WHOOP Podcast - Hitting the Reset Button to Create a Healthier Lifestyle with Melissa Urban

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

This week’s episode is all about nutrition and learning how to create a diet plan that works for your body. WHOOP VP of Performance Science Kristen Holmes is joined by Co-Founder and CEO of Whole30, Melissa Urban. Melissa is a recovered addict, nutritionist, and a seven-time New York Times bestselling author who realized she needed to change her habits and her life in order to maintain her recovery – which caused her to examine her relationship with food and its impacts on her body. The two will discuss Melissa’s background and battling addiction (3:03), the importance of setting boundaries (5:40), how to deal with others while trying to make personal changes (8:05), how Whole30 started and grown over the years (10:40), changing the relationship with the scale (12:51), the process of elimination foods (14:50), the moment Melissa realized the positive impacts of Whole30 (16:13), the concept of a health reset (19:40), making Whole30 accessible to everyone (22:48), reintroducing foods back into a diet (25:10), how context matters when it comes to eliminating foods (27:35), tips on how to use WHOOP data to make better food and sleep choices (28:35), Melissa’s sleep data (34:31), how Melissa keeps people motivated to stick to their programs (36:35), her new book The Book of Boundaries (38:55), her concussion and how it has impacted her over the years (43:20), how she combats anxiety and other recovery tips (47:05), and how nutrition is the foundation for a healthy lifestyle (54:23).Resources:Melissa Urban Whole30The Book of BoundariesSupport the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

Welcome back to the WOOP podcast, where we sit down with top athletes, researchers, scientists, and more to learn what the best in the world are doing to perform at their peak, and what you can do to unlock your own best performance. I'm your host, Kristen Holmes, DUP of Performance Science at Woop, and we are on a mission to unlock human performance. On this week's episode, I'm joined by the co-founder and CEO of Whole 30, Melissa Urban. Melissa is a recovered addict, nutritionist, and a seven-time New York Times best-selling author and has been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and more. After leaving rehab, Melissa realized she needed to change her habits and her life in order to maintain her recovery, which caused her to examine her relationship with food and its impact on her body.

I know many of you are probably rethinking your own habits, whether they're diet, exercise, consumption, or something else. And this conversation covers so much more than just food. Melissa and I will discuss how and why she started Whole 30 method and the effects she saw, the physical benefits of a dietary reset, the importance of understanding your body through dietary elimination, reintroducing foods into a diet, tips on how to commit to a diet and lifestyle program,

how Melissa used her whoop to help notice lasting effects of a concussion. The Whoop Sleep Mask is our latest innovation to maximize the quality of your sleep. Get serious about rest to improve recovery, energy levels, mental health, fitness gains, and so much more. In Whoop Sleep Mask studies, participants experience an average of 9% increase in REM sleep and 80% of participants reported zero light leak. Head to shop.wop.com to increase your sleep quality today. If you have a question, you want to see answered on the podcast, email us at podcast at whoop.com or call us at 508-443-4952, and it might just be answered in the future episode.

Here's my conversation with Melissa Urban. Melissa founded Whole30 back in 2009 as a 30-day dietary reset that millions of people around the world have tried. The idea is focused on eliminating and reinstituting certain foods to help the body reset and gain a healthier understanding of what it needs to operate at a high level. through the whole 30, Melissa found an avenue to empower people to examine their own stories, find their voice, set and hold boundaries, and step into their power. Melissa has a profound personal story as someone who's undertaken her own personal health journey. While we will root a lot of our conversation in nutrition, this will definitely be a conversation about why it's so important to pay attention to one's health across every dimension.

Super excited to welcome Melissa today. Melissa, hi. Hi, Kristen. It's so good to chat with you again. So, Melissa, I'm just astounded by your personal journey. It's incredibly inspirational in so many levels. I'd love to hear kind of how you started down this path and go back as far as you need to to give us all the context that you feel is relevant. Yeah, I should probably go back to the days where I was snorting heroin a lot because that's really where my journey starts. People ask me all the time, oh, have you always been into health and fitness? And my answer is no. I spent a lot of years as a drug addict in my late teen. and early 20s, and it wasn't until I entered into rehab for the second time because I went in once and I had a year of recovery and I relapsed, as is so often the case, that I realized that I really had to change everything about my life if I wanted to remain in my recovery and protect my recovery

practices. So I decided from that moment on that I was going to be a healthy person with healthy habits. It didn't matter that a week ago I was still using drugs and still living that lifestyle as of right now, I was a healthy person with healthy habits. I adopted what was a growth mindset, although I didn't know that was what it was called then. And so I started going to the gym early in the morning when healthy people would go to the gym before work. And I met a group of like-minded girlfriends and started running with them in the mornings. And I started paying attention to what I ate and started eating healthier and more whole foods and started cooking more. I started going to bed earlier.

I changed my job. I changed my friend group. I changed the way I dressed in the music that I listened to. I really adopted this entire mentality that I had to become the person that I wanted to be in order to protect my recovery. And that's really where my journey with health and fitness began in 2000, more than 22 years ago now. So you just completely flipped your identity. I did.

I did. You know, going into recovery the first time and then relapsing after a year of recovery was really scary for me. It made me realize that the first time, in recovery, I didn't really set any boundaries with anybody else. I didn't really do anything in that first year other than tell myself that I would try not to use drugs. But I didn't change any other aspect of my life. My friend group was the same. The activities we did were the same. I didn't talk about my recovery. Everyone wanted to just pretend like I was better now. And so that was easier for me

as well. And it didn't keep me safe. So the second time through, I really knew I had to make some dramatic changes if I wanted it to stick. And I did. And maybe talk a little bit more about boundaries. I mean, that's a whole podcast in of itself. But I know this is something that you talk a lot about and you help people. I think through your experience, you have had to set very clear boundaries. And so what has been, how have you done that? And what do some of those conversations look like? Yeah. You know, in the earliest days of my recovery, I realized, I didn't know what the concept of boundaries were. But I found myself, you know, after my second go around, after a relapse back with a friend group and a party I didn't belong at with people I didn't know doing God knows what in the

