Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 654: Rich Roll

Starting point is 00:00:00 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. So Rich Roll, what I knew of this guy, he was a badass. Yeah, so I didn't know much about him except for this fucker's podcast is always highly running on iTunes. He's always one of the top podcasts, right? Of course you bring that up first. Well, because that's how we knew,

Starting point is 00:00:28 that's how we first knew of this guy. Like when we first started Mind Pump, we looked at the top podcast and he's always up there. He owns it. He's always up there and then we passed him a couple times. What's up Rich? But he's a super, he's a good dude. Super good guy.

Starting point is 00:00:43 We actually went up to, dude, he's got a hell of a story. Yeah, oh my god, and I love that he's like an open book when it comes to like battling addiction And I think there's so many people that suffer with all these different types of addiction So I think that's a lot of where his success is very relatable. Yeah, you definitely is very very transparent He's shared all his story he invited us in his home. I mean, that's what we recorded the podcast. Beautiful home. Oh, it was a great home. It was awesome. He's your, like, he is a super achiever.

Starting point is 00:01:12 He's one of those people that pretty much anything he does, he achieves at a high level. I mean, he went to Stanford University. Cornell Law School was a successful lawyer before he got into the fitness space, and now he's obviously dominating there with some top-selling books in the fitness space. Obviously, he's got a very popular podcast. It's the Rich Roll podcast, and his website is richroll.com.

Starting point is 00:01:41 Here we are. Here we are talking to Rich Roll. The man. Tell us how you got Rich Roll. I mean, the man. Tell us how you got started in all of this, man. Let's go because we see your podcasts on the top of the charts. We started mind-pump about three years ago, and your podcast was always kind of up there.

Starting point is 00:01:57 Very interesting. And I want our audience to know kind of what got you into all of this. Podcasts and fitness. Podcasts and fitness. Yeah, just tell you about the whole thing. Yeah. I just have to have far back to you on all of us. Podcasting and fitness. Yeah, just tell you about the whole thing. Yeah. So how far back do you want to go?

Starting point is 00:02:08 Well, I was a swimmer growing up. I swam a Stanford in the late 1980s, which at the time was the number one collegial swimming program in the country. We won two of the years that I was there. And I was training with the guys that held world records in American records, NCAA champions, Olympic gold medalists, and the like. But I was very much a bench warmer.

Starting point is 00:02:34 I was not. I was by no means a star. And then I never really fully achieved my potential as an athlete there. I got more interested in partying. Drugs in alcohol kind of took center stage and that took me on a whole journey that ultimately I bottomed out at around age 31

Starting point is 00:02:53 ended up in rehab for 100 days, got clean and sober. And then in the wake of that, my life became all about trying to repair the wreckage that I'd created as a result of being your responsible, reprobate, alcoholic. And through myself into work all of them, really, I was a lawyer at the time and was very much intent on trying to get back on track.

Starting point is 00:03:17 And by the time I was in my mid-30s, late-30s, I was on the partnership track at a prestigious law firm in Los Angeles, had all the stuff, met my wife. We were building this house, had a really nice sports car in the driveway. So from the outside looking in, it looked like I had a pretty good life. But on the inside, I was kind of dying. I was dying spiritually. I was dying emotionally. I was really not happy in my career choices and very much unfulfilled. And during that period of time, in which I kind of transferred a lot of my alcoholic tendencies into workaholism, I also wasn't taking care of myself

Starting point is 00:03:52 physically. Like even though I was an athlete in college, like that was done. Did you know what though when you're going through, there's this you looking back going, I didn't give a shit. You know, I was just like, you know, I just need to be like, I'm trying to achieve the American dream. That's what I was focused on. And so my diet consisted of fast food, basically hitting the drive-through on the way home, take out Chinese at the law firm, all that kind of stuff.

Starting point is 00:04:16 And it's fine, you can kind of get by a little bit when you're in your 20s and your metabolism is churning, but as you start to get older. Yeah, it starts to add up. And so by the time I was 39, I was about 50 pounds overweight. Oh wow. So I was never a super obese person earning like that. I looked like a guy who is trying to be a partner in a law firm.

Starting point is 00:04:39 Ever tried an elevator up and down all day long. Classic couch potato. Just didn't have good energy. Just want, all I want to do is park myself in front of the TV at night and just kind of unenthusiastic about my life. And so what happened was, shortly before I turned 40, I had a bit of a health scare

Starting point is 00:04:56 where I was walking up that flight of stairs that you saw over there late one night after working a long day and had to pause halfway up. Like winded out of breath, tightness in my chest, like buckled over. late one night after working a long day and had to pause halfway up. Like winded out of breath, tightness in my chest, like buckled over. How old are you? 39. I was 39 at the time. And it was scary.

Starting point is 00:05:12 You know, heart disease runs in my family. My grandfather, who I'd never met, was also a champion swimmer, captain of the University of Michigan swim team in the late 1920s. Olympic hopeful, American record holder, the whole deal, died of a heart attack at 54. 54 well despite never being overweight or not being a smoker and anything like that So my mom my whole life was like you got to watch what you got to watch what you eat and you're like yeah Whatever you know until you have that you know your own reckoning experience. So I had that experience and

Starting point is 00:05:41 It's a longer story But really that was the beginning point like my bottom with lifestyle that was similar to my bottom with drugs and alcohol, where I realized like, I really need to make a change. And I need to take that that process of changing my life as seriously as I took getting clean and sober. And that that kind of launched me into this search for a new way of living that ultimately led me to adopting a plant based diet, which repaired my health and allowed

Starting point is 00:06:07 me to drop all this weight and feel good in my own body again. And gave me the enthusiasm to move myself physically for the first time in a long time. And so I began working out again very casually. Like I had no interest or desire to return to becoming a competitive athlete in my 40s, I just wanted to like not be fat. Feel good. Yeah, I didn't want to tire around the waist and I wanted to be able to like have fun with my kids and not get worn out and all that kind of stuff.

Starting point is 00:06:35 But. So you didn't take that kind of that addictive personality and apply it towards exercise at this point? Not initially. Not initially. I was very diligent about once I'd kind of figured out that eating plant-based was working for me, I became pretty focused on trying to figure out how to do that right. Did it feel good right away when you switched over? Within about seven to ten days,

Starting point is 00:06:57 I felt a dramatic difference. And I'd played around with a couple other ways of eating to know a veil, and this just seemed to really work for me. And so, and this was before all the documentaries and all the kind of stuff that has made it a little bit more mainstream, because this was back in, I mean, this was 11 years ago. Yeah, because now you can test to see that there's different polymorphisms, right? Some people do respond very, very well to a plant-based diet and other people, you know, more in the other direction. Yeah, and this was an experiment with an N of 1. I mean, this was just me trying attention to like what felt good for me and the seem to be working and so I just launched myself into it

Starting point is 00:07:30 And have never really looked back because it's always agreed with me But yeah, I mean what happened was you know I lost the way pretty quickly and every week I start feeling better and better I went back to the pool. I you know We live there's all these amazing trails right around here I started exploring them for the first time. Like I'd lived here for years without ever going out on them.

