Layne Norton on How Social Media Influencers Distort the Science of Nutrition & Fitness (And How To Discern Fact from Fiction)

This week, I’m joined by Dr. Layne Norton for a deep dive into nutrition, fitness, and the psychology of positive lifestyle changes. Layne tackles health industry misinformation, stressing critical thinking in evaluating scientific claims. We discuss weight management, exercise’s role in appetite regulation, and the impact of dietary choices. Debunking myths on cholesterol, seed oils, and fiber, we touch on protein nuances for plant-based diets and delve into long-term dietary adherence and identity change. Layne underscores the importance of a strong “why,” resilience, and the transformative power of action for personal growth. This episode is a treasure trove for navigating health and wellness with clarity. Enjoy! Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: LMNT: Get a FREE sample pack with any purchase 👉drinkLMNT.com/RICHROLL Waking Up: Enjoy a FREE month, plus $30 OFF 👉wakingup.com/RICHROLL AG1: Get a FREE 1-year supply of Vitamin D3+K2 AND 5 free AG1 Travel Packs 👉drinkAG1.com/RICHROLL Faherty: 20% OFF your first order w/ code RR20 👉FahertyBrand.com/RICHROL Whoop: Listeners get a FREE 30-day trial 👉join.whoop.com/roll Squarespace: Get a FREE trial plus 10% OFF 👉Squarespace.com/RichRoll Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:08Speaker 01

  Let's go.

• 1:09Rich Roll?

  How do the carnivore enthusiasts dismiss the importance of fiber?

• 1:14Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 1:15Rich Roll?

  What is...

• 1:16Speaker 01

  You want the smoke, huh?

• 1:20Rich Roll?

  Who can you trust for accurate nutrition information?

• 1:24Speaker 01

  You can always find a study that will support whatever narrative you want to play.

• 1:28Rich Roll?

  Dr. Lane Norton is a preeminent authority in nutrition science. He's also one of the most intellectually honest voices delivering nutrition information on social media.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  I have yet to see a study where fruit and vegetable intake, whole grains, fiber, does not decrease the risk of cancer and does not decrease the risk of all-cause mortality.

• 1:49Rich Roll?

  Heart disease is our number-one killer. This is what most people are gonna die from. Like, why incur that risk into your life?

• 1:56Speaker 01

  The house is on fire, and everyone is arguing over what started the fire instead of just getting out of the house. Just start making some changes.

• 2:10Rich Roll?

  Well, I appreciate you being here. It's been a long time coming. We had some scheduling stuff, so it's taken a minute to get you in the seat, but really happy to have you here. Can you help me like bust a few diet myths?

• 2:24Speaker 01

  Let's go.

• 2:25Rich Roll?

  Okay, so, seed oils.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  Oh, boy.

• 2:28Rich Roll?

  What is, what is hap- what is happening?

• 2:30Speaker 01

  You want the smoke, huh?

• 2:32Rich Roll?

  I don't understand this, you know, emergent discourse around seed oils, the vilification of them, the, the selection of them as the root of all evil. I'm not saying seed oils are good for you, but why did this suddenly become topic number one for diet influencers all across the internet?

• 3:00Speaker 01

  So, this started in the low carb area and carnivore. And I don't know if, I'll name drop, I don't know if Paul Saladino was the one who started it, but I think he kind of like really like popularized it, right? And, you know, if you look at kind of his arc, he was originally, I think he was actually a vegan a long time ago, and then became kind of low carb carnivore, pure carnivore, and then moved into-

• 3:31Rich Roll?

  He eats fruit now, right?

• 3:32Speaker 01

  Now he eats fruit and honey and stuff. Well, so, originally, low carb carnivore people were like, carbohydrates, sugar, the devil, bad. But now you've got this whole host of carnivores that-

• 3:44Rich Roll?

  Fruit and honey.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Eat fruit and honey. So, there's gotta be something else that explains all the negative health effects. Can't be saturated fat, it's gotta be, it can't be calories, because, you know, that's not sexy. So, it's gotta be seed oils. So, are seed oils negative for human health? And you'll get a lot of people saying, well, the government this, and, um, look at the way they're ma- don't care about any of that. Literally don't care.

• 4:13Rich Roll?

  And that, it all, it opens the door to the whole discourse around hyper palatable, ultra-processed foods, and how these oils made their way into all these products that we eat. And this is the true source and cause of the obesity epidemic.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Right. So, this gets into how the studies are done is very important.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  In the last few decades,

• 4:39Speaker 01

  added oils, mostly from these seed oils, are the biggest source of added calories in the US diet.

• 4:48Speaker 01

  So, they are not innocuous, right? They are contributing. But, if we want to compare apples to apples, so if we look at studies where they're just, you know, they're, if they're adding this stuff on top of somebody's normal diet, and somebody's over-consuming calories, you get energy toxicity, you get, you can develop obesity. You, people who are obese probably tend to eat more seed oils, because they're part of hyper-processed foods, and people tend to use more oil in cooking.

• 5:21Rich Roll?

  Because these oils are in basically everything, we're not realizing the extent to which our, you know, calories are far beyond what we think they are.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Well, if you go out to eat, and...

• 5:32Rich Roll?

  There's oil in everything.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:34Rich Roll?

  When you go to a restaurant, you can't control that, control for that.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  Tell me if you can pick out if that's a tablespoon of oil, or five tablespoons, right? Like, good luck. Um, and then if you look at like the nutritional information of like, say Cheesecake Factory or something like that, and you're like, how is there 2,500 calories in pasta? You know, I'm just like hypothetically, but I know there's a lot of dishes on there that are over 2,000 calories. So, okay, if we over, if we have people overeat them, they get more sick. Or more metabolically unhealthy.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  But if we're gonna compare apples to apples, we have to do what are called substitution studies, right? So, we're, we're gonna add this in and take something else out, so that we're controlling the energy portion of things, right? Because calories are a confounding variable here. So, in studies where they look at, okay, we're gonna remove saturated fat, add in polyunsaturated fat, or, you know, mostly polyunsaturated fats are from seed oils. And then we're looking at risk of heart disease, metabolic health, liver fat,

• 6:40Speaker 01

  insulin sensitivity, inflammation. I mean, you go on the list. I mean, at worst, it's a neutral effect. And for a lot of them, there's an improvement. I mean, you know, a lot of these people will go crazy about fructose and liver fat. And it's like, well, if you're worried about liver fat in straight up overfeeding studies of fructose versus saturated fat, there's actually a study that equalized calories, overfed fructose, overfed saturated fat. Fructose increased liver fat by 16%, saturated fat and the same calories increased it by 86%. So if you're worried about fructose, why aren't you worried about saturated fat?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  And so again, it really boils down to how are you doing the study, right? And if you're doing a replacement study, again, it's like one of the tropes that gets tossed out there as well. These have multiple double bonds in these fatty acids and they can get oxidized, rancid, and that's going to cause inflammation in your body.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Okay, well then, what about the studies that measure inflammation? Oh, wait, it's either neutral or positive when they add in polyunsaturated fats. So I think one of the things people miss is when you talk about some of this stuff, what you're talking about is a mechanism of a biochemical pathway, right? Oh, this double bond can be oxidized and that's going to cause oxidation in your body and inflammation and heart disease. You're, people don't realize you just made a lot of assumptions right there. That's like looking at single stocks inside of a mutual fund. Okay, so a mutual fund is a bunch of stocks inside of an overall fund, right? What do I care about if I'm investing? The performance of the mutual fund.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  And this is like somebody coming to me going, oh, you don't want to invest in this. Look at these two stocks that are down by 50% this year. And you go, oh. But if the mutual fund's up 30%, who cares? Right? Like, there's going to be some stocks that underperform in there. And what I would submit to people, any food you eat probably activates negative and positive biochemical pathways. But the question is not whether or not it does both good and bad things. The question is, what is the summation of that response? The outcome of that response? Because outcomes, inflammation, heart disease, changes in body weight.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  These are the summation of hundreds, if not thousands, of mechanisms and biochemical pathways. And so what I always tell people is like, well, if only we had studies that actually measured that, oh, wait, we do have studies that measured this and here's what they show. Right? And so this is like a, um, a different topic, but a great example of this was I did a debunking video where there was somebody saying, well, you don't want to drink coffee or are taking caffeine because it stimulates cortisol release and that's going to make you store belly fat. And I'm like, okay, so what you're talking about is a mechanism. Okay. Um, there is some evidence, people who have more belly fat have higher levels of cortisol. And by the way, that connection is not as clear as a lot of people think it is.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  But, um, and there is research showing that caffeine can stimulate cortisol release. If only we had studies that looked at caffeine intake and levels of body fat and visceral fat. Oh, wait, we do. And there's either a neutral or positive effect. So, okay.

• 10:10Rich Roll?

  Because of other mechanisms that are at play. Because everything is a latticework and you have to look at these things from a holistic perspective. And the multitude of impacts, both positive and negative.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Exactly. So. Could seed oils activate some negative biochemical pathways?

• 10:29Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  But it's obviously compensated for by other positive things. And again, it's either seems to be a neutral or positive effect. So to me, the more nuanced argument about it is, okay, seed oils may be a proxy for also hyper palatable processed foods, right? Because they're in potato chips and all that kind of stuff, french fries. But should you be worried about like, you know, your cooking spray with canola oil or olive oil, or olive oil is not one, but with canola oil? Or like, you know, using that in a dish or something? I really, I really think that we're missing the point here.

• 11:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think there's a, basically what you're saying is there's a difference between the notion that we're all probably eating too much oil because of our food environment is rife with ultra-processed foods and all kinds of packaged goods that have all too, all too, all too much oil in them. And so every day, we're consuming more than we probably should. But that's very different from the vilification of one single food item as the root cause of all that's wrong with America and health and what's driving the obesity epidemic and the conspiracy behind it, right? Like, that's the, that's the really, that's the tasty, zesty part of it.

• 11:53Rich Roll?

  Like, they want you eating these foods, there's a plan, all of that, right? And it's fun and it sort of gamifies all of this. But, you know, it's, it's, I think the truth is a lot more boring.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I always tell people, conspiracy theories are very appealing. Sounds sexy. I mean, some of the best movies are about conspiracy theories, right? And listen, I'm not saying that there's no conspiracies out there. But, you know, this idea that there was this orchestrated thing by the government and the food industry, I mean, all different sectors of the food industry are lobbying the government. Like, okay, you're talking about seed oils and agriculture. Okay, the meat industry lobbies the government too. Hey, look, I got partial. And I tell people all the time, it's so funny that I spent so much time defending the virtues of plants now because my research was funded by the National Dairy Council,

• 12:52Speaker 01

  the Egg Nutrition Center, and the National Catalans Beef Association, right?

• 12:55Rich Roll?

  Well, you're clearly a shill.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Right. If anybody has a bias towards animal protein, it's me, right? But I'm just like not willing to go down this insane path of, oh, you know, the vegetables are toxic and, you know, fruit's bad for you because of sugar, or whatever else this stuff is, or these arguments around seed oils. And quite frankly, I can make you afraid of any food, or make any food seem like a health food using this influencer template, right? I don't know if you saw this post.

• 13:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you did. Is it Dr. Mike?

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 13:30Rich Roll?

  What's his name? You did that, yeah, where you, you basically made the argument for french fries, McDonald's french fries.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  Right. I did another post a while back where I said, "Hey, if you want to lose fat, you should eat poop, and here's why." The, one of the major volatile fatty acids very present in fecal matter is butyrate. In studies, butyrate's been, and these are legit studies, you can look these up. Butyrate has been shown to improve insulin sensitivity, increase fat oxidation, improve weight loss, so eat poop. Now, what I'm not telling you is, most of these were in animal studies, and the amount of poop you would need to consume to get that amount of butyrate would be about 50 to 100 pounds a day, right? So, but that's what these kind of, they're like, oh, you know,

• 14:19Speaker 01

  you don't want to eat broccoli, you know, broccoli's bullshit because it has isocyanates in it, and they can prevent the, they can bind to iodine, prevent the absorption of iodine. That's going to negatively impact your thyroid, and that is going to lead to a reduced metabolic rate and weight gain. Okay? Mechanism, right?

• 14:40Speaker 01

  If only we had studies that looked at cruciferous vegetable intake and thyroid and BMR and wait, oh wait, we do. And the research shows that if anything, cruciferous vegetable intake has a positive effect on body weight, metabolic health, and does not seem to negatively impact the thyroid. And that is probably because it is just not a dosage high enough to actually make a impact on thyroid. And I made the point in my rebuttal video, I said, I can find something in meat to do the same thing. NUEGC5, I think that's the compound, present in meat, and they've been, they've shown that people who have Hashimoto's have antibodies

• 15:25Speaker 01

  present for this particular compound. So, and that's in humans, not the pig study that he cited. And I, it's so, I'm like, that's actually stronger evidence for like meat being negative on thyroid. Now, I don't think it's actually a negative on thyroid, right? Like, I'm just, I'm saying, hey, if you're gonna make this type of argument, then you've gotta do it for all the foods.

• 15:49Rich Roll?

  Well, that's not gonna happen. I mean, you can play this game all day long. You know, Paul's whole thing with broccoli is no different from Dave Asprey's whole thing with kale, or Dr. Gundry's whole thing with beans and lectin. So, let's talk about the whole plant toxin thing. Like this, the idea that this whole lectin thing like took hold and became a thing is just insane to me because nobody eats uncooked beans. We cook our beans. This is like, not a thing.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, you know, what is very consistent in the scientific literature? Fruits and vegetable intake associated with improved mortality, lower cancer risk, lower cardiovascular disease risk, better metabolic health. I just don't know what else there is to talk about, right? And so, but I think this appeals to people, one, who don't like eating vegetables, right? Like, this is a very convenient, um, you know, uh, for people who are like, ah, I hate vegetables. Oh, yep.

• 16:50Rich Roll?

  I feel better because, yeah, they're trying to kill me.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Right. Now, what I will say is, this is what we call a false attribution error that a lot of people make. Some people cut vegetables and fiber out of their diet and feel better. Cause they say, well, I was, they caused me to be inflamed.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  This, this gets into how people don't actually understand what inflammation is either. You had gastrointestinal distress, um, and by going on a carnivore diet, for example, is basically an elimination diet. And it removed whatever gut irritant was causing you to have problems. And in fact, a lot of people, um, have sensitivities to FODMAPs, um, which are like fructans, oligosaccharides and these different, um, like present in different vegetable and, uh, fruit compounds or fruit, uh, foods. And so they eliminate all of them, feel better in the short term, and they said, well, I'm thriving. I feel great. That's great.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  You, you, heart disease, you don't feel until it happens, right? Maybe you notice a little bit of fatigue and those sorts of things, but a lot of people just have a massive heart attack and that's it, right? So just because you feel good doesn't really mean much. Now, what I will say to those people is, okay, you did an elimination diet, essentially, by doing carnivore, in which there's a lot of people who clinically use elimination diets to feel better when they have gastrointestinal distress from certain foods. But the purpose of an elimination diet is to then slowly, one by one, add these foods back in and figure out, oh, which one of these was actually triggering me, right?

• 18:33Speaker 01

  And once you have determined that, most people can find fruits and vegetables that they tolerate fine, even people who have really sensitive GI. And so, you know, a lot of people with like IBS, they can, they can have some triggering symptoms from some of these fruits and vegetables, but that doesn't mean they're toxic. It doesn't mean they're making you inflamed. Like, your gut is locally inflamed because it's irritated, but that's different than systemic inflammation that's in your, that damages blood vessels.

• 19:06Rich Roll?

  And also different from just being generally a little gassy that might have something to do with the quality of your gut microbiota, which, you know, isn't sort of oriented around the foods that you're eating and requires a bit of an adjustment period.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:26Rich Roll?

  Is there truth to that?

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Well, here's the thing. People are like, "Man, I got gassy from that food. It's bad for me." Well, if you're gassy, that's short-chain fatty acid production and those usually are associated with a lot of beneficial health effects. So, it may be uncomfortable. Is it unhealthy? I'm not sure about that. Now, what I will say is like people with IBS, for example, and this kind of gets into like pain science literature. People with IBS, they, I don't want to, this is, I'm going out on a limb a little bit, okay? This is my kind of interpretation of the literature. They are just more sensitive to the same pressure

• 20:12Speaker 01

  that most people incur. And what I mean by that is, if you look at people who have IBS, at the same level of intestinal pressure that a normal person has, they may actually have a lot of pain. And so, for them, trying to move to foods that produce less gas can reduce their pain. And so, again, you can find fruits and vegetables that are less fermentable, and those may actually be better tolerated, right? So, again, I think somebody who eliminated fruits and vegetables and felt better, it's hard to argue with that experience, right? But...

• 20:53Speaker 01

  When you understand why they felt better and you can explain it to them and then say, "Hey, why don't you just slowly try adding some of these things back in and see what you tolerate?" And I will tell you that you can probably, especially like leafy green vegetables tend to be a little bit better tolerated by people who have these sensitivities. You know, some of the cruciferous vegetables honestly are some of the, I don't want to say worst offenders, but they're the ones that tend to give people a little bit more problems that have these sensitivities. So I would just say, "Hey, if you've fed one on a carnivore diet, okay, great, but now let's try to figure out a way to get some fiber in as well, right? And just add these foods back in one by one."

• 21:34Rich Roll?

  Let's pivot. The idea that cholesterol doesn't matter, this new kind of idea or segment of the keto carnivore crew that think cholesterol doesn't matter if you're lean, if you have high HDL and low triglycerides. Don't worry about your high LDL, basically.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  So, okay, 10,000-foot view and then we'll zoom in. It's people with high LDL, high HDL, and low triglycerides, first of all, are relatively, I don't want to say rare, but usually it's a little bit harder to kind of try and find that phenotype, right? Usually it's like elevated LDL, low HDL, high triglycerides, right? That's like metabolic syndrome. But there are people who, especially on a low carb diet, you do see a bigger increase in HDL, a pretty big reduction in triglycerides, but you can see an elevation in LDL, especially

• 22:41Speaker 01

  if somebody's eating a lot of saturated fat. Now, is LDL, the question is, is LDL independently a risk factor for heart disease? And this is something where I was on the other side of this about 15, 20 years ago, where I was saying, you know, it's not about LDL, it's really about the HDL to LDL ratio, particle size, you know, some of that trope you hear now from the low carb crew. And what really changed my mind was the Mendelian randomization studies and

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Part of the problem with the cohort studies that we look at, for example, which is essentially epidemiology, right? You follow people, see what they do. People with higher LDL versus lower LDL, higher LDL has more incidence of heart disease. But people with higher LDL also typically have other lifestyle factors that like are also bad, right? It doesn't exist in isolation. But you can't do a 20, 30-year human randomized control trial. And the problem with looking at heart disease is you're looking at a lifetime exposure risk, right? A lot of the low-carb people will cite studies like the Minnesota coronary experiment, where they're like, "Oh, well, look at, you know, this randomized control trial where

• 24:02Speaker 01

  they fed higher saturated fat versus lower saturated fat, didn't see any differences." The average person was in that two years, and the average age was like just under 50. So the likelihood that there's going to be some kind of cardiac event in that two-year period is probably relatively, I mean, you're looking for small differences between small numbers. The Mendelian randomization studies, what Mendelian randomization takes advantage of is the fact that based on genetic polymorphisms on genes, some people are higher or lower secretors of LDL. And you're basically, because it's a genetic polymorphism that doesn't affect other areas of metabolism, you're essentially having a lifelong randomized control trial, right?

