The Rich Roll Podcast - Running Raw With Tim Van Orden

Episode Date: February 5, 2013

Raw vegan runner extraordinaire Tim VanOrden joins the show to discuss his journey with food, how he re-discovered a passion for running that led him to 9 U.S. Masters Trail Championship victories, his holistic approach to life and how he makes it all work on a 100% entirely raw plant-based diet. Along the way, we talk specifics about: * aerobic zone training * finding the joy in racing & training * the perils of becoming pigeonholed by labels * the importance of microbial health * what it's like to race up the Empire State Building * his thoughts on supplementation, and * the ever-present protein question I thought I knew a lot, but Tim enlightened me on more than a few issues and it was a pleasure interviewing him. NOTE: apologies for the poor audio quality of the Skype interview. There is a persistent static hum that I could not eliminate and the levels are — well, let's just say — a wee bit off. I am still new at all this and obviously still have a few things to learn. Production quality is important to me, so I am truly sorry for the issue. Hopefully Tim's passion and sagaciousness will overshadow the annoyance, and all I can say is that I promise to do better next time. And if you have a moment, we'd love it if you could toss a quick review up on the iTunes page.It's most appreciated! Thanks for the support and hope you enjoy the show! SHOW NOTES * NY Times Sunday Magazine: How to Make an Ironman Whimper (and Cough): * Running Raw Blog: runningraw.com/blog * Running Raw on Facebook: facebook.com/runningraw * Tim on Facebook: facebook.com/tim.vanorden * Tim on YouTube: youtube.com/user/runningraw

episode 15 we're back how's it going everybody out there welcome back to the show welcome all you plant eaters you athletes you nutrition fanatics you dads you moms you yogis you meditators you cyclists you triathletes you runners you meditators, you cyclists, you triathletes, you runners, you crossfitters, whoever you are, thanks for tuning in. If you've been listening, thanks for returning to the show. We hope that you've been enjoying it. Like I keep saying, I'm having a blast doing the podcast. I absolutely love it. And I feel like I'm finally hitting a bit of a groove here. I put up two in succession last week and already got this one in the can for today, uploading Monday night. And I got two more interviews scheduled for later this week. On Wednesday, I'm having James Wilkes join the show.

James Lightning Wilkes, who you might know if you're a fan of the UFC or MMA. He's a plant-powered beast and an incredibly smart articulate, much more so than I, much more articulate than I, fellow, a fine young gentleman. He's going to be coming out on Wednesday. fine young gentleman. He's going to be coming out on Wednesday. We're going to talk a lot about eating a plant-based diet for performance and the documentary that he's working on, which is all about plant-based athletes. He's a fascinating guy, just another guy that I've met along the path over the last couple of years. So I'm excited about that. We're even thinking of trying to film that episode. So like I said, I'm trying, I'm working on, uh, upping the production value of the podcast. Uh, and then also on Friday,

back by popular demand, Vinnie Tortorich, one of my most popular podcast guests to date in the short career of this podcast. Uh, people seem to really like him. He's fantastic, and he's agreed to come back on the show on Friday, and we'll get into it once again. So that's pretty cool. He'll be my first repeat guest, besides my wife, my sometime co-host. But today, we have Tim Van Orden on the show, who is quite a remarkable gentleman in his own right. Tim's a guy I've been following for a couple years. We've actually never met face-to-face, astonishingly, because we sort of have a similar story. We kind of do some of the same stuff and are passionate about the same things, and I'm surprised that our paths have not crossed to date, but for whatever reason, they haven't. Tim's in Vermont. He used to live in Los Angeles, but he lives in Vermont now. So he is coming to the podcast right at you today.

And a little bit about him. Tim is a multiple US Masters champion at various running disciplines. He specializes in trail running, but I shouldn't even say that he specializes in any particular running category because he is a rare beast in that he's incredibly prolific across a number of running disciplines. The guy is quite outstanding at distances as short as the mile, but also excels at the half marathon distance and even the 50K distance. I mean, the guy does it all. He's super fast and he can go long. And not only that, he'll run up mountains. He participates in

snowshoe running races. I don't even know what you call it. I guess snowshoeing, where they run up mountains in the snow. And he is also quite the specimen when it comes to this new craze known as stair climbing. If you saw my tweet the other day or you read the New York Times, you might have seen the article in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine on the new craze of stair climbing

with a specific focus on the Empire State Building race, which Tim has competed in, among others, like the Sears Tower and a couple other ones. He's a fascinating guy, and his perspective, more importantly, on sport and food and life is very refreshing uh despite his countless podium finishes and race wins etc i mean there's too many to count if you go to his website runningraw.com you can see his race results and and i can't even keep track of it the guy races every weekend somewhere and more often than not he either wins the race or lands on the podium.

And he's 45 years old. That's not enough for you. The guy subsists, trains, and races on a 100% raw vegan diet. What does that mean? I've been on a plant-based diet now for six years, but I wouldn't characterize myself as raw. Raw means that you don't eat any cooked food whatsoever. And I eat tons of raw food. I would say that I eat predominantly, if not entirely, raw throughout the day. But even I enjoy a cooked dinner, especially if it's cooked by my wife, who's an amazing cook. So I do eat cooked food, although I would say the preponderance of the foods I eat are raw. I've never gone entirely raw.

So I was really interested to hear from Tim on his sort of journey through nutrition, how it all happened for him. There's a lot of overlap in our stories. He had dealt with some depression. He had a good number of years as a couch potato and stumbling through veganism and ultimately kind of landing on his feet through this raw vegan regime of his that seems to have rejuvenated his life completely and energized him to get into

fitness and running. and his results speak for himself. It's quite extraordinary what he's done. But like I said, more importantly is his very unique and interesting perspective on life. He's a very humble sort, but very knowledgeable. And I really enjoyed hearing his sort of take on why he does what he does and what's important to him. And like myself, he's really in it for the journey. He really embraces the journey aspect of what he's doing. It's not about race results. It's really about finding the joy in what he does, this sort of active meditation of racing and training and how that has affected his mental

state, his spiritual state, his perspective on life, and essentially everything. So he's really fascinating. And we had a very long conversation, which was great. And I hope you enjoy it. A couple things, though. We do have some low-grade static in this interview. We did it by Skype and I am still new to this podcasting thing and trying to find my legs and work out all the technology and the minute I think I have it all sorted out,

I get hit with a new sort of dilemma. So I don't know. I tried for the life of me to try to figure out where this static was coming from. We stopped and started the interview at one point and I've tried to remove it in post-production, but it's still there. So I did the best I could. So please bear with us through the kind of technical audio issues that arise throughout this interview. And I hope that you can still enjoy it despite the amateur sort of sounding quality

of the interview. So that's it. This is another really long interview. So I don't want to bog you down with too much more introductory matter. But I would say if you've been enjoying the podcast, we really appreciate the support. The audience is continuing to grow, which is great.

And I've been inundated with emails, which I love getting from everybody who's out there listening. It's been fantastic. And I always try to respond to every email that I get. But I have to admit that I am losing the email battle. There's just no way that I can keep up with it. And it's sort of been overtaking my life lately. So if you send an email and I didn't get back to you or I haven't gotten back to you yet, please don't take it personally.

I'm going to try to get back to as many of you as I can. But know that I received the email and that I read it. And it means a lot to me. So keep them coming. And we really appreciate it and it means a lot to me. So keep them coming and we really appreciate it. I want to support the show. Please leave a comment on iTunes. It means a lot to us and it helps out with the iTunes rankings and all that kind of good stuff. And if you're going to buy something on Amazon, do us a favor and click on the Amazon banner ad on richroll.com. It's not on the homepage, but if you go to the blog or the podcast page, you'll see it on the right-hand side. It's a little black,

black and white square banner ad. Click that, buy whatever you're going to buy anyway on Amazon. It won't cost you a penny extra, but it will throw a few nickels in our bucket and help keep the lights on so we can keep doing this. This podcast will always be free for you no matter what, but we do have a few costs that we kind of have to manage. So it would be most appreciated if you could just click through that banner and be awesome. What else? I think that's it. click through that banner and be awesome. What else? I think that's it. I think that we should just get right into Tim Van Orden and his journey of joy, food, running, life, everything. The guy's awesome. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time.

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So without further ado, let's meet Tim. Well, thanks for joining the show. Yeah're welcome thank you for inviting me i appreciate you uh you taking the time and uh you're an inspiration and you're a thought leader and uh a leader among men in this world of vegan uh endurance sports and i just i was really excited to be able to uh talk to you it's surprising that we haven't come across each other or met yet. I feel like I know you already, though. Well, yeah, that is the funny thing. Thanks to the Internet, I can follow what you're doing, and you can follow what I'm doing, and we've never met.

But we know more about each other than most of the people that live within a mile of us. That's very true. I think that's true. So you've been at this for a long time, and, you know, you've just been, you just post one amazing result after the other. Just I can't even keep track of all your victories and podium finishes and all these races. I mean, you're just constantly racing. You're, you know, you're constantly out there. And it's just really impressive what you've been able to do.

So I'm a huge fan. Well, thanks, Rich. Likewise. And I think that we have um you know there's some similarities in our story you know we're we're a little different obviously but um but i'm interested in hearing kind of how this all began for you uh you know you kind of had this sort of humble couch potato beginning which i can certainly relate to so i was hoping you could kind of take me down memory lane a little bit

and explain a little bit how you kind of arrived at the place where you're at now. Well, you know, it's funny because I do interviews quite frequently and blog about this and I'll make videos about the beginnings. And I've noticed over the past seven years that the story keeps changing a little bit and it's not that i've been dishonest with anyone at any point in time and telling the story it's just that as i've grown and learned about myself as a person and about this process and also about diet and exercise that my focus is different now so it's uh it's interesting to look back now and see it from a completely different perspective than that i didn't see before in what regard like what do you mean specifically well you know initially it was

i'll start the story as it as it told. I was an actor, photographer, and restaurant manager in LA, living in Venice Beach, and was vegan. From 1998 to late 2004, I was 100% vegan. But my health was failing, and I wasn't really doing anything physically at all. Even though I was vegan, I was eating a lot of vegan junk food. Fruits and vegetables were not really a part of my diet at all. Everything was a grain product or a potato product, some sort of flour, fried, baked, cookie, tofu, pup, whatever it might be, but it was vegan.

Lots of fake cheese analogs and fake meat analogs. And my health declined to the point where I developed chronic fatigue syndrome. I dealt with depression pretty much all my adult life, but that really spiraled out of control to the point of being debilitating. And just everything went south in a heartbeat. And found myself uh without a job without any energy without any desire to do anything without any um really without any options and some people that i had met through the restaurant because i worked at a vegan restaurant so i i kind of became an ambassador for veganism in los angeles right which restaurant actually real food daily oh you did oh really yeah back in this was 98 yeah i started at the santa monica location and then i went over to

help uh i was part of the opening crew for the west hollywood location interesting and then i became the director of training and a manager and i actually um personally opened the beverly hills location which then closed a few years later. Right. And then I went back to West Hollywood, but I worked with them for seven years. Interesting. So I knew. I eat there all the time.

I know Anne Gentry a little bit. Yeah. It's great. I love RFD. It's still one of my favorite places, even though I eat differently than the food they serve, but I still think it's a fabulous restaurant. But I met all the vegans and raw fooders and at that point I thought they were freaks, but I met all the freaks in Southern California and they made a lot of good friends.

So when I started going down and I lost my job there, some people reached out to me and suggested I try a raw diet, which I thought was the silliest thing in the world. It's incredibly restrictive. There's nothing fun to eat. It's just fruits and vegetables, which were the two things that I weren't eating. And I would imagine you were also getting pressure from other people to abandon this vegan thing altogether or saying that, you know, it's because you're vegan that you're feeling this way and it's, you know, it's time to, you know, go back to something more traditional. Yeah, absolutely. A lot of people said that that was the case, that I needed animal products. I was hearing that from many different sides of the equation, even vegans.

Because many vegans. Because many vegans live in fear and doubt. They hope that veganism works. They hope it's effective, but they're really not quite sure. So even they'll question it. They'll say, well, maybe you do need some eggs or some dairy or some meat or some animal protein. And that put a lot of doubts in my head as well but i'm i hate to use the word ethical because i don't think that's really an accurate description but how why not why not i mean it i mean i think i know what it means but yeah well i i choose to be vegan because i don't want to harm animals how is that how is that different from in from saying it's ethical though or is

that because you think that that places you on some kind of higher moral ground or something? Well, I've studied a lot of philosophy and ethics. It's hard to prove that something is more ethical than anything else. And I don't want it to appear as if I'm being self-righteous by saying I'm an ethical vegan, because I don't feel I'm superior.

