How I Built This with Guy Raz - Whole30: Melissa Urban

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Whole30 began as a dietary experiment: For 30 days, Melissa Urban went without grains, dairy, legumes, alcohol and added sugar. She was trying to address several health problems, and the results were so extraordinary that she decided to share the diet with others. What followed was a blog, a series of seminars, a best-selling book and eventually a wide-ranging wellness brand that’s helped millions of people identify the best diet for their own body. But in 2015, Melissa had to rethink everything—even her own name—when she split up with her husband and business partner, Dallas Hartwig. She retained ownership of the business, and today, the “Whole30 Approved” logo appears on a range of brands, from La Croix water to Chipotle salad bowls. This episode was produced by Chris Maccini with music by Ramtin Arablouei.Edited by Neva Grant, with research from Katherine Sypher. Our audio engineers were Patrick Murray, Gilly Moon, and Robert Rodriguez.You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram, and email us at [e-mail] Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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might put you on the show. Yes, on the show. And when you come on, you won't just be joining me, but you'll be speaking with some of our favorite former guests who also happen to be some of the greatest entrepreneurs on earth. And together, we'll answer your most pressing questions about launching and growing your business. Imagine getting real-time branding advice from sunbums, Tom Rinks, or marketing tips from Von Weaver of Uncle Nearest Whiskey. If you'd like to be considered, send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you like help with. And make sure to tell us how to reach you each week. We'll pick a few callers to join us on this show. You can send us a voice memo at hibt at

ID.wondery.com or you can call 1-800-433-1298 and leave a message there. That's 1-800-4-33-12-9-8. That's 1-800-433-1298. And that's it. Hope to hear from you soon, and we are so excited to have you come on the show. And now, on to the show. We did this big road trip that lasted about six weeks through the entire U.S. And when we were in San Diego for the seminar, because my sister lived there, my mom and her husband flew out for it. And during a break, my mom came up and she was like, people paid you to be here.

And I said, yes, Mom, this is what we've been doing. People are paying us to talk about this. And that was the moment where she said, I think this is like a thing that you have. And I'm like, well, I sure hope so because I just quit my job. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz. And on the show today, how Melissa Urban turned a dietary experiment into a wellness and nutrition powerhouse,

Whole 30. inflammation has been a buzzword in the health and fitness space for at least two decades. If you listen to popular health podcasts or read books by people like Peter Atia or Mark Hyman or Andrew Huberman, you will hear the word inflammation. There is a lot of evidence that illnesses, including Alzheimer's, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes may be linked to chronic inflammation in the body. And one of the theories around this is that food may be one of the culprits that, the kinds of food you put into your body can have an impact on how much inflammation you develop. Now, full disclosure here, I personally buy into a lot of this. It's why I try to avoid foods that spike my glucose, things like sugar and refined grains,

because healthy glucose levels are usually connected to lower levels of inflammation. Now, why is this relevant to today's episode? Well, because if you have even the slightest interest in anti-inflammatory doctors, you will have heard of Whole 30. It's basically an elimination diet. You cut out things like sugar, alcohol, grains, dairy, and even legumes and soy for 30 days. And you see how your body responds. It's not a weight loss diet, but it's designed to help people feel better.

And Whole 30 doesn't make any claims on what the diet will do for you, but let's just say, cutting down on sugar and simple carbohydrates for most adults isn't bad idea. The diet was created by Melissa Urban and Dallas Hartwig back in 2009. At the time, Melissa and Dallas were CrossFit fanatics who were just experimenting with different diets. Their intention was never to create a template for other people, and it certainly wasn't to create a brand. But as these things go, that's exactly what happened. The more Melissa blogged about how the diet was helping her, the more people asked if she could share more of about it. And eventually, Melissa quit her job in the insurance industry to turn Whole30 into a

business. Today, the company publishes books, offers coaching, and most importantly, makes deals with other brands to license the Whole30 logo to use on their products if, of course, those products meet Whole30's strict guidelines. A Whole30 approved logo on a product can really help boost sales. It's like the good housekeeping seal of approval, but for health food. It's on everything from LaCroix water to epic meat sticks to several brands we've had on this show, including Ciette Foods. As for Melissa, she grew up in New Hampshire, part of a tight-knit Portuguese-American family, and as a kid, she was expected to attend Catholic Church every Sunday. I mean, it was never a question, and I never really questioned.

it either. You know, by the time I was 16 and had a part-time job and was able to drive, my sister and I would call it going to the Church of the Golden Arches because we would tell my mom we were going to church and we would go sit in McDonald's and have some fries. And we would slide into the back row of church right before communion so we could go. We could take communion. We'd have a bulletin to kind of prove that we were there. But I'm pretty sure my mom suspected what we were up to at that point. But from what I gather, from what I read about you, you were a good kid. You did what your parents told you to do. You studied, you went to school, you didn't get in trouble. Yes. I mean, still to this day, I would describe myself as a rule follower. I was the oldest

of two. I was the smart one. My sister was the fun, cute one that everybody liked. I was far more introverted. I preferred books to people. I was kind of socially awkward. But I was a good kid. I rarely got in trouble. I got stray days in school. I had one best friend in the neighborhood that I spent a lot of time with. But if I didn't see my friends for a week at a time, I was perfectly happy just to sit at home alone with my book in my room. So you, your sister, mom and dad, and an extended family of cousins and aunts and uncles in this sort of Portuguese world that was surrounded by. Yes, exactly. And I was very close. I was close with my aunts. I was close with my cousins and uncles. And my aunt die would pick me up for a special

McDonald's run after school one day. And we'd blast the radio. and go get happy meals. And yeah, I have a lot of really fond memories of that. I should start by saying normally in this show, unless it's something that the person is comfortable talking about or if it's relevant to their lives, I try not to talk about trauma because I don't want to trigger certain feelings.

I mean, I don't think it's necessary. But I know that you've talked about something that happened in your life when you were 16, which was kind of a shock and a break in your life. in your life that would lead to a lot of the things where we are today in some ways, and that is you were sexually assaulted when you were 16 years old. I understand that it did. It changed everything for you. It did.

