The Rich Roll Podcast - Sid Garza-Hillman On Approaching The Natural

Episode Date: February 20, 2013

Musician, author & health philosopher king Sid Garza-Hillman joins the podcast to chat about all things PlantPower, including his new book, Approaching the Natural: A Health Manifesto*. More than just another book about plant-based nutrition, “Approaching the Natural” is a passionate and insightful primer on how we can achieve a more grounded, holistic, happy & gratifying existence — physically, mentally & spiritually — by connecting better with ourselves and the natural environment that surrounds us all. Sid is a breath of fresh air and it was a pleasure to have him on the show. Hope you enjoy the episode. SHOW NOTES + MORE Thanks for listening and enjoy the Program! Rich

The Rich Roll Podcast. What's up, people? It's the podcast. We're back. Today, episode 20, we have Sid Garza-Hillman coming on the show. Who is Sid Garza-Hillman? Sid's a very cool guy, a very diverse individual, multi-talented. He's a musician.

He's an actor. He's a nutritionist. He's a philosopher king. And he is the author of the recently released manifesto called Approaching the Natural. It's actually called Approaching the Natural, a health manifesto. And it's a cool little book that actually looks like a manifesto. It's a little paperback that you can stick in your back pocket. It's only like 160 pages. And it's sort of a plant-based nutrition primer. But more than that, it's a sort of comprehensive approach to living more in harmony with yourself and with your environment.

Hence the title, Approaching the Natural. So it hits on nutrition, but it also hits on the body in its physical sense, how to move the body, how to be more in tune with your environment, how to dial yourself in mentally and spiritually so that you can live a more fulfilling and happy existence. It's a cool little book. I was lucky enough to get an advanced galley copy of it and just loved it. I loved it. It's very straightforward. It's easy to read. You can read it in a day and it's chock full of very helpful, insightful information from Sid. So it was my honor to give him a blurb, which you can find on the back cover of the book. So, hey, that's worth checking out the book right there just for that

because in addition to my blurb, it also has a foreword by Biz Stone, who is a co-founder of twitter also a plant-based nutrition guy who wrote the forward and also gave sid a blurb which is pretty cool so he's in good company with biz stone uh and uh again i was proud to give him a blurb i stand behind the book 100 it's a cool book and so when he was coming down here, uh, to do some book related stuff coming down to LA, cause he lives up in Mendocino. He, he runs the, uh, he's head of the wellness center at the Stanford Inn. Um, actually I think it's called, it's called the Mendocino Center for Living Well at the Stanford Inn. Um, so he doesn't live in LA, but I told him, you know,

when you come to LA, you definitely got to do the podcast. So he's here. We're actually doing an event together on Wednesday night. And we talk about that in the interview. But I'm glad to have him here today to have him talk about his journey. I found it very insightful and it's so much more than just plant-based nutrition. He's got a very than just plant-based nutrition. He's got a very refreshing and interesting perspective on life and happiness in its holistic sense. We're brought to you today by recovery.com.

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I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. I hope you enjoyed the interview. And without further ado, Sid Garza. All right, man. Thanks for making the trip up to the garage

you're welcome how's it going Sid? it's going well Sid Garza Hillman in the podcast HQ the music garage turned I guess lean to sort of temporary podcasting

village situation surrounded by instruments that's right man so this could erupt at any second it's a vault of creativity coming out of here which is good you got to stoke that all the time definitely you're a musician right i am what's the what's the story there the sid garza hillman quartet well it was a sid hillman the sid hillman yeah the sid hillman quartet the garza why no garza. Well, it was the Sid Hillman. The Sid Hillman. Yeah, the Sid Hillman Quartet. Why no Garza for that? That was because the Sid Hillman existed before I was married,

and then my wife is Garza, so we both became Garza-Hillman. Oh, I see. Interesting. I was musician Sid Hillman prior to being married in 1995. That's very progressive. Yeah, ahead of its time. I suffered from sexism early on because my wife and I got married, and she went to the DMV and said, you know, I just got married, and I want to change my name from Garza to Garza Hillman.

They were like, great, just sign here, boop. So then I went in and did the same thing. They were like, oh, you need to file. Different story for you, yeah. And I was like, well, I just got married with my wife. Well, you need to file because I was a man, so that's interesting. to different story for you yeah and i was like well i just got married with my wife well you need to file you know because i was a man so that's right interesting yeah well you can't you know men don't have a maiden name i don't know if i've ever met any guy who changed his

last name to put his wife's name in there i have a friend in mendocino who did the exact exact his last name is is her name uh-huh so but you know did you uh were you reared by uh progressive parents i mean did you grow up in a i have this i have this image of you well you live in mendocino and you've written this pretty progressive book so i'm like maybe he grew up in a commune you know northern california air force was an air force fighter pilot and uh you know a pilot his cop for continental for 27 years and you know i mean not, his cut for Continental for 27 years. And, you know, I mean, not conservative, but not progressive by any stretch of the imagination. So did you guys move around a lot?

A little bit. Born in LA and then San Diego, Houston. And then I, at that point, was 18 and moved back to start UCLA. And my parents moved again to Atlanta, but I was already out of the house. I see. So California most of the time.

Yeah. Except for Texas. But your dad's a military guy? He was, yeah. He was 20 years in the house. I see. So California most of the time. Yeah. Except for Texas. But your dad's a military guy? He was, yeah. He was 20 years in the Air Force, but he was post-active duty. He was a liaison officer and then he worked as a pilot

for Continental and then into management there. But he was with them for 27 years. Uh-huh. Continental Airlines. So unlikely to spawn a vegan child. Yeah, totally. Now he's a vegan.

Oh, he is? Really? He was raised, yeah. He was raised by a progressive son. I'll put it that way. Interesting. So how does that, yeah, I mean, with everything that I've been doing and I still can't get my parents on board,

although my sister just started doing it this week. It's like, oh, I had to write a book and wait a full year. Yeah, my dad was like, and my mom eats extremely well. I don't think she's 100% vegan, but she's doing really, really well. But he's a chronic asthmatic, and that's where I came to the whole picture of nutrition in 92 is because I was a chronic asthmatic, and my asthma went away then,

and his went away three years ago, and he's 75, and he's off prescription medication for the first time in 35 years. Wow. So 35 mile bike rides three days a week, you know, it's like... Interesting. You know, unbelievable. So did you make this switch to a plant-based diet as a response to trying to address your asthma? Yeah.

Oh, you did. I was handed a book. Specifically for that. I was a personal assistant back in college during my time at UCLA to Woody Harrelson and his now wife, whose name is Laura Lewin. I had just graduated in 91 and was playing out as a musician and working in the audiovisual department of UCLA. And they handed me a book, and it was called Fit for Life. I'm sure you've heard of it. I don't know.

And I read it, and I went, oh, what's going on there? And so I changed my diet then. Removed dairy was the first thing I did. My asthma went away almost. It was like overnight in a way. It was within a month. And I stopped using the inhaler, and I haven't used it since. And I wasn't even 100 vegan back then but then

just over the years it kind of we'd cheat and you know go out for mexican food at el caudi and we would take like a prescription medication before dinner for allergies like that you know it was finally just like this is this is the dumbest thing in the world you know right because you know the impact of the foods you're eating are going to cause this asthmatic reaction in you, and you're doing it anyway. Yeah. Congratulations, you're a human being. I know, right?

And the healthier you get, the more of a reaction you get. You know, like when you're eating it all crappy all the time, you sort of set that bar for yourself. And then when you start eating healthy, a little bit of dairy would just totally set me and Lisa off. You know, we'd wake up just feeling like we got hit in the face. That's definitely the experience that I've had. Yeah, when you're eating like crap all the time, it doesn't really matter. You're just kind of on this low burn of not feeling so great all the time

that you acclimate yourself to. The cleaner and cleaner you eat, then, yeah, you have this like hair trigger response to eating something that's like not quite right i mean i see it with julie all the time she'll she'll have one taste of something and then she'll be like laying on the couch you know like i can't handle that or whatever it's you know yeah it's kind of interesting that way it is but uh don't think that that we're just going to gloss over the fact that you work for woody harrelson like i did that that was not lost on me and i'm not going to let you leave here without telling me at least one or two Woody Harrelson stories because then I would not be doing my job. Well, I can tell you one right now.

I bought $450 worth of underwear for him. And I'm sure he's, no, this was like pre-hemp. I was just, I was just, I was like his, he was on Cheers at the time. And I was a. So this is way back. Yeah, I was like 91. I was a sophomore in college. And my sister was friends with Laura, his wife. And they needed somebody in the office to help out and, you know, put autographed photos into envelopes and, you know, grunt work kind of stuff. And so he would, I'd go on errands, you know. And so one of them was to go to Nordstrom's because he had gotten a hold of Boxer Briefs and liked them.

And so, you know, I went there and called like, are these the ones? Yeah, buy everything they got. So I bought everything they got. And it turned out it was the wrong stuff. And he kept them anyway. And so I was like, in fact, I was trying to send the book to him. I couldn't get it. I couldn't get it.

They were traveling around. And she was like, I'm so sorry we're on the road. But I kept saying to my sister, you know, I bought his damn underwear. Like the least he could do. He's like, read my book. Yeah, exactly. Or give me a blurb or whatever. Did you say 450 pairs?

No, $450 worth. Oh, $450 worth. Yeah. Gotcha. Which, you know, back then. Right. Yeah, I would see him show up from time to time in a yoga class I would go to in Santa

Monica, but I haven't been in that class. I haven't seen him around in a long time. They live in Hawaii full time. Yeah, I think so. On Maui, right? Like on the eastern side of the island? I think so, yeah. I haven't been to his house. I haven't seen either of them in years. Interesting. My sister still talks to Laura. I didn't seen either of them in years. Interesting. My sister still talks to Laura.

I didn't know that all the way back in the Cheers days, he was rocking the vegan vibe. He was. I got to tell you, they had their first kid, and I was one of these people who were like, oh, my God, they can't do this vegan. They're going to kill their child. You got to talk into the mic a little bit. They're going to kill their child. You've got to talk into the mic a little bit. They're going to kill their child.

I still get that with my kids. They can be standing right next to me looking perfectly healthy and people act like I'm torturing them by not feeding them animal protein. You've got to be really careful. Everybody's a nutritionist. Right. But back then I remember going just like, oh, my God, that's shocking. How can you have a pregnant you're pregnant, you know.

Right. Take them to McDonald's and give them a Happy Meal. Yeah, or something. Well, at least to McDLT. And so – because the cool stays cool. Hot stays hot. And then – but they were the first reason why – I mean, they were my first introduction into plant-based. I mean, they handed me the book, you know, and that was 20 years ago.

And I've been reading nutrition ever since. And I wouldn't even become a nutritionist until years later. Right. So you're in L.A. You graduate from UCLA. You're an assistant to Woody and his wife. And you're pursuing a musical career. I mean, was that the focus at the time?

It was. I mean, I was assistant to them during college. Once I graduated, I worked in the audio visual department there at UCLA. And my whole goal was music. And I was a philosophy major, which that's pretty much going to be what you do if you're a philosophy major. And so loved it. I mean, I i love what i studied i'm convinced to this day that it kept me in school because i just was completely attached to that major and that was the third major i declared it was political science then english then philosophy and um absolutely fell in love with it um yeah i graduated and and was playing i mean just

started playing i was a you know we audio visual services was kind of this funky department at UCLA, public sector kind of job, a bunch of artists and musicians and writers and songwriters and actors. And it was just this great little, you know, mecca of art and creativity. It was a great place to be and, you know, decent job and allowed me to do what I needed to do. And I did that until 95 when I started acting, just kind of fell into it, but then started making a living at it. So then I quit at UCLA in 96. Right. And I became a full-time actor after that.