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Now, if you look at that, those studies, I mean, you could almost draw a straight line between LDL, like levels of LDL, and the incidence of heart disease. On a mechanistic level, because people, I'm sure you've heard people argue, "Well, it's more about particle size and oxidation." So, small, dense LDLs do more easily penetrate the endothelium, but they carry less cholesterol. Large LDL particles can still penetrate the endothelium, not as easily, but they carry proportionally more cholesterol and deposit more cholesterol. The net effect between the two is basically they're equally atherogenic.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  And it's, we know now that the, the damage to the endothelium, again, I'm not a lipid expert, but I feel relatively comfortable with my interpretation of literature. It is the ApoB.

• 25:43Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  The protein on the LDL particle.

• 25:45Rich Roll?

  Supplanted LDL as a, as a proxy for cardiovascular risks.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Right, but ApoB and LDL essentially go together. And so, based on the research literature I've seen, I would say LDL is a causative risk factor for heart disease. Now, if you are somebody who has high LDL, but your HDL is high, your triglycerides are low, you have good insulin sensitivity, is your risk as high as somebody who, say, has more moderate LDL, but has high triglycerides, low HDL, bad metabolic health? That's hard to disentangle. We don't really know. I would say that, you know, hey, if you have high HDL, moderately elevated LDL, low triglycerides,

• 26:32Speaker 01

  good insulin sensitivity, overall, you're pretty metabolically healthy, right? But are you as healthy as you could be if your LDL was also low? Probably not. And so I think that's the discussion that's a little more difficult to have.

• 26:44Rich Roll?

  What percentage of people have high LDL, high HDL, and low triglycerides, though?

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Oh, I have no idea.

• 26:51Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's a unique combination.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  It is, and, you know, there was a, this kind of, the lean mass hyperresponder, I don't know if you saw this paper, basically, there are, there are some people who do a low carb diet, and even with, I mean, at least reportedly, with lower saturated fat, their LDL goes way up. It's really interesting. And it tends to be people who are, like, lean and have some other characteristics, in terms of starting characteristics, but they see this weird effect where, like, their LDL kind of skyrockets, their HDL is really high, their triglycerides are really low. And that paper got a lot of play.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Now, it doesn't show that LDL is not a risk factor, but people have said, well, I think about that, and I have a video coming out on it, but I've said, well, I don't really know what to make of that because this is a very, like you're talking about a very, very unique subtype. I mean, you know, I could probably find a subsection of smokers that don't develop cardiovascular disease or cancer, but that doesn't mean that I think smoking is a good idea for the vast majority of people.

• 28:01Rich Roll?

  It just feels like rolling the dice when you, you know, appreciate and understand that heart disease is, is our number one killer. This is what most people are gonna die from. So to be fast and loose with whether or not like your high LDL is important or not, just seems like to your point about risk, like why incur that risk into your life?

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, what I, what here's, here's the more nuanced version of what I would say a devil's advocate argument is, right? So let's say somebody's tried a bunch of diets and for, for whatever reason, they just, it, they just couldn't be consistent with it. They finally try a low carb diet and for whatever reason, they can, they're just able to be consistent with that. And they lose 50, 60 pounds, their insulin sensitivity improves. They have all these positive benefits, but their LDL goes up. How do I weigh that? We don't have any way to weigh that, right? What I would say, all things being equal, if, based on the odds ratios of mortality and obesity and these sorts of things, if

• 29:06Speaker 01

  somebody can get to a normal or lean body weight from like, kind of like overweight or obese, using an approach that their LDL still stays up, but everything else improves, they're probably still better off than they would have been being in the higher body weight but lower LDL. But are they as good as they possibly could have been if their LDL was also low? Probably not. And so what I'll tell people is, you know, hey, just because you're low carb, it's always interesting to me, this fascination with, we have to prove that saturated fat is actually good for you, you know? And like, why? There's

• 29:47Speaker 01

  plenty of low carb friendly foods that are not high in saturated fat, right? And I think a lot of it's this like, well, there can't be any possible downsides to low carb, right? So any kind of like low carb friendly food has to be good for you. And so it's this weird kind of trying to...

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Find this roundabout way to prove that saturated fat is good for you. And I mean, even like, again, like the cherry picking of studies. Well, look at these studies showing that people who have high, elderly people who have high LDL live longer. This is a reverse causation effect. And first of all, when they do the appropriate controls, they don't really see that. But people who, once you get to old age, you're more likely to die from some sort of kind of wasting or, you know, if you get cancer, people who have high LDL, I think, I don't, I can't recall the study specifically, but I believe there's a study showing that people

• 30:49Speaker 01

  who had higher LDL tended to survive cancer. But again, that's because having higher blood lipids is probably more of a, you might be looking at the difference between like somebody with a 50 LDL and 80, right? And somebody with higher LDL probably is just, was able to get in more nutrition. They weren't malnourished, right? And so that person is much more likely to survive the cancer treatment than somebody else. And so when you look at, again, the lifetime exposure studies and the Mendelian randomization trials, you see pretty clearly like a, a pretty negative effect of LDL on mortality and heart disease.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  And the other thing I'll say is, just to add a little bit of nuance to it, not all saturated fat raises LDL. I think like, for example, stearic acid, I don't think that has been shown to raise LDL, I want to say. But in general, I mean, if you're eating a high amount of saturated fat, you are going to see your LDL go up.

• 31:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Again, to me, when I think about what's killing most people, heart disease, stroke, now we have dementia, Alzheimer's, these are diseases of circulation, right? And to the extent that we can make dietary choices that are in service to the health and robustness of our circulatory system, and, and to the extent that there's any evidence whatsoever that saturated fat, elevated LDL, that these things are contributory factors to these illnesses, like, why not just let it go and reduce it and step away from it rather than hold on to this idea that we have to prove?

• 32:33Rich Roll?

  To everyone that these things that basically science has told us not so good, that are, they're actually good.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Well, my thing I tell like the carnivore keto people, I'm like, hey, you can like, you know, I'm, I'm an omnivore, right? You can eat lean meats, by the way, you know, you, you can also eat like chicken or fish or, you know, like you don't have to eat a ribeye every day. Like there are more sources of dietary protein than just those rich and saturated fat.

• 33:14Rich Roll?

  How do the carnivore enthusiasts dismiss the importance of fiber in the diet? What is the argument that they, that they are not suffering because they're not eating anything with any fiber in it?

• 33:29Speaker 01

  So I've heard a couple of different arguments. I actually did a debate, debate with Paul Saladino back in like 2018. And he was very, he didn't really, wasn't really that well known at the time. And honestly, I was, I didn't really know that much about him. And I don't think I did a bad job in the debate, but I was honestly so shocked by his proposition that it took me about half an hour to just recover from it. And I probably looked very confused. And he cited a, he first off, he kind of said, well, fiber's just like undigestible. So you might as well just like eat toilet paper. First of all, not all fiber is undigestible. Insoluble fiber, we think of as undigestible, but that

• 34:14Speaker 01

  doesn't mean it doesn't have benefits.

• 34:15Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Gut motility. There is some evidence that, you know, toxins that go through your GI, insoluble fiber can help move those out a little bit more quickly and they spend less time in your GI.

• 34:30Rich Roll?

  It's a prebiotic.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  And well, isn't it? Soluble fiber is the prebiotic.

• 34:35Rich Roll?

  Insoluble doesn't serve that end.

• 34:40Rich Roll?

  All right. We don't, we don't need to get all sidetracked.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  There's, there's some, there's some rodent evidence that maybe some of these insoluble fibers can still be fermented by the gut. But for the most part, soluble or fermentable fiber is what the prebiotic fibers are for the gut. So these are, soluble fiber is just what it sounds like. So it'll dissolve in water, right? And soluble fiber is the main fuel for your gut microbiota. So they can ferment that and produce short chain fatty acids, which have some of these benefits that we, we talk about. And typically, like the, like probably the biggest lever you can pull for a healthy gut microbiome is soluble fiber.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Now, back to the toilet paper commentary, right? So it's, it's not totally indigestible. There are some metabolic effects from this soluble fiber and possibly the insoluble fiber. And then he cited a, a study that I never heard of, but it was, basically they had people who were suffering from constipation, eliminate fiber or reduce fiber, and they self-reported that they felt better. There was no control group. And again, if we go...

• 35:53Rich Roll?

  Isn't it the other way around? Isn't it that adding fiber into the diet resolves constipation?

• 35:58Speaker 01

  So there are some situations, like if you add fiber but don't increase your fluid intake, it can make you a little more constipated in some cases, or people who have like poor GI motility, those sorts of things. But what I'll say is, you, you can always, almost always find a study that will support whatever narrative you want to play. And let me give an example of how, how extreme you can take cherry picking. I was looking at a, I actually used this in a, in a debunk I did. I was looking at a meta-analysis of smoking and the risk of adenocarcinoma. And of course, smoking drastically increases the risk of adenocarcinoma. And there was 50 studies included in this. And there's, there's what's called a forest plot, which is basically, there's a line down the middle.

• 36:41Rich Roll?

  Made famous by the James Wilks, Chris Cresser debate.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Shout out to James Wilks. Can you read a forest plot?

• 36:49Rich Roll?

  Yes.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  So a forest plot is basically, you're, without getting too far into it, you have a line. The line, right on the line, basically means no effect. Either, like either way, there's... One side of the line is favors X, other side of the line favors Y. So if you're looking at this forest plot of smoking and the effect of adenocarcinoma, to the right is increases the risk of adenocarcinoma, to the left is decreases the risk, right? Well, almost all the studies are on the right by a good bit. There's two studies that are a little bit to the left. So what if I cherry pick, if I just pick those studies and I go, you can smoke, doesn't increase the risk of adenocarcinoma.

• 37:33Speaker 01

  In fact, might actually decrease the risk a little bit. Do I care about those studies, those two studies or the other 48 studies, right? And so you have to be very careful when people are citing this research, you know, especially, I mean, again, I, we're talking about LDL. I was trying to give like both sides of this, right? But then explain why I was on a certain side of it. When somebody just kind of like cites a study and then, hey, it's supporting my narrative, without giving the full picture, because as you said, if we look at the studies, the meta-analyses on fiber consumption and constipation, it increases frequency and it helps. It helps prevent constipation.

• 38:18Speaker 01

  So they kind of get focused in on like fiber as a, as for constipation and like why it's not needed. So, well, you know, I've been on carnivore and I poop just fine. Well, cool, you know, poop isn't just fiber. I mean, it's mostly turned over GI cells. So if you're carnivore, I mean, you will make stool. But that's, I would argue, constipation is the last reason to eat fiber.

• 38:44Rich Roll?

  Especially in light of all the new and emerging science that's coming out on the importance of the microbiome and how integral it is to so many of our physiological functionality. You know, it's, it's, it's just integral to so many of these systems, which just makes me think like, well, Optimizing your microbiome has so many benefits that maybe we're only beginning to understand right now.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Oh, we're very much in infancy.

• 39:13Rich Roll?

  And we do know that increasing our fiber is good for our microbiome. And a diversity of foods, a diversity of plant foods is also in service to that.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  So one of the things I'll tell people is, okay, epidemiology, it's hard to draw conclusions from, right? And again, like we talked about with heart disease, cancer, I mean, it's hard, you can't really do a randomized control trial of cancer. Well, we're gonna do something that we think is gonna give this group cancer, but not this group, right? Like, that's never gonna get past an IRB. So you have to look at the epidemiology and the cohort studies. And let's take non-nutritive sweeteners, right? You can find some studies that say they increase the risk of cancer. And I could go through a whole discussion as to why I don't think that they're really the case. But you can find actually more that show that they don't increase the risk of cancer. In fact, about 80% of the studies say they don't, right? But there's a disconnect, right?

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Like, there's some that say yes, some that say no. So to me, again, my takeaway from that is that it doesn't really seem to make a difference. Fiber, they're all to one side. I have yet to see a study where fruit and vegetable intake, whole grains, fiber, does not decrease the risk of heart disease, and does not decrease the risk of cancer, and does not decrease the risk of all-cause mortality. And in fact, there was a meta-analysis, I can't remember the year it was done, but it was almost a million subjects between all the studies they put together. And they did what's called a meta-regression in there, which basically tries to form a dose response.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  And they found that for every 10 gram increase in fiber, there was a relative 10% decrease in the risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and all-cause mortality.

• 40:58Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Now, okay, gotta do a quick bit on relative risk, because people will hear that and go, "Oh, so I can just eat 100 grams of fiber a day and I'll never die?" It's not what that's saying. So relative risk means, let's say you're a 50-year-old person, and I don't know what the relative risk is, I'm just gonna throw a number out there. Let's say your absolute risk of developing cancer in the next 10 years is 10%, right? A relative risk reduction of 10% would be going from 10% to 9%. Absolute risk, right? A relative risk increase of, say, 50% would be going from 10% to 15%, right? So again, the relative risk sounds very, very sexy.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  But again, that's still a nice lever to pull, right? And especially when we look at specific cancers like colon cancer. I mean, that is pretty, like, over the top clear that fiber helps prevent colon cancer. And the other thing I'll say to people, my omnivores and my meat eaters out there, is hey, if you're going to eat meat, you definitely want to take in fiber. And there was actually a very, uh, one of my favorite studies out of Canada. They looked at, I think it was quartiles, so four different levels of meat intake, with four different levels of fruit and vegetable intake. At low intakes of fruits and vegetables, meat had a significant, meat intake had a significant association with cancer. But at high levels of fruit and vegetable intake, it didn't.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  What that tends to suggest is one of two things. Either fruit and vegetable intake is a proxy for overall diet quality. And so people who eat a lot of meat tend to have lower overall diet quality. But if you're eating more meat but also having a high diet quality, it doesn't appear to have the same risk. Or there are compounds in fruits and vegetables that offset whatever the risk is from meat. So again, like when the carnivores go all on this, you know, anti-fruit and vegetable, like, oh, well, if you want to validate your feelings about meat, you probably ought to be consuming fruits and vegetables as well.

• 43:07Rich Roll?

  Hmm, that was a good answer. That's a good answer.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  I'm glad you think so.

• 43:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 43:13Rich Roll?

  Here's one for you. Might be a little bit different, but it's something that I'm personally interested in, which is this idea that if you want to be good at burning fat, you need to be eating fat.

• 43:29Rich Roll?

  Now, as an endurance athlete who has a lot of experience with high-volume aerobic zone-two training, my personal N of 1 experience and my sense is that one's ability to burn fat as fuel has less to do, perhaps far less to do, with what you're eating and much more to do with how you're training because the fat-burning energy system is a result of your capacity to perform aerobic exercise. And with consistency and slow increase in

• 44:13Rich Roll?

  volume, you become very efficient at that, and that is what allows, you know, basically enhances your ability to utilize fat as your fuel source. How does that land?

• 44:26Speaker 01

  True. Also, eating a low-carb, high-fat diet will increase your fat oxidation. Now, the question is, why are we trying to increase fat oxidation? And if you're somebody who's an endurance athlete who's already really primed up that system, do you get a further effect from going very low-carb, very high-fat? And then what's the trade-off on that? So, I'm not as familiar with the endurance literature, but I'm gonna do my best, and I think I feel relatively comfortable discussing this. So, if you look at endurance exercise and the effects of a ketogenic diet, it's either neutral or negative. And it does seem that,

• 45:11Speaker 01

  like, once you get over a certain VO2 max, it's pretty significantly negative. And there's a pretty obvious reason as to why. Because once you get over a certain VO2 max, you are starting to use some of the glycolytic systems, right? And so, if you're not consuming any carbohydrate and you have low muscle glycogen...

• 45:32Speaker 01

  You're going to run out of energy and especially things like obviously like anaerobic exercise.

• 45:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, you just basically you can develop some proficiency at steady state, low end aerobic exercise, no problem. There might, there's certainly an adaptation period or whatever, but at some point you will be able to do that and do that well. What you will not be able to do is excel at any kind of higher gear. Once you get into an anaerobic state, so if you're going to do threshold work or tempo work, or you want to attack a hill on your bike, or you know, throw down an interval workout at the track or something like that, you're shit out of luck.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and there's, um, so there are like, for example, Zach Bitter is an example. He's a, by the way, actual like not crazy low carb person.

• 46:23Rich Roll?

  But he's, he's, he's really gone to the, I mean, he's really, you know, he's an incredible athlete and what he's done as an ultra runner is unbelievably impressive. And I know he's done it on like zero carbs and all that kind of stuff. Like it's, it's super interesting to look at, at his results.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  But again, he's never, no, it's okay. But he's never really approaching that upper end.

• 46:43Rich Roll?

  Right, because he's an ultra endurance athlete.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:45Rich Roll?

  He doesn't have to go fast. All he has to do is keep going.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. So, and I don't want to speak for Zach, but I do think he actually does eat some carbohydrate before he goes into a race, I think. So Zach, I apologize if I got that wrong. Um, now, when you look at like getting past that VO2 max level and you're into like where you're starting to flirt with some anaerobic stuff, or you're in a race and you're just trying to sprint, right? Ketones, while they can be used by mitochondria for oxidative, uh, respiration, they cannot be like anaerobic, exercise is anaerobic because you're not getting enough oxygen. And so that requires glucose.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  So if you're not eating any carbohydrate, I mean, you're going to run up your, you're going to run out of your stored muscle glycogen pretty quickly. And so.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  What I'll say is, there is some, like, at least my understanding is some sect of endurance exercise where they go, "Well, we're gonna train low, compete high," meaning they train on low carbohydrate, and then before a race, they load carbohydrate, because the idea is, "Well, I'm gonna train my fat-burning system," right, my fat-oxidation system, "but then I'm also gonna give myself enough muscle glycogen."

• 48:04Rich Roll?

  But then you're not training your high end.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  So that, I think there was a recent, actual study looking at this, that basically showed that there was no, there was no additional benefit, like, in terms of actual performance.

• 48:18Rich Roll?

  I don't know of any, maybe you do, I'm not saying there aren't any, but I don't know of any, like, Olympic-caliber, elite athletes who are excelling on that type of diet.

• 48:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, and then when you look at, like, the oxygen cost per unit of ATP produced, it's, while you produce more ATP per gram of fat than you do per gram of carbohydrate, you produce, I believe you produce more ATP per unit of oxygen with carbohydrate than you do with fat, which may actually be more relevant for the endurance athlete. So, all that to say, you know, if you're, if you're an ultra-endurance athlete, you probably can just kinda pick whichever one you like, right? If you're more in that, like, normal endurance athlete, now you're starting to flirt with

• 49:15Speaker 01

  possibly inhibiting your performance. If you're, like, resistance-training bodybuilder, you're a...

• 49:24Rich Roll?

  Or a sprinter, or a middle-distance athlete.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  You're a, you're a mixed martial artist, you know, somebody who has to do...

• 49:30Rich Roll?