And I'm very comfortable talking about it at this point. I've shared this story publicly a number of times, but it was the first really important pivotal moment in my life. and I describe it like a record scratch. Pre-16 years old, everything that we've just talked about, I was a good kid, I got straight A's, I followed the rules, I had a good relationship with my family, and then at 16, I was sexually abused by someone in my family, someone I really loved and someone I trusted. And from that point on, everything was different.

I was different, my relationship with my family was different, what I thought about myself was different, my behavior, my grades. I mean, it was night and day. I became a different person after this experience. I began acting out. My parents would go away for a night and I would throw a party and the police would come. This was never something that happened before. I started drinking and nobody really asked me if I was okay or what was wrong. And that was very indicative of the culture of my family, that the way they responded when something was wrong was that they just didn't look at it or talk about it.

That was their coping strategy. So when somebody got cancer, they just didn't talk about it. When somebody was sick, when somebody got divorced, that was just the way my family handled things. So it was just a really difficult time, I think, for all of us, not knowing what to do and what was wrong and me not knowing how to even share it. You eventually did talk to you.

your parents about it, I think, right? Yeah, about a year after, I couldn't hold it in anymore. And I absolutely broke. And I shared what happened with my parents. And they didn't know how to handle it. You know, I don't know any parent that would feel comfortable handling something like this. But it was kind of decided that we would just not talk about it because bringing this up would destroy the family. So as a family, we decided that we just would not talk about it.

And that was kind of another record scratch, I think, and how the rest of my life would go. You did manage to make it through high school and graduate, and you became a student at the University of New Hampshire, but you continued to drink and really started to use drugs, more and more and more. Yes. I was looking for a way out of my body. I wanted to just not be here. I wasn't suicidal. I just didn't want to exist with the thoughts and the feelings that were inside my body. So I tried a lot of different

things. I tried drinking. I didn't really love it. It didn't work the way I needed it to. I dabbled with controlling my eating. That definitely did not stick. It was like never anything I was interested in. And then I found drugs. I smoked my first joint the summer between my senior and freshman year of college, and I thought this is it. This is the thing that is going to take me so far outside of myself the way I've been looking for. And I dove in so hard and so fast from that point on. So what do that mean? I mean, you're a student and also, as you say, dove in so hard, so fast. How were you managing your life? I was highly functional. as you might imagine from someone who was, you know, a straight-A student and very type A and very

dedicated and very committed. For the first two years of school, I went to all my classes and also drank and used as many drugs as I possibly could at the same time. And I managed to keep the wheels on that bus for about two years, which is pretty remarkable. But of course, it devolved. And when it devolved, it devolved very quickly. So what happened? I mean, did you make it through college? I mean, did you have to drop out? Yeah, I did drop out. By my junior year in college, I was dating a drug dealer who gave me access to anything I could possibly want. And I dove into harder and harder drugs. And so halfway through my junior year, I realized I was failing all my classes. I still have nightmares to this day, guy of not showing up for my botany class and feeling like, what am I going to do about this? So I went to the registrar's office and I made up some story about my parents getting divorced, which they were, actually. And I mentioned that I was just really struggling with my schoolwork and I would like to withdraw from my classes.

And so I was able to withdraw. I think I got one F, but the rest of them were withdrawals. And, you know, people in New Hampshire were really starting to catch on that I was not okay. My sister, for one, she was at school with me my junior year and she knew that my drug use had spiraled into uncontrollable territory. So I left. I bounced. And I went down to Virginia to live with my dad. He moved down there after his divorce. He had remarried at this point. And I went down there to live with them. And I met another drug dealer very quickly. And I started dating him very quickly. And he had more access to heroin than the last drug dealer. So I got into that very quickly. And I found a job. And I was able to maintain that job mostly. Again, I was mostly functional for the next

six to nine months, but my parents started wondering what was wrong. They could see the signs. I was flaky at work. They were wondering what was going on. And so, you know, eventually when they caught on that things maybe weren't okay, I moved back to New Hampshire. I just bounced around from location to location for a few years. The second anyone started to wonder what was maybe wrong with me. So you're kind of floating, right? I mean, this is, you hadn't graduated. You dropped out. And, And, I mean, what did you think about your life? I mean, here you are, you're, you know, 25, 26, managing to, you know, to keep a job and, you know, earn enough to pay rent, but still, you know, addicted. I tried very hard not to think about my life.

If I were to think about my life, it quickly became overwhelming. I knew that I was in so much trouble. I knew that my drug use had become uncontrollable. I tried to stop once or twice and absolutely could not. And I knew that underneath all of this was this trauma that I had refused to address. And if I stopped using drugs, I would have to look at that. So I tried really hard not to think. So how did it end?

I mean, what happened to knock you out of it? I was living with a boyfriend at the time who in the beginning knew that I used drugs but did not realize the extent because, again, I hid that from him and I was highly functional. But the last six months of our relationship, it was pretty obvious that I was seriously addicted and unable to control my use and my behavior at home started to become very erratic. And there was just one night where he said to me, I can't do this anymore. I can't watch you do this to yourself anymore. So if you want to go to rehab, I will call right now. I will find you a bed.

I will drive you and I'll be there for you. And if you can't do that tonight, I'm leaving. I can't do this. And I just, I had a moment of clarity. And I said to him in that moment before I could lose my nerve, I will go. And he called and he found me a bed in the first rehab facility he called, which is incredible. And an hour later, I was tucked into rehab. And what did, I mean, did you keep this from you?

You had such a tight-knit family. You know, did you keep this from them? Were they aware of it? I had to call my mom from rehab to say, hey, mom, I'm in rehab for a drug addiction. And again, my mom had no experience with drugs or alcohol. Nobody used drugs in my family. Nobody drank to access. This was just not something she had experience with.

So I had to call her from rehab, and she was supportive in the best way that she could, you know, not really knowing how to navigate this either. So you had to relax. about a year later, and you went back to therapy. And I guess around that time, you somehow started to exercise, I guess, as a way to try to keep yourself busy and to actively kind of tackle this and avoid relapse. Yes, I got out of rehab, and I knew that something had to be different. And so I thought to myself, well, what would a healthy person with healthy habits do? If I were healthy, if I didn't just come out of rehab, if I wasn't, you know, still craving heroin, like, what would I be doing?