So tell me about the transition to acting. Like how did that occur? What happened? This buddy of mine, Peter Murnick, who's still an actor in LA, and he gave my photo to his agent, my music photo and they called me in for a meeting

and signed me. That doesn't, for people who are listening out there, that's not the way Hollywood works. I know, I didn't have to. What's going on? I mean, did the guy want to sleep with you or what's happening here?

No, I never asked actually, but I would have because he hooked me up with his agent. Of course you would, yeah. But he, me up with his agent but he yeah he did that and he's a commercial actor and he actually does film and TV too but at the time that was his commercial actor and they signed me

and I'd been performing for a few years and comfortable in front of a camera and they called me I got some calls on auditions and I had actually had my Screen Actors Guild card by that time because another buddy had done an indie film, and I had done the music for it, and he put me in a scene.

And so I just get these auditions, and I start booking, you know, like kind of effortlessly. Like commercial booking or like television? Commercial at this point. Just commercials, Twix, you know, Zuzu, like all of a sudden. And then I go, oh, that's kind of cool, you know. Commercial at this point. Commercial is Twix. All of a sudden. And then I go, oh, that's kind of cool. I remember the first commercial I booked was a Twix commercial.

And it got paid less for the day than it cost me to join Screen Actors Guild. So this is going to be the worst investment ever if I never work again. But then it started airing. I started getting residuals. And I started booking more jobs, booking more jobs. And all of a sudden, I'm making a living know and i got home one day and said to my

wife um who had just quit her job as a producer for a motion graphics company to be to start her graphic design firm like she had like a month before and i said i think i'm gonna quit you know ucla this like safe, totally secure job. I'm, you know, making a living acting. I want to pursue music and, and, and this is where I want to go. And, and to this day just was such a blessing because she just, without a hesitation, she just said, we'll figure it out. Right. And that was that wasn't like, well, you should keep your job or anything.

She was like, we'll figure it out. And I put in my notice and that was that. Right. So it was pretty amazing. Yeah, it's cool. I mean, I think that that is, uh, you know, taking that leap of faith is a, is kind of a theme of, of my book and this podcast as well as sort of stepping out into the void and, and trusting that, uh, you're on the right path or you will be taken care of if you're kind of expressing yourself authentically and embracing the journey as sort of uncertain as it may be, as opposed to sort of contracting in fear and doing the safe thing. So what do you think it is about your wife that allowed her to be comfortable

making that move? You know, I probably her upbringing, you know, and I will say that it was, if I, if I could tell you how opposite that was to my personality to, I mean, I, you know, my parents were, I mean, I have, I had a happy childhood. I'm not, there's no, You know, my parents were, I mean, I had a happy childhood. There's no, but they were conservative. My dad was with the same company for 27 years. I mean, that was unheard of in my brain of not knowing where my paycheck was going to come. I mean, I cannot, looking back, I can't even believe that I did that. But yet you were still pursuing the creative arts. I mean, you know, being a musician and an actor are hardly, you know,

being in the, you know, being in the union in the traditional sense of, you know what I mean? So you are already kind of more out on a limb than somebody who is taking a job where they get a paycheck every two weeks. But I was working full-time at UCLA. Oh, that's right. So it was sort of like, and I mean the move of quitting that job. Completely, right. Yeah, like the whole idea was like I'm just going to, you know, I'll have this safe kind of arrangement while I'm pursuing music and acting. Right. And I remember when I quit the full-time UCLA job, I had three months of money. I knew I had three months.

Basically three months I would be out of money, you know, and that was not my personality. I mean, at all. I remember calling my actor, Peter Murnick, that guy who got me into it and going, he'd been acting for years by the time. And I was like, how do you negotiate? He goes, I just figure it's going to get something. I just, to this day.

It's like, how can you live your life that way? I know. And to this day, it's still, it's a struggle for me. Just ingrained in me, but I did it anyway. And that's a big lesson for me as a, as a, just a human being and learning not how to not be afraid, but learning how to be afraid and still do the things that are important to you. And there's never a point where you just stop being afraid of something, but it's just kind of. It's your response to the fear.

It's whether you're, you're, you're modifying your behavior as a fear reaction. It's not whether you're not afraid. And I think it's, it gets mistaken as, um, well, you're just different or you're, you know, I don't know why you're not afraid. And I am, or that it's just easy for you or something like that, or you're wired differently, but that's not what it is. It's a warrior path and it can, it's hard. It is. It's hard as shit sometimes, you know? But what I think what happens is, and this has been my experience over the last, you know, eight or nine years of, you know, many, many times I've been in that place where I was like, I don't know where the, where the next money, the next dollar is going to come from. And we're coming near the end here. Right.

And, you know, if it's just me living it, you know, Ted Kaczynski style in a cabin, I could probably deal with that. But when you're married and you have kids and, you know, all these responsibilities, it's very stressful. But something always does occur, you know, something always happens and I've strung together so many examples of being provided for, maybe not the way that I thought it would happen or wanted it to happen or at the moment that I wanted it to happen, but the needs are always met, you know, as long as I'm sort of checking myself and going, all right, is this, is this

the path I'm supposed to be walking? Should I be walking it slower or faster? Should I modify it? What is authentic to me? What is the mission here? And, you know, as long as I'm doing constantly doing an inventory of that and getting right with myself on that, I feel like it will work out. Yeah. Cause it has too many times. I can't. I can't deny it. For me too. And it's not like I ever had like a windfall or anything like that. No, it's not like, you know.

I got the, you know, I envisioned the beamer and it manifested, you know. Right. It's like the secret. Yeah, it's like, oh man, I missed the point. Well, I just imagined it and it happened. Yeah, no. It's not it at all. No, it's healthy relationship and healthy body and healthy mind and what that entails.

And realizing that people who have, and myself included, grapple with a choice, oftentimes there's really no choice at all. And it's kind of moving through the information to get to the point where you knew the answer all along and you knew the direction you were going to go. And it's like, I don't know whether to move here or move there. It's like you know already. Sometimes you need somebody to kick you in the ass and go, you're turning left because you know you're turning left, so just turn left. Just turn left. You're done. I don't care how afraid you are of what left looks like, but that's where you're going to go.

Right. Sometimes the indecision is more comfortable than the decision, whether it's left or right. That's right. You know, that's right. And I think that dovetails pretty beautifully into, um, the themes of your book. And, uh, so I want to get into that. I mean, I, first of all, you sent me a galley, a copy of your book. So I was privileged to read it before it came out. And, uh, and I love the book. Um, it's, uh, what's really cool about approaching the natural is that what you find out there are diet books that are very specific to diet. And then you have fitness books that are about, here's the workout plan for you. And then you have spirituality books, which are all about the ethereal. Right. But but there really aren't very many books

that sort of take this holistic approach to wellness and say, well, all of these things comprise health. Right. It's mental, it's spiritual, it's physical. And if any one of these elements is out of balance, then you're not healthy. And so, and, and so you've sort of, you've done this, you've, you've tackled this Herculean subject and woven it into, you know, a very easy to read and easy to implement kind of primer for taking your own health to the next level in all of these categories. So it's really cool. You did a great job with the book.

Thank you very much. So, you know, we haven't finished going through your biological history here, you know, but I wanted to get into the book. So, I mean, what spawned the idea for it? It just seemed like a natural launching point because you were getting into the ideas behind it. Right. I mean, part of it was just my own thinking over the years. Part of it was a practical sort of, you know, becoming a nutritionist finally and a wellness coach and, you know, going back to school

and doing, you know, becoming that and starting to work with clients and coming up against a lot of issues, you know, and food related in the beginning. And because, you know, people come and they go, Hey, I want to work with a nutritionist and put me on a plan. And I go, okay, here's your plan, you know, and, and, and they wouldn't stick with it. And I went, what the hell, you know, like I had asthma and I changed my diet and, and, and I am not toot my own horn. It's just, I got tired at, I'm a long distance runner. I got tired of having asthma. You know, I got tired of going, why, why am I carrying an inhaler? Why am I, tired of, I'm a long distance runner. I got tired of having asthma. You know, I got tired of going, why am I carrying an inhaler? Why am I, you know, that was just my thing.

But I wanted to figure out the nut to crack and, you know, how to crack that nut of like, how do I get somebody to kind of really either, and this is, it sounds horrible, but sometimes it takes somebody to have a heart attack before they make a change. And I hate that that's the case. Pain is a great make a change. And I hate that that's the case. Pain is a great motivator, as I always say.

Yeah, I hate that that's the case. And I would love to, I'm hoping that the book gets to people in a way that catches it before it gets to that point. And that the picture of health, like you said, is that whole picture. And I think a lot of people mistake thin for healthy or fit for healthy even, you know, and sometimes people are fit, but they're not mentally healthy or they're not spiritually healthy. And what is it to be that as a human being? And I drew on looking at health of the human being in the context of us as a species instead of us as a modern world animal or a modern world non-animal as the case may be i really wanted to look at us and still do in my practice and the way that i approach health is as how do i compare it to us as a species is this something that that is even remotely what

our species would be open to or doing if we were still living in the wild knowing that we're not going to go live in the wild but But we wouldn't be sitting here, besides the fact that there's microphones and stuff, we wouldn't be talking about healthy food if we lived in the wild because we'd be eating it. Every day, there's no other choice. I mean, whatever food you find in the wild is healthy. It's going to be.

Even animals. I mean, that's what blows my mind about the paleo diet. You know, as people go, oh, the paleo diet is fantastic. It's ridiculous, you know. And it's because, you know, Jeff Stanford, I work at the Stanford Inn up in Mendocino, and he has a gift shop, and, you know, I run the wellness center up there. And he gets this catalog, and on the cover is a paleo cookbook, and it's got a picture of fried chicken on the front.

Because, you know, the paleo, they were eating, you know, they were doing chicken all the time. Yeah, they had lots of oils up in the back. Lots of fried chicken. It's like you know the paleo they were eating right they were yeah they had lots of lots of oils up back then oh my god and so but the point is is that paleo you know regardless of what you know about what they're well i want to talk i do want to talk about this a little bit and and roll our sleeves up on the paleo thing um because that's a recurring thing that comes up uh on the podcast and i've had a a recurring thing that comes up on the podcast. And I've had a couple of guests recently that kind of are from that low carb and or paleo camp. And like I keep saying, you know, these folks really have the microphone right now in a big

way. I mean, there's definitely an ascension of plant-based eating as a healthy way of being like never before. And it's certainly more in the mainstream than ever. But it's still, you know, pretty marginalized when compared to how popular paleo and low-carb eating is. And I've had a couple guys on espousing the benefits of, you know, eating lots of fat and going into ketosis as a means to... I think there's confusion about losing weight and long-term health. Yeah, those are mutually exclusive, for sure. And I had a guy on the other day who is a CrossFit coach, pretty outspoken, well-known guy,

and not the first to come on the show and say everything we know about saturated fat dietary fat is wrong there's no connection between that and and arthrosclerosis did i say that right heart disease etc and we've all been duped and you shouldn't worry about you know the dietary saturated fat that you're eating every day. And I have to keep saying, I'm not down with that. I just cannot believe that that's true. And on some level, they'll cite Gary Taubes or these other resources, and I'm not spending all day long pouring through clinical research to figure out who's right and who's wrong

and trying to poke holes in this peer-reviewed research versus that. So I'm interested in hearing what your response is to that because I've just heard too many doctors and cardiologists and people that I respect say, you know, you cannot eat saturated fat in your diet and expect to not develop plaques in your arteries. Right. Well, I'll first say that even if you did spend all your day pouring through research, you still can't maybe figure out who's right and who's wrong. And I can find research to support

pretty much anything I want to say, you know, and that's kind of what that is and just how it goes. I will say that that's part of the reason why sometimes I defer to the natural state of the human being. And that's why the book is called approaching the natural. Cause it's the premises that the closer we get by degrees, um, to what's most natural for our species, um, the better we're going to be. And that goes for mental, spiritual, and physical. With regards to paleo, I mean, just to finish that thought was, in the wild, in the paleolithic era, we would be moving around to find the animal.

