The Rich Roll Podcast - Ethan Suplee On Shedding 300 Pounds, Ditching Drugs & What It Really Takes To Transform Your Life

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

Ethan Suplee is a renowned actor known for My Name is Earl, American History X, and The Wolf of Wall Street. This conversation explores the intersection of trauma, food addiction, and the false narratives of transformation. We discuss Ethan's journey through multiple relapses, the psychology behind sustainable change, and why "diet and exercise" is both completely true and profoundly dishonest. Along the way, Ethan dismantles the mythology of quick fixes and linear progress. Ethan is called to serve. This exchange is incredibly nourishing. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Eight Sleep: Get $350 off your Pod 5 Ultra w/ code RICHROLL👉eightsleep.com/richroll Seed: Use code RICHROLL25 for 25% OFF your first order👉seed.com/RichRoll BetterHelp: Get 10% OFF the first month👉BetterHelp.com/richroll Calm: Get 40% OFF a Calm Premium subscription👉calm.com/richroll  Birch: Get 20% OFF sitewide👉BirchLiving.com/richroll AG1: Get a FREE bottle of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs 👉drinkAG1.com/richroll On: High-performance shoes & apparel crafted for comfort and style 👉on.com/richroll Check out all of the amazing discounts from our Sponsors 👉 richroll.com/sponsors   Find out more about Voicing Change Media at voicingchange.media and follow us @voicingchange

My bottom was being diagnosed with congestive heart failure. I'm going to bed every night, damn near 500 pounds. Pretty sure I'm going to die. I'm doing an obscene amount of drugs and drugs are not getting me really high. And what would happen is I'd get sick for a couple of days and the swelling would go down and then I'd use and the drugs would have their potency back, but a couple days in the swelling would return. The swelling's moving up my legs, then it gets to my groin and it's really uncomfortable. So then I'm just using and miserable and swollen and in pain and the doctor says you have congestive heart failure, you are going to die.

And she's crying and this is like my family doctor from when I'm a little kid. How old are you now? 20. 20. Yeah. And she's like, no, I'm so sorry. You're going to die.

Like, if you get clean or not, this is going to kill you. And I thought, like, it'd be nice to leave my parents a clean corpse. That was my bottom. Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. So today we are gonna go old school with another round of what it was like, what happened and what it's like now. And this is going to be set in the context of what it was like, what happened and what it's like now.

And this is going to be set in the context of a deeply honest and soulful conversation with a man named Ethan Supply, who I think is about to rock you with his incredible story of personal transformation, which is truly one of the most extraordinary I've ever heard. You probably know Ethan as an actor. He's a guy who achieved fame at a pretty young age

and has gone on to work with some of the greatest to ever do it. Directors like Scorsese, Aronofsky, Anthony Mengele, and Tony Scott, and actors like Denzel Washington, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Edward Norton. Or you might know Ethan from television from shows like Boy Meets World or My Name is Earl.

Now, this is all interesting enough, but it's not really the story here. The real story is the story behind the story. The story about a guy who once tipped the scales at 550 pounds, was hopelessly addicted to pills, heroin, you name it. And on a very fast track to a very tragic end to his very young life.

But Ethan pulled himself out of the spiral. He took responsibility for his life. He got sober, he lost hundreds of pounds. He got extremely fit and essentially rebuilt himself wholesale from the ground up into the man he is today. A healthy, thoughtful and sober dad of four and an inspiration to so many people all around the world. Inspiration that he shares on his podcast,

American Glutton, and in the incredibly honest and quite poetic words that he shares on his sub stack and on Instagram. And I can't wait for you to hear it, but first we got to take care of a little business. If there's one thing, one thing that I've learned over the years, it's that sleep is the bedrock of everything. Recovery, performance, mental clarity, longevity, emotional regulation, all things that are

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clinical studies show the pod users gain up to an extra hour of sleep per night. Think about that. That is real recovery time. More deep sleep, better HRV, better everything. So head on over to 8sleep.com slash richroll and use the code richroll for $350 off your pod 5 ultra. And you can try it risk-free with their 30 day at home trial. Your body will thank you. We are gonna talk about gut health for a second. Now, you guys know at this point that I am passionate about longevity, performance and taking care of my body

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Since starting with Seed, I have noticed some pretty real changes in my digestion, more regularity and a little bit lighter after meals. So whether you're pushing your body in training or grinding through work projects or just trying to make it through a challenging day, I would tell you based on personal experience that you really can feel the difference when your foundation is solid. Plus there's the added bonus of being able to just throw them in my bag when I'm traveling. There's no refrigeration needed. And it's good to know that Seed is all meticulously tested for over 500 contaminants. It's simple, effective cut support. So here's what you're going to do. You You're gonna go to seed.com slash rich roll.

And then you're gonna use the code richroll25 for 25% off your first month of DSO one. So what happened and how did Ethan do it? Well, I think the answers might surprise you, but it's all in this one conversation I've been wanting to make happen for a very long time. And Ethan really sent it. So let's get into it, people.

This is me and Ethan Supply. All of the work that you've done in film and television is worthy of, you know, like hours and hours of conversation because I know you're like loaded to bear with like all kinds of amazing stories. Hopefully, you know, you'll tell a few, but the story behind the story is this remarkable journey that you've been on to, you know, really just, you know,

reclaim yourself, honestly, like there's an extraordinary weight loss story in there. There is a sobriety story in there. And these things are all kind of intertwined. So, you know, I don't even know where to jump in other than to kind of start at the beginning and to do a little bit of what it was like, what happened and what it's like now.

I mean, you grew up in Hollywood basically, right? Yeah. Yeah. I was born in New York, but my parents and my parents were theater actors. When my mom got pregnant with me, she decided or they decided together that it was not a great lifestyle for kids,

which I didn't take that lesson from them. And also I think I'd gotten my act together by the time I had kids so that it was a good lifestyle for my kids. But they moved out here, oddly for my dad to become a contractor. And my mom became like a stay at home mom who ran the accounting for his business.

And so what kind of kid were you? Like just riding your bikes around the streets of LA? Like a mob getting into trouble from day one? From day one. Yeah, no, yeah. What high school did you go to? I went to a high school called the Delphian Academy in La Cunha

but I stopped going to school at 14 and started to like really pursue trouble at that point. Uh-huh. Yeah. With a little side hustle called acting. No, I didn't start acting until I was 17. So there was an arrest in there in the late 80s, which still frequently comes up when I go to renew my global entry or my TSA pre-check. They are very, they very much want me to announce that yes, I have a felony weapons possession arrest on my record from I think

1988. And you were how old then? 12 maybe. Whoa. And it sounds really scary, but I was a kid playing with nunchucks in a park. Oh, so you didn't have a handgun or something like that. No, strangely I was told at the time,

had I had a handgun, it would have been a misdemeanor. How does that work out? Handguns are misdemeanors, nunchucks were felony at the time. So what was the animated energy at that point? I mean, you were just rebellious or what were you rebelling against or was it chaos in the home or what was happening?

The chaos, I think, look, I don't know. This is like a chicken and the egg kind of a question for me and I've tried to do some real soul searching. I was put on my first diet at five years old. And when I look at pictures of me at five, I do not see a kid that needs to be put on a diet. There's plenty of kids today that I look at and I go in the most non-judgmental way possible, like that kid's eating is out of control.

That was not like when I look, but for whatever reason, my parents saw something in me and thought like we got to nip this in the bud before it gets out of control. And that, so I don't know if I was experiencing this turmoil prior to that, or that was the catalyst, but kind of from that moment on, I learned to do the things that I wanted to do in secret.

And I started to cheat and lie to eat in the way I wanted to eat. Cause I was not interested in a diet at five years old. There were times in my adolescence where I was interested in the diet and losing weight, but I didn't stick to them for a long time. So the message coming down on you, although well-intentioned, you know,

was basically there's something broken in you and you need to follow our direction because you're maybe not bad or a bad person, but you're flawed in some way and you need to be fixed. And in order to be fixed, you need to follow our direction. And you were having none of that. I was having none of that. But it got way more complicated too,

because I think initially it was just restrictive of like, here's the portion of food you're gonna eat. Nothing was really changed with the food. And then when that didn't work, we lived in California in Los Angeles. And so every fad diet that hit Los Angeles, I was then put on. So there was, you know, early Atkins diet,

early blood type diet, early Candida diet, seeing nutritionists, all of these things. There was one really crazy incident where my mom took me to somebody's guest house in Glendale and this woman took a Polaroid of me, smeared some water on it and based on the rainbow coloring on the back of the Polaroid, charged some water and told us if I just drink a capful of this water before every meal, I swear to God, I would lose weight.

And it was like, you don't have to restrict his food if he drinks this water. And then there were all kinds of stipulations about like, nothing can touch the water. The water goes into a cap and then into your mouth, but like you can't put your lips on the water. It was like real insanity, you know, to the point where like even today, when I hear about some of the diets,

I get like PTSD, shell shock kind of like memories of my childhood of like, yeah, these crazy diets have been around forever. And I was put on them and I rebelled and part of that rebellion. And then there was, you know, my discovery of alcohol and drugs. My parents were for all intents and purposes sober, there was never alcohol in our house

but they weren't sober in the way that I'm sober, it just wasn't the thing. And so when I started to have trouble, I had nobody to communicate with that about it. I had so much shame about that and so many years of shame about my body and food that it just got very out of hand. How old were you when drugs and alcohol entered the picture?

14. 14. Was it drinking first? Drinking, yeah. Yeah. And that was just another thing that you, from the get-go, would just hide? Yeah. Yeah. Did you have a sense early on that it was problematic for you compared to like your friends?

Yes, I went through bouts of telling my friends I was going straight edge just so that I could drink in secret because every time I drank openly, I got blackout drunk and caused some kind of scene. So yeah, not in a way where I knew like, oh, I have a real problem with this, but it was the concern angle. Like I didn't like the attention from others

about concern on me, which I experienced with my weight many times. And then with drugs and alcohol too. And what was the experience of being drunk for the first time or those early years? Like, did it feel like it alleviated a lot of that pain and angst of, you know, that was making you rebellious or, you know, what was the safe that got unlocked

with that key? Yeah, it separated me from my shame, totally. There was a feeling of dread that just went away when I drank. And then, you know, the problem with drinking for me was that the end result of drinking on any given night was blackout drunk and waking up with even more severe shame. When I found opiates, that kind of handled that. I could get that separation and then just keep it going and ride that forever basically.

How did you get your hands on opioids for the first time? Like when you're in like high school or whatever. No, it was like, I mean, I think the first opioids I had was 96. I had my gallbladder removed and I was in the hospital with a morphine drip and a pump that you hit every seven minutes. And I just was like playing a video game, just constantly pushing that button. You know, it didn't help. I remember having this thought in the hospital, like this isn't taking the pain away,

but I don't care about the pain when I hit that button. And it wasn't just physical pain from the operation. It was just the burden of being alive was gone every time I hit it. How big were you in high school? Well, I left high school at 14. So I was probably 350. Yeah, I was big.