And the first thing that came to mind was you would go to the gym before work. Because only healthy people are at the gym at 5 a.m. And so having never set foot in a gym before in my life at this point, I found a gold's gym that was pretty close to my office. And I started going five mornings a week. And then I met a group of women at the gym, and they would run every morning. And one of them said one day, do you want to come running for us? I had never run in my life. A month ago, I was snorting heroin.

And I said, yes, I would love to. And so I started running. And I think those women probably did more for my recovery than just about anything. And that kind of became my routine for the next two years. So you started with running, and running is an amazing exercise to do because it really, especially you can go slowly, and it can really clear the mind. Yeah, and that was the fun thing about this group, is that one of the women ran really fast. So she would run ahead and then run back and catch up with us and then run ahead again.

Some people ran really slow. I was a very slow runner, so sometimes one of the women would hang back and we'd just chat the whole time. But I loved it, and it turns out I was pretty good at it despite never having run before. And then, you know, on the off days when I wasn't running, I would do some machines. and hit some weights, and that led me to doing a few triathlons. I did a few sprint-level triathlons where I swam and biked and ran, and that all felt pretty good. And I guess during this time, you also went back to school and did eventually get your degree. And you were also working for an insurance company, I think around this time, that you eventually became a manager there, right?

Yeah. And, of course, you were getting more and more into fitness. And this is sort of around like 2005, 2006. And I remember that around that time, you would start to see CrossFit gyms pop up here and there. It starts to become a thing, right? And you stumbled on it, I guess. I did. I was really into kettlebells.

This was before kettlebells were a big thing. And nobody taught kettlebells in New Hampshire. Nobody even knew what they were. But I was managing an office in San Diego at this time. And my sister lived in San Diego. and she was training kettlebells with a woman in San Diego. So I would go learn kettlebells with her. But nobody back home knew what I was talking about.

And I found an RKC certified kettlebell instructor in Maine. And I used to drive two hours on Saturdays for private lessons with him because I was really into it. And kettlebells, I think it's important. They're really good for your core. It's really good for cardio exercises. It's good for stability. Like it's a really amazing. It's just a weight, but it's just the way it's shaped.

Yes, it's a fantastic tool for all kinds of things. They're one of the things where people ask me if I'm building out a home gym, what are just a few pieces of equipment I should have? A kettlebell is definitely on that list. Yeah. So I got into kettlebells, and then CrossFit was now becoming this really big thing. And of course, we didn't have a CrossFit gym in New Hampshire back then, but I became aware of CrossFit exercises.

CrossFit used kettlebells quite a bit. And this was right around the time that I met my Whole 30 co-founder. This is Dallas Hartwig. Dallas, yes, Dallas. Who would eventually become your husband in addition to being your co-founder. Yes. So he was interested in kettlebells. He was interested in CrossFit.

He was a physical therapist and also an athletic trainer. He taught me how to deadlift. He taught me how to do a lot of the CrossFit moves. And when a CrossFit gym did open in New Hampshire, I started going there to train, too. So I became very invested in CrossFit and the CrossFit community. And what was it about CrossFit that? spoke to you. I mean, I've done it before. It's awesome, but, you know, not everybody, kind of people try it and then move on. What was it that you really loved about it? I, you know, CrossFit in

2006 was very hardcore. You had to be willing to punish yourself and really hurt. If you want to do some of these workouts that are so short but so brutal, you have to be comfortable with discomfort. And at that point, in my own healing journey, I was really, into self-punishment. I was really into working my body really hard. And so that language really spoke to me. But CrossFit is really where I discovered that I was athletic and I was coordinated and I could be fit and I loved that about myself. So while you were getting into CrossFit, this is also a time when another phenomenon is happening, which is blogs. Like blogs really start in the early 2000s and they're exploding by 2006. And you,

You get in on this. You're like, I'd like to write about my CrossFit journey, I guess. Is that how it started? Yes. I started my blog, my training blog, which was called Urban Gets Diesel. I make no apologies for that. But I started my blog as a way of just sharing more about the way I thought about workouts and the way I thought about training. And the blog started amassing quite a few readers that became pretty popular. I had a lot of comments. I had a lot of comments. I had. And it was fun, and it was just something I was doing for free on the side, nights and weekends. But the more I wrote, the more deeply invested I got in the CrossFit community, too. I started writing for the CrossFit Journal, and I started traveling for CrossFit kettlebell certifications. So I became very closely entwined with the community through the blog. And then you decide in the midst of this to open up your own CrossFit gym. Yeah, you know what?

This is wild. But CrossFit called me and said, you're doing so much. for the community, have you ever thought about opening your own CrossFit gym? And I was like, yeah, I would love to. Wow. And was that hard? I mean, how did you, was it complicated? Was it expensive? I mean, I guess Manchester and Hampshire may be defined and rent a place, maybe not the same as like doing it in Boston. Okay, well, I did it in such a way that I didn't have to do any of that because I knew that that was outside of my capability. I had this full-time job. That was really important. What I did was I approached my local powerlifting gym. And I said to them, hey, I want to open a CrossFit affiliate,

but I'm only going to train people on the weekends and maybe one night a week. Can I use your space for that and just give you a small amount of money? And they literally said to me, oh, you can do that for free. Don't worry about it. Just bring your clients in, you know, occasionally maybe mention us, give us like a shout out. So I opened a part-time CrossFit affiliate with maybe 10 or 12 clients. Inside an existing gym. Yes. I mean, it was. Every night I would get home from work and I would write my blog post for the next day. And then on the weekends, occasionally I would travel for certifications or I would train my clients or I would be working on blog posts for the next week. So it really did turn into a part-time kind of hustle.

All right. The story that I have heard is that there was a certain point that's around 2009 where Dallas, who was your partner. You were not yet. I don't think you were married yet. No. he started to get shoulder pain. Yeah. And you would think that the first thing he might do is stop CrossFit.

