Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1592: The 30 Day Diet Experiment That Launched an Empire With Melissa Urban

Episode Date: July 8, 2021

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin have a fascinating conversation with Whole30 co-founder Melissa Urban. A traumatizing event that led to numbing her feelings with drugs. (2:17) The moment the wheels fell off. (5:13) What caused her to relapse? (9:02) Why food and drugs are not that different. (12:12) The challenges and process of changing your mindset. (14:49) The importance of doing the hard work. (18:52) The powerful transformative experience that sparked the Whole30. (20:50) The impetus that sparked her first Whole30 experiment and the game-changing results that came from it. (23:33) When did the transition happen from blog to business? (28:42) The moment she recognized she needed a new approach to her training. (30:24) How did she escape the CrossFit mentality? (36:40) Coping with a rise of fame. (40:56) The challenges of growing a business while going through a divorce. (42:33) The pivotal moments that sparked an empire. (51:23) What are the biggest misconceptions around the Whole30? (53:14) A conversation around food accessibility, privilege, and race. (57:28) What does the future look like for the program? (1:06:28) What is her metric for success? (1:07:48) Any pushback from the medical community? (1:09:43) What is her least favorite part of having something so massive? (1:11:21) Featured Guest/People Mentioned Melissa Urban | Whole30 (@melissau)  Instagram Whole30 Robb Wolf (@dasrobbwolf)  Instagram Gretchen Rubin (@gretchenrubin)  Instagram Diana Rodgers, RD (@sustainabledish)  Instagram Jamie Oliver (@jamieoliver)  Instagram Related Links/Products Mentioned July Promotion: MAPS HIIT and the No BS 6-Pack Formula 50% off!  **Promo code “JULYSPECIAL” at checkout** Visit Four Sigmatic for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Code “mindpump” at checkout The Whole30: The 30-Day Guide to Total Health and Food Freedom Mind Pump #1475: Eating Meat Is Good For The Climate With Robb Wolf Sustainable Dish Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump, right? In today's episode, we interviewed the founder of Whole30, Melissa Urban. So Whole30 came under the scene and exploded because it's an extremely effective way

of figuring out how to eat for your body. So in today's episode, we talked to Melissa and learn more about her. A lot of people don't know if she's got a really interesting history at one point she was in a heroin addict. So she kind of walks us through her story and then talks about how she developed

the ultra successful Whole30 company. So it's a great episode, great conversation. By the way, you can learn more about her on Instagram at MelissaUse, that's M-E-L-I-S-S-A, and then the letter U. And of course Whole30 can be found at whole 30 that's whole 30.com. Also this episode is brought to you by our sponsor Forsecmatic. Forsecmatic has the best mushroom-based supplements you'll find anywhere. They use a dual extraction process to give you all of the active

ingredients that you'll get in commonly used medicinal mushrooms like cordiceps. That's one of my favorites for athletic performance, or you can try Lyons main, for example, which is great for cognitive performance, but they have so much more. Go check them out and then use the Mind Pump Discount for 10% off. Head over to 4sigmatic.com. That's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C.com forward slash MindPump, use the code MindPump for that 10% off discount.

Also, we are running a promotion. Two of our programs are 50% off. So the first one is Maps Hit. That's high intensity interval training. The second one is the NoBS Sixpack Formula. This is a core and ab training program. Again, both are half off for this whole month and then that's it.

So go check them out. Go sign up at mapsfitnessproducts.com. Just use the code July Special with no space for that discount. Well, let's see, you have such an incredible story and you're an open book on your podcast. I know that you share a lot. I think it's really a very, very transparent.

And I kind of want to start you somewhere totally different than anywhere I've heard anybody else start you because I find your backstory extremely intriguing. And so I want to talk about how you've shared about your heroin addiction. And I want to know where that started and how that started and take me from there.

Yeah. So it really started at 16 when I experienced some sexual trauma with a family member. I was like a really just solid kid before that. Good grades really quiet. Kind of kept to myself. Studied really hard and at 16 because I didn't know how to handle that. I didn't tell anyone for a long time. My behavior radically changed.

And when I finally did tell someone, my parents, a couple years later, they did not know how to handle it. They did the best they could with a difficult situation. But as a result of how all of that went down, I just was desperate to look for a way to sort of numb my feelings and pretend like it didn't happen. I was advised that we would all just pretend like it didn't happen. And I tried drinking and that didn't work. It never stuck.

I tried, I don't know, controlling my food, that never stuck. And when I smoked my first joint at 18, I was like, oh, this is it. This is what I've been missing. It was like the thing that would take me away the hardest. And I just dove in as fast and as quickly as I could at that point. I spent the next five years only dating drug dealers. I bounced.

I had to drop out of college in my junior year. I bounced from household to household as soon as one set of parents recognized that my behavior was kind of off. I just would move states and live with the other set of parents. And I eventually got into ecstasy and heroin and, you know, all of that. I didn't really have a drug of choice. And I spent basically the next five years high, highly functional. I still hold a job. A lot of my friends didn't know the depths of my drug use, but the whales kind of fell off the bus

about five years in and that's when I eventually went to rehab. Now when you went when you got into hair because I've known a couple people that have went down that direction, they all started though with pills first and then then went to the hair one. Did you go straight to that or? Because I had access to like everything through my drug dealer boyfriend, I was like the girl who would do anything. I would snort lines off a table and not even know what it was. So I started with pot but then like quickly dove into acid and mushrooms and cocaine

and it wasn't until I moved to Virginia that I found a new drug dealer boyfriend and tried heroin for the first time and the combination of heroin and ecstasy was I think what I did the most. It was the thing that removed me from myself the most. And that was kind of what I chased for a really long time. Now I shared on our show a while, a couple of years ago, I think I went through that with Vicodin.

And of everything I've ever dealt with in my life, that was the hardest thing ever for me. And I didn't even know, like it snuck up on me really quick. I actually wasn't trying to escape anything. I was, I had a tour, I tore my ACL and MCL and I actually got instructions from my doctor to stay ahead of the pain. You know, I was, oh, it's still hurt me, it's still hurt me. Oh, then take it every three hours instead of four hours.

And then before you know it went from, you know, four day to five a day, before you know it, I had nine a day. And then all of a sudden, I stopped taking them when I'm done. I'm like, oh, I rehabbed, I'm fine. I've been consistently doing about nine a day for a few months at that point. And at that, just decided to cut cold turkey, had no idea what feeling addicted to something felt like.

I had these awful flu-like symptoms. I had the shakes. It was the worst thing ever. And I remember thinking, oh my God, how terrible is this? I just got the flu really bad symptoms, I had the shakes, it was the worst thing ever, and I remember thinking, oh my God, how terrible is this? I just got the flu really bad, it's what I thought. And I remember it was the next day, I was like, I didn't sleep all night long, tossing and turning, and the next day,

I was like, I knew I still had a couple of Ike and left in my bottle, and I'm like, I'm gonna take one just so I could sleep, because I knew it would help me sleep. I'm just gonna take one, and I took it, and I felt amazing within like 30 minutes and I went, oh shit, insulin went to the computer and like started googling and found out, I was like,

oh my God, I'm addicted to this. So what was it like and how did you come off of that? Imagine heroin's gotta be 10 times worse. Yeah, you said the wheels fell off. What was that moment? What happened? Yeah, so I had gone from being relatively functional to now needing to take something, anything, just to like maintain a baseline. So I was drug seeking with my psychologist. And so I was on

out of hand and I had clonipin and I had Xanax. And at one point, I could, in any pills, I could get my hands on. And I started having panic attacks. I started behaving incredibly erratically. I remember my sister's 21st birthday. I actually don't remember it. But the family story is that I showed up for this 21st birthday clearly high and was telling a story about how I had keyed the car parked next to me in the parking lot because they had parked too close.