It's just I make choices that work for me and that choice for me is all about not harming any other creatures. Right. And not to digress because I want to hear the rest of this, but I think it brings up an interesting point that I think you have opinions on as well, which is just the issue of these labels that we use in general, whether it's, you know, vegan or plant-based or fruitarian or raw or what have you, I mean, once you sort of adopt a label and it's, it's easy to do and it makes it sort of, you know, it's a, it's a thumbnail way of sort of understanding where somebody's coming from, but it also creates problems and pitfalls and pigeonholes people and is limiting and, and, and all of that. And I struggle with

that a lot. Yeah, I'm in 100% agreement with you. At first, like when somebody first makes the plunge, they're scared to death because they've moved away from their peer group. They've probably moved away from their family. And they're in uncharted waters without a lot of support. and they're in uncharted waters without a lot of support. So it's very easy to jump into this new community, but the community says, great, we are vegan, we are raw, we are this, we are that. We're going to give you the label, we're going to give you the vegan tattoo, we're going to give you the vegan clothing.

Here's your t-shirt and your membership card. Your membership card. And so people get caught up in it it and they really embrace that label at first and they feel like they have a new group and it's a powerful group it's a very prideful group and that's exciting but the longer i've done this the less comfortable i am with that and now even though my website is running raw and even though i'm vegan and i you know unprocessed raw foods i really don't want to use those labels anymore because i think not only is it just a tiny fraction of who i am as a human being uh nobody else defines themselves by their diet right like is that all we are is just the food that we eat i'm vegan really that's it that's all i am that's i got news for you that that's it

yeah thanks you are what you eat right that's it right i mean you know there is a sort of i think there's a natural human inclination to kind of join a team or be member of a team or a community and and you know that's natural and we all gravitate towards that but yeah i mean i think it's it's tricky and i think that when you that. But yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's tricky. And I think that when you start, you know, people are very passionate about food and very opinionated. And I always say that it kind of ranks up there with, you know, religion and politics in terms of being a hot button issue for people. And when you start throwing these labels around, people get defensive or they have preconceived notions of what it means and it causes a lot of judgments and you know like yourself i mean my goal really predominantly

is to get people to sort of rethink their choices and and try to make healthier choices and it doesn't have to come with a label it's just about being more open-minded and and maybe entertaining something you you're scared about or or what have you, all in an effort to get healthier and to grow as human beings, beyond what's on your plate. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's the main focus of my project now and what I'm doing. Not to convert people to veganism or raw foodism, but simply to hopefully lead people down a path of greater awareness

and more fulfillment. And, of course, the choices I'm going to suggest are going to involve plant-based foods, but that's not all I talk about anymore either. Right. So let's just get back to the story, though. So you have these people saying, hey, you should check out a raw diet. You have other people saying, you know, time to go back to meat, and this leaves you at a crossroads.

But meanwhile, you're battling with chronic fatigue syndrome and depression and all of these things. So, you have this choice to make. Yeah, and there was also one thing I have not talked about in sharing this story before, but it's becoming very clear to me right now. Right at the very end, the end before I was reborn as a raw vegan, I was having a really hard time digesting anything. Everything that I ate made me feel sick. So it got to the point where I didn't even want to eat anymore. And that was probably the scariest thing of all. Food was no longer fun. It was eating anything. It was a horrible experience. So I tried it. I really didn't have a choice. As far as I was concerned, I was going to end up

homeless in Venice like so many other people do. But I tried raw food. There was a restaurant in Culver City called Leaf. I'm not sure if it's still there, Leaf Cuisine. I've been to that, but it's been a long time. I'm not sure if it's still there, Leaf Cuisine. I've been to that, but it's been a long time. I don't know if it's still there. Yeah, and Rod Rotondi, who opened the restaurant, he didn't advertise raw or even vegan. It just said Leaf on the sign, and that was it. So I walked in, and they had salads predominantly,

salads and smoothies, which is the bulk of my diet now. But I thought, okay, I'll get a salad and we'll start there because I understand salad. Salad's an easy access point. Many of the options that people are introduced to are very, very different than the foods that they are familiar with. Everybody knows what a salad is. You may not like salad, but you know what salad is. So I started with salad, and it was a really good salad, and it was really filling, and I didn't feel terrible after eating it.

I didn't have that inability to digest or that nausea or that complete lack of energy after eating. So I committed to eating there for a week every day. lack of energy after eating so i committed to eating there for a week every day and like i said the salads were good so it wasn't a real struggle and at the end of the week i just i felt great like there was a huge shift in my physical experience in a single week and what were you eating other than the one meal you were eating there every day i mean were you maintaining a raw diet outside of eating at leaf i was getting a salad there and then i would take a salad to go and then i would get a smoothie and i don't remember i think that's all i was eating because i wasn't i lost my appetite

leading up to this so i don't think i was eating a lot of food anyway. So I think it would have been two salads and a smoothie a day at that point, and that was about it. So it was kind of calorie-restrictive at the same time. This is like back in 2004 or something like that? Late 2004. I had no birth at all when I started. It's funny, I now consider that to be one of my birthdays. I have two birth birthdays. Because it was such a huge shift for me. You know, I don't remember my own birth, clearly, but I do remember this. Right. Profound experience.

So I just kept adding time. I tried it for two weeks, and I felt even better. And then I tried it for a month, I felt even better. And just kept going along. And as I progressed in time, I started doing a lot of research and talking to people and going to lectures and talks all over Southern California and started adding other things to my diet, tried other nuts and seeds and seaweeds and just kept expanding things

and kept feeling better and better for about three months and then i went through what most people would call the detox phase and that was pretty tough i went through two months where i lost a lot of body weight muscle what were you what when this began how much did you weigh i was do you remember i was probably like 160 pounds and i went down to maybe 142 wow that's really like how tall are you uh five nine uh-huh so which 142 pounds uh against the runners that i compete with now is a heavyweight right i was gonna say yeah you're not that tall so that's that's like you know that's elite runner's elite runner. You're in the ballpark there. Yeah, but then I bounced back.

After going through that quote-unquote detox period, I bounced back. And my body physically changed. I wasn't exercising because that hadn't been a part of my life for 17 years maybe. But I noticed that my musculature was changing. The shape of my muscles was changing their size was changing my skin was changing a lot of things were changing say five to six months in when you were going through this detox phase though i mean did you experience a lethargy or or what you have these physical symptoms right so how were you able to identify this as something you had to weather

to get to the other side as opposed to hey this isn't working like i don't feel good i've been doing this for a while and i'm starting to you know tank well this is one of the places where jumping into that label and jumping into the community can be an advantage it can also be a serious disadvantage um because i was told by the gurus of the raw world that I was going through a detox and I just had to go through it. This was all part of the process. So you were willing and able to put your trust in that and see it through. Yeah. That could be potentially dangerous as well. Everybody has a different physiology. And maybe I had a severe deficiency or maybe I had come down with some other illness.

Who knows? But I believed in it, so I went through with it and I came out the other side. But now, I wouldn't recommend that someone just take it on blind faith. I would recommend that someone go to a doctor and get some blood tests done and see if they have any deficiencies, see if there is something that is truly problematic and not just, you know, quote-unquote detox symptoms. Right, but in truth, I mean, there aren't going to be very many doctors that if you went and sort of as an open book and said, this is what I'm doing, that are going to say

keep going they're going to try to talk you out of that right i mean i wouldn't give full disclosure but i would just say hey i'm feeling a little weird you might get a blood test right do i have any deficiencies that are showing up yeah full disclosure with many medical practitioners is not a good idea and as i found as a raw vegan full disclosure with many medical practitioners is not a good idea. And as I found as a raw vegan, full disclosure with many alternative practitioners is not a good idea either. Right, right. I remember getting acupuncture in LA probably in 2005 and I was all proud of my diet. I was so proud that I was 100% raw vegan. And they were giving me needles and testing my pulse and whatnot.

And they asked me some questions about diet and this and that, and I said, oh, I'm a raw vegan, all proud. He's like, oh, no, that's terrible, that's terrible. So the woman ran out and got me some hot soup and hot tea and was trying to force it down my throat. Yeah, I mean, there's still a lot of work to be done to raise awareness about this. And that's why I think being an athlete is so powerful and so important. It's a very different thing than just somebody who's doing it and is telling you, I feel good, or maybe their skin glows and they look good.

But when you're able to get on the podium and win these races and do the kind of things that you've been able to do on this diet i mean that that speaks you know profoundly to the benefits that you've been able to actualize and realize by living this lifestyle i mean before this i take it you had you had had some background in running you know cross country in high school or whatever but but when you started to run and we'll get into that story i mean it was still sort of uncharted terrain for you i mean you weren't competing prior to this at the level that you are currently or you know did during you know the last five or six years right no uh basically what happened is after a year of being raw, once again, the labels, they sound strange coming out of my mouth now, but after a year of eating this diet...

Well, your website's called Running Raw. I know. But I'm moving that more towards a raw living, being vulnerable, being open, being open to whatever shows up in life and embracing it. That's a couple of ways. I like that.

Yeah, there's definitely a deeper meaning to that word. Yeah, so I'm transitioning. But I had a party, a birthday party, a raw birthday party, and I was talking to a lot of people. And I was just sharing what had happened to me. Most of the people at the party were not raw. Most of them were vegan, but not raw. And I was talking to someone who was a filmmaker, a friend of a friend at the party. He said, you really need to document this.

Have you thought about doing a film about this? I'm like, no. He said, this is really cool, but how would we show in a film that these changes are actually happening? How do we show that your body is transforming? How do we show that you feel better? It's like, how did we go to doctors? Did we get medical tests? And I thought to myself, you know,

I used to be a runner in high school and first up to sophomore year in college. Running is a great metric. It's a great way to measure fitness. It's a great way to measure energy. Maybe I should try running again. I wonder if that would work. I mean, now that I'm in my late 30s, it'd be fun to see if I could run as fast as I did when I was 18 or 19. So it was just a question. And he got excited about it. And we became friends and decided to make a documentary about this,

which was running raw. That's what we called it. Right. So I started running and it was hell at first. It was absolutely. How long, I mean, how long had it been since you had, since you had been running? Well, I, like I said, I retired from athletics in 1988 and mainly because of depression. I just, I wouldn't do the training. And I watched my friend become a two-time Olympian, and many of my friends actually became Olympians, and I wouldn't do the training. I wanted to. I had the same goals they did, but I couldn't get myself out of bed.

I couldn't get myself to get dressed. I couldn't get myself to train. And wanting to be an Olympian and not doing what it takes was making me suicidal. Yeah, that's a spiritual crisis right there. Yeah, so I decided that I had to never, ever again be an athlete. And I completely burned all those bridges towards athleticism. Burned them. Couldn't even look at it.

Because I wouldn't survive if I did. Right, so all this time that you're in Los Angeles. Where did you grow up, by the way? In Vermont. In Vermont. So you came out to L.A. to pursue acting and you're working at Real Food Daily and all of that. And during that, how many years was that going on? I moved to L.A. in 97.

And had been a computer consultant and a high school coach for skiing, which is mostly just standing around in the cold. Not really anything athletic. You're just standing around in the cold helping the kids that keep falling down. So I was either standing in the cold or 15 hours a day at the computer in my consulting job. Right. But the point being that during all these years there's there's no physical activity you're not going out you know in santa monica or venice for a jog along the beach occasionally or anything like that there's absolutely nothing going on

no there was no jogging there was no hiking there was um i did lift a little a little weights but not seriously um but no cardio whatsoever you know just you know the usual actor thing try to get some biceps right right so then the documentary project comes along and this burns your interest in in checking out running again which is interesting because you would think it would be the reverse you'd start running you'd be feeling good posting some good results and then the documentary would surface but it was the other way around with you yeah yeah it was the the chicken before the egg and which is kind of the recipe for the best documentaries where you start out you don't know where it's going to lead and the story's going to unfold as you kind of move forward through it right yeah that's exactly the way i looked at it

like i was curious it wasn't as if i wanted someone to say, hey, look at me. I'm doing these great things. Come film it. It's like, I have no idea what's possible. Let's find out. And that became the tagline for Running Raw, which is to see what's possible to be what's possible. And I still use that line quite a bit in my materials. But that's what it was all about. Let's see what's possible. I don't know where this is going to go. And I really threw my hat over a really tall fence.