  Anything that requires speed, power, agility, like, quickness, high-intensity efforts.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  Right. So, for those, it's probably not an optimal, an optimal approach. And then I will say, like, just to touch on this, because a lot of people in the low-carb kinda discipline will say, "Well, that's one of the benefits of keto, is you burn so much fat, right? And so you're gonna lose more fat." Well... The, yes, you burn more fat, but again, mechanisms versus outcomes. Burning fat is not the same thing as losing fat. Burning fat is part of the loss of body fat. But you are always simultaneously storing and burning fat at the same time. The relative rates of each will determine whether or not you are losing or gaining body fat.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  So, on a, for example, a high carbohydrate, low fat diet. Insulin's going to be higher. You won't be burning nearly as much fat. But carbohydrate almost exclusively has to be oxidized or stored as glycogen. It's not really stored, like, I think there was a, there was a study done with a metabolic tracer is looking at how much of carbohydrate or fat wound up in adipose tissue, in body fat. Less than 2% of the fat that was stored in body fat originated as carbohydrate. Over 98% originated as fat.

• 50:52Rich Roll?

  So what happened, there's that trope, like, oh, if you eat all these carbs, you're just going to store it as fat. If that's not the case, what is happening? Where are they going?

• 51:01Speaker 01

  So, let's take the two extreme examples. High carb, low fat diet. You're not burning as much fat, but you're also not storing very much fat. Now, a low carb, high fat diet, you're burning a lot of fat, but you're also simultaneously storing a lot of fat. And so what actually ends up determining whether or not you lose or gain body fat is energy balance. How many calories are you taking in? And some people, some people will say, well, see, that's why you don't want to do high carb and high fat. I'm like, well, that's just called high calorie. Like, that's, that's just high calories.

• 51:32Rich Roll?

  Eating a lot.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  Like, so, yeah, so, and, and if we look at the, the best meta-analysis we have on this is by Kevin Hall back in 2018. And they looked at 20 controlled feeding studies where they either were in a metabolic ward or food was provided to the participants. So adherence was very high, right? Because free living studies is kind of a crap shoot. And They ranged from low carb, high fat to low fat, high carb. And but the the one big caveat inclusion criteria was these diets were all equal in calories and protein. And that is important because obviously you got to equate calories if you're going to see who lost more fat.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  If there's a better approach and protein is thermogenic, we know this, it increases energy expenditure. So if you're having a higher protein diet and comparing it to a lower protein diet at same total calories. Sometimes we actually see a little bit more fat loss in a higher protein diet. The summation of these 20 plus studies was essentially no clinical difference between the two. The the low fat diets actually caused a little bit more loss of body fat. It equated to about 16 grams more loss of body fat per day. But again, I I wouldn't see that as really clinically significant. And if you were somebody who says, well, I can more easily stick to a low carb diet, then do that. But again, it's not superior.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  And every single study we have where they're equating protein and calories, looking at the actual loss of body fat. You just don't see differences between these diets.

• 53:12Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 53:15Rich Roll?

  But at a minimum, it kind of disabuses people of this idea that if you're going to eat a high carbohydrate diet, that you're headed for disaster.

• 53:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:24Rich Roll?

  You know, I eat a pretty high carbohydrate diet.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 53:28Rich Roll?

  But I'm exercising in a certain way and and I have enough experience knowing like I I fluctuate. You know, there are periods of time, whatever, but that seems to suit me pretty well. But I want to, sorry, go ahead.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Well, then you get into the people right now who are like wearing continuous glucose monitors like, oh, you don't want to ever spike your insulin and your glucose.

• 53:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's a whole other thing like I've experimented with that and it was certainly revealing. But I think having it on for a couple of weeks at a time is is plenty. Because you I easily could find myself trying to gamify it, which is going to drive unhealthy food choices. Because I just want to flatten that curve and any spike feels like a failure. And then you feel yourself starting to like, well, maybe I shouldn't eat those bananas or the, you know, all these foods that, you know, I've always.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Mind if I address this real quick? So I what I would tell people. Is be very careful equating short-term responses with long-term outcomes. And there's actually studies that show that short-term, actually, people who have a higher insulin response in the short term tend to, in the long term, have better insulin sensitivity. And let's just look at some other short-term responses that don't equate to long-term outcomes. Like, first of all, if you want to go that route, don't eat anything, because protein activates mTOR, and mTOR is overactive in cancer. Okay, well, what we're not talking about is that the mTOR response to protein ingestion is very truncated, it's an acute response and then it ends.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  Don't eat fat, because fat impedes flow-mediated dilation in the short term, and worse, flow-mediated dilation is a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. And you can't eat carbohydrate, because blood glucose takes insulin up, right?

• 55:14Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna photosynthesize.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 55:17Rich Roll?

  Like a good, plant-based person.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  Just lick some ice cubes, you know? And so, then, like, let's just take exercise, for example. So, Rich, if you didn't know anything about exercise, at all, and I said, "Rich, I'm gonna have you do something that's gonna increase your inflammation, increase your reactive oxygen species, it's gonna cause you to hurt, it's gonna increase your heart rate and your blood pressure..."

• 55:37Rich Roll?

  And your stress response.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:39Rich Roll?

  And your cortisol.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  What would you say?

• 55:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, let's avoid that.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, right, but, exercise does all those things, but in the long term, it actually improves those things. So, again, I would just tell people, be very careful about equating short-term responses with long-term outcomes, because the body doesn't really work that way.

• 55:58Rich Roll?

  Let's talk about protein. What do I need to know, as a plant-based person, about protein? Like I said, I've been plant-based for a very long time. I wouldn't say I'm a hyperresponder, but I've never had an issue, like, building or maintaining lean body mass, which has led me to not really think that much about protein. But, I'm 57 now, I'm actually, for the first time in decades...

• 56:29Rich Roll?

  In the gym in an intentional way. And so I'm thinking more about strength training than I have in the past.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, fill all those sleeves nicely.

• 56:38Rich Roll?

  Racing right now. So what do I need to know? What do I not need to know when it comes to my protein intake?

• 56:45Speaker 01

  Okay, so the first thing I would say, and again, as an omnivore who was sponsored by, you know, companies from animal protein.

• 56:52Rich Roll?

  Just the meat and dairy shill sitting across from me. Nobody can ever accuse me of not letting people who aren't plant-based on the podcast.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 57:00Rich Roll?

  Bullshit anyway, but go ahead.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  So the first thing I would say is you can absolutely build as much muscle on a plant-based diet as you can on an omnivorous diet that includes animal products. You're probably gonna have to be a little bit more diligent about how you get it. So let's, let's talk about what are the considerations, the downsides to plant-based for protein? The first one is that plant-based sources of proteins, they do have all the amino acids. There's no, that's utterly devoid of any amino acid.

• 57:31Rich Roll?

  Right, we've, we've had this whole wave of, you know, oh, the incomplete protein versus the complete protein, and then the debunking of that. And then that kind of morphed into bioavailability concerns. So, sorry, go ahead.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  That's okay. The amino acid composition of most plant sources of protein isn't as good as, say, animal sources. When I, when I say good, what I mean is, there tend to be lower in like the branched chain amino acids, leucine in particular, right? Which is the, which is the stimulus for initiating muscle protein synthesis, what I did a lot of my research on. And so you typically, to get, now, we did show that if you eat enough of the plant protein overall, that at a certain level, you get the same response, right? So I'm, I'm thinking of a study we did, now, this is in rodents, but it was later validated in humans as well.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  We fed three levels of wheat protein versus whey protein, 10%, 20%, and 30% from calories. And at 10%, we saw a pretty big difference in the protein synthesis response. At 20%, there was a small difference. At 30%, there was no difference. So once you got over a certain threshold, you're maxing out the response. And so at a certain level, the plant protein becomes just as good.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  That's because you're kind of getting enough total either branched chains, leucine, essential amino acids. The other consideration is what you mentioned, the bioavailability. So intact plant sources of protein, the protein can be bound up in some of the fibrous material of the plant, and so it's less accessible for digestive enzymes. Now, cooking can increase the bioavailability in a lot of cases, but it still usually isn't quite, probably about, I don't want to generalize, but probably like 10, 20% below like animal based sources of protein. Now, what I'll say to people is, first off, let's talk about the goal of the person, right?

• 59:39Speaker 01

  Because not everybody wants to be the most muscular human being they can be, right? If the goal is to be the most muscular, strongest person you can be, and you're trying to optimize your muscle mass, right? The research says, you know, 1.6 to 2.4 grams per kilogram of body weight, you know, and most of the research says 1.6 is probably good enough. There is some, there are some studies suggesting maybe that the, the max benefit is higher than that, but I would certainly feel comfortable in saying you get the vast majority of-

• 1:00:11Rich Roll?

  And the RDA is like 0.7, right?

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  0.8. 0.8 grams per kilogram. So you get most of the benefits by going up to like 1.6 per grams, a kilo, per kilogram. So that's the straight down the line answer, and I will tell you what I do, right? As somebody who is trying to be the most muscular human I can be, my protein intake's probably somewhere up around like 2.5 grams per kilogram.

• 1:00:34Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  Now, part of that is just, again, my personal bias of being a protein guy, right? I enjoy protein, and there's no, you'll have some people who argue with me on this, but really, there's not very much evidence that there's downsides to that level of intake. And so- I consume probably more than I need to in terms of maximizing muscle mass. So if we look at that like 1.6 ish grams per kilogram. Can you build muscle on less than that? Yeah, of course you can, right? Like you can build muscle on the RDA for protein. You won't build as much, but you can. And so the question becomes like, kind of what's the goal? Right?

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  And so if somebody's is their goal is I just want to build a little bit of muscle and maintain what I have or whatnot. Well, then, you know, you probably don't have to eat that much protein. And it's just more about your resistance training. But if somebody wants to build as much muscle as possible, probably getting above 1.6, you know, 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight. Now, if you-

• 1:01:42Rich Roll?

  Assuming they're putting in enough training-

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:01:45Rich Roll?

  -to put that to use, right? My understanding was always, and perhaps this is totally wrong, was that once you meet your body's protein requirements, any excess beyond that isn't really doing what you think it might be doing. To put in the most general terms.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  So here comes the devil's advocate argument, right? So the RDA for protein, the way it's established is, well, there's some new ways, but the way it was originally established is through what's called nitrogen balance studies. So basically, protein and amino acids are unique in that they're the only macromolecule that contains nitrogen. And so typically, the weight of amino acids or protein is about 16% nitrogen. And so if you know how much protein someone's taking in, you also know about how much nitrogen they're taking in. And then you can capture what's coming out in sweat, feces, and urine. And so when they do those studies, what they're looking at is, okay, How much is going in? How much is coming out?

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  And where does it get balanced? Right? Like where is it? Where is? Where are you eating enough protein? That you're at least at a balance of where what's coming out is the same as what's going in? And then they basically added a couple of standard deviations above that and put it at 0.8 grams per kilogram. And so some people have said, well, that maintains nitrogen balance. And, you know, at the rate you build muscle, it's like five to 10 extra grams of protein a day. So just add that protein. So just add that to the RDA, right? Well, the rub on that is what it takes to maximize protein synthesis

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  to create the demand to build that muscle is disproportionate. Meaning you, in order to build like optimal or like the most muscle you can, you have to maximize the synthetic response. You end up wasting a lot, wasting a lot of amino acids in that process because they get oxidized. But they're still needed in order to meet that threshold to create the protein turnover that drives that. And so are you familiar with an asymptote?

• 1:04:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  Okay. So basically like if it's, if we're talking about descending numbers, it's a lot, it's something, it keeps getting closer to zero.

• 1:04:13Rich Roll?

  Approaching zero that never reaches zero.

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  Never gets there. And you can also kind of do it in the opposite direction, right? So I look at protein intake as I think it's probably kind of like an asymptote. Like you get the vast majority on that front end of the curve. And then at a certain point.

• 1:04:29Rich Roll?

  The marginal gains on the far reaches of it. I understand, I get it.

• 1:04:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:33Rich Roll?

  Um, here's a weird one.

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:35Rich Roll?

  But I've never really gotten a good answer for this.

• 1:04:37Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:04:39Rich Roll?

  Proteins are the assemblage of amino acids. There are nine essential amino acids. Those are the amino acids our bodies can't make on their own. And we require them from the food that we eat. Why is it that we can't just supplement with amino acids? Like, take tablets with these amino acids in them and call it a day? Like, why do we have to consume protein as opposed to individual amino acids? And why is it that these proteins are best served and utilized in the matrix of a whole food?

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  If you wanted to just take essential amino acids, you probably could do that.

• 1:05:19Rich Roll?

  So you could just take those in capsule form and not worry about... Like, is your body having a different... Like, I have to believe that if you're eating protein in a whole food, that there's something about that that's qualitatively different than supplementing with amino acids.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  I mean, there's no real long-term studies on this, so we can't really know what the outcomes would be. But in terms of muscle protein synthesis, I mean, it doesn't seem to be real different. If you give enough essential amino acids, you get the same response. Now, I would say in capsule form, it's gonna be a lot of capsules, because I think what maximizes protein synthesis at a meal is something like 10 to 15 grams of essential amino acids. So that'd be a lot of capsules. But one of the things I do tell, for example, like vegans, is you could probably just add some essential amino acid if you didn't want to worry about, like, you know, combining protein sources and all these different things. Could probably do that, where you're taking in some essential amino acids and, you know, covering your bases.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  I would say, like, if you're not gonna do that and you wanna be, you know, straight down the line vegan, you know, no fish, no dairy, and you're looking to try and, like, get a high protein level, you probably would do well to, like, supplement with some kind of vegan protein powder. Because the isolated protein powders, they're gonna have a higher bioavailability than the intact plant proteins. So that is, like, one thing that people can do that would help them get a little bit more protein. And people make a big deal about, like, "Oh, soy is gonna give you man boobs." There's several meta-analyses now that show that soy doesn't affect the sex hormones.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  Even up to like two or three servings a day. So I'm not really worried about that.

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  So, you know.

• 1:07:08Rich Roll?

  I've been eating tofu and tempeh forever.

• 1:07:12Rich Roll?

  Well, the big thing also with vegans and protein is this idea of leucine and meeting the leucine threshold, which is basically like, what is it, like two and a half grams a day? And this notion that it's going to be very challenging as a plant-based person to meet that requirement, whereas it's very easy as an omnivore to do that. And like anything, there's probably a kernel of truth in that. But there are plenty of plant foods that are, you know, have adequate amounts of leucine in them. But to your point of supplementing with a protein powder, my counsel would be to find one that has an adequate amount of leucine in it.

• 1:07:53Rich Roll?

  And I think brown and pea, like the brown rice pea protein combination seems to do a pretty good job with that.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think those are usually around 8% leucine, something like that, which is similar to a lot of animal sources of protein. Whey tends to be the richest in leucine. It's like 11 or 12%.

• 1:08:11Rich Roll?

  Right, which is part of the whole like whey is superior thing. Although, are you hearing about like the corn protein products that are coming to market? They're actually very, they're higher in leucine than whey.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're about 12% leucine, the corn protein isolate. I can't remember which, but I think they are like very low in another essential amino acid. But again, you can always combine, right? Actually, one of the best plant sources of like the essential amino acid profile is potato protein. But it's just really hard to find. But it's, I think it also tastes pretty bad. But the, it's got like 10 grams of leucine, or 10% leucine, and pretty heavy in the essential amino acids. So there are options out there. And so, yeah, I mean, like I would tell anybody, you can build muscle and you can optimize muscle on a plant-based diet.

• 1:09:07Speaker 01

  It might require, I would say now it's a lot easier because of all the supplements.

• 1:09:11Rich Roll?

  It's really not that. I think that that gets overplayed. Like you're gonna have to really think of it. It's like, I've been doing this long enough. I don't think about it that much. It's not that difficult, I would say.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  I would say, I would agree with you that the difficulty gets overblown.

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  And, you know, I think that that's kind of people just, you know, wanting to justify their own way they do things.

• 1:09:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think there's this idea that it's, it's, it's, it's going to be really expensive. It's going to be unbelievably time consuming. You're going to be doing all your meal prep. I don't do any of these things like, and, um, and I don't even supplement with plant-based protein that much. Like, I do it, but I do it as a supplement, not as a replacement. And I think, you know, I didn't really fully answer the leucine question, but if you are concerned about leucine, you can find it in lentils and beans and seeds and nuts. And of course, they're not going to be in as high amounts or percentages as they're going to be in animal products. But if you make those foods part of your kind of daily or average routine, I don't think you're going to be leucine deficient. You may disagree, I don't know.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  No, I don't think I would disagree. Um, I will say there is some interesting research literature. And again, this is just all short-term responses. So we wouldn't, we, we don't have long-term literature on like the muscle building effects. But they did, they did do a study where they basically matched protein. And I want to say somehow they matched the leucine content from plant sources versus kind of a mixed meal, an omniform meal. And they saw, still saw like a higher response in a bigger area under the curve of the, the, the mixed meal.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  And so there's some like, talk about maybe there's the bioavailability, or there's a sequestering of essential amino acids with plant-based proteins. I'm, I'm not sure how to biochemically explain that. But I would say, again, if we look at the outcome data, if you're just eating enough total protein, you're, you're going to be okay.

• 1:11:38Rich Roll?

  What would your advice be to somebody who is plant-based or predominantly plant-based is enjoying it in terms of things to look out for, things to pay attention to beyond the protein thing that we just talked about?

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  Uh, I would say, you know, if you're straight vegan, I would say maybe supplement with some omega threes, you know, um, there seem to be some, some pretty strong evidence for healthful effects of omega three fatty acids. Um, and I honestly, like, if I had, if I had to, I did a video on this. I'm like, if I had to pick between plant-based or doing carnivore, like the two kind of extreme or vegan versus carnivore, I'd do vegan because there's a lot more flexibility in that. And there's a lot like there's fiber. So I think, like you said, the, the worry about, you know, vegans and nutritional deficiencies.

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  I mean, people worry about B12, right? People worry about iron. Um, but I mean, you can take a multivitamin. Like there's, these are not complicated problems to solve, you know? And I think this, this is, um, one of the things I just don't understand where people kind of go, well, you could be deficient in this and all different diet tribes do this.

• 1:12:52Rich Roll?

  Your, your diet, there's something wrong with your diet because you have to supplement with B12.

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:12:57Rich Roll?

  But I think anybody, no matter what diet you're on, if you do a blood panel, like not everything is going to be fully optimized. You know, it's like everybody can benefit from some, you know, sound, intelligent supplementation. Otherwise you wouldn't be taking protein powder and doing all that, you know, it's, it's, I just think that's a straw man argument.

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, it's kind of like the naturalism fallacy, right? And one of the things I'll tell people is like, well, you know, our ancestors were really just worried about surviving long enough to pass on genetic material. It wasn't really worrying about like optimizing our health and human function, you know? And, um, again, I just, I go back to the fact that, okay, well, you can supplement. And I mean, most people are low in vitamin D. Um, I would say the vast majority of people are probably low in vitamin D. Right? So does that mean that all of our diets are bad?

• 1:13:52Rich Roll?

  Everybody's diet is terrible.