And my entire family was just so horrified at seeing me like this. I had kind of been avoiding them for a while and a day or two later when I got home my live-in boyfriend essentially was like I won't watch you do this anymore. I've been trying to help you. Like you're either gonna go to rehab tonight or I'm gonna leave and and I went. So the wake-up call was him basically saying that's it. Yeah. Did you believe it at that point, or were you like, okay, all these people are saying it, I'm gonna go see what's going on,

like were you fully on board or was it? I was, I hated how I felt. I hated myself. I hated this cycle that I was stuck in, that the shame and the isolation that I felt just made me use more, which only brought on more of those feelings. I didn't care at that point what happened to me. I remember sitting on the couch and him saying,

like, you're going to go, or I'm going to go. And I remember thinking I had just been paid, I had a whole bunch of money in my bank account and I was like, I could just blow all of this on heroin and like, I don't really care what happens at that point. And it was literally a moment of like divine intervention that gave me the pause to say, like, okay, I'll go. Now, I know a little bit of your timeline. Is this around 04 or what time is this? You know, this was earlier, this was 98. Oh, wow, this is even further about, okay.

Because it's 04 and on is when you were completely, right? I went to rehab, I had a year of recovery, and then I relapsed, which is not uncommon. No, I think it's only like a 10% success rate out of those rehabs. Yeah, it did. And then the second time I kind of managed to pull myself out of it, the second time around

after a relatively short period of time because I was just so terrified of what would happen to me. And it was in the year 2000 that I entered recovery for the last time. Now, if we have anybody listening right now that's kind of struggling with this, because relapse is such a common thing. Adam mentioned the statistic only 10% success rate. I would say it's probably even smaller than that.

What causes the relapse if you're good for a year is it those old feelings that you still hadn't dealt with that were still troubling you that caused that? Yeah, the only thing I changed in that first year of recovery is that I stopped using. That was it. I didn't set any boundaries with friends or family. I didn't change my habits. I didn't change who I hung out with. I relied on nothing but like willpower and white knuckling my way through it to stay in recovery. And I found myself in the wrong place in the wrong time with, you know, something dripping down the back of my throat. It happened faster than I could imagine. And to this day, I don't even know what I took. And it wasn't until the second time that I realized

that in order to become this healthy person with healthy habits that I so desperately needed to become to save my own life, I had to start setting some boundaries. With everyone in my life, I had to change every aspect of my life who I hung out with, the clothes I wore, the music I listened to, the places I went, and it wasn't until I adopted that kind of growth mindset that it all changed. Was it like a right away thing, or was this a process? It was a process that really started by just setting one boundary with a friend where I was like, hey, you can't ever offer me drugs again. And I really don't want you to do them in front of me anymore.

I know I've been saying that I'm fine and you all wanna just make believe that I'm fine because it's easier for everyone, but that's not how we need to operate anymore. That's gotta be really hard to tell someone that you know that you're close to to say, I, because very vulnerable, right? Like, okay, I don't have the self-control that I need.

Therefore, I need you to never offer it to me ever again. I mean, that's gotta be really, really challenging. It was really challenging. I was terrified that I was gonna lose this friendship. He was a very good friend of mine. We'd been very close for a long time. We'd done a lot of drugs together. He's still used, but very casually,

he did not have the same kind of addiction issues, and it was terrifying, but I realized that unless I created these safety mechanisms around my recovery, it wasn't going to make it. So it really was like a matter of life and death at that point. Now, what are you doing for work at this time? So to tell me, take me through your kind of your work journey, because you said you were functioning and actually still being able to go and have a normal job. Yeah, when I went into rehab the first time,

I worked for an insurance company. I worked and I had very good health insurance, which was an enormous privilege that allowed me to go to both detox and weeks and weeks in rehabilitation covered by my insurance plan. But I was helping customers over the phone. I was again very functional with my job. And when I went back, I went back to that same job.

They took me back. And I stayed working for them for a while. When I relapsed, I was without a job. I had been fired from my job for smoking pot with some clients. That was part of my relapse. And I took a few months off, lived on my savings and went back and got another job right around the same time

that I entered recovery for the last time. Yeah, you know Melissa, oftentimes when working with people with nutrition, because oftentimes food can be used in abused in ways that drugs can be used, I noticed that oftentimes with people, depending on the situation, that they had a circle of friends that they connected with over food and the thing that they had to do, and this

is very challenging and very, very challenging, in order for them to progress and move forward so that they start to develop a better relationship with food, is to realize that those people they can't be friends with anymore because that's how they connected. Did you have situations like this? I did have situations like this and I often make the parallels, you know, associations between food and drugs because they're not that different in so many ways. I found that I was able to maintain some really solid friendships. We just had to do different things.

So we didn't go play pool, we didn't go drinking, we would go for a hike instead or we would do a yoga class instead. And if I had friends that were willing to do those things with me and just not invite So we didn't go play pool, we didn't go drinking, we would go for a hike instead, or we would do a yoga class and stat, and if I had friends that were willing to do those things with me, and just not invite me to the other stuff that they did, that that was a way I could maintain the friendships. I definitely had to drop other friendships,

and that was okay with me, because my only goal was to protect my recovery. And then I went out and made like-minded friends. I was like, okay, what would a healthy person with healthy habits do? They would meet girlfriends who like to run instead of drink. And so I met girls at the gym and we started running together

and we would still go off for dinner and some of them would drink and some of them wouldn't. But I did have to very much change my friend's circle and with my existing friends, change how we interacted. Now, did you find yourself ever challenged with abusing exercise or using exercise as a replacement for drugs.

I've seen this oftentimes with people where they quit one thing and then now the addiction has now been placed on running or exercising all the time. I did. I did do that for a little while. I think it's really common. You can't pull an addiction up and not replace it with something. And unless you have this self-possession to replace it immediately with really good healthy

modulated habits, which I did not, and most people can't, I think it is natural to gravitate to something else and hyper-focus on that. But I did overexercise for a while, and I did kind of turn that into a bit of an addiction, but it self-modulated very quickly because I was so focused on making every area of my life really robust and healthy, whether it was friendships or work, I focused on sleep, I was focusing on nutrition, and so I wasn't

hyper-focused on just one area, and that over exercise, I wasn't really stressed about it, because I was like, well, I am not using drugs, and that's cool. And B, I have all of these other ways of supporting myself that are eventually gonna meld into this healthy recovery. So talk about that, because you reinvented yourself, literally is what it sounds like you did. And I don't wanna take that lightly.

That's a very challenging thing to do because you're changing who you are essentially. Talk about the challenges of that. And the process, you have to go through changing from the person you were before to eventually a person you are now. Yeah, I didn't know it was called a growth mindset at the time, but that's exactly what I adopted. This belief that you can become anyone you choose to become with tenacity and determination.

I decided that I was going to be a healthy person with healthy habits. That was literally the phrase that was my bedrock. And so when I would ask myself, when I had faced with decisions or choices, I would ask myself, is this what a healthy person with healthy habits would do? So I started getting up every morning at 5.30 to go to the gym,

because that's what a healthy person would do. When people would say, do you wanna go out after work for happy hour, I would ask myself, like, well, what a healthy person goes? Sometimes yes, and maybe I would drink, or maybe I wouldn't. And sometimes, no, I want to get to bed early so I can get up and go to the gym.

And it was a slow process rooted in this belief that I truly could become that person, and not only could I become it, I already was. And I just had to look for evidence to support the fact that I was that healthy person, and I was no longer the addict that I used to be. Were there any definitive people in your life at this time that you could see is like modeling that

and showing you what that looks like? Or was this something that you were just trying to create yourself? I didn't, there wasn't any one person that it was modeled on. I did make a group of five girlfriends at the gym and they were incredibly helpful. They didn't know me before. You know, my existing friends knew addict Melissa

and now new Melissa and sometimes they struggled with like, oh man, it's like you're not, you know, you're not as fun anymore. Sure. And so I met these new group of girlfriends and they didn't know. Old me, they only knew me as this person who was like, had a steady job, was dating a good guy,

and liked to run and go to the gym and that was so affirming for me. Like I could see myself through their eyes and not only helped me uphold my own version of myself. You talked about growth mindset. One of the, I guess hallmarks of that is focusing on the things that you can change and not focusing on the things that you can't.

