The Rich Roll Podcast - JD Roth: The Big Fat Truth Behind The Controversial King of Weight Loss TV

Episode Date: May 15, 2017

Despite our cultural obsession with weight loss, we've never been fatter. Right now, one out of every three U.S. adults are obese. Another third are overweight. Even worse? 18% of our children are morbidly obese with rates continuing to soar. In lockstep with our obesity epidemic is a shocking escalation of chronic lifestyle illness, including high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, liver disease, and stroke. One out of every three Americans will die of heart disease. Close to 30% of the adult population is diabetic or pre-diabetic. The problem is so bad, 75% of all U.S. healthcare costs are attributable to these conditions — illnesses that quite ironically are avoidable and often reversible through some fairly simple diet and lifestyle changes. So why can't we lose the weight and keep it off? This is the question JD Roth has devoted his life to answering. The man behind a television empire built on the shoulders of a prime-time juggernaut called The Biggest Loser — which aired for an astonishing 17 seasons — JD is the award-winning producer and reality-TV pioneer behind some of the most successful and prolific television programs of our era. More than a decade ago, JD first introduced viewers to the weight-loss TV arena with The Biggest Loser on NBC – now a worldwide, half-billion-dollar brand – and expanded upon it with Extreme Weight Loss on ABC, which ran for five seasons and airs as Obese in more than 130 countries. JD is also author of Big Fat Truth*, and a brand-new television series of the same name (premiering June 11 at 8pm ET/PT on Z Living), which challenges and guides groups of participants unhappy with their weight and health (including some former Biggest Loser contestants who regained their weight), providing them the tools to uncover and tackle the real issues behind the weight while encouraging them to adopt a whole food, plant-based diet over a three month period of mental, emotional and practical mentorship by JD and a panel of experts that include none other than podcast favorite Michael Greger, MD (and a brief appearance by yours truly). Never before has a show advanced plant-based eating as a central conceit. A first in the history of television, I cannot overstate how excited this is for the movement and the world. Today I sit down with the blockbuster producer to unpack it all — including the whirl of controversy that surrounds the successful shows he created. This is a conversation about the cultural phenomenon of weight loss television that JD originated, framed and fashioned. It's about the overlooked mental and emotional barriers that prevent too many from achieving and maintaining optimal weight and health. And it's a conversation about his passion for the plant-based lifestyle, as well as the hows and whys behind his book and new television show that advance this lifestyle as the model way to not only lose weight, but keep it off for good. Irrespective of your opinion on JD's former shows, I can honestly say that JD is truly passionate about helping people — I've seen it first hand, up close and personal. So I urge you to set aside any pre-conceived notions you may have and enjoy! Rich

You need to plant the flag in the sand that says, this year I'm going to do X. Make it public. The more public you make it, the more likely you are to be successful. Get other people involved. People want to help. I think people think no one wants to get involved in their life. Ask for help.

People want to help you, and they will support you. If you want to just go out with the same friends and have ribs, french fries, and ice cream, then that's what's going to happen. You have to change some of those friends if they won't get on board. You have to really want to change something in your life to be successful. Like anyone, not just weight loss, right? You want to make more money?

What are you going to do? Work harder or work less? It's three easy steps to accomplish anything. First, identify the problem. Hey, I'm overweight. I'm losing all these things in my life I can't do anymore. Gosh, it's terrible. I'm going to die at a young age.

Number two, make a list what you need to do. Oh, I need to move more. I need to eat better. Not rocket science. In the case of a kid, it's usually I need to do my homework. I need to study for the test, right? Number three, it's the only step nobody gets to. It's the only step that matters. And so if anyone's looking for this giant secret that I have on step number three, there isn't one. Step

number three is go do it. Stop talking about it and actually do something. That's JD Roth, this week on The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Let's talk about obesity. On the one hand, we all know that it's an epidemic, but on the other hand, I'm really not sure that everyone fully comprehends just how severe this problem really is. It's an epidemic that is so large that currently one in three U.S. adults are obese and another third are overweight. But this puts an alarming amount of our nation at serious risk for contracting a whole litany of chronic lifestyle-related illnesses, everything from high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, liver disease, stroke.

According to the CDC, more than 30 chronic health conditions are directly attributable to being obese or overweight. And this problem, this problem of obesity is so common in our culture that today's guest was able to build an entire career around the issue, creating and producing a little known TV show you might've heard of called The Biggest Loser. If you're under a rock and you've never heard of it, it is a primetime juggernaut that aired for an astonishing 17 seasons on network television, as well as another show called Extreme Weight Loss, which was also super successful. My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. This is my podcast. Thanks for tuning in today.

And today I sit down with J.D. Roth, who is the man behind these blockbuster television shows. We sit down to talk about his career, the cultural phenomenon created by his shows, as well as all the controversies that swirl around and surround them. We really unpack that in depth. We get into the hows and whys and whatnots behind his decision, a decision that I think might surprise many of you to adopt a plant-based lifestyle. It's a decision he made about two and a half years ago. Okay, J.D. Roth. I guess the first thing that I want to talk about is that I am more than aware that there is a lot of criticism and controversy that swirls around his shows. The Biggest Loser was this crazy cultural phenomenon that I think it's fair to say was essentially built on, in many ways, fat shaming people and the extraordinary pressure

that the contestants were under to lose an extreme amount of weight in what many experts consider to be an unreasonable amount of time. And the fact that in many cases, contestants lost the wait temporarily only to put it back on again after their season ended only kind of fueled this controversy and allowed it to sort of perpetuate well beyond the show. So I wanted to say as prefatory to this conversation that we get into all of this, which is great. JD was more than happy to discuss all of this, which I thought was really cool and very open-minded of him. We also talk about food, lifestyle, and the often overlooked mental issues that trigger people into treating their emotional problems with food instead of doing the work. We talk about J.D.'s book,

The Big Fat Truth, which explores the plant-based lifestyle, his decision to adopt a plant-based lifestyle, the mental and psychological barriers that prevent most people from being healthy. And we also talk about his latest TV show, which goes by the same name, The Big Fat Truth, which premieres Sunday, June 11th at 8 p.m. Eastern and Pacific on a channel called Z Living, Z Living, June 11th. And it's really cool. It's this new show that challenges and guides groups of participants unhappy with their weight and their health, including a couple of former biggest loser contestants who gained the weight back and provides them with the tools to help them uncover and tackle the real issues behind the weight as they face the big fat truth.

And what's super interesting and unique about this new television show, what's fundamental to it, is that it is adopting this plant-based diet approach to treating these people. It's the first TV show ever to do this, which is amazing. It features friend of the podcast, Dr. Michael Greger, as a sort of medical consultant on the program, which, which is amazing. It features friend of the podcast, Dr. Michael Greger as a sort of medical consultant on the program, which I think is amazing. And I even got to do a day on the show. I'll probably show up in a cameo in one of the episodes. And you know, that was super fun. So anyway, we get into all of this stuff. We talk about how genetics may load the gun, but decisions pull the trigger. We talk about how the mental aspects of health, wellness, and weight loss are really crucial and central to resolving these problems,

how the real workout begins in your head. And regardless of your thoughts on his former shows, I can honestly say that JD sincerely cares about these issues. I really do think his heart is in the right place. He's a really good guy. I'm excited about his new TV show. And we had a really great conversation that I think you guys are going to enjoy very, very much. So with all that said, here's me and JD. All right, man, let's rock it.

Let's do it. So good to see you. You too. I always feel lucky to be in a room with you. Oh, come on. I admit that. It's true. It's true. I'm a big fan. Well, I appreciate you. You too. I always feel lucky to be in a room with you. Oh, come on. I admit that. It's true. It's true.

I'm a big fan. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to sit down and talk to me. You got a lot of exciting things going on right now, and I want to just dive into all of it, man. There are three books that sit on my desk, and yours is one of them. I appreciate that. And you told me you went running this morning, right? I did.

I did. That's good. Awesome. Cool. Well, I mean, first and foremost, let's talk about the TV show. I mean, this is super exciting. The first plant-based approach to lifestyle alteration that is going to go to air pretty soon, right? In April? Yeah. I think it's going to be in May now, a little bit later. But for me, this is how I live my life. So it's such a blessing to be in May now, a little bit later. But for me, you know, this is how I live my life. So it's such a blessing to be able to have something that you wake up every day excited

about and turn that into entertainment. So now instead of reaching whatever it is, maybe a doctor can reach 20 or 30 patients a week, right? I can reach potentially millions of people in a week by doing the show. And so it just helps to get that message out there, which is important to me. And I know it's important to you too. Yeah, of course. So the big fat truth, where did the idea for this come from? The idea came out of my book, which is the same title, the big fat truth. What I really wanted to do was expose kind of the big fat truth around weight loss and how it really doesn't have much

to do with being in the gym, which most of my shows, as you know, that's a priority. It really has to do with the mental work that you do and the food that you put in your mouth. And that's it. And what I found over the years is the more focus you get on the food, the better the results. Yeah. You can't exercise your way out of a poor diet. Not at all. Ultimately. I mean, you can get yourself to a place where you look good, but if you're dying on the inside and your arteries are clogged, that's not going to go in a good direction for you.

You can't run that off. Right. And I think what I learned so far is that people who overeat, and I'm not talking about the guy who's 20 pounds overweight. I'm talking about the people I work with, 300, 400, 500 pounds. They need volume. And so imagine all these people, their whole life have been told you need to go on a diet. What's the first, the real definition of a diet is restriction. So somebody who loves volume, that's a problem

right off the bat. They're instantly, they feel like they're restricting. They're not getting what they want. The more they don't get what they want, the more they want it. Then it's a mental game that they can't win. So if I can replace volume with volume, it's no longer a diet. Right. This is something that Chef AJ talks about all the time. Do you know Chef AJ? I do. Yeah, talking about nutritional density.

And when she gives her talk, she shows these pictures of the inside of his stomach. And however many, like 400 calories. If it's oil, it's just a tiny, you know, it's like a couple teaspoons. Or if you're just eating vegetables, you know, like- Fill the room. Yeah. You can fill your entire stomach and you have all this nutritional density, but it's very calorically low in density. Yeah. And that's the beauty. So the way I put it is I'm going to replace a pound of bricks that you've been eating with a pound of feathers.

It's still a pound, only it's so much better for you. And instead of being calorically dense, it is nutritionally dense, which is what your body needs. And once you give your body what it needs and you start feeding your mind, the two feed off of each other and then the body follows. You don't have to do much work after that. So how did you arrive at this? Like, what is your story of, you know, kind of being delivered to the plant-based approach to living? Yeah, I started by eating a lot of steak and a lot of French fries and a lot of hamburgers and working out a ton. And I definitely ate healthier than the

next guy, right? You know, I mean, I was definitely conscious of what I was eating. I never had a weight problem my whole life. And my wife started going plant-based. What inspired her? She had high cholesterol based on a family gene. And of course, as we know, my favorite Dr. Gregor Lyon ever is genetics load the gun and decisions pull the trigger. And she decided, you know what I want to do? I'm just going to make better decisions. And so she got really hardcore about it. She did not want to be on medication. And- I'm sure the doctors were telling her, look, you got to be on stat and take the pills, right?