Yeah, so pretty big. And then how does the acting enter the picture? Acting was this amazing thing. Two things occurred in my school were a couple of actors, Soleil Moonfry and Giovanni Ribisi. And I noticed with them that the other kids weren't looking at Soleil Moonfry and Giovanni Ribisi necessarily,

they were looking at the characters these people played on TV. And that kind of looked to me like a magical shield. It looked like a force field from like peering at the person to peering at some facade that's built up in some other area of their life. So that was interesting. And you had conscious awareness of that

or is that something you piece together looking back on it? That's something I piece together looking back on it. But I definitely saw that there was a distraction with these kids that I wanted because it was a distraction. And then another thing that happened was I did a play in school at 13 or 14, and I played Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist. And there was a moment where being fat was not shameful

because the character was meant to be fat. And so there was this kind of amazing thing of like, if I'm playing somebody who's supposed to be this way, then I'm not wrong for being this way. So there were kind of two things that were occurring that got me really interested in acting. Right, it's like a solution to that sense of feeling like there's something wrong with you.

Yeah. Yeah. I've heard you talk about, you know, hiding and how, once you were sort of noticed for your screen appearances, when people would look at you, you could say they're looking at me because they recognize me from something they saw me in. They're not looking at me because I'm fat. And it didn't matter what was true or wasn't.

You could like make that argument to yourself. But there's also that thing that's very common with actors, which is perhaps some discomfort with who they are. And acting allows you to hide, you know, in all of these characters. And like you can just put the mask on and you don't really have to confront yourself. Yeah, you get to be somebody else.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like an out of body experience. It's almost like a defense body experience of what's happening. It's almost like a defense mechanism or like a coping strategy. Yeah. But in your case, like you found success pretty quickly.

Yeah, immediately. Like a kid. My first audition was Boy Meets World. First audition. Yeah. Wow. And then that's like network television, right? So this is like real money,

all of a sudden, like your life changes like pretty fast, I would imagine. Yeah, I had a strange relationship with my father. You know, we tried to dance around all these diets with my mom doing a version of like, let's figure out how it's the food's fault. You know, like there was a time period where I couldn't eat anything red. It was red food's fault.

And then there was another time where it was anything white. I couldn't eat anything white. And then it was Candida's fault. Just these diets that were very much like, the problem is exterior to us entirely. But when I was 10, my dad said, like, if you get to be 200 pounds, I am going to control what you eat. And at that point, our relationship became very strained because

I did hit 200 pounds at 10. And it didn't last very long where he was trying to actively control what I ate because I would just go when he wasn't around and eat stuff. You know, there were no like padlocks on our refrigerator. But when I started doing Boy Meets World, I took my dad on a trip. The first money I ever spent was taking my dad on a trip to an island. And I was still terrifically uncomfortable being in public. So we would go and find like secluded beaches to hang out.

We were staying at a big resort, but I didn't want to be around people. So we would drive and find like some empty desolate beach and go snorkeling there. And on the last day, he wanted to stay by the pool. And so I said, okay, and we're sitting there. And I saw some, this is very early on in my career, I saw some kids looking at me.

And of course, in that moment, we're in a foreign country and I'm feeling very much like these kids are looking at me because I'm fat and I was horrified that they were gonna make a scene in front of my dad. And over the course of about a half an hour, they started playing closer and closer to where we were sitting. And at a certain point, one of them got up the nerve

to like walk up to us. And my heart rate is probably at 200 at this point, cause I'm like terrified that the whole trip is gonna be tainted with this thing that my dad, like I feel shame about, but I'm also aware that my father feels shame about whatever's happened to his son. I was at least 400 pounds at this point. And the kid says to me,

are you Frankie from Boy Meets World? And it was the, maybe the first time I felt pride in front of my father, you know, because they were in fact looking at me because I was on TV. Right, and you're not broken. Right. Like you're actually. They're looking at me because they like me.

Like this switch gets flipped and you're like, it's all good, right? Like maybe I don't have to worry about this. I can just inhabit this character and bank the checks and set aside all this weight stuff, all the baggage of that. And then, you know, booze it up. Whatever confused emotions come up,

those are easily compartmentalized. That's right, shove them off, bury them. So off you go. And then you end up in mall rats when you're still really young as well, right? But now you have to be on a movie set. You gotta control things a little bit, don't you? Like, does it start to spill into the work?

You know, I had this rationalization for many years that I never missed a day of work. And that was kind of something that kept me going. You know, this idea like- As long as you make it to the gym, as long as you show up on time for work, all of these things- You don't have to think about them.

It's two things. Tell me if this resonates with you. Like one, it's a great crutch to convince you that there's nothing wrong and you can keep going and everything's fine. And it also fuels a bit of narcissism that you can do both, right? Like, oh, I can do all this partying

and I can do like all these normal people go to bed early, but I'm possessed with great powers where I can do it all, you know what I mean? I was thinking about this recently cause like there were sleepless nights. There was in the late 90s, like a bizarre moment where there was a heroin drought in Los Angeles. And so I'm like making it to work, but dope sick

and 500 pounds and just a mess, but still going like, well, this drought's not gonna last forever. I gotta get through the day. And I didn't miss a day of work, like that rationalization is still going. And recently, I've been dieting for basically the last 23 years and to some degree or another different diets

and different schemes and all of that and different workouts. But like, I don't really eat ice cream and I miss ice cream. And then they come out with this stuff, Halo Top, which is like diet ice cream. And I eat some of it and it's magical, but the stuff gives me a hangover. And I'm like waking up going like, I used to not sleep and show up to work, dope sick.

And it feels like maybe that was less horrible than this Halo Top hangover. You know? You become like a, yeah, you've become a little snowflake. Yeah. You know? What's happened to, you've become a little snowflake. Yeah. You know? What's happened to me? The sensitive system.

I've weakened myself. Yeah. Remember when I could do that? Yeah. It should be said, I haven't said it yet out loud, but like your story is remarkable. Like this arc of transformation is really an astonishing thing.

And it's a credit to you for everything that you put into, making you into the man that you are today. It's incredibly inspiring. I know it's inspiring to millions of people across the world. But I think within that, one of the things I like about it is that, or what I think is so powerful about your story

is that it's not as if you drew a line in the sand and like walked over it and then just, you know, you were a different person and you never went back. Like it's littered with like relapses and failed diets. And for every step forward, there's two steps back. Like it's a very human story in that it's littered with like all this toil and experimentation. Like it's not just a upward trajectory.

Not even close. You know what I mean? Like you suffered and you know, experimented and done everything, you know, to finally figure out like what works for you. Yeah. done everything to finally figure out what works for you. Yeah, there's such a draw to the sales pitch of just step over that line in the sand. I stepped over that line in the sand 50 times.

Just got fucking knocked back on the other side of it pretty rapidly each time. That just do X is great marketing for somebody who's desperate. And in the narrative that ends up in the press around you, like I did, like just in my normal prep for Pi, I was like, what are some of the recent news stories? And it's like yesterday or today,

there's like a whatever, daily mail, like one of those things like incredible before and after. And it's true, but what's lost in that is like- It's 20 years of work in there. You know what I mean? Yeah. But I think it's important to highlight that because for somebody who's watching this

or listening to this, who's looking for some guidance here, it's a hopeful message. Like you don't have to do it perfectly. It doesn't happen overnight. It took you 20 years. It's still like an ongoing battle. And this shit is hard and it doesn't, it's not a math equation.

It's not. And it's, you know, like, first of all, I share all this very selfishly because part of what I came to find was like, I would lose weight and get to a point where I would go like, oh, this, I think this is a healthy weight. I haven't experienced the Nirvana or the enlightenment

that I was thinking I would experience, but I think I'm at a healthy weight. Now I'm gonna just forget that and pretend that I wasn't 500 pounds. I'm not gonna talk about it. I don't wanna think about it cause that's still shameful and painful. And that was not successful either.

That always collapsed too. And so I found that like the more I talk about it, the more I keep it in the forefront of my mind, the more I'm able to win every day. So it is slightly selfish that I am communicating about it because sometimes my wife is like, the drug piece is from further in the past than weight, where I don't know that today, I mean, I'm going to touch wood, but like today is not going to be super hard

for me to get through the day without like needing to use. But I'll eat today. And every time I eat, there's going to be a little bit of a, like a conversation in my head around the food. And my wife is sometimes like, why do you even bring up the drug stuff anymore? But there's such corollaries to them that for me, I can't take them apart.

They are very, very similar in what it was for me to get through that. Yeah, I mean, there's so much in what you just said. I mean, obviously the food thing and the drugs and alcohol, of course they're intertwined. Like they're both ways to numb your feelings and escape and run away from whatever emotional pain you're feeling and they work in, they're very effective at that, right?

I suspect you would say food is your drug of choice. Yeah, I mean, well, I think if like, if I had seen you 20 years ago, or it might even be more than that, 25 years ago at this point, I don't know that I would have said that when I had opiates, but I would always end the night with food, you know, even if that screwed up the high from the opiates.

So maybe today, food is my drug of choice because I still have to eat. I can't be abstinent from food. Yeah, which makes it really tricky. I mean, sobriety, abstinence, it's very binary, and your relationship with food can't be binary. And as much as it's important to create guardrails and rules around it,

you have to have some level of flexibility if you're gonna sustain any kind of healthy habit, which gets into all this weird gray zone. Yeah, I found that when I was trying to be the most pious version of myself with food, that was not sustainable. And when I was just, you know, letting my hair down and doing whatever I wanted,

that was very clearly not sustainable. So like the search for radical moderation is very real. Both of which trigger shame, right? If you have this deeply held shame about like how you appear or how you feel and you set yourself up for failure with an overly restrictive diet, you're gonna be ashamed of yourself when you fall short. But if you let yourself loose,

you're gonna feel like shit too. And then you have to find a way to be somewhere in the middle and eat things maybe, that other diet wouldn't allow you to without feeling that, without that like shame impulse coming up. Yeah, it's a very tricky thing to navigate, especially when, you know, what's the big one today, people are trying to sell you on,

if you just eat meat and that's it, then you don't have to think about anything else, you know, it's hard to get the message across that like, it might be, and again, I'm not speaking for anybody else, you know, it's hard to get the message across that like it might be, and again, I'm not speaking for anybody else, but for me, I found, cause I tried those structures that that wasn't it, that it was more, it was internal, it was behavioral, it was seeking emotional comfort through the thing. It wasn't just the fact that, you know,

I was eating lectins or carbohydrates or seed oils or whatever is taboo and whatever will be taboo next week. Red dye number 40, it wasn't that, that was causing me to overeat. I can overeat steak. I can overeat, you know, vegetables. If that was, you know, I'll go find veggie grill. If I'm being vegan.

Like this is not, it is not the food that is causing this condition in me. And what's causing it is in part physiological, like these like, you know, biological cravings, but there's also, you know, the childhood trauma piece, like everything that like led you to that point, like if you don't untie that knot, like it's gonna continue to activate and agitate you.

So in the drugs and alcohol context, that's the difference between abstinence and sobriety. So if you're not willing to like look into that and start to heal those parts of yourself, you're like a dry drunk. You're just like clenching on for dear life. And at some point it's all gonna shatter and fall on top of you.

And life isn't fun. You get no joy out of it. Like, you know, there should be joy. But on the selfish piece of like sharing your story and talking about it a lot, I mean, there's a service aspect to that. Like in sharing it, you're helping other people. And, you know, the analog in AA is like,

people are always like, why do you go to these meetings and like talk about stuff you did 30 years ago or whatever, cause it helps you stay vigilant. And it's also helpful for other people to hear that. They need to be able to find a way to connect with your story, find a piece of themselves in it so that they can connect with what you did to kind of claw out of it and build this new life.