I wanted to try to make the Olympic trials at 10,000 meters, which is absolutely preposterous. But if you don't try, you never know what's possible right so i didn't start training like somebody who hasn't run in 17 years who wants to do a 5k and and maybe break 20 minutes i've still been training like someone who's going to make the olympic trials coming off basically coming off the couch for a decade or something like that. So, wow. So, we're talking trials in for 2008? 2008, yeah. And so, tell me what happened. Well, I was going to be 40 in 2008.

So, I wanted to see what I could do at 40. Like, can I make an Olympic trials at 40 not having done anything for 17 years? And I trained with abandon. But unfortunately, connective tissue cannot keep up with cardiovascular improvements. Right. And I want to talk about that too, but I want to hear this story first. So I kept getting injured and half the year I would be down with injuries, literally six months out of the year, you know, spread out throughout the year, I would be down with injury. My knees, my ankles, my hips, my lower back, constant. You know, I trained for the year, I would be down with injury. My knees, my ankles, my hips, my lower back, constant.

You know, I'd train for a month and I'd be down for a month because I was doing too much too soon. And that was really frustrating. So when 2008 did roll around, my training never really got up to speed. So that didn't happen. The documentary died the first year because the filmmaker that I was working with really wanted to, well, he thought I was going to be an instant success. And I knew it was going to take time. And, you know, we started this in 2006.

So I thought, okay, I got two years to put in. Let's film for two years and then see what happens. But he was hoping that something great would have happened sooner, so he walked away from the project. Understandably, you know, you need to make money. But I kept at it. And when 2008 came around, the Food Network heard about me, Al Roker Productions,

and they decided to do a documentary about me, about me trying to make the Olympic team as a raw vegan at 40. And they decided to do a documentary about me, about me trying to make the Olympic team as a raw vegan at 40. And I told them that my training had not been sufficient and that it was not going to happen. But they still wanted me to do it anyways. And I tried to talk to them. I thought, let's move you in another direction. I'm doing okay, but I'm not great yet.

And they really wanted the high drama of me going to the Olympic trials, which I hadn't even qualified for. They didn't understand that. And people don't realize how difficult it is to make those trials cuts. I mean, you're the absolute elite of the elite just to make the Olympic trials, whether it's track and field or swimming or many of these other sports. And to make the Olympic trials cut off for the 10,000 meters, I would have had to have broken the American record for 40 year olds by a minute. Oh my God. So I would have broken the American record by a minute just to get into the trials. Wow. So it was, it, yeah, I was far away from making that happen. But anyways, they decided to film this anyways, and it was a huge disaster.

And they decided halfway through the filming that they were going to get a lot more views, and the ratings would be better if they made me look bad rather than make me look good. Oh, no. So it's turning into Honey Boo Boo. Yeah. So they tore me to pieces. And when that show aired, oh, it was hard to watch. Oh, no. I didn't know that, oh, it was hard to watch. Oh, no.

I didn't know that. Yeah, it was a terrible experience. And stair climbing is my best sport. Right. I want to talk about that, too. Yeah, I'll finish this up, and then we can get into more details. But I'm sorry for dragging with it. No, no, no.

So you've kind of run the gamut with these film projects. But the important thing, though, is that you kind all right. So, so you've kind of run the gamut with these film projects, but the, the important thing though, is that you kind of recaptured this love for running and, and you were starting to see, you know, maybe not these grandiose results, but you were seeing improvement and you were enjoying it again and, and kind of saw the, the long-term potential if you kept at it. Well, it was that, and it was also, I felt i had done people a disservice i so many people had put their faith in me um at least this is how you know the story that i told myself and i had let them down so i kept at it no matter how many times i fell in my face i just kept at it kept at it kept at it and then i started getting quiet about what I was doing. So instead of advertising what I was going to go for, I just kept it to myself and started this internal journey, which I'm still on today.

And that's when I started to get good. And that's when the training really came together. And that's where everything shifted. So now it's a completely different project for me. I'm going to be 45 in two months. I'm still improving. I'm getting faster all the time like it hasn't stopped yet oh no i mean and i i don't see you stopping anytime soon

i mean you you look at the result your results page on running raw.com and i can't even you know keep track of all the wins and the top finishes and all these races you're very prolific in your racing i mean it looks like you race almost every weekend yeah sometimes twice a weekend that's amazing so all right so you know let's talk about running and training and and the like i mean i think that you you brought up a really important uh and interesting uh topic for discussion which is this idea of trying to do too much too soon. And, you know, there's a lot of listeners here or they're runners or they're triathletes or cyclists. And, you know, a lot of guys our age, I mean, I just turned 46. So we're basically the same age,

you know, guys who want to kind of recapture some of that who, you know, like you and like me, maybe spent too many years on the couch, but they want it right away. You know, they want to, they want to, you know, show up at that marathon and qualify for Boston or, you know, qualify for Kona or, you know, whatever it is for bragging rights or, you know, sort of their, you know, I'm turning 40 and I need to do something, but there's a certain impatience. And I know it because I've been there and I know what that feels like to have it happen, you know, right away. And, you know, what I've realized is you really have to, if you really want to do it and you're enjoying it and it becomes, you know, more of a lifestyle thing and you are willing to kind of check your ego at the door and have a little bit of patience and turn it into more of a four or five year plan, you can have these dramatic and drastic improvements, but it's not going to happen in one season. And if you try to make it happen in one season, you're going to end up like you did with all these injuries and, you know, back on the couch. Well, this is what, it's not just people

our age. This also happens in college where a coach is going to have someone for a few years, and they want to get their money's worth, especially if this kid is on scholarship. So they push these kids to the point of potentially great results, but most of the kids just get in, get up, they get injured, or they lose interest, and they're done with the sport. And if they're overtrained. Or they're overtrained. And if that can happen at 19 or 20, imagine what happens in your mid-40s. Right. I mean, when you're 19 or 20, a lot of guys can get away with that, at least for a while, or they can kind of see their way through it.

But when you're 40 or your late 30s or mid- just can't you know it's an inescapable truth that you have to reckon with yep well one of my best friends who was a two-time olympian he said to me when i was first starting this project you know because i was getting guidance from him he said that when he started with the olymp team, his coach told him, he said, you're not going to be good for six years. But if you do this training in six years, you're going to be incredible. But it's going to take you six years. Are you willing to commit to that? guy and and he did he committed and he was u.s champion two-time olympian but you know his cap his coach kept saying it takes six years for the adaptations of this training to become fully in effect and that has nothing to do with diet that's just the physical adaptations of training right i mean you can't cram there's only so many so much performance gain that you can realize in a year and if you try to surpass that then you're going to start moving backwards.

Yeah, and it was five years of running when I started running raw that the results really started coming in. And now it's 2000. So now this is seven years. And last year, 2012, was a really exceptional year. And that was the six-year mark. Like my body is adapting. It's getting there. Right. And you have to allow your body the time to make those adaptations. I mean, they just don't happen overnight. don't happen they don't happen overnight no well see here's the thing that a lot of people don't realize your body is constantly changing and modifying itself even if you're doing nothing like for instance the lining of your intestine changes every three days the cells are sloughed

off and new ones grow your skin changes you know every few days uh every part of your body gets turned over on a cycle 95 percent of your body gets turned over every seven years so if you're training for six to seven years by the time all those organs and systems and and bones have been turned over they've now adapted to this new training stress but also that works with diet too. So if you change your diet over the course of those seven years, those new dietary patterns and pathways are going to be incorporated in that new body. That will be the physical adaptations of training. And then you're going to see an enormous benefit.

But you've got to wait it out so what I ask people you know a lot of people come to me for coaching and they're like I want to do this now I'm going to do it this year I'm going to PR on my 5k you know in two months I say why? why do you want it? like what what does that give you? like if you get a PR if you win this

race what do you get like what emotionally what is the feeling you're gonna get well I think it's also informed by this the culture that we live in which is you know we're all about instant gratification and you know what's the shortcut and I want it now. And, you know, we've lost kind of the art of patience and an appreciation for the journey as well. Well, yeah, and that's the whole point. Like people, they get it and they're so far away from being present that when they get it, they're not even present to what they got. I agree with that. And then they just go looking for the next one okay well i pr now i gotta do this and now i gotta do that and i gotta do the tough mutter and i gotta do the right you know triple triathlon it's like why you weren't even present to the result you got last time what makes you think

this is going to be any different well it's not's not dissimilar from, you know, I mean, the analogy that I use is it's sort of there's a hole in your spirit, right? And you're looking for that thing that's going to fill it and make you feel okay, make you feel whole, make you feel happy. And it's this incessant chase to, you know, either accumulate material possessions or what have you, but to fill that hole with externalities outside yourself. And a race can be the same as a sports car. It's like, oh, if I can just get that thing, then I'll be okay or I'll feel better. And then you get it and then you realize, oh, wait, that didn't work. Well, I got to chase the next thing now. And you're just on this habit trail that never ends. And it never will end until you kind of shift that perspective and that focus and you know do the internal work and learn to be present and appreciate

the journey because that's that's where the value and the beauty is yeah and that's when you finally get good too that's right when you stop caring about being good is when you get good interesting and and and i think it's also interesting how you train and I want to get into your training philosophy a little bit. I mean, you know, I think you've gone through, you've, you've gone through these overtraining periods and, you know, logging tremendous amounts of miles and, and, you know, I'd like to hear your perspective on, on training volume and also on training intensity because i know you do a lot of your running at a very moderate pace you know a pace that you know a runner of you know at

your elite level people would think well why are you running so slow and you know why are you putting in all these junk miles and so i'd like to talk about that because i have some you know strong opinions about it yeah i've tried excuse me i've tried all the programs and the protocols i'm an experimenter so i i've tried it all and what i found is that if you understand human physiology the vast majority of the time you should be burning fat and not glycogen or sugar. And if you're training your body to burn sugar, it's going to need a sugar fix all the time. And you're also going to get lactic acid buildup because that is the byproduct of burning sugar. When you're burning fat as fuel, it takes a much greater adaptation to burn fat as your primary fuel source.

adaptation to burn fat as your primary fuel source, but there is no lactic acid byproduct and you have an unlimited supply in your body regardless of how low your body, you know, I'm like four or 5% body fat. I still have enough fat for days worth of running. Yeah. It doesn't matter how lean you are, how low your body fat percentage is, you still store a tremendous amount. You will never, you will never deplete your fat stores. you still store a tremendous amount. You will never deplete your fat stores. No, but you deplete your sugar stores quite quickly. So if the human body was designed to use sugar as its major fuel source,

we would be the size of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Not only does fat have more than twice the calories per gram, fat is nine calories a gram, carbohydrate is four calories a gram, but fat can be, fat molecules can be stored right next to each other, whereas glycogen needs to be stored with six times as much water. So you've got four calories being stored in an area six times as large as the sugar molecule because of all the water required. Whereas fat, you can jam it right next to each other at nine calories for every molecule. So in order to store enough sugar for a day's worth of activity, we'd be 1,000, 1,500, 2,000 pounds just to be able to house all this sugar. So I train for fat burning. I train for aerobic efficiency to me it's all about running

economy and adapting towards aerobic efficiency and that's all about putting in the slow easy stuff i'm teaching my body to burn fat really efficiently right and i hate that word junk miles because they're not junk no you are you absolutely when you are putting in that low intense those low intensity miles you are doing exactly what your body what you just said which is training your body to to more efficiently utilize your fat stores for energy and also building those metabolic pathways increasing mitochondrial density and you know improving blood flow to those areas all of these physiological changes are occurring as a result of those miles and you you know improving blood flow to those areas all of these physiological changes are occurring as a result of those miles and you you know you may go out and do that run and feel

like well i didn't get enough out of that but you know trust me those changes are occurring they're occurring slowly but they are occurring and the more efficient that you can become at running you know at that at that intensity level the much better runner you're going to be or, you know, cyclist or swimmer or what have you over the long run. Yeah, and it's also about neuromuscular intelligence as well. It's not just the biochemical pathway, but it's the neurological pathway, like a pianist. The more you practice, the stronger the neuromuscular connections are. Are you familiar with the term myelination? Yeah, but why don't you explain it, please?

