The author, David Rives, was born and grew up in Detroit, Michigan, where he graduated from Mumford High School the same year as movie and TV mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer (whom David has called, over and over again, to try to convince Jerry to share some of his mega-millions with his fellow classmates [OK, one classmate!] but so far to no avail.) David then went off to attend the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, which is very difficult to get into if you're from out-of-state, but requires little more than a detectable pulse if you happen to be a Michigan resident. in Cellular Biology, whatever that is), David went on to the University of Michigan Medical School, where, after two years, he started asking the “wrong questions:”
Wrong Question No. 1: “Uh, excuse me, professors, but…is there anything we can actually CURE?!"
To which the professors usually responded, “Um…nothing that comes to mind.”
Which invariably led to Wrong Question No. 2: “Well, since we can’t CURE anything, what about…oh, I don’t know – PREVENTING disease? How does THAT grab you?”
To which the professors usually responded: “PREVENT disease?! Get out of here!”
So David did, heading for the West Coast, to do the research necessary to produce
Walk Yourself Thin – and, soon thereafter, its companion volume, Dying for a Smoke – thereby giving David a strong leg up on putting an end to the three most preventable causes of premature death and disability in this world: overweight, lack of exercise, and cigarette smoking. In other words, to do what he had hoped he was going to medical school to do: prevent disease. After 40 years in southern California, David relocated to western North Carolina in 2008, so that he and his wife, Catherine, could be a bit closer to their two sons: one in Boston and the other in Kansas City. Anyway, the “bottom line” on all this is that, with the help of Someone, David managed to walk himself thin, and knows that you can too!