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  Right. So, you know, I think that there are. There's, I tell people, like, there's some low hanging fruit that you can do with some supplementation that, to me, makes sense. I mean, like, creatin monohydrate's an example of that. Because, I mean, everybody, a lot of people know about the muscle building and the strength benefits, and even some endurance benefits, but what people don't know is there's research coming out now with a lot of cognitive benefits around creatin. So there's some pretty, like, low hanging fruit that people can do with some things out there that would improve things. I just don't see the... And again, people do say, "Well, you can get creatin in meat." And I'm like, "Okay, well, let's talk about how much meat you would need, all right?" Because people go, "Well, I think there's like, um, you know, you'd have to get like,

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  two, three pounds of meat or something like that to get five grams of creatin." And I'm like, "Okay, but these studies where they supplement with five grams and see benefits, are those people not eating meat at all?" Okay, so, all right, so it's actually probably more than that five grams you think out of meat. And oh, by the way, when you cook it, it actually degrades about half of the creatin, so you don't need two or three pounds, you need more like four or five pounds, right? So it's actually much harder to get than you might think. And again, why are we having this discussion? You could just go buy a bottle of the stuff, and it's cheap and easy to find. Like, I've seen this on both sides, right? But it just seems kind of like a silly argument, that this, this like,

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  "Well, if my diet needs less supplementation, it must be the best diet ever."

• 1:15:29Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, like I said, that's a straw, man. I do have to ask you about your thoughts on Christopher Gardner's twin study and the Netflix series. You've had some choice thoughts about this. So explain your, or maybe explain what the twin study was and your take on this.

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  Okay, so I'm gonna be going off of memory on this one. So, Chris, if I get something wrong, I apologize. But I think, in general, I have a good understanding of the study. So first off, people are like, "This study sucks." I'm like, "No, it's actually a great study. I liked the study. I thought it was a cool idea." I mean, getting twins like that, I mean, you're minimizing, you know, genetic variability, and you're kind of, you know, each set has its own control. I thought that was cool. They provided food to the participants. I thought that was great. You know, I know in the latter half, or sorry, I think in the first half, everything was provided and in the latter half, they were more free living.

• 1:16:26Rich Roll?

  I think that's right.

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:27Rich Roll?

  Dividing the groups between omnivore and plant-based.

• 1:16:31Speaker 01

  Right. And so, you know, I saw, I believe they showed, you know, better improvements in blood lipids with the plant-based. And then there was a couple of other things that they saw improvements in with the plant-based versus the omnivore diet. Now, the, my, this isn't a criticism of the study. This is pointing out limitations and overinterpretations of the study. So, and actually, I had a nice comment from one of the researchers who did it on the Instagram posts I did. So that was nice. But there was a, quite a bit lower

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  amount of saturated fat in the plant-based diet. And there was a greater amount of polyunsaturated fat and more fiber, right? All those things are going to help lower LDL more. And they were, it wasn't statistically different, but there was about a 200 calorie difference between the groups. And they did see a little bit more weight loss in the, in the vegan group or the plant-based group. And when I do the math, it's about a 200 calorie, you know, difference. So, here's one side of that view, is that a plant-based diet makes it easier to eat low saturated fat, high polyunsaturated fat, and higher fiber. I

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  agree. The other side of that is a lot of people are overinterpreting this as there is something inherent about animal products that makes them unhealthy. And I would say that's probably not true in terms of if we could, if we would have equated like saturated fat, polyunsaturated fats, and fiber between the groups.

• 1:18:16Speaker 01

  I don't think we would have seen much difference. But again, if you have free living people and you're telling them, hey, eat plant based or eat omnivore, it probably is easier to get those different aspects. And so my, my, not criticism, but my, what I was trying to get people to understand is, hey, it makes sense why they found this. Okay. Like when you look at the differences in these, the fatty acids and the fiber content, it makes sense why they found what they found. So it's, there's very good reasons for this and it's nothing magical about it. But it doesn't mean that it's not a relevant finding.

• 1:19:01Speaker 01

  Again, my, my problems were the over interpretation of some of that research.

• 1:19:08Rich Roll?

  But who's doing the over interpretation? I mean, my whole thing, when I saw your take was that, like to your point of this isn't magic, it makes sense, of course, they're eating lower saturated fat, they're eating more fiber. So their blood markers, their lipids, their health outcomes, all of that are going to be better than the other group. And my whole thing is, well, isn't that the point? Like you're making their point for them, which is that this is a healthier way to eat because by its very nature, it's lower in saturated fat and higher in dietary fiber, which of course is, it doesn't have to be magic. It just is what it is. And whether or not like there's anything to vilify about animal proteins or animal

• 1:19:53Rich Roll?

  products is really beside the point. Like if you're creating an environment where this is what people are eating and it's crowding out other bad habits, it's going to drive better health outcomes.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  So I love that you're challenging me on this. And so my, my response to this would be, so the same way that omnivores or people who are very pro animal product will say, well, see if you're going to get, if you're going to build muscle on a vegan diet, it's got to be much more, you know, you can do it, but you gotta do a lot more work. Okay, can go the other way too. You could probably still get low saturated fat, high fiber, high polyunsaturated fat on that omnivore diet, you know, eating things like fish, you know, very lean sources of protein.

• 1:20:37Rich Roll?

  Either eating less meat or eating different types of meat and eating more cruciferous vegetables and all these other things that are higher in fiber.

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  Right, so in that aspect, now, on this side, you're gonna have to do more planning and more work, right? So the same thing does apply, right? So I don't disagree with you on any of that. I guess like my point would be, if you plan appropriately enough, you can do it, but it does require some work. And so, again, that's the, I try to be intellectually honest about this, whereas like some people over on this camp will be like, well, vegan diet takes so much planning to make sure you're getting all, you don't really hear me saying that a whole lot with specific instances, but then, okay, well, on this thing, like to get enough fiber, because I eat about 60 grams of fiber a day, it does take some planning. Like, I do have to like purposely make sure I'm eating quite a bit of fruits and vegetables.

• 1:21:29Rich Roll?

  Sure, but if you're, if you're controlling for calories and you're increasing your fiber, which means you're increasing your vegetables, dark leafy greens, all that kind of stuff, that's gonna cut into the amount of animal products that you're eating. So by, by definition, that will have to be reduced, yes?

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  Well, you're, again, gonna have to do a lot of planning, right? And if you are, like, I have a little bit more easy time because I'm eating 3,400 calories a day, right? So I can get a lot of fiber in and still have room for, you know, lean meats and those sorts of things. But your average person who maybe is trying to eat 1,500 calories or 1,800 calories a day, might have a harder time.

• 1:22:10Rich Roll?

  Sure, I get it, I get it. I think I'm looking at it from the perspective of the average, everyday person in a food environment that is kind of leading them towards heart disease, diabetes, all of these chronic lifestyle ailments. And they're going to lunch, it's one o'clock on a workday, and they're with their colleague, and they sit down, and they have a choice, like, am I gonna get this or the, you know, like, in just a real world, like, tangible context, and just say, Hey, listen, if you swap these things out and you just eat this instead, without thinking about it, you're going to reduce your saturated fat intake, you're going to increase your fiber. We've seen from this twin study and other, you know, all kinds of studies out there that, you know, overall, by and large, and I'm saying, yes, there are trade offs, yes, it's complicated.

• 1:22:52Rich Roll?

  Yes, you can do this in a number of different ways, that this might be a good option to consider. That's all.

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  And so, like, I agree, what I would do is I would zoom out a little bit, which is, I think, a lot of times, we get caught up in what is the best diet? And we're looking at the X's and O's. We also have to take into account, what are people consistently executing? So what I'll say, hey, if you like a plant-based diet, you can consistently stick to that. You know, and you're doing it the right way, because you can do, you can do a good plant-based diet.

• 1:23:27Rich Roll?

  Of course, 100%, I'm with you 100% on that.

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  Because, you know, if you're getting plant-based Oreo cookies.

• 1:23:35Rich Roll?

  It's never been easier to be like, the worst, you know, most unhealthy, plant-based person ever.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  But the same goes for low carb too, because you can go to the grocery store and get keto ice cream that has more calories than the normal ice cream, right? So there's a, there's a right way to do both of those, and a wrong way. Because, what is the reason that somebody, for whatever reason, plant-based clicked for them and they were able to be really consistent with it? Whereas another person struggles with it, they go on a low carb, all of a sudden they're consistent with it. Or they do intermittent fasting, all of a sudden they're consistent with it. They do calorie counting, all of a sudden they're consistent with it. So, what I'll say is, I want to zoom out just a little bit, and go, alright, we know there are benefits to higher fiber, these sorts of things. But we also have to look at, what can people be consistent with?

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  And, by the way, no diet stands out from another diet in terms of what people are consistent with and sustain. But the one thing I will say is, hey, I mean, as an athlete, you know, this consistency is way more important than perfection, right? And so, most diets fail, not because somebody didn't have the right, they didn't get their B12, or they didn't, it's because they stopped doing it.

• 1:24:46Rich Roll?

  They abandoned it.

• 1:24:47Speaker 01

  Right. And so, you know, if it's plant-based for somebody, heck yeah. And I would always say, like, plant-based means mostly plants, right? And so I would argue that most people should be Eating plants relatively heavily, you know, even for people who are omnivore. If you choose to be omnivore, you still need to be eating a lot of plants and fruits and vegetables. Right. Because we've already talked about the benefits of fiber. But again, I go back to, all right, what can somebody consistently execute? And if that's plant-based, awesome. But I'm also willing to hold out that, hey, if somebody loses 50, 100 pounds on a low carb diet, and they tried all these other things, and for whatever reason, that clicked with the algorithm in their head,

• 1:25:32Speaker 01

  I hold that open too. I look at this stuff as kind of tools in a tool belt. Right. And when we look at long-term, like kind of, and now I'm kind of specifically talking about weight loss. Right. We look at long-term weight loss studies. They see really no differences long-term between any of these popular diets. But when they stratify them for adherence, there's a linear effect. Right. So again, kind of going back to, you have to do some form of dietary restraint in order to get results, right? Whether it's counting calories, whether it's plant-based, whether it's low carb, intermittent fasting, whatever have you.

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  But probably pick the form of restriction that feels the least restrictive for you. Like you talked about, like, plant-based feels easy for you. You don't have to think about it. You do it. It feels easy.

• 1:26:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't know that it was easy in the beginning, but it's easy now.

• 1:26:29Speaker 01

  Well, any change.

• 1:26:30Rich Roll?

  It's just like any change that you make, you have to understand that it's going to be uncomfortable. And you have to weather that discomfort because you're being deprived of the things that you crave and that you're used to. But there is light at the end of the tunnel, like those cravings dissipate. You acclimate to this new environment. And what used to feel like a heavy lift now is second nature. I mean, that's just, that's like any behavioral change. I do want to, why don't we take this opportunity to shift gears a little bit?

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:59Rich Roll?

  When I think of the work that you do and kind of how you equate yourself online, you're a good faith actor. You know, there's a lot of misinformation out there. There's a lot of bad actors who are prone to. You know, the influences and the incentives of the internet to make wild claims. And you're very quick to call these people out. You're not tribal in any way. Like you'll call it like you see it across the board, no matter the tribe. And just as a little bit of backdrop, you know, I've been podcasting for over 11 years at this point. I've been plant-based for 16, coming on 17 years.

• 1:27:38Rich Roll?

  And as the podcast has matured from something that barely anybody listened to, to a pretty large platform, I've tried my best to shoulder the responsibility that comes with that, to be really discerning in who the guests are that I host. And I've made mistakes in the past. I think I've done some good as well. But I think one thing that I spent a lot of time thinking about is who the people are that I invite on the show and what that means and the impact that that's having on a very large audience. And I'm not sure I can say the same for a lot of other people out there with large platforms who will go directly towards the incentives to host anybody who's got the

• 1:28:22Rich Roll?

  next hot take or the reductive claim that's very binary and simplistic. And I think it's important that there are policemen out there like yourself to right wrongs and, you know, correct the record. I don't know if that's a losing battle. Like, you know, do you feel optimistic about, you know, the future of information, the information landscape, not just respect to diet and nutrition and fitness, but overall? Like, this is a kind of plight on humankind. And I would imagine there are despairing moments where you feel like, am I just shouting into the void? And I'm here to tell you that you're not. Like, I think you really are doing good. And I think it's a real public service.

• 1:29:04Speaker 01

  Thank you. You know, we've chatted a little bit, you know, via email and whatnot. And I think it's very obvious that both of, both you and I have, we just want to help. Like, we just want to try and get some good information out there. And, you know, I was on a podcast a few months ago with a friend of mine, and he described it as a fire hose of information coming at people.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  And I think you have to almost reframe it, or I have to reframe how I'm approaching this because there's probably no winning, you know what I mean? In terms of for every, you know, thing I swat down, here comes 100 more, right? And if you saw my DMs from people sending me things, I mean, it's, it, it really is like, I kind of have to triage with it, right? What is the most damaging information? What can I make a little bit entertaining so that I can get some eyeballs? And what can I provide some good education on? And so I kind of look at it as, I don't know if there's winning.

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  This is kind of like an infinite game. I, I just look at it as I'm going to try and do what I can to make the information sexy as I can without being clickbaity and entertaining. And hopefully over time, I'll help equip more people with the tools to discern this stuff for themselves. And one of the things I have a great passion of talking about is kind of not just, hey, here's the information. It's trying to teach a way of thinking. And I was lucky enough to have a really great PhD advisor who really, I mean politely crushed

• 1:30:58Speaker 01

  a lot of my biases. And I think it was very useful for me because I got used and okay with being wrong and changing my mind. And, um, you know, I think when it comes to human beings, and we were talking off air before we got on about how just everything gets so politicized these days. And people get so tribal about stuff, right down to nutrition. I mean, you see this, somebody. Try something, it works a little bit for them and all of a sudden that must be the best thing ever and everybody's got to do it. And they're almost like, you know, a religious cult going around trying to convert other people. And I think, I don't know if there's

• 1:31:42Speaker 01

  a way to fix that per se, because I think humans are kind of tribal by nature. And that was something, you know, 10,000 years ago, kept us safe. Because you wanted to be in your tribe and not like the other tribe. Now, it's creating kind of a disservice to ourselves. Because even when it, take nutrition information off the table, anything people get tribal about, sports teams, people get in fights, people kill each other over sports. Um, you know, politics goes without saying.

• 1:32:20Rich Roll?

  Sure. Politics and religion are obviously at the top.

• 1:32:23Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:32:24Rich Roll?

  Uh, but I would put nutrition, a close third.

• 1:32:27Speaker 01

  It's, it's up there.

• 1:32:28Rich Roll?

  And I'm always wondering, like, why is nutrition so inflammatory for people? Like, the way that people get their backs up and get defensive and the kind of warring that you see going on around the various nutrition tribal cults out there, is kind of fascinating from an anthropological perspective.

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:48Rich Roll?

  But also confusing. Like, why is nutrition so intense for people?

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  Um, I think, so part of it may be that, you know, people, the, the amount of people who are religious has gone down. But that sort of like mindset of kind of buying in all into something.

• 1:33:10Rich Roll?

  Nutrition has replaced the God-sized hole in people's spirit and soul.

• 1:33:14Speaker 01

  Right. Like, that's, that's something that we've, you know, something to believe in. Give me something to believe in, right? Um, and I think the, another thing I've thought about a lot is, and I had this thought about when I meet people. And like, if I'm out with friends and meeting new people or at a party or something like that, and somebody said, what do you do? And I start to explain it, you know, Everyone has an opinion on nutrition. If I tell you I'm a theoretical physicist and I study string theory, I mean, we might have a short conversation, but most people aren't going to challenge me too much or really go down the rabbit hole with string theory, right? For the most part, you're just going to listen as I try to explain it. But if we talk about nutrition,

• 1:33:59Speaker 01

  everyone has a personal experience and belief system they've developed around it because everyone eats. And so regardless of, and they have made some association between something they've ate and something that's happened. And so I think that kind of makes it to where people have really strong opinions, but don't understand like the physiology behind everything. And so you have a lot of really strong uninformed opinions out there.

• 1:34:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we all have our anecdotal experience and we tend to overindex on the importance of that and how much can be extrapolated from that to apply to the general public. And if somebody has had an experience in which they lost a tremendous amount of weight or they had some kind of, you know, epiphany as a result of making a significant dietary change and that has affected them positively, obviously they're going to want to share that and I'm no different. I've done that, you know? I've had that experience and I have evangelized. But the more that I learn about nutrition science, and I know only a very little, the more humility I have developed around the complexity of it.

• 1:35:13Rich Roll?

  And, you know, you've been, you know, a real voice of reason in that and helping me to appreciate just how complex these systems are and perhaps how little can be extrapolated from the N of one personal experience to the broader public. And when it comes to finding a way to communicate that, personally, I've sort of pulled back on any kind of advice that I give. I'm happy to share my experience or something that I've, you know, directly, you know, I have direct experience with, but I tend to avoid general proclamations about what people should or should not do.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's funny because I had somebody send me a video. I forget who it was, but it was just somebody like kind of describing their personal experience. And I was like, I'm not going to call this out. And they were like, why not? I'm like, somebody's allowed to talk about their personal experience. But when they make, again, generalized claims around a personal experience, or say it's, you know, best because of X, Y, Z, that's a totally different thing, right? But if you're just describing it, I'll give you an example. Somebody asked me the other day, hey, do you eat more calories on days you train versus days you don't? And I go, yeah, but there's no evidence that that actually makes a difference. Like, if you're balancing out the weekly calorie intake. And they go, what do you do it then? I go, I just like it better.

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  And they're like, there's no scientific... No, I just, I kind of got doing that for my bodybuilding days. Because, you know, when I got started, all you had was the bodybuilding magazines. And so they would say, you know, eat a lot on days you train and eat less on days you don't. And that was kind of my bias. And so I just got in that habit and I just kept that habit. But I'm like, if you don't want to do it, and if you feel good just eating the same thing every day, then do that, you know?

• 1:37:03Rich Roll?

  Very dissatisfying response for that person, I would imagine.

• 1:37:06Speaker 01

  I know, everybody gets so upset that like, I want some, give me some trick, some hack, you know?

• 1:37:11Rich Roll?

  Well, when it comes to helping people better discern fact from fiction and bad actors from good actors, let's talk a little bit about what some of the red flags are. I mean, to me, it generally begins with a sort of outrageous claim on the heels of a statement that goes something like, everything you've ever heard or been taught is wrong. They're lying to you. And there's just this one thing that you need to do that is kind of counterintuitive. But if you do it, all your problems will magically disappear.

• 1:37:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's, that's one of the influencer formulas out there, right? I think...

• 1:37:54Speaker 01

  That is really appealing to people because this idea of like secret knowledge, you know, that that people who are getting results, there must be some kind of secret they have to have gotten the results that they've gotten. And quite frankly, it works. I mean, people buy it. But you know, you you've been a very high level athlete, right? And my guess is there wasn't a whole lot of magic in it. It was just a lot of repeated consistent work. Like, obviously, I'm sure you had, you know, good coaches and those sorts of things and had a good game plan to follow. But the magic you're looking for is in the work you're trying to avoid for the most part.

• 1:38:33Rich Roll?

  All the gains are in the the least sexy stuff ever. And you know that, you know, as a powerlifter and bodybuilder for many, many years, has been training forever. There's just no way around it. And nutrition is obviously fundamental to your progress as an athlete. But there isn't any kind of magic secrecy to that at all.

