The Rich Roll Podcast - Ultimate Weight Loss Secrets With Chef AJ

Episode Date: April 30, 2018

Let's be clear: just because you're vegan doesn't mean you're healthy. To be sure, for so many reasons, eating animal free is awesome. But it's not a wellness panacea. Oreo cookies and Lay's potato chips are vegan. Unless your diet is liberated from the growing abundance of refined and highly processed processed foods, you're prone to confront the same weight management issues and chronic lifestyle illnesses that plague the average consumer subsisting on the standard American diet. Just ask Chef AJ. A vegan chef for almost 40 years, she nonetheless struggled mightily with obesity for decades — prisoner to an addiction to processed snacks, refined sugar desserts, and an array of vegan junk foods that left her not only chronically overweight, but seriously unwell. AJ's salvation came only when she finally became willing to confront her unhealthy relationship with food as a true addiction. It's a journey that required her to completely let go of habits that no longer served her, accept help, and embrace an entirely new relationship with food in the form of a whole foods, plant-based lifestyle. This is her story — an inspiring tale of triumph and personal transformation that will leave you rethinking your own habits. Enabled with the tools required to achieve and maintain your optimal body weight. And empowered to live your best life. A former comedian, today Chef AJ is a renown plant-based chef, culinary instructor, public speaker and member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine with a certificate in Plant-Based Nutrition from Cornell University. An expert in food addiction, emotional eating and creating meals to transform health, AJ is the host of the television series Healthy Living with Chef AJ and has appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Late Show with David Letterman and more. In addition, she is author of Unprocessed: How to Achieve Vibrant Health and Your Ideal Weight*. Her latest book, The Secrets To Ultimate Weight Loss* comes out soon (release date TBA). Full of life, AJ is one of my favorite health warriors, totally committed to serving others. Picking up where we left off in RRP #56 way back in 2013, this conversation is a must listen for anyone who struggles with food addiction, unhealthy cravings and a fluctuating waistline. As impactful as it is entertaining, it's an exchange about the often under-addressed emotional aspects of eating. It's about the hows and whys behind empowering a new relationship with food. And it's about the joy, vitality and self-esteem that can be experienced by breaking the chains of food addiction. I sincerely hope you enjoy this interaction as much as I enjoyed having it. More importantly, my hope is that you put AJ's insights to work — because if she can do it, you can too. A reminder that the podcast is also viewable on YouTube here: http://bit.ly/chefajrrp Enjoy! Rich

Americans eat over 92% of their calories from animal products and processed food. They're eating a fiberless diet with no micronutrients, and they're always going to be driven to overeat because they're really looking for food with nutrients. To me, what food addiction means is refined food addiction. You're not really addicted to food and eating. If you don't eat, you'll die. But there are particular foods, specifically foods like sugar and flour that are very highly refined carbohydrates that when we ingest them, they have a more drug-like behavior

than food-like behavior. That's Chef AJ, this week on the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How are you guys doing? What is happening? How are you? Greetings, podcast listeners of Planet Earth. I am Rich Roll. Indeed, I am your host on this podcast. Welcome to the show, the show where I go deep, where I get intimate with some of the most interesting changemakers, thought leaders, paradigm breakers across a wide spectrum of topics and themes, everything from health, fitness, athletics, to medicine, entrepreneurship, entertainment, environmentalism. And in the case of today's guest, diet, nutrition, weight loss, and personal transformation with my good friend, the ebullient,

the exuberant, the effervescent. What else starts with an E? The enthusiastic, the earnest, the eager, the energetic plant-based chef, AJ. She's so great. It's a great conversation coming up in a couple of few, but first I just wanted to take a moment to thank everybody who made last week's launch of our brand new cookbook, The Plant Power Way Italia, a massive success. Thank you so much. Julie and I greatly appreciate it. And it's been super fun to see everybody sharing the book and the recipes on social media.

Unbelievable. Amazing. The reviews are rolling in on Amazon. They've been great. So thank you for that. And we're just honestly just so happy to finally have it out in the world. So if you haven't checked it out yet, you can pick it up. I think you'll really enjoy it. It's available wherever you buy books. For those who are overseas, you can purchase signed copies through my website at richroll.com and we do ship internationally. Also, we did announce the winner of the spot

on our upcoming Tuscany retreat the other day. In case you missed it, a huge congrats to Chloe Olivia. She is at Chloe's Clean Cuisine on Instagram. Congrats to you, Chloe. We're really looking forward to meeting you in a couple of weeks. And thank you to everybody who entered the contest.

Of course, it goes without saying that we wish we could bring all of you. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower

you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. 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 and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Chef AJ, you guys are in for a treat with this

woman. She's a kick in the pants. She was one of my first guests on the show, episode 56, way back in October of 2013. Amazing. I can't believe I've been doing this podcast thing for that long. And she's just great. She's a former comedian, a chef, a culinary instructor, a public speaker, and an author devoted to the plant-based lifestyle for almost 40 years. AJ holds a certificate in plant-based nutrition from Cornell University and is a member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. She's hosted a bunch of TV shows. She has made appearances

on Carson, Leno, and Letterman, and she's the author of a couple books, including Unprocessed, which is a really great book. It chronicles her journey from overweight junk food vegan to learning how to create foods that nourish and heal. And her newest book is called The Secrets to Ultimate Weight Loss. AJ is just full of life. Her story of personal transformation from chronically overweight to true wellness, how she did it and how you can too, is truly inspiring. And that's what we're going to talk about today. So let's talk to her. That's right, I'm gonna ask you questions and you're gonna answer them. Just like an interrogation.

Just like that. You buttered me up because you brought these amazing gifts. Look at this. Yeah, well, you know. Can I, how do I even open this? Oh, just the little latches at the side. So this insane cake. Yeah. Oh my God.

What is in this? So it's, well, good stuff. It's obviously vegan. It's German chocolate cake. I used to be the pastry chef at Sante for five years on La Brea. So even though it looks decadent, and it is, I don't use oil. I don't use sugar, at least not refined sugar. It's all made with dates and there's no salt and it's pretty darn good actually. It looks pretty amazing. Yeah. I think you'll like it. I want you to like it as much as... The thing that stood out for me, Rich, most in your book that I remember the most is when

you talked about when you detoxed and you ate your first blueberry and it was like the best blueberry ever. Right. I hope this is like the best cake ever for you. I think this might exceed the taste of a simple blueberry, but that's amazing. So I should refrigerate this. Yeah, at some point refrigerate it. It'll be fine now though.

And then you also brought me this. What is this? That's my rock and nut crunch. That was actually the first product I created out of culinary school. And again, it's just nuts, seeds, and fruit. That's it. Looks amazing. That's good. It's good for athletes because I know athletes need more concentrated calories. I'm not going to eat it now because I'll be chewing on my gum. It'll be very noisy actually. Thank you.

You're welcome. So it's great to see you. Thank you. We are back here again. You were one of the original old guard on the podcast. It was episode 50 something, 53 or something like that, back in like 2013, I think. It was a while back. It was amazing.

Thank you for having me back. Of course. I'm so excited to talk to you. And I think the best way to kick it off is to kind of share a little bit about your story. I mean, I know we dug into that pretty deeply the first time you were on, but the show has grown quite a bit since then. I'm sure there's a lot of people listening who were not aware that you were on the show. That's right. And your story's great. I mean, it's so empowering and inspirational and your transformation is really something else. So tell me about that. Okay. So where should I begin? Born 1960 in Chicago to a morbidly obese mother and a normal weight father. And you probably know that when your parents are obese or overweight, you have more chance of becoming that. And so I got fat when

I was five years old and I lived in Chicago. And I don't know if you remember, because I'm a little bit older than you, maybe a lot. You don't look it though. Well, thank you. I'll be 58 in three weeks. But in the 1960s, there weren't a lot of fat kids. And so when people tell me now, you can't understand what it's like to be fat because they see me as a slender person. I was fat before it was socially acceptable to be fat. Nobody was fat. There was one fat kid in every grade in 1960 to 1970. That was me. So maybe I wasn't as fat by today's standards, but when you're the fattest one, you're still the fattest one. And there's a lot of things that go on with that that are not

comfortable growing up. Like for instance, you can't buy your clothes at a regular store because they don't fit. And so I became fat at five, but by 11, I was actually obese. I weighed 160 pounds and I'm five, six. At 11. At 11. But I wasn't five, six then. I wasn't even five feet then. So I was obese. And it's not fun. And it doesn't matter how fat you are. It's not fun if you're fat and you're uncomfortable in your own body. So I didn't realize that I was actually suffering from what I know today to be a food addiction, an addiction to refined foods, specifically things like sugar and flour.

And I continued to become fatter and fatter. I got into about the 200 pound range in my 20s, but I was vegan. This is the weird thing. At the age of 17, when I was a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, I was studying to This is the weird thing. At the age of 17, when I was a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, I was studying to be a veterinarian. And instead, I became a vegetarian because the first day on the job, I was handed a tank of live salamanders and the doctor said to cut their heads

off. And I said, why? He goes, well, we're doing protein lens regeneration experiments in the amphibian and I just need their eyes. Well, I was on scholarship and there's something about, you see a guy in a white coat and I cut off one head and I was like, eyes. Well, I was on scholarship and there's something about, you see a guy in a white coat and I cut off one head and I was like, terrible. I started vomiting. I went to the student health center and I said I would never eat another animal again

or harm one or wear one. So I became a vegan on September 1st, 1977. Yeah, not cool back then. Yeah, that was 40 and a half years ago. And I imagine not easy either. No, oh, we didn't even have powdered soy milk in 1977. Now you can go to any town anywhere in the United States, 99-Cent Store, Walmart, and you get plant milk in probably 10 different varieties. Oh, and soy and rice.

There was nothing. Well, there wasn't nothing. There was whole natural food like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and legumes and nuts and seeds. But that's not what I ate. Right. I was a sugar addict. I didn't know it at the time. but that's not what I ate. I was a sugar addict. I didn't know it at the time,

but looking back, starting every day with a Coke Slurpee with eight pumps of vanilla syrup and having a Dr. Pepper Big Gulp 48 ounces every day at lunch, not exactly a health-promoting diet. So I did this every day until I was about 43 years old. 26 years of my veganism was basically eating candies, cakes, cookies, pies, and ice cream. And so of course I became, of course I became- During that period of time, were you trying to resolve this issue? Like, were you going on diets and trying to restrict your calories and doing all the things that, you know, we do? Yeah. So I tried this one diet in my teens, which was called anorexia, where I didn't eat and actually ended up- It's effective for a while. Oh, it works beautifully.

It's just not sustainable. So I tried that in my teens and ended up hospitalized. And so that wasn't good because there were so many complications. My hair fell out, my nails, I developed an enlarged liver. That wasn't very fun. But the thing about anorexia is the minute I started eating again, I didn't start eating the way that you eat and I eat now. I went back right away to the junk food and then I gained even more weight. And actually what a lot of people don't know, and they'll find out in my book,

is I actually attempted suicide because then I became bulimic. And in a lot of ways, that was worse than anorexia for me because I didn't like being anorexic, but it wasn't that hard. So in other words, to be anorexic, but it wasn't that hard. So in other words, to be anorexic, all I had to do was not eat. But bulimia required extraordinary efforts because the binging and the purging and the laxative use and the overexercising, bulimia was a 24-hour job. So was anorexia, but anorexia, you're basically cold and tired. You don't have any energy to do anything. And so that's when I attempted suicide at the age of 19. And I never told anybody this, not even my husband until about three years ago. Yeah. I mean, I read that in your book and I was like, wait, I don't think I knew that. We didn't talk about that last time and I'd

never heard you speak about that. It's not something I was really comfortable talking about. But then when I spoke at the McDougal conference, he insisted I tell my life story. And I didn't think it was fair to leave that out, especially since coming out as a food addict or food addict in recovery now, so many people have written me saying that they've contemplated suicide and attempted suicide because of their discordant relationship with food. So I figured, well, I'll tell people. Yeah, it was a dark period in my life. So walk me through that a little bit. I mean, I can't imagine the level of despair you must have been in. Yeah, it's like, I remember the day, April 1st.