Yeah, I think being of service is really important, but it does always come back to like, if I wasn't getting my sobriety or keeping diet in the forefront of my mind, would I still do it? I don't know. But that is the vigilance piece. would I still do it? I don't know. But that is the vigilance piece.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. A big focus of this podcast is de-stigmatizing mental health issues. And listen, Lord knows I've gone through it. I'm going through a bit of it right now, as a matter of fact, but I'm really proud to be a voice amplifying the conversation around the struggles that men face,

struggles most men unfortunately weather quietly trying to manage it all alone. And despite this growing awareness, sadly over 6 million men in the US battle depression every year, but shame, silence and outdated cultural scripts still keep too many men from seeking help. I've seen firsthand how therapy can be a catalyst,

not just for healing, but for transformation. And mental health isn't crisis control, it's foundational maintenance. And when we don't tend to it, the consequences show up everywhere, in our relationships, our work, our sense of purpose. It literally affects everything, including, of course, our loved ones. And that's what I appreciate about BetterHelp.

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Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash richroll. That's betterhelp.com. So I'm about 900 plus episodes into this thing now. And one thing I can confidently say as somebody who has spent quality time with so many world leading performers is this, our greatest limitation is often our own scattered mind.

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for 27% off site-wide. That's birchliving.com slash richroll and get 27% off site-wide. birchliving.com slash richroll. Sitewide, birchliving.com slash rich roll. I watched Unstoppable the other night. Oh yeah? That movie is bad ass. Yeah, that was an awesome movie.

And I revisited it, A, because I knew you were coming on, but also because I know that Quentin Tarantino had listed it among like his top movies of 2000, of the 2010s. did you know this? I didn't know that. He's like, this movie rules. That's awesome.

And it does, it just like propels itself forward. It's not any longer than it needs to be. And it's like, it hits all the beats. And it's just an example of why Tony Scott is an absolute master of the form. He's incredible. Yeah, with the first scene in that movie that we did, me and TJ Miller got golf carted out to meet Tony

and we're standing next to a train and it's just us and Tony and he's talking to us about the scene and we run it with him a couple of times and then he kind of goes away, and we're standing there like, well, should we go to our chairs? What should we do? And there's nobody in sight. And we just hear from a really far distance action.

And we're like looking at each other like, are they talking to us? Like, we don't know what's going on here. And then we hear just this insane screaming and profanity and like, what the fuck? Come on, I said action, can you not hear me? And he can hear us talking and we're like, is he talking to us?

Yes, I'm fucking talking to you. And he had like cameras with NASA lenses on them in every like window of far away buildings. And the entire thing was being shot from a distance that we just couldn't see anybody. It was, I mean, one of the wildest experiences of my acting career. You guys are just out there freewheeling.

Yeah, like so he could shoot the entire scene without coverage, right? And you two were just absolute knuckleheads. Totally, yeah. And then you're cheering at the end and I'm like, yeah, but these guys fucked up the whole thing. They fucked up the whole thing. Yeah, people got mad at me and I like took a little flack.

They were like, why'd you let that train get away? And I was like, there's no movie. If the train doesn't get away, then nothing happens. We had to do it. You're the inciting incident of the entire enterprise of the movie. You've worked with like a lot of the entire enterprise of the movie. You've worked with like a lot of the greats, man. Scorsese, Wolf of Wall Street, Darren Aronofsky,

The Fountain, I think that movie is a masterpiece. Tony K, American History X, like, you have sidled up with some of the best to ever do it. Yeah, I have a career that I have no, I mean, I have one regret, but I have no, like I look back on it and I feel so like honored to have been in some of those movies. Do most people know you from My Name is Earl?

Yeah. That's what you get stopped for the most. And Oddly Boy Meets World, which was my first job, 1993 or 1994, but the show never went off the air. It was on in syndication on the Disney channel for the last 30 years. How old were you when you first got on that show? 17.

Wow. Yeah. My name is Earl is having a bit of a resurgence though. I've heard that on TikTok. My kids, when I told my kids you were coming in, they're like, oh, we love my name's Earl. And my 30 year old was saying, oh yeah, like Chen Z's all over this. It's like the new suits, you know?

It's crazy. It's weird how like these old shows just percolate up and like find a new audience. I mean, that is, I guess that's a gift of like everything being digital and available, but that's gotta be a cool feeling, like a whole new generation of people finding your stuff. It's always odd when it comes back.

Like my little kids who are now 18 and 20, when we shot My Name is Earl, they were, one was not born and the other was like two. And so they never experienced it while it was happening. But when I came home one day, when they were teenagers, very young teenagers, and they were just watching the show like, dad, why didn't you tell us about this show is great?

And that was weird. And it's very weird now when somebody who's very clearly too young to have watched Boy Meets World 30 years ago, somebody who's like in their teens says what a fan of Boy Meets World they are, or even My Name is Earl, a teenager today wasn't alive when it was being shot. It is a bizarre thing because that's 20 years in the past for me.

So let's go back to the timeline. So you do, you get through Mallrats. Yeah, Mallrats. I don't know what comes after that. I mean, you're in a bunch of stuff. Well, Mallrats- I mean, when does it start like really getting out of control?

Mallrats is a funny one because we go to do Mallrats and Kevin Smith had had huge success. He made this movie, Clerks for no money that then made millions and millions of dollars. And then he had millions of dollars to make Mallrats. This was his first opportunity to make like kind of a, I don't know, was it a studio movie? It was a studio movie, yeah.

And we were like, oh, well, if he made millions with we're gonna make billions, Mallrats gonna be the biggest movie ever. And it was a studio movie, yeah. And we were like, oh, well, if he made millions, we're gonna make billions, Mallrats gonna be the biggest movie ever. And it was a total failure. And so then it was like, Mallrats came out, nothing happened, back to the grindstone. Like drugs didn't pick up with me for probably a year from Mallrats,

like real daily drug use. I was a dabbler before that. Uh-huh. Yeah. And then I had this operation. I left knowing that whatever I had in the hospital was what I needed at all times. The opioids lit you up.

Like that was the thing, right? Yeah. They pressed a button in me that, you know, I was, the last surgery I had, I had to have an argument with the anesthesiologist saying, like, you cannot give me opioids when I'm unconscious. And he was like, it won't matter when you're unconscious. And I said, yes, it will.

It's activated, the lizard brain. Something happens, yeah, I will. It's activated. Something happens. Yeah, I will wake up and I'll probably wake up no matter what saying, give me drugs. You can't give them to me then either, which doctors don't really love to hear. They wanna keep you calm and sedate. And I understand that, but like for me, I can't have them.

Was it oxycodone, Vicodin or what was it? Percocet? No, it was Vicodin at first. And then there was a Mexican bakery on Kenmore and third, which I don't know if I'm outing people right now, but I doubt it's still there. This was the nineties. And you could go in and buy Vicodin for a dollar a pill, Mexican Vicodin.

And then when that went dry, it was, you know, hitting up doctors for prescriptions and then finding a doctor who was knowingly giving you stuff that you weren't faking or you weren't talking about your sciatic nerve and stuff. You were just going in and like- They understood. Getting prescriptions.

Yeah, there's no pretense. Yeah. Yeah. That's gotta be not easy to do these days, I would imagine. I wouldn't know, but it wasn't super hard back then. There were like pain clinics, you know, where you could just go and get a ton of pills. I haven't seen an actual pain clinic in a while. I think when the shit came down on the Sackler family

and all of that, a lot of those pain clinics went away. But I don't know, I'm sure there's plenty of like underground shit. And then of course, like when you run out of, you know, scripts or you can't find the, you know, the Mexican bakeries closed or what? I mean, that's sort of like the portal to heroin because that's what leads so many people to heroin.

Yeah. Is that what happened? That's what led me to heroin. Yeah. And how far did that go for you? That was a couple of years of heroin use. When did the movie Blow fall into this? Blow was in the late nineties.

Blow was like 98 or 99, maybe 98, I think. And that was still Pills. Still Pills. Yeah. But there's some weird irony that you're doing that movie while you're just, you know, blowing it out. Yeah. I think it was still pills. I mean, I have a vague memory of, I don't know what the statute of limitations

on this stuff is, but like of traveling through customs with stuff taped to my ankle. But I think I flew back from Mexico shooting that movie with a lot of pills. Were they aware of what was going on with you at the time? Like the crew and the director and- Not to the extent that it was going on. You were hiding it pretty well.

Yeah. And what's the weight like at this point? Damn near 500 pounds. Wow. On blow, yeah. By the time I did like a movie called the first 20 million is always the hardest and the butterfly effect, I was over 500 pounds. Wow.

What is the, just the daily experience of being that big? Like? I would go to sleep at night thinking I would most likely die because it was hard to breathe laying down. So I would have like a lot of pillows set up so that I was propped up in bed because laying flat on my back, I actually couldn't breathe. There was just too much weight on my chest.

And then every morning that I woke up, I would just get high to not think about the fact that I was pretty happy that I survived the night. And then just moving around, like just simple stuff, right? Yeah, it was, I mean, you know, if I throw a 35 pound kettlebell in a backpack right now and go for a walk, it's a nightmare.

And I was 300 pounds heavier than I am now, which is, it's hard to recall. A lot of the things that affected me in my day to day then, A lot of the things that affected me in my day to day then, I still have creep up in my life today. Like I have just extreme anxiety about going to the airport because the airport is walking around and the airport is there's a time deadline. And this was, this all was prior to TSA pre-checks.

So the airport is taking your shoes off. And all of that is a real chore for somebody who's 500 pounds. And drug sniffing dogs. Drug sniffing dogs, all of it. Yeah, it was, but so like, I still have that anxiety about like, oh my God, am I gonna have to rush at the airport?

Is that gonna ruin my day? And when I'm forced to, it doesn't. I've had to run to the gate and then I get to the gate and I sit down in my chair and I'm not, I haven't even really broken a sweat. And I can just recall that my clothes would be soaked through sometimes by the time I got to the gate,

if it was a far enough gate, you know? And I can remember seeing people in, you know, the little golf carts that we're getting driven to. I wouldn't even take that because I was scared I would break it. And there would be a scene about me breaking a golf cart. You know what I mean? Like being a public person, it would end up in-

Or just even the attraction of eyes in that instance. I wanted as few eyes on me as possible. And so, you know, but none of that is true today. And yet the anxieties from it linger. Yeah, the story is so deeply grooved. Yeah. That it's, yeah, it makes me sad that you still feel that. Like looking at you, it's like hard to believe

that you would, that that would occur to you. It's cognitive dissonance because I can talk myself through it. You know, it's like doing maintenance on a diet. I'm an advocate for maintenance, like actively working to maintain your weight. You get to some place, you lose some weight and then work to maintain it because it is real work.

But for me, there was so much effort for so long put into losing weight that when I'm putting effort into anything with food, I want the reward to be the scale moving down. And when the scale doesn't move down, it's this tremendous feeling of defeat. Even though what I'm actively working to do is- You've succeeded. Yes, I have won.