Like maybe it's the physical exercises that were causing the shoulder pain. But that wasn't the issue? So he did. He had this chronic shoulder tendonitis. He and I both shared that, actually. I also had this recurring shoulder pain that I would go see him for actual physical therapy for. And of course, we modulated our workouts. But even with modulating his workouts and resting.

and doing all of the PT things that he knew he needed to do, he still struggled to find relief with the shoulder tendonitis. So what did he decide to try and do? So he had been doing some research into the impact of dietary choices on inflammation in the body. And at this time, paleo was all the rage. Dr. Lauren Cordane was kind of the godfather of paleo. And he had written several papers on the impact of legumes. and their potentially inflammatory impact on folks who are sensitive.

And if you are sensitive, it could be provoking an immune response, an inflammatory response that can manifest in a number of different ways throughout the body. And I should mention Lauren Cordane. He's the guy who came up with what, and I think called it the paleo diet back in the early 2000s or maybe even the late 90s. And really, you know, around this time, much more attention was, was being paid to the efficacy of this diet. It's very controversial, I should say.

I mean, and, you know, like all nutrition-based things, they are controversial. But his basic point is that if you eat more like humans ate before they adopted a, you know, an agrarian-based grain diet, it may actually be better for us. That was his basic argument. Yes. And yes, it was highly controversial. I'm not sure was particularly science-backed in terms of, you know, the health benefits of eating more like our Paleolithic ancestors. But some of the information he presented in his findings, like the idea that there may be compounds

in certain foods to which you are sensitive but not aware that you're sensitive. We're very interesting. All right. So you guys decide to try this basically for a month to see if there's any impact. And what did you get rid of? What did you stop eating? You know, I was already eating a pretty Whole Foods-based diet in that I was doing, you know, a lot of turkey and a lot of chicken and a lot of vegetables and salads. But what it entailed me getting rid of were the breads and maybe some rice, definitely oatmeal. I was eating a lot of oatmeal. So I ditched all of those grains and

started eating more veggies and fruit. I got rid of most added sugar in this first go-around. So I wasn't particularly pedantic about it. I switched to my iced coffees black, which I did not enjoy, but I suffered through. So dairy, got rid dairy. Yes, all dairy. And then legumes. So beans, peas, soy, peanuts, which I wasn't really eating a lot of anyway. Yeah.

And then no alcohol for 30 days, of course. Okay. So you do all this. And what happened to you guys when you started to? I mean, presumably it took a couple days or weeks for you to start to feel. any difference? So we started this experiment. I thought I was really interested, particularly in performance results. Could I get improved performance in the gym and maybe improved recovery? That was kind of all I was thinking about or all I was focused on. I would say by two weeks in,

I was in Energizer Bunny mode. I woke up at 5 a.m. without my alarm with so much energy, I no longer had the 2 p.m. head on desk slump. My sleep was so much better. Even my mood was happier. People at work were saying, what have you been doing? Because I was so much more talkative and so much more just happier. It was like someone flipped a switch. When we come back in just a moment, Melissa discovers that she has a knack for teaching others about the 30-day diet. And not only that, people will pay her to do it. Stay with us.

I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2009, and Melissa is in the midst of a 30-day experiment where she cuts out grains, legumes, dairy, and most sugar. And she's seeing huge benefits. And when her partner Dallas tries it as well... His shoulder pain disappeared, which was really, again, unexpected, but confirmed for him

that there were some properties in... And I don't remember when he reintroduced if he discovered that it was beans or gluten grains that were sort of the primary culprit. And I know that he can eat those foods now without shoulder pain. So what the experiment helped him do was just eliminate some inflammatory factors to give him the opportunity for his shoulder to heal. And yeah, he was equally, I think, surprised. And just to play, like kind of just to push back here for a moment,

because I have to do that because I'm with you. Like, I do eat this diet. And so I'm a believer, but I'm also like a believer in science. and I still trust like public health guidance. And so I would say that maybe some of that was psychological. Like because of the choices you made with the food, you start to believe that it was actually having that impact. Yes.

You know, when you're talking about an elimination diet, the research definitely does show a placebo effect. Yes. In that, when participants eliminate food, they expect to feel better. And that is a very real phenomenon. And that's why many healthcare professionals recommend that you repeat an elimination diet at least one additional time to kind of confirm findings. What I will say, though, is like, does it matter? Does it matter if it's placebo?

If I feel better and I have more energy. And, you know, all of these things cascade into one another. I'm sleeping better. So, of course, I have more energy. And of course, my mood is happier. And I'm feeling more well-rested and I'm feeling more patient. And that gives me a little bit more energy for the gym. This is 2009.

Now we're talking in 2024 when inflammation is like really front and center in the conversation around nutrition. I mean, you can listen to, you know, Peter Artia's podcasts or, you know, Mark Hyman's written a bunch of books. So there's a lot of these, you know, well-respected people of science have shown and pointed out that inflammation in the body is connected to diabetes, heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, etc. and if you can reduce inflammation of the body, you're going to have overall health benefits, basically. That's the argument. Yes. And we're specifically talking about chronic systemic inflammation because some inflammation, of course, is incredibly helpful if you sprain your ankle and you've got this acute inflammation that's localized, it's immune cells that are rushing to the source of the injury to help you heal.

Working out, lifting weights. Correct, yeah. Is it a form of inflammation? You need that to build muscle. Exactly. But what we're talking about here is this low-grade chronic systemic inflammation where your immune system is just generally fired up all throughout the body where it doesn't need to be. All right. So you do this. You in Dallas do this. And I have to assume on your blog, you're writing about this. Yeah, I decided to write about it in July of 2009 on Urban Gets Diesel. And I called the article, Change Your Life in 30 Days. And I shared a very rudimentary set of, rules that we had followed. And I said, you know, if anyone wants to give it a go, I'd be happy to

lead people through it. And at the end of the 30 days, I gathered testimonials from people. What happened? How did it work for you? And what did people say? You know, when two people do an experiment and get really remarkable results, you're like, that's interesting. When a hundred people do an experiment and get remarkably consistent, equally stunning results. That was the point where I said, oh, this is something. We have something here. People reported the same energy boost, sleep improvements, mood improvements, focus improvements, digestive improvements, reduction in cravings.