Her dad's on the pill, right? Everyone in her family is taking the pill. It's genetic. It's just something you're going to have to do. I fight it. It's too much work. So how did she come into this awareness that there might be another way? She went and did some research online. She went to nutrition.org and started getting – Gregor's voice was playing in my head. It was playing so much in the house. And she slowly figured it out, and it was trial and error.

And then I have the cancer gene in my family, the BRCA gene, and it's inevitable at some point that I'm going to be staring that in the face. And all the research pointed to, well, you can prevent this, that you can actually, and that's when the forks over knives, we got into that and we became friends with T. Colin Campbell. And once you are faced with all the research that's out there, you cannot deny it. It's impossible to deny it. And then slowly but surely, she was like, what I love about plant-based eaters, and I'm now one of them for the last two and a half years,

but here's what I love about plant-based eaters. They want you in their tents. They want you to just try it. A lot of times what I find is the real hardcore, you know, vegetarian, right? It's all or nothing. It's like you can't even wear a belt that's this. It's the planet. But something about whole food plant-based eaters, it's so inviting.

It's like, well, just try it for breakfast and see what you think. Yeah, don't let perfection be the enemy of progress. And I feel like there's an issue in the vegan camp in terms of how we communicate advocacy. And once somebody dips their toe in, if they make a mistake, then they get ganged up on. And then they retreat. And it's like, well, what do you expect them to do, right? You got to create a welcome mat for somebody where they feel comfortable enough to dip their toe in. And it's okay if they make a mistake. And you trust them to move forward, have their own journey with it.

It's a much easier sell to say to a friend of mine, hey, why don't you have what I have for lunch? How do you feel? Do you feel better? Maybe you want to try it for dinner too. You know, and slowly but surely, my dream is that one day we have meat Monday. That's my dream. Right. How about like no meat any of the time?

Right. That's getting into the perfection thing, right? But can you imagine if instead of meatless Monday, it got so good on the planet that you actually have meat Monday? We've reversed it. In the end, that's really the goal. And I was somebody who I wouldn't think in the beginning could have been converted. And now I'm such a believer and I feel so much better and life is so much easier because of it. Everyone thinks it's such a hard thing to do. It really isn't. Yeah, it's not. How do you travel? How do you do it when you're here? It's like, I've been doing it for 10 years. It's so rote. Like, I don't even think about it. It doesn't seem like an imposition or an inconvenience at all. So what do you do? You get to your hotel

room and what do you do? I'm curious. Well, I mean, first of all, I try to plan ahead and bring things on the plane if it's a long flight. And if I'm flying American, there's real food daily right in the LAX terminal. So I can get a green juice and something healthy to bring with me on the plane. If not, I make a trip to Whole Foods and get some nuts and some dates and some bananas and some green juice or something like that. I bring it with me. I try to sort of forecast, like look at where I'm going. Okay, where's the healthy market that's nearest to my hotel? Sometimes I'll take the cab directly to the market before I even check into the hotel.

I try to check into hotels that have little kitchens. If I'm traveling with my wife or my family, sometimes we even bring our Vitamix. So the more armed you are with convenient choices within arm's length, the better off you're going to be. And that's not always the case. Sometimes I'm moving all over the place and then I rely on Happy Cow to tell me where the closest vegan restaurant is. It always works out. I'm amazed that when you go to a restaurant that isn't vegan and you say, I'm plant-based. I would say a third of the time, they come back out from the kitchen and say,

oh, one of the chefs back there is plant-based too. He just wants to make you something. Are you okay with that? Yeah, they're kind of excited because now they get to make something different. And you can just, if you don't want to be in a position at the table, excuse yourself, go find the waiter,

go, hey man, just make me like the hugest salad you've ever seen. Or can you just whip up a couple of baked potatoes and maybe a plate of rice with vegetables, just whatever. It doesn't matter. It's like, just bring me a huge plate of whatever you got. And it's always fine. It always works out. And I've gone to crazy places. I've been across Saudi Arabia. I've been to Pakistan. I've been to Morocco. I've never had a problem. I mean, worst case scenario is late night room service where it's like rice and soggy vegetables. And so it's not like you're going to get a cafe

gratitude type dinner every time, but you can always make it work. You know what I mean? If you're committed and this is your thing, it's just never been that big of an issue. I was walking through Whole Foods Tuesday and I saw that in their restaurant, they had a jackfruit taco special. I stopped everything I was doing, sat down, had some jackfruit tacos. If you're aware and you want to be aware, it's all around you. Right. So two and a half years ago, how long after your wife? Was there a learning curve of getting on board with this or you just saw results with her or how did that process work for you? She was always 105 pounds soaking wet. She always looked good to me. You know what I mean?

She was always fit. She was always healthy. She was, she was always the one counting out her nuts. You know what I mean? This was something new and I was definitely not a believer right away. Hey, I invented weight loss, uh, in primetime. You're the guy. Don't tell me how I'm supposed to lose weight. I know more than you. What what's interesting about both you and your wife is that it wasn't about weight loss for either of you. Nope. It was about strictly a health choice. And she would bring things out.

And like any normal man, and I have two boys, we're cavemen. Put something in front of us that tastes good and we'll eat it. We don't care what it is. If you can make this table taste good, I'm eating it. And she'd bring something out. If it didn't taste good, we would just shake our heads.

And to her credit, she would go back in and she'd read, I don't know what, she threw it up in the air and it came down to something else and she'd bring it back out again. And we'd go, and then she'd do it a third time. And when she came out the fifth time and we'd go, yes, she'd put a check mark next to that one and she'd work on a new meal. And when she got 10 meals that were good, she kind of put those in the rotation and then we became consumed by it it sort of became you know like you it became kind of our way of storytelling our life and now nobody will even go to dinner with us without us ordering first right as you know which i'm not judging you know what i mean this is how i'm living my life this is the choice i'm making i will not get cancer one day and say oh why didn't I just do what I knew was the

healthiest thing I will that will not happen what will happen is maybe one day I will get it and I'll be able to say I did everything I could and if it happens at 80 maybe it would have happened at 60 if I didn't do these things meanwhile the vitality and the energy and all the benefits you get to experience leading up to that, even if, yeah, because sometimes shit just happens, right? Yep. So, you know, we can do the best that we can to avoid these things in certain circumstances. You know, it's not our fault, right? And when you work out seven days a week, I have no recovery issues.

I'll be 50 years old. I'm never sore. I'm never uncomfortable. I never have joint pain. No inflammation. That's a byproduct. Right. Well, you're preaching to the choir on that one.

That's my experience, and that's what I'm constantly talking about. And people think, like, oh, well, you're just an outlier. You have some enzyme that other people don't have or something like that. There are people that are very rooted in their beliefs around food, which is very emotional. And I'm sympathetic to that. You know, they can then be dismissive. Well, you can do it, but most people can't. Hey, look, is it a loss that I don't take my boys once a month to a steak dinner and do what guys do and watch the football? You know, it's I think as far as it's a social image that people

have of dads and their son or boys, huh? Meat, huh? We eat meat. But the reality is we do something else and it doesn't necessarily have to revolve around food. And it's the same nostalgia that they'll have when they get older to want to do those things. So I have not looked at it as a loss. In the beginning, it felt like a loss. Then you have the out-of-body experience when you go with your buddies to the steakhouse and you're a year into being plant-based. And so you think, oh, I'll just order the vegetables, the veggie sides. I'll be fine. Order the veggie sides.

And the room, all of a sudden, like a car accident in slow-mo, you watch everybody cutting into this animal and you are so grossed out by it. If you told me I would have that experience, I would have told you you're out of your mind. And literally it happened in slow motion for me. Of course, I go home, sleep like a baby. They got the meat sweats. They're sick as a dog the next day and I have nothing.

So your boys are both plant-based. They are at home. So what we serve, breakfast, dinner, 100% plant-based. If we go out to dinner, we tell them they can have whatever they want. And I think the reason for that is I don't need them going to college and coming unhinged. And I really believe that kids don't listen to a word you say, but they watch everything you do. And I think them just soaking up how important our own health is to us, moving, and also the way we eat, they're soaking it up. And so they understand the lifestyle and

they live it, but I don't want to put restrictions on them in their teenage years that seem extreme. Yeah. I think that that's a very similar approach that we've taken to our kids. We've got four and they're spread out in ages, but that's sort of the same rule. Like this is how we prepare food in the house. And my wife is an insane cook. And so they have learned over time to prefer that food, but by not creating rules about what they can or can't do outside the house allows them to explore themselves and to have agency over their choices. And I think as a developing human, that's really important. If you're too strict about these things, you're setting yourself up for rebellion later, because every kid is going to, you know, push the boundaries. And that's what they're supposed to do

as they mature. And, you know, just to say F you to the parents, you know, they're going to go and do it. And that's not healthy, right? So by allowing them that freedom to explore these things, meanwhile, educating them as best as you can and walking your talk, which is the most important thing. Totally agree. If you're face planning in Haagen-Dazs at midnight and you think your kids don't know, you're in for a big surprise because they know what's up. You know what I mean? They're much more attuned than you think. And they pay attention to those little subtle cues.

And so you're setting them up for success down the line. Because what's most important is how are they going to be eating 20 years from now? What are the choices they're going to make when nobody's looking at them? Right? Yeah, you think about it too from their perspective. If they feel that you're going to judge, then it's secretive. Right. Then they're going to lie.

Exactly. And then if they lie and it's secretive, then it becomes like there's some pleasure principle around that they've created around this secret. And I don't want it to be this great thing that they're sneaking around because it isn't. So I tell them, you want to have the ribs at dinner when we're out? Go for it. Knock yourself out. But at home, this is the way we eat and this is the way we live our life. And they're creating great habits. I am not worried. I don't know about you.

I'm not worried at all that they'll make the right decision when the time comes. And your wife's cholesterol? Unbelievably low and hard to imagine. Everyone in her family is north of 250. And hers is, I think she had a tested last week, 161, 162, which for somebody with the gene is unheard of. And, you know, LDL is off the charts, right? So that's where you want the right high and the right low. So when does it dawn upon you that there might be a TV show baked into this?

I think when I wrote the book and I felt that the shortcut or the mind games that I have been proprietarily giving to only contestants on the shows for years could be useful to a lot of other people, but there's no real narrative for a TV show in that, right? You show moments of conflict, you show highs and lows and weigh-ins and tears, but there's never any of this off-camera stuff that I thought was really valuable. There's a lot of really valuable stories that happen that aren't television worthy, but they're worthy to help somebody change their life. So I try to use those stories as part of the book to share with people how it's really done, where the magic really happens. So I took my speeches that I give every contestant almost verbatim and cut them into chapters and then tried to explore around that and

some personal stories in the show about commitment. You know what it's like. Someone says, I am going to be a plant-based eater. And then one day later, they're at McDonald's. So, or I'm going to go on a diet. And then that same day they're off the diet. So how do you show them what the picture of success looks like, allowing them to maybe create their own picture of what success looks like? People need help. And so I was hoping that the book would allow some help. And I don't preach in the book. I just share.