But you're not getting that dopamine hit, right? You can't separate them. So I've got to talk myself through it. Just like the airport, I've got to go like, if I'm late, I can sprint to the gate. I know this, this is true. It will not ruin my day. I will not break my leg running to the gate

because of my weight. I will not be sweating so profusely that I'm leaking onto my neighbor in the neighboring chair. I will not have a heart attack because of that. I can take my shoes off while I'm still standing up. This is not the end of the world, you know? But the tension in me from having to do those things or the apprehension of having to do those things

is just as live as it was back then. So there's this fear still inside of you that if you're not absolutely vigilant and your foot isn't on the pedal at all times that you're just gonna wake up and you're gonna be that 500 pound guy again. Like is that- No, I don't think that's true.

I think that there is the knowledge that it could all unravel. But I also have to give myself some grace. Yeah, that's, I mean, that brought that up cause it's like, it's okay, dude. Yeah, no, I'm trying to paint more of a picture of things that occur to me that I'm able to like rationalize and go like, I'm feeling this way,

but that feeling is not- To be an observer of those feelings rather than to indulge them. Yeah. Yeah. 500 pounds, sweating profusely. It was rough. High from the moment you wake up. Yeah.

I mean, this is not a sustainable lifestyle. Like I'm curious around your relationship with hope and your future at that time. There was no consideration of the future. There was only right now and today. In a strange way, that's how I live again. But I'm living in today with a lot of hope for the future. Whereas when I was living in today, back then,

the future was walled off. It was not a distant thought at all. Were you keeping, were you actively keeping people at arm's length? Cause I'm imagining you working on sets and like you're a sociable guy. Like I imagine you had friends, right? You had people around you.

Was anybody trying to help you? I mean, it had to be obvious. You were spiraling out of control. Yes, I had, there were a couple of interventions, which were jarring to me because I thought I'd been doing such a good job. Yeah, yeah. You know?

Like every good addict believes. Yeah, there was one point where my friends, you know, they did like a very gentle intervention. I got high in the bathroom, you know, while they were all sitting there waiting for me to continue participating in this intervention. Then there was another one where it was a little bit more severe where a mutual friend of ours, Scott G.

Oh yeah. Was sent with me to a location. And he got me through basically being dope sick at work. through basically being dope sick at work. And then, I PR my way into him, like two weeks, I was like, I'm good now, I'm a sober person now, bye, bye, Scott. Thank you for everything. And kind of sent him on his way.

And like, maybe the next day was on the phone to a doctor saying, I've hurt myself. And we were shooting a movie set in a hospital and there were all kinds of rigs and things lying around that I was going home with every night. But there were people who cared very much. And then towards the end, I think that it, you know, it's very tricky.

I've been asked a number of times, like my son has a drug problem, please talk to them. And I'm more than willing to have any conversation with anybody, but my experience has been largely like, I didn't change until I wanted to change. I didn't change my eating, I didn't get off drugs. Like none of that happened because somebody said, I'm concerned about you.

So even when my friends said, we're gonna tell the producers of this movie that you're going to do, that you have like a really severe drug problem unless you take this guy with you and get cleaned up. Scotty G. Scotty G. Came with me. I didn't know you knew him. He's the best man. He's the best. I love, I talk to Scott all the time.

Oh, you do? Yeah. I spent some time with him this past summer in Michigan. I love Scott. Yeah. He's a great guy. Shout out Scott. I know he's a good listener. Yeah, for sure. in Michigan. I love Scott. Yeah. He's a great guy. Shout out Scott. I know he's listening. Yeah, for sure. Right, you can't instill willingness in another person.

And you also can't self-generate it really. Like, it's like, the thing I always say is, it's like asking somebody to want something they don't actually want, or wishing that you wanted something something they don't actually want, or wishing that you wanted something that you don't actually want. Like you can kind of talk yourself into it, but if you don't really want it,

you're not gonna take the action, or you're not gonna be able to sustain that action. Right, like when I met Scott, I wanted to not be fired from the movie. I wanted to not be embarrassed. I wanted my friends to not spread the word that I had this problem. And in that moment, the path to that was sobriety.

So I was like, great, if that's what I gotta do, come on, Scott, let's go to Canada. Just to get people off your back. Basically, and within that, I think there were moments of like sobriety might be better. The little seedlings are being planted. Like maybe. At some day.

Yeah, maybe, you know, this is rough, this sucks, but this would probably be better for me in the long run. But again, I didn't really want it. So it was like trying to talk myself into buying a car I didn't really want at the time. So was there like a single bottom or a series of bottoms? Like, you know, it took you a bunch of tries and a bunch of stabs before this thing stuck.

Yeah, my bottom was being diagnosed with congestive heart failure. And the doctor, and you know, this was one of those things like I'm going to bed every night, pretty sure I'm gonna die, but then I start swelling and the swelling's in my feet and drugs are not getting me really high and I'm doing an obscene amount of drugs

and it's not, and something's wrong. So I'm like, okay, what do I have to do? I have to get sick for a couple of days and then the drugs will be more potent. And what would happen is I'd get sick for a couple of days and the swelling would go down and then I'd use and the drugs would have their potency back but a couple of days in the swelling would return. The swelling's moving up my legs

and then it gets to my groin and it's really uncomfortable. And I went to see a doctor when I had done a couple of days being sick and clean and the swelling was not going away. So then I'm just using and miserable and swollen and in pain. And the doctor says, you have congestive heart failure. You are going to die. And I'm like, okay, so now it's time to get sober.

And the doctor says, yeah, you're gonna die. I'm gonna give you this diuretic, but, and she's crying. And this is like my family doctor from when I'm a little kid. And how old are you now? 20. Yeah. And she's like, no, I'm so sorry.

This, you are, you're gonna die. Like if you get clean or not, this is gonna kill you. And I thought like, it'd be nice to leave my parents a clean corpse. Like that was my bottom. And then I even had relapses from that, but they were briefer. And did you end up going to a treatment center?

Or how did you, you know or how did you take steps? That was my third time in a treatment center. You're the guy who goes and leaves early or whatever and holds up in some crack house somewhere. Yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah. I walked out of a couple of them, yeah. What stuck?

You know, A was really, really a big part of it. I had sober friends. I had people I could rely on, people I could talk to every day. When I came back from treatment the last time, I had a group of friends who, I don't think any of them had a drink

in front of me for two years. And they would come and get me and take me to a movie or out to dinner. I had a really solid group of guys that took care of me. It's a weird experience when you have that deep shame and that sense of worthlessness and you enter that community and all these people embrace you

and genuinely are wanting to help you and make themselves available to you, but you don't trust it. You're like, this is some bullshit. You know what I mean? Like, what's the angle? And for me, like, you know, I kept it at arm's length to my peril for a long time until I realized like,

oh, this is how it works, you know? Yeah, I think I did too. But I had a couple of sober friends who I didn't keep them at arm's length. But I know what you're talking about. The broader picture, I was like, you I can trust, you I can trust, this guy I just met, I wanna hear him talk, but I don't trust him.

Yeah, it is a miracle though, that this thing exists where you can come in totally broken and hopeless and hanging on by a thread and be taken in by these people who don't want anything from you. Like it really is a remarkable thing. I mean, it saved my life. Clearly it saved yours. Do you still have a relationship with AA?

Yeah. You AA? Yeah. You do? Yeah. Cool. I went to a meeting this morning. Oh, you did. Yeah. A lot of people come to me who are suffering

from health issues, but they also have a drug and alcohol problem. And they generally, they're looking for advice, but they're generally focused on like the fitness or the weight. I'm sure you get this a lot too. And my whole thing is like, none of that matters until you get sober.

Like you can't do all of it at once. And unless you get sober, like it's all irrelevant. Like take care of that first and create a foundation. Don't worry about that other stuff. And then, you know, when you have that foundation, you can begin to address those other things. Is that how you think about that? I do, I kind of accidentally did it that way.

But I was gonna die so quickly from drugs that the rest of it wasn't even, it was just like, but I remember, there would be days in rehab going like, well, I want this, like, you know, you wake up one day and you want it more than you did yesterday, or you're gonna want it the day, the next day, and I would be like, yeah, I'm gonna quit smoking, I'm gonna quit drinking coffee,

and maybe I'm gonna make better decisions in the food hall. And I'm, you know, 550 pounds and maybe I'm gonna make better decisions in the food hall and I'm 550 pounds and maybe three weeks clean at this point or four weeks clean and I just wake up going like, I could turn everything around and that would last until lunchtime. And then I'm drinking caffeinated soda and having a cigarette and like, fuck it, that's too much.

So I didn't really start thinking about my weight for another year or two. I continued to kind of wall it off and have it be like, well, this thing that I'm working on is so tenuous and so important. And so, I'm walking on a cliff's edge. I was gonna die. It's a miracle I didn't die.

Okay, well, I'm not gonna think about the other stuff right now. But I think it was by accident. So at what point does that kind of enter the picture and you begin to put some pieces together on that? And how did you do that? Well, I did it all backwards again. Like, you know, that the, I wish I had just gone,

like I'm gonna apply everything I'm doing in my day-to-day life with drugs that I'm working on myself with food. I'm gonna use the same kind of idea, but I didn't do that. I just went like, oh, I need to lose weight. I had a blinder on and I wasn't thinking about this. I need to think about this now. What do I do?

But I thought about it like the weight was the problem, that once the weight is gone, the problem is gone, that it's an acute condition that I just need to exercise and then I won't have that condition anymore. And that took many years to parse out. In other words, just like sobriety, it's a process. There's no destination here. Like you don't arrive at a certain weight

and then you can wash your hands of it and you've achieved it and it's a process, there's no destination here. Like you don't arrive at a certain weight and then you can wash your hands of it and you've achieved it and it's done. Dude, I wanted that so badly. I was convinced that that was what was gonna happen to the point that I went, when I was riding bikes a lot, I went to a doctor literally for him to go to say, like, when does that, like, what is the weight I need to a doctor literally for him to go to say, like, when does that, like, what is the weight I need to get to?

Because I don't know. And I had in my head, I go to see this, the best sports nutrition doctor, famous guy, Dr. Heisenga, who I really like. And I walked in and I had in my head, I probably need to lose another 20 pounds. And I go in and I say, I just need you to tell me how much weight I need to lose.

And I said to him, I said, I think it's probably 20 pounds. And he said, no, no, no, much more than that. How heavy were you then? 240. He said, you gotta get to 185. So 20 went to like 65. And I was kind of devastated in that moment. And then he said, we'll get you an exact number.

We're gonna have you do a DEXA scan. So I do the DEXA scan, come back. He looks at the scan. He says, this is not right, go and do it again. I did a second DEXA scan. When we met again, he said, I is not right, go and do it again. I did a second dex scan. When we met again, he said, I'm wrong. You don't need to lose weight. You're 14% body fat.

You're fine. You're done. No more weight loss. At 240, you're just a big dude. I'm a big dude. I was riding a bike a hundred miles a day. I wanna get into the whole cycling phase cause you went hog wild with this.

I went hog wild. You ride like every stage of the Tour de France one year. Yeah. Like you were- And then some, they didn't have Mount Ventoux on that year. So we went and rode that. Was that like part of a tour or group? I went with Team Radio Shack

with the executives from Team Radio Shack. When that happened, wow. It was awesome. So that was during the, was that during the Lance comeback, or this was like Levi Leipheimer. Yeah, Levi was leading. Lance was out there.

I got to ride with Lance, which was amazing, but he was not a participant. Yeah, and when you were deep into the cycling, you got down to like 200 or something like that. I got close to 200, but that happens after Dr. Heisenga says you're 14% body fat. But you're convinced. It's like, how far can I take this?