The animal would be moving around to escape predator and to find its own food. And the food the animal would be eating would be wild, nourishing food. We wouldn't be cooking it. We wouldn't be storing it. We wouldn't be moving it, transporting it in a refrigerated thing. We wouldn't be shooting it with antibiotics and hormones. We wouldn't be feeding it unnatural food like corn to a cow. This is insane.

So if you're going to talk about paleo, let's talk about paleo. Go get a bow and go in the forest and run around. On a persistent hunt. Yeah, and kill an animal. You don't need to. The thing about it is

it's not that we can't survive on that. We could. I can envision myself being healthy by eating mostly plants. Oh, another thing we didn't do is milk it. We didn't catch the antelope and milk it real quick before we killed it. We just killed it and ate the meat. We ate, by all accounts, most accounts, about 5% of our diet from animal.

And usually what I've read is it had to do more with needing a caloric boost when plants were in scarcity. I mean, there's, I was talking to Jeff Stanford's, an anthropologist, and he was telling me about that 50,000 years ago, they found sites that showed that they were growing in an agricultural setting. And then, you know, the conventional wisdom is 10,000 BC was when we started doing agriculture. Setting, not, and then, you know, the conventional wisdom is 10,000 BC was when we started doing agriculture. Well, they found 50,000-year-old sites where they're planting potatoes and planting and growing and eating porridge and things like that. If I were, if plants were scarce, the next best thing would be a wild animal. But I still maintain that as much as we need carbs and we need fat and we need protein, healthy versions of all three of those. And I wish carbs was just not a word.

I wish people would just say carbohydrates because carbs is like such a limited word now. It drives me nuts. But we need those things. The question isn't that we need them. The question is where do we get them? What is the source of those things? And as much as anybody wants to tell me that I need protein and I will debate and I won't debate with you

because you and I agree on this that people eat way too much protein. But the question for me isn't that we need protein or how much. It's where we get it. What comes with the protein? What is packaged with it? How much micronutrients? And when you compare whole plants, the vitamin and mineral content of whole plants versus animals,

there's just no comparison. There's just no comparison. And if you were going to eat animal, of course a wild animal is going to be better than a farmed animal, period, end of story. I just don't need to go kill a deer because I can get all the plants I need at the corner market. And that's where I go on the paleo thing. It's like just because the paleo people, our ancestors ate whatever they ate

doesn't necessarily mean that it's the best or that there was a lot of – maybe they were short on plants. Maybe they were living in an area where they couldn't get plants that were edibles. And so they had to eat the animals that could eat the plants. Cows can digest grasses that we can't. And that's why we would have to eat them if all there was was grass for us to eat. Right. That kind of thing.

And also, it seems to me, and I think you probably have, you know, no more than I on this subject, but when we talk about paleo, there's so much focus on the hunting aspect of it because there's a sort of machismo uh component to the paleo lifestyle this caveman idea um and and the hunt is a big part of that but it overlooks the gatherer aspect of what was going on and the balance between the plant foods like you said and the hunting and it and you know maybe i'm wrong but my understanding is that that the animals

that were hunted they're few and far between i mean that was almost like a luxury right or delicacy or like gatherer hunters right i mean not hunter gatherers right you know we predominantly gathered and the hunt was the persistent hunt of running after these animals sometimes for days until they were exhausted right you can read about that in Born to Run, they talk a lot about that. So there's a lot of exercise involved, a lot of energy spent. If you look at net calories, how many calories were exerted to get the calories gained by the animal that was hunted? And how lean was the animal?

I'm not talking about saturated fat. Right. And to be fair to the paleo folks, I mean, there's a lot of good qualities to that diet. Very free. In comparison to the standard American diet, for sure. And I think that if you're doing it sort of as prescribed, there are a lot of vegetables in that diet. Right. And that gets overlooked because people just talk about bacon for breakfast.

Well, they want an excuse like Atkins to go who came on you know i can do that i can have fried chicken fried chicken and you know paleo diet you know and there's a stink a distinction i think between paleo and low carb because low carb is all about no carb basically or you know no grains and let's all get in into ketosis until we have bad breath and we're destroying our kidneys. Yeah, that sounds good. And I have people on that are athletes and telling me how great they feel and all this sort of thing. And I'm like, all right, well, there's a performance aspect to this. There's a weight loss aspect to this.

But what is the long-term down the line 20 year thing? You know what I mean? Like I do. What happens? Yeah. Cause I'm not totally not. I mean, I tell people if,

if it were, I have clients, I've said, if you want me to have you lose weight as fast as possible, I'll put you on Atkins, but I'm not, that's not my job. I'm a well,

I'm wellness. I'm health. I'm not, it has nothing. I can put you on a thousand diets, go eat sand for a week you'll lose weight it's like there's a million things you can do to lose weight but i like weight loss as a side effect of health that's my thing about weight loss it's one of the things you know

and um like good skin you know and and when you focus just on weight loss you're gonna be most chances most by most accounts you're not going to be successful, which is why most diets diets fail, but why, but at the same time, why people like Atkins, you know, sell millions and millions of books. Cause it's a, you probably do feel better in the short term. You know, if you're eating junk food and snicker bars and crap, and you go to Atkins and, and, and you switch over to whatever that is and give up some of the white flour kind of stuff, you probably do feel better in the short term. But again, I'm not interested in the short term. And that doesn't do us justice.

If Atkins worked, if meat worked. Well, Atkins himself would not be six feet under right now. Of heart disease. So it's just that kind of like common sense, like, okay, you know, let's all take a deep breath. And, and, and it's really not that I try to get across that. It's not that complicated really, which is my, my book is only 160 pages long. You know, I didn't want to write a, another book with charts and blah, blah, blah about, you know, food, because I think people's brains explode when they're given 21 day,

this and that. Right. You know, and it doesn't work. It's confusing with people because on the one hand, the flip side of that is they want to be told exactly what to do. And if they see a bunch of charts, they're like, oh, this guy knows what he's talking about. Right.

You know what I mean? But it's almost like not genuine, you know, or inauthentic because it's really more elementary than that. Yeah. And you don't really need to get into all that stuff. So what do you say to somebody when they come to you and they say, I want to get healthy and I'm ready, you know, how do I, how do I start? I mean, are you a guy who's going to say, all right, jump all the way in, or can you lean into it gradually? Or what, you know, what would be kind of the first words of wisdom to get somebody going in this lifestyle?

It would depend on the client because, you know, I get the call of I have stage four cancer. That's a different conversation than, hey, I just want to learn about nutrition and maybe I think I could probably start eating better, you know. And the just want to start eating better, I ease them in. The just want to start eating better, I ease them in. Because what I found is that when I just focus on adding things in, I always talk about how we're kind of all children at heart. And if we're told we can't do something, we're going to do it anyway. And you can't tell me what to do kind of thing. And so I go, okay, hey, just got cream in your coffee.

Have cream in your coffee. But maybe on your way to the restaurant to have prime rib, you bring some cucumber and celery with you and you chomp on that in the car on the way. I think you could probably do that. A stalk of celery, a couple slices of cucumber. That's probably something you could do. And just, oh, yeah, I can do that. Okay, cool. Why don't we start there?

And that little step to me is so profound because it makes people start thinking about what they put in their bodies and it starts making them think about how they take care of themselves. And I think we are so programmed, and by we I mean, you know. Hey, Ty. Come on in.

Podcast us, interrupt us. I feel like I like having a cigarette. But just how to add little things in because we're so programmed to do the things that we've done our whole lives. The foods that we're used to taste-wise, the foods that give us comfort, the actions that we're used to taste-wise, the foods that give us comfort, the actions that we rely on, and the relationships that,

even if they're not healthy, we stay in, because the idea of not having those things is kind of weird to us. And I think it's effective to kind of ease people in and insert a little bit of mindfulness into their day-to-day lives. And what happens is that, like me, where I took a little tweak of my diet and then it made me start thinking about things, and then over time I've gradually moved all the way because I just kept feeling better and better.

And that's a better, to me that's a better thing than telling somebody you can't ever smoke again. And rather say, keep smoking. But why don't we right now work on your diet and then eventually they don't feel like having a cigarette because it just doesn't taste good and it makes them feel like crap and they've gotten to a level where they feel so good that a cigarette doesn't make them feel well

and they don't feel like having it anymore. That's lifelong. Well, it's getting to a place where they're willing to take greater responsibility themselves. That's right. And when that desire is self-generated as opposed to externally generated, because you're telling them to do it, that has a completely different effect on the human psyche.

That's right. You know, and I think you're right. I mean, I do that. I say the same thing. Don't focus on what you can't have. Focus on what you can have. Right. And put all the attention on, you know, this new food or try something new and have fun with it

and don't take it so seriously and learn to enjoy it. And the more you do that, it also creates a momentum, you know, and you can't underestimate how powerful that momentum is. I mean, once you kind of, that train starts to pull out of the station and slowly, slowly, slowly picks up speed. That's right. It becomes very difficult to slow down. Yeah, and that's exactly the experience I've had.

You know, and recently I had a client, I just, you know, she came to me with a bunch of serious issues, you know, so I was like, game on. But I completely misread it because she wasn't ready, you know, and it was like, whoa. And then she's like, I can't do this, you know, And it was like, I totally just didn't, I needed to gauge it better to say you're let's add in a little bit, but you know, the seriousness of the stuff that

she came to me with was enough for me to come back and say, let's go all the way here. This is like heavy duty, but we're so mentally attached to the, the nostalgia of food and the things that we're used to with food that you got to wade through that minefield, you know. Yeah. It's so emotional. And everybody is different. You know, for me, I can't do it. I had to do it. You know, I had to go extreme because if I did dabbled here and there, I just know myself well enough. And that's

based on my sort of personality defect of, you know, having an addictive personality and struggling with addiction that I really had to apply a recovery model to it and treat it like drugs and say, I'm crossing this line and I'm not going back. And that created its own kind of momentum, you know, and sort of parameters that work for me. But, you know, that doesn't work for everybody, and I'm aware of that. Yeah, and that's the difficulty of my job is to figure out. Figure out what's going to work for which person. I mean, that's what I want to do because it's too easy for me to do what most dieticians that I've come across do,

which is give a little plan of, you know, measure a cup of this at 1030 and a, you know, ounce of that and blah, blah, blah. And the people go, Oh my God, this is great. I'm going to plan on a plan, you know, and they do it. And then two months later they burn out and, and, you know, and that's that. And I just, it's so not interesting to me to do that. I never was. It's also very in vogue right now to, to have this negative reinforcement strategy in place. Like there are people who are sending, you know, before pictures of them looking terrible and say, if I don't lose this much weight or get to this place by this date,

then you're going to, then you have that picture and you put it up on my Facebook page or, you know, like sort of, you know, putting your hand to the fire a little bit as opposed to the flip side of the positive, you know, keep going and that kind of gentle reinforcement that you probably give your clients. Well, and I remove that. And to me, it goes back to what is health in my mind. And health is coexistent with happiness. And so if you just make it on, here's my before picture and I better be this wait after, I think you're missing the whole point.

