a little better. It was still bad though, Rick. My body just wasn't trying to force it back up. This is when he had the talk to change my entire transition. You guys listen up.
Rip Esselstyn:
We're listening.
D. Anthony Evans:
He said, "Look, D, when you were eating the meat, did you just take it out the package and throw it on the grill and cook it?" I said, "No, it's a process." I marinated, I beat it, then I sprinkle some stuff on it. I beat it again. I put it in the freezer. I take it out, beat it again. Then I cook it the next day. He said, "Man, that's a lot of effort and a lot of light and a lot of love. You put into just one meal." I said, "I can't really eat it the way you talk." He said, "Ah. It's not the meat that you love. It is the preparation."
He says, what would happen happened if you put that same effort into this stuff I give you, instead of just taking what I give, you have a bunch of seasonings. They're all plants. They say organic. If you make this yours, it will become more palatable. He said I never said you couldn't. I thought it was supposed to this like a punishment. He said, "Dude, you looking at me wrong. The object is to get it in your gut. To get it in there to create this new environment." Once he told me that, and I got some see-saw and just things that make my body just do this no matter what I'm eating. Then, I was like, man, this pine nuts stew because they're pine nuts. So that means $1,000 dollars worth of pine nuts for 10 years, brother.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
D. Anthony Evans:
That's why I'm doing what I'm doing for free. $1,100 worth of pine nuts every week until I got stuck. He said, "This is your biggest test, to figure out how to feed yourself."
Rip Esselstyn:
D, show me that 18-inch pine nut bicep. I want you guys to know, you got to go check out D. Anthony Trains. That's your Instagram.
D. Anthony Evans:
Yes, D. Anthony trains.
Rip Esselstyn:
The workouts that you are doing are absolutely insane. I can't believe how hard you push yourself.
D. Anthony Evans:
Thank you, brother.
Rip Esselstyn:
What a specimen you are. It is absolutely phenomenal considering you've got terminal cancer and you're fueling yourself on plants, but I'm being a little bit facetious there with the second part. D, give me an example, what does a day of eating look like for you? Can you run through a breakfast, lunch and dinner for me?
D. Anthony Evans:
Absolutely. On Sundays, I prepare a big pot of six cups of organic Basmati rice and six cups of organic pine nuts. I simmer those on a low heat for six hours. They culminate together. Then, I eat that for the next 10 days. When we think of eating, I don't eat, just like I don't sleep. I take naps throughout the 24 hours because I'm doing business in South Africa. I'm in the Netherlands. I'm all over the place. My time schedule's very different. With the food, it's about getting my amount of pine nut mixture in my body that's strictly for protein in my muscles. Then, I build around that are healthy snacks, whatever I like munching on. But I don't look at it as a meal unless for Thanksgiving, my wife did an amazing plant-based-
Rip Esselstyn:
I saw that spread. It was in insane.
D. Anthony Evans:
Yeah, or we're out of town, we're at at the best vegan restaurants plant doing. But on a daily regimen, in my regimen and my daily ritual, it's about getting up at 1:30, because we're in Maui and we're 12 hours behind South Africa and the Netherlands, and we're six hours behind the East Coast and five hours behind central time. And so, I'm doing things in all of those time zones with different people. I'm just trying to spread this message and these products.
And so, the whole day is 1:30. I put this on. I rub this all over my body. I go sit on the toilet, tears come to my eyes, the pain subsides. Then, I have a five-hour window that I need to train, check my emails, get back to patients and get ready for calls that are scheduled because my entire day is based on my ability to put my pain ointment on. When you talk about food, it's this in the morning, and then it's in the afternoon, and then it's in the evening. But they're like, they're three cups of the mixture. There is not a shake, but it's like a-
Rip Esselstyn:
Porridge?
D. Anthony Evans:
It's like a porridge, but it's been liquified so it looks more like a soft serve. It's more soft. I didn't know how to put that in the words. It's a soft serve texture.
Rip Esselstyn:
Do you ever eat, I don't know, fruit, bananas and oranges and apples and stuff of like that.
D. Anthony Evans:
Starfruit. I got spoiled. I'm in Maui. I do a lot of starfruit and dragon fruit and things that I never knew existed. I'll eat a banana, a plantain.
Rip Esselstyn:
What about green leafies? You doing green leafies?
D. Anthony Evans:
I do green leafies. I'm a big spinach head. I'm a spinach head. Love broccoli, but I'm the seed and legume guy because of the muscle. The thing is on the journey is that you do muscle and the greens, you'll burn it up. You better train for 30 minutes. Anything after that for me, I burn. I burn through calories, Rip. I'm my worst enemy on this plant-based thing.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm just thinking with what you have with your NF, if you're just trying to get, like you've said 10 times, you're trying to get rid of the acidity environment and more of an alkaline, but also just pumping in all those phytonutrients and antioxidants, too, that are going to keep all that cancer at bay.
D. Anthony Evans:
Absolutely.
Rip Esselstyn:
Now, so D?
D. Anthony Evans:
Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
Can you say goodnight to yourself like you're winding down the day, you're looking in the mirror? If you wouldn't mind, maybe it's too personal, but I'd love for you to give us a taste of that love that you feel that courses through that incredible body and mind of yours, because there's something about it that I think a lot of us could use and it's a great takeaway.
