Pod Insights 10% Happier with Dan Harris How To Take Care of Your Body Without Losing Your Mind About this episode Editor's Note (March 2026): This episode contains a brief reference to Peter Attia. Since this episode was published, documents released by the Department of Justice have revealed Peter Attia's connection to Jeffrey Epstein. We find these revelations deeply troubling and do not condone any association with Epstein or his activities. Please know that we have removed our interviews with Peter Attia from our library.
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Behind the scenes of this year's Get Fit Sanely series with ace producers Eleanor Vassili and Marissa Schneiderman.
Today we're kicking off the third annual iteration of a very popular series we do, called Get Fit Sanely. It's all about how to take care of your body without losing your mind. This is a dynamic tension many of us struggle to manage.
This is our most ambitious version of Get Fit Sanely. We're dedicating the whole month of June to the topic, with an incredible array of guests, on everything from gut health to importance of rest to how to operationalize the old cliché around listening to your body.
In this episode we talk about:
Selecting guests and topics for this year's iteration of the series How our producers let curiosity guide their thinking How this year's episodes build on what we've covered in the past Where our producers' personal stories come into play And an exciting new component we're finally able to offer (hint: it's guided meditations) Paid subscribers of DanHarris.com will have exclusive access to a set of all-new guided meditations, led by friend of the show Cara Lai https://www.caralai.org/#/, customized to accompany each episode of the Get Fit Sanely series. We're super excited to offer a way to help you put the ideas from the episodes into practice. Learn all about it here. https://www.danharris.com/p/a-month-of-guided-meditationsjust
Related Episodes:
Get Fit Sanely: the podcast playlist https://www.danharris.com/p/get-fit-sanely-0f2 The Anti-Diet | Evelyn Tribole https://www.danharris.com/p/the-anti-diet-evelyn-tribole-d51?utm_source=publication-search Can You Get Fit Without Self-Loathing? | Cara Lai https://www.danharris.com/p/can-you-get-fit-without-self-loathing-bea How To Outsmart Your Pain | Christiane Wolf https://www.danharris.com/p/how-to-outsmart-your-pain-christiane-3b6?utm_source=publication-search
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Dan Harris? This is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
0:19 Dan Harris? Hello, everybody. How we doing? Today, we are kicking off the third iteration of a very popular series we do called Get Fit Sanely. It's all about how to take care of your body without losing your mind. This is a dynamic tension that many of us struggle to manage, myself included, which is why I'm so excited about this latest instantiation of the series. This is our most ambitious version of Get Fit Sanely. We are going to be dedicating the entire month of June to the topic. We've got an incredible array of guests on everything from gut health to the importance of rest to how to operationalize the old cliche around listening to your body.
1:00 Dan Harris? In this kickoff episode, I'm going to talk to the two producers who identified, vetted, and booked all of these guests and then helped to prepare me, your curmudgeonly host, for each of the interviews. The producers in question are Marissa Schneiderman and Eleanor Vasili. This is a great conversation. We take you behind the scenes on how we select our guests and our topics, how this year's episodes built on what we have covered in the past. We get into the personal stories of mine and of Marissa's and Eleanor's when it comes to this issue of fitness. And we're also going to tell you about a really cool new component to Get Fit Sanely that we've never tried before. So we'll get started with Marissa and Eleanor right after this.
1:45 Dan Harris? If you care about supporting independent media and if you care about being a node of sanity in an insane world, there are a few quick, easy, and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show. Wherever you're listening or watching right now, that really helps. Three, share your favorite episode with a friend. This is a great and low stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit. And not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission.
2:30 Dan Harris? And I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show. If you care about supporting independent media and if you care about being a node of sanity and an insane world, there are a few quick, easy and free ways that you can support me and my team, which I would be really grateful for. One way to do it is to sign up for my newsletter, which comes out on Monday mornings. It's a little dose of sanity in your inbox at the beginning of a busy week. The second way to do it is to follow and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching right now, that really helps. Three, share your favorite episode with a friend.
3:12 Dan Harris? This is a great and low stakes way to connect with somebody in your orbit. And not for nothing, it also helps us grow. And all of these things take about 30 seconds and they really do help. You will be supporting me and my team and our mission. And I, as I said, would be immensely grateful. You can find everything we do at danharris.com. It's all right there. Thank you. I mean that seriously. We'll be right back with more show. Eleanor Vassili, Marissa Schneiderman, welcome to the show you already work on.
3:42 Speaker 01 Thank you. Nice to be in the hot seat.
3:44 Speaker 02 Hi, Dan.
3:45 Dan Harris? Eleanor, let me start with you. What is Get Fit Sanely? And what are we doing here today?
3:51 Speaker 02 We are here to offer a preview of our latest installment of a series that we call Get Fit Sanely. It was the brainchild of our executive producer, now head of content, DJ Cashmere. And he started it a few years ago in 2023. The series is founded on one question, which is essentially, how can we take care of our bodies while also maintaining a healthy relationship with our bodies? In other words, how can we take care of our physical health without feeling things like shame, or self-loathing, or negative self-comparison? And so each episode that we have features a different guest that we think can best answer that question, whether it's, you know, fitness experts, or athletes, or doctors.