Did you find yourself before that feeling more like at a control victim? In other words, this is that you can't. Did you find yourself before that feeling more like at a control victim? In other words, there's nothing I can control here. This is because of these circumstances. Switching from that, which can be very alluring and very challenging to get out of, to a, okay, that stuff happened,

but I got control over these things. Let me focus on what I can control. Talk about that transition right there, because that's not easy. Yeah, this is potentially controversial, and I'm going to preface it by saying that I respect everyone's right to define their own recovery as they see fit, and there are so many ways to recover

that works differently for everyone. When I entered recovery the first time, it was very heavily AA and NA-based, 12-step-based. In that scenario, which is very patriarchal, you are reminded that you have no power and that you have to give up your power and that the way to stay in recovery is one day at a time. That just never resonated with me. It made me feel powerless. It made me feel as though in order to stay in recovery, I just had to wait and I go my way from meeting to meeting to meeting. And the second time, I decided

that I was going to do it my own way. I got back into therapy. I started to unpack my trauma and I decided to reclaim my power that I was fully capable of trusting myself and believing in myself and hauling myself out of this hole that I was smart and capable and talented and determined. And for me, that was a huge difference, that idea of reclaiming my power and standing in that power and deciding to make my life what I wanted to be with the help of my therapist and like being willing to go back and all the way to the beginning and start unpacking where it began. Do you recall your first kind of aha moment when you entered therapy?

I don't know that I had any one aha moment. I do know that I was blessed with a therapist in like just randomly assigned to me in rehab that I went on to work with for the next 15 years. Who called me on my shit. He was the only therapist I ever found that like I couldn't fool. I couldn't get him to like give me what I wanted. I couldn't get him to back off. Like I was so good at manipulating and he saw through all of it. The moment I realized that this guy was actually going to like make me do the work, that was when I settled in. And I quickly realized that digging in and unpacking all of that trauma

as difficult as it was was so much easier than what I had been doing for the last 10 years to run from it. And I think that was a real aha moment. You know, really, really intelligent people have that ability to manipulate other last 10 years to run from it. And I think that was a real aha moment. I think about it. You know, really intelligent people have that ability to manipulate others. But what's, I think, most challenging is they have the ability to manipulate themselves and believe in their own stuff.

I think that's what makes them so effective. They believe it. Do you ever find yourself getting into that, even today, where you say, okay, hold on a second, I'm good at this. Maybe I need to step out of side of myself a little bit. I'm pretty good at calling myself on my own shit these days. So I don't, I don't think I do that to myself very often. If there's a feeling inside me now, it's like an icky feeling.

And when I step outside of my integrity, when I, you know, try to gaslight someone or fall back into old patterns that used to feel good and safe and comforting, they feel awful now because it's not who I am and it's not what I do. And there's a moment where I'm like, oh, this doesn't feel good. And then I have the tools now to sit with it and say, okay, what's coming up for me, how am I experiencing this? What can I do instead of the way that I'm behaving?

And it doesn't last very long? So I'd like to think I'm not really in that pattern anymore. Now, now because you used exercise and nutrition as part of this kind of reinventing yourself, is that where you started to develop that relationship with those things and say, well, these have tremendous value and maybe this is what I want to do? Yeah, absolutely. My first full 30 in April 2009 was an incredibly powerful, transformative experience in terms of my recovery and performance in the gym,

which was really my big focus at the time. My energy was better, my mood was happier, but that experience highlighted for me the ways that I was using food like I used to use drugs. Explain that. As punishment, as reward to self-sooth, to comfort myself, I didn't have, while I had been in therapy and I was doing such a good job unpacking my trauma, I didn't have a lot of coping mechanisms.

If I felt icky, I just felt icky and I would wait for my therapy appointment to talk about it, but I didn't know how to self-sooth. And I didn't realize how much I was using food in that capacity until the foods and beverages that I used to use in that capacity were gone for 30 days. That was part of the program. And so I left my first full 30 with a deeply transformed relationship with food

and new healthy habits. And I felt like I learned other coping skills. And so that was such a powerfully transformative experience that I wanted to talk about it and share it on my blog. And that was really the foundation for where the whole 30 started. So when you were doing that, did you,

I mean, did you have the foresight to see what it's become now and was that what you were intending to do or is it kind of almost like therapy for yourself and then it unfolded that way? Yeah, I always joke that I'm only ever just talking to myself on Instagram and my newsletter. Like it's always just therapy for myself.

I had no idea. I remember calling my friend Melissa and I was like, hey, I did this really awesome thing for 30 days. It really changed my relationship with food and my energy. Like it was awesome. Do you think anyone would want to hear about it? Because if so, I might like write about it on my blog. And she was like, yeah, I think people might be interested.

And so I wrote about it on the blog and a couple hundred people said I would try that. And I led people through the first, like, group poll 30, a couple months later. I had no idea what it would become. I just knew that I had this cool experience and I wondered if other people might have that experience as well. Were you doing another job at the time? What are you doing for work at that time? Yeah, I was working for the same insurance company.

So I started as an admin with this insurance company fresh into recovery the second time. And I had since graduated from college. So I went back to school. I got my degree while working at that job. And I had been promoted. And so I was working for a team of business analysts and managing 20 people in three different offices and blogging and doing as much crossfit stuff as I could on the nights and weekends.

Oh, wow. So explain this first whole 30. What were the parameters and how did you come up with that whole idea? Yeah. So we had just gone to a Rob Wolf nutrition workshop. So he's kind of the paleo godfather. Rob. Me too.

And he had talked about, you know, these dietary factors that can really influence everything from inflammation to gut health, to metabolism and blood sugar regulation, and it was really in parallel with some of the research that my co-founder had been doing in terms of his sister's rheumatoid arthritis and some of the dietary factors that plan to that. So we had just heard this really awesome seminar and we were sitting around after a really challenging Olympic lifting workshop workout at CrossFit Boston and I was eating thinments right out of the sleeve right because I had just

exercised and I had earned them and my co-founder was like hey what if we did this like super squeaky clean kind of based on a paleo framework for 30 days I wonder what would happen to our performance and recovery. And I was like, yeah, that sounds good. I would do that. And he was like, how about we start right now? And all of the things that made me a really good addict, make me really good at stuff like that because I was like, yep, handed my thinments to my friend Zach and like, that was it.

But that was the impetus. Was just this 30 day self-experiment to see what would happen if we stripped some of those foods out of our diet for a month. And what did you notice? First thing I noticed was that my energy skyrocketed and leveled off. So no more 2PM had undescaped slump. No more, like I was still drinking caffeine at the time,

but I didn't need as much. I wasn't craving sugar as much. My sleep got so much better, which I didn't even expect. And I feel like it's a completely underrated benefit of dietary change. My mood improved. So I was leading like a group of, you know, 20 people every Monday morning we'd have a meeting and I would walk into my meeting on Monday and they would be like, what's what are you doing?

You're like so happy this morning. All of a sudden I was asking people how their weekends were and stuff. And then again, my performance in the gym definitely improved, my recovery improved, I noticed improvements there, but mostly it was just that like I felt like for the first time I was off the scale out of the mirror and really had this healthy relationship with food, it was really powerful. Now the challenging part would be the, for me at least,

would be the after the 30 days. So what did that look like? Were you like, oh, I'm just gonna go back to what I did before or am I, I'm staying on this forever? Like what did that look like? I felt so good when I got off of those 30 days that I was like, I don't wanna go back to what I was doing.

And I ended up, you know, basing the foundation of the rest of my diet on that whole 30 framework. At the time, we didn't have a concrete reintroduction protocol. It wasn't anywhere near as developed as it was now because we were just figuring it out as we went. But I noticed that when I did reintroduce stuff, when I would have a glass of wine, when I would return to my Dan and Light and Fit yogurt,

then I felt like crap again. And I was like, man, this stuff just like isn't worth it anymore. And because of my personality type, because I'm a Gretchen Rubin upholder, and it's easy for me to meet my own internal expectations. I was like, this is just how I'm going to eat from now on, because I feel awesome. It's delicious. I'm eating like tons of calories and tons of really good food. It's not hard. And I'll just throw this special

stuff in when I want to. And I'll figure out how much I can get away with. And that was essentially what I did. So what were the foods that you cut out that initial 30? And is it different than what you do now? No, it's surprisingly similar. It was all forms of added sugar. I think I wasn't as rigid with added sugar on my first whole 30 as we are now, but I cut out most added sugar.

All dairy, all forms of dairy, all forms of grains, including like non-gluten grains. Legumes were a big one. That was a lot of the research my co-founder was doing with RA ties. And alcohol, I just didn't drink for 30 days, which was super easy because I wasn't really drinking much anyway. And you must have increased your consumption of the things that weren't on that list, like fats, proteins. I was already eating a kind of whole foods approach, but I was doing a lot of whole grains.