Yeah, like all nerve fibers have this sheath on them, and the sheath is called myelin. And the thicker the myelin sheath, the greater the insulation around that neuron, around that nerve. The greater the insulation, the stronger the signal. So the more you do something, the more you build this protective insulation, this myelin sheath on your neurons, and the easier it is for you to do that activity. So someone that plays, for instance, Malcolm Gladwell talks about 10,000 hours in the book Outliers, that if you do anything for 10,000 hours, you will be one of the world's best. And it's all about this myelination. You're insulating those neurons so that that activity is completely instinctual for you and you no longer need a cognitive brain to do it. It's insulated so well that it's effortless.

And it's the same thing. These long, slow runs are creating these incredibly efficient neuromuscular pathways. So your body doesn't have to really think about what it's doing anymore. It's just running on autopilot and that's incredibly efficient. And so what would you say to somebody who says, well, if you want to run fast, you've got to run fast because you're running fast where the, where the vast majority of your training, not including these races that you do every weekend, which I'm sure, you know, stimulate, you know, your higher end, uh, your higher end anaerobic systems. But, um, people will say, well, you're never going to run fast if you don't, if you're not running fast all the time.

I agree with that. But my definition of fast is anything 800 meters or less. If you're running anything over 800 meters, I don't consider that fast. So even if you're running the mile? Even the mile. You're not burning sugar. Well, you are burning sugar as your primary fuel, but you're also burning fat for the mile. sugar, well, you are burning sugar as your primary fuel, but you're also burning fat for the mile. But when you get up to 5K, which I consider to be distance, a lot of people think 5K is 5K. You really should be burning mostly fat in a 5K. And then towards the end of the race, you're switching over to primarily sugar burning. but most of that race is fat burning.

But it's only fat burning if you've put in those aerobic miles, because I think what people don't understand is that when you're doing that aerobic zone training, you're pushing your aerobic threshold up so that over time, you'll be able to run a lot faster while you're still in the fat burning zone without tipping over into the glycogen zone. If all you're doing is high-end, super intense interval training, you're never training that fat burning mechanism. And so, as soon as your effort starts to ramp up, even in your training, you're going to go right to the glycogen. Yeah. So, it's not, it's, there are two thresholds and people often confuse them. There's the anaerobic threshold, which is when you're going from using oxygen to not using oxygen. And then there's the lactate threshold, which people often think is the anaerobic threshold.

But the lactate threshold is actually at a much lower heart rate. And the lactate threshold refers to the point where your body starts producing more lactic acid or lactate than it can handle. You're always burning a little bit of sugar. Even sitting here, I'm burning 20% sugar because my brain requires it. But 80% of it is fat. But as I increase my heart rate, I will eventually reach the lactate threshold where I'm burning 51% sugar and 49% fat, and I have now tipped.

And once you get to that threshold, lactic acid will accumulate, and then your performance will slowly decline. But by training just below that threshold, and it's not even a height. For most people, it's probably a pulse rate of 125 or 130 if they haven't trained it. If you train it just below that threshold, you can keep bumping it up. Right. For instance, they say that the Kenyan runners, their lactate thresholds are right around 90% of their max heart rate. So those guys are out there running at a heart rate of 175, 180, and they're still burning fat as their primary fuel. Right, because they built the house from the

ground up built it from the ground up as opposed to top down and you know i think from hearkening back to what we just talked about where you have clients who you know tell you they want to break their 5k record in one season or what have you and there's a certain impatience with that uh and and how that is sort of societally or or culturally influenced by this you know need to have things happen right away um you know that sort of paved the way for this new kind of crossfit movement and there's a guy called um i don't know if you're familiar with this guy brian mckenzie no there was just an article about that an interview with him in in the new outside magazine or maybe it was last month.

And he's pioneering and kind of pushing that envelope with this new way of training that's all very intense. And his basic point, I don't want to put words in his mouth, but his basic point is something like, you can beat your PR in the marathon without ever running more than 13 miles, and I'll do it for you you in eight weeks and it's a very kind of crash course cross-fit oriented program that's that is sort of robust with a lot

of high intensity work and and no you know quote unquote junk miles and no real aerobic efficiency and his position is that you can improve your aerobic capacity through this high intensity type of working out. And I don't, you know, I don't, I've never tried that. I don't have any experience with that. It's just, you know, it's sort of this new thing. I'm going to try to get him on the podcast too so he can explain it. He can explain it all to me. But it's just a very different way of, you know, maybe, you know, sort of getting to the same place.

But, you know, I was wondering if you to the same place but you know i was wondering if you had any thoughts on that i have lots of thoughts on it because one of the protocols that i tried uh i think maybe 2009 is when i was introduced to it it's called tabata which is the original high intensity training protocol tabata was the name of the japanese scientist who discovered this and it's a four minute workout where you do 20 seconds all out to failure so whatever the exercise is you can do it with anything you can even do it with running so you're basically sprinting 100 meter speed for 20 seconds all out to failure then you take a 10 second rest and repeat eight times so it takes four minutes of 20 on 10 off 20 on 10 off and it is the most excruciatingly painful thing you can

ever imagine and his results show that you can improve vo2 max using this protocol more than any other type of training. So this is where all these other programs have come from, is this work done by Dr. Tabata and his results in improving VO2 max. But if you look at, and I did see benefits as far as stair climbing is concerned because it's a power sport. Right. I mean, you're right on the rivet the whole time you're doing that but as far as uh you know long distance running trail running mountain running i didn't really see a benefit and secondly uh which i'll get into in a moment i dreaded working out i dreaded it but if you look at view to, it's traditionally been thought of as the indicator of running performance. So if somebody has a VO2 max of 60 and somebody has a VO2 max of 80, the guy with 80 is always going to win. But we know now that that's not the case. Right. I mean, my understanding is that it's

actually not really that informative. And also, there isn't that much that you can do to improve it. Or if you do improve it, you can only improve it incrementally and that it doesn't ultimately have that much to do with how well you're going to do. I mean, is that... Yeah, exactly. So all of these programs are based on Tabata's research showing that this method improves VO2 max more than anything else. But my point is, so what?

Yeah, you're improving something that really doesn't make an enormous difference in performance. We thought it did, but we're now realizing that aerobic capacity, lactate threshold training is far superior in regards to at least long distance performance. Now, if you're a sprinter, yeah, you got to do the high intensity intervals, no doubt. If you're a power sport person, yeah, no doubt. That's what you've got to do. But if you're into endurance sports, it's a shortcut to injury more than anything else. Right. I mean, I think you're going to have to put a lot of focus on rest if you're going to be doing that kind of high-intensity work or you're going to get injured pretty quick, I would imagine. Yeah. And Rich, one of the things that really

has become the forefront of my message when I make my videos, blogs, and whatnot. I don't want people to exercise. Just like I don't want to label myself as a raw foodist or as a vegan anymore, I don't want to label myself as an athlete either. And I don't want to say that I have to go work out or go train or exercise. I don't want those to be distinct things from my life just like growing up here in vermont you know in vermont you just you you live but when i moved to los angeles people would always say to me hey let's go out and go out in nature today i'm like what do you mean go out in nature what does that mean and they'd be like let's go to griffith park or let's go to topanga canyon or you know whatever it might be and i'm like in nature that's a straight like like there's

this distinction there's life and then there's in nature and see i don't see that distinction to me everything is nature and i don't think that exercise should be something different than life i think it it is life so rather than telling people to train and exercise and push themselves, I want people to just move swiftly through the world as part of their life. So when I'm out there so-called training, what I'm really doing is exploring the mountains, looking for caves, finding cliffs, looking for moose antlers in the woods, climbing to the top

of a mountain so I can take pictures of a sunset. But in the process, I'm getting in great shape, but I never see it as a workout, even though I may put it in the training log so people can follow what I'm doing. It's my life, and it's rich. It's an expression of who you are and a very holistic perspective of it. Yeah. It's an expression of who you are and a very holistic perspective of it. Yeah, and when I see so many people moving towards the, I don't want to single anyone out, but towards the high-intensity movement, these hardcore intervals with some pretty aggressive names, I see people punishing themselves. And this whole no-pain-no-g gain mentality is coming back in really strongly and people i want to hurt myself i want to dominate myself i want to beat myself into

submission i want to suffer i want to and it's this very aggressive testosterone saturated uh violent um complete disconnect with your life and with your heart, if you want to call it that. Right, right, yeah. It frightens me. I don't like where it's going, and I want people to get out there and enjoy their lives. Right. And enjoy the process of getting fitter. I think that's a big challenge for me.

You know, I sort of, you know, achieved a couple sort of performance goals that I wanted to. And now, for me, and I talk about this with my wife all the time, it's about how do I just engage with the joy of it on a daily basis? And yeah, I want to improve and I want to be the best that I can be. But I do want to do it for the love of it as just an expression of who I am as opposed to now I'm training, now I'm not. That was very beautifully said. Yeah, as long as that distinction exists, there will be a resistance to do it. And the more it hurts, the more the workout hurts, the greater the resistance. And that creates stress.

You know, that's the reason that I moved away from athletics back in 88 because the level of stress i was experiencing was off the charts because i had this battle going on inside of me i had these ego goals i want to be an olympian that's a complete ego goal that has nothing to do with my reality my reality was very different i you know i had some pain clearly that i was not dealing with and i wanted to impress people or i wanted to prove myself to people i didn't feel worthy and that that's where the olympic goals came from but i didn't want to go through all the training and all that i just wanted people to like me you know and i thought if i'm an olympian they'll like me right Right. And for so many people, like, you know, why do you want the PR?

Why do you want to win the 5K so you can brag about it on Facebook? Because then people will like you. They'll probably like you a lot more if you're not trying to rub something in their face. And if you're enjoying your life and it's rich with experience, they're going to want to hang out with you. But if all you're doing is boasting about your PR, you know know we're not that impressed right and here's what i've learned like i'm if it wasn't for my project i wouldn't post my results anywhere i wouldn't tell anybody what i've achieved it doesn't matter it hasn't changed my life one iota that i've won national championships who cares you know it's great for the vegan movement. And, you know,

I put it out there, but I'm almost embarrassed to tell people when they ask me, you know, what are your results? I feel shy about it. It's like, well, it's not really important. You know, what's important is that I'm experiencing extraordinary growth. That's what fascinates me. So let's talk about that about that i mean where do you see this sort of connection between food running and personal growth like what is that nexus for you and and and how how do you feel that that has sort of you know catapulted your your mental spiritual holistic you know life approach and health i think one of the problems with modern america and especially our definition of health is that we have specialized to the point

of extreme reductionism where we don't have a general i mean there are general practitioners but predominantly most medical professionals are, and they specialize in one very specific thing. And if you want to win a Nobel Prize, you don't study science. You study a particular piece of a protein that's so small that it can be only seen under an electron microscope, and you spend 30 years studying that one active site on this protein. Our knowledge has become so reduced in its scope, and I think that that has created these massive distinctions, because in my experience, you cannot talk about diet, exercise, or mental, spiritual, emotional health apart from each other. They're all the same conversation.

And it's really irresponsible to talk about one and not the others. So my approach is to find a way. I'm working on my own unified theory. Right. How to unify those three conversations into one very succinct conversation that people just get like the one thing that makes all of those just fall into place well it's so elementary on one level and and so beyond obvious and yet so you know it it just eludes people you know it's it's very difficult to you know comprehend and implement that kind of approach into our lives. And yet it's, I think if you just grab somebody on the street and said, you know, what do you think would be in

your interest to do if you were to change, like exercise more and eat better or, you know, whatever. I mean, it's not like people aren't aware of that. Um, but there's this massive disconnect. Yeah. And exercising more and eat better. what does that actually mean to most people it means losing weight and looking better and therefore being more attractive to other people so that people will like you so that people will it always gets back to that exactly as opposed to yeah if you um you know i always liken it to the adage of water rises to its own level. I think a lot of people, we're talking about race results or getting a sports car, getting your PR and your 5K will put you in a place where then you'll be happier about yourself and more attractive to a potential mate or whatever. more attractive to a potential mate or whatever.

But if you discard all of that and just focus on, you know, working on your interior life, on your spiritual life, however that, you know, may be in your individualized self, and become more self-sufficient internally, where your happiness is not dictated by these externalities, that that water level will rise in your own glass and you will be a beacon of light attracting the people that you want to have in your life automatically, as opposed to going out and trying to seek approval or try to get this person to like you or get that job or whatever the case may be.