I'm not only convinced, I was angry with him. I was like, what do you know, dude? I shouldn't have even come here. Like I came here for you to tell me a number. You told me a big number and I was like devastated, but I was gonna hit that number. I would have gotten, if you had just left it at that, I would have gotten to 185 and I was 240 and 14% body fat.

And at the time I'm like 14% body fat sounds too high. Like, I don't know what body fat means at that point, but I'm like, that's terrible. Shouldn't I be 2%? And he's like, no, no, no, 14 is fine. But I walked out going like, what does he know? I gotta lose 20 pounds. And you found the perfect vehicle to strip you

of like every ounce of fat on your body, right? There's nothing like riding a bike all day, every day. That's right. It was amazing. And in California, there's no better place. You can get long flat stretches, rollers on PCH, and then the most gnarly climbs ever. And there's nothing like being able to attack those climbs

and feeling strong doing it. Like you have to put in so much work to get there. But when you're there, it's a euphoric feeling. Dude, the first time I did Latigo, I thought like this might be the last time I'm on a bike. And then not many months later, I invited a buddy who was an amateur cyclist in college, but like a cat two cyclist.

And I dropped him and waited for 15 minutes at the top of Latigo forum and was just like, oh my God, I can do anything on this bike. If I just keep doing it, I can do anything. And being able to do that at 200 pounds. Like it's the ultimate weight weenie sport, right? It's just like, there is an obsession with weight in that sport that probably played into like all of your, like, you know, neurosis around this.

Well, look, in reality, I was not the fastest guy going up the hill ever, but like get me on the velodrome and I was gnarly. Oh yeah, cause you, I'm sure the Watts you could throw down on a track would be insane. I had enormous legs. I was like not bad on my back.

Cause when you're 500 pounds, you gotta be strong to carry all that weight around, right? So underneath all of that, I'm sure is some pretty good muscle that was there all along. Just to stand up, you gotta have muscle. But at a certain point, like cycling, no bueno for you. Like what happened with that?

It just was- You just deplete your adrenals and just take it all the way to the wall until- Basically, I had a bad accident. I was right, I would ride with the Helen's guys. And- You do the Mandeville, that Mandeville ride. Yeah. Yeah, that was my day off ride.

No, no, not Mandeville. I would do the Lagrange ride on Sunday. That's the one I was thinking of. Yeah, yeah. Mandeville. I would do the Lagrange ride on Sunday. That's the one I was thinking of. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Mandeville was the Wednesday ride. And that was easy because it was the shortest ride just to the top of Mandeville. But I would come from the Valley, from Studio City,

go down, ride that ride. And that was the easiest. If we didn't go like deep up PCH, it was a very short ride for me, you know, 40, 50 miles. Not bad. It was one of those things where I had a bad accident. I wound up in the hospital. I had 30 some stitches in my head, tore the skin off my hands, herniated my quad on my bar.

And then I went back and I was tentative going back, but I still did a bunch of rides. I did the, you know, the Helen's team does a yearly thing in Solvang, I went out and did that, but was the slowest guy because I was really out of shape at that point. And then I had to work and my wife was like, you know, like you can't retire.

You're not a professional cyclist. Yeah, like what are you doing? The amount of time it takes is just bananas. Yeah, to be really good. Makes golf look like trivial. Yeah, but I took a bike like in 2012, I went to New York to do Wolf of Wall Street and I was gonna be there for seven or eight months.

So I took a bike with me and I would ride it up and down the West Side Highway and then cut over the George Washington Bridge and there were a couple of climbs. Yeah, the 9W Bear Mountain Ride. Yeah, I'd do that. And then I think I discovered CrossFit. I discovered the rowing machine and was like,

oh, I can get on this rowing machine and really bang out a great workout in an hour. And I don't have to be on a bike for five hours. And be exhausted for the whole day, for your work day. So I would start doing like marathons on a rowing machine and lifting weights and kettlebells. And I had like very little upper body mass at that point and was like, what if I did some pushups and some bench press?

And then that was interesting for a while. And now you're just an animal in the gym. I mean, you're just a beast. I'm trying, I've gotten even that, I'm trying to exercise radical moderation. You know, like I used to go- Everything is an obsession in waiting. Yeah, it can be.

And now I'm like, can I get my workout in 45 minutes? That's like my mission nowadays. So it doesn't commandeer your entire life. And you have good energy throughout the day. Yeah, I mean, there was a bit where it was like, I gotta fill this loose skin with muscle. And then when I stopped living in fantasy land and did a little rough math, the amount

of muscle I'd have to build to actually stretch out my loose skin, I'd weigh 800 pounds or something like that. And so I gave up on that pursuit. And so now it's just a matter of communicating with my muscles that I appreciate you, I admire you, stick around, don't go anywhere. I'm not trying to get bigger. And that's really, and then going to the gym provides me with some more mental clarity for the day.

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that supports you every step of the way. Back to those early days though, when this was just beginning, like how did you instigate the fitness and the diet? Like what was the, like when you finally locked onto this, what were the steps that you took that ended up being effective in retrospect amidst all of the kind of missteps.

Yeah, it's really funny. The gal who's my wife, I like landed in Eastern Europe to do a movie and was devastated. Like it was, it was as though I had been completely blind to myself and then stood in front of a mirror for a while going like, oh my God, you gotta take a long hard look

and we're not gonna look away. And I thought the only thing I'm suddenly thinking about the future and the only thing that mattered to me in that moment was this relationship I was building with the girl who's now my wife. And if I don't tell her the secret that I'm morbidly obese, which I think she doesn't know, if I don't tell her that, then I lose her

cause she's gonna figure it out, right? One of these days, she's gonna peek behind the curtain and see me. And if I tell her and she sees it now, I'm gonna reveal this horror story to her and she's gonna, so, but I'm damned if I do, or I'm damned if I don't, I wanna have a life with her. My behavior has been like, not so honest and forthright.

Like she wants to go to the beach. I can't do that today. I'll see you later tonight for dinner. she wants to go to the beach. I can't do that today. I'll see you later tonight for dinner. She wants to go to a museum. I can't do that because walking through a museum is tiring. All these active things that she's interested in, I'm kind of finding reasons not to do with her. I also felt embarrassed for her

to like hold my hand in public because my shame would bleed over into her. So I'd walk behind her or in front of her and there was no public affection. And like all of that felt unhealthy to me. And so I recruited her to help me. I said like, hey, I have this problem. I'm obese and I wanna change that.

And she like to this day, it was as though I was this problem, I'm obese and I wanna change that. And she, like to this day, it was as though I was telling her, I'd robbed a bank or killed somebody and she didn't know about it. Like that's how I felt communicating this to her. And I thought like, and I listened so closely, like, am I gonna hear judgment? Am I gonna hear relief?

And either of those things I think might have messed with me. But she was like, okay, yeah, great. So what do you want to do? Do you want me to help you? How do you want me to help you? And I was like, I don't know what to do. And the very first thing she told me to do in Eastern Europe was, okay, for the rest of the time

that you're there, just don't eat bread. Now bread for me then became this poisonous thing for many years, but that wasn't the point. The point was exercise some responsibility, take one small step towards exercising restraint and responsibility. And that I learned to do. I didn't separate the two and realize the actual moral

of the story that she gave me on that day for many years, because I eat bread all the time now. Whereas when she said that, I just thought, okay, bread's the problem. If I get rid of bread, I'm now on the path to recovery. But I was able to make it through the rest of that trip without eating bread. And that was kind of my first step.

Your wife sounds like a remarkable woman. Like clearly she loved you and loves you for you, right? Which is bizarre. It was just fucking bizarre to be honest with you. Well, we're all broken toys. You know what I mean? How could we possibly be lovable? I share that.

But what she did deserves to kind of be explored a little bit more because I think it's really powerful. You were able to change, not because she was vibing you to change, but because she allowed you to be you and gave you the space to arrive in a place of willingness on your own. That's right. And when you were ready, she was there to support you,

but she wasn't nudging you or urging you towards that. And it gets back to this willingness idea. Like she wouldn't have been able to make you willing to make that change. She trusted that you would find your way. And I think that is an incredibly difficult gesture of love. Like we can say, oh, it's loving to like want your partner to improve or do something that's in their best interest.

But like true unconditional love is like, I believe in you. I believe in you to find your way and what's right for you. And I'm gonna love you either way. Like that is a remarkable thing. And you found your way to willingness. Finally, you had some willingness. And I think the advice around bread is actually really good.

Well, it gets to the complexity of all of this because like, I know as an AA person, like I need those binary rules. I mean, I know that like my entree into like the eating plant-based is because it's like, it's easy. It's like, I don't eat meat or dairy. And I needed that. I needed that like structure. It's like, I know't eat meat or dairy. Just do this. And I needed that.

I needed that like structure. It's like, I know I don't drink or use. Like I can get my head around that. Like, and this is just simple enough. And so the bread thing is like, oh, I can understand that. It gets messy later when you start to, when all the alcoholic obsession starts to

metastasize around that. Well, and then when you haven't lost all the weight you wanna lose because you're not eating bread. When you still have the problem as you perceive it, despite doing the work to eliminate the problem, it becomes complicated. Yeah, but you took action. And I think behind that also,

like this idea that like, I have to tell her this secret, you know, whether or not, like it's hard to believe that you would believe that she wouldn't know that, like let's take that for granted as true. But the important part of it is that you decided you weren't gonna keep secrets

from her anymore. Like you're a guy who'd been keeping secrets your whole life. So it was this commitment to yourself to be transparent in a vulnerable way that opened up the space for you to be receptive and to grow and change. I think there's a point there that you made because I think it's not that I thought she was honestly

unaware of it, because it's impossible not to honestly unaware of it, because it's impossible not to be unaware of it. But it's that if I show her that it's not something I am comfortable with, then it allows her to be uncomfortable with it. Do you know what I mean? Like if I have this false sense of, I don't know that if it's not a part of my attention,

if I'm confident, if I reveal that I'm actually not confident, then it allows- That you have a weakness. That I have, yes, exactly. It's the strangest feeling I've ever had because it's like I'm describing a blue car to somebody who's sitting there looking at a blue car with me.

You know what I mean? The secret isn't that you were obese. The secret was that you felt a shame about that. And like having the courage to like share that is a vulnerable like gesture. That's scary, like how is my partner gonna receive this? Yeah, and later in life, like I've written a book and it's with my publisher.

And so I had to go and like really talk to my wife about this because I never really got into it with her. Like, why were you with me? Like, were you waiting for that? Did you have faith that I was gonna change prior to that? And then I realized like, I don't even wanna know because everything that happened feels like a miracle to me. And so the nuts and bolts of it are irrelevant.

Yeah, so you never asked her that. I mean, I touched on it with her and she's like, I don't know, I wasn't thinking about it. Like she really is just this miraculous angel of a person who loved me. Yeah, so the bread didn't work. Well, I was able to do it. I was able to not eat bread.

Which is a win, right? It's a win. When you were able to master one thing. Yeah. Yeah. The bread, not eating bread did not produce 300 pounds of weight loss, unfortunately. You know? And then, you know, I came back and she had,

she was like, I've got, I'll have something ready for you in LA, but just do this while you're there. And when you get back, I'll have a whole thing set up for you to do here. And I did a liquid diet for two months. And I lost like 80 pounds doing that liquid diet. In two months. In two months. It was awesome.