That it's not going to deliver you what you ultimately want, which is an experience of life that is full and open and allows you to relate to people and do all the things that human beings are, I would argue, designed to do.

We're tribal. We're creative. We're rational and wonderful. And when we close our bodies off to nourishment, when we close our minds off to creativity, it all has the same effect on us and our quality of life. And so making it just about a before and after picture is, to me, completely missing the point.

I don't have anything to do with it. So where did this idea come of this more holistic approach that really embraces the spiritual and the mental? I mean, was that your perspective from the beginning, or how has that evolved? I don't think it was. I think that when I gave up dairy um in 92 and because of an asthmatic kind of thing it was physical it was just like i got asthma and oh hey look at this book i'm gonna okay my asthma's gone right on you know i'm going for a run um

but just that act alone of paying attention to what i was putting in my body made me more open to other reading other things about diet. And then that led to reading eventually coming across, um, the effect of, of animals and food production on the environment. And also the treatment of animals that we, that we fence up and, and, and brutalize, you know, and it was like this progression of, of starting with my body. It really, that's how it happened. And that's why in the book I talk about holistic self-interest

because I think we're designed to physically, if you remove the mind from the picture, our bodies are designed to procreate and survive and thrive. Our bodies are dying literally for nourishing food. That's just what they want. And if we get out of the way and walk into the forest, that's what we'd get. But we have to use our minds because we're next door to the McDonald's, so we've got to kind of negotiate that whole thing.

But just the act of taking care of my body, I think, naturally progressed me. I look back on it and think for sure naturally progressed me into just an openness that allowed other information about the way I was living into my mind and, and, um, definitely some spiritual aspects of that. And I don't mean religious because I think those two things are very different, but, um, more of a mindfulness of paying attention of what that is. And, and, um, and I wanted to bring that into the idea of the book that, you know, when you start paying attention to yourself, and I know that sounds like we got to pay attention to other people. I work with people who are the caregivers, you know, like the traditional caregivers.

And I'll still make that argument. Like if you don't take care of yourself, you can't take care of others. That's pretty common knowledge now, you know, but people don't, what that means. If you're a mother taking care of a sick parent or a sick child, the healthier you are. But I think people feel like I can't attend to myself because I need to be attending. That would be selfish.

Right. And I think the best thing you can do is be selfish. I think the best thing you can do is be selfish. I think it makes you a better parent, a better spouse, a better sibling to take care of yourself and make yourself happy. Lisa and I have been married 18 years. We have a good marriage, a great marriage because, you know, things like

when I said, I want to quit my job, she said, fine. And when I wanted to pursue music, she was never like, well, it's not really practical. You know, she's like, great. And my, still to this day, my biggest supporter, you know, and likewise, you know, she's a poet and, and, uh, I'm, I want her to do those things. I want her to do those things. I want her to do all the things that make her happy because the happier she is, the happier we are and vice versa. Right. Well, I mean, when you talk about the natural approaching the natural, uh, I mean, it's,

it's really quite profound and it brings up one of my favorite quotes, the Thoreau quote of the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. And what is considered resignation is confirmed desperation. I think that's how it goes. And it was true then in 18 whenever, when he wrote it. And it's, I think it's more true now because as society progresses and we become more and more kind of disconnected from our neighbors and our friends and ourselves. And we dupe ourselves into thinking we're more connected because of technology. But actually we're becoming more separate in many ways. Particularly, it's very noticeable in Los Angeles because you spend all your time in a car and you don't really interact with anybody except on the phone.

And this is not the natural state of the human being in his natural environment. And I think that it is a huge causation or contributing factor to all of these sort of, you know, causation or contributing factor to all of these sort of, you know, mental disorders that plague us, you know, from depression to whatever, because we're not meant to live this way in many ways. And so, but at the same time, technology is not going away and, you know, we have the lives that we have. So what are the, what are some of the ways that we can recapture a more natural state that is harmonious with the way that we're meant to live that could contribute to elevating our happiness on some level? I would say, you know, reading a – no, I'm joking. Well, go on the internet and go on Facebook. Yeah, go on Facebook. Yeah, go on Facebook.

Tweet me your problems and I will tweet you back. No, I think that, and this is the truth, this is why I did write the book, because I do think that taking even the most minute of steps, it has a profound, uh, difference. I think that, that, that, that I'm not the smartest guy in the room. Well, in this room, um, no, I'm not the smartest guy in the room, but not the dumbest either. Um, but I think that even the smallest, uh, of steps is profound in the sense that, um, like I said before, just paying attention is, is really a, to me, a solution. And what I mean by that is I know that we're not going to go, that's why it's called approaching the natural.

It's not called living the natural. Cause right. They're just not going to be a prepper and go move into the woods. You know, not gonna, and nor should you know. Um, but, um, but, but at the same time, I think little things make a huge, huge difference in the modern world. And I think it would make a huge difference. So like I said, if all you can do right now is eating a stalk of celery per day, if that's literally you're so busy and you have a family and your husband eats junk food and that's what he eats in the house, but you can squeak at one stalk of celery, that makes you a thinking person, number one. And number two, it makes you somebody

who takes care of themselves. And that means, is it at the degree that is going to make you necessarily healthy? Maybe not. But if all you can do on a given day

is walk across the room, because otherwise you're sitting on a couch all day, every day, because you're totally stagnant, but you can get up and walk across the room and get back,

and that's the step you can do every day, you become a person who exercises over time. Enough? Probably not. But you establish that as right away. And I actually argue that technology when used in conjunction with mindfulness can be useful. I know that I have friends I haven't seen and I don't have time. I have three kids and we're both working full time

and busy and I don't have time for a 45 minute conversation. Sometimes all I have time for is a tweet. I mean not a tweet but like a text. And while of course it's not as good as sitting with somebody over a coffee face to face, sometimes that's what I can do but I think that's better than nothing. I think reaching out to somebody

that you haven't talked to to bring them back into your lives, however it takes, however it takes, I think is fantastic. I think what happens is that we trade, we think that that's the real deal. It's not the real deal.

Sometimes it's the best we can muster. And ideally, I can get on an airplane and go to see my friends in New York. That'd be great. I don't have that luxury right now. And so sometimes it's an email. And then there's steps in that direction. But I think with an intention behind it of understanding that having a social network, a real one, is important.

And it's natural to us. And doing whatever you can in the moment to foster that makes a difference. Right. Same thing with food. Right. whatever you can in the moment to foster that makes a difference. Right. Same thing with food. Right. Whatever you can do. Micro steps of anchoring yourself more in the present and elevating your consciousness and directing your attention on that.

That's right. And not being distracted. That's right. Because I think, you know, if you could just define mindfulness for somebody who might not be familiar with what that term means. That's right. or whatever it is because that's what you were raised on and that's what makes you feel good. And you had a crappy day and you get home and you pop the TV dinner in the microwave and you eat it because in that moment it makes you feel good. It's like, oh God, what a crappy day.

I'm going to have some fried chicken and mashed potatoes because that's comfort food. And that's an unthinking position in terms of who we are as a species naturally. That is an addictive pleasure center act juxtaposed to a healthy act of eating food that truly nourishes you. That when your body is under stress because of emotional stress or anything, the one thing you need is nourishing food. Your body is craving nourishment. So when you eat that fried

chicken, you're creating conflict for yourself. You're putting something in your body that is the exact opposite of what your body needs in that moment. It needs caring. It needs love. And it needs fostering of health and to thrive. But I health and, and, and, and, you know, to thrive. But I think also, you know, most people would, I would argue, grab the, grab the fried chicken

without even, even being consciously aware that that is their medicine to solve whatever emotional discomfort they're feeling at that moment. So the first step in mindfulness is having an awareness that that's what you're doing before you even change the habits. Exactly right. I'm going to get the fried chicken because I don't feel this. I don't feel good right now. I have this emotional, you know, issue that's coming up. That's recurrent for me. And I know that it's my pattern to get greasy food too, and it'll make me feel better. And I'm going to go do that right now. Just that alone, like knowing what that that's what you're doing is mindfulness in and of itself before there's any behavior modification. That's exactly right. Because the next step of

course, is to then you're, when you kind of cop that position of awareness, the next step is to say, Hey, you know what? This isn't really making me feel better. It's, it's giving me five minutes of pleasure, but in an hour from now i'm gonna still that stress angle then i have five hours of shame spiral or that and also the emotional problem i had at work yeah exactly and the yeah and whatever problem i was trying to solve is still there and i'm not dealing with it directly so which means it's probably getting worse i've been i've been quoting uh louis ck's you know do you know he is a comedian of course and he has this thing a bit where he goes uh uh he goes i just now found out recently that food eating eating is supposed to make you feel good like the purpose of food is

to make you feel good and he just does this thing where he's like usually it's just like oh you know like he just he never got that like the act of eating is supposed to be you're supposed in theory naturally we would eat and feel nourished. You know, that's such a foreign thing for people. But like classic Louis, like to say something so elementary and kind of profound at the same time. Yeah. Because I think that is the public consciousness. That's right.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Really? It's supposed to do that? Yeah. It's so foreign to people and including me. I mean, there's things I can't have in the house, you know, and I'm thin, I have a flat stomach at 44. I'm in better shape than I

was at 24, but there's stuff that I can't have in the house because if I, if it's there, I will overeat it, you know, and that's because I battle whatever human being battles, which is, um, a pleasure center thing. You know, there's crazy foods that we have created for ourselves that, that mess with our natural drives and numinos do that for me, you know? Yeah. And we're all human beings and I don't care, you know, who's behind what diet and is telling you this and that and the other, the person behind it is a human being. And they, that person comes with, you know, their frailties and their weaknesses and their faults and all of that. And I think it's human to project some sort of idealistic picture on top of that person.

And, you know, everybody wants to aspire to this or that. But it's sort of being aware, being mindful, having a mindfulness, nobody escapes the human condition. And of course, you know, I've been walking this sort of plant-based lifestyle for a while, but that doesn't mean that I'm free of these cravings or, or, or what have you. It's like, you know, in a weak moment, man, the potato chips, you know, it's like, you know, I'll go there. And it's a practice, you know,

it's not something you transcend and is in your past. No, I'm totally the same, exactly the same kind of thing. And I drink coffee. You know, things I know aren't healthy. I have a scotch now and then, you know, I can't, I know that they're not healthy for me. I'm aware of that. And if I weren't healthy or as healthy as I want to be, which I am, if I weren't, I wouldn't know where to, you know, what to get out of my life. That would be that. I also have to be my, and so you're talking about mindfulness. Mindfulness is not putting the numinos in the house, right? That's how we can use our brains in a way that is, um, you know, not putting ourselves in a position to fail, you know, doing things and, and helping other people. I'm astounded, um,

doing things and helping other people. I'm astounded that people are walking around obese morbidly, many, and people aren't rushing them into rehab. I mean, if they were as addicted to heroin as they are to food, I'm assuming somebody would take them and put them into rehab. But we're letting people walk around that are literally killing themselves and it's because it's food somehow. It's exempt from the addictive model and it has all exactly the same effects on their lives.