And then people started talking about how they haven't had a migraine in 30 days, or they haven't had an asthma attack, or their seasonal allergies are gone. And that was really exciting, I think, for me. And you weren't calling it whole 30 at the time. No. You'd have a name for it. No name. It was change your life in 30 days.

That was what we were calling it. It was a mouthful. But that was the point where I thought, maybe this could be something. And that was the first moment that I thought, like, if I going to jump and leave my job and see if I can focus on this full time, I wasn't ready yet by any means. But that was the first inkling that maybe I could. And how did you start? to imagine what that could be? I don't know that I had a vision for it or a plan,

but I do know that after I shared that blog result in July 2009, CrossFit gyms started emailing us saying, would you come to Arlington, Virginia, would you come to New York City, would you come to Hartford, Connecticut, to talk to our CrossFit gym. Wow. To do like a seminar.

Yep, to do a seminar. And we, so the first group to reach out was an Arlington, Virginia-based gym. It was a guy in CrossFit who we had known. And he was like, well, you come down and talk to our members. And we were like, sure. So we jumped in the car on a Friday, drove down to Virginia, sat people in a cold CrossFit gym on metal folding chairs for eight hours and talked about the whole 30. And they loved it. I don't even think we charged for this first one. We just drove down, talked about the whole 30 and came back home. And more and more. And more, gyms started reaching out, I was working my full-time job. And three weekends out of every month, we were driving somewhere in New England to go talk to CrossFit gyms about the Whole 30. And did you call it Whole 30 at that point? Yeah, we named it. It might have been August or September. I kind of crowdsourced with my community. And someone mentioned, well, this kind of changed my whole life. And I thought, okay, we'll call it Whole 30. So you're going to these gyms talking about this thing that you did in this elimination diet and still blogging about it and continuing

to do it, right? I mean, continuing to eat this way. So it was mainly at that point, would you say like more of a paleo diet? After my first Whole 30, I discovered some foods that I thought worked well for me, did not. And, you know, I really need to emphasize here that we don't eliminate foods on the Whole30 because they're bad. There are no good or bad foods universally. What we're doing here is just providing you with a template to experiment with these foods. Pull them out of your diet, reintroduce them, and decide for yourself how they work for you. Dairy at that point in my life was not my friend.

It left me super bloated. I felt like I had an alien in my belly, so I gave up my beloved cottage cheese. I didn't go back to eating a lot of gluten-containing grains either because they also left me bloated and they made me break out. So I was really used to at that point eating a lot of veggies. But there were other foods like corn and popcorn and, you know, some added sugar and hummus that I found worked great for me. So I kept on eating those. You know, the goal is not to eat Whole30 forever. It's about to figure out what works for you and then incorporate that in whatever way you like into your long-term diet and that's what I did. Okay. In the meantime, right, the Whole 30 is taking up more and more of your time. And I think around 2010, you start thinking about quitting your day job,

the one that you had at the insurance company, right? Yes. At this point in the company, they had done a round of layoffs, but offered several employees retention bonuses if they agreed to stay for the next three years. And so I signed on for that retention bonus, which was great. My job was secure, and I knew that at the end of three years, I'd have this little lump sum of cash coming in. And my retention bonus was coming up in April 2010. That was the three-year period where, whether I stayed or left, I would get that $50,000 bonus in my bank account. And there really wasn't a hard decision to make.

I knew I wanted to pursue this. So they gave you a $50,000 retention bonus because you stayed when they had layoffs three years earlier. So you knew that money was coming in. But you still had debt, right? You still had some significant debt. Student loans, I think, credit card debt. Yeah, I had like $30K in student loans. I had $10,000 in credit card debt.

I had a terrible credit score because of my drug days. But I don't know. I just, I had faith that we were going to be able to make this work. And also, if we couldn't, I could just get another job. Yeah, so let's talk about how you were going to turn this into a business because it was you blogging about your experience, you going to CrossFit gyms, initially speaking for free. and I guess at a certain point in 2010, you came up with a fee structure for your lectures? Yeah, we started charging for them actually pretty early. Like the first one we did for free, but I think the next one we might have charged people $35 or $50,

and eventually the ticket price was $100. And we were in CrossFit Philly talking to a crowd of 150 people who paid $100 a piece. It felt like pretty good money at that point. We were also doing some one-on-one consulting, so we were charging, you know, $100 an hour or $150 an hour to work one-on-one with people. I wasn't sure how we were going to make it a business, but I knew that the seminar requests were so voluminous. We could not keep up with them, and we could travel for a weekend and do one or two seminars in a location and make a pretty good chunk of change. And this is really what you start to do. I think, like in the summer of 2010, you were in San Diego, doing.

a seminar. I guess your parents or one of your parents was in time, maybe your mom was there. And she's kind of shocked to see all these people turn out. Yeah. We had in 2010, after I quit my job, Dallas and I at this point were together. We were dating. Not yet married, though. And we did this big road trip that lasted about six weeks through the entire U.S. And we probably did, I don't know, 20 or 30 seminars that summer driving from place to place. When we were in San Diego for the seminar, because my sister lived there, my mom and her husband flew out for it. And I was, And during a break, my mom came up and she was like, people paid you to be here. And I said, yes, Mom, this is what we've been doing.

People are paying us to talk about this. And, you know, she was so worried about the fact that I didn't have health insurance and that I'd given up the best paying job I'd ever had. But that was the moment where she said, I think this is like a thing that you have. And I'm like, well, I sure hope so because I just quit my job. When we come back in just a moment, whole 30 grows into a business, a book, and a brand. But Melissa has to rethink all of that when she in Dallas split up. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2010, and Melissa and Dallas have moved to Salt Lake City to be more centrally located. They're building a business around the Whole 30 diet and holding seminars across the country. And those seminars are starting to take off. There was a seminar we did at a CrossFit Gym in Philadelphia one year, and I said to Dallas, there are a lot of people our parents age here. And that was unusual, almost always. CrossFit gyms were populated by young, fit people. And so we started at a break walking around talking to people and oh, so happy to have you here, what brings you here. And people would say,

my daughter told me about you. She lives in Albuquerque and she said I should come. Or my niece did a whole 30 and she loved it so much. She shared it with. me and now I'm here to learn more about it. So people have such an incredible experience with the program, and then they tell everyone they know. And so largely in the early days, we grew via word of mouth. It was your sister, your friend, your hairdresser, who told you about the program. So as you were talking about Whole 30 and it was gaining more traction, it was changing, right? It wasn't like this fixed thing.