And I really thought that that could be a television show after I had written it. Right. And it's a conundrum, right? Because you're trying to approach this from a lifestyle, like a sustainable lifestyle alteration approach, as opposed to fixation on a number on a scale. Because when you have that, you sort of have a ticking clock, right? And you can create all kinds of tension and drama around that. But if you're saying to somebody, forget about what that number is and let's talk about the psychology. How do you think about food and what's going on with you emotionally? And how can I create a new narrative around who you are and what's important to you that can fuel your decision making for the rest of your life? It's harder to like, okay, how are we going to, how are we going to, you know, exploit as a negative word, but how can we, you know, take that and, and create something

adequately dramatic enough that it's going to play to a television audience. Hey, look, nobody is hungry enough to eat themselves to 400 pounds. What they perceive as hunger pain is emotional pain done Done. That's open shut case. So if that's the case, then at what point in their life, where did it happen? Where food became the moment of pleasure and that loop of miserable to pleasure, miserable to pleasure. I need this to be happy. I need this to be happy.

When did that happen? How many thousands of times have you repeated that loop? And then how do we break that loop and show you a new way to exercise pleasure? Yeah, because you've got to get into why people are using food to medicate their emotional state. And just to get people to understand and realize that that's what they're actually doing as opposed to just reflexively responding to a hunger impulse requires some psychological heavy lifting. A lot. You think about it. The number one thing I would tell everybody about weight loss, because you can imagine everywhere I go, first question is, hey, man, how can I lose 10 pounds? There's only two ways to guarantee it. One way is when you wake up in the morning,

what's the first thing you see? The bedrooms I've been in, every 50 pounds overweight, see. The bedrooms I've been in, every 50 pounds overweight, 50, 100, 150, 200, every 50 pounds overweight is a bedroom that is in more disaster and chaos than you've ever seen before. So by the time you get- Meaning the relationship or what is physically present in the bedroom? What are you talking about? Literally what is physically present in the bedroom. Like open pizza boxes on the bed or- Beyond, a big gulp with the sweat mark on it. Mail piled up to the ceiling. Laundry, piles of laundry, unopened boxes. It's a disaster. And my vision of how you can really, if you really want to lose weight, what you should do is empty your bedroom is the first thing you should do. Literally empty it. As sort of a metaphor for

the clutter that exists in the mind. Of course. It is a microcosm of what's going on in your mind. And it's the first thing your eyes, when they open, see. They see chaos. So chaos begins in your mind. Now you walk into the shower, and I've seen people with pliers for their hot side of their water because the handle broke off. And the shower, it's all beat up and disgusting in there. And the towel is 20 years old. And then they get

dressed. They go downstairs. They step over dog crap in the sidewalk. They get into their car where the door doesn't work. By the time you get to your office, that top left drawer that has the candy bar in it is the first reach you're going to grab. And it ain't even 9 a.m. Well, it's a physical manifestation of how somebody feels about themselves, right? Because once you start to tip those dominoes and the weight goes on and you feel less great about yourself than you did yesterday, that sets into motion a whole series of events that get you less and less interested in taking care of yourself. And so all those other things start to fall by the wayside. And pretty soon you won't even look at the reflection of the spoon you're lifting up to

your mouth every time. Well, who cares? Pretty soon you won't even look at the reflection of the spoon you're lifting up to your mouth every time. Well, who cares? Absolutely. Absolutely. So I say clean the bedroom out completely. Put a bed. Put a chair.

Put some dresser. A dresser in there. And that's it. Literally nothing else is in that room. And then when your eyes open in the morning, you see calm. You see organized. Right? And take a minute.

Sit there. Like I love meditation. I know you do too. But I love the idea of sitting in a space that you're comfortable in. Start the day off happy. If you make one good decision, first thing, when your eyes open, chances are you'll make two, you'll stack good decisions on top of each other. You make a bad decision to start with the day. It's going downhill from there for sure. What is the kind of typical psychological makeup of the standard person that shows up on one of your TV shows? You can divide it into one of maybe five or six categories.

And a lot of it has to do with not having the ability to process certain things that happen in their life. So let's say you have a loss of a parent. 99 out of 100 people can go through the grieving process. They're fine. They get past it. They move on. One out of 100 does not have the tools in the shed to deal with it. And because of that, life freezes in that moment.

I've met with people that still have their parents' insulin needles in their refrigerator nine years after their death. They still have stuff in the refrigerator for their parent. They haven't dealt with it and they're not equipped to deal with it. And so their life becomes frozen in that time. There could be 20 people that you know that had some form of abuse in their life. 15 of them move on with their life, successful relationships. Five couldn't process it emotionally and didn't have the tools or the parents around them or the people around them to help them and got caught in a trap.

And so I feel like we shouldn't treat these people in a negative way just by how they look. We should look at them. What I see when I see someone super overweight is I know someone's in pain. I know something happened to them, whether it was a loss, whether it was a parent divorce, whether it was abuse, something happened to them that they weren't equipped to handle. They didn't have the tools to deal with it. It's our job as human beings to reach out to those people and help them. And I find that the largest person in the room is the most invisible. And that's tragic to me. The bigger you get, the less people see you.

And you could put somebody like that on a diet and get them to lose a little bit of weight, but that's never going to – Oh, it's coming right back on. Yeah, it's going to come right back on. like the psychological work that has to go into, you know, reframing their perspective on themselves and ultimately, you know, reshaping their relationship with food. And those are the people that lose the weight and keep it off. The majority, as we all know, in the real world, you lose 100 pounds, it's less than 5% of the people two years later have kept it off. Which, by the way, is the same percentage for alcoholics and drug addicts who went to rehab. So it seems like that recidivism rate is very similar across the board. On our shows collectively, it's about 50%. So it's 10 times the national average.

So clearly we have a good mousetrap. It's just, we can't handle as many people as we'd like. I'd like to be able to handle millions of people like that. The world would be a better place because the work is very significant. You got to have people who want to look at the view less than they want to look in the mirror. Well, want is the critical word, right? Because they have to be willing. They have to be in enough pain or they have to be motivated enough by the foreseeable imagined future of what they want to be and achieve in order to get them into that place where they're willing to do the hard work that's going to be required to make that shift a shift that's going to actually stick. I'll give you the perfect example of what you just said. One year on The Biggest Loser, we had our finals for casting. Maybe 40 people come in. We're only going to take 15 of

them after we've narrowed it down from tens of thousands. And we watch them work out and we do speeches and we watch what they order, room service. And we really take a look at these people. I've gotten good at weeding out the people who aren't going to spend the time looking in the mirror. I get back from our medical team. Two of the people for medical reasons cannot continue. from our medical team, two of the people for medical reasons cannot continue. One of them was a pizza owner, owned a pizza shop and his name was Mario. And he looked like a guy who owns a pizza shop named Mario, right? But look in the dictionary under Mario, it's a picture of him. The other guy was a white collar guy who had a heart issue and they weren't going to let him continue because he was too sick to be on The Biggest Loser. Let me tell you the story. The pizza guy got so upset and so angry at the situation,

he zipped his bag up and left immediately without saying a word to anyone. The white collar guy said, you know what I'm going to do? Do you mind? I'm already here. There's four more days left of casting. Do you mind if I just listen to the speeches and see what people are working on in the gym and try to soak up as much knowledge as I can before I leave? I said, no, not a problem. Right, like the difference being the guy who was just in it for being on TV versus the guy who actually had a legitimate, genuine interest in changing his life. And the end of the story is after four days of watching this guy crush it and learn and be around people and inspire, I went back to the doctor and I said, is there anything we could do? Is there any test we could give him? And he said, actually there is, but it's $5,000 more, but it would clear him to be

on the show. I said, run the test. The guy got on and lost almost 200 pounds. The pizza guy, six months later, died of a heart attack. And I can't help but think, and it was his fourth time auditioning for the show. I wrote about it in the book. I can't help but think, what would have happened if after the first audition that he didn't get it, if he went home and did it? Would his wife still have a husband?

Would his daughter still have a dad? Would his daughter still have a dad? Would he still be on the planet to make people smile? He was one of the happiest guys I ever met. And it's too bad that in the end, he was so counting on the biggest loser solving all his problems versus him solving it and him inspiring himself that he ended up dying way too young.

That's tragic. But it also speaks to what we were talking about earlier about agency. If you're always looking at outside yourself for somebody else to solve this problem for you, as opposed to taking, shouldering the responsibility yourself and taking it seriously and doing the heavy lifting and the hard work and weathering the difficult moments that are inevitably going to be required of you. That's how you make the shift, right? Yep. Yep. Well, you make me nervous when I hear you say agency, I turn around and think someone's coming to take 10% in my world. Actually doing the podcast at CAA at an agency, right? So there's plenty of agents walking around outside. Take a 10% of what's in my pocket as we speak. That's funny. Well, let's, let's,

let's talk about the biggest loser. All right. Let's funny. Well, let's talk about The Biggest Loser, all right? Let's explore this a little bit. I mean, first of all, co-creator of the show, right? And your background, I mean, you were like a child actor, right? Yeah. And then like a voiceover actor and then like a game show host. Like you did it all as a young person, right? So you got into this business like super young.

I did, 10 years old. It's been 40 years in show business for me. Wow. And I don't think if someone said to me, hey, you're going to be producing weight loss shows, you know, I would have laughed. I would have been like, no, no. What was the plan?

I was going to be Pat Sajak. You know what I mean? So it wasn't Marlon Brando or Robert Redford. You knew that was, you wanted to be like a host. Oh, for sure. For sure. What is that? I was really good at playing myself.

Yeah. Were you like in the mirror as a kid holding a microphone pretending like you were – Worse. Wheel of Fortune or something? Worse. I would roll up the TV guide. This is the story my parents say. And when the mailman would come over and drop the mail off, I would interview him at the door.

I was always fascinated with that idea that you could be yourself. You could go on and kibitz and joke around and still flex that muscle of understanding a format, when to push, when to relax, when to lean in and move things forward, when not to. So when my family would sit home watching Wheel of Fortune, I would say Pat's lines and they would try to solve the puzzle and they would drive them crazy but that's always what i wanted to do is be a producer and honestly the convergence most people when they watch that they're in the seat of the contestant trying to solve the puzzle right no interest in that yeah and the convergence of game and reality around the year 2000 is what changed my life because reality was starting to be a real thing. Right.