There's nothing that motivates you quite like success every day. I saw weight loss on that liquid diet. What was in the liquid? It was like probably 500 calories a day of protein and some, you know, powdered greens and then a bunch of fiber pills and some vitamins. There is a sort of euphoria that comes with that also, right? And the alcoholic mind will latch onto that and say,

this is the solution to my problems. I'm never gonna eat food again. Yeah, I found it. There was something- Did you have that? 100%. I wanted abstinence at that time. I thought that was the solution.

And the problem was that by the end of the second month, like every time I stood up, I would black out, not to the point of collapse, but like my vision would go dark, my hearing would get thick and distant, and I'd have to like steady myself and wait for my vision to come back. And that was like, okay, maybe I can't do this forever.

500 calories a day with that much body mass to fuel. I mean, you're cannibalizing yourself every day. And then after that? Then it was the blood type diet. And that was also pretty easy. Bread was off limits, but I could have like vegetables and meat and that was not difficult.

And then the problem came about when I just stopped losing weight. I could overeat through the intervention of the blood type diet. So at this point, you'd lost how much? From 500 down to- 550 down to around 400, maybe 375. And then you plateau.

And then I plateau and then- You rubber band back. No, I didn't rubber band back from that. I mean, I did gain some weight, but I never went back up to 500. Because from that point on, there were, I would get down to over the past 20 years, I got down to 200, I went back up to 400,

I got down to 300, I went up to 375. Like there were bands like that, but I never got back anywhere near 500. With all the rubber banding, and then now in this stable situation that you're in right now, I mean, we could talk all day about like what worked and what didn't.

I'm less interested in the details of that. It's all very personalized and individualized. But from those experiences of succeeding and failing and rubber banding and relapsing and back and forth, and now it's cycling, now it's a gym. I mean, you have compiled like an encyclopedia of principles around transformation and change. So if you had to write a book

and it had like 10 chapters, like each one being one of these principles, like what rises to the top in your mind as the most important factors for somebody who is contemplating making a change? Having a plan for the day and then preparing for the plan to go out the window once you meet reality and having another plan and having as many plans as you can consider and then having

a plan for when all of the plans fail and kind of, you know, getting through the day is the most important thing. Realizing that the weight isn't the issue at all, that the weight is a byproduct or a symptom of the issue, that it will, look, if you need to lose 10 pounds that you put on during COVID or, you know, you twisted your ankle and were laid up for a few months or something like that, then none of this applies to you. But if you've been overweight your whole life,

there's likely not gonna be an intervention that you apply that then when you're done, you don't have to keep applying to some degree. My big fear now, like I'm a fan of the GLP ones for the morbidly obese. I'm also glad that I achieved this prior to their advent. But my fear with them is that people are gonna use them like fad diets and that what we'll see long term

is a version of what I did in those years, which was find something that takes weight off really quick. You're losing muscle mass and fat. And by the way, any diet, any extreme diet, you're losing muscle mass and fat. It doesn't matter if it's keto and you're eating a bunch of meat. If you're losing a pound a day, some portion of that is lean tissue, But you get on them for three months, you lose 30 pounds, you get off them, you gain the 30 pounds back,

you 40% of what you lost is muscle and 100% of what you gain back is fat. And so we could see over a long period of time, people's weight stay static, if not rise a little bit, So we could see over a long period of time, people's weight stay static, if not rise a little bit, but their body fat percentage skyrocket. And that worries me because there is no consideration to anything but that the weight is the problem, not a byproduct or a symptom of the problem.

Also, you're missing the whole piece around developing discipline and a connection with your body and your mind. Like you have extraordinary discipline and you've done the inside work to untangle those knots and understand why you tick the way that you tick. And if you just inject yourself with something, they're appropriate for people who are,

it means like obesity is driving all these chronic lifestyle ailments. Like you have to, if the house is on fire, you gotta deal with that first. I'm not against this in any way, but in terms of like what you had to learn about yourself and the way your mind and your body works

by going through this process has placed you in this sort of sensei position. You know what I mean? Like you've done the work. And so what you have to say about this like matters versus somebody who, you know took a different route to it. It's such a tricky thing because I'm trying to be as open

and honest as possible, but there is a team out there that is these are life-saving drugs. And if you say anything bad about them, you're killing people. And then there's another team that is these are gonna result in killing people. You can't say anything good about them. There's such a lack of nuance. I don't know if it's as big today,

but there was a whole thing about like keto and sugar is killing it and carbohydrates are killing everyone. We just cycle through this by the season. Right, nuance is lost. Yeah, and it deserves nuance. I think, like I said, these drugs are appropriate, but are you, we know when you're on them,

are you using that period of time to learn about nutrition and develop better eating habits and breaking old habits, or are you just coasting by eating less of the shitty foods that you're eating, and when you go off it, you haven't really prepared yourself for how to live without it. And these people rubber band back and then go back on it.

And yeah, like, so do we end up with a worse obesity problem or other downstream like side effects from this drug that we don't even know about yet? Yeah, I have a daughter with type one diabetes and that point of view that I'm seeing so many people take would be like the point of view of me realizing that my daughter's body is not producing insulin. And so she has to get insulin

through a bolus of an injection. And then looking at her blood sugar when it's normal and going, well, she doesn't need insulin anymore. She's done, she's solved. It's not gonna be a problem anymore. These medications, and who knows if they're gonna have new medications down the line, but these medications are designed

to be lifetime medications. They're not designed for short-term use. They're not designed so that when you lose your 30 or 50 or a hundred pounds that you come off of them because the doctors who are prescribing them know that 99.9% of the people are gonna gain that weight back. Now it's not an absolute, but there are no absolutes in science.

This is the realm of like wanting to win the lottery. I'll be the one guy that doesn't win the, gain the weight back. But what about all the diets that you tried where you ate 500 calories a day, lost weight really fast, and then gained the weight back once you jumped off the diet? It's no different.

It just makes it less hard. What do you think is the primary differentiator between somebody who can make this type of change and sustain it versus the person who struggles and gives up? I think that really looking at the fact that it is gonna be a lifetime commitment, that there's no finish line, that the weight is

a sign of something else happening, that somebody who's looking at it in that way will have a better shot at success. Because if you just go into a diet going, I need to lose 30 pounds. And once I lose 30 pounds or whatever, pick any number, 300 pounds that I'm done, I think you're in for a rude awakening. Yeah, there's so much gray in all of this. It's so easy to be reductive about it. Like, here's what you do.

And like, we want, you know, you're talking about like, you need a plan, you know, and you need a plan for the plan. And there's lots of plans out there. Oh, I'll take this plan. This plan is gonna solve my problem. But it's so much more than that. Like you need the discipline and the hard work and the ability to suffer periods of discomfort

and you know, all these types of things. But you also have to be kind to yourself. And you have to allow yourself to mess up and not throw the baby out with the bathwater when you have those missteps. And you have to be flexible enough to know like, okay, well, this program that I thought was gonna solve everything isn't working

and I need to do something different now. The truth doesn't lend itself to any kind of like 10 step program that is going to work. And I think the real solution is in like the healing the inner, right? So that you can have the soft when you need it and the hard when you need it. But it's not all about self-will and discipline

and hard work and pain and suffering. It's also, as you know, as a sober person, it's surrender and it's letting go and it's compassion, right? Yeah. And how do you marry these two kind of opposing forces in a way that's driving your life forward? I do some coaching. It's not like come contact me type of a thing,

but I do work with some people. And this is the biggest point of trying to get somebody to understand it. And I think, unfortunately, it's a little bit like the willingness piece where you can't tell them the secret. They have to come to it on their own a little bit through trial and error, unfortunately.

But it's like the serenity prayer sums it up so perfectly. There is something that you have to accept because it's not changeable. And you have to figure out what you can change and then just work on changing that. And if you're coming at it, because I did this, tried to harm myself thin,

tried to punish myself into a better body, that's not sustainable either. There has to be some grace given to yourself and doing it out of compassion and kindness or I don't think it works. Yeah, it's for whom and when, right? Like certain people, they need the Goggins message, you know what I mean?

Because they can't get off the couch. They could use a little discipline and a little slap on the ass to get up and get out the door. And sometimes I like that too. Me too, of course. I think we all need that. And God bless David Goggins for making himself available to all of us for that.

But it can't be the only thing. But there are other people who are so down that rabbit hole and they need to be pulled out and given a hug. You know what I mean? And told that they're worthwhile and lovable, even if they can't lose the weight or achieve the fitness goal. That's right.

And without those two things, like you're like missing an appendage, I think. And so it's hard to, I mean, I'm like hats off to you to try to counsel people through this sort of thing. It's tough, you know, because, and I relate to it so much, but I think some of the most meaningful conversations I have are talking to somebody and understanding

or trying to understand their experience as thoroughly as possible and sharing my experience and going like, here's why what you're trying to do didn't work for me. Now that doesn't mean it's not gonna work for you, but here are all the traps I encountered in that. It's some of the most meaningful stuff I've ever done. Yeah, I mean, that's a version of what we learn in AA,

which is we don't tell people what to do or give advice, we share our experience. And if you can glean insights from my personal experience, then it's on you to figure out how to integrate that into your life. Yeah, this has slightly more like- Little bit, got you, don't do that. Listen, if you're eating 5,000 calories a day,

you're going to- In my experience, this doesn't work. Right, yeah, exactly. But it's a marriage of these two things, you know? Yeah, you have to do and you have to undo, right? So it's like a Zen Cohen, you know? What are some common like tropes out there around weight loss and fitness that you think are wrong that are misleading people?

You know, fat people are lazy. This is, I think very misleading because first of all, just in an almost comedic sense, do you know how hard it is to be obese? Like it's very difficult. You have to, and not that food is super expensive or the amount of junk food is just omnipresent. Every point of commerce,

you can get 2000 calories for a couple bucks. But just moving through space and time is difficult. That's one of them. I don't know. There are so many, you know, I think the insulin model for obesity is just completely ridiculous and sent a bunch of people down a path that, it's not that it's not sustainable.

I just think for the people who are like me at all, it's not gonna get them anywhere near where they wanna be. You'll lose weight. The majority of weight that you lose that first couple of weeks is water. And there's no acknowledgement of that. When you stop eating carbohydrates, your body just purges itself of glycogen and hydration.

And like that will keep you coming back. Like you gain your weight back and you go, but I want that incentive that I got the first week of doing keto, I lost 10 pounds. I want that win again, but it's not getting you where you wanna go because you're not addressing the fact that you're taking in more energy than your body needs.

How important is momentum? Very important. I find it- Talk a little bit about this because I have some thoughts on this. Okay, so like for me, I was on a plane yesterday, got up at the crack of dawn, didn't sleep much, arrived here in California,

had a couple of things to do, never got to the gym this morning, didn't get a great night's sleep, didn't go to the gym. Now that's two days in a row. I don't go seven days to the gym, but I've now missed two days. Tomorrow, there are gonna be 300 reasons sitting in the forefront of my mind

why going to the gym isn't necessary, that I'm gonna have to fight through slightly harder than I otherwise would. When I get to the gym on Monday and I don't miss a day, going on Friday as a piece of cake, going on Saturday as a piece of cake, but when I miss a day going on Friday as a piece of cake, going on Saturday as a piece of cake. But when I miss one day, getting back to it has lost some of that momentum and it's just harder.