It's ruining them emotionally. It's ruining them physically. It's ruining their relationships. It's all the same thing. It's because they're not eating for nourishment at all. That went bye-bye years ago. They're killing themselves and just have food as they years ago. You know, they're killing themselves and just have food as they're struggling.

Oh, they're just overeating too much. It's like, no, man, it's a desperate act. Well, we've made these weird, you know, social agreements about what's acceptable and what's not. And, you know, we've, our sort of resistance to obesity has been eroded and it's changed our cultural mores. And now, you know, somebody who's tremendously overweight is seen as normal. And, and, and I think that, you know, there's a more kind of Rubin ask, uh, notion of beauty that is ascending right now as a result

of this, where, you know, when we were kids, it's like, maybe there was one overweight kid in every class. And now it's like half of them are home. The t-shirt of the beach kid. Yeah, exactly. And it's everywhere now and that's the norm and it's tweaked our kind of, what's the word I'm looking for? Our perception of what's appropriate or normal, I suppose. Right. our perception of what's appropriate or normal, I suppose.

Right. And again, to come back to sort of why I approach health in the context of us as a species is because regardless of cultural norms and cultural relativity and what beauty is, I still would make the argument that the human body, like other wild animals, isn't designed to carry extra fat. And we're the only species that's that carries too much weight every other species in the wild anyway is exactly the how heavy they're supposed to be because they regulate self-regulate not because of willpower they

self-regulate because their bodies are right in tune with nature and they finish eating when they're done eating and the only animals other than than humans that become overweight are the ones that we domesticate you know dogs and cats and cows and pigs and that force feed that we're messing up yeah but in the wild we wouldn't be battling with weight we do exactly what the gorillas do you don't see a gorilla with a beer gut they they eat the amount of calories and the quality of calories it's perfect and perfect balance with the amount of energy that they expend in their activities that That's it. It ain't complicated. And just as an example of Sid's mindfulness, I told him to meet me here at the house at 3 o'clock,

and I was a couple minutes late. I'm pulling into the driveway, and he's walking around. Our driveway is gravel, and it's very rough on a bare foot. Walk around, it kind of hurts your feet if you're not wearing shoes. And he's walking around the driveway in his bare feet. So I'm like, he's walking his walk literally and figuratively of being in contact with the earth

and having a tactile experience with his environment, which is a classic example of mindfulness. He had a choice. He could put his shoes on. Maybe it would be more comfortable, but he's like, okay, I'm gonna to connect with this place. I've never been before. I mean, I'm projecting this onto you, of course, but, but I mean, I'm, I'm assuming that that's part of your, you know, part of your trip. That's, this is part of your way of being.

Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, it's, and just for people who are listening, I don't have dreadlocks. No, I'm, I'm, I'm, yeah. And that's the thing about it is, and, and, well, it's, and just for people who are listening, I don't have dreadlocks. No. And that's the thing about it is. Well, let's talk about the hippie thing. Yeah, I want to get into that a little bit because I'm like the not, I mean, there's no judgment against hippies. I'm just not a hippie. Never have been. I'm an indie rock musician.

Right. You know, you look more like a hippie than I do. Right. Well, my hair is a lot. I think I'm going to cut it all off soon. Okay. That's what the cool people are doing. That's what the kids are doing. Anyhow, but yeah, so I'd love to talk about the hippie thing.

Right, well, let's talk about labels in general. I mean, there's the vegan label and there's the paleo label and the low-carb label and, you know, these labels, and I talk about this a lot, you know, carry with them, they're loaded, you know, in many ways. And my sort of take on the whole word vegan is that it's complicated. And I think when you call yourself vegan, for a lot of people, that conjures up an image of somebody that they have a preconceived judgment about, good or bad. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's not so good. Oftentimes there's a political agenda associated with that. There is an assumed level of activism that's associated with that.

with that right so it's beyond a food choice and it's it ventures into the realm of politics uh maybe even religion for some yeah um environment environment for sure uh and uh and so sometimes you know if you're in a position where you're kind of carrying this message of healthy lifestyle, not just diet, but like a healthy, balanced, holistic way of living, sometimes the word vegan fits and works for whoever you're talking to and sometimes it doesn't. So, you know, labels like, you know, I prefer to not use the label just because I'd rather be neutral. And I'm not, you know, I'm not waving a flag and trying to convince somebody or recruit. You know, I'm trying to share my experience to somebody who's interested in hearing that. But that's different from a bully pulpit. And I think the word vegan kind of gets more associated with a bully pulpit point of view. I would agree with that. I think, I mean, I don't even mention the word vegan in my book. I am as a nutritionist interested in the healthiest foods you can put in your body

and how to put more of those in your body and I'm interested in as a wellness coach because one chapter in my book is nutrition and the rest aren't right, just to be clear it's not a whole book about eating a plant-based diet it's just one of however many, eight chapters, I think. How many do you have? Yeah, six.

Yeah, it's six chapters. And I think I do make the case. Yeah, I mean, I'm not even technically vegan because I have raw honey. No, I actually eat honey as well. Yeah, and so I was like, you know, I started reading all this crap about agave nectar and it was not good and I started at the same time reading a bunch of stuff on raw honey and I was like this is kind of cool but what about this and that

and I picked up the phone and called the local beekeeper up in Mendocino County and I just picked up the phone and I was like tell me about what you do and how you treat your bees and what's your practice of doing and he goes explained it to me and he goes if you're ever in the area i'll put a suit on you and take you into the bee you know take into the bees you can see what i do um it's local and it's clean and it's well cared for and that was a choice i made and in doing that gave up the label vegan big whoop you know it was like it's so not the point of what i do or how i live the whole point is is to live in a way that is in minimal conflict to myself and to the

world that it's if i had to sum that up and that's really what the book is about too it's when you remove the conflicts that you i mean i think a lot of people know conceptually what goes on environmentally in food production. And that not only is animals, but that's also just the processing of food. And also the treatment of the animals and the human workers that are involved in that industry. It's horrific.

I think people understand that. A lot of people do anyway. They get it. They's horrific. I think people understand that. A lot of people do anyway. They get it. They've read it. They've seen it. Then they go, I can't even deal with this. I don't even want to think about this. And so they compartmentalize. They don't want to think about it. Why? Because it's troubling. It's troubling. I'm sure you've seen the videos I've seen. That's conflict. When you know something and you have information about something and then you continue to act in a way that is promoting that, that's in conflict. And so I shut that away. I don't believe you can shut that away effectively. I think that what you're doing is closing yourself off to that, and in doing so, closing yourself off to a more full experience of life and to a more open relationship with your family and friends.

I think you can't just say, well, I'm just not going to think about this thing, but then I'm going to think about I'm still cool with all these other things. I think you need to let it all out and remove any kind of conflicts that exist for you. It's like a low-grade disharmony to be aware of those issues and have a, like you said, like some court, be conflicted over it, but to do it anyway

and participate in a system that's rigged to kind of prevent you from really looking at it or really understanding what's going on. When you go to the supermarket it's a total disconnect yeah you don't see it but there is that kind of low grade you know kind of um lack of alignment there that is like it's almost like a thing that that is like uh in the back of your head that's kind of bugging you but isn't important enough to do anything about it right and in my experience and this is like my experience in recovery, it's, it's been a process of looking at all those things in my life that are, are, that are not in alignment

or lack, lack a certain harmony and addressing them, resolving them. That's right. And moving on. I mean, that's a huge premise of like the 12 step program. Yeah. Um, and the more that I can, yeah, yeah, you free yourself of those things and then you become more empowered, you become more holistically well, and you're able to look people in the eye and function and know who you are as a human being. You become a more actualized, authentic version of yourself. Right.

And you don't have to be a new agey person. No, it has nothing to do with that at all. You know, I think people think like that all sounds good, you know, or, or, you know, I'm just, that's not my world or especially in the terms of like food, people think, you know, I know animals are harmed. I know it's bad for the environment, but, you know, I, at the end of the day, I need my protein, you know, and like I'm raising kids. And so, you know, I'm willing to kind of make that. And so that's why I've got chapter on food is to say, well, not only do you not need that much protein, but you can get plenty of protein from plants. Cause I have for over 10 years, you know, and, and spirulina has got twice as much protein in it than beef does, you know,

broccoli is more protein than beef, you know? So it's sort of like to remove those kinds of like, well, here you go, you know, and whether you act on it or not is profound. It has a profound effect on your quality of life and that it's totally okay to be concerned with your quality of life. Like every human being should be 100% concerned, maybe not 100, but a huge percentage of their concern should be their own quality of life because it speaks to the quality of the lives of the people that they affect and live with and interact with in the world. And that goes for people you don't even know. That goes for people on the freeway stuck in traffic, and you're pissed off partly because you don't like your job

and because you feed your body junk food, and you have no ability or little ability to deal with the stresses of living in Los Angeles. And so you decided to get, you decided to get violent or you don't decide, but you become violent because you're, you haven't equipped yourself, you know, that it affects people. That's real for me. I see that that way. I see that putting that Big Mac in your mouth affects how violent you are. I completely make that argument and I will make that argument that what people, I look at Congress and I go, gee, I wonder if they took care of themselves, you know, what our country would look like, you know, if people would feed themselves well. What the laws would look like. What the laws would look like, what the wars would look like, you know, what would it be if people took a little time to pay attention to what they put in their bodies and how well they take care of themselves, how that would go. Because they've linked anger and violence and stress in general, anxiety and fear to

food they have. And that's why a diet is such an important part of mental health and to me is a fundamental necessity with regards to mental health. Not that psychiatry or psychology or anything else doesn't have its validity, but if you're not feeding your body what it needs to function and survive, well, boy, it is the preventive medicine to me, but that movement, you know, the things like we move and we, we, we nourish, you know, we do those things. That's number one.