4:35 Speaker 02 We have a constant stream of voices that are telling us what to do with our bodies. And I feel like it's really hard to know what voices we should be listening to. So I think that I have a lot of confidence that the series helps on that front by choosing the smartest and most informed and insightful compassionate people as guests.
4:57 Dan Harris? You said that the series is built around one driving question, and I like the way you put it. I also heard Tara, another one of our colleagues, phrase it another way, which is, how do you take care of your body without losing your mind? Which is like a great question, especially in this era of optimization. So as you mentioned, DJ generally produced this in the past. This time, Eleanor, you and Marissa produced it. So Marissa, let me bring you in. Like, as you chose guests, what was your guiding philosophy?
5:31 Speaker 01 Basically Eleanor and I were the ones that were selecting all of the guests and putting it together. And we really made sure to find guests that we had a personal connection with, but also would bring benefit to all listeners. And I really believe that in this series, there's something for everyone. In the past couple of years, we've had a lot of big-name guests. I'm just going to name a couple. Longevity expert, Dr. Peter Attia, Harvard nutritional psychiatrist, Dr. Uma Naidu, mobility experts, Kelly and Julia Starrett, which that episode has blown up recently in the past month, which has been really interesting. Also, Dharma teacher and friend of show, Cara Lai. She did an amazing episode called, Can You Get Fit Without
6:13 Speaker 01 Self-Loathing? And something that's really exciting is that she's going to offer companion guided meditations for each episode in the series.
6:22 Dan Harris? Yes, and those guided meditations will be available for subscribers over at dan Harris dot com. And it really does kind of represent a new direction for the show. We've long had this theory that
6:37 Dan Harris? Back when we had an app, the show was the lecture and the app was the lab. So you'd listen to the show and be like getting a great inspiring lecture from an amazing professor. And then you'd go over to the app to practice it. And so now we're actually going to try to really follow through on that. And this series is our first step in that direction. Okay, but let's get back to getting fit sanely. Marissa, since I've already got you here, let me ask you, you talked about picking episodes that resonate with your personal interests. What is your relationship to fitness generally?
7:11 Speaker 01 So I loved producing these episodes, but of course it's complicated. I grew up in Los Angeles, which is arguably the epicenter of toxicity. And what that looks like is growing up with billboards of Angeline and Pamela Anderson just outside my door, praying to God that I had big breasts when I grew up, surrounded by a lot of plastic surgery and a lot of people like striving for a very specific beauty standard. My mother is also a self-described exercise addict. So she had Michelle Obama arms before they were cool. And she's now in her early seventies and she works a full-time job, but still manages to go to the gym daily, practice yoga, lift weights and rock up about 20,000 steps a day.
7:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, she's pretty impressive, but I also spent a lot of time as a kid sitting at a sweat-infused, pungent gym while my mom worked out. So that is very much like in my psyche and my history. So right now it's estimated that the health and wellness industry racks up about $7 trillion a year. So in terms of these specific episodes, I really wanted to make sure that we found experts in the field who could go beyond the fluff and the snake oil and empower listeners and myself to connect with all aspects of our bodies beyond the quote unquote "shape." Eleanor, what about you?
8:33 Speaker 02 Yeah, you know, I was oddly excited to talk about this series. I think just because of the fact that body thoughts have really lived rent free in my mind since I was a little kid. I don't think I'm alone in this, but young me got the message kind of early on that my self-worth stemmed from how attractive I was or how desirable I could make myself. Part of that, I think, is just being born in a woman's body. But I definitely know that men have their own version and I don't think it's necessarily apples to apples. I was also raised in a household that idolized health and fitness. And what I love is that as soon as me and Marissa sat down and started talking about the series and what we wanted to talk about, and we found out almost instantly that we
9:18 Speaker 02 both had fitness fanatics as parents. I was a little weirdo wandering around the gym at 10 years old, pretending that I knew what I was doing, wondering if the adults knew that I was 10 years old. They definitely did. And I guess for even more context, my mom is what I would call an OG intuitive eater. She's one of those weirdos that doesn't necessarily always eat for joy, but really for subsidence. And my dad is going to be 89 this year and he's an intermittent faster. And if you walk into his living room, the first thing that you see is a punching bag and a wall of weights. And, you know, I've got to say that a lot of what they bestowed on me has been really valuable in my life.
10:04 Speaker 02 And it's been a serious gift of knowledge in a lot of ways, but it's also contributed to some serious hangups. There'd be moments in time when I was a teenager and I would gain a little bit of weight and I would somehow connect that to a weakness in myself. Or I would assume that it said something about my character or my willpower. And juxtaposition to that, if I lost weight, people would come up to me and they'd be like, you look incredible. I just think it's kind of fascinating at this point in my life that the reflection of how I felt on the inside, it really didn't line up with how people treated me on the outside and how I felt about myself.