I think, I mean, obviously consistency is the most important thing. But what happens when you're consistent is you create momentum. And I like to think of momentum as like a spiritual force. Like it has its own field of energy. We all know how easy it is to go to the gym when we've gone 28 days in a row before that.

That's right. It's an autopilot thing. It's an afterthought, right? And then you have that interrupting situation. You go to a wedding, you travel, whatever, you get thrown off and suddenly it's hard. Like, why is that? It doesn't make any sense. No, I like that.

And so I just think when you've cultivated and developed, you have some momentum going, like you gotta fucking protect that against, like that is like to be dealt with reverence, knowing that it will get interrupted at some point, but when you have it, like really seeing it for what it is and respecting it. It's magical.

It becomes like a, it's a very powerful thing, I think. And then having the ability to have grace with yourself when life happens and you do get interrupted. And doing that thing that we also learned in A, which is like if you relapse and then you beat yourself up, you've made the second mistake, right? So just get how quickly can you get back to square one and start to rebuild again and not be in that shame spiral

that we've all experienced when we allow ourselves to, you know, fall a little bit. Yeah, yeah, I think that that, and even being aware of it too, because when you get the momentum and then it is hard, you can remind yourself, but it's not gonna be hard forever. I'm gonna get that momentum back.

I'm gonna get that wind beneath me that's gonna help push me. I just have to get back to it. It's tough though, man. Like you fall off and then you're like, it's too hard, forget it. And then you just give up. And then like your habits across the board

in every aspect of your life, just, you know, go to pot as a result. You're waiting for the gift of desperation to get you back into it. And it doesn't have to be that way. Yeah. Pain is such an have to be that way. Yeah. Pain is such an amazing motivator for this. Like I know, you know, I don't go out of my way

to, you know, make changes in my life unless I'm backed into a corner. And it's always confounding that that choice is available to us. Like we don't have to be in pain. We don't have to be in crisis. We don't have to have congested heart failure, all these things like that you had to go through

to become the person you are. How do you counsel people around trying to make that choice short of the elevator going all the way down to the ground floor? This is where that piece of willingness comes in where I'm not out there trying to convert people I'm only really talking to people who who are there and just going like tell me what to do I don't know what to do and I'm

You know one of the things that I'm not super interested in doing is super interested in doing is spreading some message of the right way, because I don't really believe that, that I could broadcast the right way to everyone. But if I have somebody who I can really talk to and get a really as clear a picture of their circumstances as possible, then I can make implementations

that I think will be beneficial to them. But that's, you know, if you come up to me on the street and say, how'd you do it? I'm gonna give you a very truthful but dishonest answer, which is diet and exercise. That's the truth, but it's so dishonest. It's lacking a two hour conversation, you know? Yeah.

How has your sense of potential and possibility shifted as a result of this? Like as an artist and as a dad and a grandfather, right? You have a grand daughter. And a grandson. Oh, you have two grandkids. Two grandkids, yeah. That's insane.

How old are you? 49. Oh, you must've been young when you had kids. My wife was 20 when she had her first. The two older kids are my stepkids, but I've been raising them since they were three and five. Yeah, similar to two stepkids and two kids, similar situation.

No grandkids yet though. They're coming. Yeah, I don't know. We'll see. Having accomplished these things, obviously, self-esteem is a product of performing esteemable acts for yourself, right? And so that's very empowering.

And I would imagine shifts your worldview on like what you're capable of and, you know, what you, you know, the kind of person that you could become as somebody who's continually trying to grow and evolve. Yeah, there's an idea for me, the thing that I like to do is to imagine in a way that you're talking about

who I would like to be, who I would like to evolve into. And then even if it's just so absurdly far-fetched, I'm aiming in that direction. I'm casting my line towards that so that every day I'm casting my line towards that so that every day I'm transforming, even if it's imperceptible, I wanna be transforming a little bit or growing more towards that person.

And the idea of impossible, dude, my life is a fairy tale. And I'm still have this kind of, like corrupt narcissism where like, I think people are looking at me and talking about me and don't like me and I'm still embarrassed about myself. And I often have to tell that voice to shut the fuck up and to get out of the way because I'm awesome

and I'm doing great. And I have people in my life who love me very much. And if that voice is right and there is somebody out there saying bad things, then that person is irrelevant to my life and the person I wanna become. How does this translate into your parenting? Parenting has been interesting.

Parenting has been interesting. I was raised in a very, you know, food was regulated. And so I wanted very much to be not, like I thought that that was one of the main drivers to me going the route I did. And when my daughter who's now 20 was four, she was diagnosed with type one diabetes. And suddenly I found myself having to restrict her food, not saying no necessarily to stuff,

but juice for her was literally medicinal or poison in very stark terms. If she had juice without, really she should never have juice unless she has crashing low blood sugar and then it's to save her life. And that was a real mind fuck, dude. It was really hard.

I mean, it's like the universe designed this. Like the one thing that, you know, is your biggest like trigger and pain point. Yeah. It was like, hey, now you're in a position where you have to do this for your kid. You have to. And it actually, in a strange way,

allowed me to forgive my parents because my parents were doing exactly the same thing. Now, I look at a picture of myself at five and don't see a little kid who's obese and needs to be on a diet. Doesn't matter. They did. They saw a situation and they thought

we have to do something about this in the exact same way that I see the situation with my daughter when she's four and go like, fuck, we can't keep juice in the house. And if we do, it's medicinal. in the house and if we do, it's medicinal, you know? Well, also not trying to repeat, you know, like instill that same trauma in her and that fear, right? I think impossible not to when you have a four year old.

She has a disease. Yeah, and yeah, you have to police what she's eating. And I'm now the cop saying, no, you can't eat that. Or if you eat that and I give you insulin for it, you have to eat that now. It was so fucked up. And I didn't navigate it perfectly. And I battled with it a lot.

And it was very, very hard. And like, woe is me, it was hard on her. And she's like very toughened because of it. And she's doing great. And, but we struggled for a long time. I, she wound up going to a boarding school and I had, when she was 12, 13, 14, her continuous glucose monitor would, I had the app,

so I could look at it. So I knew what her blood sugar was 24 hours a day. And I would call her panicked five, six times a day going like, why haven't you taken insulin? What are you doing? Or calling a teacher to go, her blood sugar is too low. Go make her drink juice, you know. Which is just a different version

of what your dad did to you. That's right. That caused that rift. That's right. And it was completely insane. And I'll tell you this in all honesty, her A1C was elevated until I said, listen, I can't do this anymore.

I'm going to turn this over to you and whatever happens to you, it's on you. And I think I tried that once, but not honestly. I was still sneaking peaks of her blood sugar and there was no change and I'm panicking and freaking out and thinking my kid's gonna die and how could I let her die? But when I finally really did it,

deleted the app from my phone and really said, I'm not gonna even talk to you about this anymore. I think three months later, she had a normal A1C or maybe it was six months later, but- Give her the space to take ownership of it and figure it out. I mean, you basically had to do what your wife did for you.

Yeah, and it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do because I felt like my kid's life was on the line and it was to a degree, but it wasn't my place to be responsible for her life anymore. Scary though, that's hard as a parent. Yeah. That's an extreme example.

Dude, I can't believe that's what the universe gave me. I know, it's like, it's perfect. It was like perfectly, it's like, how can you not have some connection with spiritual? It's like so how can you not have some connection with spiritual? It's like so, you know, clear as day that there's like this lesson for you to learn here. But on top of that, just being this disciplined person around food and exercise,

but also having had such bad experiences with all of that as a kid and, you know, having all kinds of complicated emotions around it, there's no clear line as to how you guide the young people in your house. You don't wanna push them in the way that you were pushed, type one diabetic aside. I didn't wanna push them at all. I wanted to just like, I'm gonna be a good example

and I'm gonna allow you guys, you know, we're very much the house where with substances, my wife drinks, there's alcohol in our house. She does not have a problem with it. I did not want to create a problem for my kids. And so we were the house that was like, listen, if you guys wanna do something, fine, you just communicate with us and you can do it here.

And we're not gonna yell and scream and tell you you're bad. If you're ever at a party and you don't have a ride home or you're drunk, call us, we'll come and get you at any time of the night. There will be no judgment. We don't even have to talk about it if you really don't want to, but please recognize that you're not gonna, we're not gonna judge you for this.

And that seems to have worked pretty well. That has been successful. That's the most important thing in my experience of parenting. You wanna be the person that they instantly call when they're in a problem and they're not hung up about it because you've built that foundation of trust and open communication where they feel safe

and they feel like, you know, the way I was, like the last person I would call with my parents, you know, I'd call anybody but them, right? Terrified, ashamed, all of that. And in order, in my experience, in order to achieve that kind of open communication where they feel like they're trusted and accepted and all of that,

you have to let go of being too much of a task master. You know what I mean? You gotta like, you lead by example, these are the habits and this is how we eat here or this is the things I do without that like unhealthy expectation or attachment that they have to follow you and hope that they learn over time through osmosis, that what you're doing is healthy

or they get to make their own judgments around that while also recognizing, like they have to find themselves. And in order to do that, they have to push against you and go out and do other things. And you have to have space for that. It's the realization that you're dealing with another human being. Yeah, sentient and yeah.

Right, like there's this- Sovereign. There's this thing of going like, this is my kid as though like I have ownership over this and I'm shaping it in my image to some degree and the morals must be the same and the ideas and the points of view about the world must be the ones I instill in this person. And the realization that like,

oh no, that's just a human being that I've spent a lot of time with. And all I wanna do, like my job is to not infect that person with my garbage. That's the biggest gift I can give to my kids. So the communication's good these days. That's the good thing. The older you get too, it's just like, you just want them to days. That's the good thing. The older you get too, it's just like,

you just want them to call. That's it. Yeah. I check in, chat with them. What are the things that are still a big struggle for you that throw you off your game? Travel, travel is tough. I find myself traveling a lot.

That throws me off my game a little bit, but it's not, you know, like there is still, you know, there is still this sneaking desire that comes up every now and again that I wanna graduate from the program. You know what I mean? That I want the degree and then I want to not have to think about it anymore. And that's really dangerous.

And that's something I have to keep in check every now and again. I have to like really bring myself back down and go like, oh, you better check in with somebody dude. You know, this psychiatrist Phil Stutz, I've had him on the show a couple of times. Somebody made a movie about him. Yeah, he lives- Yeah, Jonah Hill

made a documentary about him. He's a beautiful, remarkable guy, but he has these three truths about life. And he sees all these like ballers and like high rolling dudes who have everything and are unhappy, right? Right. And he's like, most of them are unhappy

or dissatisfied with their life because they fail to recognize these three fundamental truths of life, which are pain, uncertainty, and the need for constant work. And like, I have like a bracelet with these things on it. It's like, there's no destination here. You will never conquer uncertainty. You'll never like work so hard and amass so much

or get to a place where you're not gonna have to deal with shit that just goes haywire. There's always gonna be pain and you're always gonna have to do work. And if you can accept that, then maybe you can like meet these obstacles and these challenges with a little more grace because you're not expecting it to be otherwise.

Don't you think just that meeting them intentionally gets you almost all the way there, just going like, this is the obstacle, this is the task for today or for my life. But I think that we, or I was constantly trying to avoid those obstacles by just doing something else or feeling bad for myself or using substances or eating my way through pain and uncertainty

and the need to do work. Sure. Just being aware of it is the game. Being aware of it. And I think it does have a lot to do with, especially as like somebody in recovery, like I can get attached in an unhealthy way to almost anything.