Starting point is 00:07:48 Oh, that's crazy. And I was improving really rapidly. I'd never been a runner. And my wife bought me a bike for my 40th birthday. I'd never really ridden a bike before. And I had this experience about, I mean, it must have been about three, four months into this experiment where I've been kind of working out

Starting point is 00:08:07 regularly, but nothing too crazy. And I went out for a run on a local trail around here and just had one of those experiences where everything clicks and you're kind of in this flow state. I ended up running like 24 miles that morning, which was way longer than anything. Yeah, second. So you're never really doing this.

Starting point is 00:08:25 Well, I've been got, yeah, the longest run I've done up to that point was maybe six or seven miles. Oh, shit. Just kidding. I don't know what it is. I'm sure you have those days in the gym where you just feel like unbreakable. That's not right. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:08:37 Well, you nailed it. You hit flow state. When you hit flow state, I liked that. Everything just, and so I had this crazy experience. And I thought, like, either I just unlocked some crazy dorm in Gene that I didn't know that I had or there's something about this lifestyle that's agreeing with me in a way that I didn't initially realize or some combination of those two things.

Starting point is 00:08:54 And that's what started getting me interested in in in my own inner potential, you know, because it hadn't been that long since I was sort of a couch potato. And I was like, wow, in a very short period of time, like I've made some pretty drastic significant changes. What would happen if I pushed the envelope on this? Like where could I take this? And I think it was fueled in part by the fact that I didn't achieve my potential as a swimmer in college. And so there was some unfinished business there to attend to, I think, that had always bugged me. And so that's what kind of got me interested in the world of ultra-indurance sports.

Starting point is 00:09:30 What do you think the self-awareness came for for you? Are you always a self-aware person, or are you kind of valued, and where they come from? Which, what do you mean, the selfless? Well, even like that you're talking about right now, like you are sharing this, like a lot of people are just not in touch with how exercise affects their body, how nutrition is affecting their body. You have this scare and now a sudden you're paying attention to all this or you're paying attention to things like that before.

Starting point is 00:09:52 I mean, was it that that really propelled the... Mmm, that's an interesting question. I don't know if I've ever really been asked that question in that way before. I think because 12-step had repaired my life so dramatically as a result of getting sober and being part of the recovery community here in Los Angeles, I was aware that people are more capable of change than we believe. Because not only had I changed dramatically, I'd been first-hand witness to seeing a lot of my friends repair their lives, like coming back from, you know,

Starting point is 00:10:30 like I was a pretty pedestrian drunk, right? But I have friends who were just, you know, living on Skid Row, gutter rat, heroin addicts, like, or friends that were literally look like they were clinically insane, like bouncing off the walls. And I'd seen them become productive members of society. And it's pretty dramatic when you're kind of there to watch that evolution.

Starting point is 00:10:50 And so I think that experience made me realize that we put a cap on our own potential in other areas. And I think the diet thing kind of further illuminated that for me and made me start to think about, where else am I turning a blind eye to what I'm capable of. And I think, you know, the world of ultra-injuring sports seemed like a pretty good template to kind of explore that question for myself. Now, did this further your interest in self-growth in other areas as well besides fitness?

Starting point is 00:11:18 To an extent, yeah. Most of my self-growth at that time was being pursued through the recovery community. This seemed initially more like, oh, I want to be an athlete again, and it's turned and ground into much more than that, because I think the process of training for these races is an exercise and mindfulness in its own right. You have to spend so much time with yourself, and you know, although one of the steps and 12 step is meditation, it doesn't really get as much attention as it should. And so I started getting involved in meditation and exploring that.

Starting point is 00:11:54 And, you know, my podcast, which, you know, came much later, as you guys, as we were kind of talking about before the podcast, like you get exposed to all these amazing people that, that kind of energize you to explore other areas of your life. And so a lot of the personal growth stuff has come, you know, in recent years as a result of the experience of doing what you guys are doing. Did you ever have any chest?

Starting point is 00:12:15 So I battle with addiction, and mine was painkillers. And I had friends, St. Rolcemoor stories. And something that I noticed common with all of us was we tended trade one for the other at first. Did you ever deal with that where you, okay, sure, I moved on from that, but didn't realize like, oh, now I'm just becoming so consumed with something else.

Starting point is 00:12:35 Yeah, the thing I think that a lot of people don't realize about addiction is that the drug or the alcohol, whatever if it's a substance-based addiction, that is the solution, not the problem. That's the solution that works for a while to an underlying malaise or problem that if left on a dress, even if you take away the substance remains and will continue to fester, and I think that's not initially self-evident to most people that get sober. I'm going to quit drugs and alcohol.

Starting point is 00:13:04 I'm going to be cool now. They don't realize that they're gambling. They're sitting with all of these emotions without the tools to deal with it. Right? And so you see a lot of that. You see a lot of acting out with different kinds of behavior, whether it's gambling or sex or shopping or whatever. It doesn't matter what it is.

Starting point is 00:13:24 Any behavior to take you out of the moment to help you escape from whatever discomfort that you're experiencing, right? So recovery, true sobriety is like addressing those emotional problems and working through them so that you can be comfortable on your own skin. But that's a process and that takes many years. The only way through is through. Yeah, the only way is through. So in early years of sobriety, a lot of people, most people, myself included, will act out

Starting point is 00:13:49 in different ways, right? So, you know, I channeled a lot of that into workaholism and into food addiction. Like I would hear people talking about food addiction and I'd be like, what are you talking about? You know, meanwhile, I'm going to in and out and like Wendy's or McDonald's every day. You know, I totally unaware that I was meditating myself through my food choices, that that was a way to like, sell whatever wounds I had that still remained for me to deal with, right? And so yeah, I did that for a long time and slowly developed self-awareness of that.

Starting point is 00:14:19 And I still, you know, look, I got a million character defects. And I'm an extreme person by nature. And I want to act out in a million different ways. And you can use whatever, you know, you can use running, swimming, cycling, triathlon, ultra endurance, all these sorts of things can be used addictively or alcoholically, right? It's about your relationship to those. And I've had experiences where I see myself

Starting point is 00:14:43 moving in that direction because people will say, like, oh, you do these crazy long races, you just transferred your addiction onto something else. And a lot of people, because there's a lot of people in recovery that get into ultra sports, you know, it's like, oh, the pain, you know, it's like, there's something about it that's attractive that you see lots of people with tons of tattoos and tons of, you know, tons of people who have been drug addicts and like. So I always say, yeah, yeah, there's an element to that. That's true, of course. But for me, the drug or the drink

Starting point is 00:15:17 was always the easy choice, the way out. And like doing these events is hard, right? It requires discipline, it requires a whole battery of like emotional maturity to deal with it. doing these events is hard, right? It requires discipline, it requires a whole battery, like emotional maturity, to deal with it. You can have an unhealthy relationship with it, but I'm also a father, I've got four kids, I'm married, I'm doing a million things,

Starting point is 00:15:33 and so I'm always trying to objectively analyze my relationship with all of these different things to make sure that they're in balance. They may not be balanced on a daily basis, but over the course, if you look, you know, sort of looking down over the course of a year or six months, everything balances. Did you come right out with this quest, this message of change on the podcast?