I mean, over the life of Whole 30, what was sort of restricted and what's not has changed. Very much so. You know, in the earliest iteration, we essentially took a paleo framework and put it into an elimination diet format. But very quickly, in 2010, in 2011, we started recruiting the help of scientists and medical doctors and psychiatrists and PhDs to really help us dive into the research behind it so that we weren't being dogmatic. You know, the early, earliest iteration of the whole 30 said no white potatoes because Lauren Cordane said no white potatoes. And then we do some research and we do some digging and we're like, well, that's dumb. Potatoes are whole real nutrient dense food. Like, of course, you can have potatoes on the whole 30.

So that was the first rule change we made. But high in carbs. Yeah, they're high in carbs. But for some people, that might be really appropriate for their context. And for others, you know, we're not saying you have to eat potatoes. But we began having a lot more conversation about the nuance and the context that is always necessary when you're talking about diet. But the basic principles are at this point, you know, it's still no sugar, right? During the 30-day elimination, yes, no added sugar, no alcohol, no grains, no legumes, no dairy. Those are sort of the basics of the rules. Right. And then you reintroduce things that your body, you know, is okay with. But is the idea to, you know, initially it was about reducing inflammation in Dallas's shoulder. And yours too, is it, is it,

today about reducing inflammation or is it is it about just feeling better or both historically we talk about kind of looking at the whole 30 impacting the body in four areas your cravings and your emotional relationship with food there's a lot of habit research and behavior change science woven into the whole 30 so that's one area we look at blood sugar regulation and metabolic health we look at digestion and gut health and then inflammation or the status of of your immune system. And dietary changes can have an impact on all four of those areas. We're not here to tell you what to eat or how to eat when your whole 30 is over. We're here to give you the tools to help you evaluate that for yourself. So how did you, I mean, when you

and Dallas were kind of coming up with what this would be, was it going to be a business around seminars and content? Or did you think, well, we've got to figure out bigger ways of of, you know, building this out. In 2010, we were doing these seminars all across the country, making good money every weekend. And then when we got to British Columbia as part of our road trip to visit Dallas's family, we took two weeks off. And we realized that we did not make any money when we took time off. And we realized that that was deeply problematic.

And that was the moment where the term passive income was, introduced to my lexicon. I was like, we need a way to make money even when we are not working. We can only take on so many consulting clients a day. There are only so many weekends in the year to do a seminar. And we can't survive on that. We have to take time off. We have to take weekends off. And that was the first moment where we thought we have to create something that we can just create once and then sell. And then that's going to earn us revenue in between. And what did you start to think about? We put together, a 40-page PDF on how to do the whole 30. It was essentially our seminar packaged down into

PDF format. All of the stuff that we talked about, the science behind it, the big picture recommendations, the rules of the program, how to do it, tips for grocery shopping and meal planning. And we put that all into a PDF. And we sold it through our website for $39.99. So it was a digital book. It was a digital book. But it wasn't even an e-book. It was literally just a PDF. that you downloaded. And we sold thousands. Thousands of this PDF. People were so hungry for how to do the whole 30. And this was an accessible, easy way to lead hundreds of thousands of people through the program. So you knew that basically you had to write a book.

Yeah. That was the point when we started thinking about, okay, well, maybe we could turn this into a book. Yeah. And one small independent publisher, Victory Belt, which was operating out of Las Vegas at the time, reached out and said, maybe we could do a book about the whole 30 together. And they had just published a book, another paleo book in the kind of in our community that had done pretty well. And I think they decided that they were going to be like the paleo book publisher. So they reached out to us. I didn't know anything about publishing.

I didn't know to ask about an advance. I didn't know anything about agents. I didn't know anything. But we wanted to write a book. And so we were like, yes, great. Sounds good. Signed a contract and started writing. So this was going to be the first book. It starts with food. And that was going to kind of lay out the science behind the whole 30 idea. And this came out, I think, in 2012, right?

Yeah. And it did pretty well. I mean, it got quite a bit of attraction. It did. It didn't hit the New York Times bestseller list right away. It was published in June. but I got the call from my publisher in September that it had gained enough traction and it made the list, which was huge. I never expected that. So yeah, it did really well. Okay. So at this point, you have the seminars and the one-on-one coaching and the book. And then another big part of your business would become like a kind of partnership program, right? Like where food brands could pay to become a whole 30 approved and then put that logo on their packaging, right?

Yes. In 2011, we came across this company called Primal Pax. They were making this jerky, not dried fruit kind of snack mix. And the cool thing is that their jerky didn't include any added sugar. And so they reached out to us and they were like, hey, we make a really small company, like making these, you know, things out of my garage. but like we don't have any added sugar. And I thought that is so cool. What if we said you were poll 30 approved and we introduced you to our community and we could make an affiliate commission if people bought it through our link. And he was all on board because we were now introducing his product to a whole new community. And there was no agreement. There was no contract. There was

no payment other than our affiliate link. But that was the first time that we think. We thought maybe we could connect partner products with our community and have it be a three-way win for everybody. Okay. So you were experimenting with like Whole 30 approved, but it was still kind of early days. And meantime, did you have brands or small companies who made, you know, certain products start to approach you and say, hey, can we do this too? We did.

Yeah. You know, Epic Bar was another very early adopter, now owned by General Mills. And you're absolutely huge company. Yeah. But at the time, they were just like two, you know, two young adults who were making these meat sticks that happened to, again, meet Whole 30 compatibility, you know, guidelines. And so we did a deal with them. I think there was a contract for Epic Bar, like a really simple one-pager. And they may have paid us like $500 to use the logo.