Yeah. You know, Rich, I've dealt with shyness my whole life. And what I've learned over the past few years is that shyness is a form of narcissism. I always wanted people to feel bad for me for being shy. Like, oh, you know, they're shy. Oh, he's a shy little boy. She's a shy little girl, whatever. But really, it's narcissism. Shyness is, I'm only concerned with what you think about me. I don't really care about you at all. I don't have any curiosity towards you. I just want to know what you think about me, and I'm scared that you think badly about me. That's what shyness is. So, for most people, we live in this state of narcissistic fear. Everybody's got some degree of shyness. We all want to fit in. We all want other people to like us.

We want to be accepted by our peer group. And it's all about, well, what do they think of us? What you were just saying reminds me of a quote from The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, where she says, Before you can say, I love you, you have to know how to say I. And this is what I'm really embracing now, the rising water. I'm simply a vessel and I can't try, I can't rely on the outer world to fill that vessel. I have to fill that vessel myself. And once that vessel gets full to the top it's going to start pouring over and then that liquid that water that me that richness is going to spill out and it's going to reach people at a distance and it's going to wet their feet and they're going to look down and say wow that's

that's kind of cool what is that and then they look for the source and yeah you'll attract people into your life but not because you're trying to but just because you have a richer life and people want to be around that and yeah i mean i think it's also trying to understand what makes you tick trying to tap into you know your latent passions or what you have to offer what brings joy into your life and then finding a way to express that more fully in a more authentic way yeah and if you can do that then that's truly you know a road to to happiness that becomes infectious yeah and you know it's not about domination it's not about competition it's not about vegans are better than meat eaters it's not about i'm a better runner than somebody else it's just simply about let's all rise together you know it's funny the the whole point of me racing is to bring awareness to a plant-based diet but the race that i had the greatest impact in

was on st louis not st louis Springfield, Missouri. I was traveling on a speaking tour. And when I was checking into the hotel that night, I saw a guy with running attire checking in as well. And I asked him, is there a race in town? Because clearly he looked like a runner. He said, yeah, there's a half marathon tomorrow morning. What time? Seven o'clock okay cool maybe i'll show up so set my alarm and missed it so seven o'clock rolls around and i'm still in bed the race has started and i'm like oh crap so i get up throw my clothes on drive over to the start they're taking down the start they're taking down the course markings it's been 45 minutes now since the race started and i thought what the hell so i asked a guy i'm like which way did they go and he said well you go down here and then you turn a left on cherokee street you turn right here and like i

have never been to springfield missouri i don't know i'm just running around a city i've never been in the markings are down and i just started running and they were taking down the mile marker when I got to it so I knew I was on the right track and I just I was running you know all out and it was kind of fun and then after about three miles in I saw the police lights ahead and I knew that was the tail the tail end so I started catching up to the walkers and when i would run by them they would get scared because here i am running you know i was probably doing like 5 15 5 30 pace blowing by them and they didn't expect this you know the runners are up in front nobody's going to be running by them so i would scare them they would jump and scream often so i'm like oh i'm sorry i'm

sorry so i started warning people as i was coming i'm like you know runner coming runner coming you know coming on your left and so people would turn around and look at me and i had my running raw shirt on and which on the back says powered by raw food so here i am getting their attention by letting them know i'm coming and they're turning around to look at me and they're looking at me like holy cow what is why is this guy way back here? Oh, look how fast he's running. And then they would read my shirt.

And as I would go by, I would hear people say something about powered by raw food. And I went by another group of women and like, I heard about that raw food thing on Sex and the City. And I was starting conversations throughout the whole race. And I probably passed three or 4,000 people.

I finished in the middle of the race because I was starting conversations throughout the whole race, and I probably passed 3,000 or 4,000 people. You know, I finished in the middle of the race because I was so late. But thousands of people were talking about my shirt and the guy that blew by them at what seemed to them like 100 miles an hour. Right, right, right. Yeah, because more people saw you and took notice of you by running by them quickly and drawing attention to your shirt. And that creates a dialogue. And then there's a ripple effect of that. Exactly. But had I been in the front pack running with the leaders, three or four people would have seen my shirt and that's it.

And the people that I really wanted to reach, which are the ones in the middle of the race all the way to the back, those are the people I really want to reach. I finally reached them. And I finished, you know, 4,000th in that race, but I reached more people by not winning than I ever have by winning. Right, and they're the people that have the most to, they're probably more receptive and have the most to gain or benefit by, you know, entertaining this new way of looking at food. I mean, the elite athletes, you know, they have have their way of eating and you're not going to change that, most likely. Well, here's something that I've had a unique opportunity to experience in New England. When I came back here in 2007, I left Los Angeles in 2007, came back to Vermont. I thought about getting into Nordic skiing, cross-country skiing, because I

had done that in high school as well. But it was so expensive to get into the sport. I thought, well, I'll run, but it's really hard to run here in the winter. The roads are icy and the shoulders get narrow because there's snow on the side. And a said hey you should try snowshoe racing we've got this snowshoe circuit that we do i'm like oh that sounds stupid you know you know running sounds hard is what it sounds like yeah like running is hard and now you want me to run in you know zero degree temperatures with these heavy things on my feet up mountains in deep snow. Are you kidding me? And they encouraged me to go to a race, and I did, and I loved it. Believe it or not, it was the hardest thing I'd ever done,

and I loved it for some crazy reason. And now I've been competing as a snowshoe athlete since 2007, and it's my favorite sport. And it's not just the fact that you're doing something incredibly challenging, but it's the people that show up to the races. Yeah. It's gotta be an interesting crowd of people. Only really hardy, really motivated, really positive people show up to a snowshoe race. Yeah. There's no, cause there's no, nobody's going to be paying attention to that. I mean, you're only going to do that if you love it. And have them in the middle of the woods, so for the most part, there's no lodge. There's no place to get warm.

There may be a porta potty. There may not. You're standing outside before the race for an hour. You race, and then you stand outside for an hour after the race in the cold. But it's a completely, how shall I say it? Even though there are winners and there are mid-packers and there's people to get last place, everybody's equal. Everybody talks to everybody.

The guy that wins the race is probably really good friends with the guy that got last place. And it's this incredible community where everybody just shares in the experience of going out and they and doing a snowshoe race. Nobody cares who won. And the people that show up are the top trail runners and marathoners in the country. I mean, like we had a race just a couple miles away last week. There were five national champions in the race.

Wow. You know, either trail running, mountain running, road running to our American record holders. And these are just local people who are out there having a blast. And there is no elitism. There is no, I'm an elite athlete and I can't talk to you because you got last place and you're 80 years old. Right. Oh, we all hang out in this wonderful, um, equal community and is completely changed my experience of sport and this is one of the reasons that i've started moving away towards this whole you know i'm i'm a champion i'm going to win my results matter right interesting i mean that's that's really you know i relate to that a lot i

mean that's really the same kind of thing that originally attracted me to doing ultraman is because it seems so different from all these other triathlons because everybody had to bring their own crew and they bring their friends with them and then the crews help out the other athletes and you know it's a race you know there are people that want to win but at the same it's not really about that it's about this collective journey that these 35 people and their crews are taking around this island over three days that just seems so remarkable and unique in in the world of sport where you know it's it's not about it's not about the victory it's about the journey and and i think

that you know being able to tap into that and and you know what you've been able to do you know not you know by by being so diverse in your career i mean you know you're racing everything from one mile races maybe even shorter all the way up to these 50Ks. And then you're doing these snowshoe races and then these insane stair climbing races that I want to talk about. Yeah, well, once again, this comes back to my insecurity, which I've learned to embrace as an asset. Which is meaning what? which is meaning what well like i said you know i grew up a shy person but i i realize now that that's not necessarily a quality that i want to embrace at least wondering what people are thinking about me but at the same time this insecurity that i have

never allows me to rest on my laurels there There's always something more to do. There's always something bigger, better, and harder to do. And it's not about proving anything, even though there might be a part of me that wants to prove something. But when I let the higher part of me do the training and do the racing, it goes to a different place. But I see, I sort of see you as an extremely secure athlete because an insecure athlete would say, all right, well, my best event is, you know, whatever it is, 50 kilometers, let's say for the purpose of argument. So I'm going to stick with that. And I'm only going to enter those races because that's where I have the best chance of distinguishing myself or placing high. But you're putting yourself in all these different scenarios,

you know, really without regard for, you know, whether you're going to do well or not, just out of the joy of it. And so I see that as being someone who's extremely secure. Well, I do it for the joy, but at the same time, it's like, okay, I've got nine U.S. trail running titles now. But the insecurity in me says, well, who cares? Nobody cares about trail running or mountain running. Yes, those are incredibly hard sports, but most people don't even know they exist. So I've got to do something more mainstream. Or then I'll do stair climbing.

Like snowshoeing. Exactly, right? But then when I do it, when I enter a sport, it's like, okay, I'm not just going to do it. I'm going to find a way to be one of the best at it. But I'm going to do so in a way that I enjoy. I'm not going to make it a sufferfest. I'm going to show people, which is what my videos are all about, showing people how to achieve a high level of anything that you want to do and enjoy the process. Like, you want to be a national champion here's what i do but look i'm actually having fun and it's interesting and it's beautiful and it it doesn't have to suck

right you know but when i throw my my hat into a ring i really i go all out and that's the insecurity like okay i'm not just going to try snowshoeing i got to be the best okay i'm not just going to run up the empire state building i got to be the best. Okay, I'm just going to run up the Empire State Building. I've got to be the best. Right. Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about running up the Empire State Building because this is fascinating to me, and it's a world that I know nothing about. You're lucky. It's an extremely arguably marginal sport, but more and more people are starting to learn about it. And it was fantastic to see the article in the Sunday New York Times last weekend in the magazine. They had a big article about stair climbing racing and the Empire State Building race and all of that.

So, you know, take us behind the scenes on what that's all about. Yeah, we just had a big write-up in Esquire magazine last week as well. Oh, cool. Which I was quoted in. had a big write-up in esquire magazine last week as well oh cool which i was quoted in one of the reasons this stair climbing is really taking off is that well two reasons three i'll make it bigger there are three one is that this whole high intensity interval craze where no pain no gain how much can i suffer it's attracting that crowd because it is a suffer fest right the tough mutter crossfit crowd yep and two people want to it's unique it's some unique uh achievement accomplishment that you can brag to your friends like hey i ran up a building um people think

you're crazy and people want other people to think that they're crazy you know everybody's trying to impress everybody and thirdly it's one of the few sports that is attracting athletes from hugely varied disciplines. You're getting Olympic rowers. You're getting Olympic cyclists. You're getting world champion mountain runners. You're getting stair climbers, and that's you know sole sport you're getting uh 212 marathoners you're getting um all and triathletes um uh chrissy wellington yeah chrissy wellington just did that's right i forgot about that this year and the woman that won was a world champion rower so you know you've got all these athletes from different disciplines coming together to see which athlete is the toughest of all.

Oh, you've even got Ultimate Fighters doing it. Anton Apollo, Anton Ono, he did it. Oh, he did it, wow. You've got, everybody's coming to see who is the master of the staircase. So it's really... So how does it work? First of all, how many people, for example, do the Empire State Building Race?

fittest men and women in the world of all different sports. You had to submit a resume and it's really, really difficult to get into. This year, somebody else took over the race and now it's a money making machine. They quadrupled the entry fee and they let in 900 people. Wow. So how do they do that though? They let people up in heats or people go every 10 seconds or how does that work well in other races around the country there's a time interval either 10 seconds 15 seconds or 30 seconds the empire state building because it was unofficially the world championships of stair climbing they would have two heats so you know 50 in the first heat 50 in the second heat whatever the number was and it's a free-for-all if you're running okay you start in a lobby which is maybe 15 feet wide slick polished granite floors you have 20 feet of lobby before you have to go through a door a

little over three feet wide so you've got stud, like the fittest people you can possibly imagine, punching, kicking, elbowing, tripping, getting trampled, getting slammed into the walls next to the stairwell, getting trampled before they get into the stairwell, getting pushed down the stairs rather than going up the stairs, like somebody will knock them into the down because there's two flights of stairs that go down from where the start is and people get knocked down the stairs uh there's blood that's amazing so yeah it's it's i mean and people are going to be gunning you know immediately from the gun right to be the first to hit the stairs

because once you're in the lead like it's probably hard to pass people, right? So it gets very congested. Yeah, because it's an old stairwell. It was built in the 30s, so it's not wide enough for two people to go by each other. So it's very difficult to pass. And people will hold on to the railings on both sides, so it's very, very hard to get around them. And the worst part is the adrenaline rush at the beginning because of that melee. And the worst part is the adrenaline rush at the beginning because of that melee.