I was doing low fat, tons of cottage cheese, so it did require a bit of an adjustment. I started eating a lot more potatoes and more protein from animal sources as opposed to my protein shakes, but I was already eating a lot of whole food and I already knew how to cook, so that did make it easier. Take me through what's happening financially with you right now. I'm always so curious to like the scaling of the company and like, you know, the blog starting to go viral, you're starting to piece this all together. Are you having lots of financial success yet

or how's that starting to come together? Well, there's no business at this time. This is just me running a CrossFit blog on the side. My insurance job paid really well. And luckily, I was able to support all of our kind of side projects through my salary, and I had recently signed a retention bonus with my company. And so I knew I was committed through 2010 with this company, and I'd see like a decent chunk of cash come in.

So I was able to finance all of that. I had done some writing for the CrossFit Journal. I was traveling for some CrossFit certifications, but like none of that paid anything. It was really, this was a true side hustle. We're like, I wasn't making any money. And we were just, I was really just like giving a lot of stuff away for free to, because I thought it was fun and a good way to build community and a good way to just stay connected to my own healthy habits. How did this turn into a business? When did it start to make that transition? Yeah, so a lot of it was timing.

I was very heavily invested in the CrossFit community and CrossFit had just lost its nutrition program, right? They let Rob Wolf go and they now had this like big empty gaping hole of nutrition. And I was writing about the whole 30 on my blog and more and more people were starting to do it and it started to gain some traction at this time. I had my own CrossFit affiliate back in New Hampshire. And I remember one day a friend of ours from a gym in Virginia called. And he was like, hey, would you guys like drive down here and talk to our members

about the whole 30? We were like, yeah, sure. So we packed up the car on a Friday. You know, had it headed down to the DC area, drove eight hours on a Friday, spent eight hours the next day talking to like 30 people about what we had learned about nutrition and the whole 30 program and then packed it up and went home on Sunday. And it got great.

Kind of PR, the members did the whole 30, had great results, CrossFit was incredibly well connected at the time. This was well before Instagram and even before the Facebook community was like huge, but they had their online forum that was really popular. And that gym just started talking to other gyms and other gyms and pretty soon we found ourselves with like a bunch of requests in the Northeast area to drive and talk about Whole 30. So we were like, well, we should probably start charging.

I didn't know that. So the CrossFit was really the big catalyst to getting it off the ground. Oh, huge. It was, you know, in part because they were so well connected and like they were growing through word of mouth and so was Whole 30. And part because we did have this kind of hole in CrossFit nutrition where nobody was providing this info. And in part because people were getting awesome results, not just personally, but in the

gym. And CrossFiters are so performance driven that that really spoke to people. Now, as you're structuring this, and you're presenting this to groups of people, and you being the type of person that could adopt these things right away, what did you learn, and what was the feedback like in terms of like as they're going through it,

they might have had certain challenges that you had to then implement into the structure. But yeah, I was so unemphathetic back then. I was so unaware of my privilege. I was so unaware of how different people respond to habit and change and different kinds of expectations. I just assumed that everyone was like me. If I say I'm going to do something, I do it.

And it's not hard. And I don't understand why you can't just do it. Even in the very first iteration of the whole 30 right up on my blog, I was like, this is not hard. Do it for 30 days or go somewhere else. I have plenty of people who like want my help. And if you can't figure out how to drink your coffee

black for 30 days, like do something else. It was so, I cringe now that I think about it. It's like a new trainer. Yeah, that's it. Totally. Yeah, but, you know, I was very dogmatic about it. I think as we tend to be when we discover something we love, and I was very unaware of other people's situations

and how different they were of mine. Now, remember though, I'm in CrossFit land. These people are very good. I just like do it or don't do it. Which we want to say pretty much. Yeah, so I actually found a community that responded very well to my style of tough love in the moment, and I didn't actually have to reflect or change any of that empathetic piece of myself until

the community started to grow. So in the beginning, we were very successful with my tough love, do it or don't approach. Yeah, you had a bit of a self-selection by a CrossFit people. Yeah, I'm so glad you said that too, because listening to you talk about it, and I'm thinking of a client who's addicted to sugar and food and trying to get them into exercise, CrossFit is actually not the modality that I would probably take you,

if you were a client of mine, right? And I got you, and you'd battle the diction and so like that, and you trust me to take you through, that style of training would be something I would actually wanna keep you away from. So, at what point did that all come together for you? Well, you know, I was in the CrossFit community and I crossfitted myself for a long time. When I moved to Salt Lake City, I trained at Jim Jones for a year, which, you know, with Rob McDonald.

And so I was very much still into that, like, more as more, harder as better, you know, punish yourself until you kind of beat it out of you. The mind is primary. That changed for me right around the same time that our whole 30 community began to expand. I remember showing up to a seminar in January in Philadelphia. There were about 120 people there and we looked around the room and there were a lot of people in there like 50s and 60s. Yeah, like, not CrossFit looking people. And I was like, what is happening here?

So we would go, you know, talk to people at the break and they were like, yeah, my daughter told me to come. My niece called me from Florida and said, like, you need to show up to this thing. And that was the moment where I recognized the community was growing well beyond CrossFit. And in my own evolution, that was the moment coincidentally, or not, that I was like, oh, maybe I need a new approach

to my own training and how I speak to myself and how I care for myself. And so those evolutions really happened in parallel intentionally or not, I don't know. Yeah, so I have a specific situation I can remember where that came to me. I had a lady that I trained who she just wasn't telling me everything that she was eating and I could tell.

And I said to myself, I'm gonna have a come to Jesus talk with her. And I sat down and I, you know, I basically did the tough love thing and she cried and she left and she never came back. And at first I was very satisfied and said, yeah, that's, you know, if she's not serious and I'm not gonna train. And then I realized like, well, you know,

she was coming at least working out a couple days with me. And she probably is never gonna do this again. What have I done? And it totally changed my approach and maybe real life. Did you have a moment like that where you had a person where you were maybe a little too tough and then afterwards you said, Oh, this isn't very effective. I don't know if it was an outside person, although I can definitely relate to what you're

experiencing. I think I think what happened was that I didn't have empathy for others because I had none for myself. I was still in that place, post recovery, CrossFit, Jim Jones, working as hard as I possibly could, feeling like I needed to prove something to myself. I was still in that space where I couldn't show myself grace. I couldn't let good enough be good enough. I really was pushing and driving and punishing myself, even though the whole 30 had radically

altered my relationship with food. I still didn't really have that relationship with like myself yet. And it wasn't until I started to recognize that maybe I needed to be softer and I needed to show myself more grace that I found that extending that to people in my community became a lot easier. Oh, so it started with yourself. Yeah. Do you ever find that that starts to rear its head a little bit when you're under a lot

of stress or in a new situation? Do you ever find yourself saying, here she comes, I need to fight this back a little bit. Not anymore. No, I don't. It feels awful. That person feels awful. That taskmaster, the nasty voice in my head, is like she is not welcome anymore. So I find in times of stress that I may close off, I definitely may

get brittle for a moment. But then it's just the pause of like, okay, we're in this really difficult situation. What else can you let go to allow yourself just a little bit of softness in grace and space right now? Who can you talk to? What kind of conversations can you let go to allow yourself just a little bit of softness and grace and space right now? Who can you talk to? What kind of conversations can you have? What little acts of self-care can you provide for yourself to allow a little bit of a smoother passage through what you're in right now?