10:43 Speaker 01 Here, here.
10:44 Speaker 02 And then I guess just to add another layer to that, I feel like I got to a certain age and I realized that half the women that I knew in my life had had an eating disorder at some point, myself included. And the older I get, I feel really thankful that the goalposts have started to shift a little bit. Now I'm trying to focus on what makes me feel good, what makes me feel strong, as opposed to making my body more appealing to other people. I still catch myself trying to control how other people see me, in all honesty, but kind of slowly moving away from that into the ideal of just me feeling myself. And
11:24 Speaker 02 the last thing I'll say is that realizing that I wasn't alone with body hangups, I think is the other thing that's been really, really helpful. I think that's why this series has been so successful in a lot of ways. You know, I might have a completely different lived experience than other people, but I think most people have scrutinized their body at some point in their life. And so, working on this series has been really great because it's either reinforced some of my goals, or it's offered new skills and perspectives to try out.
11:56 Dan Harris? You said your mom was an OG intuitive eater, and yet what you described about her eating didn't seem to jibe with my understanding of intuitive eating. I just want to get at that a little bit. And just to say for the audience, intuitive eating is a huge theme in these Get Fit Sanely episodes, and the series writ large, and a huge theme in my own life. And it really is about eating not according to arbitrary diet rules, but eating according to the signals you're getting from your own body. And you said your mom does not eat for joy at all, just for sustenance. Maybe that does fit with intuitive eating, but it just piqued my interest.
12:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, no, I think that that's a great distinction, to be honest. And I still stand by my description of her, I guess. When I say joy, I think she still definitely, definitely gets joy out of eating. I think it's just not the primary factor that's driving her decisions when she's deciding what to eat. It's more ever since I've been a kid, the way that she talked about food, you know, people would ask her, what do you want to have for dinner? And she was like, I have no idea. I don't know what my body's gonna be wanting at that moment. And so I think that's more where I was going.
13:12 Dan Harris? Right. So she is really just in tune with what her body wants as opposed to, oh, I need to measure out a certain amount of protein in order to hit ketosis or whatever it is.
13:22 Speaker 02 Exactly. Dan, I'm curious. I know that you've sat down with DJ and you've had these conversations with him and our listeners before, but what has changed for you since the series has started? And you know, what, if anything, are you still wanting help with?
13:38 Speaker 01 Or Dan, feel free to share any parental hangups.
13:42 Dan Harris? Well, my parents actually were also fitness fanatics. My dad was an early runner of marathons before that was much of a thing back in the seventies. I have a really great picture of them in their thirties after they had gone running together and you can just see how fit my dad was. You can see these abs. My mom is wearing a shirt, so you can't really tell. And they weren't really focused on the aesthetics of it. I mentioned my dad's abs, but I never heard him talk about that. My understanding and the message they sent to me was that they were exercising. I once heard my mom say, I exercise so I can eat whatever I want. They were exercising because it was something they liked to do together and with their friends and they liked to be healthy, but it didn't seem toxic to me.
14:27 Dan Harris? The toxic stuff for me really came more from just being part of this culture and realizing, you know, in my first interview with Evelyn Tribole, one of the progenitors of intuitive eating, which that interview happened right here on the show. I'll drop a link in the show notes. You can really hear me in that interview wake up to. The kind of intrapersonal psychic violence I had been doing to myself around food and exercise and body image. You know, I think many men would reflexively write this off as a women's issue, but that's bullshit. As Evelyn points out, we have just
15:09 Dan Harris? as many hangups when it comes to our body. We just call it biohacking. And in that interview, it really woke me up to the fact that I had been spending much of my life as a grown up, especially a grown up on television, really obsessing about how I looked, how much I was exercising, what I ate. That was back in 2020, I think. And that was really the genesis of my interest in this subject, which kind of went on steroids when DJ and I launched this series, Get Fit Sanely. And I have learned a ton through these episodes, just with the caveat that I had a really good foundation going into the episodes, having worked with Evelyn one on one. After the interview I did with her in 2020, I became
15:53 Dan Harris? a client and we really worked together and still work together. Having said that, I've learned a ton in these episodes. You know, I think about the Cara Lie episode where she talks about, you know, having gratitude for your body. I still lift a lot of weights and it's not uncommon for me to look in the mirror after a workout and be like, why do I not look the way I used to look when I lifted weights? But I can pop myself out of that much more quickly and just feel gratitude for the fact that I'm 53, going on 54 pretty soon, and my body's still functioning at a high level. I can work out every day. And that's one thing that I've learned. There was a moment in one of the interviews that
16:35 Dan Harris? we're going to post with Christiana Wolf, who's just a ferociously impressive human being, a physician, a Dharma teacher, a mother, and an ultra marathoner, who also is very balanced about her attitude toward her body. And she said something that really has stuck with me, which is that she likes the feeling of exertion. And I like that feeling. I like to work out. Always super happy when I'm in the middle of a high intensity interval training sprint on the Peloton. But generally speaking, I really like working out and having worked out to such a key part of my day. And so tuning into the part that I enjoy and turning down the volume on the useless stuff around
17:19 Dan Harris? trying to achieve a type of body that is in accordance with standards that are pretty arbitrarily set. We talk about getting in shape, but who decides what the shape should be? If you look back over history, there have been various times where larger bodies were considered the ideal and then other times where that hasn't been the case. And so really through these interviews attuning to like, what is the bottom line? What matters? What matters is, is my underlying physiology healthy? And when I go to the doctor and get all the tests, the answer is yes. So how much time do I want to waste then on my waistline?