Starting point is 00:15:55 Was that what you started to kind of talk about right away, like how you were able to overcome this addiction? Or were you more like ultra-marathon-ing-based? No, it was, my podcast I've always wanted to cast like a really wide net and talk about a whole variety of things. It was never intended or conceptualized to be a vegan podcast or a triathlon podcast or a running podcast. What happened was, I mean, we can get into it if you want, but I did all these crazy

Starting point is 00:16:25 ultra endurance events and I did quite well in a few of them and I'd done this one thing that no one had ever done before and it got a bunch of media attention and people were interested, like this guy is 43, 44, he's doing all this crazy stuff and he's doing it without eating any animal products, like how does that work? So there was a bunch of stuff that got ridden up about me and that led to a book deal and I wrote this memoir fighting ultra that came out in 2012. And at the time, it wasn't as well known as I am now. So after I did everything I could to push that book out,

Starting point is 00:16:55 I was like, what's next? And I thought, well, podcasts could be cool. And this was late 2012. Podcasting wasn't new, but it wasn't cool. It was just now kind of getting cooler. Yeah, there were some good shows, but there wasn't a lot of depth. They fell off a cliff pretty quick, and I realized in the health space, there was a couple interesting things there, but there wasn't a lot, right?

Starting point is 00:17:18 And I'd love the medium, because when I would go out and train, I'd go out in these six, eight hour bike rides, like, I can't listen to music the whole time, right? And I would listen to audiobooks and I got interested in podcast and I was like, this is a really cool medium. So I thought maybe there's something for me to explore there. And I started mine without any, I didn't have an agenda that it was going to be this big show. I didn't know if I would do episode two. I didn't even know what it would be.

Starting point is 00:17:41 I just turned a mic on and started talking. And my first episode was with my wife. We were living in Hawaii at the time and it just has evolved very organically into what it is today. But from the beginning, I had this idea that I wanted to be able to have conversations that weren't just about the sport that I do

Starting point is 00:18:00 or the way that I eat, but how we can all be better in many different ways. I mean, I guess probably the main theme of it is, how can we live more integrated more authentically to who we really are, right? Do you find it therapeutic element to podcast? I know I do, I know for many years. You know, we were talking about that beforehand too.

Starting point is 00:18:19 You get to talk to these amazing people, hold them hostage for however long. I know. Ask them the question. You're gonna ask all these questions and they have to answer it because it's getting recorded. Yeah, it's like having this huge board of advisors

Starting point is 00:18:33 for your life where you get to ask them everything you want to know and then share that. Like it's super powerful and it's intimate and like I'm sure you've experienced this where the people that you have on has guessed become your friends and that's just been an extraordinary thing for me personally, and it has helped me develop as a human being in like

Starting point is 00:18:49 huge, traumatic ways. Let's talk about that. So the people that do you have certain people that have really altered how you deal with things or that become friends, like they come right to mind that you've thought of that you've interviewed. Yeah, I mean, part of that's like, how do you choose your babies? You know what I mean? People I'm sure ask you. Who's your've interviewed. Yeah, I mean, part of that's like how do you choose your babies, you know? And people I'm sure ask you.

Starting point is 00:19:05 Who's your favorite guest? Yeah, you can. That's really tough to do. I had so many different kinds of people. And I talk about addiction and recovery, and I talk about diet and nutrition and fitness and training and mindfulness and all these. So there's people that cut across all of those categories, I think. A lot of the meditation and mindfulness

Starting point is 00:19:25 guests that I've had from Sharon Salzburg, to my friend, Charlie Knowles, who's an amazing meditation teacher. Like, I'd always been somebody who kind of gave it lip service. I'd kind of do it here or there, but I was never really fully committed. And wasn't really sure I was completely sold on the promise that everyone was talking about. But I think because I had so many people on and had so many interesting conversations about it that I was able to kind of take that leap

Starting point is 00:19:49 and commit to it in a way that maybe I wouldn't have otherwise. And that's been super transformative. I had Gabo or Mate on who's an expert in addiction and that like blew my mind because it turned into a personal like therapy session for me, which was incredible. And I've had amazing athletes on. I mean, my most recent guest was Lance Armstrong. And that was, you know, that was a good experience. It was, it was cool. It was tricky, you know, he's an intense individual, right? Going into that, like, you know, you know, you're in for, you're going to, you're in for a ride. And as I said in the intro to that,

Starting point is 00:20:25 I'm not there to judge him or to be judge and jury or anything, and I'm not an investigative journalist. I just wanted to have an intimate discussion with him and figure out what makes this guy tick and how he's dealing with certain things that the Irish human being doesn't have to deal with. How is he moving forward and all of that? How often have you been challenged to break through

Starting point is 00:20:43 on people and have you had some guest use of, I just came through this guy? Yeah, I mean, you know, for me, when I go into these interviews for me, and this is just my own personal thing, it's less about the information that the guest is sharing and more about me being able to connect with that person emotionally, right? And some people are ready to go there all the way, and some people aren't. And so it's about finding that edge and that line. But there's something about looking somebody in the eye, right? And being present with them that allows for a little bit of magic to happen. And so I go into it prepared, but also open to allowing it to go wherever it wants to go. And like you said, some people go places you never, you're hoping they'll go, but you never thought

Starting point is 00:21:30 that they would. Like I had Travis Barker on the podcast, the drummer for Blanket, too, amazing rock star. And I really wanted to talk to him about this plane crash that he survived, that his friend, DJ Adam, I'm still at the AM, ultimately, perished from, and I wasn't sure if he wanted to talk about it, but we got into it, and it became incredibly emotional,

Starting point is 00:21:53 you know, for him to recount that, and like for me, for a guest to trust me in that way, and to be able to share on that level, for me, those are some of my favorite episodes. I can get to that level of honesty with people is rare and not everyone's willing to go there, but when you can get that, like, I think that's a beautiful thing. I wanted to ask you, if we could go back a little bit to

Starting point is 00:22:13 the, you know, your initial stint with alcoholism. You know, the, our attitude towards addiction is starting to change, which I think is a good thing. We're starting to realize, like you said, that it's not really the substance. It's, you know, what's behind that? It's the solution. When you look back, because it was a while ago now, can you identify what it was? You were trying to distract yourself from.

Starting point is 00:22:34 Yeah, that's an interesting question. It's a question I get a lot. And of course, I've put thought into that, but I've also learned that spending a lot of time trying to figure out why I'm an alcoholic is not necessarily the healthiest pursuit or use of my time and energy. I know that I am and I know what the solution is. So I can go down the rabbit hole of like, oh, this happened to me and that happened to me and all of that. Ultimately, it doesn't necessarily inform the solution in a fundamental way,

Starting point is 00:23:09 because I know what I need to do to stay sober and to live as sober as possible. But I think, you know, to speak to that, I was just born, I was born uncomfortable. You know, I always felt apart from I had difficulty making friends as a kid. I was born uncomfortable. You know, I always felt apart from I had difficulty making friends as a kid. I was very isolated. I trouble making, you know,

Starting point is 00:23:29 I was like the kid who got picked last for kickball. Like there was no indication that I was gonna be an athlete. Yeah, you were in the house at the same time. You know, I had the headgear or the doncha and I had an eye patch over my eye because I'm cross, I was not a vision for you as a young kid.