And in the end, they needed people who understood game compliance and storytelling. And there weren't many that were young. Game show guys were old and salty dogs. And here I was at the time. I was 30 years old and had several thousand episodes of game shows, both in production and hosting behind me. What were some of the shows that you hosted? I hosted the first big show. I was in college at SC and I booked a show called Fun House in the late eighties. And it was supposed to be 22 episodes for the first season. By the end of the

first week, it was the number one, number one show in America for kids. And you're still in college. I'm still in a dorm. And I literally went from the dorm room to the cover of Teen Beat in less than a month. And they ordered 195 episodes of the show. Wow. And that changed my life completely. And I always knew, I met Dick Clark back in those days. And Dick said to me, hey, you're great.

You're great. You're the next me, kid. And he said, but remember, ownership is everything. Don't just be a meat puppet. That's, these are his exact words. And I realized in the end. And he was like, he created this huge production entity, right? That's right. And that was what really made him the money. You can be a meat puppet. You can look good, right? That's great. But owning the shows and controlling your destiny, giving yourself the jobs, owning formats, creating formats, producing formats, that was where it was. And were you studying film and television at USC? I was.

And I left early because the show just became so big I could no longer live in the dorm room. And I remember telling my Jewish mom, hey, the first year I don't have a TV show on the air, I'll go back and get my degree. Have you gone back? That was 1988. I've had a show every year since. Uh-huh. All right. So that set you up.

You're the new guy, right? Yeah. And so at some point – so was when this was so this was a long time ago right so just hundreds and hundreds of shows in between right yeah and then reality kind of enters the picture and blows up as and i was a storyteller i love telling stories fact that i could add game and story together no brainer up with formats, I did that every day for fun. So to come up with formats that were story-driven, it was like a dream come true.

Was I trying to come up with a weight loss show? No, I was trying to come up with a show I could sell. I remember when the network bought the show, they said, how much do you think someone can lose? I was like, a good salesman tells them whatever they want to hear. I go, 100 pounds. Guy's like, 100 pounds? Seriously? Absolutely. I didn't hundred pounds. Guys like a hundred pounds. Seriously?

Absolutely. I didn't even do the math to defy how many weeks of production by a hundred pounds to see how much they'd have to lose. Turns out it was a shitload. It was too much. There's no way. So I started calling experts around the country, weight loss experts, doctors, medical institutions. They all gave me the same answer. And like any good salesman, when you don't get the answer you want, you just hang up the phone and call somebody else. So I got one to two pounds a week, click, call the next one. One to two pounds a week, click. Now I'm panicked. Production starts. Right. You sold it, right? Yeah. I had promised 100 pounds.

There had never been a weight loss reality show right like this is brand new territory and if my memory serves me correctly it was i mean it was sort of a hard sell right like who's going to want to watch this tv is about one thing wish fulfillment beautiful people beautiful cars beautiful locations hot girls it was not about a 300 pound woman can you imagine pitching that to the network but it is about emotionally connecting with a protagonist right ding ding that was the thing that was how it ended up getting sold to be able to say to them hey look these are emotional stories of people like your sister and your brother and your parent and your co-worker and your best friend you know

these people and i really wanted to change the conversation at the dinner table. But I didn't know, I was a TV producer, not a weight loss fitness. And you were 30 at this time? I was, it was 14 years ago. So I was 34, 35 when the show premiered. And had you created other shows prior to that?

Yeah, I had big success with a show called For Love or Money. 28 million people watched the first finale. Four success with a show called For Love or Money. 28 million people watched the first finale, four seasons of that show on primetime at NBC. So this was the next NBC show that I was going to do. So then I go back to the president of NBC and I say, kind of in a whispered voice, hey, I know we started, but it turns out I called every expert in America. Turns out you can only lose one to two pounds a week. And I'll never forget this moment.

We're still friends. The guy leaned forward, crossed the table, and he said, it turns out if they lose only one to two pounds a week, you'll never work at this network again. You promised me 100 pounds. And this sets in motion a series of events. Panic. For better or worse, have created success, but also quite a bit of controversy.

You know what? I actually would argue the opposite, which is it has done more good for millions of people and inspired millions of people. In the beginning, I was just trying to get people to order the side salad instead of the French fries, trying to get people not to hit their snooze button. Who knew that there'd be a movement so big, it would almost be a new religion. You think about it, here's how I got the weight off of them. I looked at doctors and scientists and thought, all they're doing is measuring calories in

versus calories out equals one to two pounds a week. Nobody measured love, nobody measured hugs, nobody measured inspiration. Scientists don't measure shit like that because it doesn't interest them because that's not something they can calculate. So I loved the weight off of them. I ran next to them. I worked out with them. I cried with them. I hugged them. I was not afraid of their fat, of their sweat, of their smell, none of it. And I looked them in the eye and told them they could do it. And do you know how many years it had been since somebody looked them in the eye and said, you could do it? Decades. They were in a dark room with every light bulb out. I showed

them how to turn those light bulbs on. And in that moment of inspiration, we realized tears, really dealing with your emotional stuff, Tears weigh more than fat. And you could have a week where somebody lost one pound, a week where someone lost zero, and another week where they lost one. And then they have an emotional breakthrough and they lose 10 pounds, 12 pounds. And those tears do weigh more than fat. And you cannot have a breakthrough without a breakdown. I know that for sure.

Well, that is the reason why the show is so successful, right? It's the emotional component of it. It is the breakdown. It is the breakthrough. And it is the love and the support and the inspiration that comes from that. When you see these people that the average audience member can relate to, they see themselves or they see their relative or somebody that they care about deeply in that individual. And they go on that journey, that like hero's journey. Of course, you're going to, you're going to captivate people with trying to figure out what's going to happen next.

I mean, how many, I know the most miserable people on the planet can run a 7.0 on a treadmill for an hour. Big deal. I mean, they're happy, you know? So what makes you happy? How are you going to get happy inside? Whether you're fat, thin, tall, short, none of that matters. It's a game of endorphins, right? We're all chasing endorphins so we can all be happy. And that's really, I try to show them how to find that in their life again. And how many years has the show been going on? The show's been on 14 years. 14 years? We've done 18 seasons. Wow.

Yeah. 18 seasons. And how have you seen the show change over that period of time? Sure. Did it morph into something different than it originally was? Well, like all successful shows, there becomes a lot of people who jump onto that success, right? And then they all want their share. They all want a bite of the apple.

So yeah, of course it changes and it isn't as pure as it was in the beginning. And it's a competitive show. So you got people trying to outdo the people from before and outdo, right? So it's all of that that you try to manage in any hit, whether it's scripted, unscripted film, all has the same problems is that in a lot of ways shows eat themselves from the inside. The audience doesn't get tired of them. The people making the show get tired of figuring out how to make it new and fresh and exciting for them. And it becomes such a juggernaut. It's generating so much income for everybody involved

that you got to keep it going. No doubt about it. And I really felt like we were doing something really good. Think about it. Thanksgiving dinner, you're around the table. Every table in America, right? It's got a Thanksgiving dinner. You always pick on people at Thanksgiving dinner. First person you go to is the smoker. Hey man, you know that stuff can kill you. Put the cigarette down. You can't smoke anymore. Next person they go to, the drinker. Hey man, you could definitely have one or two less. Before our show, you would never go to the third person, which was your aunt who was 100 pounds overweight and say, you know, there is a way for you to get that weight off. You would have never

done that. And because of this show, the conversation has changed the dinner table. In fact, you might go to the overweight person first and say, you know, it's unhealthy. I've seen these people go on these shows. It's amazing what they can do. I can inspire you to do the same thing. You can do it, grandma. You can do it, Aunt Sophie. Right? And I think that if that is the public service part of what we've done then we've created a movement which is what i was hoping for what is you know amongst these 18 seasons you know are there standout examples of people that meant the most to you their stories or or you know successes or failures that have that sort of rise above the fray as memorable for you? Sure, lots, right?

So there's one contestant, Pete Thomas, who every year, he was in season two. So 16 seasons ago, every year on the date of his final weigh-in, he sends me a picture and a video weigh-in of himself to keep himself accountable. And he's kept the weight off. And he's kept the weight off.

He's the only one out of all the contestants I've ever worked with that every year on the anniversary of his finale, he sends me a picture of himself and a picture of his feet on a scale. That is someone who's not going back. Guy lost 200 pounds. He's never going back. So let's talk about the criticism, the controversy. There's another side of this whole thing that gets a lot of press, the recidivism, the people that are putting the weight back on and the sort of harping and sniping about theories about things that go

on behind the scenes. You know, there's, you know, stuff about weight loss drugs and a lot of yelling and screaming and a lot of pressure for people to lose massive amounts of weight in an irresponsible amount of time driven by the pressure of primetime network television, only to then graduate from this experience and go back and, you know, put all the weight back on. And all the talk about, you know, metabolic rate and the impact of extreme weight loss in a compressed period of time has on a person's ability to manage their weight going forward long-term.

Oh, I love this. This is the stuff that I could talk about all day. And here's why. One of the episodes of The Big Fat Truth, I bring five contestants from The Biggest Loser who gained all the weight back. And I bring them on the show. And Ryan's one of them, right? Ryan Benson's one. Ryan. So I saw Ryan last night. He came to the screening of What the Health.

No way. Yeah, yeah. And he came up to me and we were chatting a little bit after the screening. And he's telling me his whole story. And I was familiar with it because I'd read about it and I knew he was part of the show. And I was like, I'm going to see JD tomorrow. And he's like, say hi to him for me.

But you know what? As soon as you said, I saw Ryan Benson. And my first thought was, I'm so proud that he went to an event with you about plant-based eating. Isn't that transformation? Isn't that amazing that this guy, he didn't just settle for, oh, I lost it. I gained it back. All right, I'm done. No, he's back in the game, still trying to just settle for, I lost it. I gained it back. All right, I'm done. No, he's back in the game still trying to better himself, which I love. And just for context, he was on like the first season or the second season? He was the first winner. First winner.

Of the first season. Okay. Of Biggest Loser. OG. Right. And part of this big New York Times front page article, which I was on a run in Central Park when up on my phone, the headline came in. Amazing that you can have an article about Biggest Loser and the effects of Biggest Loser and never even call the guy that created the show to talk to him.

It's a big article. It's a long article. I read it this morning, re-read it this morning. Amazing. And so here's my point with that article. And I think there's a lot of takeaway there. And it's worth reading. Everybody should read it. I wanted to get to the core of why the people that gained the weight back did gain it back. Was it metabolism or was it something else? I was interested. And to me, the Danny Cahill, the guy that the whole article is about, who I knew very well and who at the time had lost more weight than anyone in the history of the show, was a land surveyor. And he gained all his weight while driving from survey to survey, eating fast food in his car. He hated his job, hated his boss.

It was an emotional upheaval for him to go to work every day. Gained all the weight, over 400 pounds. Lost 200 pounds. Now, follow me for a second. He then trades and makes his money on speaking engagements engagements standing next to the picture of his old self. Keeps the weight off for four years doing these speaking engagements, trading off of the success. Right. Well, there's accountability.