Did you were talking about 13 years of therapy? Like so much there. I'm glad you said that because it's, we're talking to after all of that work, you know, Melissa, someone watching or listening, like this is a process, it's a challenge, it's uphill struggle and it can last a long time. Yes, oh my gosh, yes, this has been an evolution

and I would say the evolution really jumped again in 2000, well it would have been 2014 when I went through my divorce and business split with a one-year-old. So even that Melissa, from the whole 30 to this divorce business split situation, to the Melissa I am now is radically different. I definitely want to get there. Before I get there, I want to stay in the CrossFit talk a little bit longer because I'm curious to, we talk about this on our show a lot. In fact, one of the things that inspired us to do this was we couldn't stand how clicky the whole space is, right? It's like everybody, we have all these fitness

community. We all say that we're trying to help people, but then we come very dogmatic about our way of training and it's like our ways better than your way and we're trying to break all those barriers, right? So, and I know how it can be like that. If you were hardcore crossfit, you're doing all that and then you start to realize that and you start to share your journey and break free, was there any resistance with the, maybe the group that you created or did you ever had any problems with people or were you challenged with that as you moved away from it? I wasn't challenged with it, but I was also at that point where I was super comfortable

just being like, this is what I'm doing, screw you if you don't like it. Like, I was very good at holding boundaries. When I left Jim Jones, I did nothing but yoga for six months. I was so burnt out physically and mentally from constantly pushing myself and trying to be better and trying to break through those barriers. I was very successful and I was exhausted. I was also in like a toxic marriage and trying to break through those barriers. I was very successful and I was exhausted. I was also in a toxic marriage and trying to run a business and things were just so hard at that point.

And I kind of didn't really care what other people thought. I had occasionally received feedback like, oh, you're just letting yourself go or like, oh, you used to work so hard. And I was like, no, no, I'm still working hard just in a different way. Right. Yeah. Did you find, did, you used to work so hard. And I was like, no, no, I'm still working hard, just in a different way. Right. Yeah.

Did you find, did you go straight to power yoga? Or did you go to, I mean, that's because that's a hard transition. Crossfit to yoga is totally. I did not go into power yoga, but I did try to kick your ass at yoga for the first few months. I was going to be. Yes. And then again, I learned to soften.

I was like, okay, this is not the point, but I actually did write a blog post called, I will kick your ass at yoga where I was like, I got into this class, get away from the mentality and I couldn't escape the mentality for a really long time. Did you, now at that point, you did six months of yoga, obviously starting off with the kick your ass, but then transitioning.

Yoga's a practice that's much more internal, it's much more soft and quiet and you're introspective rather than outward. It's more working in than out, I would say. Six months into that, you start going back to the gym or incorporating more things. What was that like? I went back to the gym at that point.

I still was doing a lot of yoga, but I started, I have 20 years in fitness and I've had the privilege of working with some of the greatest coaches, you know, especially CrossFit coaches. I learned a snatch in Coach Bergner's garage and Mark Repito taught me to deadlift and Jeff Tucker taught me gymnastics and Marton taught me kettlebells. And so I've got this enormous repertoire of movements and modalities. I love watching fitness videos and learning new things, you know, K-Star and his mobility stuff.

I had tons of yoga experience. So I just started doing my own thing at that point and really found myself enjoying it. I didn't have goals. I certainly didn't make the progress that I was making when I was on a structured program, but at that point I didn't care. I just wanted to get in there and move

and like have fun with it. That is the biggest structured program, but at that point I didn't care. I just wanted to get in there and move and have fun with it. That is the biggest and hardest, but also most rewarding transition, to go from training for goals, to training for the sake of training. Like I just do this because I enjoy it. What was that like for you? Yeah, I found it so incredibly freeing.

So freeing, it was just, I no longer had to do things I didn't want to do. Again, my actual performance probably suffered. I'm probably not as fit as I could be. Had someone else been programming for me for my weaknesses, for my imbalances. I don't care. I don't care about any of that. I love getting into the gym.

I loved moving. I loved trying things just to try them. I would throw in what I called mess around days where like there's no structure whatsoever. It's just, I saw this cool thing on Instagram and let's spend 30 minutes figuring out if I could do it. Because I no longer had goals, I was super able to get into like mobility and flexibility

and work on very specific skills. And I had a couple things where I was like, okay, if I can always deadlift one and a half times body weight, wrap five pull ups, like I'm fine. As long as I can do those things, like was like, okay, if I can always deadlift one and a half times body weight, wrap five pull ups, like I'm fine. As long as I can do those things, like I'm doing okay in my training, but I started to love being in the gym again. Well, those are pretty bad ass markers.

Yeah, I think so. So how did you, going through all the stuff that you were going through simultaneously, how did you deal with the rise of fame? I mean, because you didn't get into this really seeking that, it was like more about helping yourself, and then it grew into this thing. Talk about the transition of like, okay,

I'm not just me and my own little bubble, like the whole world's kind of paying attention to me now. I'm like weirdly, I'm like oddly famous. It's not really famous, but like if you do whole 30 or crossfit stuff, it can be very famous. If I go to Expo West or Paleo FX, it's like definitely a famous situation.

It grew slowly. Obviously, as the program grew, I became more recognizable. I've always been kind of the face and the voice. I remember the whole 30 book coming out in 2015. I was in New York for the premiere. I was walking down Park Ave. And a woman walking past me was like, are you the whole 30 lady? And I was like, oh my gosh, I just got stopped in New York City.

I'm like the busiest street in New York. And that was the moment where I was like, oh wow, people are starting to actually recognize me. So it came on slowly. I think the pressure of it didn't really build until we were about to enter into it like our divorce and business split. We had a baby.

We decided not to show the child or name the child ever on social media. We wanted that our son to have like a complete, you know, insulated like sense of privacy. And also like our marriage was falling apart and we had this very public persona and that was when I got really conscious of how people perceived me and how many people were

like interested in and invested in my life. And that's where it got challenging. So you've mentioned a couple times your first husband, but I haven't asked you yet. Where did you meet him? At what point in this journey did you meet him and when you're talking about what we're talking about right now, where are you at in that marriage? Yeah, I met him in 2006. We were good friends for many years. He was a personal trainer

and a physical therapist and had helped me with a lot of my own physical stuff. So we were really good friends for a long time and ended up getting together to create the whole 30 in 2010. We were working together. We had our cross-fit affiliate and he was helping me program for that. And so once we founded the whole 30 in 2010, a couple years later, we got married. And so, you know, we were married for a few years, had our baby in 2013, but like the marriage was never good. And in 2014 was when we started to divorce. But at that point, we had this like book contract and a lot of press and a lot of publicity

around this program. Our publisher was so jazzed that we were this husband and wife dynamic team. And it was so—that was the most uncomfortable year of my life. I felt like I was living a lot because we had to meet the obligations of this book contract and our publisher's expectations. And in the meantime, we're like very quietly booking second hotel rooms on our book tour because we're separated. Wow.

Wow. Okay, so divorce is challenging anyway, but you have a kid together, a young child, and you have this business that is now just starting to explode. And I'm sure you're thinking yourself, we're gonna, we could potentially destroy this business by revealing what's going on with our divorce. Not that that's what'll happen, but I'm sure that went through your mind. How did you handle the splitting

and the management of the business and the baby and the whole situation? Yeah, I was already running. I had been running Whole 30 by myself since 2013. We had split the kind of Whole 30 segment of our work away from some of the other aspects. It was always understood that I was doing Whole 30. That was my passion. It was my interest. It was always my voice. I had been running that by myself. The book had both of our names on it. We were going to tour together. We made the decision to just come together for this last one book tour out of a sense of obligation to the contract.

And I was very careful never to paint the picture during this time that we were this like super happy, rosy couple that felt super gross, but we also couldn't really let people know because I didn't want to let my publisher down. I didn't want to kind of destroy the momentum they had built for this book. So we went on book tour together. We pulled it off super well. We cooperated really well together. And when we were done with that book tour in 2015,

that's when we really started talking about negotiations for splitting the business out. And I ended up buying him out. Now was it amicable? Was the whole situation up? Were you able to work together? And how is your relationship now? Obviously you have a child together.

Yeah, I mean, is's a divorce ever amicable. You do the best you can, but divorce brings out the worst in people and it's a really scary and fear anxiety, written time. Totally. I'm very proud of how we handled our situation. We definitely each other moments and we each were willing to give each other a kind of grace and the benefit of the doubt. And now we have a very solid co-parenting relationship. Oh, okay. and we each were willing to give each other a kind of grace and the benefit of the doubt

and now we have a very solid co-parenting relationship. Okay, that's good. So it's like a dual custody type of deal. Okay, that's true. Now, you referred him knowing early well before you guys actually divorced knowing that it was a toxic relationship. What did you learn about yourself? Oh, that's such a good question.