And they put it on their products. C snacks was another really early adopter, those seaweed snacks, that are still so popular now. But they were an early believer in the brand. But it was, it's like, and if you build it, they will come phenomenon where we needed brands in the approval program to lend legitimacy to the program. Like, this is the thing that you want for your brand. Did you have, I mean, you know, any product, I mean, not any, but really you don't need permission to say paleo friendly or keto friendly on a brand. That's not a trademark, right? But were there, you know, did you start to see sometimes people describing their food as like whole 30.

friendly without asking permission? So you can still describe your food as Whole30 friendly, but if you want to use the Whole30 logo and now Whole30 approved is also a legally registered trademark, yeah, you have to have a license for it. So in the early days, we didn't see a lot of overstep, but when we did, I had a good trademark attorney who would go in and, you know, very politely request that they take it down. So we were pretty persistent in protecting the trademark early on knowing how important that was going to be for future contracts. How did you decide? I mean, initially charging 500 bucks for, you know, the use of your logo is not, you know, you're not going to build a business around that, but how did you start to think about

the value of that logo on a brand? You know, I always had a hard time, I still, to this day, sometimes have a hard time thinking of Whole 30 as anything other than this scrappy, word of mouth, little do-it-yourself brand. And so I really undercharged for so many years for some of these licenses. In 20, I think 2018, we hired an in-house attorney, somebody to run our licensing program. And she was the one to take a look at all of our contracts and all of our deals and say, y'all are undercharging, like massively. And she was the one who created our new contracts and set our new pricing structure. And so from that point on licensing became a much bigger part of our revenue stream. And we really did start charging what we were worth. But we spent a lot of years

just getting brands on board because adoption was really important. So I guess a lot of people, after your first book came out, wanted a more sort of step-by-step guide on how to do this, right? And so that was going to be your next book, which was the whole 30, because people wanted to know, look, I get it. I've read it, but I just need a paint-by-numbers thing here. Just make it really easy for me. Exactly. I still felt like I had so much to say about the whole 30 and so many different pieces of advice and tips and resources I could offer down to just the most granular, oh, I'm doing the whole 30 alone. My husband's not doing it with me. Like how should I go about this or what tips do you have? I had so much to offer that the idea for the second book came up almost immediately after the first one was published. So that book was written. You guys wrote that book, but you also, your partnership, your marriage was kind of coming apart. And I, again, you know, don't always talk about this on the show unless it's connected to the business. And this was inextricably linked because the two of you had a business together, but your personal life was coming apart. Yeah. You, in this book, the Whole 30 came out while you were in the process of divorcing.

Yes. Yes. And you had to go on book tour and you had to show a happy face. And how did you guys manage that? That was so hard. It was so challenging. We knew the marriage was over and we were in the process of quietly divorcing. But we had already signed this book contract.

We had an obligation to our publisher to write. and promote this book to the best of our abilities. And so we are on tour for this book in April 2015, and our publisher is booking our hotel rooms, and we are quietly booking a second hotel room, paid for with our own money, so that we could maintain our own individual spaces. And then during the media and during the tour events,

we came together, and we did a really good job. We were a good team. I'm really proud of how we behaved. We could have made it difficult. And we didn't. We promoted the book. We did a great job. And then when the tour was over, we made a very simple announcement, told our publishers, told our agent, and moved on with the divorce and the business split. Now here's another sort of challenge, which is you had changed your name. You had taken on Dallas's last name. And that was your professional name because the book came out. You were Melissa Hartwig. You were blogging. under that name, you had written two books with that Melissa and Dallas Hardwig. So, I mean, I'm assuming your publisher who's like, well, it looks kind of a bestseller.

Like, that's your name. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. I just never change your name. Just don't. Just keep the same name that you have. That's my advice. I remember going to my publisher after the divorce saying, okay, and as part of the divorce,

I'm going to change my name back to Urban, and I'm going to keep it that forever. and my publisher said, well, you can't. You're already under contract for your next two books. Hartwig is the name that you wrote under. That's the name the media knows. That's the name the public knows. That's the name the booksellers know. Like, you can't change your name. And I went back and I thought about it. And I came back to my publisher and I said that is absolutely unacceptable. So let's talk about a way to change my name that suits your needs, but also suits my timeline. So for a couple years, we did a hybrid approach where I was Melissa Hartwig, Urban, on books, and we did that for, I think, two book cycles. And then I was finally able to drop the heartwig and go straight to urban. But it was a process.

Yeah, yeah. And presumably with the split, you also had to figure out what to do about the business, about the whole 30 business. Yes. There was never any question whatsoever that I was going to buy him out. He agreed with that. I agreed with that. This was my passion.

This was my baby. I had a jillion ideas for it. And he did not want it. Of course, the issue was, what does it look like? How much money do I give him? It's a price, yeah. What does he get to keep, right? There were seminal articles and pieces of content that he wanted to use going forward.

And, you know, what does that look like? And how do we share in those things? So it was complex. Any breakup, whether it's a divorce or partnership breakup in a business, is just so complicated. It's so challenging. And there's no playbook for it. I mean, you just have to hope that everybody, can work through the challenges.

Yes. And I mean, add to that, we had a one-year-old at the time. So it's figuring out what to do about the business, figuring out how to be a solo parent. You know, I'm lucky in that he's a great co-parent. But it was the hardest year of my life, certainly, especially having to do all of this in such a public fashion. But I also remember it being one of the happiest. So I guess that's paradoxical.

but that's how it was. How did you, especially when, you know, you guys split in 2015, how did you like start to staff the company? I mean, did you, I'm assuming you didn't need too many people to run the business. No, I think we hired our first employee in 2012, and she stayed on for a couple years, and then we hired another assistant in 2013, a social media manager, and in 2016, we hired a Whole 30 approved partner coordinator because the licensing program was blowing up at that point.

Right. I mean, on that point, I think around this time you started to do promotions with some pretty big retailers like Whole Foods, right? Yeah. We had, you know, as you mentioned, Whole Foods in the Rocky Mountain region did this big Whole30 approved promotion. So for a period of three months when you went into their store, you saw Whole30 approved logos on everything, these little. shelf tags that would call out our Whole 30 approved partners. I'll never forget the time that one of our brands was trying to get into Whole Foods and they had a meeting and said, Whole Foods said to them, we would love to have you in. Would you put the Whole 30 Approved logo on the front of your bottle? Move it from the back of the bottle to the front. And that was the point where I thought, okay, it felt like we were a pretty established brand by that point in 2017.