• 1:38:55Speaker 01

  I wish there was.

• 1:38:56Rich Roll?

  Everything is about consistency, obviously. But there is something about the the kind of primate human brain that lights up when it's been told that there is this thing that's hiding, you know, behind the curtain, and I'm going to tell you what it is, that gives people a sense of agency and excitement, makes them feel special, that overrides that that, you know, default to good judgment and and experience, you know?

• 1:39:28Speaker 01

  We believe what we want to believe. And it is, especially when it comes to like, you you kind of pointed out, the conspiracy aspect of they're lying to you. It's the food companies and the government conspired together and they made you sick. And then they that's a very sexy thing for people, because nobody wants to believe that their actions led to them being in a

• 1:39:53Rich Roll?

  Right, it wasn't your responsibility.

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  Right. And, you know, on a on a broader scale, when I got into grad school, it's interesting how the arc of my thinking has gone. Got to grad school very much in the camp of not completely all the way there, but close of if you're obese, it's because you're lazy and you're just not diligent or disciplined enough. And then the more I was just around people, you know, when you're young, you get very black and white and you have very strong opinions and you just haven't had life kick you in the teeth enough, you know? And I realized, one, there were things, I was very disciplined as an athlete for nutrition, for scholastics, but there was other things in my life I was very undisciplined about.

• 1:40:37Speaker 01

  And I, oh, why didn't that translate? Right? And then I kind of took that back out and thought, look at all these obese people who are very successful in other aspect of their life. It can't just be laziness, right? And I think what people have a real difficult time with is, I think Will Smith said this, they try to tie like fault and responsibility together. And if it's something else's fault, someone else's fault, it should be their responsibility to fix it. And the reality is, as human beings, and you can apply this to almost anything, it may

• 1:41:17Speaker 01

  not be your fault for where you wind up, but it's gonna be your responsibility to deal with ramifications and fix it. And I mean, a great example of this is, I was bullied really badly growing up and it led me in personal relationships to be extremely defensive, which if you read anything about personal relationships, that is one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, right? And it really, even with friendships, made it hard for me to receive feedback from people. It felt like an attack. And so, I can blame it on the fact that I was bullied by my peers horrifically growing up, but that doesn't help anything now. I have to do the work to fix that.

• 1:42:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:42:02Speaker 01

  And same thing with, you look at obesity, you know?

• 1:42:07Speaker 01

  There's this kind of this trope going around that, well, the government put out the food guide pyramid and then everybody got way more sick and way more fat. And I'm like, listen, I'm not the biggest fan of the government, okay? I'm, I consider myself an independent, but I'd probably be a fiscal conservative, I would say. So I'm not the biggest fan of the government. But this idea that they wanted to make everybody sick and stuff, like, the government's just made out of people, like you and me, you know?

• 1:42:34Rich Roll?

  And nobody followed the guidelines anyway. So there's no adherence to that. So that's the overlooked kind of key thing in the whole, that conspiracy.

• 1:42:43Speaker 01

  You said it. They pick out the one thing. Increase your intake of starches. We did do that, but it also said, exercise, control your calories, don't do added sugars, added oils. So we did like, one thing out of 10 that the government, you know, recommended. And then people go, oh, see, it made us sick. And, I mean, not really. We just, you know, people love to be able to blame stuff. A lot of it is just mindset in terms of growth versus being stuck. You know, it feels good in the short term to be able to say, wasn't my fault. It was this thing, it was that thing that I didn't have control over. But

• 1:43:25Speaker 01

  the problem is, if, if that's true, then what can you do about it? Right? But if your mindset is, well, it is my responsibility, then you actually have some autonomy and freedom that you can make those changes. And the thing I'll tell people is like, hey, I'm not saying this stuff isn't hard. It is absolutely hard. And I mean, I'm sure you can attest to as a recovering addict, like, it's very, very difficult. But at the end of the day, a lot of people are able to do it. Therefore, it can be done. And we need to empower people.

• 1:44:07Speaker 01

  I just don't know how much the kind of like portrayal of victimhood really helps. You know what I mean? I think being empathetic to people and saying, okay, this, you know, this isn't necessarily your fault. And actually, when I talk about like the bio lane way of coaching with our coaching team, we always say you have to have two very important things for effective coaching. Empathy and accountability. They have to coexist. Because if you're just doing empathy, there's no impetus for change. If you're just doing accountability and you're like the drill sergeant, you know, people end up not being honest with you, they tune you out, right? You have to have both.

• 1:44:49Speaker 01

  You have to be able to say, to tell someone, you know, understand why it happened or like if they, you know, if somebody goes off the rails of their diet or something like that. You know, our coach is being able to say, okay, I understand how that happened. Here was the antecedent to that. How can we possibly prevent that in the future? And then a lot of times if we're having difficulty with clients, we're not like browbeating them about their goals. We'll just kind of like mirror back what they said was important to them. So, hey, these are the things you said were important. Here are the actions that have to get you in alignment with that. And so, how can we remove some of these barriers for you to get in alignment with that?

• 1:45:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's a lot packed into what you just shared. I want to tease out a few things. First of all, this idea that you had a kind of very binary notion, at least with respect to weight loss, like, hey, listen, if you're obese, like, here are the things you do. You must be lazy because you're not doing them. And then growing into an appreciation of the psychology that comes into play and the nuance of people's experiences that, that, that complicate these things. I mean, I had a similar journey with that with just substance abuse and recovery as somebody who...

• 1:46:05Rich Roll?

  Really believed in the power of self-will as the engine to achieve anything. And every success that I had as a young person, I could point to that as the key thing that allowed me to overcome obstacles and make my way in the world. Until I was confronted with alcoholism. And all of that self-will not only failed me, but actually made the problem worse. And then I had to really let go of that and understand that this was much more complex.

• 1:46:35Speaker 01

  Well, do you think that was because of like that will? I'm honestly asking for my own edification. Like, do you feel like you felt very ashamed when you weren't able to do it? And that kind of like pushed you into it further?

• 1:46:50Rich Roll?

  Of course. So my like capacity for hard work, my ability to kind of out-suffer the next person, served me very well as a competitive swimmer and as a student. Like, I could study really hard. I could, you know, overcome a talent deficit gap and like make my way forward into the world, and I was rewarded for that. And so I just thought, well, this is how I'm going to do everything. I'm just going to be the hardest worker in the room. I'm just going to apply this capacity for hard work and suffering to all of the tasks in front of me. And alcoholism was something that, you know, I kind of privately went to war with using

• 1:47:33Rich Roll?

  that one cudgel that I had in my toolbox. And it didn't work, and it just made me more and more ashamed. It made the problem worse, and it became very confusing. Well, if this is not working, like, I don't know what to do now. Until it got so bad that I had to raise my hand and let go and allow other people to help me, which was very humbling. But that humility, in the long term, serves one well as a greater appreciation for the complexity of the human animal, right? And I think the longer that, you know, I've done this thing, sitting across from people and talking to them and, you know, hearing from and communicating with so many people who struggle in various ways in their life, you realize that psychology is really the key.

• 1:48:18Rich Roll?

  When it comes to anybody trying to make a positive change or overcome an obstacle, you know, not the least with, you know, weight loss or making a change in their diet. The limiting factor is generally psychological in nature. Otherwise, it would just be, here's your list of things to do and you would go and do them. Right. But that's not how we function. We're emotional beings. And as somebody who has worked with thousands of people to help them make better choices, I'm sure you've had a similar kind of analogous experience with maybe frustrating also, you know, trying to help people who struggle to help themselves, which then that's where the empathy piece comes in, right? Because if you don't have that empathy, you're not going to be of any help to anybody.

• 1:49:00Speaker 01

  Can't reach and connect with people, which is really what makes the difference. I, it's so funny you say this. Literally was texting with my therapist this morning and, and with my best friend. And both of them kind of talking about like more on the personal relationship side of stuff. They're like, Lane, you are just used to like work harder, plow through it. That isn't how this stuff works. And, um, you know, even like my, my therapist basically saying, um, you know, how many times do I have to tell you like where you're coming up short? And you keep trying to plow through it. And then when you can't, you're ashamed of yourself.

• 1:49:44Speaker 01

  And so then you beat yourself up, which doesn't help and sends you back down that spiral. And, um, you know, it's interesting with regards to alcoholism. You know, my, uh, my friend, John Deloney, I don't know if you're familiar with him. Mental health expert, great guy to have on, by the way.

• 1:50:01Speaker 01

  He said, you know, alcohol is very good at what it does. You know, it's, it, it becomes a, a proxy instead of having to deal with whatever pain you're dealing with. It numbs you up, you know? And so when you, if you get in that shame spiral where you're trying to do something, end up breaking and you're even harder on yourself. Well, then how do you deal with that shame? Well, alcohol is a good way to deal with that shame. And for some people, it's that, for other people, it's gambling. For some people, it's food. For some people, it's sex and, you know.

• 1:50:35Rich Roll?

  But it's all the same thing. That shame spiral with alcoholism. Yeah, you you're ashamed and then those emotions are so overwhelming that you have to drink to mute them, right? And you're sort of exacerbating the cycle. But that is equally applicable to food. And I just know from my own personal experience, like getting sober and then being very slow to recognize the extent to which, you know, the inner addict would grab on to food as a coping mechanism to, you know, modulate my, you know, emotions when they were uncomfortable. Like, well, I can't drink or use drugs, but I can certainly go to Jack in the Box. And that seemed to be a good substitute and something I did for many years before I had, you know, another awakening with that. And it's very crafty that way.

• 1:51:20Rich Roll?

  And I think it's operating along a spectrum where nobody is, is, you know, nobody is free from it. Like, yes, you can end up with, you know, a needle in your arm and in rehab, but that doesn't mean that the average person who can't put their phone down or, you know, ends up, you know, plowing their face into a, you know, a bowl of Ben and Jerry's at midnight every night. It's, it really is, it can be tracked down to the same thing, which is, we're very uncomfortable with just sitting with our own emotions and we're always grasping for something to take us out of the moment. And food, just like alcohol or perhaps gambling for somebody else, is very effective and reliable when it comes to that.

• 1:52:02Rich Roll?

  And that makes the conundrum, like the untangling of that knot to kind of help somebody find a healthier way forward with respect to their food habits, all the trickier because you do have to be a psychologist on some level to understand what's, what the barriers are when it comes to people and their daily habits.

• 1:52:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, lots to unpack in what you just said as well. So take alcohol, for example, right? Here's why the eating stuff in some ways is.

• 1:52:36Speaker 01

  Not that it's harder, it's just a different kind of hard.

• 1:52:39Rich Roll?

  Well, because you have to do it every day.

• 1:52:40Speaker 01

  Imagine you're an alcoholic and I said, well, you still gotta have two or three drinks a day. Right? Because you can abstain, right? If you're a drug addict, you can abstain. I mean, not that it's not hard, it's hard. But knowing that you have to eat, that's a whole nother level of hard to be able to moderate that. And it's not just, one of the reasons that alcohol is tough to quit is that it is so tied up in our culture. Well, food is way more tied up in our culture. Food is not just food, it's how we connect. I mean, think about the last time you went to an event or got together with family and there wasn't food as part of it. Like, it is, it is part of how we connect with other human beings.

• 1:53:26Speaker 01

  And trying to untangle that and teach people how to moderate themselves, that's really difficult. And some people say, well, I just, you know, I quit eating these certain foods. And for some people that can work, but for a lot of people, that leads down an even more difficult road, which is kind of like a, the reactive response of you're trying to avoid certain foods. And then when you get exposed to them, you actually end up eating way more of them.

• 1:53:58Rich Roll?

  Overeating them, overindulging, because they're taboo or what?

• 1:54:02Speaker 01

  Right. And I always tell people, it sounds silly, but mindset matters when you're doing this stuff.

• 1:54:10Speaker 01

  And I always tell people, have guidelines, not rules. So for example, a guideline would be, I'm gonna try and limit my sugar intake because, you know, sugar isn't satiating. And, you know, I, I don't feel as good when I eat a lot of sugar. And it's, it's, it's part of some of these really hyper palatable calorie dense foods that are easy to overeat. Versus, I do not eat sugar ever, period, because it's toxic and, you know, I'm gonna spike my insulin.

• 1:54:45Speaker 01

  Well, one person, let's say they end up, you know, deciding, oh, you know, well, first of all, the person with the rule, what about fruit now? Right? Because the sugar in fruit, I mean, biochemically, really isn't different than the sugar that you get elsewhere. Like, it all breaks down into glucose and fructose, you know? So that's one problem. So you end up doing weird things that aren't necessarily helpful because you have these hard rules. Same thing with like, say, even like processed foods. I'm not eating any processed food. Okay, as a guideline, probably a good guideline because processed food tends to be more hyperpalatable and more energy dense, easier to overeat.

• 1:55:31Speaker 01

  But like, how do you define?

• 1:55:32Rich Roll?

  Where do you draw the line with that?

• 1:55:34Speaker 01

  Where do you draw the line, right? Like, I mean, there's some like, you know, various protein powders have been shown to be, you know, beneficial for, you know, certain things. And even like, you take,

• 1:55:47Speaker 01

  like a whey protein, for example, there's actually some evidence that it has some antioxidant capability or capacity, like whey protein concentrate. But again, if you're saying, well, I'm not eating processed food, well, now you can't touch this stuff, right?

• 1:56:01Rich Roll?

  Or, or, I mean, it's a, it's a moving target, right? Is olive oil a processed food? Is hummus a processed food? Like, if you're acculturating a food, you're processing it. I guess that's, I mean, we can all agree what's an ultra-processed food, you know, all the terrible stuff, but then it becomes a murky area. But I guess the point that you're getting at really is, is when you have these hard and fast rules, and because human animals are imperfect by nature, there will probably come a point where you transgress that rule, and then you have those feelings of guilt and shame, which isn't really in service to you, right? And having a kind of looser relationship that allows for some flexibility in the long term is healthier.

• 1:56:44Rich Roll?

  And that's, I think that's right and correct. But also, I'm somebody who operates well within binaries. And, and I think, you know, if I'm being really honest, like, my initial foray into the world of being plant-based was catalyzed initially because it's binary. And because I had this Positive experience of getting sober in the construct of 12-step that is also very binary. You're either drinking, you're using drugs, or you're not. Like, there is no gray area. And when I was trying to tackle how to improve my eating habits,

• 1:57:27Rich Roll?

  plant-based was attractive because of its binary. It's like, "Oh, I don't eat animal products." And my brain could understand that. And if there's a line, that removed decision fatigue and allowed me to step into. And like, look, you know, it's been many years. So I've had a whole evolution with this and my perspective. And I still love it and all of that. But my reasons are different and my relationship with it is a little bit different. But that binary thing, I think, was helpful to me at that time. And so I don't want to be dismissive of those kind of rules because I think they're entry points for a certain personality type.

• 1:58:06Speaker 01

  That's probably very true as well. And that's why I am very careful, like, to very rarely say always, never, best, worst, you know, because there's variations to everything. And some people are outliers too, right? Like, when you're looking at studies, they're reporting means, averages, but you're not a mean, I'm not a mean. We're individual data points, right? But we can start with, okay, if we're like, you know, again, with like when I coach people, "Well, I know what tends to work best based on research and data, and I'll start there with somebody." But then paying attention to how they are, sometimes it needs to be a little bit more extreme, right?

• 1:58:50Speaker 01

  But I think the hope is eventually your understanding evolves so that it's not so binary, right? So that if, let's say, one day you kind of...

• 1:59:06Speaker 01

  Strayed, you said you didn't have something plant-based, right? You're not beating yourself up over it, you're not ashamed about it, you know, take the kind of ethical animal considerations out of it, right? Just from the health perspective. The inner conversation is different, right? And even, you know, I had a friend the other night who, they were a recovered alcoholic, and they had have a glass of wine, and they said, you know, I'm, and I'm not saying that this is right for everybody, right? But she said, you know, for me, being able to have half a glass of wine with friends in the mindset of, I'm not trying to numb up my feelings, I'm not trying to avoid anything, it's just a part of my life, and then be able to walk away from it, that was a huge victory

• 1:59:51Speaker 01

  for me, you know? And again, some people, the chemical that starts our whole spark plug-

• 1:59:58Rich Roll?

  That's a trickier one for me, you know?

• 2:00:00Speaker 01

  But I think the point, I guess, that I'm making is, at least for her, it didn't start that shame spiral, right? Because of the mindset. When it comes to food, we actually see, and I'm probably gonna butcher the study a little bit, so I apologize in advance for people watching, I'm gonna try and get the crux of it correct. They noticed, this is like way back in the 90s, what was called a disinhibition reflex, kind of sort of like binge eating, right? When people were, they had two different models of dieting, flexible model, flexible mindset, restrictive mindset. Restrictive was, you know, I can't have these things. Flexible was, I can have kind of whatever as part of a healthy diet.

• 2:00:45Speaker 01

  And they found that when they exposed both groups to like hyperpalatable foods, I can't remember exactly what they used, I wanna say it was cookies. Basically saying, you have to eat at least one, you don't have to eat more than one, but you have to at least eat at least one. They found that the group that was restrictive ended up eating significantly more than the group that was flexible, right? And I think, again, that kind of points to the mindset of, like going, like, if somebody says they avoid sugar because it's toxic- Well, what happens if you like, you're eating something and you don't realize, oh, it's actually got some sugar in it. You look at the package, whatever. Well, in your mind, well, I've already screwed up.

• 2:01:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:01:28Speaker 01

  Might as well just-

• 2:01:29Rich Roll?

  So the snowball starts rolling down the hill and then all the good habits go out the window because I failed and I couldn't do it, so fuck it.

• 2:01:36Speaker 01

  Exactly. I, I, I'm glad we concur. So I call that fuck it mode. Yeah. And I just, I, um, like I, I started working with a guy, I don't, I don't work with many people one-on-one anymore, but, um, I did take on one client last year and he was a, um, very stressful lifestyle hedge fund manager. Um, he was having issues with like binge eating pretty much every day. And, um, you know, cause he would, he would go into it like, I am never doing this again. And I said, hey, why don't we shift that instead of I'm never doing this again to, um, let's just try to have it less frequently. Let's just try to be a little bit less frequent, right?

• 2:02:13Rich Roll?

  Or the tried and true, uh, 12 step way, which is like, I'm just not gonna do it today.

• 2:02:18Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Or, you know, and one of the things we said, I said was like, hey, you know, if you, you find yourself, it was always at night, right? Always cause stressful day. I always, I always say like, nobody ends up screwing up their diet at 10 a.m. after they had eight hours of sleep and they're low stress, right? Like that's not when it happens. Um, and so I said, you know, let's start putting a little bit of things to keep your mind engaged. Because again, trying to numb up, you're trying to turn off your mind, put a post-it on that cabinet that you tend to get into. And just, not anything nasty, but just say, am I hungry or am I just stressed? And then like, um, sometimes he'd get up in the middle of the night, go out to the kitchen. I said, just

• 2:03:03Speaker 01

  lock your bedroom door from the inside. I know it doesn't stop you, but you still have to consciously unlock that door to get out. And you're just putting these little kind of- Reminders about, just to get you mindful. And I know people who have like trouble with, um, for example, like, um, bad spending habits, or kind of like been shopping, right? Uh, one of the things that people will say is like, don't say you can't buy it, but just, you have to wait one day.