Starting point is 00:23:45 I was gangly and uncoordinated and just super insecure and just walked around feeling like everybody knew what was going on except for me. And swimming was the first thing that I kind of stumbled on to that I actually had like a natural inclination for. And that became like my kind of home like this safe place that I could go. But I was bullied in high school and all of that.

Starting point is 00:24:05 I had a lot of those experiences and grew up in a household where there wasn't like explicit pressure to perform, but it was a very education focused upbringing where there was a certain way that I was gonna be in live and I felt pressure to like live up to that in certain ways. And so I think I was always a square peg trying to jam into a round hole and spent many years as a lawyer trying to like be this person that I thought I was supposed to be and ignoring this other side of me that wanted to be something else because I didn't feel like that opportunity

Starting point is 00:24:39 was available to me. And I think that that dissonance, like that, that disconnect from really taking the time to look at myself honestly and say, well, what do I want to be? What do I want to do? Like I never asked myself those questions. It was just study hard, get the best grades, you know, get into the best school that you can. I got into like, you know, I got into every college I applied to. I was like a kid who at a very young age, I could overcome that awkwardness to achieve some level of academic and athletic success. So that. I was like a kid who at a very young age, I could overcome that awkwardness to achieve some level of academic and athletic success. So that when I was a senior in high

Starting point is 00:25:09 school, I was getting recruited by all these colleges. I got in the Harvard, I got into Princeton, like I was being groomed to be this ultra successful person. But I never once asked myself like, is this even what I want? Right. And I just went along with it because that's climbing the ladder on the path to achieving the American dream. And the cracks in the veneer started when I grew up in Washington, DC, and I go 3000 miles away to go to college, and I'm away from home for the first time. And I just go bananas on partying, because it was like an outlet.

Starting point is 00:25:42 I didn't even know how uncomfortable I was in my own skin, and I was starting to discover that, that what made me feel okay. Like I remember the first time I got drunk, and it was like this warm blanket enveloped me for the first time, and I was like, oh, this is how you're supposed to feel. Like I can take a breath, I can exhale. Like I feel comfortable for the first time.

Starting point is 00:26:01 I was like, I want to do this all the time, and it worked for me for a long time. It allowed me to become a social animal. And I figured out how I could talk to a girl, or crack a joke, and do things that I never felt like I would ever be able to do. So it's not just, oh, it destroyed my life. Like it actually propelled things probably.

Starting point is 00:26:20 Yeah, exactly. A lot of success from it for sure, respectively. Yeah, so it works until it stops working. And then when it stops working, everything goes to shit. But there was a good many years in there where I had a lot of fun with it. So how did the bullying feeling isolated? How does that affect you now as an adult

Starting point is 00:26:38 and your relationships with people now? I think I have a huge reservoir of compassion and empathy for other people. And I think I experienced that most recently in my conversation with Lance, everybody has an opinion of that guy and emotions run hot. And there's a lot of people that can't, all that kind of stuff. And I just go into it like, my life was broken. There was a period of time where like my family

Starting point is 00:27:11 wouldn't talk to me. I was sleeping on a bare mattress in a shitty apartment with no furniture. I was about to get fired from my law firm job. I had two DUIs, I was looking at jail time. Like I lost all my friends. I'm hanging out with lower companions. I'm going on multi-day

Starting point is 00:27:25 benders where I don't even remember where where I am. You know, my bank accounts over drawn. Like it was not good at the end. It was pretty fucking dark. And and the prospect of like facing that and walking through it and rebuilding your life is difficult. And I have a lot of empathy for that. So I don't walk around in judgment of other people's experiences, you know, because I've gone through hard times and I've seen other people go through hard times. And I've done a lot of bullshit, you know what I mean? And I don't want to be judged for that. And, you know, my path forward is to own it and to be transparent about it.

Starting point is 00:28:02 In hopes that that is helpful to other people that are struggling in the same way. So I'm very empathetic to people in general and especially the guests that I have on the podcast. Well, growth doesn't happen from being comfortable. I mean, it comes from being uncomfortable. Do you view feeling uncomfortable as a gift? Yeah, I have a huge capacity to tolerate being uncomfortable.

Starting point is 00:28:24 Obviously, for better works. Yeah, I have a huge capacity to tolerate being uncomfortable. Obviously, ultra-med up. For better or worse, you know what I mean? Like, when your life's going downhill, and I'm still drinking and partying, despite my world collapsing on top of me. I got this. Even though I'm suffering all that pain,

Starting point is 00:28:39 I'm like, I'm gonna keep going. It's not painful enough yet. Let's make it more painful. But I learned that as a young person in my swimming career, all throughout high school, I'm getting up at 4.30 in the morning and going to some practice before school and then training another two hours after school.

Starting point is 00:28:55 And I was never the most gifted swimmer, athlete, but I learned at an early age that I could overcome a big portion of that talent deficit gap by overworking, like working harder than the next person. And I would put in these insane sets that, like, my coaches from that period still talk about, because people just don't do some of the stuff that I was doing. And I was able to channel that into my workaholism and then into the ultra-endurance world. Like, I can pain, probably better than most. All I know is my own experience,

Starting point is 00:29:26 but there's something about the ability to step into and whether discomfort that I think most of us are either scared of. We run away from it. We configure our lives to avoid it. And in my experience, and I think you would agree with me, like the willingness to bring that into your life,

Starting point is 00:29:45 not only is the way forward and the way to grow, but it also makes you feel alive. People are struggling with being happy and they think the answer to happiness is to create more luxury and ease in their life and the truth is quite the opposite. Well, this is why you see these Spartan races and stuff exploding right now

Starting point is 00:30:03 because we're becoming so plugged in and so comfortable. Yeah, and detached from ourselves that people want to feel that feeling of discomfort again. Yeah. It's great. Like, when you think about it, like if you're an alien who came down to earth and said, why do these people like sign up for this stuff getting all muddy? Hey, guys, pay your attention.

Starting point is 00:30:18 It looks ridiculous. They're spending, you know, 50 hours a week at a cubicle and their life is very predictable. And there's something very primal about getting muddy and mixing it up and doing all of these things that we have just divorced ourselves from in such a fundamental way. And I think, you know, it's beautiful to see these races exploding and people having these experiences of connecting with themselves in a physical way. Where do you see us going in the future, look right in line with what you're talking about right now, like, where do you see us going, like as far as a society, do you think we're going to get worse before we get better

Starting point is 00:30:48 with being plugged in, or do you think that you're going to see more of these events happening, and people are going to start waking up? I think it's a bifurcation. You know, I think we're in this super, I mean, things are getting weird, you know what I mean? Like, cultures getting weird. We're in a race against time. Like, we're either going to destroy our planet, you know, in the next 100 years, or we're going to

Starting point is 00:31:11 figure out a way forward. And so I see like, both of those things happen, I'm happening simultaneously. On the one hand, you know, the environmental wreckage that we're creating is just insane. And the blind eye that so many people are turning to it makes no sense. Meanwhile, we have people who are innovating new ways of feeding the planet as we move towards 10 billion people. All these sort of lab-grown meats and new ways of eradicating factory farming so that we can feed. It's like it's crazy what's going on.