There's external pressure there to maintain it because his livelihood is dependent upon it. Now, all the speaking engagements dry up because they want the new skinny person from the biggest loser. So what does he do? He goes back to the only thing he knows, land surveying at the same job. And the second he goes back to that job, what happens? He gains all the weight back. And my point is, nobody, no doctor, no scientist in that article dealt with the emotional impact

of a moment of my memory, my subconscious, which works on survival every millisecond of the day, goes back, click, click, click, click, click, boom. What happened when I did this job? Oh, I ate my way to 400 pounds. The second you get back to the job, the same thing is going to happen. There's no running from it. There's no changing it. That is what's going to happen. So is that a medical condition? No, it's an emotional condition.

Yeah, I think it's two things. I think it speaks to the difference between external pressure and that internal willingness, like the difference between wanting it for yourself versus doing it for, you know, the sort of rewards that come with it. You don't think it's pride. Come on. You don't think that when you're doing these speaking engagements, you don't think there's like, you're proud of yourself. Look, all these people in this room because look at me, I did this. But when that goes away, there's a psychological shift, right? And how you feel about yourself. Well, I don't have this anymore. People don't love me for that.

And that sets in motion another domino effect that is going in the wrong direction. So you tell me, is that metabolism? Or is that, hey, I started making bad choices. And so I wanted to explore that personally. Look, think about how many producers who created a worldwide phenomenon like this show would lean into bringing five people back who gained all of the weight back and who are an example of exactly what you don't want to show. I wanted them on the show to look them in the eye-

For the new show. For the new show and look them in the eye and say, you tell me, is it your metabolism or is it your choices? What is it? And Ryan Benson looked me right in the eye and I had not spoken to him since the end of first season. And he said to me, I won. I collected my $250,000 check and drove directly to my favorite hamburger place and never looked back. So it's choices. It's a difference between him and Pete Thomas, who every day looks at himself in the mirror and says, I'm going to make sure I keep doing this today. I'm going to make the

right decisions that I need to make. And it's hard if you've been, well, you can't weigh 175 pounds. If you went from 175 pounds to 400, right? And you went back to 175, you definitely have to work harder to stay 175 than I do. And my answer back is boo-hoo. You did the crime to get to 400. You did the work to get back to 175. It's your job to make sure it stays that way. And so if you have to work a little more and you can't have the double cappuccino at Starbucks and get over it. Right. But will you, I get that, you know, I'm with you on that. I think there is like, let's, would you concede that creating an environment in which somebody is expected or pressured to lose that much weight in that short a period of time through some pretty, you know, severe restriction calorically and also a lot more

exercise than they're used to creates a scenario that ultimately is doomed from the get-go. And I'm not a scientist, so I don't know the impact of long-term metabolic rate as a result of that. There seems to be some science to suggest that there's validity to that. But I think just the unhealthy nature in and of itself of creating that kind of environment, like how, you know, what's your, how do you think about that? I guess if the article had shown both sides and compared 12 people who gained the weight back with 12 people who kept the weight off, I'd be more interested in the science. So in other words, you're saying like, it's not necessarily inaccurate but incomplete to point a finger at metabolic rate without taking into account and really evaluating all the environmental factors and psychological factors that came to play. Which is no different than drug addiction, alcohol addiction.

It's the same thing. When you got out of drug rehab, did you go back to the same street corner with the same friends? No, you have to change everything. Exactly. And the people that do keep it off. Well, they say you only have to change one thing, everything, right?

And food is very similar. And my approach to how I change my relationship with food is premised upon what I learned in rehab and in recovery about my relationship with drugs and alcohol with substance. You have to keep eating, right? So it's qualitatively different in that regard, but there are certain principles about the environment that you surround yourself with, the people, and all of those externalities that come into play that either move you forward towards recovery or towards, you know, being healthier or move you backwards. And there is no, the illusion is that

there's a stasis point, right? Where you can either, you can go on cruise control because you got to figure it out. No, every thought that you entertain, every conversation that you have, every single thing that you put in your mouth is either moving you in a positive direction or in a negative direction. It's always in flux. And to be able to be mindful of that in every moment is the trick. Or if you can master that, then I think you set yourself up for long-term success. Sure. And I'm looking to give people pictures of what success looks like so that they can reflect on that

when they're deciding whether to pat themselves on the back for a job well done that day. So I'll give you another example. A girl in The Biggest Loser, our weigh-ins take four hours to shoot. Okay, that's a long time. One of the girls in the gym, contestant, was swaying back and forth.

So she would go into the shot, out of the shot, into the shot, out of the shot. So I go on my walkie talkie and I say to the assistant director, go in and tell that girl, stop swaying back and forth. She's in and out of the shot. She needs to stand still. He goes over, they get in an argument that I can see on camera. He comes back. She's not going to stop. Sorry. Go tell her to stop swaying back and forth. What do you mean swaying back and forth? Like literally standing in place, just swaying back and forth.

So lean one way, lean another. Lean one way, lean. So he goes back and they get into another argument. I go, that's it. I'm coming down there. I walk down to the gym. I pull her aside. Come here.

I got 150 people on staff here. It takes four hours. It's late at night. Can you just stop swaying back and forth? I'll never forget this moment as long as I live. She leaned into me in a whisper and she said, I've done the math. If I sway during this four hour weigh-in, I lose 175 calories more than if I don't. I said, you go ahead and keep swaying, widen the shot out. And I guess what I'm telling you, why I'm telling you that is her level of commitment and a decision instead of to sit

in on a couch the rest of her life, eating bonbons and doing what she was doing, a switch had been flipped. And once that switch is flipped, the power of the mind is so incredible. It can't be harnessed. And so you could, one argument could be like, hey, that's a little unhealthy. She's even worrying about swaying. No, she's just refound herself and she's willing to do anything to be successful. And that I can admire. But you have to balance that against, I mean, there is some aspect of that that is perhaps unhealthy and might be setting her up for a dysfunctional relationship with food going forward. For the rest of her life, the swaying? Yes. In that moment in time-

She's swaying all the time or she's overly focused on every single calorie. Absolutely. But in that moment in time, in a game, in a competitive situation, in doing something that's legal, moving, she's allowed to move. I'm all for it. And the reason I'm all for it is there were so many switches in her life that had been turned off and so many things she wasn't doing. Was she the best mother, the best wife, the best friend? No, she wasn't the best her. And so you might have to go to an extreme in the other direction to then find the middle ground once it's over, but you need to taste both sides to be successful. And what about all these allegations of treadmills in the sauna, trying to drop weight like wrestlers and mysterious brown bags full of weight loss

pills and things like, I mean, there's a lot of press about, a lot of bad press about these kinds of things going on. If you would have said hey um if bob or jill if one of their people wins they get paid twice what the other gets then i would go oh yeah there's a reason to do stuff like that but ratings are driven by you know extreme extenuating circumstances and the drama that that evolves from that i think the ratings are driven by really great storytelling of emotional battles with transformation and overcoming obstacles in your life that you never thought you could overcome. To me, the best, highest ratings we've had were those moments and moments of failure. Moments when someone says, I just can't do this anymore.

failure. Moments when someone says, I just can't do this anymore. So I never saw those things. And like any show, whether it's scripted or unscripted, drama tends to follow success. So on the way up, everyone's pushing you up the mountain. The second you get there, the rocks start getting thrown and you got to put on a helmet. So I never saw that. I always felt that Bob and Jill had the right priorities set that they wanted people to transform. People like Dolved and Jen, they really want change for people. And so all the stuff that I saw was very positive. Was it competitive?

Yeah. But that's why I make Extreme Weight Loss too. Non-competitive show, single contestant, follow them for a whole year. I got tired of people saying, oh, but can you do it at home? Ah, sure. In a Malibu mansion with trainers, food given to you. So we did another show, extreme weight loss, 500 pound people doing it at home alone for a year. So we tried to spread the idea when anyone would throw stones, we try to create something else to show that it could be done. Now, of course, then they say, oh yeah, but working out five hours a day and eating only healthy food and

animal protein. Well, I can't do that. So that's why I came up with another way to do it. It's like, hey, you don't even have to exercise. You can just really watch what you eat and look at the results. So do you look at the big fat truth as, do you perceive it as somewhat on some level like redemptive from the biggest loser? Evolutionary is how I look at it. A little more evolutionary that I love the biggest loser. I love what we accomplished. I love the brand. I love everything that we did. Looking back on it, you wouldn't change any of those extreme circumstances?

Would I change any? I wouldn't. No, because I think that the amount of people we helped, even outside the brand, far outweigh the few moments where someone could take it too far. You know, look, even in education, people take it too far. They got their kids studying morning, noon, right? Seven days a week till midnight every night. What's the advantage of that? There is nothing in society that is not taken to an extreme. Look, hey, look at you, Rich.

Took it to an extreme, right? Five Ironmans in five days on five islands, the unthinkable. Did you take it too far? Was that healthy to eat 50, you know, almond butter sandwiches and bananas a day? And that, you know, you know what I mean? So I can admire what you did and then add it to my life. And so what I do is I say, man, I'm going on a 10-mile run. If Rich could do five Ironmans in five days on five islands, this runs nothing. So that inspiration of you going too far actually encouraged me to do something that was good. Yeah, I appreciate that. Thanks.

And I get that. And kind of the way that I message it is similar to that. I don't expect somebody hearing my story to go out and mimic exactly what I'm doing, but hopefully it will recalibrate how they think about fitness and food and they can meet me, you know, at the 15% mark. You know what I mean? Because if I could do it this far, then maybe, you know, you can, you can like, you know, inch yourself forward in a way that perhaps before hearing that story, you might not have thought possible for yourself. You're the glossy trophy. I just want to rub up next to it. But I'm also going to say that I don't know that doing five Ironmans in a week on five

islands is a healthy thing. I don't know that that's going to make me live longer. But what did it do? It create a lightning rod for you to get your message and your movement out there. Right. And so doing extreme things as a way to, as like an attention grab, or that has a negative connotation, but as a way of putting your imprimatur on the world and saying, this is possible. And I'll put another thing out to you. The New York Times once called me very aggressively on the phone, angry. We went to your website and do you know what we found?

And I said, no, what did you find? do you know what we found? And I said, no, what did you find? Only half the people on your website kept the weight off from the finale and are still at the current weight. What do you have to say about that? So here's what I would say about that. If half of America that's obese lost all the weight they needed to become healthy and stayed at that weight, we would save billions of dollars a year in healthcare and people would live longer and had a better quality of life. Is there something wrong with that? Phone call over. Do you feel like you have some responsibility to create kind of a little bit of an outpatient model for these people once they depart the show

and suddenly they're just back to their lives without, you know, people buzzing around them all the time, you know, being of assistance to this goal, right? Like suddenly, suddenly they're just, they're freewheeling on their own, right? Like you get out of rehab and you can go to a 12-step program and continue to, you know, maintain your sobriety. But if you're just going home after the biggest loser and you're going back into your life, you're armed with whatever you learned as a result of that experience, but you don't have the infrastructure to, you know, sort of hold you accountable. Like you have to create that for yourself. And one day your four kids are going

to leave the nest and they're going to be on their own too. So you don't feel any obligation. Hopefully the basis of information that you gave them and that foundation, that pure foundation of knowledge and being a good person, right, that you gave them is going to pay dividends and they're going to use that later. And if you're really wanting to be successful and you soak up everything and you get my email and you have my phone number and you stay in touch with Bob and Jillian and you utilize all the resources of the dieticians and the nutritionists and the doctors and you keep all that, that is a quiver with a thousand arrows in it that you can reach for at any moment. Or you can gain the weight back and blame that you didn't have an afterschool program

that gave you what you needed. And so the Pete Thomases who send me a picture of themselves, people who reach out by email regular to me that need help, we're there for them. And so I would argue that the people who really want to stay off the drugs and off the alcohol and off the food and live healthy lifestyles, they have the tools to know what they need to do it and they don't blame. They're not victims. They actually take control of their life and they make decisions that put them in a place to be successful.