• 2:03:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the, the delayed effect, like,

• 2:03:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:03:32Rich Roll?

  Cause that makes you more mindful and present with the emotions that are motivating the choice to begin with because they're uncomfortable. And if you can develop the resilience or the capacity to sit with those uncomfortable emotions and gain experience with how they're fleeting and they pass, that allows you to, over time, make fewer and fewer of those impulsive bad decisions.

• 2:03:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:57Rich Roll?

  But it's, but that's like very not sexy.

• 2:03:59Speaker 01

  No, it's not.

• 2:04:00Rich Roll?

  You know, let's talk about lectins. I wanna, I wanna point the finger at like aspartame or whatever it is, you know? That makes me feel like it's somebody else's fault and I don't have to take responsibility for this. What do you think is, um, the key distinguishing factor between the person who's able to, you know, take the advice and make the positive change and sustain that change over time versus the person who struggles, who just can't quite get there?

• 2:04:29Speaker 01

  I think there's quite a few things, but I think, um, having some trust in the process. And what I mean by that is, as an athlete, for example, for the, to do the stuff that you did and the stuff that I did, like where I, I read about some of your accomplishments, crazy. I'm on the other end of it, right? Like I left heavy things in a straight line for one rep. Um, but I said,

• 2:04:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we're, we're on the far ends of that spectrum.

• 2:04:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. I set a, a world squat record back in 2015. I hit, uh, 668 pounds at the 205 pound weight class, uh, drug free. It's been broken a bunch of times since then. But like, for me to get there, one of the things that you're acutely aware of is that you may put in all the work and you may still not get what you want. Like, you have to be willing to not count that cost. I think a lot of people really struggle with being willing to put in the work without a guarantee of the outcome. But here's the rub. If you don't do the work, you're definitely not going to get the outcome. And one of the things I'll tell people is,

• 2:05:38Speaker 01

  You may put in all the work and maybe you don't get exactly what you want, but just by walking the path, you you're gonna learn a lot, grow as a person, and you'll probably end up way better off than you would have. Now, when it comes to like losing weight, obviously like there's a there's a mechanical thing to this. Like if you eat less calories than you expend, you will lose weight. But kind of just telling somebody that, I mean, it's like telling somebody, well, if you want to save money, just earn more than you spend. We all know that. I don't think that's like news to anybody, right? But like, that doesn't change people's lives. And even people who are high income earners, plenty of them end up broke, right?

• 2:06:21Speaker 01

  So obviously, there are some behavioral habits sort of things that need to be modified. And as you said, it's very unsexy to talk about daily habits, mindset. It's much more sexy to go, well, you know that lectins, that's the thing that's keeping you sick. Or sugar is addictive and toxic, and that's why you're, you know, not being able to lose weight. Or, you know, pick anything out that people kind of want to demonize. And there's, there's a few things. One, I always say paralysis by analysis and perfectionism has killed more dreams

• 2:07:05Speaker 01

  than failure ever could. And I think so many people, especially with that fire hose of information that's out there, they all, where do I start? I don't know where to start. Like, uh, low carb, wait, plant-based, intermittent fasting. Uh, well, wait, hang on. What about this thing? And, uh, but I also need to, uh, you know, have fun and live my life. And like, these competing sort of messages, right? How do you synthesize all that into a plan that's useful? And I think, try to simplify it a little bit.

• 2:07:40Speaker 01

  What I mean by that, like, let's just, instead of speaking abstractly, I'll just be blunt. If you want to lose weight, for example, and I know that's not everybody's goal out there, but we do have a high amount of people out there who are suffering with obesity. And so if you want to lose weight, you have to eat less calories than you expend.

• 2:08:03Rich Roll?

  How dare you.

• 2:08:04Speaker 01

  I know. Well, and again, I always tell people, people insert judgment on that that isn't there. Right? So what I'll say that and what people hear is, you got fat because you're lazy. That's not what I'm saying.

• 2:08:18Rich Roll?

  Lane, not all calories are equal.

• 2:08:22Speaker 01

  So actually, you know what? Let's talk about that real quick because I think it is important to cover this real quickly. All calories are equal because calorie is just a unit of measurement.

• 2:08:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:08:31Speaker 01

  You're talking about the-

• 2:08:32Rich Roll?

  It's like a volt or a watt or an inch or a yard.

• 2:08:34Speaker 01

  Exactly right. It's like saying, well-

• 2:08:35Rich Roll?

  It's not a material thing that exists in the world.

• 2:08:38Speaker 01

  It's a unit of measurement. Now, all sources of calories do not have the same effect on energy expenditure and intake. And what I mean by that is, we know, for example, that high fiber diets have a greater, for example, thermic effect of food because there's less metabolizable energy in fiber, and they tend to be more satiating. So you're getting a little bit more energy expenditure and you're feeling more satisfied. Right? And we know with regards to protein, some of the same things, that a higher protein diet tends to be a little bit more satisfying and tends to increase energy expenditure a little bit more. So all sources aren't necessarily the same, but at the end of the

• 2:09:22Speaker 01

  day, if you lost weight over, you know, over time, you did because you were in some sort of deficit. And if you gained weight over time, you did so because you were eating more than you were expending. Now, some people will say, well, I don't eat that much and I gain weight. Okay. You probably don't feel like you're eating that much, but it is so easy to overeat. People, if you're not mindful, especially if you've never had the experience of like weighing out portion sizes. I'll give an example of this. There was a classic study back in the early 90s. They took people who self-reported had trouble losing weight on low calories. And most of them, the average reporting was that they were eating 1,200 calories a day.

• 2:10:05Speaker 01

  And the researchers tracked them, very controlled experiment. And did you know that they were underreporting their calories by almost 50%? Actually, over 50%. And they over-reported their physical activity by 50%. Now, people hear that and they think, you're saying I'm a liar. If I'm saying I'm not eating that much. No, I think people are just really poor estimators of food intake. And we tend to see ourselves through rose-colored glasses as well. I mean, people under-report their debt.

• 2:10:38Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. And also nutrition labels aren't necessarily entirely accurate, even for the most earnest person who's trying to do it right.

• 2:10:47Speaker 01

  Right. And so if you ever want to be depressed, go weigh out a serving of peanut butter, you know, or a serving of ice cream or cereal. Like, I remember the first time I actually weighed out a serving of cereal and I was like, that barely covers the bottom of the bowl, you know?

• 2:11:04Rich Roll?

  Right, or an average salad dressing.

• 2:11:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:11:07Rich Roll?

  Things like that, that are, that are hyper-caloric, that you would, you know, unless you're really paying attention, you could very easily over-indulge and not, not be any the wiser.

• 2:11:17Speaker 01

  Exactly. So that's, that is a, a, a big part of it. And again, people kind of put judgment on that. Try to take the judgment away. And I think, again, that's one of the reasons why it's very unsexy to talk about that sort of thing, because you're aware of the inherent personal responsibility. Right? And I always tell people, hey, you, you might have ate what you thought was a calorie deficit, or maybe you didn't think you were eating that much. And maybe you still felt hungry. What, all I'm saying is if you gained mass over time, it's because for your given level of energy expenditure per day, you were eating too much for that given level of energy expenditure.

• 2:12:02Speaker 01

  But that's very, that can be different amongst different people. I mean, like, people like me, I go in the gym, I train for two, three hours a day. I can eat 3,400 calories and maintain my body weight. So it's not that hard for me, right? Because that's a, that's a pretty healthy level of intake. But if you're somebody who has a sedentary job, you don't exercise that much and you don't have a ton of lean body mass, your energy expenditure is probably going to be pretty low.

• 2:12:31Rich Roll?

  Then there are people who have hormonal dysregulation or some kind of thyroid problem or have a different BMR, but like base metabolic rate. There are other complications there. I don't want to go down too deep of a rabbit hole on that. But to your point of things not being, you know, ostensibly binary, there are other complications that make it more challenging than other, than it, than it is for other people to lose weight.

• 2:12:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, the, what's actually really interesting about people who are obese prone versus what we call obese resistant. You know, think about your, you know, everybody's got a friend like, man, they can eat like crazy and they don't gain weight, right? Whereas somebody says, man, I, I feel like I look at food and I pack it on. So two things with that. One, people who tend to be more obese resistant have better appetite regulation and they may eat a lot at a meal where you see them, but they don't really snack. Then most, most people with good appetite regulation are not big snackers. And that's actually one of the things that pops up consistently amongst people who lose weight and keep it off is they don't really, they limit their snacking.

• 2:13:36Rich Roll?

  And what drives appetite regulation?

• 2:13:38Speaker 01

  Oh, a lot of stuff.

• 2:13:40Rich Roll?

  Is that like a four hour?

• 2:13:41Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 2:13:42Rich Roll?

  Deep dive just to understand that.

• 2:13:44Speaker 01

  Full semester on appetite regulation in graduate school. And I walked out going, this is like a symphony with, you know, this hormone matters, but only when this one is present and the half life is like, it is very complicated. I mean, there are some generalizations we can make. But the really interesting part is what also tends to happen with obese resistant people is when they eat more, they tend to spontaneously move more without realizing it. So you've heard of NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis? So a lot of times you'll hear like, um, you know, people with obesity have lower levels of physical activity and invariably some people go, no, I go to the gym an hour a day.

• 2:14:26Speaker 01

  That may be true, but physical activity isn't just about what you do at the gym. There are spontaneous movement, like just what I'm doing here with my hands and fidgeting. People who are obese resistant, it can be quite a bit of difference in the literature in terms of how much they will spontaneously move and dissipate extra energy through need. So there's a classic study, I think from Levine in the 90s, where they overfed people, I want to say, I could butcher it, but I want to say about a thousand calories a day above their maintenance. And on average, I think over the course of the study, people gained, I think the average gain was like around five kilograms, something like that.

• 2:15:08Speaker 01

  But there was one person who gained like eight kilograms and one person who gained 0.8 kilograms. And what they found was the person who gained 0.8 kilograms basically just spontaneously became so much more active without even realizing it. They're pacing more, they got on their feet and moved around more, they were fidgeting more.

• 2:15:27Rich Roll?

  Unconsciously, though.

• 2:15:28Speaker 01

  Unconsciously. And that's, and that's the thing. It's not something that's super modifiable, it's not really modifiable at all. So if you're somebody who kind of falls into that category, you may actually have to do more purposeful activity to kind of make up for that. Because if you're more obese prone, you may not have that spontaneous nature to become more physically active. And one of the things that exercise does, because I'm sure you've heard like kind of the war about is exercise helpful for weight loss or not? Some people say no, some people say yes. This, this really boils down to like, how did you do the experiment?

• 2:16:03Rich Roll?

  The, the whole idea that exercise is not a pathway to weight loss is very confusing to me, that somebody, somebody who is highly credentialed could make that statement.

• 2:16:14Speaker 01

  I'll give you the devil's advocate argument for it. There's a couple devil's advocate arguments. The first is, well, people exercise and they get hungry, so they just end up eating more. And some people eat past what they exercised. Okay. And then the other argument is kind of this, what we call the constrained energy expenditure model, which basically the model says that most, majority of people have kind of a level of energy expenditure that they do throughout the day. And if they try to exercise more, what happens is they just get less spontaneously active, right? And so their overall energy

• 2:16:54Speaker 01

  expenditure doesn't change that much. So that's, um, there is some applicability to both of those, but, so when I say that, there's some compensation on both ends of that, but it's not a complete compensation. What I mean by that is, on average, again, some people, there probably are some individuals out there who they exercise and get hungry, they end up overeating. Um, but, yes, if you exercise, like, let's say you burn 100 calories from exercise, you tend to compensate some, but it's about, at least based on Herman Ponzer's

• 2:17:33Speaker 01

  work, it's about a 28 calorie kind of, um, compensation. Meaning, um, you may have burned 100 calories from exercise, what you end up netting out is about 72, right? And then, but if you look at the studies on exercise and appetite, some people eat a little bit more, but you don't eat, they don't eat enough on average to compensate what they, what they exercised out. And exercise, actually, I think the, the biggest reason you see it being very consistent in the successful, people who successfully lose weight and keep it off, of people who lose weight, keep it off for years, over 70% exercise regularly. I don't think it's necessarily from the fact that you, yes, you're burning more calories,

• 2:18:18Speaker 01

  but exercise has an effect on appetite regulation as well. So it tends to sensitize you to satiety signals. And again, there's a really classic study in the 1950s in Bengali workers, where they looked at, um, sedentary workers, lightly active, moderately active, and like, basically hard labor, right? And they found that from lightly active to heavily active, they pretty much perfectly compensated. Like, the people who were doing more work just ate more, and they all were kind of maintaining their body weight. The sedentary people ate more than the lightly active, and I think more than the moderately active.

• 2:18:59Speaker 01

  So, sedentary actually, when you're sedentary, it dysregulates your appetite. So now, you think about what has happened to society over the last 60 years with people becoming more sedentary at their computer all day, right? And you have a fire hose of cheap, readily available, hyper-processed, hyper-palatable foods, energy-dense. And even if you back up 40, 50 years, we had cakes, cookies, we had hyper-palatable, ultra-processed foods.

• 2:19:37Speaker 01

  But you had to, you had to walk down to the bakery and get it, or you had to make it yourself.

• 2:19:42Rich Roll?

  The portion sizes were different, too.

• 2:19:43Speaker 01

  Portion sizes were different.

• 2:19:44Rich Roll?

  Big gulps, and just, everything wasn't supersized.

• 2:19:47Speaker 01

  And if you look at, actually, my PhD advisor talked about this, if you look at plates from like the 1800s, they were like this big.

• 2:19:53Rich Roll?

  I knew.

• 2:19:54Speaker 01

  You know? And like, now you go to, go to the buffet, and that's part of it, too, when you go out to a restaurant, you know? If you're, even me, as a nutrition expert, I went to my first, like, Michelin-starred restaurant, and got done, like, you know, there wasn't really that much food for how much I paid, you know? And then I'm like, "Hey, dummy, you weren't paying for the portion size," you know? But that's, that's, that's kind of how we've been wired, right? Is, well, if I want to pay a lot, I want to get a lot. And, you know, and even some of the damaging messaging that we didn't realize from parents and grandparents, you make sure you clean your plate, there are starving kids in Africa.

• 2:20:38Speaker 01

  And, you know, one of the things I'm careful with, with my kids, is when they say they're full, I'm like, "Okay."

• 2:20:47Speaker 01

  Fine.

• 2:20:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:20:48Speaker 01

  Great job listening to your hunger signals.

• 2:20:51Rich Roll?

  Right, and not encouraging the overindulgence.

• 2:20:54Speaker 01

  Right, and now, my daughter is a little negotiator, you know, so she'll be like, "I'm full. Can I have ice cream?"

• 2:21:06Rich Roll?

  There's crafty workarounds.

• 2:21:07Speaker 01

  Hang on, this math doesn't math.

• 2:21:09Rich Roll?

  But that's a window into like the human psyche and how creative it can be to like, get what it wants to meet its needs. I think that also, different types of exercises, for my own experience, have different impacts on appetite regulation. For example, endurance exercise, which is mostly what I do, like a long run, is actually an appetite suppressant. Like, I'm not hungry for many hours after, you know, a pretty extensive like, distance run. Swimming, totally different, makes me absolutely voracious afterwards.

• 2:21:46Speaker 01

  There's scientific data on that.

• 2:21:47Rich Roll?

  Strength training, a little bit different. So, and I've just noticed this over, like, made mental notes over the years. But when I'm doing a lot of endurance training, I actually run the risk of under-eating. But if all I'm doing is swimming, like putting in massive yardage, like, I will just eat everything in sight. There's thermo regulation that applies to that, that I know is a key factor.

• 2:22:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so if you look at the research on like, cold water swimming, they do see like, quite a bit of increased appetite and food consumption. It's pretty interesting. But what you're saying about like endurance exercise, resistance training, yeah, people who, if they, basically if they have free-living people, in general, I don't want to say every study, but most of the studies, if they have them exercise, they don't really start eating more. You know, on average. Now, there are some people who will start exercising, right, and they'll go, "Well, now I've earned this, and I can go have this," and, you know, again, that's, you know...

• 2:22:50Speaker 01

  That's kind of around that mindset, but at least in terms of pure physiology, exercise is, seems to be very positive in terms of appetite regulation and improves your sensitivity to satiety signals. And that's actually where I think the most benefit is. And then again, like, you know, it's so funny how people will kind of pick and choose their information to support whatever bias they have, right? So on the very extreme end of this, you have kind of the, the, um, I don't want to say health at every size, because not every health at every size person has this position, but kind of the very like extreme end of that camp, which is obesity has no negative health consequences. Um, the health consequences are from psychological stress because people fat shame them and

• 2:23:34Speaker 01

  those sorts of things. Um, you know, they'll, they'll look at, and they'll make this argument. Well, um, you can't, diet actually doesn't work and exercise doesn't work. Because if you look at the, the studies, uh, over the long term, people regain the weight, which means that your body fights you and puts it back. People regain the weight because they stopped doing it. Like the, the research is very clear about that with adherence. Uh, but again, you can, you can pick and choose, cherry pick the lines of evidence that you want to use to construct this argument. And then if somebody is prone to want to believe

• 2:24:15Speaker 01

  that, then they found their, and that goes for low carb fasting, whatever.

• 2:24:21Rich Roll?

  Sure. Yeah. I mean, there's no shortage of studies out there that can be handpicked to support whatever preset idea you already have. Whether that's a charitable interpretation of that study is a different matter, which you're very good at disabusing people of, but, um, there's a lot out there and that is part of the reason why the landscape is so confusing and why the social media landscape has become this hellscape of misinformation.

• 2:24:49Speaker 01

  Well, and, you know, people, I'll get this a lot. They say, well, they, they cited studies. I'm like, did you go look at the study? Did you see if it actually said what they said it said? I can tell you, like, when we put up articles on our site, um, We have right there, you can click the link, go straight to the study. Less than 1% of people click a single citation. And I understand, right? Like, people are busy. And even if you click the study and go read it, most people don't have the wherewithal to disseminate that scientific jargon. It's one of the reasons I started my research review, so I could like try to kind of translate this stuff, right? But it's just really hard for the average person to pick through all this. But you've got to be really-

• 2:25:31Rich Roll?

  The average person shouldn't have to go to PubMed or, you know, go to Nature and read these studies.

• 2:25:38Speaker 01

  And I think one of the things I tell people is, this gets in, you kind of have to find people to trust to be your filter. And the hard part is, people don't know how to determine who is being intellectually honest.

• 2:25:56Rich Roll?

  Right, like, how do we discern the good from the bad actors? And my sense is, there aren't very many people like you, because most people who are super into the research are not public communicators. It's not really what they want to do. It's not what they're trained to do. Like, they're in there doing the hard- they're not on Twitter getting into fights with people or arguing about what a study said or did not say.

• 2:26:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:26:23Rich Roll?

  On some level, I feel like science communication should be part of the science education curriculum, because I think we do need more effective science communicators who really understand these things and know how to translate it in a way that, that really connects with the average person. Same with journalists who report on all of these things. There's plenty of kind of laziness there and, you know, not great stuff on that front. But somebody who can be, you know, kind of an antenna to help point people in the right direction and who is, you know, a trusted, objective source of information. Like, we need that. Like, we need to have people that we can trust.