And then getting into the, getting into the mental and the spiritual, um, let's talk a little bit, you know, kind of launching off from mindfulness into, you know, a more, you know, spiritual practice, whether it's meditation or how you can kind of enhance that other side of the equation outside of food. I'll, you know, I'm going to sound like a broken record. um, I'll, you know, I'm gonna sound like a broken record. And for people who are listening, a record is, um, um, my first album was on vinyl. So just to date, to date me, um, I think our demo is in our age group. Yeah, I know. I know. Um, but, um, I would say that, uh, you know, mindfulness applied to all parts of life, you know, and that's going to be the spiritual, I don't want to say awakening, but it's that kind of experience of life to pay attention and to be open in your day to day. And that's just something that is you as a human being,

as it applies to all the things that you do. So it's like, I just, you know, I've been reading a lot of, I'll mention Jeff Stanford again, because it's like all these at the Stanford, like all these conversations where it's like talking all the time. And he introduced me to Krishnamurti, um, who's a philosopher and, and his thing is like, you know, going into a room and, and meditating, you know, he doesn't even see that as meditation. His argument and his whole approach is meditation is watching every day. It's how you cook, how you talk, how you walk, watching, being aware, being in the moment because truly in the moment, it's not even like a watcher stance, but it's like just being a watcher,

watching just what we're doing, being aware in the moment. That's more like an Eckhart Tolle approach to just being present and not being distracted and being hyper-conscious of your thoughts, your environment, being focused on the person that you're talking to and not thinking about, you know, I got to call that guy back and all the other things that enter into our minds. hard to, it takes practice. Like you said, it's a practice, you know, but, but in the moment, you're not going to eat. If you were truly present and truly aware, you wouldn't eat a Twinkie. You know, you would eat something that was good for you nourishing. Cause you know, that, that you want to be a healthy person, no matter what you want to do in your life, you want to be somebody who lives a long time. And, and, and more importantly than that lives feeling good every day. And you wouldn't abuse somebody or treat somebody badly in the moment. You wouldn't get violent on the freeway because you would realize that's not who I am, that's not who I want to be.

But if you're not present, you just do that. It's a reaction instead of an action. So spirituality, I don't know. I, there's a lot of unknown, but I think that getting more in touch with the, um, the, the present, the energy, if you will, which most of the time I won't, but, um, you know, the energy of the earth and, and, and, and all the beings in it, um, how to get in touch with that whole seeing things like that. I look at people, for instance, that are morbidly obese and I used to kind of look at them and go, God, and now I feel compassion

and I feel like I want to help them and it's frustrating when I can't because most people I can't because I'm not going to go up to somebody and give them advice if they didn't ask for it. But I see people who are addicts. I see people who are in pain. I don't see somebody who's a pain in the ass

because they have to buy two seats on Southwest. I don't see somebody who's a pain in the ass because they have to buy two seats on Southwest. I see that as somebody who's suffering from immense pain and needs help like any addict. And it's just a way of looking at that and being present to that moment. It's not like, you know, a criticism stance. And I think it's drawing a distinction between somebody's, you can call it higher self and then behaviors

that are not in that person's interest that sort of run amok because of addictive patterns or habit or what have you. It's sort of like when you're in a road rage incident and that's not your normal, that's not kind of who you are, but you just react and you yell at somebody and you go, oh my God, that's not me. Why did I do that? You know, your higher self is saying, well, the real me or the real me, I guess, you know, wouldn't do that. Yes, I'm lacking control or self-control over my behaviors because of X, Y, and Z. Right. And just having knee-jerk reactions to things is a good barometer of how present you are. Because if you're present, you can say,

oh, it's interesting that I'm feeling angry right now and I have a choice. Like, am I going to go crazy right now or am I going to kind of pause and just observe it and make a different choice? And that's a mastery. It's a mastery over your domain and it's understanding that you can draw

a distinction between your thoughts and who you are. They're just thoughts or they're just emotions. That's right. But my consciousness or my better self or my higher self or whatever you want to call it, it gets back into words and phrases that, that really trip people up because it triggers this kind of new age resistance or whatever, but just, but everybody knows like, oh yeah, you know, I thought that, but it wasn't that weird that I thought that because that's not the way I usually think. Right. And you can kind of analyze your own thoughts. So right in there, you can see a dichotomy between consciousness and thought or consciousness and emotion. That's right. And there is a starting point, um, from which you can grow

into having control over those things. I think at least that's what I've learned and I'm trying to continue to learn. Um, but for somebody who, who might be listening and these are brand new concepts for them, or they're having a resistance to even hearing this. I mean, what are, are there some sort of simple entry level elementary tools or things that somebody could carry with them to start working on this? I mean, one thing that my wife always tells me to do, which I should probably do more of and I don't, is to have a rubber band around my wrist. And every time I think a negative thought or I react to something without being mindful, yeah, I snap it. And it's a, it's like a Pavlovian, you know, reminder of, you know, I, I could, I have a choice, right? I don't have to perceive this as negative. I can

make a different choice. Yeah. Well, I'd say two things. One is I actually would say in the moment of, of, of, of mindfulness in that example, you said where, you know, you're feeling the anger and I would almost go so far as to say, there's really not even a choice there because at the point where it becomes so over consuming at the point where you're so mindful that you are aware of the anger, you've made your choice. You're not going to act on it. I mean, you're there, you're in the place, you know, you're in the place of just, well, that's that. And here I am. And you're not acting on it because you're watching. You're paying attention already, so you're there, which is a great thing.

For people who it sounds next level, it sounds weird in a way, but so does eating plants to most people. And that's why it's like, what? That's just like crazy. And I think that's going to take me. I'm not there. And it's like well you can put a cucumber in your mouth you know um in the mindfulness thing i i'm a big journaling

fan i could just pretend it's something else yeah yeah exactly that's a cucumber mac um yeah and uh and but i think journaling is a great thing and i talk about the book so um to me i always make break it down in the book in the intolest steps. And I think journaling is powerful. And I say, if it's about putting a sticky pad and a pencil in your pocket today, because that's all you can do, do that. And don't even write on it. Just have it in your pocket. Because when you feel it in your pocket, you are aware. In that moment, you go, well, I got that sticky pad on it. And eventually you might pull it out and you might write a word on there, you know, angry, or you might write a word that says blue, who, whatever, whatever it is. And that just might start the process of writing things

down or of thinking about writing things down. And then all of a sudden you're a person who maybe texts one last time that day, because you had a thought and that you wanted to get on paper. And then you realize that your thoughts are, are as wonderful as anybody else's thoughts and and or maybe you use that paper to draw a little picture with a pencil you know you don't have to i think people get they want to i'm totally guilty of this too in the past i've totally done this where i find some exercise program and i just go balls out you know get all the gear and the whole thing and, and, and then burn out again. And it's, I think that's our inclination is we want that high of that excitement of a diet or a, or a exercise plan, but sometimes, or if I'm going to write something down, I better be, you know, I better be Norman Mailer when I write it down. It's got

to be brilliant and witty. You need a laptop first of all, right? You need it. Yeah. And it's got to be awesome. You know, and there's the judgment. But sometimes, not sometimes, it is the process. And you have to start to get to that point. And so in answer to your question, anybody listening to this right now, get up, go get a piece of paper and stuff in your pocket. Don't even worry about a pen. And that's a step because that's just something that you're going to do an act of taking care of yourself because it's the intent

of, I'm going to start expressing myself in this way. And the more I express myself over time, if I build on this, the more I express myself, the more I get things that are in my mind out on the paper in a way that I can look at them and kind of see where conflict, conflict exists that maybe I didn't even know. Maybe I hate my job and I didn't even realize it. I've just been doing it for so damn long. And maybe I realize I'm not happy in my relationship and I need to work on that in a real way.

Maybe I, how do you know? You know, but start today to little things. And this is really, I can't stress enough. It is not, you know, hippy dippy. This is being a human being in the modern world. This is, if we're going to work as a species in the, in the world that we've created for ourselves, we have better figure out a way to coexist in a, in a, in a better manner, in a more respectful manner and in a more co-existent manner than we do currently. And it ain't getting better. And so I think part of it is how can, instead of, you know,

writing a letter to your congressman, which I'm not opposed to, but I do think it starts in your body and your mind. And I think that the act of taking care of yourself is going to eventually lead to, you know, my dad is asthma free. He did that because I started taking care of yourself is going to eventually lead to, you know, my dad is asthma free. He did that because I started taking care of myself. Plain and simple because finally he was like, all right, what do I do? But he wouldn't have said, all right, what do I do? My mom wouldn't be, you know, in the best shape she's been in years. If I didn't do what I did, I didn't call them and go,

here's what you guys should do. You know, I just said, I'm doing this, you know, and my asthma went away and he had asthma too. And he was like, what do I do? Three years ago. It's the difference between attraction and promotion and standing in the light and attracting those people into you that are kind of on the, they're ready to resonate in the way that you are.

And you will bring those people into your life at the opportune time. But if you go and say, you know, I think there's an inclination and it's very human to, and I've seen this a lot with people that have embraced this way of living or eating and have experienced dramatic turnarounds in their health and their perspective of the world. And you want to share that, right? And then you want, and then you're frustrated when everyone's not on board and then you, you start to get, you get, you get hardened and then you're frustrated when everyone's not on board. And then you start to get, you get hardened and then you get angry. And then you become entrenched. And then you resentful and all these, you know, you can see the cycle going on and on and on.

As opposed to, hey man, I'm just over here doing my thing. If you're into it, that's cool. I'm happy to talk to you about it. If not, like, hey man, that's great. It's all good. I mean, I've gone through the exact thing, you know, and it's hard. And that's something that I work on for myself to be aware of that in the moment. I interviewed this guy, Gene Bauer, who started the farm sanctuary.

Oh, yeah. I've met him. I did a little radio interview series, and I asked him, I was like, how do you, you know, knowing what you know about what's going on right now as we're talking, you know, in the industry and all the good that you've done. But how do you get up every day and just go like, I know, how do you not go bomb a, you know what I mean? I don't even, it's like, how can that? And he goes, I just wake up and I go focus on the good that we're doing and how much better things are than they were, and that's all I can do. Because otherwise, if I think about all the stuff that's going on at this moment,

I would never get out of bed kind of thing. And so he just does what he does. There's only so much you can do. And as much as I'd love everybody to start eating really well and feeling really good for my own sake, because I'd love to live in that world. Um, and I'd love my kids to grow up in that world. Um, I can't, you know, and it's also recognizing the ego component in that. Like I'm going to be the guy who's going to get all that, you know what I mean? And it's just share your experience and somebody comes to you and they want to help and you're able to help them.

Then, Hey man, if that's all that it is, then that's, that's fantastic. You know what I mean? And I'm happy in that, you know, but, but, but I have moments, you know, where I'm like, oh my God, you know, your kid is overweight and you're, you know, and you know, better, you know, and I, especially when it comes to kids, it breaks my heart sometimes, you know, but I got to, I, I shut my mouth. And you pull your journal out and start writing pull my damn sticky pad out of my sticky pad well i want to talk about that a little bit more um i'm always advocating on the podcast journaling and i talk a lot about the artist way uh and that's which is so funny i have to just interrupt you because there were so many times where i read

your book um that i was like this my and even my wife was like this is eerie because there was literally things you said like, potato chips and French fries are vegan. And that's another reason why I don't mention vegan, because vegan and healthy don't necessarily mean the same thing. And then the artist way, I quote that in my book too. When I was doing the band full time, I used the artist way. I mean, I was doing three pages every morning for years.

And it was so funny when you went, I was like, Lisa, look at this, like again, you know? Yeah, I can't overemphasize the impact that that program has had on my life. Me too. And again, it's not a hippy-dippy thing. It's like you get up in the morning and you write three pages no matter what, you journal it. Even if all you write is, I don't wanna write right now

and I have nothing in my mind, and you just repeat that like a kid who's in trouble on the chalkboard. Then you've fulfilled that duty for the day. But it has been remarkable in kind of unlocking my unconscious mind. And I don't know that I ever would have written a book had I not done the artist way. Or I don't know that I would have ever made these kind of life changes that I've made without doing the artist way. So it's not about being an artist

or being creative. And again, it gets back to labels. It's like, well, I'm not a creative person. I'm not an artist. That's not for me. I'm a bad drawer. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, Julie was talking about that on the podcast the other day. So it's about understanding that we are all, uh, you know, expressing creativity in our lives, artists or not. Right. And I think that we can live a more fulfilling, happier, more balanced life if we are more expressive of what that natural creativity is. Totally agree.