Right. I get that. I get that. Is there another season of Biggest Loser coming up? Not currently. No. Okay. So is that over now? I would say as for right now, it definitely is. And Extreme Weight Loss had its last season last summer as well. I think that the notion of an overweight person in a gym with a trainer yelling at them is a little long in the tooth. And that the reinvention of that is necessary. Just like for a while, a sitcom was dead and then Modern Family brought it back. Right?

And all of a sudden then it comes alive again, just like the drama, just like any genre of television. Um, it has its pendulum that swings both ways. And I think in this specific genre of reality, I think it needs, um, a little roadside, uh, CPR. Right. Do you think back on that experience and wish that you could have leveraged some of the information that you have now about plant-based nutrition into that equation? Or would that not have been possible? I don't know if it was the right time or place. I think that the movement has picked up so much steam in the last three or four years. And I don't know if it's just because I'm involved in

it, so I'm more aware of it, but it certainly feels a lot more mainstream. You can walk into any grocery store and see Ripple milk and right. And every, everything is driven by a plant milk, plant-based milk, nut-based this like, so it seems to be more on the tip of people's tongue. Maybe that's LA and New York and I'm not in Cleveland, so I don't know, but it certainly feels like it's, it's becoming more mainstream. I think that would have been ahead of its time. I think we were ahead of our time then in dealing with people in the emotional side of weight loss.

Hey, no one did that. Now it is actually the way into weight loss. Now they start with the emotional decision before they even start with food. So there's been so many positives that have come out of a brand as big as the biggest loser that for me, I don't think that will ever be equaled again, much like I don't think there'll ever be another American Idol. In that genre, it was the only one of its kind.

How did you originally find Bob and Jillian? Yeah, it's crazy, right? Because there's so many trainers and they all thought they were great. And how do you know which one to choose? And I went for against type. And what I mean by that is Jillian acted more like the guy, angry, yelling, screaming. She's super alpha. Right. But she's hot. And you're like, okay, well, that's against type. And Bob was tatted up and looked like he might rob you, but he just wanted to hug you. He's like a sweet guy. Yeah. So having opposites like that, to me, always works in television. And I always look for

things that are against type. It didn't hurt that Bob had a Saturday morning class, a treadmill class that was packed. He had to sign in an hour before. And in Hollywood, right? I mean, you know, only the good ones are going to survive like that. By the way, to his credit, he still teaches that Saturday morning class. Oh, does he really? 15 years later, it's still something he does, which is the roots. And so when you think about people that to their core really want to help people change their life, Bob used to show up on set with a car that would break down every week. He had no money. He had nothing. He just wanted to help people. And Bob and Jillian moved into that house the first year and lived for six months,

24 hours a day with these people, helping them to change their life. So the core of our belief system, what we all want is for people to be happier. It's actually that simple. We just want people to be happier and live a better life. That's it. So Bob had flirted with being plant-based. I think it must have been 2008, I think maybe around that time, 2008, 2009. It was not only plant-based, but it was also very small portions of plant-based things as well. Yeah. So I knew, and it kind of made news because he was playing around with that and seemed to be somewhat of an evangelist of it for a brief period of time. And then he kind of moved away from it and- Paleo.

Yeah. He went paleo and it made a lot of news. Maybe, what was it? A month ago, about a couple of weeks ago when he had a heart attack at age 51, right? So have, which is awful. I wouldn't wish that on anybody. Have you, and he was, I guess he was unconscious for like two days or something like that. So it was like a significant, yeah. So I wanted to know, like, how is he doing and how are you talking to him? First of all, I love me some Bob Harper, right? I mean, this guy, he's the ultimate.

And what I give him credit for is he tries everything. Tries plant-based, tries paleo, tries all different exercise, tries CrossFit, tries no weights, tries all body movements. He wants to know and be in touch with everything that's out there. And he does become very evangelical about the thing that he's in in that moment. And there's a certain beauty to that. He doesn't just try it. He dives in and it becomes the flavor gum he chews, right? And everything.

He's into it. And I love that about him. That kind of passion you can't teach. That's a beautiful thing. I don't, I'm not a fan of CrossFit. I love the community that CrossFit creates. I don't like that in a very fatigued state to have giant heavy weight on someone who's 50 years old, snatching it up over their head in other ways that seems more violent than beautiful,

is a thing that you need at that age. I just don't believe it. I don't see it. He is a CrossFit diehard guy. And so that's a big part of his life. And the combination with paleo, combination of heart disease that runs in his family, who knows if those were factors that all got involved together in the same way. I don't know. None of us will ever know. But if anyone is going to overcome it and continue to be healthy and find the best way to be healthy, it'll be Bob. Yeah, I hope so. I mean, I think in the press release that I saw, you know, he was attributing his sort of genetic predisposition to what had occurred because his

mom had suffered a heart attack. Although I believe her heart attack was when she was like in her seventies, right? I don't know when it was, but his mom definitely did have a heart attack. And as somebody who now, you know, we spoke at the outset of this podcast about this sort of disease prevention and reversal aspects of eating a plant-based diet. Do you feel like, you know, like when you talk to Bob, are you like, come on, man, like get back on the plan here? Compelled, absolutely compelled to say, hey, again, genetics, load the gun, decisions, pull the trigger. What are you doing? We got to make good decisions. Bob's a really smart guy. I guarantee you he's already done the research. And if he hasn't already gone plant-based,

my guess is he doesn't need me to tell him. I think he knows enough about the research and medical support that's out there to know what he needs to be doing. He's a smart guy. And even people like Jillian who, you know, sort of are open to everything, try everything, look at everything. I think she understands the importance and the basis of it as well. I don't think people are going to take it to the level that you and I do. I think they use the more 80-20 rule. It's like, okay, well, if I have a four-ounce piece of meat and I surround it with a gigantic plate of vegetables, that's just as good. And it is a good step. That is a step in the right direction.

But I think you and I have taken it to a different level. Yeah. Before we started recording, we were talking about What the Health, the new movie by the guys who made Cowspiracy. And they addressed that kind of 80-20 rule in this movie. You got to check it out. I can't wait. Yeah, you got to watch this movie. It does an amazing job of advocating that position of why going all whole hog and all the way in really is an important aspect of it. There's so many ways to think about this. My mom has stage four pancreatic cancer. I said, mom, now's the time. You've got to go plant-based. Please, I'm begging you. I'll help you. I'll make the food, whatever you need me to do. And she said, if ever there was a time to eat a donut, now is it.

What can you do with that? You say, I love you. And where do you want me to go get you the donut? And so everybody's at a different stage of their life in their needs and their wants, what they're comfortable with, what they're not comfortable with. And so all guys like you and I can do is say, hey, here's what I'm doing. And by the way, what we're doing is extreme, right? So I don't expect anybody to get all the way there to where my family is. We go out to dinner, my wife and I, people won't even order until we've ordered our food. I don't want to make it uncomfortable for anybody, but it is something I'm extremely passionate about. This is how I live

my life. When I do the show, I invite the contestants over. We make them smoothies in my house. I work out with them. I show them how to live their life and how to eat. And I do it by example. And I think that's the best that you and I can do. So the new show, you've got these contestants and what is the kind of the through line? How are you organizing it like episode by episode? Like how are you teaching these people? And what are the paces that you're putting them through? Right. Well, the show, the basis of the show is I think there are a lot of unsung heroes in America who are unappreciated. So, and I want to deal with them one group at a time. A lot of them, they pick a job, guarantees just by the job they pick, they're going to

be overweight. So take a night nurse, for example, nine times more likely to be overweight than the average population. Yet they stand next to skinny doctors all the time. Because they're up all night and they're off their rhythm? Off their rhythm, up all night. And it even goes down to the lighting. It goes down to switching from nights three days a week to days when you're not working, right? The switching back and forth. And they live seven years less than the average population as well. These are health professionals.

They know better than anyone. Why is it that there's, I go to the hospital to visit my mother. I'm stressed out. I'm there 12 hours in a room. We just stare at each other for the 12 hours. Why is it there's not one hospital in America that has a gym for patients, families that come in, they need to go downstairs and blow off a little steam for 45 minutes, work out, get a healthy smoothie, shower, and go back up to the room, like endorphins running, smiling to show some love to their family. You'd think, right? Instead, there's McDonald's. Instead, it's worse, right? It's not only McDonald's. What comes up in the elevator?

All the patients that they got well that bring donuts and all the rest of the garbage to thank them. There should be someone down at the bottom of the elevator doesn't even allow that stuff to go in the elevator. This is a place of health. There's nothing healthy about it. Do you know where the most Coca-Cola is sold in America? Hospitals. Is that true? That is a true fact. That is shocking. More Coca-Cola sold in hospitals than anywhere on the planet. You start adding all of those things up. That's a problem. As health professionals, as health organizations and corporations, they should make a decision to make sure that health means health everywhere. McDonald's aren't in cafeterias. Fried food is not

in cafeterias. Night nurses, guess what? All the food's already closed down. Done. They can't even get food. They have to order Thai food from some place in the middle of the night with some guy coming trying to get up the elevator. So what do you think they're going to get? It's going to be terrible for them. There's no system set up where they can put their order in the day before and the cafeteria when it closes could leave it in the cooler for them and it could be a healthy salad or something that you and I would eat.

It seems like the system is so broken and there's so many obvious easy fixes, but follow the money. system's so broken and there's so many obvious easy fixes, but follow the money. Yeah, you got to follow the money and also appreciate the fact that even a conversation about nutrition with respect to a treatment protocol for a patient in an acute situation in a hospital isn't really even on the radar. Or if it is, it's only recently that that has become something to even talk about. Very new information that a friend of mine's father who has cancer went to interview at Cedars-Sinai, USC, and UCLA at all the hospitals. First thing all three oncologists said,

you need to go on a plant-based diet immediately. Now that is earth shattering news. Yeah. Yet they don't serve that food in the very hospitals that they work in. It's Salisbury steak and jello. I talked to a doctor who shall go nameless at Cedars-Sinai who told me the only thing that matters, he said, like this, meat people don't agree with the plant people and vice versa,

but one thing everybody can agree on. Sugar, when I inject sugar into a tumor in a Petri dish, I can watch the cancer cells multiply when I put sugar in there. It's the only thing I can put in there when that happens. And we know that exercise helps a lot. So I say to him, well, what do you do? You're one of the greatest researchers at Cedars-Sinai in health and cancer. What do you do? And the quote he gave me was, I have a sweet tooth and I don't like to exercise. I said, well, if you're not going to do it with everything that you know, you're not doing it. How do you expect your patients to do it? And he said, well, I have disease on my side. What does that mean? I asked him the same thing. said, well, I have disease on my side. What does that mean?