And part of that attachment, whether it's a particular diet or a training regimen, is this implicit promise in it that like, if you do this thing, it's gonna fix you and solve your problems. And you won't have to deal with uncertainty. Like there's a, it's the control, right? It's like back to the serenity prayer.

Like you're diluting yourself into thinking that you can exert control over your life if you just follow these certain protocols. And even if those protocols are moving your life forward in a positive way, that relationship is unhealthy if it's loaded with that like false promise. And the acceptance piece is like, this is good, I'll keep doing this, but fundamentally

I'm still in a human body. And this is not gonna absolve me of all the pain and uncertainty and difficulty that I'll inevitably have to face in my life. Yeah, I love that. For the longest time I was communicating about this only on like Instagram and it's a picture and then I would go to write about it

and then you're limited to something, 2,500 characters, which is, you can't, I found, you can't communicate all that much. Now on Substack, I can write an essay and it can be as long as I want. And that's the piece is being able to communicate to people that like, I've lost 300 pounds, I'm sober, I'm happily married, I have four beautiful daughters,

I have two grandchildren, I consider my life a fairy tale. I look at my life and think it couldn't have gone any better. There is not one aspect of it. And still I struggle every day and still there's pain and still there's setbacks and still there's difficulty and barriers that I have to overcome. And that's a hard message sometimes to communicate in five, 10 words in a caption or with a picture.

Yeah, your sub stack is fantastic. And you're a really good writer. Like it's very poetic the way that you share and so much thought has gone into these pieces that you write. Like this is the perfect platform for you. I love it. It's my favorite thing to do

because I want to get into as much nuance as possible because that's all I lacked for so long was don't eat carbohydrates. It was this binary, which works for me in sobriety. I love the binary. I love the binary in life. It's very easy to be a yes or no. I'm on this team or I'm on that team,

but that doesn't get you there with food because you don't stop eating. But you have to meet people where they're at. And some people need the binary, you know, they have to do that before they can, they have to do the doing part before you can get to the undoing part. And that's why it's like, it's so difficult.

You said it earlier, like, I'm not here to lie. I can't tell you what to do or not to do, you know, those are decisions you have to make, which makes it such an intractable problem to solve because we all just want like, Ethan, you did it. Well, no, my wife, my wife amazingly is like, you tell me what to do all the time, you know, like she'll come to me and I'll say to her,

I've known you for 30 years. I know your habits. I know your preferences. I've known you for 30 years. I know your habits. I know your preferences. I know what your willingness level is. I know that, you know, what, so yeah, I'll tell you what to do because I've got all this data. If I'm sitting with somebody and I can take an inventory of their life,

then I'm more than happy to say, you should do this. But, you know, spreading that on the internet I think is actually dangerous. I think sending a message out there that everyone should do X, devoid of nuance, I think is actually dangerous. Yeah, yeah. Which makes it, my next question is like,

when are you writing a book? Yeah, I've written one. But again, it's non-prescriptive. It's very much just, here's what I went through. Here's what I went through in this situation. And here's what I went through in this situation. But the idea of saying, you should food journal. I will say, I found food journaling to be super helpful,

but I'm not gonna say everybody should food journal. Yeah. I think here's the, here's what I did and why I did it book. But I think there's another book in you that is a more philosophical approach to all of this that isn't necessarily a how-to book, but is like a perspective.

Because I think you have thought about this so deeply and you're so good at putting words to it without being preachy or overly directive to people. But that's a hard book to write. It's a hard book to write. I am actually toying with that, with a philosophy professor, with a version of that. But it's amazing that you said that

because it is actually that's the direction we're going. But it's broader, like for me, when I read Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird or Rick Rubin's The Creative Act, those books to me are diet books. Oh yeah. Or if I'm struggling with, if I'm having a rough day, you know, if I suddenly the laws are more lenient

and I see a guy shooting up on the corner and suddenly that idea is in my head and I open one of those books, those books are about sobriety. Or if I'm struggling with work, those books are about work. So diet is found for me more in philosophical texts that are talking about being more harmonious with the universe.

Right, it's not about the food, it's about your relationship with yourself. And in order to understand that, you gotta go all the way back to the beginning and you gotta cast yourself all the way forward and you have to be a Calvinist and a Buddhist. Right. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Yeah. And it's tough. Yeah. And it's doubly tougher when you have somebody telling you just don't eat carbohydrates or lectins or seed oils that seed oils and red dye 40 are the problem.

I made the terrible mistake of saying to my family over the holidays that I did not think RFK was going to, in fact, make America healthy again. And this is not a knock on him. I think he's pretty cool, but I don't think that banning red dye 40 solves the obesity crisis. It's a distraction.

Nor does beef tallow at whatever fast food. It's like, this is not really getting to the heart of what we really need to be talking about. It's trendy and fun and it gets headlines, but it's missing the bigger picture. Yeah. Also substituting corn oil for regular sugar, that's not gonna make,

that's not gonna kill the Coca-Cola industry. You know? Yeah, it's almost like encouraging people to go and eat those French fries and drink the Coke. Right, right. That's right, there you go. The other piece that I think is worthy of noting with you is that these changes that you've made in your life

with food and with fitness are much more than that in that like when I read your sub stack posts or I just being in your presence, it's obvious, like you're somebody who's just committed to change as a way of being, like growth is your mandate. And that has manifested in your relationship with food and your body and fitness and the like. But what you're not doing that I see so many people do

is get caught up in one lane. Like whether it's a particular diet or a particular approach to fitness or being a certain kind of athlete. And then suddenly becoming an evangelist of that. Cause I think what happens is people make a change, their life becomes so much better and they're so enthusiastic about it.

They wanna shout from the mountain tops to everybody about how amazing it is, because it was so positively transformative. But then what liberated them, it becomes a prison and keeps them stuck. And they just, they stay in that place and they don't continue to grow and evolve and change in all these other ways.

And like, for me, I always look at it like, for example, you know, triathlon or ultra endurance sports, like this was an incredible teacher. I learned so much about myself, but if I stayed in it and just kept racing and racing and racing, like the dividend on that starts to get pretty slim, right? Like how many more lessons am I gonna learn?

Like I can always try to go further or faster or farther or whatever. And there's always something to be learned by taking your body to that edge. But I have so many other blind spots in my life where I'm a screw up and I trip myself up. And if I stay over here, I'm really just like in denial or avoidance of that.

And I'm trying to always like have the courage to like walk into those areas that I really don't want to. Because that's the impulse that got me on this journey to begin with, right? And it feels like a betrayal to not keep doing it. And I'm not saying I'd do it perfectly. I'm terrible at it. Like I don't wanna do any of this.

But I feel like you're kindred in that. Like you're, it's not about the food and the weight and the fitness. It's about like trying to live an expansive life. Yeah, it's the idea that, you know, I found with anything that I get a hankering of like, I wanna do something. And if I go into it feeling like I have nothing to learn

that I can just go do it, I fail. And so I wanna approach everything as though there's still many lessons to learn. In the same way, it can't just be one thing because I will slip into that. I will slip into, I'm gonna just ride my bike. I'm gonna just row on the rowing machine. I'm just gonna do CrossFit.

I'm just gonna be a bodybuilder. I'm just gonna do keto. I'm just gonna do, you know, bodybuilder type dieting of chicken, broccoli and rice. And none of those present the fullness of life that I actually want. None of those allow me to be the father and husband and friend and business associate that I want to be.

And so- Yeah, we do these things so that we can show up in our life in the areas of a life that are actually important. Whereas it's very easy to make that your life and lose the rest of it. And I've done all that too. I neglected my wife and kids.

I would ride my bike eight hours a day and then be basically too tired to do anything with them. There were many years where my little kids would bake cookies and I wouldn't take a bite of them because I was being so pious with my diet that that food was taboo for me. And I wouldn't share that moment with them. And I look back on that with great regret.

Right, you're like missing the bigger miracle. Yeah, which is just being present and being the best version of who I am today with the idea that I'm going to improve. And that improvement doesn't have to be radical every day. It can be slight, it can be through reading or exercise or conversing like this for me is an improvement. This makes me better, our conversation.

There's a soulfulness in your writing as well. Your hint without like being direct about it, like you're always kind of like tiptoeing around or hinting at like deeper meaning here. Yeah. Because I'm sure like a big part of your audience are some Jim bros or some overweight dudes who are looking to you as the lighthouse.

Right, and the danger would be chicken, broccoli, and rice, progressive overload, that's it. Because that is the truth. But again, I think it's dishonest because I think there's more than that. I think there is a soulfulness to be found in all of this. What's the one change you know you need to make, but you're afraid to make?

Quitting nicotine probably. That's a tough one. That's probably it. Now it's a nootropic. Right, exactly. And it staves off Alzheimer's apparently. There's so many great benefits to nicotine. I've not had a cigarette in 20 years,

but I've been woefully addicted to nicotine this whole time. Yeah. Well, there you go. You called yourself out. There's no secret around that. No, no, I know. I mean, look, that's a very superficial answer.

I'm sure we could get really deep and figure- Into the deep wounding. Yeah, exactly. And I would cry and it would be hard. And then I would confront it and have to do anything about it. But I'm so aware of nicotine that I've said it to you. I'm not gonna quit.

You know what I mean? I gotcha. We gotta wind this up. But I wanna leave people with just a little encouragement for the person who's tiptoeing around making a change, I wanna leave people with just a little encouragement for the person who's tiptoeing around making a change, maybe is a little bit afraid, not in the practical sense, but maybe in the orienting their mind around

how to approach or encourage them to take that first step and follow it up until they can get a little momentum. So I think any point of responsibility that you can put in that's difficult without being truly burdensome as a first step can be magical. When I was 550 pounds, I remember some days just walking past my car door to the end of my car. And that was more than I had to do.

And that was enough because that was something and that you can always build on stuff. The idea that you could barely walk to your car and then went on to ride every stage of the Tour de France. Right, but this doesn't happen overnight. It's stunning, I know. But it begins with that walk to the car.

That's right. You know, this is the other terrible burden of a life lived in sound bites and through Twitter where you get however many characters, I don't know, maybe there's no limit now, but I remember when it started, it was 140 characters and you had to like come up with your slogan that communicated everything in two sentences and it's immediacy and nothing's immediate.

None of this is immediate. This conversation wasn't immediate. It took us two hours to get to this, you know. And how many years of going back, I don't know when I first reached out to you or how this began, but it happened a long time ago. A long time ago. This was a long time in the making, but,

and this is great, get rid of immediacy, allow life to unfold in like this marvelous, mysterious way that it will and take a step in a direction and then just take another step, but don't try to get to the finish line today because there's no finish line, the finish line is death. You said that you talk about all these things

from a selfish perspective, but it really is an act of service. And I think services you're calling and what you're doing right now is needed and incredibly nourishing to a lot of people. It's a beautiful thing that you're doing and I appreciate you coming here and sharing so openly. Thanks for having me.

It's super inspiring, man. And I can't wait to see what you do next in this continual evolution and unfolding of your life. Yeah, me too. I'm excited. It was great to get to know you a little bit. Appreciate it. You too. Thank you.

Right on, cheers, peace. Thank you. Right on, cheers, peace. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive

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