It's funny because I don't usually think about this, but it's interesting because I do personally believe in God. I know a lot of people don't, but that's the only explanation for why I'm alive because I didn't tell anybody. I didn't even leave a note. And I had stolen, I never had to talk about this. My grandfather was a medical doctor and I stole medicine from his house. My grandmother was diabetic. She was on a lot of stuff and I just stole- What kind of stuff? Just all of my grandmother's pills. I don't remember the names, but my grandmother took

a lot of pain medication. So I know it was in that realm of pain medication. And I never drank alcohol, but I remember drinking a bunch of alcohol and taking a bunch of these pills. And I remember it was Passover and I didn't go because I had planned to kill myself that night. And what was really interesting is my grandfather, who I had stolen the pills from, he showed up at my door. He said, I don't know why I've been directed to come here. And then they take you in an ambulance and they pump your stomach. And then you end up in a mental hospital, which is worse because that's... It was not fun, I'll tell you. How old were you then? I was 20. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So do you think that looking back on it now with some perspective that, was it a tried and true suicide attempt or a cry for help? No, it was tried. I mean, it was from, you know, it was tried and true because I didn't tell anybody. I didn't leave a note. And I took a lot of pills. I mean, I don't know if it would have worked, but there was a lot. So you were still alert when your grandfather?

a lot of pills. I mean, I don't know if it would have worked, but there was a lot. You were still alert when your grandfather- No, I only remember vaguely a shadow of him saying that, you know, I just felt like I had to come here because you didn't show up to the Passover Seder. And yeah, that- So I want to get into like how you recover from something like that and the path forward, but I don't want to move too far away from this subject of food addiction. I don't want to just brush over that. I think it's a super important topic that deserves a little bit more of a deep dive. And I think there's a lot of confusion about it. What does it actually mean? Is it even really a thing? So describe to me

your perspective on food addiction. It's true because it is not really a thing? So describe to me your perspective on food addiction. It's true because it is not really a thing yet to many people because it's not in the DSM. So a lot of doctors won't acknowledge it, even some of the plant-based doctors. So to me, what food addiction means is refined food addiction. You're not really addicted to food and eating. If you don't eat, you'll die. But there are particular foods for specifically foods like sugar and flour that are very highly refined carbohydrates that certain people are very vulnerable to the effect of so that when we ingest them, they have a more drug-like behavior than food-like behavior. And as a recovering alcoholic, I'm sure you understand that there are people out there

that can drink alcohol in varying amounts and not become an alcoholic. God bless them. Right. But there's certain people like you, one drink, one drunk, and there's people out there that can drink alcohol in varying amounts and not become an alcoholic. God bless them. Right. But there's certain people like you, one drink, one drunk. And there's people in the world like my husband that can eat sugar and flour in almost any amount and be slender and healthy and not have cravings. But there's other people that even a little bit, like maybe if it's the fifth ingredient in a barbecue sauce, will set us off and it'll set off the phenomenon known as craving, where all we do is want more and more and more.

It sets off that insatiable desire for more. Yeah, it's insidious for those that suffer from it. And I think, you know, I started doing a lot of deep thinking about addiction and what it is specifically and what it's not. And I really think that we need to have a broader conversation and expand the definition of what we mean when we talk about addiction. It's not just drunks and people that can't keep a needle out of their arm. You know, I think on

some level, it's this, on some level, I think all of humanity suffers to some extent from some type of compulsive behavior or thought pattern or substance, you know, and food is certainly a part of that, but it is a spectrum, right? And so where do you fall on that spectrum? That's why it's so hard, I think, because it's a spectrum, you know, and because some people can have a little. And some people, there are people that identify with the title of food addict, but maybe can have the barbecue sauce as a condiment with the fifth ingredient. And because it exists on a continuum, it's so hard to quantify. Whereas like with high blood pressure, we can say, if your blood pressure is this, you're hypertensive. And there's no real direct test for it. Yeah. And the substance is, whether it's food or a drug, is the catalyst. The condition really has to do with your mental, emotional, and physiological state. There's a certain person who's going to be sensitive,

like you said, to sugar or alcohol or cocaine, and it's going to activate them in a way that it isn't for somebody else. But ultimately, the addiction lies within the soul, really. I mean, you're trying to alter your state, your state of mind, your physiological state. And you're reaching out often, mostly compulsively, but often even unconsciously to medicate yourself in some way because you have some level of discomfort. And sugar hits the spot for a lot of people. But it's about getting at the root of what is activating that. And something that I thought was really cool and interesting about your book is that you get into the emotional trauma that you suffered as a young person. And I think that there is a direct nexus between the trauma that we suffer as young people and how we kind of navigate the world as

adults. And I've explored this at length on the podcast. I had Gabor Mate on the show. He's all about that. I love him. And so to hear you speak to that, I think is really powerful. So walk me through kind of what that experience was like as a young person, because you did have some challenges as a kid. Sure. I thank you for asking that. First, I want to agree with what you say about how addiction often starts because of something like that, that trying to medicate, feel better, especially as a child when you're helpless, you can't go to a bar and have a drink or things like that. But I think that often it continues because now it is an addiction. Does that make sense? So when I was 43 years old and happily

married, I was still using, not because of what happened to me when I was five, but because I was really addicted. There was so much energy behind that habit at that point, right? Yeah. So, you know, my father was psychotic. It was not his fault. He was kicked in the head by a horse when I was little. Like psychotic, like clinically psychotic. Yes, like he was, and I didn't know him before the accident, but the people psychotic, like clinically psychotic. Yes. And I didn't know him before the accident, but the people that did, like my grandmother said, that that changed him. Now, today he would have been in a neurologist, there would have been MRIs, but my dad had a gash in his head from being kicked in the head by a horse and that changed his behavior. So he was violent

and he was abusive to pretty much everybody in my family. He never physically hit me and my sister, which was interesting. But in a way I had survivor's. He never physically hit me and my sister, which was interesting. But in a way I had survivor's guilt because he hit my brothers and my mom, but the worst was watching him torture my dog. And it's interesting because I think the reason I became vegan so young is because I couldn't protect my dog from my dad.

And he would just brutally beat, I love my dogs. I love dogs. I saw a dog here. I love dogs so much. And that was my best friend, Snoopy. And Snoopy was an epileptic and he would have seizures. And my dad would just beat my dog. And I couldn't do anything about it.

And that was the worst thing is like, you know, my brothers were older. My mom was an adult. Not that it's good to watch humans being beat either. But like when it's a defenseless animal like that, and I hated him so much and like I wanted to kill him, but like when you're five, what do you do, you know? And so, you know, you have cookies. Do you think your dad's rage or anger outbursts are, I mean, what was that an expression of? I mean, was it just a neurological tweak because of the injury that he sustained? You know, I didn't know him before. I mean, I don't know if I should even say this because

then people think I'm really crazy, but I did contact a medium that could talk to him since he's dead. I'm all about mediums. Yeah, okay. So I finally did a few years ago, and part of it was his personality. But the thing is, the personality plus the injury just made a bad situation worse. personality. But the thing is, the personality plus the injury just made a bad situation worse. And what about your mom? My mom was a helpless victim. She had four kids, so it's not like she didn't have a job, so it's not like she could leave. And I don't think there were shelters back then. But finally, she got the courage to leave. They were married, gosh, a long time. I think it was when I was 11.

Finally, when he brutally attacked her, she finally, my grandparent, my grandfather, thank God for my grandfather, finally got her to finally leave once and for all. So, yeah, you know, I grew up kind of scared because he was really mean and I was really little and I couldn't really do anything about it back then. And, you know, there was nobody to talk to back then about it. Do you have a specific memory of turning to food to comfort you or is it just a blur of like, it just was always there? Trying to think if there was an actual incident. It kind of was always there because it was in the environment. You know, we had all the treats there.

So that's a good question. I'm gonna let it marinate because I right now, no. But you grew up with Fruit Loops and Oreos. Yeah, oh my God, I love that stuff. Yeah, and it's funny because my mom would pack my lunch, I went to school. And one of the things that, again, I think about these things as traumatic memories,

but when I went to school, I sometimes go to this place called Farmer's Market at Thurn Fairfax, and they sell these vintage lunchboxes that were so cool. I know exactly what you're talking about, yeah. And all the kids had those, but mine was gray, like the construction workers, the big gray lunchbox with the thermos. And when I think back to the kind of food she fed me, because obviously she was a food addict herself, I mean, I wouldn't just have like one little dessert. Like I would

have like the whole double thing of Susie Q and then I would have a soda. I would have like just, part of it was just that I wasn't being fed the right food either. I was fed a diet that was going to probably make me fat and sick unless my genetics were such that it wasn't. So part of it was that. Let's see. I remember I had to crawl on this counter to get to the good stuff in the thing. And I remember the box cereals, like Lucky Charms. I remember picking out the charms. I wouldn't eat the Lucky because the Lucky was the oat bran thing. That was terrible. I just wanted the marshmallows. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. So you're in fifth, sixth, seventh grade. You're the one overweight child in your class. And I remember that too. There was generally one kid who

struggled with his weight or her weight. Now it's very different. There's lots of kids. Oh, it's more of them. Maybe most kids at some schools. But that had to be, I would imagine, I don't want to project onto you, but I would imagine, you know, that's isolating. Yeah. You know, I was lucky that I was funny and I was, I made up, you know, it's the kind

of thing where like, I've since have done standup comedy. I've been on a tonight show. One of the things they learn is, is that you make fun of yourself before they make fun of you. And so I was very funny. I was, I was intelligent. I was always the teacher's pet. I was very bright, but I was really funny. And so people still like me, even though I was fat. I mean, the boys didn't like me. I mean, they liked me because I could do their homework, but they didn't like me like, like, like they would like a normal girl. So I didn't get a lot of teasing. There was a little bit, but it wasn't like the bullying that goes on today,

because I really was popular, because I was funny, and people like funny people. It's so hard to imagine you, like 200 pounds, like I can't even picture it. Yeah, and that's a lot. Do you have pictures from that time? You know, here's the thing. I thought you might ask that because, so in 90, I think it was 94, we had this huge earthquake in Los Angeles and I was in Sherman Oaks and I lost everything except for, you know, the clothes that I had. And so all the pictures, because the water pipe broke, were gone. So I don't have pictures at that weight, but if you go to my YouTube page, Chef AJ, and watch me on The Tonight Show, you'll see me at least at 180.

But I did have a pair of shorts. Oh, my God. That I used to wear. So these are pretty big. Yeah, those look like 42 or something like that. Yeah, so I do have that. And then I have also pictures, you know, not quite 200, but, you know, most of them have topped out at 165 that I have. Right, right, right.

That's wild. So, all right. So let's pick it back up from, you know, after the suicide attempt. I mean, was that like a moment of reckoning where you're like, I got to figure this out or, you know, what happened after that? No, it was dark. I just, the shame and humiliation, my brother's a psychiatrist. I mean, it was like kind of brought a lot of shame to my family. And, you know, I remember, you know, people saying to me, why don't you just pull yourself up by your bootstraps? And I'm like, you know, it's like saying an alcoholic, you know, why don't you just stop drinking? Right. It's not that easy. And so, you know, I was depressed and it was, it was, it was bad. It was bad. And how long did that?

You know, I was in, I was, how long was I in the hospital for? You know, they put you, they put you in a locked ward of a mental hospital. How long were you there? I want to say like three months. Oh, whoa. And it's crazy. I mean, because some of the people there, I mean, no disrespect to mentally ill people, are actually crazy. And so it's sort of like in prison, like they mix like hardened criminals with less hardened criminals.

They just put everybody together. And there's something about when that door closes, you know, you can't get out. And I remember my mom visiting me with my dog and it's just, you know, it's almost like, I didn't know you were gonna ask about this or I would have brushed up on my past because it's really something I don't think about,

but it was not a good period. Three months. So did they have you on a battery of all kinds of crazy- Well, they were, you know, they tried medicines. They they tried medicines. I'm lucky that I'm a real sensitive and allergic person because none of them seem to work and none of them, either I would throw up or get a rash. So no, they didn't put me on Thorazine, thank goodness. And were they just warehousing you or were you getting help? Were they counseling you? You go to groups. I mean, again, I don't

want to sound like I'm belittling them, but, like, you know, they have, like, art therapy and music therapy and psychodrama. So, I mean, you know, I wish I had remembered it more. If I knew I was going to be at a point in my life where I'd be able to tell the story, I would have taken notes because it would have made a brilliant, you know, like, comedic movie at some point. Well, comedic, but also, you know. And heartbreaking. Yeah, it's heartbreaking. I mean, and it is that thing, like once you're in, like, you know, a lot of people never make it out. Yeah. No, it's really, really scary. I don't wish it on anybody. Maybe they're better

now, but you want to hear a funny story. So later in life, I became a respiratory therapist. What does that mean? It's like an allied health profession where we go around with machines and give breathing treatments. It's like in the hospital. And I ended up working at the same hospital where I was locked up as a mental patient, but the mental hospital is across the street. And I never liked going there to give the breathing treatments because I thought, God, what if they lock me up again? Because you're not going to make it back out. Exactly. Yeah, oh, my God. So it's not like, because most people up until now were, you know,

nobody knew about this, but I remember going there to give a breathing treatment to a patient. And then I saw a patient that was one of the staff members when I was hospitalized. In other words, the people that were our staff were just as crazy as the people they were trying to help. And again, I apologize if people are offended by crazy. I mean it like in a more loving way. I don't mean crazy. But the people that was my psychiatric aid when I was hospitalized was now an incoherent psychiatric patient. The staff person became a patient.