18:02 Dan Harris? Couple of other things from past episodes really stick out to me. You mentioned the starets who are mobility experts and they really talk about walking as an important thing.
18:14 Dan Harris? The whole 10,000 step thing is a bit of an artificial measurement. They say it really aimed for around 8,000, but just getting more walking into my day outside of my regular exercise has just been nice. It gets me outside. I like the feeling. I take a lot of my meetings on the phone or if I've got people at the house from our team and we're in a meeting, we'll do it on a walk sometimes. Just one other thing that's coming to mind and we've kind of covered it a little bit, but there was a moment in my conversation with Dr. Peter Attia, who is kind of like the ultimate avatar of optimization and trying to live forever. And he works out some crazy amount per week.
18:55 Dan Harris? And even he said, "The cost of being lean, the cost of trying to, really at any age, to achieve visible abs or something like that is probably not worth it." I don't remember exactly what he said, but if even Peter Attia has the wisdom to say, "Yeah, we should all be working out because it's going to help us be happier and healthier and live longer." And if you're obsessing about...
19:27 Dan Harris? Looking a certain way, well, that's counterproductive. That was really helpful. I'll just finish by saying there is a term that we talk about a lot in these episodes, orthorexia, which is the unhealthy obsession with being healthy. And I think this is just a line all of us have to walk because it is important to be healthy in a holistic sense. Exercise, sleep, getting enough non-sleep rest, eating in a healthy enough way. All of these aspects of fitness and health are important and you don't want to take it too far. And this is more art than science, but the point of these episodes is we, I think we train you to get better at that art. So I said a lot. Does that all land for you guys?
20:12 Speaker 02 Absolutely. All of that adds up. I think it's interesting. I have just started putting all of those things together, even though they're probably things that I've heard since I was a teenager, but it's just all kind of sinking in right now and making sense. And I'm grateful, but it does add up. Yeah.
20:30 Speaker 01 And for the listener, we'll link to all of these past episodes in the show notes. So you can do a deep dive once you finish listening to our Get Fit Sanely series this June.
20:39 Speaker 02 I guess the one, and this is just a teeny question for you, Dan. You're obviously in a good place and I think the amount of knowledge that's been shared on all the past Get Fit Sanely series has definitely helped, but I'm curious if there are still things that still are challenging for you when it comes to your personal fitness and health.
20:59 Dan Harris? Well, I'd say two things. One, I've already talked about, which is just continuously staying on top of my mind as it pertains to trying to look a certain way. My wife has pointed out, over the past six months, I've gotten involved in a group exercise program, which involves a lot of weights. And she said that she's seen a slight uptick in my body dysmorphism as a result. And so just taking her seriously when she says that and really trying to. Monitor when that's happening and talk to myself the way I would talk to you guys about body image, which is, hey, this is the wrong yardstick. The right yardstick is what's your blood pressure, what's your cholesterol, what's your resting heart rate?
21:43 Dan Harris? The wrong yardstick is how you look in the mirror. And so that's a dynamic tension in my life that I need to stay on top of. The other thing for me, and we don't really hit this that much in this series, but I think of sleep as a big part of fitness and sleep is, there are times when it's hard for me. My insomnia can go up in direct correlation to whatever ambient anxiety I might be experiencing in my life. So over the several years where I was breaking up with the app that used to be called 10% Happier, that was really, really stressful and I had a lot of insomnia and it can come back episodically. And so I just have to be kind of right on top of it.
22:26 Dan Harris? I know the sleep hygiene rules because I've learned a lot of them right here on the show and exercise is a big part of that. So yeah, that's another thing I just need to be pretty diligent about.
22:36 Speaker 02 We have a great guest in June's lineup as well, who talks a lot about rest. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to sharing some of that episode.
22:44 Dan Harris? Just to pick up what you're saying, so Claudia Hammond is the guest you're referencing. She talks about rest and rest is related to but distinct from sleep. And it is now that you're mentioning it, another area that I'm actively working on. So sleep has been challenging for me and I think I've made a bunch of improvements of late. And rest is the same thing, you know, it's for me, it's the same thing in that I think directionally I'm headed in, heading in the right direction and I really do need to constantly listen to my body and not override its signals because I'm so obsessed with productivity. Because actually, if you're truly and wisely interested in productivity, you will rest
23:28 Dan Harris? the body because then you will perform better. And so learning to take more breaks throughout the day, even if there isn't one scheduled because my body is exhausted and Claudia and I talk a lot about that and I think it's going to be useful to a lot of people.