bathroom feeling incredibly unsafe. I had put myself in a position once again where my recovery was at risk. And out of sheer desperation and honest to God boundary just tumbled out of my mouth, I said to my friend that I was there with, I don't feel safe here. This is not good for me. I need to leave. And in that moment, he was very gracious about it, asked me some questions, and he was like, yeah, okay, we can go. And he drove me home. But I realized in that moment that if he hadn't been like that, if he had said no, or if he had laughed at me, I needed to be responsible for my own health and safety. And I would have left on my own. And that was the moment, I think, that I realized that boundaries were going to be not only the key to my recovery, but the key to expanding my life beyond

what I had imagined. I had been living so small in my own. And I had been living so small in my recovery so afraid to talk about my feelings or express my needs or let people know what I needed in the moment. And the minute I realized that I could advocate for myself and keep myself safe and healthy was the moment I realized that I had control over, you know, how I wanted my recovery to look. And it really did change everything. And then that practice continued with me into all of my habits going forward. You know, people who are close to us often, you know, don't want to see change, you know, because that is almost a mirror into, into their old world. And, and those conversations that can be really hard. You know, we've talked, we've had a lot of different

conversations, you know, over the course of January as people are, you know, trying to adopt new habits potentially and take on healthier ones. And, you know, as you know, behavior change is really, is really hard. But I think it does kind of start with setting those boundaries. And I love how you talk about, you know, food boundaries specifically, you know, when you're trying to make change, what does some of those conversations look like? You know, because people, you know, to your earlier point, like when we're trying to change something about ourselves, it has a cascade effect, you know, across lots of different areas of our dimensions of our life. So maybe just kind of talk through, you know, food specifically and how you're, you know, how you position that

kind of conversation. Yeah. You know, one of the things I've learned in helping people go through the whole 30 for the last 13 years is that you have the power. to make people feel bad about what they're doing just by doing what you're doing. You don't have to pass any judgment. You don't even have to say a word. When you roll up to the bar and you order your sparkling water with lime instead of a glass of wine, other people can become incredibly defensive, incredibly judgmental. They can give you a lot of pushback. There can be a lot of peer pressure. And often, it's the people who are the closest to us that we think would want to see us succeed. I'm doing this for my own health and my own happiness, you know, wouldn't you want to see that for me, they can be the ones that feel the most threatened because it is like holding up a mirror. And they might be worried that if you change, maybe you lose that connection that you have. Maybe your bond isn't as strong if you're no longer drinking or you're no longer ordering the dessert with them, you know, after dinner. They may feel as though you're going to leave them behind and they might feel bad about the habits that they think they may want to

change but haven't taken the steps to change yet. Or they might just be jealous. There are a lot of reasons why people will give us pushback and pressure when we're trying to change habits. And food is especially emotional for a lot of people. But I do find that setting and holding healthy boundaries around the things you eat and the things you drink are mission critical for any of your health goals. And it's also a relatively easy place to start in the world of boundaries because it only depends on one person to hold them. Nobody can make you eat something that you don't want to eat. And so holding that boundary can be as simple as,

I said, no, I'm good, thanks. Or please stop asking, I said, I'm fine with water. Or, no, I just don't want any pizza tonight. Can we change the subject, please? Yeah, I feel like sometimes, you know, the less of a deal we make about it, you know, the less other people make about it too. You know, I think we could just be kind of nonchalant.

But I think to your point, like, I think it is important to talk through it with folks, you know, so they kind of understand, you know, where your line in the sand is, you know, and they know how to react and respond around you as it relates to kind of those specific behaviors that you're trying to change. So talk a little bit, well, you know, you founded Whole 30 in, gosh, 2009, so it's been going for a good while and it's evolved a ton over the years from what I can see. talk a little bit about, you know, how it all started and just how it's kind of grown over the course of the last, you know, got 15 years or so. Yeah. So Whole 30, for people who maybe aren't familiar with Whole 30, I'll just do a really quick, like, 30 second elevator pitch. Whole 30 is not a weight loss diet. It's not a prescriptive model in that we're not telling you this is how you should eat forever. Whole 30 is based on the framework of an elimination diet. And it's designed to help people identify food sensitivities and figure out the foods that

work the best for you in your unique context. So every dietitian in the world says there is no one size fits all. You have to figure out what works for you. And people say, yeah, that makes so much sense. How do I figure out what works for me? Whole 30 is really the answer to how. It is at its heart of self-experiment. And that's exactly how it started. In 2009, Whole 30 began as a two-person self-experiment. My original co-founder and I were sitting around after a tough Olympic lifting session. And he was like, what if we did this thing where we, like, stripped out these potentially problematic foods, foods that some of the researchers in the current environment were calling potentially inflammatory? Like, what if we just didn't eat them for a whole month? What would

happen? And I'm meeting thin men, as he's saying this, like right out of the sleeve because I had just exercised and I had earned them. And, you know, I loved a good thin man. And I was like, yeah, that sounds good. Like, when should we start? And he said, how about we start right now? And I was like, okay. And I handed my thinments off to my friend Zach. And we began right then. So, you know, the next 30 days for me, I was hoping to see athletic performance improvements. I was hoping to see recovery improvements. I thought that I already ate really healthy and I already felt good. So I didn't know what else would change. And the next 30 days proved profoundly transformational. My energy skyrocketed and leveled out. I was sleeping so much better than I ever had. My mood,

my focus, creativity were all so much stronger. People were noticing, like in the office was noticing saying how happy I was and what a better mood I was in. My performance improved, my recovery improved. But even more than that, it really dramatically changed my relationship with food, my relationship with my body, my relationship with the scale in a very powerful way. So I decided to share about it on my little CrossFit training blog and maybe 100 people said, oh yeah, I would try something like that. And that's really how the whole 30 started. How did it change your relationship with the scale? I felt like after my whole 30, it was the first time in my whole 30. It was the first time in

my whole life that I was able to get off the scale and out of the mirror. I have been in a privileged position where I've never needed to lose weight. I've never been overweight. I was always very what we would call like skinny fat where I was like very skinny, but I didn't have any muscle whatsoever. But I still had body dysmorphia like so many of us did. And I was still very fixated on the number on the scale and what I looked like and I was highly critical of myself. And during my whole 30, I was cross-fitting and exercising, and I became so in tune with how my body performed when I was eating in a way that felt really good for it that I stopped thinking about the scale at all. And I wasn't critical of how I looked or looking at these specific body parts in the mirror.