• 2:27:07Rich Roll?

  Otherwise, it's like you said, it's an analysis paralysis situation, because all these people are shouting at each other. Nobody agrees on anything. So I'm just going to continue to enjoy my big gulp and my, you know, jelly beans while I sit at work all day.

• 2:27:22Speaker 01

  And there's the danger. I don't know what to do, so why do anything? Right? And when it comes to looking for people who to trust- I did a story series on this a while back on Instagram and basically my take home was, hey, just keep in mind, you can never turn your brain off and don't do it even with me. Okay. Because I am a human like anybody else. I get stuff wrong sometimes. I have my own personal biases. I try to be honest about those. I try to disclose those whenever we're touching on something that's a personal bias. A great example is that, I don't know if you've heard the recent study where they gave 100 grams of protein and like they basically

• 2:28:03Speaker 01

  found that, you know, maybe the, the limit for protein anabolism is higher than what we thought it was previously. This kind of went against the personal bias I had because some of my research was looking at protein distribution and I don't want to get too into the weeds with it. But basically when I started the video, I was like, hey, listen, I'm going to be honest about this. Here was my belief that I had previously and the study is going to probably shift me a little bit. Okay. But that's like, I think that's an example of like trying to be intellectually honest.

• 2:28:36Rich Roll?

  And also credibility is built on the, is built on instances in which you could admit that like, hey, I thought it was this way. Now I have new evidence and I've changed my mind. I think people are very afraid of admitting when that occurs or just being honest about the fact that science isn't something that's locked in stone, in stone. And it's, it's, it's about predictions and approximations and it's a moving target and it's always evolving. And the more you can kind of appreciate that and welcome a correcting of the record and admit when you've changed your mind, ultimately in the long run, that engenders more and more trust. It's when people dig in and refuse to look

• 2:29:18Rich Roll?

  at new evidence or change their mind because they're so entrenched in whatever ideology they subscribe to, that's where the erosion of trust occurs. They think that they're trying to hold on to that trust, but ultimately it's at cross purposes with what they're trying to do, which is have that trustworthy relationship with an audience.

• 2:29:37Speaker 01

  And I think a lot of people just don't understand like the concept of risk, right? Because you, you touched on it. Which is, and this kind of gets into why science, trust in, in science overall is so far down, post pandemic. People don't understand the concept of risk. So let's just take something simple, right? Seat belts. We know seatbelt reduces your risk of being in a fatal car accident. Like, well, not being in a car accident, but dying in a car accident. Airbags, same thing. But there are some people who are killed by seatbelts. There are some people who get trapped in cars. Airbags have broken people's necks. But if you're playing the odds, you're

• 2:30:22Speaker 01

  wearing your seatbelt and you're having an airbag in your car, right? If you're playing the odds. But again, instances of exceptions to this, people kind of go, see, it's BS. And it's like, no, you just don't understand the concept of risk. Yeah, this is, this is the equivalent of, of an aberration of lightning striking, right? Same token, I can find people who smoked every day and lived a long life and never got lung cancer or heart disease, right? But that's, if you're drawing it up on paper, that is not how you would do it if you want the maximum, or maximum risk reduction. And I think, you know, getting back to what I was saying about not turning your brain off, a lot of people will, first

• 2:31:06Speaker 01

  off, get focused on credentials. And I, I'm not saying credentials don't matter at all. I think they matter. If somebody is a PhD in a specific field and they're talking about that field, they're going to get a lot more leeway from me than somebody who isn't, right? If somebody's a physician and they're talking about something with health, I'm still going to give them a little bit more leeway than I would the average person because they've had to go through extensive schooling to get there. I mean, all the way down to like a personal trainer, like not as extensive of schooling, but still they had to learn some stuff and they give you a little bit more leeway than the average person, right?

• 2:31:47Speaker 01

  But you can never turn your brain off because I have heard some, it's always funny because people are like, well, this person's from Harvard. And I'm like, listen, great school. A lot of really, really smart people came out of there. I have heard some insane statements from people who came from Harvard. Okay, you can't turn your brain off. And a great example of this, have you ever heard of Nobel Prize Syndrome?

• 2:32:11Rich Roll?

  Yes, but explain.

• 2:32:12Speaker 01

  So if you go down the list of Nobel Prize winners, by like, objective accounts, some of the smartest human beings to ever walk the planet,

• 2:32:24Speaker 01

  almost half of them believed in some sort of absolute nonsense. Healing crystals, eugenics, in some other area of science. And so, I think sometimes people see DR in front of a name, or PhD, and they go, "Oh, just turn the brain off because, you know." And it's like, no, that, people, I really want to emphasize this. Smart people are even more prone to cognitive dissonance than most people because they will use their own intelligence to justify, "Well, I wouldn't believe in BS." Of course you would, you're a human being.

• 2:33:06Rich Roll?

  Well, there's a couple of things at play. The first is, with the, that kind of Nobel Syndrome, is this idea that they made this, they had some breakthrough, right? Because they had an originality of mind to approach a problem from a perspective that nobody else could see before. And they are rewarded for that. So of course that person is going to think, "Well, I'm going to now apply that in all these other areas of life because I have, I have this unique skillset." And they're going to over-index on their capacity to problem-solve in areas beyond their expertise. We want people to look at things differently, and we value that, but it does become problematic when it kind of metastasizes

• 2:33:51Rich Roll?

  beyond their areas of, of, of domain expertise. I mean, Lane, like technically, I'm a doctor. I have a juris doctor. I would argue that, like, that that's not really a doctor at all.

• 2:34:03Speaker 01

  Just put DR in front of your name and say whatever you want.

• 2:34:06Rich Roll?

  I'm just going to start doing that on the internet and see what happens. And I think in internet speak, that would be referred to as galaxy brain, right? People who have some kind of domain expertise in a certain area and then they go on podcasts and they start talking all kinds of crazy about stuff that has absolutely nothing to do with their education, their professional career, or any area of expertise. And that's where we see all this, you know, kind of culture war stuff, you know, like, "Oh, you're a physicist, so now you're going to talk about trans rights." Like, you know, there's just so much of that right now that's happening.

• 2:34:47Rich Roll?

  And we have this human default to authority when it comes to people that we think are smart, and we tend to give them a lot more runway than perhaps we should in areas that they really have no business pontificating on.

• 2:35:03Speaker 01

  And nutrition is an easy one because there's a very low barrier to entry. Anyone can call themselves a nutrition coach or a fitness coach. There's literally no barrier to entry, right? And so, and then add on to it, if somebody looks the part, right? Then people are even more likely to buy into it, right? So what I tell people, because they'll say, "Well, if I can't trust somebody's credentials, even somebody with a specific focus," because people are humans and biased. By the way, people who say they don't have bias usually have more bias than other people. I will never say that I don't have bias, I absolutely do.

• 2:35:48Speaker 01

  I just try to be honest about it.

• 2:35:51Speaker 01

  You want to listen to the way people talk as much, if not even more than what they actually say. What I mean by that is, real experts will very rarely say things like "always," "never," "best," "worse." They don't really use those kind of superlatives because as you mentioned, everything is kind of on a spectrum of a risk analysis, right? And one of my favorite quotations is, "There are no solutions, there are only trade-offs." And I think a lot of people would do well to remember that when they're discussing some of these things because, you know, this idea that there's this one panacea diet.

• 2:36:32Speaker 01

  I mean, overall, we kind of have an idea of a healthy eating pattern, whether it's plant-based, Mediterranean, you know, we know it's higher fiber, fruits and vegetables, lean protein sources, you know, those sorts of things, right? And obviously, that comes with controlling calories, limiting processed food, because it's energy-dense. But, you know, the idea that there's one diet that's gonna be the absolute best for heart disease, and cancer, and building muscle, and metabolic health, and, you know, neurodegenerative disorders, I mean, I think that a healthy eating pattern is probably good for all of those things, but I'll give you an example of, I was reading a paper the other day where

• 2:37:14Speaker 01

  I like, had to like, read it again, because I was like, that can't be right. Parkinson's disease, do you know what one of the biggest lifestyle risk reduction factors you can do for Parkinson's disease is? Smoke. It lowers your risk of Parkinson's. It's very consistent in the literature.

• 2:37:33Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 2:37:34Speaker 01

  Alcohol consumption.

• 2:37:35Rich Roll?

  I think somebody did say that to me at some point, I think I have heard that.

• 2:37:38Speaker 01

  And alcohol consumption also lowers the risk of Parkinson's disease, right? So, again, now, it's hard to, it's hard to tease out with all the confounding variables of epidemiology, if that's actually a cause and effect thing, but with smoking, it was a pretty powerful kind of risk reduction. So, the point of all that is just to be careful of anybody who their diet is the panacea for everything, or they're, whatever they're, whatever they're kind of selling, or, or pushing, because one of the things I get from people is they go, well, you've got, you know, it's all about the funding source, or is this person selling something, or, you

• 2:38:23Speaker 01

  know, it's funny, I got, somebody on Twitter was like, oh, we can't trust you, you're selling an app. And I'm like, okay, but I never said this was the solution to everything. I just said, hey, you know, this is something I made and it's based on evidence-based principles. And here's the reasons I think it's a useful tool.

• 2:38:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a lazy barb to throw at someone to say you're a grifter because you're trying to make a living. You know, it's like, of course, there's a spectrum of integrity when it comes to this sort of thing. But I think it's, you know, it is sort of low hanging fruit for somebody to just say that. And it allows them to kind of dismiss the substance of what you're saying.

• 2:39:02Speaker 01

  Well, and the same thing goes with funding sources of studies. I always tell people if your only criticism of a study is the funding source. It says more about your bias than the researchers. Now, it should be disclosed. It is a portion of it. But it's funny how funding sources only get brought up when it's a study that somebody doesn't like. Whereas I don't know if you saw the study that just came out of, what is the name of the chemical? Chloro, chloroquat, I want to say. They found it in cereals. It's a pesticide and they, there was a study where they showed that it's present in urine of people who consume these cereals, whatever.

• 2:39:44Speaker 01

  Well, it was funded by a group that is an organic food lobby group, right? Now, again, people will say, well, if people are eating less processed foods, it's always a good thing. Okay, but again, everybody's freaking out about funding sources. Nobody talked about this one.

• 2:40:02Rich Roll?

  You can't have it both ways.

• 2:40:03Speaker 01

  Right, you have to be consistent with it, right? And this is, so long story short, in that study, the amount that they found in people's urine is still orders of magnitude below what an unsafe amount of this stuff is that would actually cause side effects. Now that being said, this is one of the things I, I point out a lot with, you know, there was a very well-known carnivore diet advocate who was, who has a video saying epidemiology is garbage. And as soon as an epidemiology study comes out that supports his bias, that thing is plastered up there as the greatest thing since sliced bread. And I, I just point

• 2:40:43Speaker 01

  like, hey, this is logically inconsistent, right? If epidemiology is garbage, it means that the epidemiology you also like is garbage, right?

• 2:40:53Rich Roll?

  It's, it's a pick and choose, you know, type of adventure. What serves me, I'll use it when it serves me, I'll dismiss it when it doesn't.

• 2:41:00Speaker 01

  Right. And so when I say, listen to how people talk, real experts will typically, like earlier, I made the devil's advocate argument, right? About why exercise isn't good for weight loss. So I, I gave you that argument, but then I explained why I'm on this side of it, right? Like, actual experts will do that. They'll also, um, a lot of times you ask them a question, they'll ask you a question back. Or like, you know, if I wanted to get ready for an, an Ultraman, right? And I, I come to you and I go, hey, uh, what are the best shoes for this? You're gonna go, well, probably depends on a lot of different things, right?

• 2:41:43Rich Roll?

  Sure, sure.

• 2:41:44Speaker 01

  And

• 2:41:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the answer is, is, well, it's complicated, followed by a bunch of questions to narrow down how to specifically answer it in this context for this person at this particular moment in time. For whom, when, why, all of that.

• 2:42:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so I think that is what to look for. And unfortunately, it's very counterintuitive, right? Because you're, what you're looking for is somebody who doesn't sound super certain, right? They're using words like likely, maybe, possibly.

• 2:42:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the, the internet doesn't traffic well in that, that personality type. They want the convicted person who's gonna look right to camera and say, forget about all that, here's what you need to do, here's why it's the best. And they're very superlative and certain and charismatic in their delivery.

• 2:42:37Speaker 01

  Right. And like, one of the things that I, um, I've actually tried to get better at is Not the camp, if you can't beat them, join them. But I'm like, alright, so one of the problems with science communication is we aren't reaching people. Right? We're not connecting with people. And it's funny because people will be like, man, you like this last people, you blew up. I'm like, not really, I've been doing this for like 20 years, you know? Now you, you just found out about me because other people found out about me because I was on some podcast that they heard, that they heard, that they heard. Right? But what happened and what I focused on was how do I deliver this? How can I make this palatable for people?

• 2:43:22Speaker 01

  Can I come up with really good analogies that still keep the, keep the nuance of what I'm saying? While making it palatable enough for people to understand and make it click. Right? And that's where I was like, okay, if ethically, I have kind of my hard boundary of where I'm going to go. But I am going to, you know, push up to like a little bit of clickbaity-ness to try to get more eyeballs. Because if they're not looking at my stuff, they're going to go look at somebody else's. And so I'm, I'm never going to go with something that I think is disingenuous. Right? But I'm going to try and make it entertaining.

• 2:44:07Speaker 01

  I'm going to try and make it fun. Um, I might be a little snarky sometimes, but like, I tried for years to be highbrow, straight down the line, science. And it was like shouting into a void, you know? It was like shouting into a void. And I, again, I'm thankful I had a really great PhD advisor. I'll never forget this, um, but I was giving my exit seminar. My mom came to my exit seminar. So my mom's there. There's also, um, high level professors who are there. And I said to Dr. Lehman, I was like, well, who do I like? How, how do I give this? And he goes, your mom should learn something and I should learn something.

• 2:44:52Speaker 01

  Hmm. And that is the hardest to write for, right? That's the hardest to present for. And, um, that really stuck with me, you know, which was basically, how can you walk this line of generalizing enough? That people can understand it.

• 2:45:13Speaker 01

  But not generalizing so much that it loses the core of the truth. And that is a very fine line to walk, I think.

• 2:45:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's a challenge. I mean, I think you do a really good job with that. The other piece to that is not condescending to the audience, like providing them with scientific information that might be challenging for some people to truly understand. But with this kind of belief, like, you can get this, like, if you pay attention to what I'm saying, even if this is new for you, like, I believe in your ability to kind of learn what I'm trying to say to you. And I think people like that because they feel respected.

• 2:45:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I've quite honestly struggled with that at times, right? Because I think I'll, every once in a while, like, I'll, not every once in a while, I'll go into my comments and I'll be like, oh my gosh, guys, you know, like, how is that your takeaway, right? And if I, hopefully, I'm going to grow and get better with understanding that, you know, this is, if I'm going against your belief system, this is gonna feel very threatening, you know? This is gonna feel very challenging. And I have had a lot of people who have actually messaged me and said, man, I used to hate you. And, you know, you really just won me over over the years with the information that you provided.

• 2:46:37Rich Roll?

  Just wore him down.

• 2:46:39Speaker 01

  Just wore him down, yeah. Just, I'll outlast anybody, right? And, um, but I think, you know, you, you, you mentioned earlier about like, kind of, every once in a while, having times of despair. And I, I think I, every few months, I'll tell people, I'm like, every few months, I'll get in this mode where I'm like,

• 2:46:58Rich Roll?

  What am I doing?

• 2:46:59Speaker 01

  Nothing, nothing I've done has made a bit of difference. Like, this is a waste of time, you know, even though, like, logically, I know it's not.

• 2:47:08Speaker 01

  It is tough when you, especially like when I'm so, and something so clear about how I've broken it down. And then it's like, somebody just takes something totally different away from that. And you're like, how is that your take home from that? But I think, you know, and again, having gone to therapy for eight years now and understanding that, oh, there's, there's my filter on the world. And then there's your filter. And whatever happens in my brain, it then has to go to my mouth, passes through my filter, goes to your filter, into your brain. And man, tell you what, that message can get quite convoluted.

• 2:47:50Rich Roll?

  Sure. And you have no control over that, nor do you have the kind of ability to change that, right? So it's like being okay, like you can improve if you feel like, oh, I didn't communicate that clearly enough, you can make changes. But beyond that, like divorcing yourself from the expectation of how that's going to land with somebody else, I think is a healthier approach. But I would say, look, I think you are making a difference. And I think that can be calibrated by how I do see this shift in how the internet is operating, because it wasn't that long ago that somebody could go on a podcast or make a video and make some outrageous claim.

• 2:48:33Rich Roll?

  And it would really go untested or unchallenged. And I feel like those days are over with. Like if you go and you say some crazy thing on some, on a large show, somebody, if not you, is going to make a video about how you're wrong. And I think that's a healthy kind of, it's almost like a, like a vaccine in the discourse around topics that are rife with misinformation. And I think that that's, that's a good thing. Like, I think there is a higher standard of care.

• 2:49:07Speaker 01

  I agree with that. I, I used to say, I, I want to be, you know, I want to keep the charlatans awake at night going, ah, I don't want to wind up on what the fitness, you know? And, um, you know, I love, um, you know, for, quite honestly, I mean, I've been doing kind of debunking stuff for a long time. And for a long time, I felt like I was the only one doing it. And I know that's probably not true, but it definitely felt that way at times. And now there's so many people who do that stuff.

• 2:49:36Rich Roll?

  Well, there's debunking the debunking.

• 2:49:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:49:38Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 2:49:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:49:39Rich Roll?

  Which is good, like, let's have the conversation.

• 2:49:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:49:42Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? And the truth will surface as a result of that.

• 2:49:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think, like, I love the people who are doing that kind of content. I've had somebody who was like, "Does it bother you that people are like, kind of ripping off?" I'm like, "It's not a ripoff." I'm like, "Please, I need help. I can't deal with all this stuff on my own, you know? Please, like, I hope there's 10,000 people that go out and do this who are, who have the capability to do it, right? And I think the, the, the other problem is that

• 2:50:13Speaker 01

  people have to be in the space of being willing to receive the information, right? There was a, there was actually a study done.

• 2:50:21Speaker 01

  I may butcher it again, but I'm gonna try my best not to. But it was a study on politics. And they looked at both Republicans and Democrats. And they would give them information that either refuted a commonly held belief in their party or supported it. And with both Republicans, Democrats, there was no statistical difference. Both were equally bad at this.

• 2:50:45Speaker 01

  Information that supported their position obviously reinforced that position. But information that debunked it actually had the opposite effect. It actually made them entrenched further.

• 2:50:57Rich Roll?

  More entrenched.

• 2:50:57Speaker 01

  They, they actually doubled down. And, and so both the information that supported it or debunked it were equally as effective at just reinforcing them in their own beliefs. And so it is a, that's very, very difficult to overcome. And one of the things I'll tell people is... You know, that's, that's kind of why debates can really be a waste of time. I mean, I'll do them, um, but I'm not doing them thinking like if I'm debating somebody in the carnivore camp or something like that.