Yes. And I was like, oh my God, I couldn't believe it. It's like, and these are the people that were tending to us. It's scary, you know? Yeah, that's heavy. It's very scary. So you get out of that, and then what happens? Oh, my God.

So I went back. I had to go back to live with my mom. I couldn't go back to the University of Pennsylvania. And, you know, she basically said, you have to get a job. And I am trying to remember, what did I do? It's like my 20s were a blur. But eventually, you know, I did get a job. Actually, I got a fun job, actually.

I became a dog walker, I got a fun job, actually. I became a dog walker, believe it or not. And I remember I was the dog walker for Michael J. Fox. And that was the funnest job I ever had. How did you get like the plum dog walking job? It's like literally he was so generous. And he had two beautiful golden retrievers named Jamie and Rosie that he wanted taken out for like several hours twice a day. And at that time, that was like the only client I needed. Like that was the best job I ever had in the whole world. So you were out here, that was it?

Yeah, I lived here. I moved here in 1971 from Chicago. Right, gotcha. All right, so let's play this forward. When's the final reckoning moment with weight? I know you have sort of fits and starts. You're taking stabs at trying to get this under control. Walk me through that to the breaking point. So like I said, I didn't have a big history of dieting or trying diets because I saw my mom fail at every diet. I had the stab at anorexia from 14 to 19,

which worked but was unsustainable. I got married when at anorexia from 14 to 19, which worked, but was unsustainable. I got married when I was, I was going to say 95, but 35 in 1995 is when I got married. And I didn't want to be a fat bride. And as luck would have it, Fen-Phen had hit the market then. It was very popular. And I wasn't quite really fat enough for it, the doctor said, but because I had a knee injury from all the years of overexercising, he allowed me to have it. And I was able to get my weight down to pretty close to what I am now. Well- Powerful stuff. Yeah, it worked.

Anorexia and a pill, basically. Oh my God. So exactly. They both work, but again, they're both dangerous. They're both life-threatening and neither of them are sustainable. So I was so happy when I was on Fen-Phen because it allowed me to keep eating the crap that I was eating, but it tricked my brain into thinking I was full so I could eat just smaller amounts of crap. And were you all jacked up too? No, it actually had an antidepressant effect on me. So it actually made me feel really good. I felt fantastic on it. Things rolled off my back like water off a duck's back. How long were you on it?

I was on it for probably six months. Oh, that's pretty long. Don't you get a tolerance though where you still have to take more and more? Well, yeah, you do, but here's what happened. It got removed. The FDA took it away. And I remember, this shows like- But it was two drugs, right? Yeah, it was phentermine and fenfluramine that separately worked okay, but together were like this magic bullet that was going to annihilate the obesity epidemic.

So what happened is people were getting heart-lung damage from it. And so I remember going to the mailbox one day and there was a letter from the FDA. And I'm like, why is the FDA writing me? Well, they had removed it from the market. We were told to stop taking it and to go immediately to a cardiologist to have an echocardiogram. So I was fine, but I really still wanted the drug. So I went online and I tried to buy it in other

countries, but I couldn't buy the potent combination. I could only buy, I believe, the fentamine illegally. Right. There was no Silk Road then. Didn't work. So guess what? Within three months, the weight came right back on. I learned nothing. Right. And so I just assumed that I was destined to be fat, 160, 165. I just figured that's my set point. Mom was fat. My grandma was fat. My great-grandma, that's it. So I'll just learn to accept it. In your makeup, genetically predetermined. I figured that's it. And I remember because as a vegan, I had started to teach cooking. And I remember thinking, it was a little bit embarrassing because you think

of people in the vegan world that are like influencers. You think of like Mary McDougal, she's very trim and, you know, Ann Esselstyn. And I just figured, you know, it's not in my cards. It's, and so I was going to do the best I could. But what was happening is I started teaching. I remember teaching at Whole Foods, Pasadena, when they opened that big store. And I was very popular as a culinary teacher. I had the biggest class, 77 people. And I was doing a culinary class. And I remember this gentleman raises his hand. I'm thinking he's going to ask about the garlic or the onion. He said, I go, yeah. He goes, if the vegan diet's so good, why are you so fat? And I felt like saying,

I don't know, why are you such an asshole? But I didn't say- He just called you out. Yeah. And then people were, and once I started putting these little videos on YouTube, people were saying the same thing. It was generally men saying that. And my husband would delete the comments. And it didn't really hurt my feelings so much because they were right, because I really didn't know why I was so fat. I really like, but then I found out and I went to a place called True North in January of 2011. What motivated you to go there though, first of all?

Well, this is it. This is interesting. It wasn't because I was fat. In my first book on process, I talk about my string of fetal deaths. The babies weren't quite yet born, but I had four miscarriages right one after the other. Yeah. And the first one was like almost a live birth. And so that set me into a pretty bad depression. This was in the year 2000, February 1st, 2000 was when the first baby died, the one that was almost born. And I was 40 years old. And so it was tough. It had four of these in a row. And at the same time, my mom and my dad and my dog died. So it was like, so I was, I was like, I developed something called panic disorder and I couldn't leave my house for a year. I lost my job and my house because I kept having

panic attacks and I wouldn't go on meds because I don't like meds. I don't like the, it's not, I just didn't like the idea of meds, especially psych meds. Well, I would imagine you associate that with being in that institution. Like that's a highway back there. I don't want to be on psych meds, you know? And especially because, you know, I'm vegan and I keep thinking, oh, I'm vegan. I should, you know, a diet should be enough.

I should be able to, you know, do this. Right. The problem is I had already had that major depressive episode, you know, in childhood, which again, sets you up for another one. So I was depressed, but now it wasn't just depression. I was having panic attacks and I, they're scary because, you know, I'd be walking my, I had two dogs at the time and I'd be walking them. I'd get a panic attack and then I'd lose control of my arms and then the dogs would go. And so it got

so scary, especially when I was driving that I just checked out and I just stayed home for nine months. Like a shut-in, like an agoraphobe. Agoraphobia. And so the problem was if you don't go to work for nine months, you don't make any money. And so what happened was is this is actually outlined on a show called The Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan, is I found out that my dog, Sparky, at the time, was able to predict if I was going to have a panic attack. He just knew, just kind of like my grandfather knew. Right, like they know about

earthquakes. Right, like he could sense it. And so if it was coming on, he just like, he would stare at me, he would paw at me, he would lick me, he would bark. And I didn't train him to do this. And so the problem is he was a little bit dog aggressive. And I found out there was a thing called a psychiatric service dog, a service dog. And what happened was is I went on the dog whisperer and he became my service dog. And I was able to reenter the workforce using the service dog, go back to work. And I did start taking medication at the- Hold on a second.

I went on the dog whisperer. Like how, what? Okay. Well, so what happened was is, okay, sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. A lot of this is- I just called up Cesar. I wish I could do that. So what happened was is I saw on the LA Times, we had newspapers back then, the Sunday Times, I believe this would have been 2006 now or 2005. And the show had only been on one season. He wasn't as huge of a star then as

he is now because this was casting for season two. And I found out because my psychiatrist was willing to write me a letter to have this dog because I felt safe with him because I knew that if he could predict that I was going to have a panic attack, if I felt one coming on and I was driving, I could pull over. I could get to a safe space. And so Cesar Millan helped me get him certified so that he would be suitable in public. And it was great. It was a wonderful heartwarming episode. The thing is, I did go on a small amount of medication at the urging of, believe it or not, a naturopathic doctor who said, I can't help you. you need these drugs. So I went on an antidepressant called Lexapro in 2011. 10 milligrams, not that much.

And it did stop me from having panic attacks. It did work. The thing was is it also has other effects. And it just, you don't have as joyous or a vibrant as life when you're on these medications. You're just kind of like, yeah, you know. So in a way it was good because here having panic attacks, you know, I remember one time, the scariest panic attack was I was taking a bath and we had at that time a sunken tub

and I got a panic attack in the bathtub. And when I was getting panic attacks, my arms and legs would go numb and I couldn't get out of the tub. And then you just end up being naked and freezing. It was really scary. So, so I went on this medicine, but again, I wasn't really having, like you say, it was more of a flat affect. I wasn't really having a joyous life. And plus, I didn't like the idea of being on medication. And I tried to get off them by titrating the dose.

I went to these specialists. I flew around the world. And I could lower it to 7.5, to 5, to 2.5. But the minute I went lower than 2.5, the panic attacks were coming back and I went back on. So in about 2010, I heard about a book called The Pleasure Trap by Dr. Lyle and Dr. Goldhammer, my two mentors and now friends. And I read the book. It's a great book, by the way, about addiction and more. And I found out that Dr. Goldhammer had this center in Santa Rosa, California.

And that if you fill out the form online, you can have a free consult. So I did that. And I said, listen, I'm on this psychiatric medicine. I'd really prefer not to be on it. Can you help me? I was fat, but that's not why. It wasn't about weight loss.

Not yet, but it's interesting because that opened the door because then I met the secret weapon, him and Dr. Lyle. And he said, yeah, you're going to come to the center. I'm going to put you on disability. We're going to fast you for six weeks, and we'll get you off the meds. Well, I get to True North, Martin Luther King Jr. birthday weekend of 2011. I go with a friend of mine, Tim, for support, and my service dog, Sparky.

And the first thing you do before you water fast is see one of the actual medical doctors. He said, can't fast on psych meds. So I couldn't fast. They meds. So couldn't fast. They did a juice fast, you know? But the thing is, is what happened is I met Dr. Doug Lyle, who is the best. You should interview him. He is so- No, I'd love to have him on. I've heard him speak many times. He's a good friend. I love the book. The book has come up many times on the show.

And you know, the book is going to be on audio now. And guess who got to record it? I don't know, you? Yes. I was chosen. I know that's like the biggest feather in my cap that I was chosen. It's a full circle moment for you. Well, it is because it was like neither of them wanted to do it, but the publisher needed the book out. And because I relatively understood the material, they let me do it. So it was really very nice. So this is 2011. Yeah, January of 2011. That's not that long ago. I thought like this went way back for you, much further back. Well, trauma and trauma ago. I thought like this went way back for you, much further back.

Well, trauma and trauma goes further back, but this particular- No, I know, but this sort of turning point for you was much more recent than I recall. I'm the nouveau thin. I've only been thin for about six years now. So yeah. So I met Dr. Lyle, who's fabulous and I love his book and his lectures. And I actually had an individual appointment with him then. And again, we still hadn't talked about weight loss then. It was just about, can you help me with my panic disorder? And he helped me more in that one session than all the doctors did my whole life. So you went up there for the session or was that on the phone? Up there because he works there. He works there and he works at the McDougal program,

both in Santa Rosa. And he gave me some really good techniques, explained what panic disorder was, and he really helped me. So I still could not yet get off medication. I tried. And then it was now September of that year. And what happened, and this is interesting, because I really believe that sometimes when things in life, and you might believe this too, there's no real accidents, is sometimes when things are difficult and painful in the moment, you look back and you go, wow, that was really a blessing. So we're now talking- Story of my life. Yeah, right? Yeah. So September of 2011, I was really embarrassed that I was on psych meds and

I didn't want anybody to know. I felt that as a personal failure, like what's wrong with me that I have to take these drugs and what's wrong with me that I can't get off of them? Because they tell you they're not addictive, but they are because you can't get off of them. So in September of 2011, I got a job as Chef AJ, like doing a really cool presentation at a high-end kind of thing. And I got there and I was going to be there for almost a week in New York and I forgot my meds. And my doctor, of course, would have written a prescription for me and I could have got them. But the people that I were staying with said, oh, no problem. So-and-so, their neighbor, was a pharmacist. Just tell me

what you need and we'll get it for you. And I was too embarrassed. As it turns out, I was on thyroid meds too. So I just said, well, this. Well, after not taking them for a week, you go through, oh, it's hard. That's not the way to get off psych meds, by the way. It's sort of like- You were titrated down to a pretty low dose too. No, I was back up to 10. I was back up to 10. If you ever saw those dolls, they're like gray and they're rubber and you squeeze them and their eyes pop out and their ears pop out. When you go off psych meds like that, you actually, it's almost like you feel your brain wiring and it's not a pleasant thing. And like, you have to kind of lay there in the dark and you, it was a horrible,

horrible experience, but I was so embarrassed. I went through this. And Doug Lyle, Dr. Lyle, really helped me through it. He called my husband. It was not pretty going through this detox. But after I got through it, just like anything else, you know that withdrawal sucks. But you were staying with people at the time? I was staying with people.

