Al Sharpton is an up-and-coming Brooklyn Hip Hop artist, and the founder of the Sharpton Fit Kids organization. The program offers a youth leadership program that seeks to engage the city’s young population in positive pursuits. It also gives the kids’ access to healthy, organic foods. But there’s a bit more to Al Sharpton’s impressive Net Worth: He’s also one of the country’s most prominent philanthropists. He’s given millions of dollars to charities, most recently contributing $1 million to a cancer research program called Operation Smile.
The late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech about the need for non-violent protests and called for the young people of America to get involved in those daily protests. He referred to the youth as the forgotten children of America. Al Sharpton certainly fits into that mold: He has been quoted as saying that he does not get asked to give motivational speeches because he is a non-fiction writer by trade, with a background in community organizing. He gave up his lucrative day job as a newspaper columnist to devote more time to his activism, and has become one of the most recognizable and outspoken civil rights leaders in the nation.
Sharpton’s passion for civil rights and social justice is well-known, even among his own peers in the hip hop community. During a discussion on MTV’s reality show Real World, Sharpton was asked how many days he spends each week exercising. He said that he doesn’t, because he is too busy being an activist, speaking out about social issues facing black Americans. Sharpton then revealed that he was recently visited by Oprah, who asked him how many pounds he’d lost since he’d been at the gym.
The reverend didn’t mince his words when answering the question. ”Well, I dropped my weight. I just ate a lot of fried chicken. That’s why I’m down to about 305 pounds. Right now I’m really trying to detoxify my body.”
Ouch. Not only did the reverend lose weight – he looks like a man who should be enjoying a vacation in the Caribbean instead of a lecture tour. For someone who is usually in the spotlight for his controversial views, losing even a few hundred pounds can be difficult, but Al Sharpton made sure that he got back on the right track by eating healthy and exercising.
The good news is that Sharpton is making the rest of us look at what we put into our bodies every morning. If you are eating tons of fried chicken and drinking gallons upon gallons of sugary soda every morning, you are most likely adding more pounds to your body than you realize. In order to shed those extra pounds, Sharpton has turned himself into a strict vegetarian. He eats only fruit and vegetables in every morning and he believes that this combination helps him to shed pounds quickly. So if you are looking for a health blogger who looks like he just went back to school for statistics and wants to tell you about the benefits of eating vegetables, eat for the sake of eating and avoid the carbs in every morning, then you need look no further than Al Sharpton.