Starting point is 00:31:39 And you have in parallel with things like obstacle course racing or triathlon or marathon or any of these kind of healthy physical pursuits, we have the development of virtual reality and AI and people with the ability to plug more and more into it, like not just these, but devices that are even more addictive and more all-encompassing. So, these things are budding up against each other and it's gonna be interesting to see how it splits our society in which way we're gonna go. And I think that it's coming fast, man.

Starting point is 00:32:15 It's coming very, very fast. Well, you have kids, right? You said you had four of them. Yeah. So how's that been? How's that been being a parent? How much of a challenge has that been? Or what have you?

Starting point is 00:32:23 Yeah, it's been interesting. We've done the best that we can with navigating this. But these devices, these phones, this is part of the fabric of our lives. And we tried to, right? Yeah, it's like this is the first generation of kids who are being reared on this from the very beginning. And what is that going to look like?

Starting point is 00:32:44 So I can't tell my kids you can't use these things. We try to police the hours around it and kind of have healthy boundaries around when it's appropriate to use them and when it's not. But also, I think it's important for kids to be fluent in the language of what is happening because that's currency for how how their professional lives are going to unfold. So it's not about not using it. At the same time,

Starting point is 00:33:13 like we got rid of our television maybe eight years ago. We don't have a TV. We have an out of TV. Our little girls who are now 10 and 13 have never watched television. I mean, but they're on YouTube. And even if we had a TV, they probably just be on YouTube anyway, because they don't watch TV. They don't watch TV, they don't watch TV. They're on your interest in that, you know what I mean? So watching that has been interesting.

Starting point is 00:33:33 Have you heard of the book Irresistible? No, I haven't. I had them out there, great read. Yeah, and they talk about just, I mean, we've only had Facebook and these phones enable like this for 10 years. So we're just now starting to see some of the research and studies we have like a back pain and children now

Starting point is 00:33:49 coming up because they're posture and stuff. Yeah, and they're talking, and here's the scary part. And why I always recommend people, anybody as kids, I always say, you know, read that book, it's a great book. And is where it's heading in the future is, when you get somebody who has alcoholism, addiction,

Starting point is 00:34:05 to drugs, some of that, you can see it on their body. Like if I'm an outside person looking at it and you're grossly addicted to something, I can see it on you and you look bad. I'm like, oh man, he's addicted to some of that, right? And people shame people like that. But this has become something that it's a tool and it's like you can make a lot of money

Starting point is 00:34:19 if you get good at using this tool and we celebrate it and it's, oh, the next next this is better, this is faster. And no one's really talking about the addictive properties that are happening to the point that I find it extremely fascinating, that the people that created these things don't let their kids really use them. Right. Yeah, there was that guy Tristan. I forget his last name.

Starting point is 00:34:38 He was on Sam Harris's podcast waking up a little while ago who I can't remember whether he is an ex-Google or so many, he'd worked at a huge tech company and has really studied this. And he's the kind of the face of the Silicon Valley community who's coming out and saying, let's take a real look at what's actually going on here. And the vast extent to which these companies are investing millions of dollars in research into how to create the most highly addictive time-consuming application possible. And that's frightening.

Starting point is 00:35:10 It's frightening. And as somebody who isn't addict at my core, like I catch myself all the time. And I'm like, what am I doing? I mean, I have to create rules for myself around using these devices, because I go down the rabbit hole as well. And when you have small children,

Starting point is 00:35:27 you can see it happening. And it's frightening. And so as a parent, what is your responsibility or obligation towards managing that in a developing mind? It reminds me a lot of the parallels between the technology in our kids and when food started to become highly processed,

Starting point is 00:35:47 highly palatable, it reminds me the same thing in the sense that I grew up in the 80s and we were starting to understand that you probably shouldn't be eating a lot of stuff but it really wasn't known like it is now. And kids were, when we were kids, it was just fed to us no problem. Breakfast lunch dinner and it wasn't really police.

Starting point is 00:36:04 I'd come home from trick you know, trick or treating. And my mom didn't tell me you can only have four pieces of candy. I'd go in my room with my pillow sack. I'd eaten till I got sick. And now, parents kind of... It's hot pockets left to right, yeah. Exactly. Now parents kind of understand.

Starting point is 00:36:18 And I think the same thing is happening with technology with kids where parents don't realize really what's, you know, how bad it is. And so, you know, they're doing stuff in the house and the kids are quiet playing on the iPad. And they're like, what's the big deal? They're, you know, they're occupying themselves. Now realizing that they could be causing problems. And I think what's going to happen is like, what's happened with food is we're going to see a lot of problems come up. And then people start to become aware and start to say, oh, wait, now we can identify it. Yeah, now I need to limit my kids. I need to police them and say,

Starting point is 00:36:45 you can only be on for an hour a week or whatever. So I see it being a completely new challenge, but very similar to the ones that we've been and kept being going through with food. Yeah, it's gonna be interesting to see what all of this looks like in 20 years. I think one of the kind of overarching rules that I use or that we use is distinguishing between passive

Starting point is 00:37:08 use and active use in the sense that there's a distinction, a fundamental distinction between watching somebody else's creative output, like watching a YouTube video versus using Minecraft or some other kind of application to build something where you're using your creative energy. If you're going to be on it, at least be creating something as opposed to just absorbing somebody else's creativity. Or distracting your own. You actually have that conversation with the kids? That's a word.

Starting point is 00:37:34 Yeah, yeah, I'm like less observing more creating. That's right. You're going to be on it, like there has to be that there has to be a balance on that that's tipping towards the creative part as opposed to just absorbing somebody else. So I just got into the stop motion camera and he does like Lego, like animation stuff within now. And it's like, I do kind of want to encourage him to be creative like that. That's cool. Yeah. Make a video, you know, even if it's just, you know, playing with filters on a, on a, on a, on a photograph, whatever it is, at least you're doing something as opposed to just scrolling through somebody's feet

Starting point is 00:38:05 or like watching it. I'm gonna steal that, that's a good, yeah. We're just being very distracted. Does the whole family eat a plant-based diet as well? Does your kids eat that way, or is it a challenge? Yeah, I mean, it's been, I started this 11 years ago, so it's been a journey. Each kid has had their own different,

Starting point is 00:38:22 it's hard enough to get kids to eat a particular way. Well, now, I mean, we live in this bubble, like, not only are we in Los Angeles, my two daughters now go to a school called Muse that was started by James Cameron's wife and her sister, and they have a plant-based lunch at school. Oh, wow. It's like the only school in the country

Starting point is 00:38:40 that serves like this organic plant-based lunch every day. And my wife is an incredibly talented cook, so they prefer her food, which made it easier. And that's not to say that when my 10-year-old goes over to her friend's house, goes to a birthday party, I'm not gonna be the dad who tells her she can't have pizza or cake. It's less about that than it is trying to instill in them healthy habits around food and educating them whenever possible,

Starting point is 00:39:08 whether we're at the supermarket or in the preparation of the food, we involve them in the cooking to use every aspect of food as a homeschool opportunity to help them better understand their choices so that 10, 20 years from now, like that's what I'm interested in. How are they going to be eating 20 years from now? Not like did you have the cake at the birthday party? Right. You could also backfire, right? If you do it the wrong way, like you're thinking you're doing it the right way, but I had friends who their parents were extremely strict when it came to nutrition and the second

Starting point is 00:39:40 they got out of the house, of course. It was like, yeah, yeah, you guys remember the kid, the Hercules kid. Oh, yeah. Do you remember that kid with six pack abs? He was like five years old and he was jacked. His dad was like, I mean, he was feeding him at all this crazy food, training him every day. I mean, he was all over the news.