And you didn't tell them that this was going on? I was too embarrassed. They must have been like, what is wrong? What's going on with her? I was too embarrassed. I was still able to do my job. Were you able to do your event or whatever? I was. I was able to do my job and I was able to do it well. But the rest of the time, I just kind of laid there like in a fetal position, just feeling my brain just go crazy. But I got through it. And just the same thing, whether it's drugs or alcohol or food, withdrawal is a bitch. But addiction,

I think, is worse, actually. But when you get through it, you know what it's like. I mean, have you ever met anybody in recovery from anything that ever said, you know, it was much better back then? No. So I was off it and it was great. And by now I had some techniques, some actual cognitive behavioral techniques that I learned from Dr. Lyle about what to do when I had a panic attack. Like what? Okay. For example, all the other doctors said, oh, you need to meditate, you need to breathe. Well, when you're in the throes of a panic attack, you can't all of a sudden ask your body to relax. So Dr. Lyle would say, no, what you do is you run in place. You do jumping decks. The panic disorder is like, there's a lion. You need to run. There's fight, flight, or freeze. I was a freezer. And Dr. Lyle taught me, no, you have to run. I go,

but what happens when I'm in the car? He goes, you just squeeze your arms like this with the steering wheel. So I was able to use the techniques he taught me. And what happened is, do I still get panic attacks? Occasionally. But the stakes have to be high now. Like there was a pit bull in the neighborhood coming towards me. I got a panic attack. But a regular person might have too, right? I was in a car accident a couple of years ago. I got a panic attack, but I'm not having them every day. Yeah, they're commensurate with a threat. Exactly. But whereas before, nothing would happen. And so, yeah, so that's what happened. So I was using Dr. Lyle really for panic disorder and psychiatric medication withdrawal. He told me

to read a book called Anatomy of an Epidemic, which explains that these medicines not only don't work most of the time, but actually are harmful and that in trials, clinical trials, placebo was more effective. And so if I had read that book, I would not have chosen to go on meds. But I was starting to work as Chef AJ in the Vegan World Conference here and there. Dr. McDougall had had me a couple of times. And in the weekend after Thanksgiving 2011, Dr. Lyle and I, we'd become friendly. We were on a job together and at a break. I said to him, I said, Doug, I get to call him Doug.

I said, I know that you hear this all the time because now by then I was eating a really health promoting diet, by the way. I need to backtrack a little bit. From August 1st, 2008, when I first heard Dr. Esselstyn speak, I stopped eating sugar, oil, and salt. I was eating a health promoting diet and I wasn't eating the mass copious amounts of candy, cakes, cookies, pies, and ice creams. I was able to make rich date nut treats, but I wasn't eating sugar, oil, salt. But I was still 50 pounds heavier and I couldn't figure

out why. Well, I know now why and it's in the book. But I said to him, I said, Doug, I said, I swear to you, I'm not cheating. I'm eating a whole food diet. I don't eat sugar, oil, salt. Why am I so fat? And he basically sat me down and explained calorie density to me, which is- Yeah. And this has become your thing. I mean, I've seen you give your keynote presentation many times and it's super powerful, but it's also like, oh yeah, duh. It's so elementary in many ways, but I think the concepts elude most people. So, you know, walk us through that

because I think it's really important information. Right. And also, sorry to jump on you like that. No, no, no, please. But I think, you know, it helps with this confusion that you've lived through between what it means to eat a vegan diet and what it means to eat a whole food plant-based diet and what it means to eat like, you know,

the ultimate sort of health promoting, longevity promoting, disease reversing type of diet, because those are very different things. And I've been through them all, you know? So yes, thank you. That's a great question. So I was eating a whole food plant-based diet without sugar, oil, salt.

I wasn't cheating, but not having understood caloric density, I was eating way too much of the whole plant foods that were calorically dense, such as the nuts, the seeds, the avocados, and the dried fruit. And there's nothing wrong with those fruits. And athletes such as yourself, you need those calories. But somebody that's a female, and as Dr. Goldhammer says, females are energy-conserving, estrogen-producing fat storage machines, and somebody that was already fat didn't need so many calories from those calorically dense foods, even though they have nutrients and they have fiber. been saying for 40 years, but for some reason it eluded me until it was like face-to-face. And he explained it to me, the concept, at least for me, the fat you eat is the fat you wear. And yes, there are people that can eat more fat and not be fat, but if you're fat, it might not be you. When I ate a more McDougal type diet and didn't add any fats, the weight just came off.

It was so weird because I wasn't even eating that many nuts. I was weighing and measuring an ounce a day thinking I needed them or I would die without them. And I remember it was so funny because for the, Dr. Lyle, he's funny. He tricks you into doing things. He has you do these experiments. And so he said to me, he goes, you know, just for a month, I want you to not eat any added fat, no nuts, you know, just for a month. I want you to do it. And, and, and, and I go, that's, can I say bullshit or? Yeah. I didn't, no nuts, you know, just for a month. I want you to do it. And I go, that's, can I say bullshit or? Yeah, say whatever you want. I say, that's bullshit, Doug. I said, that's not going to work. You know, nuts are healthy. You got to have them. All the doctors

are saying you got to have at least this much. He said, just do it for a month. I said, you know what? You're so stupid. I don't know if I said stupid. I said, you're wrong. I'm going to do this for three months. I'm not going to start until January 2nd, 2012, because that's when I get back from True North. I work there every Christmas as a guest chef. And I'm going to do it for three months because I'm going to do it till my birthday and show you that I'm not going to lose any weight. And then on my birthday, I'm going to have a rich date nut dessert and go, nah. Well, guess what? Dr. Lyle's always right. And he was right. And I was losing a pound a week doing that. I couldn't believe how easy it was because now I was eating more food, but calorically dilute food. And in my opinion, better food, because I was eating like lots of potatoes and sweet potatoes

and rice and beans. So I was filling up, I was less hungry and eating bigger volumes of food that had less calories. And it's like, like you said, it's so obvious, but it does elude people. Right. So you mentioned the McDougal type diet. So for somebody who's listening who doesn't know who John McDougal is and kind of what he stands for, maybe it's worth fleshing that out a little bit. Yeah. Well, I'll sing a little ditty because last time I was on, I sang the Goldhammer song. Oh, you did? I don't remember. Oh, I did. I remember that. You let me sing the Goldhammer song. You can sing it again. John McDougal has a plan based on carbohydrates. If you eat them, you'll be trim and not have

ass or thigh weight. John McDougal, he's the man. He's as smart as Plato. Eating starch will make you thin. Just eat a damn potato. Oh, my God. Did you write that? Yeah. I mean, I didn't write the melody, obviously. It's Yankee Doodle. So here's where things get sticky for a lot of people. You know, and this comes up all the time in the podcast. Like right now, you know, there's a lot of talk and energy behind this idea that carbohydrates are terrible. this idea that carbohydrates are terrible. You should be eating a low carb, no carb,

potentially even ketosis, high fat type diet, which is in total juxtaposition to where John McDougall was coming from, who's basically, his basic principle is we're starchivores and we should be eating these complex carbohydrates in natural food form. Yeah. I agree with him. You know, I run a program in LA and actually online too, called the Ultimate Weight Loss Program. And I have people now that have lost 100 to 300 pounds and kept it off for like five years eating nothing but carbohydrates.

So to me, and a diet not high in carbohydrates would be not fun. It would be sad. It would be deprivation. And potatoes make you thin. I mean, didn't you interview or did you? I had Andrew, yeah. That's what I was gonna say. So how the heck did he lose 120 pounds just eating potatoes?

I mean, they really are the perfect food for health and weight loss. According to something called the satiety index, they are the most satisfying food in the world, potatoes. Because they're filling. They're so filling. They're also nutrient dense. Absolutely.

They have a lot more nutrients in them than people realize. We sort of think of them as a junk food, like, oh, it's a white food, like it's just calories without any vitamins and minerals. But it's actually got a lot of good stuff in it. But to be clear, you know, we need to kind of define our terms. I mean, when you say carbohydrate, that doesn't mean- Yeah, that doesn't mean, you know- Flour, sugar, alcohol. Yeah, like wheat, pasta, and Coca-Cola.

I mean, whole, unrefined, complex carbohydrates. Whole grains in their whole form, not processed into a flour. Legumes, beans, split peas, lentils in their whole form, cooked with water. And potatoes, sweet potatoes, and winter squashes. These are the foods that our ancestors ate throughout most of human history that are still eaten parts of the world today that are free of the diseases like obesity and heart disease that plague us. I mean, the Okinawans, according to the Blue Zones, are the longest-lived people in the world. Don't they eat something like over 70% of their calories from sweet potatoes? So these are foods that make you thin.

The problem is people are adding things like oil to them for French fries and chips. And that's the problem. It's not the carbohydrate, it's the fat, the cheese, the butter, the oil that people add to it that make them fat and sick. Right. So let's get back to this idea of caloric density you know when you give your talk you always have

these the jars i almost brought them the jars and you also have these charts where you show what a stomach looks like right here's a stomach with you know tons of vegetables and it's completely full you know more vegetables than you could possibly sit down and eat until you're completely stuffed um and then the caloric equivalent of that is, you know, I don't know, like, you know, an ounce of oil in your stomach. It's just like a little, like, it just looks like a tiny little bit of your stomach. Maybe two and a half tablespoons. Yeah. It's like, it doesn't even show up. It puts it into perspective in terms of calories. So on the one hand, you have these foods that are super high in fiber, minerals, vitamins,

phytonutrients, micronutrients, all those things that you need and want and that we're always trying to get. And then on the other hand, you have, well, there's a little, what's wrong with a little bit of olive oil, right? But when you see that, you realize like, oh, wow, it's so, you know, a food like olive oil

is so calorically dense and so nutrient poor that it seems harmless, but when you kind of look at it through that lens, you have this sort of awakening moment where you're like, oh, now I get it. Well, also it has no fiber. That's the most important thing probably. Dr. Goldhammer always says that foods like sugar, oil, and salt, they're not really food. They're not found in nature in any concentrated form and they fool our brain's satiety mechanisms and cause us to overeat exponentially. The thing is, is you don't sense any fullness from olive oil. So if I were to make you a meal of like a gluten-free pasta, brown rice pasta with steamed vegetables and an oil-free marinara, you could have a very nice big serving of food for about 500 calories. If you eat that

same meal at a restaurant where there'll be about 500 calories from oil, from the sauce, from the pasta, from the vegetables, you don't experience any more fullness. They've done studies that show that the extra calories from oil are insidious. They slip under the radar undetected by the mechanisms of stretch, nutrient, and calorie receptors. And so I remember when I stopped using oil in 2008, I didn't tell my husband because he didn't need to know. I make his breakfast, lunch, send his lunch in 2008, I didn't tell my husband because he didn't need to know. I make his breakfast, lunch, send his lunch to work, I make his dinner. So I stopped

using it, not because of caloric density, because Dr. Esselstyn said it creates heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Everybody in my family was dying or dead from heart disease. I figured, well, why would I do this? And you don't miss it because you can make food delicious without it. You can use the nuts and seeds if you want. So about seven months after stopping oil, my husband had to go to a formal event. And he's thin, six feet, 160 pounds. And he doesn't normally wear a belt. But seven months after stopping oil, we had to go to this event.

And he went to put his belt on. And now he can't attach it. There's no more holes. He goes, oh, I must have cancer. I'm losing all this weight. And he got on the scale. He had lost like eight pounds. Without trying.