I asked him the same thing. Oh, because the patients have disease. So they're more motivated. They're compliant because they're going to die. So why do you got to wait till that point? I just, to me, it baffles my mind. It goes back to psychology. Yep. You know, it's so complicated. But that's the doctor that's messaging out to the patient, You know, it's so complicated. But that's the doctor that's messaging out to the patient, waiting for disease to become compliant. The doctor doesn't even do the things he knows would help. So how do you get a regular person to do it? Right. And then backing up from that, when you look at, you said follow the money, the extent to which, you know, big food companies are embedded into the hospital system and And the amount of money that's made on

those contracts is massive. And there are powerful lobbying groups, et cetera, that have a lot to say about how that goes down. Someone should do a study on how much they make on soda versus how much they make on beds in the hospital. I would almost bet you they make more on soda. That would be an amazing study. I would almost bet. But a lot of soda. That would be an amazing study. I would almost bet. But a lot of that soda has got to be people in the waiting room. Sure. They shouldn't be drinking it either.

Again, if you walk into a hospital, it should be a picture of health. That's what it's about. Nursing people back to health, right? And the people that visit should see that written on everyone's faces. How about getting to the root cause of what's causing the problems that deliver people to the hospital in the first place, as opposed to treating the symptoms with pharmaceuticals? Sure. Well, food is in, last time I checked, it's not reimbursable. That's the problem. That's a problem. Get someone on insulin, every two months,

they got to come back to get that checked out to make sure it's working properly. Tell somebody to eat more broccoli. They never come back because they won't need to make sure it's working properly. Tell somebody to eat more broccoli. They never come back because they won't need to. And then what? Then the whole system breaks down. It's beginning to shift though. You know, I think you're seeing people are waking up to this and they want more from their medical practitioners. And so clinics are popping up that are about preventative care, about functional medicine. People like Robert Ausfeld, he's a doctor in the Bronx. I've had him on the podcast. He's created a whole program in this underprivileged section of New York where diabetes rates are through the roof. He brings them in, he gets them on a plant-based

diet, and there's all this very significant kind of outpatient care to keep people on track. And that's at odds with the typical system of you get 15 minutes and you diagnose and you prescribe and you get them out the door and that revolving door kind of thing. You have to create a new model that on some level has to be financially, economically viable, not with the margins that you're getting in the old system, but in a way that's actually getting at the cause of what's getting people sick and getting them on preventative measures that are going to put them on a healthy trajectory. The way to do that is to help somebody's pocketbook. And what I mean by that is, start with something simple. What if, think about how gyms make their money. They make their money with people who are asleep at the

wheel. I give you my membership. You automatically charge me every month. I feel guilty and shame because I don't go. I don't cancel my membership. Thank God because they have 10,000 members. And if they all showed up on the same day, place would shut down because of the fire code. What if you did the reverse? What if you had a gym that said, hey, it's $250 a month, but if you swipe your card five times income, it's half off. We'll refund you half the money. Right. Give them their money back when they use it. The more you use, the less it costs. To me, that's making a statement. That's saying, hey, I care about your health. I don't care about the fact that all you're doing is you're paying me a monthly sum and you're asleep at the wheel and you don't come in. So how would that work in a medical context?

You pay a doctor a lump sum and then when you make progress, he gives you your money back? Absolutely. The better you do, the more you're rewarded. In the end, that's the only way to get people to be compliant. For instance, I had an uncle say to me, ah, I'm getting ready to go on vacation. I need to lose 10 pounds quick. How do I do it? I go, easiest thing in the world. He goes, how? Cut me a check for five grand. He said, what are you talking about? I said, you lose the 10 pounds before your vacation, I give you the check right back. You don't? I'm taking my family on a vacation that weekend. And then I saw the light bulb go off in his eyes. Like, oh, I need to have skin in the game. I need to have something that I'm afraid of losing to make sure that I do what I'm supposed to. But that's also a quick fix, right? If you

want to get somebody to really change how they think about themselves long-term, like really adapt their lifestyle to new patterns that are going to serve them better um it's going to take more than that because as soon as he wins that bet he's going to go back to whatever he was doing there's no there's no negative external pressure he feels better he looks better in the mirror he's happier he doesn't get up he's not in pain when he gets up his joints don't hurt and he's like this feels pretty good yeah i'll keep this up a little longer. That's what I'm hoping for. I'm hoping it's somewhere along the way, click. Oh, wait a second. I like this. And so if I can get somebody to that place and even one out of two end up doing that, it's a win. You want to lead people, show them what

success tastes like. And then once they taste it, they always want more. The promised land though, I think has to do with the mental shift from somebody who thinks of themselves as a fat person, as a 400 pound person to embracing the idea that they are something else, right? Fundamentally. One is losing 10 pounds. The other is a 400-pound person, which guaranteed 100% of the time, there's darkness. That's not, hey, I really like pizza and French fries. So you're right. A 400-pound person is a completely different structure that needs to be unwrapped and figured out.

Right. And that's a trickier puzzle. No doubt about it. But it's so doable. It is so doable. I that's a trickier puzzle. No doubt about it, but it's so doable. It is so doable. I had a 400 pound guy. I have everybody write down three victories a day that are very small. And I never put that on the show. That's a private thing that we do. And one guy wrote down like four days into it. I tried today, even though no one was looking. Now on its surface- That's the whole game. That's the ballgame.

Most people would have read that and not thought anything about it. It brought tears to my eyes. And because here's why. Where else wasn't he trying when no one was looking? As a husband, as a father, as a worker, as a friend. Now, the button was flipped in four days. He tried when no one was looking

and he saw the value in that. So that goes way beyond what the value in that so that goes way beyond what the scale says because that's somebody who's doing it for themself not for any other reason absolutely and that is transformation that's where you have to get that's where you have to drive people towards and that was a Biggest Loser contestant so we can say hey yeah are there people that push the boundaries on the Biggest Loser yeah people push the boundaries and everything right you're first it was send someone around the world next thing the boundaries on The Biggest Loser, yeah, people push the boundaries in everything, right?

First it would send someone around the world, next thing you know it sends someone to the moon. Next thing you know it sends someone to Mars. Next thing you know it's, well, there's gotta be an alien somewhere, right? We're always pushing the boundaries. But there are also people that just have that small moment of wow.

I tried when no one was looking, that are, to me, just as important and need to be recognized in the same way. What have you learned from the biggest loser? What are the kind of tools and tactics that have worked that you're applying in this new show and what hasn't worked that you've had to change? Well, the thing that always works, and it doesn't have to be with weight loss, is the body's no match for the power of the mind.

For sure. Look at you. How many times did your body tell you, what are you doing? Just stop. And your mind said, uh-uh, you're not stopping. No matter what, you're not stopping. The beast wraps you up and tells you

you're done and your mind goes nope i'm not done i needed a friend on this run thanks beast go ahead you can join me that is something you can't teach somebody right that's something you you have to have inside you and so i i believe that training people to work the power of the mind is the greatest asset you can have. And how do you do that? Not just in weight loss. What's the way in for you? How do you approach that?

Well, believing you can do it and believing that you're worth it. And those two things may sound like a fortune cookie, but they're not. There are more people walking around on the planet today who don't think they're worth having. I didn't deserve that guy. I don't deserve this car. They get comfortable with taking shots in the face. And I teach people how to throw punches, not how to take them. But to get to that point, you have to delve deep into that pain, right? And push that button and get it exposed, bring it into the light and have people wrestle with it, right?

People have exposed secrets that they've had for 30, 40 years to me in under five minutes. So it's getting a trust with them and looking them in the eye and not accepting their bullshit. So when you say, hey, well, why are you 300 pounds? Oh, I just love food. I love, no, that's not it. Try again. Don't tell me that's not it. I told you I love food.

I love barbecue sauce. I love ice cream. No, that's not it. Try again. Don't tell me that's not it. I told you I love food. I love barbecue sauce. I love ice cream. No, that's not it. And really not accepting their bullshit, which everyone in their life does accept. And then breaking through that and having them admit what it really is. And once they admit what it really is, I just get out of the way and the weight falls off of them. So that tactic's never going to be different. It's no different than with my son as well

when he comes home with a problem from school. It's three easy steps to accomplish anything. First, identify the problem. Hey, I'm overweight. I'm losing all these things in my life I can't do anymore. Gosh, it's terrible. I'm going to die at a young age. Number two, make a list what you need to do.

Oh, I need to move more. I need to eat better. Not rocket science. In the case of a kid, it's usually I need to do my homework. I need to study for the test, right? Number three, it's the only step nobody gets to. It's the only step that matters. And so if anyone's looking for this giant secret that I have on step number three, there isn't one. Step number three is go do it. Stop talking about it and actually do something. But what is the barrier that prevents people from the doing? That activation.

There's that, you know, there's the huge, I talk about this all the time, but it's like the crevasse between the intellectual understanding and the actual action. Right? Sure. You can totally understand, yeah, I need to stop doing all these things. the intellectual understanding and the actual action, right? Sure. You can totally understand, yeah, I need to stop doing all these things. But what is it that activates people and motivates them and gets them moving? For the people I work with, activation is about being worth it. It's about feeling like you're worth it, feeling like you matter, feeling like someone wants to hear you, feeling like somebody loves you. And that's where I come in. And if you, again, if you would have told me before I did these shows, I was going to be that guy, I would have told you you were crazy. And I've

always been a passionate guy. I've always loved to solve problems, but I was a producer. I have zero, I don't even have a college degree. I have zero background in nutrition, zero background in exercise physiology. I got zero background in all of this stuff. So why is it that I can get more weight off of people than the professionals? Because I'm dealing with something they're not. That's the game. You don't need to go somewhere

to get advice on how to eat better. You know what you should be doing. It's all the emotional stuff that you need to fix. And when you do the emotional work, the benefits are massive. And so every show, in my opinion, that I've done all starts at the same exact entry point. And that's the emotional decision of why food gives you more pleasure than anything else in life. So if someone's listening to this and they're thinking, you know what? I just, I rubber band diet. I'm okay for a while.

I go back. I lose weight. I put it back on. And maybe I'm not looking at that emotional component and I'm ready to look at it. But, you know, I'm not going to be on a TV show and JD's not available to me. Like what, what should I do? You just described my book. So in the book, I make you a contestant

because not everybody does want to expose their life. I give the same questionnaire I give to the contestants to fill out. I ask you to make a tape of yourself as if you were going to be on. Because when you ask your friends, hey, why do you think I'm fat? And you really want to know, they will tell you.