Starting point is 00:39:56 This was probably 13 years ago, 15 years ago. It was a big deal. And I actually just saw his photos resurfaced and they had a hole right up on him. And he was way out of shape, we have a, but he definitely was not in shape. And just like, I don't work out, I don't lift weights.

Starting point is 00:40:10 I don't feel any more. He got away from it, like Todd Morinovich. Yeah. I think, yeah, we don't create hardness around that kind of stuff, or judgment, because that's what leads to the rebellion. The kid can't wait to leave to get out of the house and go to their friends house so they can go crazy.

Starting point is 00:40:29 So we don't have a rule, like, this is like how we eat at home, but we don't create hardcore rules so that there's nothing to, like if they come home and say, I ate this in my front, okay. I don't get pissed, because if I get, if you create that hardness and strictness around it, then that's exactly what you get. You get that rebellion.

Starting point is 00:40:48 What does your typical, I guess, day look like when it comes to your exercise routine? It depends on whether I'm preparing for an event or just in between events or like thing. Yeah, I just did a crazy race in Sweden in September, but that was the first event that I'd done. Yeah, there's it's up there What was that everything? Yeah, swim run world championship. What's that a ball? Oh wow, look at this This was a race It's a swim run event. It's called Otilo pronounced like to the Swedish And swim run is a is a sport that is finding its way to America,

Starting point is 00:41:25 but no one here really has heard of it. It's fairly large and growing in Europe, especially in Northern Europe. And the biggest race of the year is the Swimran World Championships, which takes place in the Stockholm Archipelago. It's about a two-hour ferry ride outside of Stockholm and Baltic Sea.

Starting point is 00:41:43 It looks like you do a bunch C. Island hopping or something. Yeah, so what you do is over the course of a day, you traverse 26 islands by C and foot. And you do it. So there's 52 transitions between swimming and running. And you do the whole thing. You say 52? 52, you do the whole thing in a wetsuit,

Starting point is 00:42:02 a modified wetsuit, and your running shoes. You're swimming in your dreams. You're swimming with your running shoes on. And you can bring anything you want for the swim. You just have to carry it with you. So most people wear these hand paddles, that you then carry when you're running. And you do it in tandem with a teammate.

Starting point is 00:42:17 So not as a relay, but you have to do it together as a duo. And you have to stay 10 meters within distance of your teammate at the entire time. That's cool. There was 150 teams that did it this past year. I think 25 teams, DNF didn't finish. Wow. And we were the fastest American team. We finished middle of the pack. I didn't have the greatest day to be honest with you, but it was an amazing adventure. Has to be one of your favorite. I mean, that's so crazy. I mean't have the greatest day to be honest with you, but it was an amazing adventure. It has to be what a great goal. Favorite. I mean, that's so crazy. I mean, the conditions that day were insane too. We woke

Starting point is 00:42:50 up in the morning, like on this little island, and it was sideways rain, and the wind was crazy, and the white caps on the sea were just bananas. So it was like, the thing was, the something was fine for me. I actually enjoyed it. The water was cold, but it wasn't as cold as it had been in past years. It could amount a lot colder. I think it was like 56 or 55 or something like that. But the running wasn't really running. It's like it was like doing a spartan ray.

Starting point is 00:43:18 It was like obstacle course race. It was probably rocky. The waves would crash on these granite slabs. And you can see like on the bottom lower left corner, you're climbing up, you're trying to climb the trees. It's super slippery, I was falling down. I wore the wrong kind of shoes. They weren't grippy enough, and I was falling down

Starting point is 00:43:35 all over the place. And then you're traipsing through these bugs with the mud, like up to your knees, and climbing under fallen trees and stuff. It was wild. Wow. Wow. And all the runs you've done, what was been the most amazing moment for you, climbing under like fallen trees and stuff. Like it was wild. Wow, yeah. What was it? So in all the runs you've done,

Starting point is 00:43:46 what was been the most amazing moment for you, like as far as an accomplishment or excited finish or one? Like a couple things. I mean, there was one moment in this race. I mean, this was a 75 kilometer race, about 40 miles of running and six miles of swimming. It took us like 10 and a half hours to do. About halfway through the race,

Starting point is 00:44:04 there's the hardest swim. It's about a 1.2 kilometers, not the longest, but the most difficult because it was the most exposed part of water, of the channel, of the whole race. And the swells were like up to six feet. I mean, it was crazy. The boats that were out there were pitching. I was like, you're like surfing your way in. I was like, there is no way that this race could take place

Starting point is 00:44:29 in the United States. Like no insurance company would have been like, this is most dangerous. Yeah, like nobody should be out here right now. And but I just started laughing more. I was like laughing. I was like, what am I even doing here? You know, like, this is crazy that I'm even here.

Starting point is 00:44:43 But it was like, it made me really reflect on this journey that I've been on, you know, like this is crazy. That I mean, but it was like, it made me really reflect on this journey that I've been on, you know, like from being in rehab and all these obstacles that I've overcome to like get to do the things that I get to do today. I was like, I just had this like swell of gratitude. Like I was just laughing, I was like, I can't even, but like what brought me to this place that I'm like in the Baltic Sea, like getting, you know,

Starting point is 00:45:02 in this washing machine, you know, right now swimming this thing. So that was definitely a highlight. I, in 2009, the race that I've specialized in over the years called Ultraman, it's a double Iron Man distance triathlon. It's one Iron Man is two months. Yes, so 320 miles. It's a three day stage race that circumnavigates the big on

Starting point is 00:45:24 of why and in 2009 it's broken into three days. The first day you swim 6.2 miles and ride your bike 90 miles. The second day you ride your bike 170 miles and the third day it's a 52 mile run. A double marathon. And in 2009 I won stage one by 10 minutes. So it'm like 43 years old at the time So that was definitely a highlight of the of my that had a pretty badass Especially it was pretty cool. Yeah, 43 Lawyer like I wasn't even like two years before that. I was 50 pounds overweight sitting on the couch So that was pretty dramatic moment for me

Starting point is 00:45:59 Wow Awesome, I ended up crashing my bike on the second day, which took me out of like podium condition, but I was kind of lucky to finish that race. But, and then in 2010, I did this thing called Epic 5, where a buddy and I did 500 man's on 5 wine islands and under a week. So that was like finishing that was definitely something cool. How do you recover after something like that? I mean, that race was, I shouldn't even call it a race because it wasn't a race.