That's a hard question. I learned in that relationship, never to doubt myself again. I know who I am. I know what I'm good at. I know what I'm capable of. I know where my talents are. I know where I'm not good at. And I'm for perfectly comfortable kind of living

in that space of like, here's what I'm good at. Here's what I'm not. I'll let someone else kind of handle that. But I think over the course of that relationship as happens in times when relationships are bad, you tend to just lose yourself slowly. You make so many compromises on so many important things to kind of keep the relationship going,

that pretty soon you wake up one morning and you're like, I don't even know who I am. Or where I am, I had drifted so far from myself. And so I swore in any relationship going forward or in any situation that I would just never lose that touchstone of who I actually am. Do you know what it is about yourself that attracted to that type of person, knowing that the person is wrong, obviously, looking back, do you know what it is that attracted you to that?

I absolutely do. And we have spent many, many sessions in therapy talking about exactly why that is. Yes, I know exactly why it was. And it's probably not appropriate for me to share. But yeah, it's incredible when you experience trauma at such a young age. That was 16. I'm 36, at the time that I met my ex-husband. And now I'm in my 40s, like it's incredible how that trauma continues to show up in your life in a very unexpected way.

I mean, I don't want to push you because you obviously are not, doesn't sound like it's an exciting thing for you to talk about. But I feel like there's such a lesson there for people because we tend to get attracted to people and we don't realize that we're attracted and it's this deeply rooted insecurity that goes a lot of times all the way back to childhood. Yes. And you don't really, and I see a lot of people continue that pattern if they don't figure it out. You know, a lot of it stems from just my unwillingness to believe in my worthiness and my value as an independent human being.

Not a value outside of what I can do in the gym or how people think of me or what my success is in my career, but like my worthiness just as a human being as the person that I am. And when someone comes along that you find so just like magnificent and heaps on to you that worthiness or allows you to attach your worthiness to him. It's really easy to fall into that. And I've definitely spent the first years of our relationship not realizing that I could stand on my own and feeling like I needed this person to provide me with this validation. And when he did, it was glorious.

And when he didn't, it was the darkest time of my life. And again, I think it just goes back to this idea, which probably goes back to my trauma that like I just wasn't worthy of that kind of love. So much, just from hearing you talk about this journey, so much pain and challenge is connected to the trauma, but also, and this is this is maybe challenging to talk about, so much of your success is connected to that trauma.

In the sense that it pointed you in this direction, do you look back and say, I wish that never happened or do you look back and say, it sucked, but that is why I'm the person I am today. I want to, I want to have a small clarification. It's hard for some people, it's hard when someone says, like, well, your success was tied to the trauma. It wasn't the trauma. It was the trauma.

That made me who I am. Yeah, it was my resilience. Yeah, that's what I'm glad you said that. It was my, right? It's just a very small kind of change and how I see it. I never go back and say, like like I wish that didn't happen. If something, if anything in my life had changed, I wouldn't be where I am right now and I'm super happy and grateful for exactly what I have.

I am at a point now where I can say, wow, I learned some really valuable lessons from these deeply painful experiences. That's not an easy thing to do and that's not something that I think everyone who experiences trauma has to get to. I certainly don't think that everyone needs to get to a place where they can see the silver lining, but I happen to be able to, and I wouldn't change any of it. There's so much, especially in the whole 30,

that came from my addiction and my recovery, and that came from as a result of the trauma and that experience did make me who I am today, yeah. If we had someone watching right now, maybe a young person who's experiencing or experienced some trauma, do you have any words for them to help them through the process or maybe avoid some of the

destructive behaviors that may result from it? Yeah, it's, I mean, first of all, I have so much empathy because as I mentioned, there's just no area of your life that trauma doesn't touch and doesn't impact and in obvious and completely subconscious ways. But I'll go back to the point I made earlier, which is what I've come to realize is that diving in and like starting to unpack it with the help of a good therapist and a good support system, honestly as painful as it is, is easier than everything I always tried to do to escape from it. That's a great point.

It hurt a lot less to actually get into it and start to look at it than it did to like eat it or swallow it like I tried for so many years. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about hole 30 now. So you've got the book, but now you're getting divorced and it's public. So now you're in the public eye. What's that like? Because I got, I went through a divorce and it wasn't nearly as public, I would say, as maybe yours was because I wasn't nearly as known or what not. What was that like managing that plus managing now this perception of people around you?

It was oddly the most stressful time of my life, but also the absolute happiest. I was doing such great work in my own therapy and my own self-care practices. We handled it publicly in a very kind of matter of fact way. There was nobody was passive aggressive or bashing anybody online. We just did our own thing. And I had incredibly clear boundaries and strong boundaries around what I would and wouldn't share with the public, around what I would and wouldn't share with him. So I think that helped a lot.

I really set up some very conchi and just guardrails around this time and this space in my life. And then I felt like I got to actually live my life instead of being afraid of how things would look or what people would say. So this is near the beginning of the takeoff I would say of of whole for 30. Were there any it was there anything pivotal around this point where it really started to skyrocket? We had received so the whole 30 book that was released in 2015 went on to sell. I think it sold like almost two million copies so far. So that was selling really well. We had some major press at that point.

I had done Dr. Oz like once or twice, maybe twice at that point, maybe three times. Good morning, America. Today's show, you know, that was the press was super helpful in terms of it taking off. But the community just continued to grow via word of mouth and via, you know, people having an awesome experience and then wanting to tell everyone they know about this program that worked so well for them and that helped tremendously as well. Would you call Whole 30 a diet?

That diet is such a dirty word, right? Diet used to mean the way I eat and now it's unfortunately associated with like weight loss, diet, culture. We don't call whole 30 a diet and that it's not prescriptive. We're not telling you how you should eat for the rest of your life. We call it a reset. We call it a practice. It's a 30-day self-experiment, but it's not a diet in the sense that it's not a weight loss approach. And it's certainly not how we think you should eat forever. What are some of the biggest misconceptions around Whole 30? I think that is a weight loss diet. We often get lumped in, you know, US news and world report ranks the best weight loss diets every year,

and Whole 30 always comes in at the bottom, and I'm like, but we don't even do weight loss. Like, does it make any sense? So I think the misconception is that we are a weight loss diet. The misconception is that it's meant to be, you know, done forever that we have this list of rules, the misconception is that it's meant to be done forever that we have this list of rules and we think that's how you should eat for the rest of your life, which couldn't be farther from the truth. It's the whole 30, not the whole 365.

And I think that people think it's maybe sometimes like meat, heavy, or fat, heavy, which if you look at our meal template, couldn't be farther from the truth. But I think the first two are the biggest misconceptions that people do it for weight loss, and then it's meant to be done forever. Right. I actually, you know, it was the first, you know, diet book that I ever recommended. So I, for that reason, because I didn't look at it as a diet, I was so anti-diet as a trainer because there's such an individual variance, but I could so get behind

because this is what I was doing with my clients was you know, and we talk about this on the show at that point in my career I'm starting to piece this together like you know what's crazy like I could write the most detailed meal plan But if I just gave my clients some good behaviors and habits say like follow these whole foods I actually didn't have to tell them a bunch of stuff like that. That was your first diets were addressing the behaviors. That's right. Yeah. Not in a good way anyway. Every dietitian in the world says there is no one size fits all approach, right?

Not every diet plan is going to work for everybody. So you have to figure out what works for you. And your clients go, cool, that sounds good. How do I figure out what works for you? And honestly, whole 30 is the how. It's that self-experiment that teaches people which foods work best in their unique system. You did mention that you've had some criticisms

that it's meat heavy and more recently in the diet culture. You've been seeing a lot of people talk about the climate impact of eating meat or that it's not good. It's becoming now almost like a political pawn in a sense. Any criticisms from the vegan world or any pushback from that world? I mean, sometimes, right? We do have a lot of vegetarians and vegans in our community who want to adopt the whole 30-frame work with their specific restrictions. And we do have a vegan reset outlined based on the whole 30 principles,

but that doesn't include any animal protein. And we're so happy to have them in the community and are gonna continue to offer resources for them. I think there's a lot of misconceptions about the impact of meat on the environment and registered dietician and whole 30 certified coach, Diana Rogers of sustainable dish. And of course Rob Wolff do a fantastic job breaking down some of those misconceptions and the way that

regenerative agriculture in particular can be very environmentally friendly, but I tend not to argue with those folks, right? There's a lot we have a lot in common with vegans and vegetarians. The Whole Thirties very plant heavy We do a lot of vegetables. We do a lot of vegetables, we do a lot of fruit, we do a lot of healthy natural fats. And I think that by focusing on the commonalities and saying to people, look, if you do a whole 30 and it works awesome, but you wanna play around veganism, go do it.