23:42 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
23:44 Dan Harris? So let's talk about what's coming up in this series. One of the goals of this little episode is to give people a sneak peek. So let's run through some of the guests we're most excited about. Marissa, why don't you start?
23:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, so this year's lineup features conversations on exercise, gut health, building muscle, the science of motivation, stress and rest, as we just discussed, the Dharma, and we also mindfully trickle into biohacking territory. And the first guest that we already mentioned is Christiana Wolf. And like Dan said, she's brilliant and wears many hats. She's been on the show in the past where she spoke about how to boost your pain tolerance through meditation. And in our upcoming episode, she discusses the how to and benefits of something called interoception, which basically just means listening to your body. Here's the clip from Christiana.
24:43 Speaker 03 I think our culture, it is this weird thing. On one hand, we're so obsessed with the body, but we're not obsessed with actually listening to our bodies. We're obsessed with what the body looks like or what the body can do. So it's like very performance oriented. So what we have learned, I mean, like Descartes and everything is just like to value our intellect and whatever is in the body is not valuable. It's sinful, gets us in trouble. We have this long tradition of not being embodied. And then of course, because also we have a history like of big traumas everywhere with like war and oppression and misogyny, all of that.
25:27 Speaker 03 And that makes us not feel safe in the body. So that's like how we're coming into this. But the fact is like the body and the mind is one. It's not here is the body and there is the mind, even though it can feel that way. The body has a wealth of information and is trying to communicate with us all the time. We just haven't learned to listen to it and to trust what the body is saying.
25:53 Dan Harris? She's so good. And in that interview, she does give a lot of practical tips for interception, learning how to listen to the signals from your body. And then, of course, just to say it again, if you're a subscriber over at danharris.com, we'll be providing guided meditations from Cara Lie that will really help you deepen that practice.
26:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, it really was an amazing episode. And I love this clip so much because she so succinctly sets up how our current culture is designed for us to feel disconnected from our bodies. And later in the episode, she talks about how our culture is basically obsessed with teenagers in their underwear. And I think about that a lot because I'm like, oh, is that what I'm trying to look like? Why? And the next guest is a journalist, Mariel Segada. She is the host of NPR's Life Kit. And the show, for those who haven't listened to it before, offers practical, expert backed advice for everyday life challenges. So basically, Mariel and Dan were two peas in a pod. They were talking about the best advice they've both received
26:58 Speaker 01 while hosting their respective shows. Here's a clip of the two of them discussing the myriad benefits of nature.
27:06 Speaker 04 I think if you take meetings when you're walking too, like, it can foster creativity. It can help you come up with better ideas. I have definitely felt stuck before on a story that I was working on. And then I go for a walk and I talk to my editor or producer or someone, I'm able to think outside of the box that my apartment creates. You know, when you're looking at the same things all the time, I don't know, it's like your brain doesn't go there. But then you're suddenly among the trees in the park or whatever. And you're like, you're newly inspired. I think it can also be really helpful to know you might get these benefits, but to let go of outcomes. So it's like, I'm pretty sure if
27:49 Speaker 04 I go for a walk, it's going to shake me loose a little bit. But I don't necessarily know in what direction or towards what productive outcome. And sometimes it'll just be the joy of that experience, the joy of being in the park and seeing. A little kid on their bike, like, learning how to bike with their parent, or a cute dog that I smile at. You can find metaphor in nature for pretty much anything you're going through. Whether it's the way that trees, when they die and they fall, they decompose and they become part of the forest floor and they become a different part of the ecosystem, right?
28:31 Speaker 04 Where mushrooms can grow and maybe like little birds can live in there. It can be a metaphor for death and grief. I find there's just a lot of wisdom in nature when you sit and watch. And so you don't always, you could go for that walk and say like, this is gonna help me think about the next chapter of my book or whatever. Or this is gonna help me come up with my business plan. Or you could go into it with a little less attachment to the outcome and just see.
28:58 Speaker 01 This clip I love because it's really about letting me in conscious do its thing. I feel like we are all getting so much information on the regular about what's good for us. And often for me, it can sort of get into this rote and inspired mode where I'm doing something and then have an expectation that I'll have a very specific outcome or will feel a certain way. And by letting go of outcomes, it just gives us space to be present and inspired with whatever's coming up in the moment. And it also really ties back to Christiana's work because I think if we're listening to our bodies and following like the desires from there, we can just trust that there will be a benefit to that, even if we don't exactly know what that will be. Eleanor, what about you?
29:42 Speaker 01 I want to know about the episodes that you've been working on.
29:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, so I worked on a handful of really incredible episodes. To be honest, all of the episodes resonated with me in some way. And I think that speaks to some really universal themes that came up. Rich Roll is the next episode that I'll jump in on. He is, for those of you who don't know, he's a former entertainment attorney turned wellness, plant-based nutrition advocate. That is such a mouthful to say. But he's also an ultra endurance athlete, a podcast host. Author, a public speaker. He came in and he talked about his extreme fitness transformation that happened pretty much in midlife, which was pretty extraordinary. And the two of you also talked about your diet choices.
