Kevin Gianni’s Health Journey – An Interview

Kevin Gianni is Annmarie's husband and co-founder of Annmarie Skin Care. We know him as ‘Kev.'

For years Kevin and Annmarie were traveling around the country (and world!) interviewing, researching, and sharing what they learned about health. For a long time, Kevin was eating a raw food diet.

Their lives have changed a lot since then. They now have two kids, Hudson and Basil, and Annmarie has been devoting her time to being a mom. Kevin still travels a lot, but spends most of his time in the office working really hard to make Annmarie Skin Care a great company.

In addition to running a skin care business and raising a family, Kevin recently wrote a book. A really good book. It's called Kale and Coffee, and it might be the most entertaining health book you've ever read.

As an organic skin care company, we're the first to tell you that if you want great skin you should look at your health first and eat a good diet. The thing is, a ‘good diet' isn't as simple as we'd like it to be. 

That's why we're so excited to share this book with you… Kale and Coffee is a health book without the one-size-fits-all approach; it's about figuring out what works for you. Kevin takes you, chapter by chapter, through some controversial health topics, like whether or not you should eat gluten and whether salt is really that bad for you. He might just have you changing your mind about a few things…

Whether your goal is to lose weight, have more energy, or protect yourself against disease, you'll definitely come away with some new ideas about how to get healthy.

We thought it'd be cool to show you a little more about who Kevin is, and what makes his book so special.

An Exclusive Interview with Kevin Gianni

Click Here for Interview 2 on Coffee

Click Here for Interview 3 on Gluten and FODMAPS

Click Here for Interview 4 on High Fat and High Carb Diets (And Why They Can Work)

Take a Peek Inside Kale and Coffee

Chapter Two: From Skinny, Raw Food Vegan to Bloated, Out-of-Shape Health Blogger

It’s been almost six years since Pittsburgh, and I’m in front of my closet mirror with my pants half-buttoned.

I used to be in shape. I actually used to be one of the fittest guys in the room, but now I’m uncomfortable. I look bloated. I see the belly fat bunch together as I pull the button closer to the buttonhole. It doesn’t make it. I don’t want to leave the house today.

I check the tag of my Levi’s 501s to see if by chance I grabbed Annmarie’s. Nope. Size 34, and they’re like sausage casing around my legs. I try one final time to suck in my stomach. It’s not enough. The button won’t make it.

You wouldn’t think that a popular, sometimes publicly recognized health blogger with hundreds of thousands of people reading his work would dare to gain this much weight, but here is the proof that I had. I’ve become one of my personal training clients from years ago: uncomfortable, disgusted, self-conscious, asking Annmarie if I look fat just about every day. All in all, strange behavior for a guy who’s never before thought twice about his weight.

What’s harder to admit, though, is that I knew all along I was getting fatter, but I just ignored it. In fact, I didn’t even care.

Four years ago, when I was something of a YouTube health celebrity, I was on top of the world. I also felt like I was on top of the diet pyramid. I ate the cleanest, most nutritious diet on the planet (or so I thought). A raw food, vegan diet. It was not only pure in its contents but also pure in its intention. With this type of diet, you eat straight from the earth, only as nature intended, never harming another living creature. I ate kale salad, raw nut butters, goji berries, raw chocolate, and dehydrated flax crackers. I drank green smoothies, green juice, wheatgrass, and hemp milk. I even tried a fruitarian diet, eating 3,000-plus calories of fruit every day. I tried all these different variations and more for four years. I guess you could say I was a little nuts about my diet.

The me looking in the mirror now would agree. All that health food made me neurotic. I thought about food from the moment I woke up to the second I fell asleep. While eating one meal, I’d be passionately consumed with what I would eat at the next. I was an addict in search of the purest dope: raw, vegan, organic food. When it wasn’t there, I bitched, moaned, and jonesed, making me extremely unpleasant to be around.

I was headed down a path of self-destruction. So it’s not surprising that, like any hard-core addict, I eventually hit rock bottom…

To get a copy of Kevin's book Kale and Coffee, head straight to Amazon if you'd like to purchase it!

by Hope Freije