Do it the right way. Make sure you're eating whole real food, not just a bunch of processed junk. Do it for 30 days, compare your experience and whatever works best for you like go. Yeah, this is the first time I'd ever seen diet get politicized. I've always seen diet be strange in our space,

but I've never seen it be politicized. How does that feel navigating that? Because you're not just talking to someone who says, my diet's better than yours, but now you're saying you're hearing people say your diet's bad for everybody and it's killing people. So don't do it anymore Yeah, that's tough. I mean food inherently is political right there are there's so many aspects to food and diet that are based in

White supremacy and privilege and systemic racism They're explaining that explain what you mean by that yeah, cuz I've heard that and I don't understand it at all I've heard people explain it. I don't agree at all So what do you mean by that? What do you mean that food is based on white supremacy? and I don't understand it at all. I've heard people explain it. I don't agree at all. So what do you mean by that? What do you mean that food is based on white supremacy? Well, there's a privilege associated

with just being able to eat real whole food, right? So we have so many people living in food deserts or what some people call a food apartheid area where they literally don't have access to. They're not within driving distance. They don't have a vehicle. There are no grocery stores within a certain set, you know, point of time. So just the ability to be able to go into a whole foods or a grocery store and be able to buy fresh food is a luxury and a privilege. And these are some of the things

that aside from maybe the environmental impact of your food choices that we really try to think about at Whole 30 when we talk about making the program accessible, it's not just aside from maybe the environmental impact of your food choices that we really try to think about at Whole 30 when we talk about making the program accessible, it's not just that the program it's free is free. It's like how can we help support people who are only shopping at Walmart and Aldi who don't have access to a health food store who have to buy frozen or things that are on sale who can't buy the convenience products. How do we help them DIY and make whole 30 more accessible?

Okay, so this is more about just accessibility, not I guess you can use the word white supremacy. So what you're saying is for some people, it's expensive or they have other things they have to worry about that are more important than getting a whole natural food type stuff. It's not that it's more important. I think, again, there's a privilege

associated with the idea. And so in some of our communities, I'll look at someone and say, look, if you, like you have an iPhone, if you have an iPhone, perhaps it's just that you're not prioritizing real whole food. And for some people, that is a valid argument.

For others, it's literally that like their life circumstance makes it impossible or incredibly challenging to afford or be able to access. And this is not my area of expertise, this idea of, you know, DEI work, but when you do go back and look at practices like redlining that segregated black communities in poorer areas and lack of transportation in those areas where they choose to place grocery stores and health food stores in various cities. There are aspects of racism involved in how communities can access food now. And this is an area that we're really exploring and trying to learn more

about in Whole 30 because accessibility is a huge focus. I know Adam, you grew up quite poor. Did you find situations like that with inaccessibility? Although I know you're obviously... No, I understand the economic side, but we've talked about that before. There's obviously a major privilege with somebody who grew up with two parents that were wealthy versus two that were you know poor like like we were we grew up I don't get the the the skin color thing That's the thing that and mixing that with nutrition. Did you ever have a point where you came at this crossroads where you felt challenged or felt like you had to get involved and this and start going the political direction

with hole 30 and what made you decide to dive into that because kind of nutrition and fitness because this is an area that we have tried to skate around very carefully because our expertise is fitness and that's but there is a lot of pressures when you get to your size and our size to speak on these topics that really are not our expertise. Where did that happen for you and what made you make the decision that you did? For me, it happened in 2016. When, again, I threw my own internal work, realized that our community was so much bigger than people who looked like me

and shopped like me and had the same resources that I did. And we've mentioned a couple times here the political aspect of some of these discussions, but allow me to reframe that all I'm trying to do with these discussions in Whole 30 is be representative and respectful of the vast group, the many groups of people in my community that don't look like us. That don't have the same resources. They don't look like us, love like us, perform like us. And if you have people in your community or people who want to be in your community, they want to take advantage of your programs, your fitness programs, listen to the podcast,

and they don't see themselves represented in your body of work and the guests that you bring on in some of the topics that you choose to talk about or at least acknowledge, they may feel excluded. And that was what I realized with Whole 30 is that accessibility isn't just about well as the program free. It's that to people in my community who do the whole 30, do they feel represented? Do they feel heard? Do they feel valued?

And very often it's the historically marginalized communities, the black indigenous people of culture, LGBTQIA plus that are left out, particularly in wellness. Wellness is super duper white and straight. I just feel like it's a dangerous rabbit hole to go down when you start going down the privilege route because there's so many different privileges and somebody is inevitably always gonna be left out. Yeah.

You know, one thing, this is actually, partially, what you're talking about is actually a passion of mine and one thing that, this was something I learned a long time ago, there's a huge percentage of children who get a majority of the nutrition from public school. So they get their food from school. And so whatever the school is providing is what they eat. And there's always, of course, that famous moment when there was a pat allah pass

that said that they had to serve a vegetable and then they classified pizza sauce as a vegetable. Have you done anything in that regard working with the school system because of how much food kids get from there? Yeah, no, we haven't. Listen, there is a lot of work that can be done at a systemic level in government, in schools, in hospitals. That's not my area of expertise or focus right now. So what we're trying to do, and what Whole 30 always started doing, was just helping one person at a time. We wanna help one person change their life,

change their health and habits in relationship with food. What we have seen now with the momentum that we've brought and carried, is that we are able through this enormous fiercely loyal community to impact some systemic change. So you see companies like Chipotle or Applegate or Walmart making changes to their product ingredients or adding menu items or sourcing their chicken from certified humane farmers because of the influence of the whole 30 approved mark and what the community is asking for.

So we are able to see some systemic movement based on our focus on like changing one person's life at a time, but we don't have the capacity or the expertise to dive in at like the school level. I look at what Jamie Oliver tried to do a number of years ago and he's so influential and he has so much power and he had so many resources behind him and I'm not sure he made a dent.

And it's not that it's not a worthy cause, that's just not like my area. So many obstacles to working with that. You're dealing with a big monster and a lot of legislation and a lot of connections, a very, very challenging thing to do. What about the criticisms that eating, you know, whole natural grass fed beef or organic free range chicken or chicken eggs, it's more expensive. It's too expensive. What about those criticisms?

Yeah, it is. It is expensive, absolutely. And that's why we really focus for every convenience product we roll out, for every partnership we do with, youfed, sustainably raised, like, meet CSA box. We are also offering alternatives, go by like frozen protein, go do frozen salmon or frozen shrimp or frozen burgers.

You can buy frozen or canned vegetables by things that are in season, do a CSA box. Make your own mayo, make your own dressing for every kind of advanced or sort of organic resource we offer, we're also saying like, hey, here's a way you can do it yourself more cost-effectively. And you know, there's also this part that I think a lot of people miss is that on the surface, it looks more expensive, but the truth is when you count the healthcare costs,

the loss of productivity, the health impacts, on the individual, it's actually less expensive to do these things. And there are ways we've talked about this on the show many times of finding whole natural foods that will actually save you money. It's actually not as expensive as you think like a bag of rice is actually quite inexpensive and rice is for most people

in non-reactive form of carbohydrate potatoes. You had mentioned that earlier. Those are also very inexpensive. Okay, so where is Whole Thirteen now? In terms of its size, its scope, and then where do you see it going in the future? Yeah, so at this point, it's really hard to know how many people have done a Whole Thirteen, because unless they have bought a book or commented on an Instagram post or visited the website, there's kind of no way to tally.

But certainly millions of people have done the program. There's kind of no way to tally, but certainly millions of people have done the program. We've got tons of testimonials. We have registered dieticians and medical doctors who back the program and use it with their clients, which is wonderful. We've got some incredible partnerships with brands like Chipotle and Applegate and Sweet Green.