30:29 Speaker 02 He's written a lot of incredible vegan cookbooks, but he also shared a lot about his recovery from addiction. Conversation went all over the place. He talked about psychedelics. I have a lot of respect for Rich Roll and he, he obviously puts great care into his health. In your conversation, I think you asked some really great questions, Dan. You know, earlier in our conversation, just now you brought up orthorexia. And I love this clip because it not only touches on the tipping point of what makes something go from healthy behavior to unhealthy behavior. And I also think that a lot of what he said kind of perfectly encapsulate the series as a whole. So I'll let it do with the talking.
31:07 Speaker 05 There is this obsession with the perfect body and the perfect diet that's going to get you there. And this is all exacerbated by all of the biohacking and, you know, the kind of six hour morning routine and the supplement stack and the cold plunging and the sauna. And like, he's like, how many things do I have to do before I can just go live my day? If you added up all of these things, any sane person would go insane and it's unsustainable. But it's all oriented around self optimization. And I think within that, there's a control piece, right? That gets to that discomfort with uncertainty. We're all terrified of dying and what can we control? We can control our bodies.
31:52 Speaker 05 If we eat the right thing and work out a certain way, we'll be perceived a certain way. So we'll be loved and ultimately we're going to avoid this thing that we pretend doesn't exist, which is that we're going to die. Like, that's what it all roots back to, does it not? It's attachment, you know? And I'm compassionate for anyone who suffers from that because we live in a culture that sets expectations high and those expectations are predominantly unattainable for most people and really aren't something that we should aspire to attain. But it's part of the underlying mental health epidemic for sure.
32:31 Speaker 05 So how do you get people to care about their wellbeing without tiptoeing into these unhealthy behavior patterns? I mean, You know, I'm not a clinician. I just think you have to be really honest with yourself. I tend to relate all of these sorts of things across the kind of rubric of recovery. Like, where does this fall within the 12 steps? And in this context, it's about like the honest self-inventory. Like, what's driving these choices? Is it some kind of deep insecurity? Is it a childhood wound? Is it a true, honest desire to take control of your health for the right reasons?
33:12 Speaker 05 And can you be honest with yourself enough so that you have that self-awareness piece to prevent you from, you know, going too far in the wrong direction?
33:24 Speaker 02 I can really relate to that honesty piece. I don't always have mortality on my mind, but I am definitely examining and tracking my own motivations when it comes to my physical health. Is it that childhood wound that Rich mentioned? Is it wanting to live longer? Is it out of respect to the people that I love? Is it vanity? Is it me desperately trying to get rid of cellulite? It might be all of the above. Marissa, I know that we covered a little bit of our history with body stuff and exercise, but I am curious, where do you stand now? Do you still hang out at the gym? And yeah, do you like to exercise? And if you do, what's your motivation?
34:04 Speaker 01 I did just visit my parents and my mom most definitely got me a free week pass at her gym. So I was reliving old times, hanging out with her. But it's funny, because when we started producing this series a couple of months ago, I was very excited because I joined a run club. So I thought, when we do an episode of the two producers chatting about everything that they learned, I could discuss how I got so strong doing this run club. About two weeks later, after the run club, I quit. Hear me out. I did have a slight injury in my shoulder, so unrelated to running. But that day, I couldn't go to the run club because I had an injury. And I went to a Dharma group instead. And I was just so much happier. I was thinking, look, I do want to exercise.
34:48 Speaker 01 I did buy my hokas for this run club. But in a way, being in that meditation group actually felt much more supportive to me. So since then, I did put the run club, but have just been focusing on things that bring me more joy. So for example, I have a walking desk now. I got a little treadmill for 200 bucks under my standing desk. And I'm just like racking up thousands of steps a day. That feels good. I take a lot of walks outside. I'm about to start biking more since the weather's getting better. So I haven't quite figured out the key to unlock health and fitness. But I feel like actually saying no to the run club is a form of like mental fitness that I'm working on.
35:30 Speaker 02 I love that. I go back and forth between wondering if I take exercise too seriously or not serious enough. I run a ton, like I run five days a week. I do a bunch of strength training. I like Pilates. And part of that I feel like is just self-preservation from working remotely and sitting in a chair so many hours a day. I wish that I had a walking desk.
35:51 Speaker 01 Join the cult.
35:52 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, I'm working on it too. I haven't answered those questions either for myself. But um, I am slowly becoming more and more obsessed with this idea of figuring out how to feel strong, which is a great segue into my next clip. The next guest I want to talk about is Bonnie Tsui. Bonnie was probably my favorite interview for the series thus far. She is an author, a journalist, a swimmer, and she writes about the human experience through the lens of movement and the body. Her latest book is called On Muscle. There was something incredibly powerful about the way that she described the psychological impacts of understanding your own physical potential.