D. Anthony Evans:
Absolutely, Rip. The whole purpose of saying goodbye to yourself is forgiving yourself. A lot of times, we go to bed with the trauma of the day, and then you sleep with that. You don't know that, but nobody tells you that unless you are in that space or in that field. But if you had a horrible day and that's what you went to sleep with, you kind of take that with you. As a person who is sick, and my entire life is based about trying to be as alkaline as possible all the time, it's about perpetuating letting the stuff go, which is hard for everybody to forgive themselves, to forgive others and let go of the things that are hindering their progress. But one of the tools that was taught to me was saying goodbye to yourself and saying it from a spirit that I am not promised the morning, no matter how positive I am, it is not a fact that I will wake up. That's not promised when I close my eyes and go to sleep that I will wake up in the morning.
When you go to bed and you really believe and let that sit in between your ears for a few seconds and be like, no, no matter how I'm feeling, I really might not wake up tomorrow. When you start right there and then you come into training yourself to die every night, you kind of start every day like I got to give everything. I can't leave anything inside of me. I got to put it all out there because if I don't wake up in the morning, it was something I could have did that I didn't do. It's a mindset. Before I go to bed, my wife go to bed before me, and I don't sneak in there, but she's sleeping. She hasn't told me she's seen this. But I go, I close the door and I get real close to the mirror.
Rip Esselstyn:
Is this after you've brushed your teeth and you're all ready to go to bed?
D. Anthony Evans:
Yeah, and I'm just like this. I'm smiling because the little part of me is like, how are you even here, bro? I'm just, I'm okay. Hi. Rip, possibly looking [inaudible 01:21:14] like man, you're here. I'll get into my mantra and I just be like, man, it was a rough one today, but we did everything we said we were going to do. We helped such and such. We did this. This didn't work out, but that's all right. It's a dialogue I'm having with myself and reassuring myself that you did your best. You might not have hit everything you wanted to hit, but you left it all on the court. Because of that, you go to bed with the feeling of accomplishment. There was no shorts that I took today. I gave my all. You'll find that laying on that pillow is like, man, I did some good stuff, man. This is great.
You're just over time training yourself to wind down while you get in the theta and alpha and I know I'm going, yeah, he be on the metaphysics, while you going to these deep sleep patterns so you can get the best hours of sleep between 10:00 and 2:00. Google that too, when the best times to grab your best sleep, 10:00 and 2:00 AM. I just say goodbye and thank you and I hope to see you in the morning, but if I don't, hey, they're going to remember you. You did everything you were supposed to do today. I tell myself I love myself. I hope to see you in the morning.
You could have had the worst day ever, Rip, but when you forgive yourself and if you took shorts during the day or shortcuts or you cheated, nah, it doesn't mean the same thing. But if you are living a life that we're living a life of service, a life of awareness, a life of education and love and light, that matters. It doesn't matter to somebody who took shortcuts all day. Everybody's not ready for this. But if you are ready to be able to respond to whatever life throws at you, because that's the name of this game, that's all I figured out how to do, is to respond peacefully to the negative things that happened to me. That's a hard thought when you think about that. Punch me in the face body, I'm going to smile at you and be like, but you're not going to have my acidity. You're not going to make me acidic. It's a constant conversation. That's all it is, Rip, just knowing yourself, loving yourself.
Rip Esselstyn:
I love it. D, I want to close this out by saying how appreciative I am that we were able to have our paths crossed. I want to thank you for coming on the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. I want to take a page out of your book and I want to send you all the love and the light and the peace and the positive energy that I can because you know what, you deserve every single speck of it.
D. Anthony Evans:
Thank you.
Rip Esselstyn:
Absolutely.
D. Anthony Evans:
Thank you. Thank you so much, Rip. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Rip Esselstyn:
Give me some PLANTSTRONG fist love there. Boom!
D. Anthony Evans:
There it is, brother. For my cancer patients watching, no matter what your doctors tell you, keep your hands up, keep your head tucked, and don't you dare stop swinging until it's over.
Rip Esselstyn:
I love it. Love it. Mahalo.
D. Anthony Evans:
Mahalo, brother.
Rip Esselstyn:
As I mentioned at the beginning of this podcast, I was absolutely floored, literally floored and speechless when I first saw the video of D. Anthony on YouTube. I'll put a link to it in the show notes so that you too can watch and share it. I'll also make sure that you have links to follow him on Instagram and his other social channels. Thank you again so much for listening. Just like D. Anthony, remember to love yourself, celebrate your own life every day, and always keep it PLANTSTRONG.
Thank you for listening to the PLANTSTRONG podcast. You can support the show by taking a quick minute to follow us wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. Leaving us a positive review and sharing the show with your network is another great way to help us reach as many people as possible with the exciting news about plants. Thank you in advance for your support. It means everything.
The PLANTSTRONG Podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Lori Kortowich, Ami Mackey, Patrick Gavin, and Wade Clark. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous true seekers who weren't afraid to look through the lens with clear vision and hold firm to a higher truth, most notably my parents, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr. and Ann Crile Esselstyn. Thanks for listening.
