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Rice Diet
PHIL JORDAN
310 pounds and 9 years later.
Phil Jordon is still going strong .
PHIL JORDAN
He weighed 504 pounds when he
checked into the Rice Diet Program in May, 1990. Seven months
later, the 6'1" Phil Jordon had lost a whopping 249 pounds
and launched a new career as an actor with a role in a major
motion picture.
It may sound like a fantasy,
but that's the way it happened for Jordon, now 28, who took a
leave-of-absence from his job on Wall Street (and as a part-time
bodyguard and bouncer) to come to Durham to lose the excess weight
which had plagued him from his Italian childhood in Brooklyn.
"My grandmother owned a
restaurant and I lived with her. I loved the food and ate continually,
lots of pasta, meat and cheese," Jordon explained. The eldest
of five children, Jordon, recalls that "every holiday was
an eating festival… totally food-centered. I ate my
macaroni from a salad bowl!"
Jordon admits to making stabs
at nearly every weight loss program imaginable. "Name it.
I've tried it. I just never stuck with anything long enough."
"My weight was never really
a problem for me. I was always active and prided myself in dressing
well. But at 500 pounds, it was getting hard to find clothes
that fit and I was slowing down a little. I just woke up one
day and decided to get in shape."
He first heard of the Rice Diet
from a friend. "I was looking for something prolonged and
with close supervision. I thank God I found this place!"
(Dr. Rosati notes that Jordon,
probably because of his young age, checked-in with few of the
medical problems that haunt the obese. He was displaying the
Pickwickian syndrome (falling asleep at inappropriate times)
which is symptomatic of the lung complications of obesity.)
Jordon lost 28 pounds in the
first week; sixty-five in the first month. "I was hungry
at first and rested a lot. Then I began extensive physical activity…
aerobic exercise, weight-lifting and volleyball… for
several hours a day."
He answered a casting call in
Wilmington N.C. for a "young 350-400 pound Italian-type"
for a part in 29th Street." I got the part and was cautioned
not to lose more weight. I decided my program was more important
and dropped another seventy-five pounds. The wardrobe man went
nuts!""(Ironically, Jordon lost another twenty-nine
pounds while filming "29tth" Street.")
Jordon left Durham in December,
got down to a low 196 by August 1991; and decided he looked "too
thin" and wanted to bulk up. He's gotten into bodybuilding;
added muscle; and works out at the "Power House" in
Brooklyn daily. He reports his current weight at 224 and has
gone from a size 72 to 48 suit; a waist of 70 to 34 inches; and
a collar size 24 ½" to 16". Jordon still eats
lots of vegetables and fruit; rice; chicken and fish, and refuses
salt and fat.
Cast as a bodyguard and wise-guy
mobster in the film" Romeo is Bleeding" Jordon is self-assured
and positive about the future. I'll always check-in periodically
at the Rice House. I look and feel better than I ever have."
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"No illness which
can be treated by diet should be treated by any other means."
-Maimonoides |
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