36:35 Speaker 02 I think her excitement about muscles was almost contagious for me. And I even loved the way that she talked about the push-up.
36:44 Speaker 06 What I love about the push up is many things. It's a very basic foundational movement, right? You really employ like your entire self to do them and to do them well. And I also love that they're sort of like a mythological, there's a lore behind them. You know, with Jack LaLanne breaking the world record by doing like, I don't know, a thousand plus pushups in some matter of minutes. And that it's also like this demonized thing. Everyone hates them. Not everyone, some people like yourself, love them. But that it's, but it's so basic. And the push up is something you can do in a very contained space. It's really like, all you have to do is be able to lie down on the ground. You know, you could do it where you are, I could do where I am. You don't require anything but yourself. And there's something also great about that.
37:28 Speaker 06 It's just you and your body and the ground. And how many times you can go down to meet it and then come back up and go down and come back up. Um, there's a passage at the end of the book in which someone has asked a character in my book named Jan Todd, who was the first woman to lift these Scottish stones of strength called the Denny stones. But she's also not only a, a world record breaking power lifter and a pioneer weightlifter. She also is a sports historian. And so she gets a lot of questions through the center that she runs there. And one was, had to do with the history of the push up and where did the push up come from and who did the push up for the first time? And of course, there's no way of knowing like, who was the first person to ever do
38:11 Speaker 06 this in the world as like a way to strengthen body and mind. But she did find this wonderful reference in a book about physical health that did not call it the push up, but what it did call this exercise was kissing the ground in equilibrium. And I love that phrase so much. Kissing the ground in equilibrium, I think is like a great mantra for living.
38:42 Speaker 06 You are doing this thing that's really hard, as are many things in life. But you appreciate that the ground is there and you go down and meet it and you come back up and you kind of try to figure out how to reach equilibrium, which is, you know, what is equilibrium? You know, you're seeking a kind of like resting state in the flux of life. And I just think there's just so much there to think about. And, you know, we're getting a little heady here, but that's a real thing. That's what a push up can do for you.
39:18 Speaker 02 I loved the way that Bonnie talked about muscles. It made me excited about muscles. When I was like nine or 10 years old, I used to be a competitive swimmer. And as an adult, I did a ton of yoga and I was kind of self-conscious about my shoulder muscles because people would would comment on them. People love commenting on other people's bodies, which is something that I don't really understand strangers. But anyways, I would associate muscles on myself with being unfeminine in some way. And now all I want is I want to have them back. Reading Bonnie's book, like I said, it was really inspiring to me because it made me want to go out and buy a new set of weights. And I'll also say, and I mentioned this at the top as well, but
40:00 Speaker 02 there was something very, very powerful for me to think about what it means to be strong in a different way and be aware of the sense that you can actually change your body. When you think about muscles, it almost sounds kind of magical. It's like your body goes through this transformation and regenerates itself. And I was really enamored by hearing her talk about it. It made me excited to be strong.
40:23 Dan Harris? It's so cool to listen to these clips. And just to say, the two of you have done such magnificent work curating these experts. As I think most listeners know, there is, and as we referenced earlier, there's so much snake oil out there. And it takes a lot of careful work to vet the appropriate people to bring on the show because we are so focused on giving you, the listener, Evidence-based, actionable, psychologically healthy advice. So I just want to thank you guys for the incredible work you've done. And also just to mention that we played a few clips, but there are a bunch of other people
41:03 Dan Harris? who are coming on, including the aforementioned Claudia Hammond, who's this incredible writer out of the UK, who's written a book about the art of rest, talking about how to incorporate rest into our days in ways that will make us function better, which is so counterintuitive. We also interviewed Jeff Krasnow, who's equally fascinating. He's been in the wellness world forever. He founded quite a famous yoga festival called Wanderlust. But then he found out that he was actually physically really unhealthy and did this whole U-turn in his life to get healthy again and has written this book about good stress. Stress, I think, quite justifiably gets vilified in our culture because it can be incredibly
41:47 Dan Harris? unhealthy, but there are all these forms of good stress, including exercise and exposing yourself to heat or to cold, exposing yourself to nature, pushing yourself in all these different ways that have had a massive effect on Jeff's life. And just a couple of other episodes to mention before we close here, we're rerunning an incredible interview with T. Morgan Dixon and Dr. Gary G. Bennett about one of the most important aspects of fitness, which is how do you form the habits? It's one thing to learn what's good for you, it's another to actually do the shit that you know you're supposed to do. And they talk about the science of motivation and how to actually do the stuff we're talking about.
42:29 Dan Harris? And finally, probably the most provocative guest, who has really stayed with me, is Dr. Robin Chutkan, who's a gastroenterologist and writes about gut health. And gut health is for sure one of the areas where there's the most snake oil. So we really had to work to find somebody who knows what she's talking about and is not trying to sell us anything other than her books. But she's not trying to sell us any supplements or anything. And she has this whole thing about the importance of looking at your poop, which made me incredibly uncomfortable, but we go there in quite a lot of detail. So a long way of saying you guys have done a great job and I think the listeners have a lot to look forward to.
