Body for Life

Like all Great Ideas, Body for Life, the brainchild of body-builder/entrepreneur Bill Phillips, began simply: get the sport of weight-lifting and body-building out of the dark and sweat-stained gyms and rickety auditoriums, where the only spectators happen to be the losers.

Bill Phillips loved the sport and discipline of body-building and wanted to give something back to it. He had already become a wealthy man, presiding over the Muscle Media publishing operation and a pantheon of scientific foods, dietary supplements, and esoteric performance enhancers under the banner of EAS--Experimental and Applied Sciences.

Phillips wondered what would happen if he created a national contest: Who could build the best body in twelve weeks, utilizing his extremely scientific methods of weight-training, aerobic exercise, and associated diet? Instead of hundreds of entrants, Phillips received something like fifty thousand applications, and the first 12-week Body for Life Challenge was launched, to enormous success, a mere two years ago. There are now four 12-week contests a year, and over 100,000 people have responded enthusiastically to the idea of taking Phillips’s Challenge (and winning $100,000 and a new luxury car).

Body for Life, the empire, has gone stratospheric. Body for Life, the book, was a New York Times #1 Bestseller and has remained on the bestseller list for nearly two years. EAS is flourishing, essentially because their products are good. The people who experience the life-transforming effects of Phillips’s program are its most effective advertising. Their stories are well-documented in the book, Muscle Media magazine, and a series of videos dating back to the original 12-week challenge.

Which brings us to the personal note that caused me to acknowledge Body for Life in this forum, which is itself something of a life-changing endeavor.

Phillips has not made a dime from the sale of his book. Every penny Body for Life makes goes to the Make a Wish Foundation, the organization that exists to ease the pain of children with terminal diseases. When you buy Phillips’s book, his magazine, or visit his website, he’ll offer you one of those videos I mentioned above. Free of charge. You pay the postage, that’s all. If, when you watch the video, you are inspired, if the video has made a change in your life and you decide to do something, finally, about your health, Phillips suggests you make a donation to Make a Wish. Because you should.

This is the key to Bill Phillips’s success. He is a decent man in an uncommonly indecent world. And he reaps as he sows--good will and good health.

As Bill Phillips is fond of saying:

”It’s about Life, and yours will never be the same.”