Without trying. Without even knowing. So he was being experimented on against his will. So if somebody that doesn't want to lose weight, that doesn't need to lose weight, will lose weight that effortlessly just by stopping oil, imagine what could happen if people actually did it on purpose. To be fair, there is a little bit of an adjustment. If you're used to eating foods with tons of oil and, you know, and like lots of sugar or, you know, salt and the like, like you do, I don't know if I would call it a detox, but you have to like go through a period where you adjust just like you would when you're switching from milk to almond milk or something like that.

Like what I found though, and I'm not completely oil free. But you're athletic. You're not. though, and I'm not completely oil-free. But you're athletic. I know. But when I'm not working out a lot, if I'm not careful, I'll put on weight and then I have to be more conscious and consciously aware of those kinds of things than I am when I'm out there crushing it all the time. So I'm very intimately familiar with this and I've seen how it works in my own life. But I think it's important to just acknowledge like, okay, yeah, it's going to taste a little bit, it's going to be a little bit different. But like, honestly, if you just go two weeks or, you know, I don't know, a week, whatever, everybody's probably a

little bit different. When you complete that cycle, you know, it's not really a detox, but it's an adjustment. Then you land in a place where like, oh, I don't, I don't know the difference. I can't tell. I don't, I don't miss it anymore. But you have to go through that period. Right. And most people just, they just don't want to do like, oh, I don't know the difference. I can't tell. I don't miss it anymore. But you have to go through that period. And most people just don't want to do it. Well, they don't. They don't want to do it. You're so right.

Most people will not go through the pain of detoxification withdrawal. It's not even that painful. It's like, okay, it tastes a little bit different. Maybe it doesn't taste quite as amazing as I'm used to. But like, you know, is it really that big of a deal? You're talking about a concept that Dr. Goldhammer in his book, The Pleasure Trap, calls neurological adaptation, neuroadaptation. And that will happen. The other thing people don't understand is the role of a neurotransmitter called dopamine in this equation.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that's released when we have a pleasurable experience, such as eating or having sex. And all eating stimulates the production of dopamine in our brain. Even kale, steamed kale at 100 calories a pound stimulate the production of dopamine. But the more calorically concentrated the calories, the more dopamine is released. Well, oil is the most calorically concentrated food on the planet.

It's 4,000 calories per pound, 40 times as calorically dense as kale. And since most people aren't doing much in life to feel good, like you and me, like exercising regularly or doing volunteer work, they're relying on these high-fat, high-calorie foods to medicate, to feel good. So if you take away the most calorically dense food, they're going to feel bad because they're not having their drug. Maybe that's why when you challenge the high-fat camp, they get so testy.

Yeah. I wanted to show you, I didn't bring my jars. You're basically, you're threatening to take away that dopamine. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, I get people that come to me and they go, oh, I'm Greek, I'm Italian, you know, olive oil's in my blood. And so I'll pour them a cup and I'll go, here, drink it. They won't. You'll vomit if you drink it. It's because people are looking to food to medicate, to celebrate. And they're not, like you say, they're not dealing with what's really going on. And that's really what it is. It's because I would challenge you that I could make the food taste

delicious without oil. Because I was a restaurant chef that didn't use oil. I think some of my recipes are that good, but what they're missing is the high hit of dopamine. Oh, sorry. No, what do you got there? Well, it's just funny because I didn't bring my jars, but yeah, I brought all these snacks. So again, I recently spoke at a VegFest and I had to take two planes on Southwest because there wasn't a direct flight.

So on the first leg of the flight, they gave me this. And on the second leg, they gave me this. Right, so you got Ritz crackers, you got cookies. And peanuts. You got peanuts. Now, this food that I can fit in the palm of my, both basically in the palm of my hands, this is over a thousand calories.

What I eat for lunch, which is usually like two pounds of potatoes or sweet potatoes baked into fries or roasted, and a pound of broccoli has less calories than this. Right. Like this huge plate of food. And this is, and people think nothing of eating this on their flight. It's just a little snack. Yeah. And it's probably 30, I don't know, a lot, it's a lot of fat. This is nothing. Yeah, it's crazy. And you could have so

many fruits and vegetables and whole grains and legumes and rice and beans for the same amount in processed food. Right. I, you know, people say to me all the time, like, aren't you just starving all the time? But I eat massive amounts of food, you know, like gigantic, you know, I'll eat like five potatoes and I'll eat, you know, just unbelievable amounts of beans. And like, I'm full all the time. I know. It's so fun. And people, if they, until they really understand caloric density and actually implement it,

they don't realize that as slender people, we can eat so much more food. We can take in twice as much food, but yet still consume half as many calories. And again, Dr. Rawls is the one that discovered this at Penn State. She wrote a series of books on it. I didn't discover calorie. I mean, I discovered it. I didn't invent it. I think I just honed it for people that especially want to be plant-based. Right, to help them to understand. What I like about your story is that there's this evolution. Like you're like a chef in the plant-based world, in the vegan world. Like you're doing cooking demonstrations at True North

before you're actually fully understanding kind of what you talk about now. Like, so this didn't happen overnight. You were immersed in this subculture and yet still you weren't fully clicking with what needed to be done to get your own health under control. I think Dr. Goldhammer, again, him and Dr. Lyle, it's almost like a conspiracy, a friendly one. He tricked me. Because when I arrived at True North 50 pounds heavier, he didn't say, you're fat.

Don't be doing cooking demos. But he said something like, and I can't remember exactly, but he said something like, you know, you're already very talented. You're a very talented chef. He goes, and we judge a chef's talent by how they can concentrate things like sugar, fat, and salt. And he goes, you know, but if you got skinny, you would rule the world. He goes, you're already a bitch, but if you were a skinny bitch. And so he did sort of like the whitewashing the fence with Tom Sawyeryer, you know, remember like where they made it seem like a chore was fun. And he made it seem like it was going to be so great to be thinner for, for, for just in general.

And, and that he could actually help me do it. Like he really gave me hope, like that he could actually explain to me how to do it. And, and empowering you rather than shaming you. Exactly. And, and, and, and I started those two guys, they're like my brothers, man. I mean, if I hadn't met them, I don't know where my life would be today. How long were you at True North? I was only there eight days the first time, but I've since been back every year, several times a year, not as a patient, but as a visiting chef. Right. All right. So a couple of questions about this. First of all, for people that are listening, True North is the same facility that you saw in

What the Health, if you watched that movie. I'm getting ready for another song, sorry. Are you going to sing a song again? Hold on a second. I'll let you sing a song in a minute. I'm teasing. And if you saw that movie, you recall there's a couple of case studies in the documentary where there's people that are on all kinds of crazy meds and they're overweight. There was that person who could barely walk. And then you see kind of what happens after however long their tenure was there where they seem to be doing much better, but that's the same place. And it's also the home of Michael Clapper, right? Is he still there? He recently left. He was there for seven years and now he just retired from True North in December,

but there's other wonderful- He's a wonderful man. Oh, absolutely. They have Dr. Lim now, who is the medical director of the McDougall program there. They have Dr. Peter Sultana. They have Dr. Solera. So they have other wonderful medical doctors and naturopaths. All right. One thing I'm interested in what goes on there has to do with the fasting aspect of it.

I mean, we're seeing emerging science that is speaking to the health benefits of intermittent fasting and what can be achieved. But there's also, you know, look, this can go wrong also. There's people that don't do this properly and they get sick or, you know, potentially suffer some nasty consequences. So what is the relationship of the fasting aspect to the rest of what goes on? Right. So it is a medically supervised therapeutic water-only fasting center. It's been there for over 32 years, founded by Dr. Alan Goldhammer and his wife, Dr. Jennifer Murano. However, not everybody that goes there fasts. There are people like me that medically cannot fast. There are people there that don't want to fast, maybe because it's too scary or too hard. So they have two other levels of care. One is that you can do a juice fast, which

I think could be safe for people sometimes to do at home. I would never recommend people do a water fast without medical supervision because they check on you all the time. They're checking your blood pressure. They're checking your temperature. They're checking your blood and your urine. So I personally would not recommend people water fasting at home. And they fast people up to 40 days, believe it or not. That's wild. Even slender people for certain medical conditions. Water only? Water only. Many people in the plant based movement, like Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. Campbell have actually gone there and fasted. I remember Dr. Campbell had that agent orange or something and True North actually helped his recovery. So we get a lot of famous people there, not just in plant-based, but like in the real celebrity

world too, because they help people with certain conditions like type 2 diabetes, autoimmune disease, heart disease, almost every condition get better and get better faster. And doing this by the complete abstinence of food, except for pure distilled water and complete rest. And so that's their highest level of care. And that's why most people seek them out. But then again, not everybody can or will fast, but even if you do fast, you have to eat at some point, you have to go home eating. So if you fast, you have to have at least half that much time to refeed. You can also go there as an unrestricted feeder, which is the funnest. And that's what I go, which means all you do is. And that's what I go,

which means all you do is eat the food. Three times a day, buffets set up in caloric density, all you can eat delicious food by Chef Bravo and Chef Mauricio. And people still get well. People still get well just eating this SOS-free, low-fat, whole food plant-based diet. And they have lectures twice a day, 10 o'clock and two o'clock.

And when I'm there during Christmas, three times a day, 10 o'clock and two o'clock. And when I'm there during Christmas, three times a day, sometimes they'll have it. You go every year? I've been going every year for eight years. And I'm like- What do you still get out of it? Oh, community. Having the childhood that I had, holidays are very painful for me. Most of my family is dead. And so it's like, it's a place to go. So I've been going there every year for Christmas, anywhere from 10 days to five weeks. And we do the holidays there and we have camaraderie and game. I'm like the social director. So we have the best time. And it's, some people do fast at

the holidays, but most of the people don't. And we have special demos and Iron Chef competitions. I get out of going just, it's like going home. It's like, it's the home I ever had. And it's, it's, it's a privilege and an honor to be able to do that. So a lot of people just do unrestricted feeder. You know, it's so funny because I remember, even though it's been years since I've been on your podcast, people found out about True North because I sang that song

and people were at True North from hearing me on your podcast. So the ripple effect is incredible there. So you have these levels of care. And you know what's interesting is, Dr. Goldhammer will probably get mad at me for saying this because he's always full, but I had to attend a wedding in the Napa Valley and Dr. Goldhammer charges less a day than any hotel. So I just stayed there for three days with my husband and used it as a hotel and got all my meals. And it's pet friendly under certain

circumstances. That's hilarious. So people, Dr. Pam Popper says she does the same thing. Because where else are you going to get food like that? And people, you get the education, you get the camaraderie. It's about a half a mile away from where Dr. McDougall runs his program. His program doesn't run all year round like True North. It's an incredible experience. And if I could have one wish for anyone that was struggling with any kind of lifestyle disease or weight issue, if they could just experience the level of healing that goes on there, it would make all the difference in the world to them. But for somebody who can't find their way there, I mean, you've worked with, I don't know, 2,000 people at this point, helping them learn how to lose weight and keep it off. And I kind of want to get into, you know,

some of the strategies that you've employed, like what works, what doesn't, and you explain all of this in the book, the secret, what is it? The secret to ultimate weight loss. I don't have the book, but I have the cover. Yeah, it's not done. I've got the cover, but it's going to be out by the time this goes up, it will be out. It should be out. There's nothing inside. No, we're not doing a book. We're just doing a cover.

Right. So, I mean, that's a huge test group of people that you've worked with, right? So, before we dig into the specifics, because I want to talk about travel and expense and time and all that kind of stuff. But what have you learned that might be non-obvious to somebody listening about like what doesn't work and what works that, that like you just wish people really got? I wish people would know if they're struggling. And I think you probably know this is that if you're an addict of any kind, moderation never works. And they knew this. What does that even mean? Yeah, exactly. I think it was in the 17th century, the 18th century, there was a saint named St.

Augustine who said that complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation. And if people could understand that moderation really rarely works for anyone, but it's never worked for an addict. And that is the hardest concept, Rich, for people to grasp is the concept of abstinence because people don't like that concept. It's scary. It's going to be difficult. If they only knew that that's where the healing lies, that's where everything you ever wanted for your health, your weight, and your life lies in this concept.