And it's like you're doing battle just to get into the stairwell. You're so pumped with adrenaline that it's very hard to get your heart rate back down to a reasonable level to finish the race. Right. And so how many stairs or how many floors is the Empire State Building now? The stairwell goes up to the 86th floor, which is 1,576 steps. And so how long is this taking guys like you to do? The top guys will be between 10 and 11 minutes. That's unbelievable.

And I got into stair climbing because I was injured. I was running mountains in Los Angeles and doing it all wrong, as we talked about earlier, constant knee injuries. And I couldn't run for a month. But I could do the stairs in Santa Monica from Santa Monica Canyon. I don't know if you know those stairs. Of course. I run them all the time. Well, I was training there, and that didn't hurt my knees. yeah well i was training there and that didn't hurt my knees so a friend of mine said hey you know they've got this race in downtown la up the u.s bank tower which is just a little bit shorter

than the empire state building so i thought i'll try it so i did the race not knowing what to expect and i've never experienced so much pain in my life but i got third place and there were like 2 000 people in the race i'm like oh wow wow i got i got third place first of all that sucked secondly when's the next one right right and that's when i realized i was good at this and then i went to the sears tower which is the tallest building in north america and chicago and then the empire state building and now i've you know probably done 50 of these races that's amazing and this is I would imagine this is just going to continue to blow up these are happening all over the place now who who do you think are the best sort of naturally you know athletes that are that are naturally acclimated to doing this because it is

a you know it's very you know vo2 max oriented it's strength oriented you know it's it's not going to be the marathoner who's necessarily going to be the guy who's going to just automatically win no it's this is where it gets really interesting uh first of all i'm quite a bit older than most of people in the race and one of the guys that used to be he hasn't competed in probably two or three years but he was one of the top guys in the u.s i think he's best at the empire state building is fifth and he's won a lot of races around the u.s he is a professional cyclist interesting and he uh was one of the top guys in one of the stages of the tour de france in the mountains you know five six seven years ago i'm not sure but i was uh interviewing him for one of my videos and asked him how this

how stair climbing compared to biking up you know the pyrenees and he said not even close the pyrenees he said are easy compared to this he said people people think that cycling hurts he said not even close to the pain of a stair climb wow and he said, I've got a lot of quit in me. He said, we all have a lot of quit in me. And he said, the guy that gets to the top of the stairwell first is not the person with the strongest leg or the biggest lungs. It's the guy who doesn't listen to the voice of quit. And this is what I've learned like i have beaten people that are far superior athletes to me but they give up faster than i do because it's really you're pushing yourself to the point of so much pain that you literally you don't know if you're going to survive

every part of your body your legs are so beyond filled with lactic acid the pain is so extreme that you're dragging your legs up the stairs and you're pulling on the railings with your arms until they don't work anymore and the dirty dusty dry air burns your trachea to the point where it feels like somebody put a blowtorch down and it starts to swell up and close off every breath hurts like somebody's jabbing a knife down your throat it literally is extreme pain through your entire being and the reason that i do this sport one i'm good at it um two it allows me to investigate places that i'm scared to go just by myself it allows me to investigate who i am when the going gets tough like do my belief systems still hold up in the stairwell does my character still hold up in the stairwell? Am I still a nice person in the stairwell? Am I still kind?

Am I still compassionate when I'm in that much pain? Who am I? Because, you know, there are a lot of compassionate vegans out there that as soon as they find out they have a B12 deficiency or some bone deficiency, they run to animal products. You know, like, do the things that you say you believe in, do they hold up when everything is falling apart? And that's when you get to learn the most about yourself.

And for me, that's the whole, that's the ballgame. Yeah, that's it. That's what it's all about. Every race I do is an opportunity to find out who I really am. Not who I am on a nice day, but who I am on the worst day of my life. Because that's what racing is. When you're in the race and you're really going for it, it's the worst day of your life. Yeah. And that's why, you know, when things don't go your way, which, you know, they're

want to do, especially in longer races, they're just opportunities. They're opportunities to lean more into that, you know, which is what am i going to learn about myself today if everything goes great and you know you do the race and you feel awesome the whole way and it's all goes according to plan well you may have had a you know a great performance but in some respects it's almost a loss because like what did you learn about yourself other than that you were able to execute a plan or that your training plan worked or whatever you're doing is working properly but it's when things go wrong and not according to plan that's when you know you find out who you really are the kind of the ugly truth you know the good bad and the ugly and all of that

and that's where you create the fertile you know uh sort of you know a fertile place from which to grow yeah you know comfort means with strength. That's what the Latin word means, you know, come with fort strength. People think comfort is about sitting around and not doing anything. Comfort is actually having strength in moments where you really don't want to have strength. You know, that's where ease comes from ease or you didn't think that you were capable of you didn't that kind of strength yeah it's to me it's meditation racing is meditation it's like okay i'm going to put myself in an extremely uncomfortable situation and i'm going to breathe into it and i'm going to relax into it

and i'm going to i'm just going to notice it i to relax into it. And I'm just going to notice it. I'm not going to judge it. I'm just going to notice it. This is, okay, I'm experiencing this extreme sensation. Okay, let's go with it. Let's work with it. That's what I've got right now. So let's work with it.

That's beautiful. That's very eloquently put. And I love that. Because for me, that's, you know, like I said, this is really what it's all about. It has nothing to do with other people or their performance or beating anybody or winning or anything like that. It's all about what can I learn about myself? How can I grow? How can I improve?

How can I expand? How can I more fully embrace this journey, not just of the race or the training, but of life in general? Well, you know, people call in sports, there's practice and then there's the game or there's training and then there's the race. But to me, the race is the practice, but it's the practice for life. Like that is like people say, do you meditate? Do you have a practice? And I say, yes, I race. That's my practice.

Because if I can check in with myself and be a good person and be clear thinking and be compassionate and generous in those conditions, then when my life, when I come back into normal normal life when things are clearly going to be easier than they are in competition then i can be much more generous and i could be much more compassionate because i've been practicing doing it under the most extreme circumstances right right absolutely well cool well uh i feel like uh you you know we can't even top what you just said because that was amazing. I appreciate that tremendously. But I also cannot let you get out of this interview without talking a little bit more about food. Yeah. Or I'm going to get a lot of hate mail. You had a raw food athlete on. You guys didn't even talk about food. Let's do it. like you had a raw food athlete on. You guys didn't even talk about food. So, you know.

Let's do it. I know, really. I mean, you've been walking this path longer than I, and, you know, I've been on a plant-based diet now for almost six years. But you take it to a whole new level, you know, with the raw thing. And, you know, I wouldn't characterize myself as being someone who's on a raw diet, but I would say that I probably, you know, I don't know, you know, 70, 80% of my diet is raw, you know, I'll have cooked foods for dinner, but I'm very curious about, you know, about how you've done it and how you make it work as an, as an athlete. Um, and so, you know, we're going to have to ask the question you get asked

every day, I'm sure, which is where do you get your your protein? I get to ask that question every day, and I have my answers to that. But some of my protein sources are cooked food, so I would be interested in hearing how you manage that, and also what your perspective is on protein in general and kind of how uh you know conventional wisdom dictates that we have these you know huge protein needs well first of all i once again moving away from the labels also moving away from the distinction between raw food and cooked food and what is a much better um metric is food that makes you grow and food that makes you sick. There are foods that are cooked that make you grow. And the idea of raw foodism is more of a dogma or an ideology than anything else, much more so than it is a diet.

Because if you ask people, you know, why are you choosing this diet? Well, because it's the healthiest diet. Well, are you sure about that? Do you really understand, you know, the biochemistry of cooking and the physiology of the body? This was an experiment for me. Running raw was an experiment. I wanted to see what I could do as 100% raw vegan.

But what I have learned through ridiculous amounts of research, I've put myself through so many biochem and physiology courses, is that steaming and boiling are perfectly safe. There's nothing wrong with steaming or boiling your food. You're not going to create any toxic compounds. You may degrade some of the vitamins and nutrients. Chances are they're in the water that you cook them in if you boiled it. So if you're consuming the water, you're still

getting those nutrients. But if you're consuming a lot of fruits and vegetables, even if you degrade some nutrients, you're still getting sufficient nutrients. Steaming the nutrients are still there and predominantly intact. But if you're eating a wide variety of fruits and veggies any nutrient that was degraded chances are you're going to get it somewhere else so the idea of being a raw foodist to me isn't necessarily the best choice for a lot of people it's very restrictive and causes stress emotional stress family stress whatever it may be and many people end up rubber banding and going back towards crappy food because they just couldn't handle that stress when all their friends were having fun going out eating normal American foods and having a good time. And they were sitting alone and

eating carrot sticks and some little cashew dip that they made, which wasn't the healthiest choice anyways. So the whole cooked food thing, so what? Does that food help you to grow? If the answer is yes, knock yourself out. It's either toxic or it's healthy. Many foods, toxic compounds are produced at high temperatures. Baking, broiling, frying, grilling, roasting, a lot of toxic compounds are produced. That's just, and this isn't coming from raw foodists, this is coming from the FDA, this is coming from foods. The oxidation that takes place with the oils and all of that. Acrylamide formation, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, heterocyclic amines,

I mean, on and on and on. All these compounds that we know about are formed in food at high temperatures. So staying away from those is a good idea. But if it's causing you stress, stress is also toxic. So once again, I wouldn't advocate that somebody just jump in 100% to a raw food diet. Because that, you know, being so strict could be causing stress and they may end up getting sick anyways. So it's really about moderation, at least at first,

finding your rhythm, finding your groove within any diet. But what do I eat? My competition diets, predominantly smoothies and salads. My competition diets, predominantly smoothies and salads. Big salads with avocado as a fat source and sometimes some olive oil as a fat source. Lots of different vegetables. Lots of different greens. A salad will be from two to five pounds, and that would be my nightly meal.

Then wake up with a big 32-ounce green smoothie, lots of fruit, lots of greens, tons of kale. And then nibble on fruit or whatever else throughout the day. As far as protein is concerned, before I get into protein, the diet that I just described is a diet that's really efficient to process. So the digestive load on the body is minimal, especially with the smoothies because you're blending a lot of the harsh fibers. They break down to a small size so your body can access the nutrients faster. I can go running within half an hour of a 32-ounce smoothie, and I have no digestive issues whatsoever.

So it's really about how quickly can I get out and exercise? How much does the food slow me down throughout the day? If the food slows me down, it's going to impair my workouts. I think there's not enough emphasis on a nutritional density, but also secondarily, like the net energy gain. And I know Brandon Brazier talks about this a lot, but looking at the tax that it places on your system to digest the food and assimilate that, that requires energy. energy and if you eat a steak or you know something that's very difficult to digest you have to marshal all of these you know resources internal resources to break that food down and make it available to you and you get tired and you gotta kind of like sit around for a while and wait as opposed to something that is very easy to assimilate like you were

talking about like these smoothies that will just go right in and give you that immediate energy boost without having to do much work to get there, the net gain. Yeah, and what a lot of people don't realize is that all these digestive organs require blood. They need a blood supply in order to function. And when you're digesting a large meal, your digestive system can take 60 percent of your blood supply right so you know you've had your your bacon eggs sausage and toast before your race you've lost 60 percent of your blood supply for that race because it's all in your gi tract it's all in your gi tract right so and you know blood circulate, but the body can preferentially send blood to one area over the other, which is also part of the fight or flight mechanism. Preferentially sends it to the muscles, which is why when you're scared, you don't digest food.