Again, releasing yourself from the strict definition of those terms, what, you know, no matter what your job is or what have you. So the simple practice of, of doing this writing, you know, no computer, we're not talking about a keyboard, get rid of that. But the tactile experience of pencil on paper, unlock something. And you will find, you know, when you're on page two and a half of those three pages that you got to write in the morning, you start writing about something just like you said, that you weren't even aware of that comes out. And then you're like, Oh my God, I didn't even think about that. And that's exciting. And then that creates a little bit of momentum that sets you on a tiny little bit of a trajectory tweak in your life.

And when you start doing that consistently, your life changes in huge ways. I agree. And if you don't have time for three pages, one paragraph. I mean, honestly, right? Yeah. Because it's better to do it than to not do it at all. And sometimes I advocate also that once in a while do it with the intent that you're going to throw away the paper or burn the paper afterwards. Talk about powerful. You know nobody will ever read that ever, period, and you burn it afterwards.

The stuff that will come out on that paper, man. And I did that back when I was living in Los Angeles and doing the band. The band was active, and being in my studio, I'd always go in when I do my writing, first thing I'd do is three pages. And I would just kind of get the juices flowing, get everything kind of moving and moving and moving.

And sometimes that would just lead into a song, lead into something, you know, it was just like, and I dabbled in short story writing and not because I was good or bad or what. I mean, it was like, I want to do this exercise of creativity. I want to just see what that goes. I was, I basically became open to more creativity and I guess that's what I advocate for, that it's not a good or bad,

any, any, anything like that. It's just when you, when you understand that creative creativity is, is natural to us as a species. And I would argue that for sure, the way our minds work is very creative,

the way that we can just figure things out the way that we can to add more of that in, in whatever medium is going to be excellent for you. Look at kids, look what kids naturally do. Of course, that's what before the filters are imposed. And I think to be clear, I mean, you're somebody who, you know, I think a listener might say, yeah, but you know, he's a musician and he's an actor, he's a naturally creative person. And you know, I'm a triathlete and an investment banker and you know, I read spreadsheets all day long and that's just not for me. So again, it goes back to the label. It's sort of, regardless of what your avocation is or your interest. And I've said this before, I apologize if you heard me say, cause I don't because I don't want to be a broken vinyl record.

But, you know, your life is the expression of your art, no matter what it is. If you're reading spreadsheets all day, then how are you doing that in a mindful way that is, you know, the most expressive, authentic way of doing that for you. If you're riding a bike, you know, whatever it is. And I think that the journaling is a way to connect with yourself in a different way and learn something about yourself and maybe unlock or discover an interest you didn't know that you have that you could then explore that you didn't even know was missing that will make your life more fulfilling. explore that you didn't even know was missing that will make your life more fulfilling. Yeah. And I would say if you're crunching numbers and doing all that, and it's, it's a, you know, mind numbing exercise, you know, getting home and, and taking, if it's just one minute to write something before you pop on the television, cause you're exhausted. But if you can do one minute of, of just writing a sentence down and expressing something, you know,

and I think I always come back to that because I think taking people think that taking on something like that is just too momentous and we were tired. I'm tired. You know, I, I'm busy. You know, we don't have childcare. We're, we're raising a family, you know, and taking care of a family and working full time at the same time. It's, it's a lot of busyness, you know, and sometimes it's, you know, my wife just talked about the other day, she never was a runner ever. Um, couldn't stand it. But one day I got home from work like about four or five, six months ago. And she goes, I ran down the driveway to get the mail and back. I was like, what? She goes, I ran down the driveway to, and I and back i was like you what she goes i ran down the driveway to and i just got i just i was going to get the mail and i just ran and it felt really good and that's just where she started it was like she was going to get the mail anyway right so it didn't

take any more time out of her day you know last time it took less exactly and and and that's where it started and six running she's been running for six months now. I've been married 18 years. She couldn't stand running. She'd try it now and then and never liked it. She always yoga. And she loves yoga. And she still does. But we don't have the time.

She doesn't have the time to go to an hour and a half yoga class. So she runs. And she did that. She goes, I basically did exactly what you advocate, which is I started with this minute thing. But it just planted the seed. Planted the seed, right? Planted the seed, right. Planted the seed.

And bringing creativity to whatever you do is such a life-enhancing act. I don't care if you're a construction worker, a lawyer, or an accountant, or whatever. You can be creative. You can take a minute to do whatever. Right. What if you're a self-loathing couch potato, unemployed? Then you probably have some awesome paintings that are in your head right now and you should get them out.

That's true. Self-loathing is a good place to start, right? Some of the best arts come from self-loathing. The bigger the pain body. My entire first record was self-loathing. I want to hear that. Cool, man. Self-titled. All right. Well, I think we did it. Cool, man. Self-titled.

All right. Well, I think we did it. Did we do it? What else do you want to talk about? We can keep going, man. No, no, no. I've got nothing. Do I have anything?

No, I've got nothing. We've got to save something for Wednesday night. That's right. We should announce that. Yeah, we should. Well, I'll put this up Wednesday. Yeah, this is going to go up on Wednesday, so the day of. So if you're listening to this right when it came out and you're in Los Angeles,

Sid and I are going to be doing an event called Book Plates at the Park La Brea Theater where we're just going to sit on a stage and talk about book stuff, right? I guess I have actually no idea what we're doing. I don't know. And there was a very impressive sounding moderator whose name escapes me right now. Who's going to, who's supposed to be moderating this. So are we going, are you and I arguing? I don't think so. No, but I, this guy sounds like he's smarter than both of us together. That doesn't surprise me. Well, and, and, uh, I guess we should say we met, um, through, uh through this guy, Tyson Cornell, who's an amazing guy here in Los Angeles who, correct me if I'm wrong, but he worked at Book Soup for years and years and years, which if you're in LA, you're aware of because it is the spot for book lovers in Los Angeles and kind of the epicenter for the literary culture of Southern California. And he curated these sort of parlor evenings where amazing literary talent would come to BookSoup

and they would have these sort of roundtable discussions and what have you. And as a result of that, he's sort of integrated himself into that culture. And he's since moved on and he started a literary agency called Rare Bird Lit, um, where he represents writers, um, and does publicity for them and helps them get out there. And I met, I met Tyson, uh, through our mutual friend, Anna David last year. Um, and he's been very gracious in trying to help me get my book out and giving me great advice, and he's working with Sid. So he suggested that we get together, and then I did your radio show. Yep.

Yeah, and then he's put us together on this panel thing for Wednesday night, which should be fun. Right. So anything that Tyson does, who's also a musician. I know. Who rocks out. He totally rocks out. God. He's cool. Yeah, super cool. be fun right so anything that tyson does who's also who's also a musician i know i saw him rocks out he totally rocked out god i was like he's cool yeah you know cool yeah um cool talk about you know pushes books and publicity and all the guests but he's also a musician you know and he's exactly does all that kind of stuff fascinating uh very smart guy with a really cool uh personal

life story actually i should have him on the podcast i know seriously he'd be really cool he's done a lot of stuff yeah can i mention one last thing no we're gonna we're gonna i want you to promote all your stuff well okay i was just gonna do that real quick just to kind of but while you're in la what else are you doing do you have anything any other i will just for people out there wherever you're traveling over the next couple weeks or months probably in the west side. Tyson's got some bookstores lined up for me to visit and pop in. I don't have anything formal. So best thing to do would be to check my, either follow me on Twitter at Sid Garza Hillman or go to my website, which is transitioningtohealth.net.

And I'll have anything added. But otherwise, I'm just kind of, I had a thing last, uh, yes, uh, Saturday down at Madonna beach. And then I have the thing with you and me on Wednesday. And, um, if you have any links for any of that stuff, just email them to me and I'll put them in the show notes for the podcast. So when I put it up, I guess if somebody was interested in the music, it's the, um, the shq.com that it stands for the Sid Hillman quartet.

I haven't checked that out. I have to check that out. It actually just got redone. And, um, so it's kind of interesting.com, the, it stands for the Sid Hillman quartet. I haven't checked that out. I have to check that out. It actually just got redone. And, um, so it's kind of interesting. The writing of the book, I've been off music for a couple of years, just kind of got burnt, um, after being in LA for so many years, but now it's, I'm kind of back, you know, the band's got a new album that we've finished and mastered and we're going to probably put it out in this year, which is interesting. I wrote a health book and

now I'm thinking about music again. Jazz on music again. Totally weird the way that life happens. And I run the programs director for a wellness center up in Mendocino called the Mendocino Center for Living Well at the Stanford Inn. So if anybody's up that way, Mendocino County is a great

I want to get you up there. So we'll talk off the back about that. I want to get you up there so we'll talk off the back about that but I want to get you up there and talk about maybe doing a retreat or something like that that'd be great I think it would be super cool it's

talk about getting back to the natural there's a bunch of great trail running and all sorts of cool stuff it's a the Stanford is a vegan resort the only one in the country I think

and there's a restaurant whole plant restaurant there which is phenomenal so called Raven's um, that's it. That's pretty cool. Yeah. So it's interesting. So what I like about one of the many things I like about you is that you're doing all the, you're pursuing the music. You wrote a book, you were an actor, you are, you know, a nutritionist and you're, you're at this wellness center doing all these

things so if somebody says to you hey sid nice to meet you like what do you do like who are you you know you're not um kind of like my wife is similar she's doing all sorts of different things um transcending this idea of you know you do one thing i'm a lawyer and that's who i am and my job is my identity and all of that. So I'm interested in your perspective on that. Like, again, it gets back to this theme of the labels that we're talking about. Right. I, um, first I just want to be clear that I do all those things and still, um, live paycheck to paycheck. So that's the first thing. And secondly, but you're doing, you're pursuing things that interest you and you're finding me up to, I just

became, it was a, I look back now and go, well, that was the moment because I became this person who was open to just about anything, you know? And I was, and, and so acting, okay. I had never acted before and I was like, this is, this seems fun, you know, and it was nerve wracking and scary and I did it anyway. And, and, and music and, and then all of a sudden I was, I started, you know, found the Stanford in and was like, I think I want to be a nutritionist. You know, I was like, all right, fine. Go, you know, be a nutritionist. Right. We didn't even talk about that. Like where, where this leap suddenly occurred.

Well, I was vegan when I moved to Mendocino, we found the Raven's restaurant. My wife's like, we have, there's a vegan restaurant in Mendocino. I was like, oh, God, we've got to check that out. And so we went down there, and I was like, this place is awesome. And we actually moved up there. I'm also a letterpress printer. We moved up. My wife's a graphic designer.

We started a letterpress company and left from L.A. so that we could print up there. That's very hipster of you. Yeah, and I can still do that. And so, yeah,, we could print up there. That's very hipster. Yeah. Right. And I still, I can still do that, you know? And, and, and so, um, yeah, so we found this restaurant and I, and this is gonna, this is like, so it's so funny. My life is so hilarious to me, but I thought I got to work at this restaurant. This is awesome. And so what I did is I went back, this is six years ago, went back to school and became

a bartender, became a certified bartender. Just so you could work at this restaurant. Cause I loved, I was like, this is six years ago, went back to school and became a bartender. Became a certified bartender. Just so you could work at this restaurant? Because I loved, I was like, this is the coolest place ever. It's like an eco resort and awesome. And they had a beautiful bar. But you were living in LA at the time and you would just visit? No, I moved. Oh, you had moved.