But because there is so much confusion around certain foods, because, and again, I love all the plant-based doctors, but they're not food addicts. They've never been overweight. So when they say, yeah, a little salt's okay, a little sugar's okay, a little flour's okay, it's okay for them. But if you're the person that's overweight

and struggling and having cravings, it's not you. So you have to know who you are. Yeah, I think that you're absolutely correct about that. And I think what happens when you put that word abstinence in front of somebody, their whole life forecasts in front of them. And they're seeing themselves at a wedding, you know, somebody's getting married that they haven't even met yet. You know, like, they're just future tripping on some situation that may not even occur and imagining, well, how am I ever going to get through that? I can't do it, it's impossible. They won't even try, right? That's why one day at a time came along. Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. Like the core principle is cheesy

and as trite as it sounds of one day at a time is so powerful because when you think about it, it's very Buddhist in its nature. It's like, what are you doing right now? Like, okay, eat the cupcake tomorrow. Total freedom permission to eat that cupcake tomorrow. But you know what? When your head hits the pillow tonight, you will have followed, you know, AJ's protocol or whatever. Like just get through today, make the best choices that you can,

and don't worry about what's going to happen tomorrow. It's so funny. I remember one of my first clients and their struggle was cheese actually, which is also another addictive substance. It's an animal product, a processed food, the casomorphines, opiate in the brain kind of thing. And they said, well, I can't do this. And I'm like, well, why? They go, well, I can't be expected to go to France and not eat the cheese. Right. It's just a story. No, but then I said, well, when are you going to France? And they go, well, I'm not. I go, when have you ever been to France? They go, I haven't. They go, well, do you have any plans

like in the next year to go? Well, no, I can't even afford to go to France. But the point was, is addicts, you know, addicts are really- Well, you're going to throw up that barrier. You're going to throw up, you're going to think of every reason possible to protect that, you know, to covet that behavior pattern. And that's addiction in a nutshell. Like, that's like, okay, well, yeah, only an addict would say that, right? If I ever have time to write another book, it'll be about some of the excuses that I hear why people can't do this, because that's what addicts do. They make excuses and, you know, you can't have both excuses and results at the same time. Right. Yeah. It's just, or even,

you know, take France out of it altogether. And it's just, yeah, but cheese, I can't, I could never give up cheese. And it's like, okay, well, let's, let's dissect that statement a little bit. Like, what are you really saying? Like, you're just, you're holding on to an idea that doesn't serve you and you're scared. You're scared of the alternative and what that might mean for you, but you've actually never trodden that path yet. So you actually really don't know. And you've created this story and you've given it so much power, but you've never actually tested the veracity of it, you know? And so it's about encouraging people. And I think a big piece of that is the empowerment thing. You know, like had he said something different to you about your weight, it might have

been, you know, a very different story for you, right? So the psychology of this is super important and how you communicate to people. That's the hard piece. That's why I refer everyone to Dr. Lyle, because I'm more like Dr. Goldhammer, like, this is the way it is. Just do it and you'll be fine. And Dr. Lyle's like, no. Yeah, it's not an intellectual exercise, but you know that as an addict. It's not the information. That's not what catalyzes change. It's so much more complicated and nuanced than that. Yeah. I think at the end of the day, most addicts don't want to give up their drug. Yeah, of course. Who would? It's like your best friend. Yeah, exactly. And I think often you have to hit rock bottom. In my case, and I forgot to

mention this, this was also a subset of meeting Dr. Goldhammer. When I broke my knee when I was almost 50 years old in February of 2010, I was 165 pounds and I was too fat for crutches, or at least I couldn't use crutches. I didn't have the upper body strength. And I was in a wheelchair for three months and I couldn't take care of my daily needs. I mean, I couldn't go to the bathroom myself. And it's very embarrassing.

And I said to my, and that was almost more of my rock bottom than even attempting suicide. Because to me, having somebody help you go to the bathroom, especially if that's your husband, is the most humiliating thing in the world. And I said that I am going to do something about this. I do not want to be that person that has to have somebody wipe their ass. That was just so degrading to me. And luckily, I soon thereafter met Dr. Goldhammer. Oh, the other thing is they wanted to do surgery, and I'm deathly afraid of anesthesia. I had almost died when I was 19 as an allergic reaction. And so that was the other reason, because pain is a huge motivator.

And here I am working as a pastry chef, you know, eight hours a day, and my knee would just swell up. So there was a lot of forces that came together to get me where I am. Yeah, two observations about that. I mean, the first thing is, yes, pain is a phenomenal motivator. It's the only thing that's ever gotten me to change anything, you know? And the tragedy in that, of course, is that you don't need to be in pain to make a change, but it goes back to that intellectualization of everything. Like pain can be your best friend because it can be the spark that can ignite you to blaze a new path. And so when I see somebody who's in pain or who's in suffering,

who's suffering, your instinct as a human being, as a compassionate person is to try to alleviate their pain, right? How can I make them feel better and more comfortable? But, you know, I think that often the more compassionate response to that is to refrain from that instinct and allow them to have that pain moment because that could be their divine moment. Let them know that you're there for them, that you believe in them, that you see them, but don't try to ease it for them because that is the crucible that can forge a brand new life. Yeah. And it's hard to do that, right?

I have, you know, Dr. Goldhammer's voice in my head, too. He's very compelling. Like, he says things with such force and assuredness. And one of the things he says a lot, you know, people will ask him questions. Well, you know, how much meat can I have? You know, like, they're morbidly obese on 20 medications. You know, how much meat can I have? How much cheese? How much wineidly obese on 20 medications. You know, how much meat can I have? How much cheese?

How much wine? And he goes, how fat and sick do you want to be? And so whenever I'm faced with like a choice that could lead me there, I literally hear him saying that, you know, how fat and sick do I want to be? Well, I don't want to be fat or sick anymore. I've been both.

And I much prefer being slender and well. It's so awesome. I mean, that's the other thing, you know, like a lot of people say, well, absence isn't sustainable. Right. Have heard that? Well, it's just not sustainable. How can you be expected to go to a wedding and not drink alcohol or go here and not have that? And maybe it isn't sustainable for some people, but what I want people to know is the joy of living is sustainable. And when you reverse a lifestyle disease, no matter how difficult it was, and when you are in recovery from an addictive substance, the self-esteem you feel, the joy you feel,

that's sustainable. Yeah. And it builds, you know, and it gets better and better, but it's experiential. Like you can't, you know, somebody has to have that experience for themselves. There's no pill, there's no surgery for that. Right, but we live in a culture that's all about that.

Yeah, pill for every ill. And God bless Dr. Goldhammer for saying that. We need a little truth talk here. And it's not about like, oh, take this, or it's gonna be fine. Like, no, it's not gonna be fine, actually. You're gonna have to like get uncomfortable. And you know what?

Good things come from discomfort. They're not just hand delivered to you the way that you want them to. And the more people can just acclimate to that reality, I think we'd be better off as a culture. You know what I mean? All right. So let's get into some of the things you get into in the book, like, you know, common subjects that come up, excuses, concerns, the FAQ of being plant-based, like, what do I do when I travel or Or I have a dinner party and like, it's too expensive and I'm going to have to live my life in a kitchen. It's way too complicated.

I don't understand all of this. So like, can we demystify some of these? You know, I recommend the Instant Pot electric pressure cooker or any pressure cooker. Instant Pot's my favorite because the truth is, is you always, whenever I hear you speak, you talked about how you used to have the window diet, the drive-through. It's true that it's never going to be as cheap or easy as going through a drive-through. I agree. Yes. The thing is, is it doesn't have to be as complicated as people are making it.

And the truth is, is if they realize what they're eating now, let's say they're eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a month. They're eating 30 breakfasts, 30 lunches, and 30 dinners. And I would wager that no one listening is eating 30 different breakfasts every day, even if they're eating a horrible diet and 30 different lunches and 30 different dinners. People find their favorites and their family's favorites and they repeat them. Well, why can't you do that with some plant-based healthy options that you'll like just as much? You like a hamburger? Try my chipotle bean burger. Delicious. All my recipes are tested on regular people. You can find a few recipes that will become your favorites and repeat them. The other thing is, is if people would understand that the simpler you eat, the easier this is. And so whereas many people are looking, well, I need a recipe,

I need a recipe, you need to learn to eat food. And just having rice and beans over greens and salsa, it's delicious. I know you love that meal. I eat that like four times a week. Yeah, Dr. Esselstyn loves that meal. It's a deli... I mean, I teach in Mexico. Everybody that lives in Mexico loves that meal.

It's food. Think about food instead of recipes. Getting a pressure cooker can take away the argument of time and money. Because when you cook things like beans and grains from scratch, they're practically free. They're 49 cents a pound, but it also takes less time. You can cook beans on the stove.

It'll take two and a half hours. Pressure cooker, 10 to 20 minutes. So it's true. It's like learning a new language. You have to learn a new set of skills, but these are not that difficult to learn for most people. And the other thing is, is you can always get somebody to do it for you. That's what Dr. Lyle does.

He has a college or a high school student come and do all his prep and then he just takes it out of the fridge. So it's harder than people make it. You know what I'm saying? Now, of course, I think the social aspect is always gonna be the hardest, especially if you're an extrovert,

if you're an outgoing person, because if you're doing something different than everybody else, that could cause you discomfort. If you're the only non-drinker in a room full of drinkers, people look at you like, well, what's the matter with you? Why don't you drink? That kind of thing. And so that's, I think, the hardest thing for sometimes people to navigate is the social aspect. Yeah, for sure. And that's the thing that leads people out the door. Right, exactly. I think that's the deal. You know, the traveling, you know, you travel full-time, I travel full-time.

The traveling isn't that hard because we're eating food. And guess what? They have food in other countries. They actually have food in airports. I mean, yeah, so maybe I have to get white rice instead of brown rice, but I've been on the road for seven years now to Mexico and Canada and the Caribbean.

And I've always been able to find food. And when I can't find food, I just take this with me. All right. That involves a little bit of prep. I mean, what happens with me is people are like, you know, like I'll fly to San Francisco or I'll fly to Phoenix or, you know, some flight that's like an hour or two,

maybe even three hours. And they're like, well, what did you eat in the airport? What did you eat in the plane? I was like, dude, it's only like a couple of hours. Like, what are you going to starve? Like I had a banana. People freak out. They're like, what am I going to do? Like I'm in this tube. I'm like, you're only in the tube for an hour and a half. Like, you know, it's going to be okay. They're scared. They'll get hungry. That's the other great thing that you learn at True North is that hunger is not an emergency. And when you, even if you go there as a non-faster, because you have roommates, unless you want to do a buyout, you always have at least one roommate in a different room though, but you share a suite.

When you see people there that are slender, that are older than you, that are fasting for 40 days, you realize, you know what, if I can fly to New York to LA without eating the peanuts, I'm not going to die. But for most people, hunger is an emergency. And I think part of it is because they're on such a toxic diet that it almost feels like an emergency because they need to get that next fix of sugar, fat, and salt. Yeah. And those microbes in the gut are signaling the brain and further enhancing that craving. I think beyond the kind of scientific benefits of fasting, I think what's important about that is it really rearranges your relationship with food

in the sense that you begin to understand that this three meals a day thing doesn't necessarily need to apply. You'll be fine. Whatever is going on in your thinking brain or whatever impulses are getting fired, those signals don't necessarily need to be heated. You're not going to pass out. I mean, maybe some people do, low blood sugar. I don't mean to minimize those sorts of things,

but I think in general, it's important for people to recognize that the way that we've been doing it for a long time may not be the best way. I think for some people, it really is like a detoxification reaction, Rich, because if you think about that Americans eat over 92% of their calories from animal products and processed food, they're eating a fiberless diet with no micronutrients,

and they're always gonna be driven to overeat because they're really looking for food with nutrients. And so I think part of it really is physiological, that hunger. Yeah, they're getting fat, but they're starving. Right, exactly. And so that's what part of, I think, the discomfort is. It's not emotional, it's physiological, because they may have eaten 2,000 calories from a fast food restaurant, but their body is starving for nutrients, for fiber. And so they're always going to be looking for more food, but then they keep making that same choice. Right, all right.

So I got a business lunch. I gotta go meet with these guys. There's a big deal on the line. They wanna meet at Ruth Chris's Steakhouse. I have no say in this. I'm trying really hard to be good, but I need to make a good impression with these guys. I need them to like me. Like, I'm just gonna have to be good, but I need to make a good impression with these guys. I need them to like me.