So before races, people often wait three to four hours or they eat three to four hours before a race just so they can have a chance of digesting it at least some of it because the uh the fight or flight from the nervousness has moved blood away from the digestive system so you know that that's a huge performance um boost right there just getting that blood back you know and not having your digestive system dominate your physiology while you're trying to train and i think people would be surprised you know to hear uh how few calories you actually eat like i think people would probably assume that well if you're on this you know restrictive to use your your term diet that you must be eating all the time eating all day long and and you know when they hear that when they hear the number of calories that you're actually taking in,

they either don't believe it or they think that you're some kind of freak or something like that. But I'd like to hear you talk about that a little bit, and then I have my perspective to share on that as well. Yeah, in the raw world, are several camps um or dogmas no you don't say and i try to uh um separate myself from all of them you know this is just purely my experimentation and my experience uh based on a lot of scientific research and then experimentation with you know what i've learned from that research but the calories required or the calories suggested by the um the fda the rdas recommended daily allowances you have to take several things into consideration many of the substances in these processed standard american foods whether they be natural substances or additive substances decrease the rates not only

the rate of absorption but also they decrease what is absorbed so if you're for instance meat you're cooking heat meat at high temperature you're not getting all the protein out of that beat meat your body can't use it but when they looked at the steak when they measured the the nutrients in that steak they did so before it was grilled like they don't you know when you study an apple you don't turn the apple into apple pie and then study what's in the apple. You study the apple first. And that's where you get the nutrient data.

That's where you get the caloric data. And so after something has been processed or cooked, a lot of it is no longer absorbable. So many of the calories that people are eating are not being absorbed. And unfortunately, many of the junk calories that people are eating are not being absorbed and unfortunately many of the junk calories that people are eating are being absorbed because when you refine a flour or refine a sugar you make that part of the the caloric ratio easier to absorb and the heat process makes other things more difficult to absorb so a lot of what people are eating is not being used. A lot of the caloric energy is not being used. And when you eat a diet that is very clean and very assimilable, you have much greater usage of the energy that you're consuming.

So, your body uses it much more efficiently. So, if somebody's eating 4,000 calories, they might only be using 3,200 if they're eating a standard diet. But if you're eating a very clean diet and you're eating 2,800 calories, you're probably using all 2,800 calories. And secondly, there are people in the raw world that try to match the caloric intake of the standard world. Okay, if a standard athlete needs to eat 6,000 calories a day, then I need to eat 6,000 calories of fruit or vegetables, which you end up grazing all day on food. Right. But what happens in that case, especially with fruit because that's much more calorie dense than vegetables, you end up overloading your ability, your kidney's ability to process all the glucose in the blood.

Even though it's fruit sugar, even though there are plenty of phytonutrients that go along with that fruit sugar that prevent, you know, harsh sugar spikes, like you would see with a refined sugar, it's still more glucose than the kidneys can process. The kidney is the first line of defense. It's constantly filtering the blood and it can only put so much glucose back into the blood. So a lot of that glucose is getting excreted. So people that are eating 6,000 calories a day of lots of fruit, they're not actually utilizing much of those calories. The body is like, it's just too much. Right.

Your body will internally regulate that. It's not going to allow that much glucose to be circulating in your bloodstream. Yeah, there's a rate of reabsorption for glucose at the kidneys. There's a limit. And if you go beyond that limit, you're just going to excrete it in your urine. So you've got really expensive urine. Which diabetes actually means diabetes mellitus means sweet-tasting urine. That's how they initially diagnosed diabetes their urine was

sweet because they were just excreting the glucose instead of absorbing it so yeah i don't eat as much as most athletes because the food that i eat is very efficient it does its job without a lot of filler right and at the same time you're you're you're spending your training time or the vast majority of your training time in this fat burning zone and and as a result of that your your body is becoming increasingly efficient not just with that kinetic movement but with the allocation of of nutrients to you know fuel your body body. And so what I found, and it sounds like this is similar, is that, you know, when I first started doing this and I was new to it and I was making a lot of mistakes and I was new to kind of getting fit again, I ate a lot more than

what I eat now. Because now, you know, six years into this, my body has adapted to the training load. It's becoming increasingly more and more efficient in this aerobic zone training. And so I don't, I'm not hungry. Like I'm not, for me to go out and do the training now, just not exact the toll on my body that it did three years ago. Yeah. Yeah, your body becomes more efficient in all regards. Not just its ability to use oxygen, but also its ability to use calories, to oxidize those calories. like a normal person you know i don't feel like i'm eating any more than you know an average person would be which is interesting and i think that that surprises a lot of people so they think you're either being anorexic or you know you must be just some kind of mutant or something yeah it's just that most people are over consuming or their bodies have not been

you know finely tuned that's that's what training is you're tuning your body you're becoming more like a hybrid car than a typical gas burner. Right, right, right, right. Interesting. And I think what's also interesting about your perspective and part of your whole approach with food is you don't take any supplements, not even a B12 supplement. Is that correct? Do I have that right? That was true up until a couple months ago when I started taking vitamin D. Oh, you did. Okay. Interesting. So, you know, people would say, oh, you're crazy not to take vitamin B12. And I read something about, you know, you had kind of commented on that and talked about how, you know, the body can become efficient at recycling b12 or whatever i just i was hoping you could shed some light on that because i hadn't heard that before and i

thought that was really interesting yeah what they've discovered from studying vegan populations is that if you have a lot of b12 coming into your diet your body has no reason to hold on to it but if you stop um adding b12 to the system from diet, the body will hold on to what it has. There'll be an initial drop and then it'll hold on to it. And they say that it looks like the average vegan can recycle

B12 for six to seven years. Interesting. So, but I also, you know, I do get some in my diet because I live in a farming area and B12 is in the air. If you live in a farming area, B12 comes from microbes. It's not a mineral like, you know, other compounds like, you know, zinc or magnesium. It's part of a microbial structure called cobalamins.

part of a microbial structure called cobalamins. And when the farmers are plowing their fields and tilling the fields in the summer and all that dust that gets into the air, that's dirt. That's dried dirt that's gotten into the air, and it's full of microbes. And when you're breathing in that dirty air, you're getting vitamin B12. That's interesting. You're breathing in your vitamin B12. And then also with the produce that you're getting from the farmer's market, of course you want to wash most of the dirt off, but leaving a little bit of that on there,

and then eating it, you're actually ingesting that microbial ecology. Yeah, exactly. And also we grow a lot of our own produce here, and we have a blueberry orchard, and most of my kale throughout the year comes from our garden. I don't wash it at all because I know how we grew it. Right. I'm not worried about it being contaminated by anything.

But, you know, if you're going to get it at the supermarket, yeah, you're going to wash it and you're going to remove the B12. But, yeah, if you know the farmer or you go to a farm where you pick your own berries or pick your own whatever they call them and you know they're not using pesticides or herbicides in an organic farm, don't wash it. Just eat it. You're getting cultures and yeasts and bacteria that are living on the skin. begs the question of kind of microbial health in general and you know the enzyme ecology and and and how all of that plays into uh you know holistic um approach to to your health and i think that you know we don't really think enough about the fact that we're mostly microbe and you know that we're basically a walking host to this incredible array of microorganisms that proliferate in our bodies, particularly in our GI tract. And that keeping that ecology healthy is absolutely critical towards, you know, making your foods bioavailable, towards not getting sick, to being able to assimilate your foods and the like.

And I know that you have some interesting thoughts on that. Well, I've done a lot of research in this area. And one of the things that really surprised me when I first learned it was that a human being is basically a community of microbes. basically a community of microbes. Now if you take the microbes out of our GI tract and you say okay we're taking these microbes out and yes 99% of our genes are these microbes that are living in our gut and what we left over what's left over is this thing called human that's also inaccurate this thing called human is made out of cells.

And cells are little microorganisms that have decided that it was in their best interest to come together and form tissues and form organs and form communities and then eventually form bodies. And over millions of years, human beings evolved. But as microbial structures. The individual cell in a human is no different than the individual cell in just about any other living thing as a cell is a cell they're little microbes so people think there is a distinction between the microbes in your gut and then you but they're all good friends you know they all know each other they all speak the same language they all have cell structure so it's not like there's this bacteria living in our gut that's foreign and alien and it's all part of us it's it's like we are the city and they're the vendors that are bringing their produce uh you

know to the city gates to do business with us but we're all you know we're all of the same type we're all you know based on these cells and they understand our language and what we're now realizing is that these cultures living in our gut because they understand human dna and human language because we're cells they actually not human language i didn't mean it like that, but cellular structure, biochemical language. They regulate our genes. They turn our genes on and off. They're one of the biggest components of gene expression. So if you don't have healthy cultures living in your gut, your genes are not properly expressed.

And they're realizing now this is where a lot of disease comes from. So it's not just about having good cultures that keep out the bad cultures. It's about having good cultures that are basically turning good genes on and bad genes off. They're regulating the expression of our genes. They're regulating our moods even. They regulate parts of our consciousness. I mean, they're incredibly important. Right. And so how, you know, if somebody's listening to this and they're thinking,

well, how do I know if my, you know, microbial gut activity is healthy or not? And what can I do to improve that or move in the right direction? I mean, what would be some things that people could undertake? Well, I saw a study that came out about a month ago, and this was really fascinating. They were looking at, first time I've seen a study like this, they looked at quite a few people who had been on long-term antibiotics, which most people know that antibiotics will often severely deplete the healthy cultures living in your gut. And gut doesn't mean stomach, by the way way a lot of people think gut means your stomach but they're predominantly in your intestines mostly

in your colon and they looked at what happens to these people after they get off the antibiotics so they observe them post antibiotics to see how long it took for the cultures to come back, if they came back, which ones came back. And it looks like in most cases, in about a month, your cultures will bounce back. That the population was at a healthful rate after about a month after antibiotics. Right. a healthful rate after about a month after antibiotics right so but if people are consuming you know meat that has antibiotics in a dairy that has antibiotics in it uh if they're on certain medications and drugs if they have a lot of stress which can definitely suppress the function of the bacteria in your gut you know changing the alkalinity or acidity of the gut,

and that remains constant, then they're not going to survive or thrive in other cultures which are dangerous can. So you've got to reduce the stress in your life. You've got to stay away from harsh medications that affect the gut. Definitely stay away from food that has any kind of antibiotics in it, which are animal products. And then, whatever foods you're eating, no matter what they are, they all have microbes on them, right? So I guess the rule of thumb would be that, you know, the healthier the food that you're eating, probably the healthier the the microbial population is on that food. Because when you when you eat the food and it has microbes on it, like any organism does, then you're sort of seeding a population in your GI tract.

Right. And it's like, you know,, you know, who are you trying to populate down there, right? So what are the foods, what are the better foods? Like if you're saying, you know what, I'm coming off antibiotics, I had to take them, or maybe I shouldn't have, but I did, and now I'm concerned about my microbial ecology, you know, what are some of the foods that I can do to help repair that or get it back on the right track? Well, foods are really a stopgap measure because you've got a vacancy. If you've killed off the microbes in your gut, you now have a vacancy and it's easy for pathogenic bacteria to move in. If you're in a toxic environment, they can move in and take up home. So eating foods, they're not cultures that are specifically designed to be inside of you, but they're not harmful. So what they will do is they will bind to these sites in

your gut that these microbes normally bind to, and they'll prevent the pathogenic or dangerous bacteria from binding to these sites. Because when they bind to the site, that's when they regulate gene expression. So you want to make sure that you don they bind to the site, that's when they regulate gene expression. So you want to make sure that you don't have any bad bacteria, you know, binding to these sites on your cells. So the food sources are really just an interim, you know, measure while your bacteria grows back. But they're not, you know, the cultures in fermented foods are not specifically designed for the human digestive system.

They're designed to be out in the world, you know, doing other things, digesting other things. Right, right, right. Every environment is unique. In fact, every person's digestive flora is unique. So, you know, I know a lot of people take probiotic supplements. And once again, that's a good stopgap measure. It's going to stop the pathogenic bacteria from taking over, but it's not a long-term solution. It's kind of like cutting down the Amazon rainforest and then planting corn.

You've stopped the erosion, but you now have a monocrop. There used to be this incredibly diverse species of bacteria in the gut there are thousands of different you know strains maybe even millions we're discovering new ones all the time of these strains that live in the gut and say they get wiped out and you think oh i can take my acid office supplement and that's enough no you just plant you cut down the amazon and planted corn you know you've got one thing growing in there. So there may be thousands of different genes that are now not being properly expressed or regulated because the bacteria required to regulate them is not present. So you want a probiotic supplement or fermented foods are good to get you off of antibiotics, but you don't want to stay on them long term because then you prevent your own cultures from growing back, which is ideally what you want to do. If you're really serious about it, what they'll do, an infectious disease doctor, they will

actually – this is going to sound freaky, but this is what they do – they will take a sample of your stool – I'll use the official term here, your stool, and they will culture it. They will grow it. They will take the stool, you won't have many bacteria left, but they'll be in there. Just their population will be significantly reduced. Culture it, they will grow them back to a healthy level, and then they will insert them into your... Insert them back in, right. Insert them back in.