When you ask your kids, do you think mommy's fat? They'll be honest with you and they'll tell you. And you need to hear these things. You know, you can't hide behind the 40 pairs of shoes you have in your closet, hoping everyone's going to look at your feet and not your face. Because it doesn't work that way. Everyone knows. Everyone knows what you feel like inside.

Everyone is aware of it. And you need to actually ask the questions. Then I would argue that you need to plant the flag in the sand that says, this year I'm going to do X. Make it public. The more public you make it, the more likely you are to be successful. Get other people involved.

People want to help. That's what I think people think no one wants to get involved in their life. Ask for help. People want to help you and they will support you. If you want to just go out with the same friends and have ribs, French fries, and ice cream, then that's what's going to happen. You have to change some of those friends if they won't get on board. You have

to really want to change something in your life to be successful. Like anyone, not just weight loss, right? You want to make more money? What are you going to do? Work harder or work less? I also think that we have to be honest about what's really going on. I mean, nobody wants to fat shame. You know, nobody wants to be somebody pointing fingers and leading to all of these chronic illnesses that are killing people unnecessarily. And to just normalize it is not okay either, right? To just say, well, this is, you know, it's like you look around like 70% of people are obese or overweight. And we're just supposed to sort of accept this as the new normal. And we're not

allowed to like talk about the fact that, you know, maybe this isn't the best way to go. I had to defend it the night before Biggest Loser came out in 2004, the Fat Women's Association of America, and I'm not exaggerating, went to Entertainment Tonight, who asked me to come on the show and defend the fat shaming that the TV show Biggest Loser was going to be involved with. And I said, first of all, nobody has seen a frame of the show. So I don't understand how people could be so unhappy or so upset. So I agreed to go on. People were very nervous at the network about me going on the show. I went on. The two women that represented the association were over 300 pounds, balding, did not look healthy. They said,

how dare you make a show? These are the last people on earth. Leave them alone. They're not bothering you. And there are plenty of overweight people who are overweight and happy. Why can't you leave them alone? And just like every good TV show, the camera cuts to me on an extreme closeup, the red light goes on and the host says, well, what do you have to say about people who are overweight and happy?

And I look right in the camera and I said the following, I'm looking for people who are overweight and unhappy. And I think there's millions of them. So if who are overweight and unhappy, and I think there's millions of them. So if you're overweight and happy, fine. Of course, off camera, I would argue they're not happy. They're acting like they're happy, but they're not. There are millions of people who are unhappy because they're overweight. Why don't we try to help those people? Why do we have to ignore it? Because there are some who claim that they're overweight and happy. I've never met one. I've never met an overweight person who in less than

five minutes, I couldn't have in my arms in a puddle of tears about how they're not really happy. It's just a show. Yeah. It's a huge problem, man. Right. And you're not going to eat your way out of it. And normalizing it is not the solution either. No. And then what happens is it's a multi-generational problem of what people refer to as the fat gene, which I refer to as the bad decisions gene. And so you're now educating young kids how you eat, and then they do it to their family. Now you've got multiple generations of people who are unhealthy, taxing the health care system, and more importantly, not living the best life they can live.

And there's not major changes that need to happen to help those people. You just have to educate them. Right. The progeny feel disempowered. They feel like they're just destined to be overweight because their forebearers are as well, their parents, their grandparents, their uncles, their aunts. But they're being deprived of an alternative perspective on that. And they think that the $1 hamburger at a fast food restaurant feeds their family, and at least their family doesn't go to bed hungry.

But they don't realize that if they buy the appropriate things, vegetables and veggie broth, they can make soups and lentils and quinoa, and that it's actually in the long run serves more meals than if they just go get the salty, calorically dense hamburger that's going to kill them at a young age. All right. Well, we got to wrap this up, but maybe a good place to kind of end it is to leave people with some suggestions for how they can embark on a more plant-centric, plant-based diet if they're flirting with it. I mean, look, the best way to go plants is to listen to you because that's inspiring to me. I'd agree with that.

And so that would be the number one rule. If they can't listen to you or they can't listen to you all the time, I would say start very simple. And so the way we started is we gave each one of our kids $5 and we went to the farmer's market and said, you can buy whatever you want with it. That's empowering for a kid. And so they went and bought what they wanted and that made them want to eat it. And it made them want to go back again. Yeah, because then they're invested in it. They have ownership. The other thing is when kids are young, and by young I mean under eight years old, if you grow one green bean in a little pot in your backyard, they will eat a whole bowl because they think they grew them all. mole. So encourage them to watch a little plant grow and watch that green bean or that tomato or right to see it grow and then have them pull it off the little tree and bring it inside and then

cut it into 20 tomatoes, right? Or 20 green beans. And it shows them the process of where food comes from. And once they understand that, they also have ownership in that part of it as well. That's huge, you know, because then they're also fully connected to the entire, you know, the entire process of where the food comes from in a really powerful and potent way in a culture in which we're completely disconnected from that. Which I think is exciting for kids.

Yeah. And then lastly, I would argue that anything that seems overwhelming is. And so when you're going from a diet of eating whatever you want to completely restricting yourself of everything, it's very hard to sustain. And so what I would do is I would make one change a week. And when you start stacking those decisions on top of each other, after a month, you got four good decisions. After two months, you got eight. And so the easiest way to do it would be start with one meal a day that you're going to go all plant-based, then cut soda out, then cut, right? And once you start doing that and getting one decision stacked up on another, then success becomes easier.

And if you slip up, and you probably will because you're a human being, you're part of the human race, to not flog yourself and use that as an argument for why you can't do it or why it's too hard. Instead, to just look at it as a learning experience and think about what led you to that bad decision and try to do better in your next decision as opposed to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Yeah. You know, Rich, I've sat there with a sleeve of Thin Mint cookies from the Girl Scouts and eaten the entire thing. The difference is the very next meal I eat is perfect. And so if you're going to bang your head against the wall and it hurts, the craziest thing to do would be three hours later to bang it against the wall again. And you're building up scar tissue.

And then the next three hours you do it again. But if you back off and just let your head heal, right? Chances are you'll be fine. So if there's a slip up every now and then, like you said, you can't beat yourself up. We're all human beings. And you let a little life creep in in those moments and laugh about it. And I think that finding the joy in a lot of the sadness that we all have would make life easier for everybody. That shame is the thing that I have the biggest problem with in what I do. Shame is

a killer. And when you get shame, you're in a room alone with the ice cream. And so if you can eliminate shame, chances are you could be success. And the process to eliminating shame is to shine a light on it. You got to bring it out into the open. I tell people you're eating, you're mowing down a bag of potato chips,

get someone on the phone. Hey, I'm mowing down a bag of potato chips. Somebody help me quick. Which is the last thing you want to do, but that's the key to transcending it. Yeah. Because when you get rid of that shame, it's very empowering. Then instead of being the guy who the strings are getting pulled on, you become the puppeteer and you're pulling the strings and that feels good. All right, man. I think we did it. Yeah. Now it's time to go for a run.

How do you feel? I feel good. I feel like I'm ready for some more plants. You're all fired up. Let's go. Awesome. So The Big Fat Truth, the book, you can get it on Amazon. Use the banner ad at richroll.com to purchase that. Check it out. And the TV show sometime in May.

We're not quite sure yet. Beyond Z Living. You can go to zliving.com right now and there's information about the show on there. Oh, cool. Zliving.com. Check it out. Starring the great Dr. Michael right now, and there's information about the show on there. Oh, cool. zliving.com. Check it out. Starring the great Dr. Michael Greger, of course, our favorite. And the great Rich Roll.

Yeah. Well, thank you for having me on the show for one day. That was super fun. You guys are like the Michael Jordan of this world for me. So to have a guy like you and Greger on the show, I'm like a little kid in a candy store. Oh, Greger's the star. Come on. I came in to give a few pats on the back. Your book is right next to his on my desk. Cool, man. Well, great talking to you, dude.

Yeah, you too. All right. Thanks, man. Peace. Plants. All right. I hope you guys enjoyed that. I really dug talking to JD. I really liked that guy. I think he's a good dude. I'm excited about his new TV show. Once again, The Big Fat Truth. It's premiering Sunday, June 11th at 8 p.m. Eastern and Pacific on Z Living. So check your local cable provider to find out what channel number that is. Hey, do you guys want to come to Ireland with us? July 24th through 31. We're going to this incredible manor called Ballyvalane for Plant Power Ireland.

It's like this crazy James Bond-like estate on 90 acres in the Irish countryside. It's a really beautiful place. We scouted it last year. I'm really excited to go there. We're going to be doing stuff with the Happy Pear Lads. Remember those guys from the podcast? It's going to be really cool. Seven Days of Transformation with Julie and I.

We're going to cook. We're going to eat. We're going to run. We're going to meditate. We're going to do tea ceremony. We're going to do some pretty intensive workshops on relationships and creativity and nutrition. There's going to be Ayurvedic treatments. We got glamping tents. It's going to be really fun. Also intense. It's all designed to help you unlock your best self and transform your life wholesale. So if you think this is something for you, you can learn more at ourplantpowerworld.com. If you'd like to support this show and my work, share it with your friends, leave a review on iTunes, subscribe on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcast content.

We have a Patreon. Thank you so much to everybody who has contributed financially to my work. I really appreciate that. And that's it. Also, if you'd like to receive a free weekly email from me, I send one out every Thursday. It's called Roll Call. It's just got some tips, some tools, some resources that I came across over the course of the week. Usually an article I read, a documentary I watched, or a podcast I listened to, the book that I'm reading, blah, blah, blah. Things that have inspired me, that I got something out of, that I found useful. I'm never going to spam you. There's no affiliate links in this. It's totally free. And I'm enjoying sharing this with you guys, and you guys seem to be enjoying it on your end. So

if you want in on that, just throw your email in one of those email boxes on my website at richroll.com, where you will also find signed copies of Finding Ultra, as well as the Plant Power Way. We've got t-shirts, tech tees, and other kind of merch and schwags. Schwags. Is it schwag? It's schwag, right? I want to thank today's sponsors, Harry's, a superior shave at an affordable price.

Friends of the Rich Roll Podcast can visit harrys.com forward slash roll to redeem your free trial set, which comes with a razor, five blade cartridge, shaving gel and post shave gel. All you got to do is pay shipping. Also, MeUndies, the world's most comfortable underwear. Visit MeUndies.com forward slash roll to get free shipping in the US and Canada and 20% off your first pair. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiello for audio engineering and production, Sean Patterson for all his wizardry on the graphics, including all those cool motion graphics that I'm sharing on Instagram and Instagram stories, theme music by Anna Lemma. Also, if you guys are into what I'm

doing fitness wise, training wise, follow me on Instagram. I'm essentially vlogging all of my training on Instagram stories. Every single day I kind of share what my workout is. I do a before and I do an after. You can also follow me on Strava to get the details on that. And that's it for now. Thanks for the love, you guys. See you back here soon. Peace.

Plants. Thank you.