And when I got done, I remember it was like a couple of weeks after my whole 30. And I was like, oh my gosh, I haven't weighed myself in weeks. And that was really unusual. And I thought, screw it. I'm not going back. I feel amazing. I don't ever want this to end. Obviously, I've achieved so many other benefits that I don't even know would be reflected on the scale. I'm just not going to do it anymore. And now that's become one of the integral parts of the whole 30. One of the rules of the program is

you don't step on the scale for 30 days so that you're not distracted by that $20 hunk of plastic. Yeah, yeah. I love that so much. I definitely gave up on scales, I think about a decade ago For exactly that reason, I think it's, yeah, and I know that obviously I'm a numbers person, a data person, and I track a whole lot of stuff, but I think that that number is so deceiving and can be, yeah, I think the wrong place to focus. I love the idea that, you know, you're focused on just putting whole foods in your body, like literally. So on that note, like what exactly are you eliminating? So obviously you're prioritizing whole foods. Yeah, what exactly is eliminated?

Yeah, so for the 30 days, during the elimination phase of the program, you're pulling out foods that are commonly problematic, to varying degrees across a broad range of people. We're not saying these foods are bad. We're not saying you shouldn't eat them. What we're saying is, historically, these foods can be problematic. And as part of this self-experiment, let's pull them out and see what happens to your energy, your sleep, your mood, your digestion, your cravings, aches and pains, asthma allergies, anxiety. Let's see what happens in the absence of these foods. So for 30 days, you're going to

pull out all forms of added sugar, real and artificial. You're not going to drink any alcohol. You're going to pull out all grains and legumes, so beans, soy, peanuts, and you're going to pull out almost all dairy. So what that leaves you with for 30 days is meat, seafood, and eggs, tons and tons of vegetables, any fruit you want, lots of healthy fats, herbs, spices, seasonings, basically a very whole food approach. I love that. Okay. And what specific kind of learnings or observations did you start gathering from, from, I guess, you and your co-founder just by eliminating these foods? Like, you know, you mentioned your mood and, you know, there's a lot of these like ancillary benefits. When, I guess, did you make that move from, all right, it's just a two-person

experiment to, you know, you put it on your blog. You know, what happened from that point on? Yeah. So my co-founder and I both had struggled with shoulder tendonitis off and on. And I realized a few weeks after my first whole 30 that my shoulder didn't hurt anymore at all. And I hadn't done any new PT and I hadn't slowed down in my workouts and I hadn't rested. It was that something in my diet was promoting inflammation in my shoulder. And it's never come back since. He had the same experience with chronic shoulder tendinitis and he was a physical therapist. So this was really profoundly impactful for him. When I shared it on, on my blog and a hundred people did the program, they started to report back equally stunning but remarkably similar results. My energy levels skyrocketed. I wake up now before my alarm. I have tons of energy. I no longer have that 2 p.m. head-on desk slump. And when it's time to wind down for bed, I'm ready to relax and go to bed. I'm sleeping so much better. And this was before the days of woo. Nobody could quantify this data. People were just saying, I'm noticing this. I feel so much better. We heard of people saying, I haven't had a migraine in 30 days, which is unheard of.

My seasonal allergies went away. I no longer have asthma attacks. I'm experiencing less anxiety. My joint pain and swelling went away. And when they, the second part, of course, of the whole 30 is the reintroduction. When you reintroduce those food groups and compare your experience and people would say, I figured out once and for all that nuts and seeds and tomatoes were what was giving me migraines. And now I can just avoid those foods. And for the most part, I can avoid my migraines. And that's such an incredibly powerful experience to learn about yourself and about your body. So when all of those people started coming back with really exceptional results and similar results, that was the moment where I was like, oh, I think we have

something here. It's incredible. So what was that moment after that? So we think we got something here. Like, how did you actually productize it? Like, what was that next step? I mean, we spent three weekends of every month on the road for two years traveling to various CrossFit gyms, talking to people for eight hours. We would hold these Whole 30 nutrition seminars in these cold CrossFit gyms. People would sit on metal folding chairs. And we would talk about the whole 30 for eight hours. And people loved it. They wanted to hear as much information about nutrition. And you know, and this was the early days of CrossFit. This was 2010. So people were really focused on their performance. They were very crossfoot was, you know, very gung-ho, very like I'm

all in, give me the thing to do, just tell me what to do when I'll do it. I love a good challenge. So we did that for about two years. My first book, it starts with food, came out in 2012, so about two years later. And that became a New York Times bestseller. So we gained some traction there. And at this point, you know, we had some Whole30 approved partners like Epic bar that were making Whole30 compatible products and putting our logo on their product. And we had received some national media attention. And the ball just kind of rolled from there. But we grew almost exclusively for the first, call it, five to ten years through nothing but word of mouth. People had amazing experiences on the whole 30, and they talked about it with everybody.