Because then they're yours, so they're Insert them back in, right. Insert them back in. Because then they're yours. So they're probably going to, you know, express your genes. Interesting. That's the best solution. But, you know, that's a medical procedure. So it's not cheap to do. And it freaks people out. Right.

But, I mean, most, you know, obviously there aren't going to be very many people that are going to do that. I mean, you know, for the everyday person, it's sort of like all right well you know eat healthy foods try to avoid foods that have you know that that have lots of uh you know pesticides and hormones and and uh and the like in them avoid animal products you know if and when at all possible and and and allow your own flora to take root. Yeah. Yeah, you basically want to create an environment that's amenable to your flora growing back. Right. Cool.

All right, man. Well, I think we've got to wrap it up here because we're going around. What's that? You asked me about protein, so I'm going to give you my two-minute protein conversation. Yeah, we've got to get the... Well, yeah, we'll bookend it with the protein thing

so we can say we did it. Save best for last yeah okay uh this is somewhat tongue-in-cheek but when people ask me where do i get my protein i always respond with a question i ask them do you know what protein is or what is protein do you know can often offend people so i just say well what is protein and they might know the answer chances people. So I just say, well, what is protein? And they might know the answer. Chances are they don't. They may say, well, it's made of amino acids. Okay, great. What are amino acids?

And you just keep asking questions that lead them down the rabbit hole that show them that they have no idea what protein is. They have no idea what it does in the body. You'll humble them. They'll get off their high horse. And then you can have a different conversation but if you just if you allow someone to think that they know what protein may not like you tim you go down that road your ultimate goal of trying to get people to like

you may be foiled by that plan no but it's it's done really sincerely it's not it's not like a you know an in-your-face kind of thing well Well, do you know what protein is? It's like, well, do you – I'm really curious. Do you know what protein is? Do you know what it does in the body? Because a lot of people think that you need animal protein because that's muscle. You need to take muscle to build muscle. But there's actually components of protein called amino acids, and they're interchangeable. They can be moved around.

Your body doesn't take muscle and turn it into muscle your body takes muscle breaks it down and then uses these amino acids for many different things it does the same thing with plant proteins and they're the same amino acids so they can be used you know for anything and you start a conversation rather than just defending yourself by saying oh oh, I eat hemp seeds, or I eat kale, or I eat broccoli, or I eat asparagus, or I eat soy, whatever it might be, because that's not really going to sell them. You start guiding them into a conversation of, well, this is how protein really works. And a lot of what you've been told may not be true, and people make conclusions and assumptions that are based on no evidence, and they think they have the answer.

So it's a great way to – first of all, you have to know what you're talking about if you're going to have this conversation with people. But I never go on the defensive. I find just answering the question isn't effective. And secondly, the person asking the question is seldom an athlete and requires much less protein than I do, but they're worried about their protein consumption. And really quickly, because most people don't realize this, there are 20 amino acids that the body uses. So all protein that you eat, I don't care where it comes from, meat, dairy, soy, tempeh, kale, broccoli, wherever the protein source is coming from, it is broken down into its component amino acids. That's just the way of digestion. That's what digestion is.

then the body reassembles those amino acids into its own proteins, whether they be enzymes, whether they be muscle tissue, whether they be bone, whether protein does many, many different things, signaling molecules, receptors on cells. But when you digest these proteins into their amino acids, they have to be delivered. They don't just walk to the cells themselves and knock on the door and say, hey, I'm here, what do you want me to do? You need transport mechanisms to get them through the blood and to the, you know, tissues that need them. We only have five transport mechanisms for 20 amino acids, which means that they have to share. 20 amino acids, which means that they have to share. Some amino acids are much more dominant than others. And it all comes down to electrical charge, you know, what makes something more

dominant than another. So you have some amino acids that don't have much charge, and you have some that have a really strong charge. The ones with the strong charge are going to dominate. So they're going to hog the transporters so when people are consuming protein supplements especially whey one of the selling points of whey is that it's like super packed with all of the amino acids and highly concentrated and very assimilable it goes into your bloodstream very quickly what's happening is you've hogged all the transport mechanisms with the dominant amino acids because they're all there and they're all there in high quantity and the little shy amino acids that are not dominant they don't end up getting absorbed and protein going into the bloodstream

super quickly is the same as sugar going into the bloodstream super quickly is the same as sugar going into the bloodstream super quickly. It's not good. You don't want protein entering the bloodstream instantly, just like you don't want glucose entering the bloodstream instantly. Insulin also delivers protein, so you can get an insulin spike from these protein powders just like you would from eating sugar. And once again, you're going to develop amino acid deficiencies because the dominant proteins will always hog the transport mechanisms. And with animal protein, all the amino acids are always present. So the dominant proteins or dominant amino acids are always there.

So in other words, the sort of weaker or or amino acids with the the lesser charge yes don't get assimilated and you know these things are you're only you know that you can't create the protein without the missing amino acid weaker you know if it's the weak one that you need to complete building that protein and you don't have it then there's no there's no impact on you know repairing muscle or muscle strengthening then because you're only as strong as the weakest link in the chain. Yeah, and when I say weak, I don't mean not important. These amino acids are all important.

It's just some are electrically dominant. They're more aggressive. But they're all vitally important, every single one, regardless of how much charge it has. So what you really want to do is get a trickle of protein or a trickle of amino acids throughout the day that way you're getting different amino acids throughout the day and you're not getting a lot of them all at once so that they all have a chance to get onto these transport mechanisms and be absorbed when people are doing these protein shakes with super concentrated 60 grams of protein,

whey protein in one shot, they're actually going to develop a deficiency. Interesting. Yeah, I'd never heard that before. That's fascinating. Yeah, you can look in sports journals, sports science journals. They'll talk about it. Bodybuilding websites even talk about it. Yeah, if you have any links on that kind of stuff, I'm sure people would love to be able to read more about that.

Yeah, and we've known about that for a long time. It's not new. We've known about life transporters probably for 30 or 40 years. Right, so then in some sense, I guess you could make the argument that eating a plant-based diet, I mean, if you're eating a wide variety of plant-based foods, they all contain protein in some concentration or other. Not all, but a lot of them do. And they have different amino acid profiles that are different from meat and different from each other. And some are complete proteins and some are not, but if you're kind of just grazing like this throughout the day,

that you're going to be kind of getting this sort of, like you said, slow trickle of amino acids and all different kinds of amino acids coming in at different times and in different amounts and in different matrices, I suppose, and that that ultimately is a better way of sort of sourcing those amino acids to go where they're meant to go. Yeah, and this also makes an argument for not getting complete proteins, that a complete protein can actually be disadvantageous. Yeah, interesting.

That you want incomplete proteins because then you're not going to have, you know, all the dominant amino acids present to hog the transporters. Right, right, right. And secondly, protein can also turn into fat, and a lot of people don't realize that. Carbohydrates and protein can both be turned into fat. Most of the food you're eating is made out of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. That's predominantly what food is.

Protein has an amino group, a nitrogen added to it. But the body can strip that nitrogen off and take the carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen and make fat out of it and then excrete the nitrogen. So if you're eating lots of protein all at once and you're not doing intense amounts of physical activity, you're just going to store the protein as fat. Right. And develop an amino acid deficiency. Right. So it's all marketing, you know? Doing absolutely the opposite of what you're intending to do.

Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. So a lot of misinformation out there just to sell products. Right. And at the same time, that goes hand in hand with the messaging that we get about how much we need. You know, it seems like right now, and I'm like a broken record talking about this, but we're just inundated with, you know, marketing messages that we need protein and everything.

I think supermarket is labeled with extra protein and protein shakes and all this sort of thing, as if protein, you know, is some sort of crucial aspect of our diet that somehow mysteriously all of a sudden we're all lacking. Yeah. Yeah. People are getting bigger, but yet we need more protein. Yeah, I know. I know.

It's like are we starving or are we obese? It's like in some respects we're both, I guess. Yeah, and people don't realize how much protein or how many how much quality amino acids are in vegetables for instance dark leafy greens a lot of protein broccoli asparagus any of those cruciferous vegetables a lot of protein in there right so yeah why don't you just uh we got to wrap it up but like if you could just recount like maybe your your five go-to foods i mean you just said a couple of them are there any more that you know are readily available for for people out there and want to take a stab at it well you know uh smoothies and salads uh big fan of kale big fan

of broccoli eat a lot of broccoli uh sometimes i'll even make a smoothie with a head of broccoli in it yeah i do that too i love love it. Yeah, it's great. If you really are worried about the protein thing, take some hemp seeds because you're also going to get some essential fatty acids. It's better to get your essential fatty acids from a whole food than it is from an oil because it's not going to oxidize as quickly. But eat a wide variety of fruits and vegetables. And if you're going to do grain products, boil them or steam them.

You're going to be very successful. You're preaching to the choir, Tim Van Orden. Yeah. Do you sing? What's that? Do you sing? Do I sing? No.

That's one thing I cannot do. That's on my wife's side of the genetic equation, unfortunately for me. You know, Rich, I feel really bad as we wrap this up because I haven't asked you any questions. Well, I'm interviewing you, man. They don't want to hear about me. They want to hear from you. I interview you, okay, because I want to know all about you now, too. All right. Well, we'll do that on a future date. All right. All right?

Yeah. So where uh, so where can people connect with you? I mean, the main thing is to go to running raw.com and then you're running raw on Twitter. Uh, is there any, is there anywhere else where you want people to find out more about what you're doing? Yeah. Running raw on Facebook and running raw on YouTube. There you go. So yeah, check out the videos. Um, and there's a couple, uh, interviews that I read, uh, just kind of getting ready for the interview on Tim and I'll throw up those links in the show notes as well. Um, how do you feel? You think we did it? Yeah, this is great. Anything else you want to get off your chest? Anything else we didn't cover you want to talk

about? No, I'm good. All right. Well, I really appreciate your time. And we're over like, man, we're like over two hours now. That was epic. That was amazing. I appreciate you taking so much out of your busy day to talk with me. It means a lot to me.

And I think people are going to really enjoy the interview and get a lot out of it. So you're an inspiration and I can only sit on the sidelines and watch you continue to go kill it out there with all these races. What are you training for right now or what's coming up that's a more key race? Because I know you race every weekend. I'm trying to figure that out. I'm looking for a goal six months out somewhere. I think I may go for the um u.s half marathon trail championships or the u.s mountain running championships that might be my big stretch goal right where's where and when is that half marathon championships are in moab utah i think july and the u.s mountain running championships are in new hampshire uh late june all right well we'll be cheering for you man yeah and hopefully you and i get to do a run someday i'd like that are you ever in la or are you just hanging out in new england well you know i come back to l it's la

still my home i consider but they're both my home yeah so i'm out there quite a bit all right well you definitely gotta we definitely gotta hook up next time i come to town. I'll let you know if I come to Vermont, but no plans right now. I want to see you come out and do a race. I would get my ass handed to me, I think. Yeah, but it would be fun. You'd enjoy it. All right, cool. All right, Tim, thank you so much, and I will talk to you soon, my friend.

All right, be well. All right, you too. Bye-bye. All right, everybody my friend all right be well all right you too bye all right everybody that's our show i hope you enjoyed it i hope you enjoyed tim i hope he helped broaden your horizons uh we will be back later this week with james wilkes ufc mma badass guy who eats plants and then on friday we have back by popular demand, Vinny Tortorich, America's angriest trainer. He was a very popular podcast guest the other day, and there was a lot of demand to have him back on. And he's been gracious enough to be our first return guest. So looking forward to that. Again, apologies for the audio quality of today's interview

i did the best i could i'm still navigating some technology issues i obviously don't have it all figured out and i can only promise that i will continue to do better and try harder for you so bear with me and i'm sorry I tried to fix it in post I did the best I could but it is what it is and I'll try not to let that happen again so I'm at Rich Roll on Twitter you can find me at Facebook

Rich Roll on Instagram Julie Pyatt if you've been enjoying her on the show she's at Jai Seed on Twitter and at Srimati on the show she's at jai seed on twitter and at srimati on instagram and she's on facebook too uh we'll be coming back at you really soon later in the week so thanks again for stopping by and until next time peace plants Thank you.