Like, I'm just gonna have to eat steak, AJ. No, steakhouses are the most vegan-friendly places to eat, believe it or not. I've often gotten healthier. Come on. No, really, maybe I haven't been to Ruth Chris. I couldn't tell you the last time I was in a steakhouse. Well, I've been to Morton's,

which I don't know Ruth Chris, but I'm assuming, I haven't seen the menu. But in general, steakhouses can be the most vegan-friendly places, more so than vegan restaurants. The chef's like, finally, I can make something else. If you look at the, think sides. So first of all, when you're invited anywhere that you have no control over, look up the menu. I mean, because if it's a place that has more than, I think, two or three locations, the menu will be online. So first thing, look at the menu, navigate the menu. In general, steakhouses have lots of sides of vegetables. And most of the time, the menu will be online. So first thing, look at the menu, navigate the menu. In general, steakhouses have lots of sides of vegetables. And most of the time, the chef will

either steam or roast the vegetables for you without oil. You do need to sometimes call up ahead to be sure. The best time to call a restaurant is during that window where after the lunch rush, before the dinner rush, and call them up and say, look, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be difficult. I've heard very good things about your restaurant. I'm going to be there on such and such a date. But I'm on a very special diet. Doctor's orders, you know, blame it on Dr. Esselstyn, can't have a drop of oil. And say, is there anything you can do to accommodate me?

And instead of saying, well, you know, don't say like, well, I'm a whole food plant-based vegan. I can't eat sugar, oil, salt, flour. Just say what you can eat, you know. And so a steakhouse generally can make you a baked potato. Now, sometimes they put oil on it, but you can ask them not to. They can steam you some vegetables. Often they have salsa as a condiment. So that's one trick you can do. Navigate the menu. Like I've had clients go to restaurants and they go, there's nothing I can eat. But then they realize, hey, you know what? They had a spinach omelet. So then they say, hey, I noticed you have a spinach omelet. Can you hold the eggs? Kind

of like that, Jack. Right. All right. So that's the logistical tactics, but then we have to deal with the social aspect of this. Okay. So this is where everybody's going to be different. And Dr. Lyle has a beautiful lecture on his website, esteemdynamics.com called The Perfect Personality. And it's going to depend on how agreeable or disagreeable the person is. Now, I don't have a problem with that because I'm not gonna eat if somebody doesn't want me to eat. Now, that doesn't mean I'm gonna be rude or socially unacceptable,

but what I might do, for example, one of the strategies I might use if I'm in a corner, I might say, when I get there, I might say, oh, this looks delicious. I'm so sorry, I had a late lunch. And can I just get a cup of tea? Or I might say something, I've used this a lot. I say, oh guys, I'm so sorry. I'm having a colonoscopy tomorrow. So I can't, I mean, I do

that a lot. Or I might say, you know what? Oh my God, I just came from the dentist with a root canal. My mouth is, I mean, there's ways you can do it without offending people for their choices, right? You know, you can order it and then excuse yourself to go to the bathroom and come back and say, oh my God, I'm so sorry. I just had the worst bout of diarrhea and vomiting. I mean, it depends how far you want to go. Yeah. So you could tell a white lie, but if you don't want to lie, Dr. Lyle has some interesting strategies around this as well, which is to just present it in a very casual way to just say, I don't know, I'm trying this thing. I'm trying to do this thing. I know it's crazy. Probably it's not going to work. Yeah. It seems to be working. Whatever, you know, it's like, it's doing okay, but like just deflate it. Don't be like, oh, well I'm

doing this and this is the way you, you know, whatever, like just try to be as casual and low key and perhaps self-deprecating in that regard. And that, and that really just diffuses everything. I've never had a problem. I have. I have battles in my mind about this. Like I trump it up to be this big thing, but I've always been able, I mean, now it's like, look, everybody knows, you don't have to tell white lies anymore. Everybody knows when they're having dinner with you,

this is where it's gonna go, right? I mean, same thing with me. So like, I don't really confront it anymore, but I did have to for a long time. So my personal way of doing it is just to be super casual about it. And if you are uncomfortable with that, like you can say, you can excuse yourself and say, I'll be right back. I'm going to the bathroom and find the waiter and go, hey, this is what I want to do. Can you do it? I'm like, that way you're having

that, you're not drawing. I think people don't, they don't want to draw that attention to themselves. They don't want to be like that person who's like difficult, you know, that everyone's going to talk about after the lunch or the dinner and just, you know, kind of take care of it in a, in a quiet way. And then just be, you know, you don't have to say anything. You don't owe anybody anything. Do you want to know a strategy that worked for a couple of my clients for whom a restaurant meal off plan could have been life or death. We're not talking about somebody that's trying to lose 10 vanity pounds, but somebody that's really in the throes of trying to reverse diabetes or lose a leg or go on

dialysis. The less is literally on the line. Right. So this brilliant lady, what she did when she was in my program, in the in-person program, she had to entertain clients for lunch and she worked near La Cienega restaurant row. So they always were places like Lowry's and whatever. But she really took her recovery from food addiction and diabetes very seriously. So what she did is she called up the restaurant ahead of time. Because you know where you're going, usually. You don't just get some mysterious text, right? Like at the last minute. This is where we're meeting. So they knew where she was meeting the client. She called up the restaurant the night before and said, listen, I'm on a very special diet doctor's orders. Would you mind if I brought my food into you? I'd come early,

you heat it up and plate it, and then charge me. And the guy says, lady, we do that all the time. And then she got what she could eat. Nobody knew, nobody batted an eye. She just said, oh, you know, hey, Frank, I'll have the usual. Oh, so she brought it ahead of time and then they put it on the plate? And they charged her for the least expensive entree. Uh-huh. Yeah, that's interesting. I haven't heard that one before. Yeah, it's a good one.

I mean, there's some machinations and some time invested in that. Not everyone's gonna wanna do that, but I guess, look, if you're on your program and this is everything to you and your life is on the line, like that's a solution to that. So let me ask you this, as a recovering alcoholic,

would you then drink alcohol just to not make other people feel uncomfortable? Of course not, of course not. But when you're newly sober, I can tell you, within the first two weeks of trying to get sober, I was already imagining this bachelor party that I committed to going to. And there was no way I was gonna be able

to go to Las Vegas for a weekend with my buddies and not drink. And that terrified me. So that's very real. I don't want to be dismissive of that. I agree. No, and I'm not trying to be dismissive. And now I can go anywhere and I have to maintain my program. It's not like I work at it, but I can go to those places as need be. I don't seek them out, but occasions arise where I'm in situations I'm not normally in and I'm comfortable in my own skin.

But that is because I've put a huge amount of work into that, right? To be able to have that gas in the tank and get through those opportunity situations where normally that would imperil me or somebody who has a very shaky foundation for their recovery. I'm not trying to be dismissive.

What I'm trying to say, and this is where the crux of this disease lies, because most people don't take food addiction as seriously as alcohol or drug addiction. No one would, if people knew you were a recovering alcoholic, it's different if they never met you, but nobody knowing what they know would say to you at a family event or a bachelor party,

say, hey, Rich, you got to taste this margarita. I made it just for you, just a sip. People wouldn't do that to you. But with food addicts, hey, Rich, you got to taste this margarita. I made it just for you, just a sip. People wouldn't do that to you. But with food addicts, they feel like, what's the harm? One meal off plan. It's harder. It makes it harder. Right. One drink, one drunk. You can live your life without alcohol or cocaine or cigarettes. You have to eat. You can't live your life without food. And so knowing what I know now, if I knew then, I would have just been honest with the person and say, listen, this looks delicious. And I'm so sorry. I don't mean to be difficult, but I am a food addict and there's nothing I can have here. So I'm going to enjoy the company and have a cup of tea. That's

what I would do. All right. So your kind of road to recovery, you've got this, you've premised this, or you've kind of distilled this down to this idea of the seven C's. What are these seven C's? Okay. Gosh, I hope I remember now. I wrote them down in case, but I'm going to test you. Come on. Well, the first C is commitment, absolutely, because you have to have that commitment. I mean, there's been research with Harvard Business School that the people that made commitments did better many, many years later than those that didn't make commitments. Commitment's sort of like having a goal, but having a commitment, writing it down. Being specific about it.

Right, exactly. Like, I'm going to eat better. Yeah, not just saying, I'm going to eat better, I'm going to exercise, I'm never going to eat cheese again. No, actually having it a time commitment. See, that's why we always do 21 days first in my program. We don't tell you that you can't have XYZ the rest of your life. We're just, like Dr. Lyle says, doing an experiment for 21 days. We're going to do this. And on day 22, if you want that triple cheeseburger, write it on your calendar. You're going to get it. But you're just going to make a commitment.

And when you make that commitment public, like we do in the Ultimate Weight Loss Program, or if you have a buddy, it seems to be more powerful because then you have accountability. Yeah, of course. So that goes to the community prong of the seven Cs. Yeah, that's, I think, number four. And I think community is the one where most people fail and most people relapse because you brought that up. That's the hardest for people because of the social pressure. And then the second- And a lot of people, sorry, I don't mean to interrupt, but I think this is an important point. Like a lot of people,

like we live in Los Angeles, there's, you know, whatever, there's a million people here to kind of pat us on the back or whatever. But a lot of people live in places where they don't have that community in their local town or wherever they live. Right. That's why an online community, that's why we created Ultimate Weight Loss to also be online, to help people all over the world with a virtual community, which actually can be just as powerful, although it is always nice to have somebody in person. All right. Compliance. Compliance is my favorite word. Some people say they don't like it. They like adherence better, but adherence doesn't start with C. But Dr. Goldhammer says the word compliance.

That's where I learned it. And it literally means just following a prescribed course of action. And what I love about it is there's no emotion, to me at least, there's no emotion in the word compliance. People all the time make posts on our private group or call me up and say, I was bad, I ate a cookie. Oh, I was good today, I ate kale.

I don't look at it as like you're bad or you might be bad or good in life, but you're not bad or good based on your food choices. You're either compliant or non-compliant. Yeah, you made a choice. Yeah, so choose to be compliant. You had a mishap, you had a slip or a misstep or a relapse, then you can go back to choosing to be compliant

in the next meal, whatever that program is. I love that word. Yeah, I like that because it takes this idea of failure and the shame that kind of goes hand in hand with it out of it. Because what happens is people slip or make that choice and then they beat themselves up. So they've made a second mistake

and then they're like, fuck it. Then they go. Yeah, so then they're out, right? And if you reframe that and call it by a different name, say, fuck it. Yeah, so then they're out, right? And if you reframe that and call it by a different name, say, I made this choice. It's neutral. You're not bad or good. This is the choice that I made. Okay. That allows you to be dispassionate about it and go, how can I recalibrate? Or what led me to make that choice? Like, let's look at that. Let's unpack that. And what do I need to do so that I don't make that choice again? And it's how they talk to themselves, because if they ate a cookie and then relapse,

and they say to themselves, well, now I failed. Now I've blown it. What's the use? They feel a certain way versus- And there's a lifetime of energy behind that. Right. Or if they say to themselves, oh, I ate a cookie. I was noncompliant. It doesn't have the same charge. It was like, oh, I wasn't compliant. Oh, well, then you'll be compliant with the next meal. All right. Consistency. The next is consistency. As an athlete, you know how important consistency is. Of course, I talk about it all the time. Because I mean, I remember, I think it might've been Doug Lyle, but was it Kobe Bryant? There's some athletes that they don't just go to practice. They stay two hours later or come two hours

before, things like that. When you do things in the same manner over time with little variation and you do them consistently, first of all, you build a habit and then it becomes an automatic habit. But too many people go to True North once a year and fast and they lose some weight and they get off some medications, but then they go right back to the same environment and the same way of eating because they're not doing it consistently. So what you do most of the time is more important than what you do some of the time. So being consistent with your food choices and your exercise too. Yeah, it's self-evident. I mean, it's pretty elementary, but I think that's the most difficult thing. I mean, I think it's

important to respect momentum. Like if you have that experience of being a true North or you've done 30 days or 21 days of whatever you're doing, we have this weird human impulse, especially addicts of trying to celebrate those benchmarks by doing the thing that is at odds with what got you there. Like, oh, I got a year of sobriety. Here's a birthday cake. Here's a cake. Yeah. Or here's a cake. Yeah. Like, yeah, I had a kid. Exactly. You know, and trying to maintain, it's those micro little decisions that you're making every day that are truly at the crux of whether you're going to succeed or not. And that's the unsexy part. It's like, oh, you can create all this romanticization out of getting on a plane and

going to true north and you're housed and you're taken care of. But what are you doing at home when no one's looking moment to moment, hour to hour? It's funny that you mentioned the word sexy. I had this very affluent client that came to me and I played the program and he goes, you know, this abstinence, it's just not sexy. And I said, well, either is your impotence. So, you know, cause. Well, also like nothing, you know, nothing truly, no great accomplishment is like what it takes to build a company or, you know, achieve any athletic heights or any of these things. Like it's the unsexy part that gets you there. It's the thing that you're doing, the grind when no one's looking that you're doing anonymously.