You couldn't get them to shut up about it because they loved it so much. They felt so good. It was such a fun experience. The program was totally free. There's this incredible supportive community. The recipes were really good. I did this really hard thing for 30 days. People wanted to talk about it, and it got other people excited about doing it. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's talk a little bit about just the concept of a reset. You know, what are, what are your thoughts on that? Yeah. So we've called total 30 like a reset since the very early days. And of course, that is not a term grounded in science, right? Your body does not need to reset. There is no like scientific founding for it. But it's a colloquial phrase that I began to use because I really felt like my first 1230 pushed the reset button. It gave me this new base. for normal, where I had been walking around thinking that I felt pretty good. I was like the healthiest person in my office. I ate well. I exercised every day. I slept eight hours a night. But after my whole 30, I had a new definition for what good could feel like. And that was now my

baseline. And I was making all of my decisions going forward about what was and wasn't worth it to eat or drink based on I feel this good and I don't want to feel any less good than this. So is it worth it? I want it? And sometimes the answer was yes and sometimes it was no. So to our community, it really does feel like you're pushing the reset button with your health habits and relationship with food. It is like you get this new baseline for normal. And once you see it, you can't unsee it, which is a really good thing. It's such a beautiful explanation. And I think that a lot of folks can adapt to a lower level of functioning, right? And I think that's part, I think, when you know your numbers, right, when you understand your baseline,

you can then start to see how certain behaviors, you know, serve as an upgrade to your performance levels or serve as, you know, a downgrade of performance levels. But if you don't ever have that baseline, you don't have a reference point. It's really hard to evaluate how you're functioning, right? And I think, you know, food is just this incredible entry point. to really see, okay, where actually am I on the spectrum of performance, right? Because if you, once you start eating right, that has a profound impact on, to your point, every other aspect of your life. You're going to sleep differently. You're going to, you're going to be alert when you need to be alert. You're going to be able to fall asleep when you need to fall asleep. You're going to

have more energy to exercise. You know, there's just this. So I think, you know, focusing on one thing and getting your diet in place is going to have this really profound effect. So I think that's like such a, it's a great way to frame it. And I think, and I think for me, like, just the whole commentary around that is really inspiring in that, you know, people might not know what they're leaving on the table, right? And I think that's an opportunity, what whole food, you know, it's an opportunity to kind of really see, okay, what, what actually am I leaving on the table? So I know that, you know, you can get access to the program, to Whole 30 in lots of different places. Like, talk a little bit about how you've just expanded the offering and, you know, you can buy it in Walmart.

I mean, I think with food stamps, I mean, I think it's just incredibly inspirational just how accessible you've made, you've made this program. Yeah, you know, Whole 30 has, the program itself has always been free since day one, and it will always be free. We'll never take that away. We want it to be as accessible as possible. Our vision is that everyone in the world who wants to do a Whole30 will be able to do that. And over the course of the last 13 years, we've been able to create this entire ecosystem

designed to support people doing the Whole 30 with this broad range of offerings. So there are now, I think, eight Whole 30 books. Some of them are cookbooks. Some of them are how-toes. There's a daily journal and kind of like day-by-day guide to the program. There's a book for what to do when your Whole 30 is over called Food Freedom Forever. So there's that universe. We have over 140 Whole-30 approved partners at this point.

You can walk into any Chipotle nationwide and order the Whole 30 bowl via their app or website. This is the fourth, I think, year that we've been in partnership with them. You've got Whole 30 approved logos on hundreds of products in the supermarket. And it's not just in Whole Foods or Sprouts. It's in Walmart and Aldi and Targets, Thrive Market. We've got brands like LaCroix and Cite Hill and Applegate and Primal Kitchen and, you know, these staples of products that where you see, the Whole 30 logo, you know by default that that product does not have any gluten in it, no

dairy, no added sugar, no soy, no peanuts. So even if you're not doing a Whole 30, it really suits your dietary values or your family's values. So it makes it really easy for you to like skip the label reading. We have a Whole 30 certified coaches and our line of Whole 30 salad dressings. And, you know, we've really been able to expand the program tremendously to continue to create resources and support and community and recipes so that when people come into the program, there's nothing we haven't thought of. There's no obstacle that you might face to complete the Whole 30 that we don't have a variety of resources from, ranging from the budget friendly to the convenience products.

I mean, at this point, like for the last 13 years, all I've done is listen to the community and go, oh, that's like a pain point for your Whole 30. Let me think about how we can fix that. and then we create something to help themselves for it. Because all I want is for people to be successful with the program. Incredible. How do you help people reintroduce foods that they've eliminated? Yeah.

Reintroduction is such an important part of the whole 30 because without reintroduction, you really miss half of the learning experience. The program is an elimination program. So you pull things out, see what happens, reintroduce and compare your experience. So this is how if you pull out these foods for 30 days and your allergies get better or your anxiety is better or your skin clears up and you no longer have eczema or acne, this is how you figure out which foods in particular may be triggering that

negative response. So during reintroduction, we have this very set schedule where you're only reintroducing one food group at a time, like a scientific experiment. So you'll reintroduce, say, non-glutin grains one day. So with breakfast, you'll have some, you know, rice or a corn tortilla with your egg and then you'll have some quinoa for lunch and then another form of non-gluton grains. Maybe you'd have oatmeal for breakfast and switch the rice to dinner. But you're reintroducing them over the course of the day. And then you're going to go back to the whole 30 elimination phase for two days or three days and see what happens. So if you do have any negative effects, you'll allow yourself the time and space to observe them, process them,

and then to let them calm down before you reintroduce the next group. So it's all very carefully outlined. And again, there's a plan for this as well. So we don't just, like, dump you off after the 30 days and say, like, good luck. There's a, like I said, a whole ecosystem and a whole system for what to do in each phase of the program. Interesting. So we have a whole lot of data about the WOOP community. And definitely January is when the month where folks are tracking the most about their nutrition.