Starting point is 00:46:24 I mean, Epic 5 was, I shouldn't even call it a race, because it wasn't a race. I mean, Epic 5 was really just an adventure. And in that, it was all about sleep deprivation and managing efficiency, because it didn't matter how fast we did those Ironman's every day, but the longer you're out there doing it, the less sleep you get and the less recovery. So it's finding that balance of exertion versus rest. And trying to finish the Iron Man in

Starting point is 00:46:46 time to make the last flight off the highland to get to the next island like we were getting very little sleep. So I actually wasn't that sore earning like that or just I just needed to sleep for a week and then I was fine. Do you have favorite tools like it? Do you use float tank cryo? Do you use these tools? Like I've just started doing cryo because there's a place in here that opened up not too long ago. We just got a clear light sauna and I'm starting to experiment with cold plunging

Starting point is 00:47:12 in sauna, but that's relatively new. I mean, for me recovery is, I mean, the number one recovery tool, sleep and sleep is like super priority. And me, I get eight hours of sleep every night. And that's my number one, no matter what. And then beyond that, eating as much anti-inflammatory foods as possible at the right times throughout the day, post-workout,

Starting point is 00:47:35 that's super important to me. I don't have like, normative foods and all the high fancy stuff. But foam rolling, things like that are super important to me. I have that hyper-ice foam roller that like adjetating one. The vibrating one, which I enjoy. Yeah, so I do more and more stuff with that and compression gear here and there.

Starting point is 00:47:52 I love that you said sleep because we always talk, people always ask this question about all these crazy tools. Yeah, and 90% of the clients that I've ever trained don't even sleep right. They're on their screens all the way till they go to all the bed and and their sleep sleep sleep quality is terrible, but yet they want to know, you know, what tool should I be using? Do you have a system in place to make sure you get that good sleep or I mean, look, you

Starting point is 00:48:17 know, I'm a I'm a data for kids, you know, I don't always get my way. And our nephew lives here also. We have other people that are living here periodically. There's a lot of moving parts here. My wife is very busy doing lots of other things as well. I don't live in a hermetically sealed tank or live in a cabin in the woods by myself. I always have to balance what I would do for performance versus what's in the best interest of my kids and the family.

Starting point is 00:48:48 If it was up to me, I'm in bed at 9 o'clock every night and up at 5 or 6. I don't always get to do that, but when I can, I do do that. But I think to your point, everybody wants, look, sleep's not sexy. The basics aren't sexy. What's sexy is being able to buy this thing, I cost four or 500 bucks, that everybody thinks is gonna make the difference. And, you know, those things are just,

Starting point is 00:49:12 in my experience and in my opinion, a lot of people are afraid of the work and they spend a lot of time focusing on gear, and they spend a lot of time like, analyze it. know, and they spend a lot of time like analyze it. Well, yeah, I'll run when I get like, well, I need the right watch. Like, we should get this watch, we get that watch. What kind of shoes do you wear?

Starting point is 00:49:32 It's like, it doesn't matter, man. I don't need any of this stuff. Like what, these are just barriers in between you and doing better induced by fear. That's so true. Yeah, so true. You talked about anti-inflammatory foods. What are your, some of your favorites?

Starting point is 00:49:46 A lot of turmeric in my morning smoothies, lots of... Actual turmeric, accurate turmeric root. Yeah, turmeric root. I'm a big fan of smoothies in my Vitamix. You got a favorite recipe to give her to that nasty taste? I don't, well like I like the nasty taste now. Like my smoothies taste terrible. Oh, so these are right up in my room.

Starting point is 00:50:04 You get it real. Yeah, so it's perfect. I don't have one specific recipe, but they always starties taste terrible. Oh, so these are, yeah, fine. You've been real. Yeah, so it's perfect. I don't have one specific recipe, but they always start with dark leafy greens, like kale, and spinach, and the like pre-workout, beets, and beetroot, and durns booster, for sure. Lots of berries, blackberries, very high, anti-oxidant, turmeric, of course.

Starting point is 00:50:22 So post-workout workouts more about the antioxidants. Chees seeds, flax seeds, ground flax seeds, hemp seeds, things like that, spirulina, clorella, lots of greens, big on the greens. Very cool. They make a big difference. When I, it's funny, we interviewed, who was it, Dr. Terry Walsh?

Starting point is 00:50:42 And she's a great story. Oh, she's fantastic story. That's a great story. Oh my God. That was a cool story just because she was one of our early on guests. Started eating vegetables like crazy after that interview. It made it, I'm not eating enough. Made a big difference. It made a very, very big difference to dramatically increase my intake of vegetables. Because I thought I was eating a lot of vegetables, but she's talking about eating, you know,

Starting point is 00:51:04 three to six large plates of vegetables. When I started doing that, I noticed just tremendous benefits and just everything from like you said, inflammation to recovery, even strength. You know, I even noticed, you know, my lips would do better because I was eating more of these things. So it's interesting when you go through and you start to study nutrition and you get really deep into it. Although there are wide variances between individuals, there are some general truths and one of which is probably for most people eating mostly plants is probably the best thing for most people. And it seems that way true for everybody.

Starting point is 00:51:40 Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, look, you're preaching to the choir on that one. But I think, if you can't vise the blue zones where people are living the longest and have the least incidence of these chronic lifestyle illnesses that are killing millions of us unnecessarily, they're not necessarily 100% plant-based, but they eat very little meat. And their diet is comprised of a preponderance

Starting point is 00:52:06 of vegetables and fruits and nuts and seeds. On that note, what do you think about the, when you look at what's happening, I don't know how much you look at this, but the bodybuilding world that's talking 2 grams, 3 grams of protein per pound to body weight. Do you see that? Do you even pay attention to that? I'm not super up to speed on the bodybuilding world. I have friends that are vegan bodybuilders for what it's worth.

Starting point is 00:52:28 I have opinions on the protein intake question. I mean, I think that we're in a protein-obsessed culture. Yes, we are. And that's what we talk about the energy. We talk about the energy. I mean, it's being fueled by crazy marketing interests that want you to believe that you need massive amounts of protein, not to become necessarily a bodybuilder, but just to breathe there.

Starting point is 00:52:47 You know what I mean? Like, if you're not eating protein bars throughout the day and drinking a protein smoothie, you're immediately waiting up in the morning that you're not going to be able to function. You know, my experience personally is very different from that. I think that most people, look, nobody's suffering from a protein deficiency. Most people are eating two or three times more protein than the recommended daily allowance, and they're not active like you guys,

Starting point is 00:53:12 to the extent that you wanna build muscle like a body builder, you guys would know more than I about what the protein requirements of that kind of athlete are. But I eat, I eat so little protein in comparison to like what everyone tells me I should. And the truth is, is that we're under this belief that the only way to get protein, or the only protein that matters is protein that comes from animals. And when we're talking about protein, what we're talking about is amino acids, the building blocks of protein.