43:10 Speaker 02 Thanks, Dan. I had a ton of fun researching the guests and finding people that really resonated with me, but also people that I think really anyone can take something away from.
43:19 Speaker 01 Yes, I agree.
43:21 Dan Harris? And just to say, the two of you are the backbone of this show.
43:27 Dan Harris? You know, there are many people who make the show, but Marissa and Eleanor are choosing and vetting the vast majority of the guests, preparing me, preparing the guests, finalizing and editing the episodes. So I just want everybody to know that if you love this show, then you should love Marissa and Eleanor.
43:45 Speaker 02 I really do appreciate that, Dan. I feel like working on the show in a lot of ways is a huge privilege because we're kind of paid to learn.
43:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
43:52 Speaker 02 And when you can, you know, find what you're interested in and then have the privilege of digging in and learning more about it and allowing it to help inform my own life. And I think DJ said this once before in one of the other preview episodes for Get Fit Sanely, another iteration of it last year. But one of the coolest parts of this job are thinking about all the things that I still want help with in my life. You know, I'm a work in progress and I've got questions still and I'm not, I know I'm not the only one doing this research and being able to find guests that we really connected with was just, it was great.
44:29 Dan Harris? I feel the same way. It's like, if I have a problem in my life, I can make it into an episode. What a cool way to live.
44:36 Speaker 02 Exactly, yeah.
44:37 Dan Harris? I do, in closing, just want to remind people of something that we said earlier, which is that for each of the episodes that will be dropping during the month of June in this Get Fit Sanely series, paid subscribers will also get an email with a bespoke meditation tied to the episode from a great meditation teacher named Cara Lai, who we've mentioned a few times. And Cara and I will go live on Substack at 3:30 Eastern on Tuesday, June 3.
45:07 Dan Harris? That's June 3 at 3:30 Eastern. And Maris, I know you wanted to say a little bit about Kara.
45:12 Speaker 01 She is an amazing teacher and she's been part of this series before. Like I said, also a friend of the show has been on many times. She's been teaching meditation for a decade and practicing for much longer. And the thing I love about her is, you know, you think of like a Dharma meditation teacher, it can be sort of often a holier-than-thou approach, which those aren't the type of people we ever have on the show. But Kara in particular is relatable, authentic, funny, a bit crass, and she's very accessible. She's also taught at all of the premier meditation institutions in the US. So it'll just be really great to have her on as a companion to these episodes.
45:55 Dan Harris? Totally agree. She's also a friend of mine and just a hilarious and wise person.
46:00 Speaker 01 Yes.
46:01 Dan Harris? And just to repeat something I said earlier, this is something I've really wanted to do for a long time is to have a tighter link between the things we're discussing on the show and guided meditations you can do to pound the learnings into your molecules. So just to be a little salesy here, if you want to be a paid subscriber, you can go over to danharris.com. Aside from all the meditations that will be dropping in association with this series, paid subscribers also get ad-free versions of this show, also get a cheat sheet for every episode. You know, it's an email where we sum up the key learnings and also give you time-coded highlights and a full transcript. Plus, if you're a subscriber, you get to join me live on video twice a month where I lead a meditation and take your
46:46 Dan Harris? questions. And also you can join the subscriber chat where you can talk to me and members of the team and one another. So we got a ton going on over there. We're just getting started. danharris.com would love to have you join us. And Eleanor, one more thing you wanted to mention.
47:01 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah. Well, on top of all of that, every Friday in June, we'll also be bringing some short gems from the Get Fit Sanely archives, just so listeners can catch some of the most useful tips that they might have missed in previous episodes.
47:17 Dan Harris? So much thought and work has gone into this series, principally by the two of you. I also want to thank Tara Anderson, who's producing this particular episode, and DJ for having helped hone the idea, and Lauren Smith for making sure the trains run on time. There's just so much work that has gone into this, and I think it's just so helpful. So, thank you again to Marissa and Eleanor for doing this episode and for doing all the work that went into the episodes to come.
47:46 Speaker 01 Thank you, Dan. Thanks, all.
47:52 Dan Harris? Thank you to Eleanor and Marissa, the best producers in the history of Planet Earth. And don't forget to check out danharris.com for those guided meditations that will be coming with every episode during June. I also will be doing a couple of live guided meditation sessions in June and pretty much every month henceforth. So, we'd love to have your support over at danharris.com. Thank you for listening, and thanks to everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan, and Eleanor Vasili, who you just heard from. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman, who you just heard from, as well as our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer.
48:35 Dan Harris? And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.
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Previous Sebene Selassie & Jeff Warren On: How Friendship Helps Your Meditation; Vulnerability vs Oversharing; And Advice for People Pleasers Next Peak Performance at Any Age | Christiane Wolf (Dharma Teacher/Doctor/Ultramarathoner) Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