I think we've got 34.5% of our members are tracking some aspect of nutrition. So I wanted to just kind of run through some of the data and get your thoughts on it. Yeah. So when on average, so according to our data, when members report 13 grams of added sugar, they, not surprisingly, will see a lower recovery score, which I've definitely observed in my own data over the course of time. And we see higher levels of a higher recovery when folks reports, you know, not having sugar. So that's obviously a cornerstone of Whole 30 is eliminating sugar. You just talk a little bit about the impact of sugar if you can and kind of why that's

a real, it's just really metabolically very tough for your system. Yeah, you know, it's always, this is the thing when we're talking about Whole 30, right? We always have to consider the context. So we will never say sugar is bad. You shouldn't eat sugar because context matters. When I'm doing a 12-mile hike at 10,000 feet of elevation, I'm going to take a ton of dried mango and I'm going to eat my face off with that because I need that. I know that I'm incredibly carb tolerant, and I know for these endurance level hikes,

I prefer a lot better when I have a bunch of carbohydrate in my system. So in that context, added sugar would probably be really health promoting for me. If your members are noticing a dip in recovery when they're eating added sugar or a certain amount of added sugar, then that gives them really important context about how their body responds to sugar in their current environment. not to say sugar is bad. It's not to say you should never eat it. It's not even to say that like it's not worth it once in a while to experience a dip in recovery because like it's your birthday and it's your favorite cake or you want a toast with that glass of wine. Sometimes it's worth it. But being able to track how what's happening in the data, what's happening with my

resting heart rate, my HRV, my respiratory rate, my recovery, my sleep based on the actions that I am taking or not taking and tracking in my week journal are so incredibly valuable for my own unique system because the same behaviors are not going to impact the same two people the same way. So I love how specific the journal is. I encourage people to use the journal and be able to track these things and really get granular in looking at the trends. I'm not talking about the day to day because things fluctuate from a day-to-day basis. But if you're looking at your weekly trends, your monthly trends, we have 110 people in the Whole 30 group in the WOOP app, and they are all looking at what's happening since they've started

the January Whole 30 on January 2nd. And I've got HRV is up 23 percent. Resting heart rate is down by five. Can you believe it? I've seen two people report HRV more than 20 percent. Recovery has been, I've heard several people say, I haven't had a red day of recovery. since I've been on the whole 30, which is huge. That, like, never happens.

More days in the green than I've ever had before. Decreased resting heart rates. Some people's resting heart rates have gone down by 10 points already just in the month of January. That is data that you cannot argue with. Your body is happy now that you are eating like this. And what you do during the introduction is you say, how much can I get away with bringing back without adjusting these gains like too much? I don't want to slip too much from where I am, but I also do want to bring things back because

they're delicious or they're culturally significant or they're important to my family. So, like, how much can I get away with and still see these games? That's the reintroduction part. And that's what I think is fun. I love that. I love that you have that data. Yeah. And it's so exciting.

I do think, you know, just having been, have had access to data over the course of six years, there's no question that meal content, quality and timing will move around your metrics in super profound ways. I mean, I'm not surprised to see that very egregious change in heart rate variability among the members. I mean, it's just your digestion is a very effortful task. And when you're digesting a bunch of crap that you're not meant to have in your body, it's going to work harder. And the result is, you know, your body is going to be struggling for homeostasis. And that struggle is going to manifest in your tissues in your body and certainly will show up in your autonomic nervous system. So it's not surprising those

data, but I think it's incredible validation for the program number one, you know, to see like those type of changes are just massive. And did you mention? We couldn't track this before Woop, by the way. All we had, all we had before Woop was people saying, I slept better. They're self-recorded. better. Yeah. And now I'm like, okay, but look at your data, because if your data says that your sleep performance has gone up by 10%, like, that's the stuff that is really, it's so exciting for us. Yeah. Wow. So have you, did you see sleep quality, just how much time they're spending in deeper stages of sleep? So we haven't gone that granular. Yeah. I'm still kind of, I think, teaching people how to use the data without overwhelming them because there's so much that you could

look at. So right now we're kind of like, okay, let's just focus on sleep performance, right? Are you getting as much sleep as you need. Because if you're able to do that, and I also really encourage people to focus on their sleep timing, I look at that graph that shows the time difference between when I go to bed every day and when I wake up every day and I try to keep that window. Thank you. And I keep that window low. Like mine's within 30 minutes. And I think that's a huge effort to focus on in terms of getting better quality sleep. But at the end of the 30 days, we're going to do a full deep dive and I'm going to report back all of the changes that people are seeing. And I think people are going to be absolutely blown away by the tremendous impact that changing your diet can have on all of

these different body systems in ways that would never be reflected on the scale. You would never know just by looking at the scale that all of these achievements were happening. Yeah. Yeah. I love that so much. And I love that you emphasize the sleep wake timing, sleep consistency. And I think we've chatted about this before. But we see that bubble up in all of our researches being the biggest predictor of mental and physical health resilience. So stabilizing sleep time is massive. And certainly, you know, I don't know if the program talks about, you know, when to eat, but obviously there's lots of research around meal timing and, you know, trying to eat when the sun's up and really try to minimize how much you're eating once the sun goes down when you're in that

inactive phase of your circadian rhythm. It's much more, you know, difficult to digest food in those inactive periods of the circadian rhythm. So just even thinking about time, can also get people to a whole other level as well. So I love that you're thinking about that. And you personally, and let's maybe just talk about your own data for a second. And thank you for letting us look at your data. Appreciate that. So your variability, you keep it under 30 minutes.

That's insane. So again, just for folks on the platform, if you go into sleep performance and you swipe up, you'll see your weekly view. And if you click on time in bed, that's where you'll see. sleep consistency. And as Melissa was pointing out, it's just basically, you know, kind of, you know, it reflects just your consistency and the day. And you can kind of, you want to make it as, you know, just this nice, easy rectangle that reflects consistent sleep and wake time. And Melissa, you keep yours below 30. So I love that you're tracking that. When did you start tracking that? And did that

actually create that in of itself kind of create any sort of changes in your functioning physical, mental, emotional. That happened completely accidentally. I just always go to bed and wake up around the same time. Once I had my son and began waking up when he woke up and he was a very early riser, always, I just started waking up at like 6 a.m. every day. And now no matter what, I just wake up at 6. Sometimes it's 5.45, sometimes it's 6.15. But it kind of doesn't matter where I am. or what I'm doing or whether it's a Monday or a Saturday, I wake up early. And so because I know that I'm going to wake up at that time, I try to get to bed around the same time every night because I know I need, you know, just over, just under eight hours of sleep.