And we have our own line of Whole 30 salad dressings now, Whole 30 branded. So that was kind of our first foray into CPG. We've got 200 Whole 30 certified coaches all across the country and across the world who are kind of leading and guiding people through the program. So it's definitely grown tremendously. We would like to continue to make inroads into healthcare and continue to partner with healthcare practitioners to legitimize the program and continue to add

a bit more of a robust foundation to some of the support, the professional support that we have. We want to continue to expand the coaching program and provide more in-person boots on the ground, social support. Now that we're all kind of starting to come out of COVID, I think that's going to be really important for people to change their habits and just kind of continue doing what we do changing one life at a time. Go ahead. What's the most profitable part of the business and what's the least profitable part of the

business? Hmm. Most profitable historically has been the books that I write, but over the last few years that's shifted and now we do a lot of sponsored content and sponsorship deals. We have a licensing program. So brands like Epic or LaCroix can use the whole 30 approved logo on their product and that's doing quite well. We have some other aspects of the business like our DEI work that aren't designed to be profitable, but we think move us forward

in our integrity to bring us closer to the community that we currently have and the community that we want to attract. So I'm not a particularly profit or financial driven CEO. That's kind of not my jam. We do well, but that's just never been a metric that I kind of am just about. So then what makes you decide if you're going to drop an idea or follow through on it? Because I'm sure scaling this thing, that you've had many ideas that may not have transformed into a part of the business anymore. Yeah, we've been super fortunate and not a lot like I always kind of make the joke That I've never had a good idea in my life. I only just listen to my community and that's actually really true So when the community says they need a resource they need more help with one particular area of the program

They're struggling with xyz. We kind of read between the lines and we are a pretty small and nimble team and can write a book for them, can create a section of the website for them or can roll out a particular partnership. So we've been fortunate that a lot of those ideas have come to us. My metric for success is just like,

can everyone in the world who wants to do a whole 30, do they feel like they're able to and do they feel like they're seen and heard and valued in our community? And I base a lot of decisions on that. And I turned down a lot of decisions based on this like gut feeling. The question I ask myself is like, does this feel gross? Is any aspect of this feel gross? And if the answer is yes, we don't do it.

It's not particularly scientific, but it works. You know, the medical community is taking a long time to it. It's not particularly scientific, but it works. You know, the medical community's taken a long time to identify, and it still doesn't quite identify that certain foods, aside from allergies, you can actually have, you know, intolerances or low-level reactions. A lot of what Whole 30 is based on is that, is eliminating foods that we tend to react to, dairy, legumes, so on for 30 days. Any pushback from the medical community or anybody saying, oh, they're saying that people react to gluten. But if you don't have, you know,

if you don't, if you don't have an allergy to it, then you're totally fine. Sometimes it tends to be the more traditional medical doctors and registered dietitians, those who are kind of steeped in sort of the government's food pyramid style, who say things like that. I think the research is pretty clear that there are such things as gluten sensitivities.

And what I like to say is like the thing you can't argue with is someone's personal experience. So I don't care if it's not represented in a study or any sort of clinical evidence, but if someone says, when I stopped eating this, I felt better. When I started eating it, I felt worse. I'm like, cool, there you go.

That's it. I remember when Leaky Gut Syndrome was laughed at, now they call it intestinal hyper-premiability or something. That's the medical term for it's Leaky Gut. That's what they've been saying for a little while. Exactly, yeah, I mean, that's really the pinnacle. If you look at the whole 30 kind of as a pyramid, the foundation is the scientific research that is done

that supports everything we recommend. The next kind of tier is clinical experience. I've watched millions of people go through the program now and have strikingly similar results, but that top, the pinnacle, is really that personal experience, and that's the benefit of the program, as it gives you information just about you. What's your least favorite about what you're doing? I was just going to ask that. Building something as big as has to be extremely rewarding because of how many lives you're changing positively. But

there's always another side of the coin. So what's the least favorite part of having something this massive? I think for honestly for me it's things like goals. My team is like so frustrated with me right now because I don't care about goals. I don't care about KPIs. I don't care about a budget. I don't care about any of that stuff. I just want to like, you know, do these fun interviews and write books and help people do the whole 30.

And what I really need is like some help actually doing like the day-to-day business stuff, because that's the area that I like the least. Otherwise, I love every aspect of my job. I love it. Well, that's actually a really interesting question then too, because we talk about this off off air About scaling ourselves out of the executive roles and hiring someone any thoughts of doing that ever I know it's like it's like you're in on my exact team meetings

I have there I had a chief operating officer for a little while who the intention was like to run the day-to-day of the business He was not the right fit and And now I'm kind of wondering, well, I don't know if I should even say this. Like, I'm kind of wondering if Whole 30 needs a CEO. I always want, I'm not a builder. I'm not the kind of person who I'm like, oh, I've built this and now I want to go build something else. And then Whole 30 is like my life. I'm in it. I'm invested. I want to be the North Star. I want to be the voice. I'm a good, like big picture idea person. I can listen to the community,, I want to be the voice, I'm a good big picture idea person, I can listen to the community, hear the nuance and figure out what they need. But if I just had more time to write the books into the interviews, into the media, and the

YouTube videos, and be the face, and someone else actually ran the business, it's kind of looking attractive right now. I have no attachment to that CEO title, I really don't, so it's something I've been thinking about. You're looking for an integrator. I have no attachment to that CEO title. I really don't. So it's something I've been thinking about. You're looking for an integrator. I am. I want someone who would be so excited to step into something that was already built.

Like, hey, here's this thing. It's already super, we're profitable. We're doing well. We have all of this great, these great partnerships. We have all of these opportunities that we haven't had the capacity to take advantage of because we're, I'm probably the right limiting factor, like take this and grow it.

Somebody out there would be like super pumped about that. Where can people send their resume? Yeah. I'm not sure if I should have talked about this yet. No, that's a great question because we do. That's a common struggle. It is. It is.

We're in it as we speak. It's maybe the single, I mean, we just had a big old, you know, thing off air with each other about that is that we we love what we do. We're so passionate about our baby. Yet we do have some goals to continue to scale it into be something so much greater. But it's going to require that we scale out of those positions to allow someone else. So it would free up us to do the things that are more important. And you know, it's the, you change, I think one day we're on one side, the next day we're on the other side of the fence.

So it's a very, it's a very good place to be. It took me two years to get to this point. Because if you had asked me two years ago, I would have been like, nope, this is my baby, this is my thing. Like I was very attached to the title, I was attached to the position. But I've come to realize that like, I don't add value creating KPIs for my team. And I don't, you know, in terms of the strategic vision, I have some good ideas, but like where I add value

and what nobody else can do is be the voice, write the books, like I've always been the voice of Whole30. And so if I'm so bogged down in the day to day, it doesn't give me the opportunity to do the thing where I add the most value that no one else can do. So that's kind of... Yeah, but it's going to be a hard... I feel like it would be harder if I was you because I openly will tell you that I am

monetarily driven and I want to scale numbers. So it makes logical sense to probably get my ass out of that seat and let somebody else do it where you said already that that's not really what drives you. And so if you're fed and you have your needs met and you got a beautiful baby, it's kind of like, why should I let somebody else watch it? Because we could help so many more people with the whole 30 and we're not able to do that yet

because we don't have the team, we don't have the vision, we don't have like the actual data-day direction. That's why it's not about the money or the growth for the sake of growth. It's about like we could reach so many more people and we have so many opportunities to do so that we're not taking advantage of. Yeah, you know, that's a cut by the way for anybody watching.

That is a very common struggle with founders of companies. It'll grow, and then there are almost always, at some point, if they're successful enough in that position where they're like, okay, I'm the dreamer, we need an integrator. I need somebody to run this bad boy. Yeah, it is really common. I've had, I have some really great friends and mentors in the space and I've had this conversation with a few of them and people have been generous enough.

I talked to a friend of mine who recently stepped out of this CEO position for this company that he founded and I was like, what was that like? How did it feel? And he was like, it was freaking awesome. And I was like, all right, that's it. Good to hear. That's awesome.

Well, hey, this has been fun. Yes, it's been great. And we reference Whole 30 all the time. I really love what you've built. I think it is incredible. And I think it's the one of the best messages around nutrition in the entire space. It's the most moldable and individualizable. And I think it addresses the, I mean, it's so hard to create some guidelines for the general

population because there's such an individual variance, I think you guys do a good job doing that, so. Thank you, I appreciate you. That means a lot coming from you, thanks so much. Thank you, thanks for coming on. Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body,

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