Starting point is 00:53:41 When you eat protein, you break it down into those amino acids anyway. And specifically, the nine amino acids that our bodies can't synthesize on their own. We have to get them from the foods that we eat. And these amino acids are abundance in a wide variety of plants, right? So you're getting them just lower on the food chain. And, you know, we could go down the rabbit hole and how those are assimilated and all of that. But, you know, I've been doing this for 11 years and I've been able to go out and kill it in my specialty and my specific discipline. And I've never had any issue building lean muscle mass or recovering. I'm 51 now. And I can still go out and I just did this race as a 50-year-old. So I think that we need to reframe and rethink this obsession with protein.

Starting point is 00:54:29 And I think really, it's one thing for me, like the skinny runner guy to talk about it, but it's guys like you, who are in the gym, who are doing big, heavy lifts, and are as part of that community to try to help translate, or at least parse truth from that. I think that was so unique about our message. We blow people away when we talk about protein and say things like, you know, we're talking to people who

Starting point is 00:54:51 want to build points. And we'll tell them, you know, it's probably a good idea to have low protein days, to have days where you don't eat very much protein at all. And studies will actually show, and this is from a performance standpoint, that you can actually desensitize your body, becomes desensitized to protein. So when you do a protein fast, and reintroduce protein, it becomes more efficient with how you utilize it.

Starting point is 00:55:13 You don't need nearly as much. But we do talk about this on the show all the time. We actually called it about three years ago where somebody had asked us a question where we thought, what's the next trend to be in fitness? And I had said, I think we're going to see a blowback. And we haven't seen it yet, but I think we will.

Starting point is 00:55:29 And I know this is going to happen because I go into the grocery store and there's protein water and protein cereal for kids. It's like the magic macronutrient. Like nothing you can't do any wrong with protein. It's been fortified with protein. And that's not true. And in fact, Dr. Mercola, we interviewed him once.

Starting point is 00:55:45 And he said, when in opinion he has, is that the overconsumption approach and he thinks maybe worse than the overconsumption of processed carbohydrates. And I find that very, very fascinating. But it's our tendency to overdo things. And we'll see. Well, we want to, we're a reductionist, right?

Starting point is 00:56:02 We want to look at the one thing. Whether it's the GPS watch, or what's the one antioxidant food, the tumor, it's all about the turmeric or the norm attack boots or the cryotherapy. It's like it's not any one of these things and we need to broaden our aperture and understand that it is the highly complex, mind-boggling, complex interplay of everything

Starting point is 00:56:22 that we're doing that translates into the result that you seek. Excellent. What is your dream now moving forward? I'll have you already gone. I'm already living your dream. I'm living my dream. I'm living your dream right now.

Starting point is 00:56:34 Listen, you know, I guess to talk to brilliant minds, you get to run in these races all over the world. I'm in what else for you? I'm in the bonus round, you know what I mean? That's what I always say. I got what he said. You know, like, so I'm not always mindful of that. I get grouchy and resentful and competitive and, you know, all that kind of stuff. But the truth is, is I am living my dream right now and I want for nothing.

Starting point is 00:56:57 Of course I have aspirations. You know, I just want to be able to continue to do the work that I do and try to impact as many people as profoundly as I can. And whether that's through a podcast or the books that I write or the public talks or the other kind of endeavors that I'm involved in, it doesn't really matter. What matters is maintaining the integrity of that message so that I can be helpful. What are current goals? Are you working on another book?

Starting point is 00:57:22 Are you getting ready for another race? It's more important. Where are your goals at right now? Yeah, so I just turned in a revised edition of Finding Ultra. It's been like five and a half years since that book came out So I rewrote the whole book and that's coming out either in April or June. I'm not sure My wife and I wrote a cookbook that's coming out in April. That's called the Plant Powerway at Talia Atalian plant-based cookbook and I'm working on a new, and I'm not quite ready to talk about, but it will essentially be kind of a mind-body spirit primer for wellness, leveraging not just my experience, but the experience of all the people that I've had on the podcast. So I'm looking forward to that.

Starting point is 00:57:59 And in terms of athletic endeavors, I'm looking at the next thing. I'm not sure what it's what it's looking like yet. I have one idea that I'm working on that I'm not ready the next thing. I'm not sure what it's looking like yet. I have one idea that I'm working on that I'm not ready to say I'll loud yet, but it'll be something, hopefully, and I'll say here. Yeah, it was cool. Like I said, I hadn't raced in five years

Starting point is 00:58:15 until I did this artillery race this spring, and I realized in doing that. And the reason that I hadn't was, I really needed to figure out how to support my family without having to go back to being a lawyer and make it work. And so I was very invested in like trying to create structure around the various things that I do in a sustainable way so that I could continue to do them. And it took many years to figure that out.

Starting point is 00:58:38 And then turning 50, I felt like doing something physical was relevant again because 50 is like what can a 50-year-old body do. And I realized in the experience of doing that race, like this is, you know, big part of who I am, and I don't want to go five years again without racing, like I want to make it part of my life in a more fundamental way. But it's, you know, as you guys know,

Starting point is 00:58:57 like I think people don't realize how much work it takes to put on a podcast, you know, when you want to do it right, like it's a lot, right? People think you just record and it's done, you know, it know, when you want to do it, right? Like, it's a lot, right? People think you just record and it's done. You know, it's like, that's, that's an easy part, right? So there's a lot that goes into it. And I'm juggling a lot of different stuff. And I want to be a present dad and all those good things.

Starting point is 00:59:14 So it doesn't leave the amount of time for training that I would like to compete at the level that I think I'm capable of. And so for me, the journey has been about being okay with that. Well, I could probably be faster, but like, can I just show up knowing I'm not at 100%, I'm at maybe 80% and being cool with that. Well, listen, go ahead. Oh, I was going to say, do you handle all of your podcasting stuff? Or do other people help you out with that?

Starting point is 00:59:37 I've got a guy who edits the show for me who's great. He lives in Phoenix, so we work remotely. And I have a couple guys that work part time on me and like kind of just a assistant capacity and do some web stuff and graphic stuff for me. So yeah, I have help. I'm not doing it totally alone but I'm also a bit of a control freak too. So I probably need to distance myself and step back. You're a good company. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:00:02 I mean, so I got this. Yeah. Well, I'm glad that we finally met, man. And you've got such a great message. You have a great message, you have a great story. I think we need more people that are sharing good information and interviewing the type of people that you do. Look forward when the book comes out and anything that we can do to help push it out

Starting point is 01:00:19 and do stuff, man. We're here for sure. Thanks, guys. It's very cool to finally meet you because we see you all the time. We're up and up. We're competitive people. And we see you. Yeah, it's very cool. It's finally meet you because we see you all the time. Yeah, we're, we're bumping up. We're competitive people. And we see you.

Starting point is 01:00:27 Yeah, it's a great. It's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great,

Starting point is 01:00:35 it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, it's a great, voice and a fresh voice, and I love the format and I hope you guys

Starting point is 01:00:45 keep doing it. Oh, you check this out. Yeah, consider it. You know, me a resource and I look forward to your future success. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Starting point is 01:00:55 Excellent. So, check out Mind Pump TV on YouTube. We post a new video every single day. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbumble at Mind Pump Media.com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps on the ballac, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically

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Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 654: Rich Roll

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