That's about, that's where I feel my best is right around eight hours. So I kind of keep my nighttime routine pretty easy. And then on nights where I get to bed late because I'm traveling or I've got like a work event or something, you know, my sleep performance for all of 2022 was I think my average was like 96 or 97 percent. Like, I'm a good sleeper. So I can afford to have a couple nights of like sleep debt, knowing that I've got a really solid bank. So yeah, that just sort of happened organically. And when I looked at my, again, my like year-end trend, I was like, oh, I'd do pretty well with this. Yeah, it's phenomenal. And not surprising that you're just, as a human being, just firing in

all cylinders. Sleep consistency, I think is one of the harder behaviors for people to deploy. Yeah. In fact, I think our overall data is something like I think people on like on average across our platform, see consistency is maybe 70%. So I'm also like old and I don't go out much anymore. Like we don't, you know, I'm like an old lady. We go to bed early. When we like go out for dinner, we eat dinner at like 5.30. So it's easy for me to wake up.

And I like waking up early. I'm a morning person anyway. So yeah, that helps. Yeah, me too. How would you, you know, you sounds like you're just talking to customers a lot. And, you know, you're just very open to feedback. And, you know, how do you, do you have conversations with, with folks in the program who are just like, I can't do this anymore? Or do you encounter folks

who are just really struggling, you know, just ready to throw in the towel, you know? Yeah, all the time I do. I'm doing a YouTube live almost every single day of this January Whole 30 where I'm connecting with people in real time on every day. It's day 23 today. We did our live. How are you doing? You know, what do you need? What are the challenges you're facing? What kind of resources can I help you with? And what I generally say to people who say that they're struggling is there's kind of a blanket. If the idea of continuing on with the whole 30 is adding more stress than it is relieving, then it is probably time for you to discontinue your program. If something happens in your life, there's a life change, there's an accident, a moment of grief, there's bad news.

Your life is so stressful that continuing the whole 30 is going to add more stress, then I don't want you to complete the program. You're supposed to complete the program from a place of like self-care and self-love. But what I will say is that if going off your whole 30 and going, you know, diving face first into whatever comfort foods or drinks, you know you would be diving into if you didn't have the structure of the whole 30 commitment. If that sounds like it would hurt you more than it would help, then maybe finding ways to continue your whole 30 in a really sustainable, accessible way is the right thing for you. And then I will help you figure out how to do that. If you eat Chipotle twice a day for the next 10

days, awesome, good for you. You stuck to your whole 30, and that is good enough. If you're eating nothing but microwaved Applegate Hot Dogs and leftover sweet potato on your kids' plastic dinosaur plate, which I have had for dinner many nights, that's great. You're doing it. You're doing the whole 30. Like, how can we make this accessible? How can we make it sustainable? But allow you to keep your promise to yourself and allow you to continue fueling yourself in a way that you know makes you feel your best during this period of stress and difficulty. So there is a lot of nuance in that discussion and I do my best to have it with people as one-on-one as possible. I'm always in the DMs. I'm always in the comments. I'm always connecting with whole 30 years as closely as I can

to try to help guide people through it. It's amazing. It's a good segue into your most recent book, the book of boundaries. And it's all about setting boundaries and, you know, kind of rethinking your relationship to anxiety and, you know, how you talk about burnout and resentment. I would love for you to just talk a little bit about that book and what you've heard in terms of feedback. How is it helping people? Yeah. So, you know, the whole 30 in and of itself is kind of a boundary program. For 30 days, you are eliminating a lot of foods that are very socially accepted and they're used to

lubricate social situations. It's the break room donuts. It's the birthday party pizza. It's the glass of wine a happy hour. And you're learning to say no to those things for 30 days for the sake of your self-experate. and your commitment. And I quickly realized that people really struggled to say no, especially in the face of peer pressure in social environments. So I've been helping people set and hold boundaries around food and alcohol and maybe talking about their diets or talking about their weight or their bodies for 13 years. And once people figured out I was really good at helping them say no in those situations, they started asking me like, well, what do I do about my pushy mother-in-law who's always coming by without calling? And what do I do about my coworker who's always gossiping or my best friend. who's always emotionally dumping on me. How do I respond in those situations?

And in October 2020, I feel like all of this really came to a head when I had the idea for the book because mid-pandemic, especially women and especially moms, realized that we had no boundaries. Work and home and school and kids and household responsibilities and relationships were all bleeding into each other. And women and moms especially were really suffering under the pressure and the expectations. So the idea for the book happened in mid-2020, and it was published in October of this past year, 2022.

And the response has been incredible. I've heard so many stories from people who were like, I didn't realize that I could say no. I didn't realize I could advocate for myself. I didn't realize I could take these actions that I needed to keep myself safe and healthy. And they've improved my relationships. So, yeah, it's been pretty wonderful. Yeah, that's incredible. Talk a little bit about, you use this word safety a lot.

Like what does that mean to you? You know, how to how should other people think about that word? Because I think it's a really powerful word. I mean, I immediately think about my nervous system, you know. And, you know, talk a little bit maybe about that relationship. Yeah. When we are in boundary less relationships, there's a lot of anxiety. There's a lot of dread. There's a lot of resentment. We are always saying yes just to keep the peace. We're always letting the other person have their way. We're being told where to show up and how to show up. up and when to show up because we don't want to say no because we're trying to be nice and it's hurting our relationships we're showing up resentfully we're avoiding certain people we're holding them at a distance and putting up walls and it can make us feel unsafe it hurts our mental health it certainly hurts our time and our energy and our energetic capacity it can feel like others are invading our personal space or not taking our feelings or our needs into consideration it can leave you feeling take an advantage of. And yes, that leaves us anxious and it leaves our nervous system dysregulated. It's not a healthy place to live. And it's not helping your relationships either.