I had moved. But you had moved, you had already left acting then? Yeah. So you were going to be- I mean, I have an agent still, but I was out of LA. You're like, I'm out of LA. Yeah, I'm out of LA. Yeah, I'm out of LA. And what was that about?

Like, why were you just done with it? Done with it. Done with it. 20 years, hadn't really played in LA much, done tours, and I got burnt on playing in LA. So the band was like, what are we doing? I was like, I don't know. I just don't want to play in LA.

It's too stressful. I don't like it. And then acting, the work started to slow down to where I was just doing commercials only. And I was like, this is not, you know, talk about the grass is always greener. I'm making a living as an actor and unhappy because I'm doing a FedEx commercial, you know,

and we're calling back on one. And that's a funny, do we have time for a quick story? Yeah, of course. Well, there was the last one. This isn't radio. One of the last, I know, really. Ridge, we uh cutting in four seconds um the one of the last you with her one of the last one of the last auditions i ever did we were thinking about moving and i it was a fedex call back i didn't actually get the commercial and i went there and and never before i'd been acting

full-time for over 10 years at that point never before had there been a wardrobe stylist at an audition but there was on this one it was a callback for a caveman part. And so there I show up and I, and I walk in and I check in and she goes, okay, there's a wardrobe stylist. You got to get into wardrobe. And I was like, this is an audition. She was like, yeah, I know. But the client wants to see everybody in, in, in, you know, what they look like, right. They couldn't imagine apparently. And so there I walk up, they weren't doing their morning pages.

Yeah, exactly. And so I walk over over, they weren't doing their morning pages. Yeah, exactly. And so I walk over to this wardrobe stylist and they have a full wardrobe stylist there with racks of clothes and I'm putting, and I, by this point, like I think we, we, we started looking like we were getting ready to move. Like I couldn't take it, but you're like, yeah. And so we, um, so I'm there I am and I'm putting on a caveman outfit, like a Fred Flintstone, like a thing with a wig. Right, like the Geico commercial guy or whatever.

Yes, and it's predated that. I mean, this was in 2006. And I'm putting this thing on for a callback. And in my head, involuntarily, I said to myself, I heard my voice say, I am so fucking out of here. And that was the last audition I did. I said, I can't, I just can't do it. It was like, I can't do it.

And so we put the house up for sale and then that was that. And we, and we left. And, um, and I like being down here now, but for the first couple of years, I didn't even want to come to LA. I was just so burnt on the whole. Right. But this was before you were pursuing nutrition. Yeah.

So I started working at the restaurant. Right. That this was before you were pursuing nutrition. Yeah. So I started working at the restaurant as a server or bartender. You moved up north just to... Printing. That's it. But being in... Talk about just being open to weird stuff. Being in that environment. I mean, it's so weird, you know? Starting to get interested in that. Yes. And then I met the owner. We became friends. We're talking, blah, blah, blah. And I'm learning. And I've been reading on nutrition for 20 years. Just wasn't a nutritionist, but ever since 92,

reading book after book after book. So he and I had read the same books. And I thought, I'm going back to school. I'm doing this. So I did. And that was that. Right. So what's next? I have no idea.

Yeah. Maybe a, you know, trapeze. You can't, don't limit your, don't limit it. It will be something you can't imagine.

I'm sure. Right. Right. But I like being open to whatever happens. That's what it's about. And that's what it's about. It's not about what you do, but just being open to that. that's what it's about and that's what it's about it's not about what you do but just being open to that and again that's not easy that that is the warrior path man you know yeah but uh but i wanted to thank you rich because

you've been um really supportive of the book from even before we met well i love the book i really appreciate that because it's it was such a huge it's a little indie squirt you know so um it's nice to that was really nice that you. Did you do the letter pressing on it yourself? No, that's my, no, it's not letter press. I wish I could have letter pressed that. Did your wife do the graphic design? My sister did the graphic design.

She's my wife's partner. Oh, cool. And so they work together and they have a design firm and so she designed that. But it's supposed to be, I mean, it's, the publisher wanted it. He, when we were talking about how the book would look, he said, you know, I've got this reissue of the Communist Manifesto on my desk. And it's this little, and he sent me the measurements. And my book is exactly those measurements. Like he envisioned, and I was like, loved it.

Having a little manifesto, a little, approaching the natural health manifesto. You know, it's a hip pocket. You put it in your pocket because it is a different, yeah, it has different dimensions. Yeah. I didn't want it to be this diet book with a picture of a squash on the cover, you know, and seven days to, you know, blue skin or whatever. It's sticking out of your back pocket as you're walking across the campus of Kent State. That's exactly what it is.

That's exactly what it is. Yeah. How has your experience been in the world of publishing? Talk about, you know, in some ways it's a lot like music, you know, cause we, I was always a, you know, we had very independent labels put out our records and, and, um, and so the, you know, the mystique of going on tour is dispelled when you're on tour. You're just like, I'm just driving to the next show.

It just happens to be a longer drive, you know, but it's not as glamorous as you are, you know, when you haven't toured, you go, I'm going to go on tour, you know, and there I was on tour going, God, I really want to get home, you know, and it was also fun too, but still. But, you know, I did this thing on Saturday at this bookstore and it was like an author meet and greet.

There's like six authors, you know, and I'm walking in with my box of books and i see another dude five feet from me walking in with his box of books and i'm like you know we're like published authors like willie lillman it's like it is it's i was like door-to-door salesman you know here i am i'm walking and selling my wares you know so that's kind of a um it's only just when you get behind the veil yeah i don't know if you've ever read tom robbins yeah yeah the skinny legs and all it's only just when you get behind the veil. Yeah. I don't know if you've ever read Tom Robbins. Yeah. Yeah. The skinny legs and all it's like the veils, you know, you remove that veil and it's like, Oh, this is, there's no glamor here. It's cool. I'm glad I wrote the book and I'm proud of it. But, um, it's just, you know, you got to hustle. It is interesting. And you know, my book

is with a big publishing house and I had certain, you know, projections of what I thought the kind of release would look like and what I'd be doing. And those met up in certain ways. But I completely underestimated the Willie Loman aspect of it. You know, I was like, all right, well, they're going to send me my itinerary of all the bookstores that I'm going to be going to. And I'm going to get on a jet plane. I'm going to fly around the country and shake a bunch of hands. And like you see in the movies, the guy who's signing books and there's a big line. Oh, yeah, out the door.

And not to discredit Crown because they did a great job, and they had marketing people that were helping me and who are really nice people. And in the grand scheme of things, I had a very good experience in the world of publishing, but you have to take responsibility for it yourself. And I had to, you know, and my publicist was great too, but I had to, you know, really take the initiative and go, hey, I want to go here, like, and then start calling people and make it happen myself and go to bookstores where six people showed up and one person bought a book and do all that you don't

you don't realize that that's really part of it and and you have to buy the books yeah and then go and sell them you know yeah yeah and that's the same thing as music you know the label would show up and give me records on tour and I'd buy them yeah my records but I bought them and then I'd sell them and then whatever's left right and you think well the publisher bought the book they technically they own the book it's their book so you know sort of like well well no I mean I did a deal with a I signed a contract with crown so they you know like the copyright is mine but it's like it's their book they paid me in advance so they want to recoup that advance. Then you, there's an incentive for me to get out and hustle.

Right. So it's sort of like, all right, well, help me sell your book. And they're like, no, actually that's your job for the most part. Yeah, it is. And I mean, luckily I had that experience as an indie musician. I mean, I was like sitting here and also, you know, I, I, and you go to those bookstore bookstores and only a couple of people show up and you're like, oh, well, this is why publishing, you know, like, what are they going to do? Spend thousands and thousands of dollars to fly you all over the place and put you up in hotels. So like four people can show up and it doesn't make business sense. So I understand why they don't do that. And I'm not a guy who shows up at book signings.

So I'm like, you know, I can't like begrudge, you know, other people for not showing up unless they're good friends of mine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, mom calling all your friends.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. No, it's, it's, you have to get out there. You really do.

And it's, and it's hard and it's, it's work. You know, I put as much work into the marketing as I did into the writing, you know, it becomes a job and, and,

uh, and it's fun. It's great, you know, and you have to be, um, there are worse, shameless, very shameless. as I did into the writing. It becomes a job and it's fun. It's great. And you have to be shameless. You have to be very shameless about it. Yeah, yeah, you do. But that's why it's great having guys like Tyson because he's not a slick deal maker.

He's just like, yeah, let's have some good ideas. And he was like, do a radio thing where you're the host. I was like, well, how does that promote the book? He's like, because it's your name. You're out there, and that'll promote the book by virtue of you being out there. I never would have thought of that in a million years. Pretty interesting. What do you think I'm doing this podcast for?

I know, right? Finding Ultra. The Finding Ultra podcast. Let's talk about you and how much you like me. Anyway. All right, man. Well, I'm looking forward to, uh, getting together again with you on Wednesday. So it should be good. So if you happen to listen to this immediately upon it being uploaded to iTunes and, and you live in

Los Angeles park, La Brea theater, I'll put a link to the event. I tweeted it today, which is Monday. Um, but if you didn't see that, I'll put a link in the show notes. And the book is Approaching the Natural. What's the subtitle again? Colon, A Health Manifesto. A Health Manifesto. So everybody needs to check it out. Yeah, check out the book.

And it's cheap on Amazon. $9.95. It's $9.95. Yeah. I mean, I just want it to be right accessible it's very yeah and it is accessible it's really easy to read um you know in addition to being short it's very clear plain english yeah and it it hits on uh a lot of important areas of life that you're not going to find in a typical plant-based nutrition book or any plant-based nutrition book really. So it's unique in that regard. I can't recommend it enough,

but I would say that if you are going to go to Amazon, which you will, because I'm telling you to go to Amazon, first go to richroll.com on the blog page. You want to click on that Amazon banner. Oh, because it goes through you. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Absolutely right. You're going to click on it. I'm going to?

Yeah. Heck yeah. I didn't even know that. And because you're going to buy stuff on Amazon anyway. Yeah. You're going to buy Sid's book, but you're probably going to buy other stuff too. Yeah, like toothbrushes and. Goji berries.

If you're an Amazon Prime member, you could buy like, you know, one, you know, sort of 12 ounce can of orange juice. And have it shipped for free. Which is not really very sustainable. In a box that's like 10 by 10 by 10. This is not thematically consistent with the message of approaching the natural. This is called approaching the Amazon. Yeah, approaching the Amazon.

A manifesto for never leaving your house and living the good life. Yeah, exactly. Oh, Amazon, we love you. But anyway, it won't cost you a cent extra and I'll throw a couple pennies in our jar to keep the bandwidth going so I can keep doing the podcast and have Tyson on. Okay. I think you should. All right, cool. Well, thank you, Rich.

All right, man. Thanks for being here, Sid. All right, thanks. All right. See ya. All right, cool. Well, thank you, Rich. All right, man. Thanks for being here, Sid. All right, thanks. All right. See you. Peace. Plants. Thank you. you you you you you you you you you you you you