Jim Morris has been a world-famous body builder who won four major titles: Mr USA, Mr America, Mr International, Mr Olympia Masters category over 60s. His bodybuilding career stretched over a 30-year period and he was also a body building judge.
What is amazing about Jim’s story is that he was also an openly gay African American at a time when being openly gay in America could seriously damage your employment prospects.
For 15 years he was Elton John’s personal bodyguard and travelled all over the world hanging out with celebrities, including Mick Jagger and John Lennon as well as being a celebrity himself.
In this interview with Dr Tracie O’Keefe, Jim Morris talks about his journey of being born in the poor area of New York to now at 79 years old becoming an internationally recognised face. Not only is he known for the beautiful body he created during his bodybuilding competition years but also from the incredible body he maintained well into his 70s.
At 77 years old he became a celebrity face of a PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) campaign to demonstrate how, into their older years, people can build and maintain a highly toned and healthy body on a plant-based, vegan diet.
Jim talks about how he underwent an “Ah Ha” moment as he began to see animals as more than just possessions and dumb beings and began to see them as non-human persons. He talks about how the revelation changed his life in so many ways.
Throughout his early bodybuilding career he had relied on meat from protein to build his body but he explains how this made him progressively more ill as the years passed. He suffered from blocked digestion, aches and pains in his joints and muscles which made life unpleasant and difficult at times.
Jim tells how when he went vegetarian and then vegan his digestion improved dramatically and the aches and pains in his joints and muscles disappeared. His love of bodybuilding returned and as can be seen from later photographs of his bodybuilding in his 60’ and 70s he maintained a hugely toned and strong body.
Although he sold his bodybuilding gym on West Hollywood many years ago he still trains people to build their bodies to an extraordinary state of health today at nearly 80 years old. He discuss how bodybuilding has gotten out of hand today with competitors trying to compete on bulk rather than the beauty of physique; and how the industry is correcting itself by introducing new categories of competition that show the ordinary, attainable, well developed body that is attractive to the average member of the public.
Jim discusses what a person needs to eat and do in order to maintain a healthy, toned body and build muscle on a plant-based vegan diet. He is surely living proof that building muscles and maintaining an exquisite physique in later life is more than possible on a wholefood, plant-based vegan diet. His emphasis on body building is on the beauty of the healthy physique.
For more information on Jim Morris, visit his website at www.gymmorris.com
For help embracing plant-based eating – especially when willpower alone is not enough – get my Natural Eating & Vitality Hypnosis Program.
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