If I'm always keeping my mother-in-law at a distance because I haven't yet said to her, please don't talk about my body or weight. That's not a conversation I want to have and it doesn't feel good when you bring it up. You know, you think about the idea of just setting that boundary and how much more free your relationship would be and how much more at ease you would be when you spent time with her and how much more relaxed and opened and trusting your relationship could be, that is the real power of boundaries. They bring real freedom into your life and your relationships. I love that. Yeah, thank you. I actually have not read the book, but I can't wait to read it. It sounds just really exceptional. So thanks for writing it and for helping so many people.

folks. I'll get you a copy. Yeah, I appreciate that. So this might sound a little off topic, but, you know, concussion. So you had, I guess, in 2018, a pretty bad concussion and you've had some lingering effects. Would love just to talk a little bit about what happened in your experience and how that, you know, how it kind of manifests in the data and how that's, you know, how you've seen kind of the symptoms or some of the lingering effects kind of, I think, bubble up in times of stress and so maybe just talk through because I know there are a lot of folks have had different types of brain injuries, you know, and it might be helpful to to kind of hear your take on it. Yeah. In 2018, I was playing with my son and I got hit behind the head,

like just behind my left ear pretty hard. I wasn't knocked unconscious, but I definitely saw stars. I now know what that phrase means. Wow. And I had a headache, but I like shook it off and we went back to playing and I thought nothing of it. And it wasn't until the next day that I said to my husband, I was trying to do some work on my laptop. And I was like, I can't read this screen. Like, I don't know what's happening. And he was like, you have a concussion. And I was like, absolutely not. That's something that happens to football players and race car drivers. Like, that's ridiculous. That's the journey of my four-year post-concussion symptoms. I didn't know anything about concussions until I got one. I didn't know that they could persist in that, you know,

something around 30% of people would have symptoms beyond the typical six to eight weeks. I developed nervous system dysregulation as the result of my concussion, a pot-like condition in which my nervous system would become highly dysregulated blood pressure and heart rate and respiratory rate when I would travel or at altitude in heat when I exercise. So that basically meant all of the activities that I loved and everything I did for work were off limits for quite some time. I went through years of physical therapy. I saw a neurologist. I saw brain docs. I saw PTs. I saw cervical chiropractors. I mean, I've gone through the gamut of treatments. And I'm in a wonderful place now. It's certainly my symptoms are much better. But I use

my whoop in a way that a lot of people don't. I use it to track what's happening with my nervous system and my concussion because my whoop tells me before I even recognize that I'm going to have a flare. And I am able to adjust my behavior such that my flares are now nowhere near as problematic. I'm able to identify the behaviors that I can take to calm a flare and to help my concussion symptoms. And I certainly know the behaviors that I do that make them worse, all because I'm paying attention to the data and using my journal really religiously. that's incredible. So obviously you're going to see just a huge suppression in heart rate variability in the lead up to a flare. Like how many days prior to the flare do you kind of see your data start to invert? It's like a day or two before I even notice it. And it's funny. When I look at I'll wake up in the morning. I'll have had a great night's sleep. I didn't have a high strain day yesterday. I don't feel particularly stressed in my data tanks, right? My heart rate goes up. My resting, my rest. rate goes up, my HRV plummets. And I'm like, huh. So I'll give it a day and I'll take it

kind of easy. And if that pattern shows up again the next day, then I'm starting to look at my behavior and my mental state. And my husband will go, you know, I have to mention you've been more anxious than usual in the last day or two. And I wondered if it was your concussion. And I'm like, dang it. Like, yep, that's what it is. It's flaring. I also get vision symptoms. So my symptoms can also largely be visual in which my eyes don't work well together. That's another kind of telltale sign. But what happens when I go on book tour is like, I know this is coming. I know book tour is going to decimate my nervous system and my concussion is going to flare. And then I'm using the data to be like, how much can I mitigate what I know is happening because I can't avoid flying. I can't

avoid events. I can't avoid late nights and early mornings. So it's been like my early warning system, but it's also been my touchstone in terms of like, am I actually getting better and am I on the right track with the behaviors I need to take to feel better. Wow. What do you do to, you know, if you notice anxiety is potentially a trigger, you know, what do you, what do you do to mitigate some of those feelings of anxiousness? Do you have some specific techniques that you engage in? So my anxiety when it comes from my concussion is not anxiety like I have stressful things going

on and I'm worried about them. It's literally an inflamed brain that is making everything. things seem. My depression gets worse. My anxiety gets worse. I'm going to tell you the thing that I do that helps the most that I will never stop talking about is cold showers. I figured out in 2020 that taking a cold shower in the morning, and I am talking about as cold as it gets, and I stand in that shower for like five minutes, like the coldest part has been radically transformational for my concussion symptoms, my depression, my mood, my energy levels. I started taking them again every single day about six weeks ago. And my HRV is up 20% in the last month. And it's the only

real thing that I have added to my normal system. My body loves them. My particular form of concussion and pots responds very well to cold and not at all well to heat. So that's unique to me. But cold showers are like a game changer for me. Wow. That's incredible. Yeah, we actually, a couple weeks ago, I interviewed Dr. Susanna Soberk. I don't know if you follow her. But yeah, she wrote a beautiful book called Winter Swimming and has done a lot of the groundbreaking research on, you know, being able to really has, her research has kind of helped settle on, you know, kind of the ultimate protocol for cold. And yeah, so she's, she's really fascinating. But, but yeah, there's no question that, you know, cold is an incredibly powerful

therapeutic treatment. And yeah, I think it's something everyone should engage in. because of its effect on the nervous system. You know, you've got this incredible, you know, parasympathetic effect. You know, it's really this hormesis, right? Your body feels like it's in danger. And then it kind of pushes through that danger, you know, as you get past that one minute and now it starts to activate your vagus nerve. And now all of a sudden, you know, your body's in that really calming state.