Like all of that is what contributes to that success. But you're building so much self-esteem with doing that. That's the thing that's so cool. Yeah, of course. And when you look back, it's those difficult moments that you recall. It's not like that, you could celebrate these victories, but honestly, the value for me, when I look at anything that I've created or succeeded at, I remember the hard time. The effort. Dr. Lyle talks about that. It's that you're rewarded for the effort for a job well done.

You know, I do a lot of these iron chefs, and I don't always win, but I don't feel bad when I lose if I know I did my best, you know? That's all that matters. Yeah, of course. So the next one is change. No, it's cooking. Oh, okay. Sorry, I don't remember the order. Well, cooking, you know, it used to be continuing education, and then I changed it to cooking because we realized that at some point you have to get the food right. And either that means learning a few simple basic recipes yourself, as we talked about, or having somebody cook it for you because the food seems to be a part that eludes a lot of people.

I had a client, 44 years old, who came to me. She goes, how do you bake a potato? And I'm like, oh, my God. People have no skills anymore. When I grew up, home economics was mandatory in junior high, sewing and cooking. We learned basic, you know, skills of the homemaker, which I think men and women should learn.

So it's just some basic cooking skills. Right, all right, cooking, change. Change, yeah. You know that saying, nobody likes change but a wet baby. But many people don't change until the pain associated with change is less than the pain of staying the same. People have to at least be willing to change because you're going on a journey here that's completely different than anything you've ever done, right? Because most of the world is going to continue to eat crap and continue to eat animal products. And so at least you have to be willing to make these changes.

You may have to change who you hang out with. Like if you were, when you were an alcoholic, if you had other buddies that were alcoholics, you probably couldn't at least- I had to completely change my social circle. Right. Or at least not hang out with them at the bar anymore. So you have to be willing to change who you hang out with. If you still go to restaurants, you might have to change which restaurants you go to, how you order. So that's a big thing for people. A lot of people don't like having to change. No, they really don't. They want all the good stuff, but they don't want to do those uncomfortable things. Exactly. So AJ's got news

for you. Yeah. You got to learn to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Right. Well, we talked about community. Do you have anything more to say about that before we go on to the last one? I think with community is that if you don't have one, find one. And whether it's my group or a virtual group or even just one person that could be a buddy to you online or in person, I think that that is really going to be the most important thing. It would be very, you know, if my husband didn't support me in this, I don't think I could do it, you know, if he was just, you know, drinking beer and eating pizza every night. So even having that one special person to support you. Yeah. So what do you say to that person who is really trying hard, but their spouse, their partner is not into it?

I say get divorced. No. So sometimes I do say that if they're sabotaging them. So what I say is then at least don't have these things in the house. So in other words, if you're sabotaging them. So what I say is then, at least don't have these things in the house. So in other words, if you're an alcoholic and your spouse isn't, and they can still drink, out of respect to you, they will then drink outside of the home. And it has to be the same thing with the foods, or we recommend even getting what's called a locked food safe. If your spouse won't support you, it's going to be rough. Now, all the doctors I've interviewed say that a loving partner will support someone in recovery, going to be rough. Now, all the doctors I've interviewed say that a loving partner will support someone in recovery, or at least should. That doesn't always happen.

So if your spouse won't support you, then you have to get it somewhere else. It's very hard to do this alone. No man is an island. And recovery, I know one person that was a cocaine addict that was extremely introverted, highly intelligent, that was able to get off the drug themselves without rehab, without going to a doctor, that's really rare. Recovery is generally done in programs because it really helps you to see that if you climb this mountain, there is a top. When you see people like Heather Goodwin who have lost 300 pounds and kept it off,

you see what's possible. And that's why I think if you don't have the support at home, you've got to find, as we say, your tribe somewhere. Yeah. A support system is absolutely crucial, not just to see the example, the successes, but also just to catch you when you fall and, you know, who are you going to call at midnight? And, you know, all that kind of stuff is like, I couldn't, I couldn't have gotten sober by myself. There's no way, you know, there's no way. So I think it's super duper important. All right, compassion. Oh, that's my big problem. That's why I wore this shirt today that says it.

You're not compassionate? I'm not discompassionate, but most of my life as an ethical vegan, my compassion was more for those with fur and fins and feathers and not those so much with skin. Don't like people. Well, it's not that I don't like them, but I always seem to do better with the animals. And so I realized that if I'm going to be successful helping people and if people are going to be successful helping themselves, you have to have compassion for other people at every step of their journey and for yourself, especially when you relapse. People, if they understood what an insidious,

chronic, progressive, life-threatening disease addiction was, whether it's food addiction or alcohol addiction, they might be kinder to themselves when they relapse. So you need to practice self-compassion. And like your wife teaches yoga and meditation, those are two of the most beautiful modalities that help you garner self-compassion when you can get quiet and do those more mindful things. A lot of people have compassion for the animals, but not so much for other people. And that's what I'm talking about with compassion. However, there are people that come to this program just to lose weight and really don't have compassion for the animals. And then it's a plant-based program. And then they maybe need to learn to have some compassion for those.

So compassion is huge, you know. Yeah, the piece about self-compassion is super important. You know, as somebody who's been in, you know, the rooms of recovery for a long time, like you see people that relapse, there's chronic relapsers. And a lot of those people are under the misapprehension that they can go out and they can always come back, which they can. But, you know, just because you go out doesn't mean you're going to come back. And, you know, more often than not, you know, I've been witness to those people that go out thinking they're going to come back after a binge weekend and they never come back. And that's because of shame and because, you know, sometimes they die and I've been to a lot of funerals, but, you know, a lot of times it's just, they're so mortified, they can't face

the prospect of returning to the rooms to admit on a public level, like, this is what happened to me. And so they would rather imprison themselves and perpetuate the addictive cycle than have to actually confront that. And that destroys lives. Absolutely. And that's why community is so important. Addiction is a disease that can only thrive in isolation. And that's just the way it is. And they shouldn't feel so much shame. I think that's why with shows like yours to educate people that addiction actually, it's a disease. Like you interviewed Dr. Mate.

It's not like a choice. It's not like we said, oh, you know, this would be a great thing to have. It's our brains are wired differently than other people's. a great thing to have. It's our brains are wired differently than other people's. And even though it's not a choice, but once we know that we are wired this way, it becomes our responsibility to behave differently if we wish to recover, which is why if I had one message for people that were suffering from any addictions, it would be that abstinence is bliss. It is so much easier to stay in recovery than it is to continually have to detoxify and withdraw and try to get sobriety again, whatever your addiction is. But like I said, I've never met anybody that's gone to the top of the mountain or got to the

other side that didn't think abstinence was... It's so awesome. If they could just feel what it was like to be in our brains, to have a calm brain and not having cravings for any addictive substance, people would do it, but it is a tough sell. Yeah, it is. So we got to round this out, but if somebody is listening to this and they are caught in that cycle and they're having difficulty confronting their own personal truth or trying to see their way out of it, what is your lifeline? Well, I think that the first thing I would probably recommend is maybe read a book like The Pleasure Trap. That's a low buy-in. What is it, like 15 bucks or 20 bucks on Audible? And see if that resonates with you, what these doctors are saying. And if

it does, maybe considering going to True North or at least having your free consult. There's no cost in just talking to Dr. Goldhammer to see if it was right for you or having a low cost consult with Dr. Lyle for $75. If my program is right for you, consider joining that. You know, it's not right for everybody because it's an abstinence-based program. And that's the thing. People want the results of abstinence

without doing the work of abstinence. So, and just get yourself educated more to see if you really are an addict. You know, there is no shame in this disease unless you feel that way. You know, that's why we need to bring this out. And I mean, I'm proud to say I'm an addict because once I found out I was,

I knew I could recover because there was treatment before that. That's when I thought something was wrong with me that I couldn't eat a cookie. I'm like, what's wrong with me? Who eats, you know, all these cookies? I don't get it. But once I knew that there was a reason,

there was no more shame. Right. So often the fear of the unknown exceeds the pain of the current situation, right? And I also, so I think it's often revealing if you get out a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle and write on one side, like all the pain that you're suffering from and on the other side what you're afraid of and really get real with yourself.

You know, willingness is something that you can't will somebody to be willing. They have to have their own sort of desire to, you know, do that kind of work. And they either have it or they don't. And my hope and my wish for everybody who's listening, who is suffering, is that you do have that willingness, because it is that that will make the difference between you, you know, changing your life and just maintaining stuck in whatever pattern. And, you know, you can always go back. You can try sobriety. If you don't like it, you know, it's it, none of these programs are court ordered. Well, sometimes I guess they are for some people, but in general- That would be me at first.

In general, that's why I love the concept of not even a day at a time, but a meal at a time, a bite at a time. You can always choose to go back. And I don't know if I heard this on one of the guests on your show, but they say that the opposite of addiction is connection. And that's why it's so important to find a tribe or at least one person to support you. Awesome. AJ, you're an inspiration. Oh, thank you. I love you. How do you feel? I feel great. You feel good? My hairdresser says she's your biggest fan and she was so jealous that I was coming here.

I have a massive fan base amongst hairdressers. You do. She's a vegan haird base amongst hairdressers. You do. She's a vegan hairdresser too. Oh, cool. That's cool. Really great. If you want to connect with AJ, there's a number of ways to do that. The most important thing though is check out her new book, Secrets to Ultimate Weight Loss.

She also has a book called Eat Unprocessed. Unprocessed, yeah. Unprocessed, yeah. Check that out. And your website, your coaching, your online programs. Sure, it's all there on my website. ChefAJwebsite.com. Or eatunprocessed.com. Eatunprocessed.com that out. And your website, your coaching, your online programs. Sure. It's all there. On my website. ChefAJwebsite.com. Yeah, or eatonprocess.com.

Eatonprocess.com. Cool. Nice. And you're on all the social networks and all that kind of stuff, right? Are you speaking anywhere anytime soon or any of that kind of stuff? You know, what's coming up? The cruise is until next year. You know, I've been taking a little time off to get this book done.

Am I going anywhere special? Not that I... Oh, Rancho La Puerta, where you've been with Julie. Yeah, in Mexico, May 5th through 12th. Yeah, I had Debra on the podcast early days as well. That's cool. She's amazing.

She's awesome. She must be like- Like 95 or 96 now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's still showing up and doing her, God, she's the goddess. I love her. She's cool.

All right, awesome. Come back and talk to me again sometime. Oh my God, it'd be my honored pleasure. Thank you. Peace, plants, eat unprocessed. And go abstinent. I told you, right? She's amazing.

Super great. Hope you guys enjoyed that conversation. Please let AJ know what you thought of the exchange. You can reach her at TheRealChefAJ on both Twitter and Instagram. And as always, check out the show notes for links and resources related to today's conversation on the episode page at richroll.com. Once again, the Plant Power Away Italia is now out. Pick up your copy today.

I guarantee you, you will be delighted. 125 delicious plant-based recipes inspired by that region's rich culinary tradition. If you want even more amazing plant-based recipes, check out our meal planner, meals.richroll.com. We're offering thousands of recipes, literally thousands, all customized based on your personal preferences with unlimited grocery lists and even grocery delivery in most U.S. cities, with international delivery in certain cities coming up soon, as well as extraordinary customer service. All of this is just $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year. For more on all this and to sign up, go to meals.richroll.com or click on Meal Planner on the top menu at richroll.com. And if you would like to support my work, please subscribe to this show on Apple Podcasts or on whatever platform you enjoy this show. It really does help with the show's visibility, extending reach and audience, which in turn will make it easier for me to book the

very best people for future shows. You can also support the show on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today, Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music uh he does all kinds of work on this show couldn't do it without him so thank you for that michael gibson and blake curtis for video and graphics this episode is up on youtube you can find that at youtube.com forward slash rich roll and theme music as always by analema thanks for the love you guys really appreciate it this podcast means everything to me but it's nothing without you guys the audience so go forth prosper eat plants be well be healthy spread love talk to you soon peace plants Thank you.