With this platform, I mean, I imagine you had people coming to you, consultants, maybe entrepreneurs and other people saying, you know, Melissa, you really can do a million things with this. Like you should have, you should be making food. I mean, you're basically saying, look, this is what you should eat. Why don't you make the food? And then people could buy that food. Yes. I've had investors approach since very early days. And I've had good conversations and gone even pretty far down the road with a few of them. But we're such a mission driven business. And I'm so focused on impact. I am not a profit-driven CEO. I'm not a revenue-driven CEO. Or care if we turn into a billion-dollar organization. And so many of the

things that these consultants or investors wanted to do to turn us into a $100 million company would have felt gross. And I didn't want to do it. You did do a line of salad dressings and dipping sauces. You launched that in 2020. Tell me, about that decision? Why did why did you feel, I mean, to me it makes perfect sense. Like it's the obvious next step. But was that, was that a struggle for you to, to make that decision to decide to do that? It was an obvious next step. And also it took us until 2020 to actually do it. But over time, it became obvious that we could fill a niche within our community and offer them something that would solve for pain points, that would add flavor, that would add deliciousness. So,

So in 2018, we started talking about what that product could be, and a salad dressing and sauce kind of line was the obvious choice. And then it took us about two years to figure out how to get it off the ground. And we launched in 2020. So this product comes out in the middle of COVID, actually. And how did it do? Well, it was obviously not ideal to launch mid-pandemic. So the salad dressings did very, very well.

when we launched, but we quickly ran into issues, manufacturing issues, supply chain disruptions, you know, freight and distribution challenges. We just started getting our butts kicked, to be perfectly frank, and we weren't big enough and did not have economies of scale to be able to absorb it. Yeah, because I imagine, like, somebody like you goes to Whole Foods or, you know, sprouts, and you're like, hey, I want to do a product. They're like, let's go. Immediately, yes.

Right. They're like, of course, we want to work with you. You're Melissa Urban. Like this is Whole 30, let's do it. At the same time, right? I mean, there were brands like Primal Kitchen that were Whole 30 approved that, you know, depended on that label to really boost their sales might have caused some tension, potential tension with those folks. That was a huge part of the thought process in launching. And I will tell you this.

I personally called our three biggest 1230 approved partners before we launched. And I had a call with Mark Sisson, head of Primal Kitchen, and I said, hey, I want to let you know that we're thinking about doing this. Here's what we're thinking about launching. Like, what do you think? And he was so immediately supportive. I think this is great, Melissa. A rising tide raises all ships. The more the whole 30 logo gains prominence, the better it is for my brand because people are going to see it on my bottles. And everyone was super supportive of getting the whole 30 mark and the logo out there more. So we did it. And I'm certainly not saying we won't go there again. But, That at that time, the right move was to shut that down and reallocate those resources and that money to the core business. Okay. One of the things that you've done recently, and you launched this in 2023, was a delivery service, food delivery service, made by Whole 30. So like meals ready to eat that you just heat up in the oven. Yeah, exactly. So Made by Whole30 meals launched in mid-December, 2023, so just a few months ago.

and again, a project that we've been working on for the better part of a year. So when you go to Meals.hull30.com, you'll enter your zip code. You'll see your local menu because we've got local and regional chefs all throughout the country who are using locally sourced ingredients, seasonal ingredients that they're comfortable and familiar with. So everyone's menu looks a little different. But most meal delivery services, you have to subscribe and you're going to get X number of meals per week.

We also have an option where you can just order one box of meals. if you want. So if you want a supplement an especially busy week or, you know, you have guests in town and you just want a few easy meals, you can order just one meal at a time. Or you can put meals on a subscription and get them every single week delivered. So, I mean, when you think about now, I mean, you've got this pretty recognized brand around nutrition, you know, that was really started out, started out as an experiment, right? That came about because you got into fitness. It came about because. you were trying to save yourself and recover from substance abuse, which was triggered by traumatic experience. I mean, all those things like lead to this moment, right, this point where you are in your life. And I wonder how much of all of the things that happened to you, how much of it do you think happened because of the work you put in and how much just happened because of circumstances and fate or luck?

It's always both. It's always both. It's always both. When I think about the earliest days of Whole 30 and how fast we took off in the CrossFit community, it was because there was a hole that we were prepared to step in and fill. Our timing was impeccable. And that was not by design. It was just how it happened. And also, we took advantage of those opportunities. And we hustled and worked as hard as we could and made connections and networked.

And so it's always both. I love what I'm doing right now. I love the community that we have, the impact that we have. If all of this blows up for some reason, and I have to lay my whole team off and Whole 30 is no longer a business and we no longer have Whole 30 approved partners or licensing and I never write another book, the Whole 30 will live forever. People will still want to do the program. I think the program itself has now incredible longevity and staying power.

And I'm still excited about that 15 years later, which, I feel very lucky to be able to say. But I would still like to see where it could go. That's Melissa Urban, co-founder and CEO of Whole 30. Melissa has a new book coming out soon. It's called The New Whole 30. And among other updates, it includes a plant-based option for vegans and vegetarians. And by the way, if you think doing the Whole 30 means you can never eat something that you know is bad for you,

well, that's not entirely true. Like, I love a good McDonald's Hot Fudge Sunday. That is my, I'm not an ice cream person, but for some reason, McDonald's Hot Fudge Sunday is with extra hot fudge. That's the one you pick. But I love it. Wow, that's, I mean, you know, it's a solid Sunday. There's no question about it.

So good. But I've figured out how much I can get away with and still feel amazing. And that's my sweet spot. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I kind of want a McDonald's Sunday. Extra Hot Fudge, that's the key.

That's the key. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast. podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show, and as always, it's free. This episode was produced by Chris Messini with music composed by Rantin Arablui. It was edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Catherine Seifer. Our audio engineers were Robert Rodriguez, Gilly Moon, and Patrick Murray. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Casey Herman, Carla Estevez, Jacey Howard, John Isabella, Kerry Thompson, Malia Agadello, and Sam Paulson. I'm Guy Raz,

and you've been listening to how I built this.