And, yeah, it really has, I think, a profound effect. And we see that this in the literature. And I love that your experience matches that. that because it's definitely something that we talk a lot about. And more and more folks on the Woot platform are tracking cold plunging. So it's definitely picked up, I think, a lot of, you know, it's really gained in popularity over the last couple of years. But I think you bring up a good point, though. It is, it is individual, right? Like certain folks are going to respond differently to these various therapeutic modalities. And, you know, I think heat, for example, for you,

is just that's just not a good modality for you to, you know, to undertake. And so I love that you've been able to kind of track it in the Whoop Journal. And it's been so useful for you to kind of see how these various behaviors are impacting, you know, the metrics that you know are reflective of your overall health. So very cool. The other thing that's been super helpful for me that WIP has been able to help me track is, you know, earlier in my concussion symptoms, I thought when I was having a flare, I had to rest. And I would just take the whole day off and I would lounge on the couch and I would try not to do any activity whatsoever. And then my recovery would get worse the next day. And I would be like, what the heck? I rest it all day. I now realize that in that space, I actually need to do some

active recovery. So if I go for walks, if I do an easy movement session, if I do like a really slow flow yoga or some mobility work, that's the sweet spot that helps me. And again, using my loop data has helped me make that connection in terms of looking at the trends in the past and now watching what happens when I do say, okay, I'm not doing great, but I'm still going to go for a walk today and keep it nice and slow and mellow, that level of really light slow cardio is very helpful for my nervous system as well. I love that. And I think people do see when they see declines in, you know, recovery and, you know, or heart rate variability and rest of heart rate, they immediately think that, oh, I need to not be active, but that oftentimes, to your point,

I think isn't necessarily the prescription. And in fact, we see in our data looking at mental health, our mental health data, so general anxiety disorder, like some of these surveys and measures that help us understand someone's kind of psychological status and looking at it over time, there's a relationship, a very strong association between exertion levels, strain levels, and mental health. in that, you know, individuals who are, who feel more depressed or feel more anxious generally also have decreases in in activity level, you know, so it's not surprising, right? Like, I think, so I think when you are, you know, kind of feeling maybe anxious and, and stressed

and depressed, you know, I think to your point, like, and we see this in the data, the, the, it might be getting out, you know, going for a long walk in nature, you know, but sitting on the couch probably isn't going to be the answer most of the time. Well, in the early concussion protocols, too, you know, when I saw my first doctor about my concussion, who was just like a general practitioner, he was like, lie down in a dark room to get no input whatsoever, just rest as much as you can. And my physical therapist is just like, that's not what we do. We need to adequately provoke your nervous system to get stronger, which means you've got

to like get it right up, you know, go right up to like the red light and then pull it back and kind of hang out in that yellow, that hormesis that you described. So figuring out, again, using my route to help me track certain aspects of, like, can I be social, but how social can I be before it's too much? Or how much travel can I do before it's too much? Or how much exercise can I do before it's too much has been super helpful? Have you dealt with screen time and concussion? I just know myself from being an athlete and having student athletes, you know, I've played a sport where there's lots of concussions, balls and sticks flying everywhere. So, yeah, just wondering how you're dealing with screen time.

Yeah, I use a lot of blue light filters. I should be wearing my blue light glasses right now, to be honest, but they kind of hurt when I have my headphones on. So I took them off. But I'm wearing my blue light glasses a ton. I did something called an Erlin screening, which is this vision screening that helps you figure out if you put a very translucent specific color over your screen, it relaxes your eyes. And you no longer feel the same level of stress. So I have a very special light lavender transparency that I can put over my screen and still read through it. But it definitely makes my eyes feel less stressed. I take time off Instagram and other like non-necessary forms of screens. And if I have to, I stop reading books. If I, if my concussion is so bad that I can't read, that's like threat level red. That's as bad as it gets. And luckily it doesn't get to that point anymore. But I basically just carve away the non-necessary screen time as much as I need to to give my eyes the rest. I love it. Well, thanks for sharing all the data. There's just like so many, I think really useful ways to think about the data and how to run kind of self-experiments. You just did, honestly, an incredible, beautiful job laying all of that out.

And, yeah, I think members are going to really benefit from the discussion. But is there anything that you'd want to, you know, leave members with in terms of, you know, how to think about nutrition or lifestyle or, you know, anything that, you know, if you had kind of one thing to kind of tell folks, like, what would be your rally cry? You know, you said it earlier, and it's kind of it's the literal topic or title of my first book, but I really do believe that it starts with food in that if you are looking for one place to focus on that is going to have the most bang for your buck, the most impact, the most spillover into every other area of your life, starting with your nutrition, whether you do a whole 30,

whether you just commit to cooking more food at home or learning how to cook or eating more whole foods, whatever that looks like. I find that our relationship with food is so foundational to so many other relationships in our lives and the benefits of changing the food you put on your plate can have a spillover into so many unexpected areas that that is where I encourage people to start. And if that was the only thing you did for 30 days, you didn't worry about exercise or meditation or cold showers or any of that other stuff, I think what would happen is that halfway through your whole 30 or your 30-day experiment, you would discover you have so much more energy and motivation

and a better mood and you're sleeping better, and that's going to make you want to take on other things. At least that's what my whole 30 group right now in January is experiencing. I love it. Well, this has been so inspirational, Melissa, I just appreciate everything that you're putting out in the world. Where's the best place for folks to find you? Yeah, you can find me on Instagram at Melissa You. I am on TikTok at Melissa underscore you, and my website is melissau.com, and I will always talk about whoop and concussion management or chronic illness or chronic injury management so if anyone has any questions come find me i'd love i follow you on instagram and i just you're so like raw and unfiltered and you know honest and transparent and i just

i love that so it's really refreshing and you've got obviously this incredible following as it is but yeah i think just what you put out of the world is just uh is really special so thank you for for all that you do and thanks for your time today thanks christin it was my pleasure thank you to Melissa Urban for coming on the show today and for all of her insights on nutrition, dietary strategies, and for allowing us to take a look at her whoop data. If you enjoyed the episode of the WOOP podcast, be sure to leave a rating or review. Check us out on social at WOOP. Have a question you want to see answered on the podcast. Email us, podcast at Woop.com, or call us at 508-443-4952, and it might just be answered on a future episode. Once again, head to shop.wop.com

and grab a whoop sleep mass to increase your sleep quality. That's a wrap for this week. We'll see you next time on the Woot Podcast. As always, stay healthy and stay in the green.