• 2:51:29Rich Roll?

  It's a great fallacy that debates are going to solve this kind of problem.

• 2:51:33Speaker 01

  People end up, e- even the people who are independent, so to speak, they usually just side to whoever kind of like is closest to their personal bias and who is basically the most likable, right? And who, who, who talks the most clearly and communicates most effectively. And so that's really tough. And so, you know, there was a, um, some people say, why didn't the scientist go on this program and debate? It's like, cause he probably knows how it's gonna go. You know, it's, it's probably not gonna go that great for him because most scientists aren't great communicators because they've been stuck in a lab for 30 years or whatever it is, right?

• 2:52:14Speaker 01

  So, yeah, it's, it's very difficult, but I agree with you that the self policing in an industry is very important. And, you know, every once in a while, I'll hear people go, you know, I wish the, the government would just step in and, and regulate this stuff, like regulate the information. I'm like, phew, okay, be careful.

• 2:52:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:36Speaker 01

  Because, you know, the government is just made up of people like us, hmm, probably about the same level of intelligence and prone to the same biases as everyone else. And you're trusting that they're going to be able to effectively identify who is an expert versus who isn't. And, I mean-

• 2:52:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's not the solution. But do you think that these platforms have a responsibility when it comes to this, you know, this kind of misinformation? I mean, you're a libertarian, so, right?

• 2:53:07Speaker 01

  I'm an independent.

• 2:53:08Rich Roll?

  You're, okay.

• 2:53:09Speaker 01

  But I, I, I would say I-

• 2:53:11Rich Roll?

  You have a libertarian streak.

• 2:53:12Speaker 01

  Yes. Um, I, I just, I have a hard time saying I'm any particular political party just because, um, let me put it this way. My, my, I think PinduLet's said it best, which was, whatever problem is trying to be addressed, I'll go up to the furthest amount of freedom the problem can be addressed with, and that's kind of where I start, where my belief system sits. But, um, even as, like saying, fiscally conservative, socially liberal, um, you know, there are things that libertarians say where I go, oh my God, like, please just shut up. So that's a tough one, the platforms, because on one-

• 2:53:54Rich Roll?

  I don't envy anybody who runs those platforms trying to untangle this knot.

• 2:53:59Speaker 01

  I mean, when the pandemic hit, I said, I'm glad I'm not in charge, you know, like, because no matter what you do, it's going to be criticized and explained why it's wrong. As far as the platforms go,

• 2:54:13Speaker 01

  you know, deplatforming people.

• 2:54:16Speaker 01

  At the end of the day, they're a, they're a business, right? They are a company. And so part of me goes, I mean, if I own a company, if I own a store and you walk in, part of me feels like I could should be able to say, I don't like the way you just looked at me, leave, right? Like, it's my company, my place.

• 2:54:35Speaker 01

  Other part of me goes, well, social media really isn't the same way anymore because it is so ubiquitous. It is almost like

• 2:54:47Speaker 01

  a human right now, I guess, the way to put it. I don't know how to put it.

• 2:54:49Rich Roll?

  Public utility.

• 2:54:50Speaker 01

  Right. So, you know, like, um,

• 2:54:55Speaker 01

  that's a great example, actually, like, um, like, let's take the, um, gas electric, right? It's not like you can go, like, shop around and be like, oh, I'd really rather have this electric company, right? It's, you're kind of really limited in your choices. And, you know, okay, you could say, well, I don't like Instagram, I'm going somewhere else. Okay, good luck with that, you know, and so-

• 2:55:18Rich Roll?

  I mean, you can, there are other options, but it's not the same thing.

• 2:55:21Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. And so I think as much as I don't like the misinformation that's out there,

• 2:55:32Speaker 01

  I think

• 2:55:35Speaker 01

  it has to be pretty egregious for me to go, yeah, I think they should be deplatformed, right? Because it is a really slippery slope because what happens if the people who are doing the platforming and deplatforming, what if I run up against one of their personal biases? Right?

• 2:55:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, this is a whole, we could talk for hours about this. I mean, I think there's a difference between deplatforming and and one's right or entitlement to algorithmic, you know, enhancements where, you know, messages rise to the top and the more kind of extreme or, you know, counter narrative they are, that's what people like to engage with. And so that's what people are going to be seeing and, you know, is this the way that we, anyway, that's a whole thing, right? Like, I don't have a solution to that. I'm gathering you don't either, which kind of brings me back to this idea of identity that you've spoken about, like, the people who

• 2:56:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, let's do this.

• 2:56:32Rich Roll?

  who really are able to navigate the crevasse between who they were and who they want to become are the people who understand that an identity change, an identity shift is what's important. I am now somebody who does this. I am no longer a person who does that.

• 2:56:51Speaker 01

  So I got a few different stories I'm going to share on this one, which I think are relevant and fun. Somebody asked me one time, if, I think it was Ed Milett when I was on this podcast, if somebody had a lot of weight to lose, like, we're talking a big shift. If you had one thing to say to them, what would you say? I said, picture in your head the person that you want to become, like, whatever that is in term, and this can go for anything that you want to change. Think honestly about what you think that person's daily habits look like, and then reverse engineer that and start it now. Right?

• 2:57:36Speaker 01

  Do you know Ethan Suplee? Familiar with him? I know who he is, yeah. I've been meaning to reach out to that guy. I'd love to have him on the podcast. Yeah. He's super inspirational, what he's done and the changes he's made in his life. So Ethan lost over 300 pounds. And this was after like multiple times going, you know, losing it, regaining it, losing it, regaining it. And something I noticed about Ethan, whenever he posts like workout, like videos or pictures, he always has this caption, which is, "I killed my clone today." And I thought, oh, that's a cool little saying, but I didn't really think much about what it meant. And then back in 2020, this systematic review of successful weight loss maintainers came out. So these were, if you look at studies and you look at the amount of people who regain

• 2:58:21Speaker 01

  the weight that they lose originally, the regain statistics are pretty depressing. I mean, depending on the statistics you're using and what you consider regain, at three years, it's like 90 plus percent of people have regained the weight that they lost. So they were looking at basically the unicorns. Who were the people who lost weight, kept it off? And what commonalities do they have between them? Which I think this is actually the population to study, right? And there were things on there you'd expect, right? Most of them exercised regularly, they weighed themselves regularly, because that's kind of like an auto correcting behavior, right?

• 2:59:01Speaker 01

  They practiced some form of cognitive restraint, which is, you know, counting calories, low carb, low fat, plant-based, like some form of restraint. And then there was other stuff on there, like social support was important. And they tended to snack less, they stopped eating as many snacks. And one of the psychological reasons for that is we were, if somebody asks you what you ate yesterday, you'll remember your meals, but you probably won't remember your snacks, right? But the one thing that stood out on there that I hadn't thought about, and I just had this like, oh shit moment, and I texted Ethan immediately afterwards, is it said pretty consistently, these people felt like they had to form a new identity.

• 2:59:48Speaker 01

  And I texted Ethan, I'm like, is this what you mean when you say I killed my clone today? And he said, this is exactly what I mean. He said, because that person is still in there and I have to choose to be somebody else every single day. And when you think about, I mean, like the example of an alcoholic or a drug addict. I mean, with some exceptions, a lot of times you can't hang around the same people. You can't go to the same places. You've got to change, you've got to change everything about your life because in the case of a lot of those people, they have formed their entire life around that thing. Right? And when it comes to food, you know, a lot of them mentioned that they, um, one of the hard things was they ended up with a different friend group, like their, their friend group

• 3:00:33Speaker 01

  slowly changed over time. Some people may interpret that as, well, as they got more fit, they just didn't want to be around their, their fat friends anymore. I don't really see it that way. I see it much more pragmatically, which is if you are adopting this new set of behaviors, you just don't have as much in common anymore with the people you used to hang out with. Right?

• 3:00:56Rich Roll?

  And you also don't want to place yourself in an environment that, um,

• 3:01:00Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 3:01:00Rich Roll?

  is conducive to relapsing back into those behaviors.

• 3:01:04Speaker 01

  Well, and the other thing too is unfortunately, a lot of the people that we align with in life, i- if we start trying to better ourselves in some way, sometimes that makes people feel really insecure about themselves and they try to drag you back into that.

• 3:01:24Rich Roll?

  It's confronting.

• 3:01:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. It's like holding up a mirror, right? Like if you can do that, then I could have done it. And so now I feel bad about myself.

• 3:01:31Rich Roll?

  Or if you're saying that you had this problem and now you're fixing it, but I was hanging out with you all the time. What you're really saying is that I have this problem, or that's how it's interpreted, or that person is then confronted with the reality that perhaps they have something they need to look at too, and nobody likes to look at their own shit.

• 3:01:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:01:51Rich Roll?

  That's like, not fun.

• 3:01:52Speaker 01

  No, it's not. Trust me. I've been...

• 3:01:56Rich Roll?

  And so those friends of yours, you know, no longer, like, you think like they're cheering for you, but then there's a psychology that ensues that then challenges that and makes it difficult.

• 3:02:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, another thing that was, um, a part of it was a supportive partner. Um, that was obviously very conducive to lifestyle change.

• 3:02:15Rich Roll?

  For Ethan?

• 3:02:16Speaker 01

  Uh, well, just in general, in this, in this, in this paper.

• 3:02:19Rich Roll?

  Oh, I see, right.

• 3:02:20Speaker 01

  But I, I think Ethan's story is like, his wife was actually like the impetus for him, or actually originally, um, when he started dating her, um, he was like, I wanted to be able to go, she liked to do hikes and stuff. I wanted to be able to, like, do stuff with her, you know? And, um, it is a really cool story. And one of the things he actually said when I was on his podcast that stuck with me as well, is he's like, "Man, Ethan, I apologize if I butcher it."

• 3:02:51Rich Roll?

  And we should also say, Ethan Suplee, like, actor, you know him from Varsity Blues, American History X.

• 3:02:57Speaker 01

  Remember the Titans.

• 3:02:58Rich Roll?

  Remember the Titans, correct. And he has a podcast called American Glutton.

• 3:03:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:03:02Rich Roll?

  Right? Yeah, go ahead.

• 3:03:03Speaker 01

  So, he said, "There's so much arguing. The house is on fire. And everyone is arguing over what started the fire, instead of just getting out of the house." And so what I would tell people is like, "Just get out of the house. We can figure out what started the fire later." And I was like, "Wow, that is such an interesting way to look at it," which is, there's so much like hand wringing and paralysis by analysis of what is causing the obesity epidemic and what... Just start making some changes. Like, okay, I, I think some of this paralysis by analysis is actually like...

• 3:03:44Speaker 01

  Kind of, I don't wanna say an excuse, but it kinda allows people to not actually...

• 3:03:49Rich Roll?

  It's a comfort zone. It's a comfort zone. Like, "Oh, I'm dealing with my problem." You're not dealing with anything.

• 3:03:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:03:55Rich Roll?

  You know, you're just delaying this uncomfortable thing that's looming on the horizon that you know you have to do, and you're just pushing it off and convincing yourself that you're in the solution when you're actively not in the solution.

• 3:04:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, my friend John Deloney, he's like, he did a post where he said, "How many self-improvement books are you gonna read before you just do the damn thing?" And, I mean, there's something to be said for that, right? Like, just start walking the path. And I think a lot of people are so... I mean, when you start out towards any goal, regardless of what it is, whether it's Ultraman, whether it's a fat loss...

• 3:04:31Rich Roll?

  You don't know where it's gonna lead. You don't know anything, and you're not supposed to know anything.

• 3:04:35Speaker 01

  And you're gonna screw up.

• 3:04:36Rich Roll?

  And so the analysis paralysis thing is a discomfort with the unknown future. You wanna be told, "Oh, if you do this, it's gonna end up here." You don't know anything. And if you wait until you're satisfied with all those answers, which by the way, you never will be, you never take one single step. And so, the journey is about the courage to take the step when you don't know, and trust and have faith that whatever information you need will be provided, probably only exactly when you need it and not before. And it's not gonna lead in the direction where you think it's gonna lead, but it might be a better one. It will be different. But the point is, you have to engage with that journey and take those steps and walk

• 3:05:19Rich Roll?

  that walk. And until you do so, you're gonna just be getting the same results because you're engaging in the same behavior.

• 3:05:27Speaker 01

  I liken this to my journey. I mean, when I started out, my goal, my dream, was to be a world champion natural bodybuilder. And I started walking that path. And then as I was walking that path, other things happened, the path kinda moved, things changed. I didn't get what I set out to get, but honestly, I got something way better. Like, how many people am I gonna reach as a world champion natural bodybuilder? Wow. Who cares? Like, I mean, it's a... No disrespect to any of the champions out there. Obviously, you have to have a lot of fortitude and integrity to be able to complete a task like that, right? But... As I walked that path, other things happened and hey, a lot of that path was screwing

• 3:06:12Speaker 01

  things up and then hopefully learning from that. And you know, I talked about how I've changed the way I do content and I've changed the way I communicate. That's all from like just doing the dang thing, right? Like I didn't, I didn't hire a social media team. I didn't do a bunch of, you know, research analysis. I tried different stuff and I go, oh, that worked, you know? And then you try something else, you go, oh, that didn't work. So we're gonna do more of that thing and less of that thing. And that's, but that's the, that is the crux of actual science, right? You observe and then you change. And I think you're dead on with what you said. People have a hard time. They want to count

• 3:06:54Speaker 01

  the cost, right? They want to know, it's why people get-

• 3:06:58Rich Roll?

  But it's just masking fear.

• 3:07:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's also why people get stuck in jobs they hate, right? Or one of the reasons is, well, I know if I put the work in, this paycheck is coming at the end of it, right?

• 3:07:11Rich Roll?

  But the truth is, that's actually an illusion, just like anything else.

• 3:07:14Speaker 01

  Correct. But the idea of like, starting out on your own or whatnot, like, hey, you can do all the work and maybe you don't get what you want. And I think that's really daunting for people. But if you look at the research, I mean, it's very cliche, but it's not the in thing that matters. It's what you learn along the way. That journey that you go through by doing something really hard, right? I mean, you probably learned so much about yourself by going through those events that you did that were so hard, right? And like I always say, I started lifting weights to gain confidence, but I thought

• 3:07:59Speaker 01

  I was gonna get confidence once I had a good physique and was really strong. That's not what gave me more confidence. What gave me more confidence was coming up against setbacks and injuries and difficult stuff and working my way through that. And then looking back at all the stuff. I mean, like, the, the list of injuries that I've had, even before I set the world's record, I mean, multiple herniated discs in my neck and lower back, torn pectoral, torn hip muscles, like all kinds of stuff.

• 3:08:30Speaker 01

  That builds your confidence so much because you look back and you go, man, if I could get through that stuff, what else could I get through? But you only get to reap the rewards of that if you get on that path and start doing that stuff and walking that path. And that applies to not just weight loss, but just anything in general. And one of the things I say is like, you know, if you want to, if you, let's say you have two people, one climbs a mountain, the other one takes a helicopter to the top. They both ended up in the same spot. Who do you think learned more? And who do you think gained so much more? It's obviously the person who climbed.

• 3:09:10Rich Roll?

  Well, and who's the person 30 years later who's thinking about that trip still?

• 3:09:14Speaker 01

  And, you know, and I'm sure you're this way. When I look back on like my fondest memories, like, and I think, thinking athletics and business and academia. Yeah, I think about the, the stuff that I won or the stuff that I got accolades for. But a lot of times I think about the lowest points of where I didn't think I was going to be able to do it. And anybody who's like gone on any goal, everyone has had to stare down insecurity and self doubt. There, there is not a champion or anybody who met a big goal out there who didn't ask themselves, can I actually do this?

• 3:09:58Speaker 01

  And have self doubt. And one of the things I tell people is try to disconnect your feelings from what you do. It is very, very difficult because we have kind of been told this day and age, our feelings are so important, right? But when it comes to like actually executing on a goal.

• 3:10:21Speaker 01

  Action changes feelings because as you do the actions and you start to get results, your feelings change for it. So many people wait to be motivated or they start and they're motivated. And then once the motivation wanes, they go, ah, and I'm like, no, no, that's, that's where you learn the most, right? Like, that's what builds confidence is you don't take, you don't feel like going to the gym today, but you do it anyway. You actually feel more rewarded from that than when you were pumped up, ready to go and go and have a great session because you didn't want to do it, but you did it anyway because it was a promise you made to yourself.

• 3:11:02Speaker 01

  And that like, I know that's a lot of stuff to wrap up in there. And I think it boils down to,

• 3:11:11Speaker 01

  do you have a strong enough why as to why you're doing what you're doing? Right? People, we were talking earlier about like how I can get kind of like sad sometimes or feel like what I'm doing is not making a difference. And you've seen people who get like the fitness industry. I mean, it's not like the film industry, but it's a pretty tough industry. It, it chews people up and spits them out. I think the average lifespan is less than two years in the fitness industry. And I tell people, the reason I'm able to keep doing this stuff, even though it does feel fatiguing and overwhelming sometimes, is because I have a very strong why.

• 3:11:49Speaker 01

  I feel that what I'm doing is very important. And so when I get down, I can just remember, no, this matters. It doesn't just matter to me, it matters to other people. So it makes it easy for me to keep going. And that is something you've got to have for any goal that you're going to do. And I'm again, on your experience, I'm sure you had a very strong why as to what you were doing.

• 3:12:10Rich Roll?

  Sure. The why is everything. The why speaks to the values that are driving your behavior, which transcend the power of things like motivation and inspiration, which are fleeting and burn like tissue paper and cannot be relied upon as an instigator to action. And one of the things I say all the time here is mood follows action. If you're waiting until you feel like doing the thing, you'll never do the thing. And the mood or the emotional state that you're seeking always Lives and resides on the other side of the doing. So developing that reflex to action where you get out of bed and go to the gym, or whatever it is that you're chasing or trying to achieve when you don't want to,

• 3:12:53Rich Roll?

  when you don't feel like it, you're callusing your mind to quote David Goggins, and you're developing a level of resilience and that reflex to action that will serve you in whatever it is that you're seeking. And it is the setbacks and the obstacles and the failures that are the true teachable moments, to your point about how meaningful those setbacks have been for you. And when you think back on your accolades and your wins and your victories, like, that's great for the ego, but like, did they teach you anything? Well, I guess they taught you that if you do hard things, you can succeed at things. But what you learn most from are when things go sideways.

• 3:13:33Rich Roll?

  And those become the rich experiences that inform the resonance of what you now share. And so instead of designing your life to avoid those things, if you instead choose a path where those things are inevitable, and life's gonna throw them at you anyway, no matter which path you choose, and developing the ability to kind of confront them with a willingness and a humility to learn from them, that's the real juice of maturing into somebody who has a resonance and a power in terms of what they then later in life can share with other people.

• 3:14:12Speaker 01

  What a great way to put it. I mean, this applies to so many things, too, that you really can go across the spectrum. And I mean, even, I've been reading a lot of like, personal relationship books, and, you know, like, they talk about, you know, love and relationships being a feeling versus an action, right? And if you're only relying on feelings, like, it is, good relationships are a choice, right? And you look at like, the Gottman stuff in terms of like, Sometimes you're really gonna be annoyed with your partner and you still have to turn towards them, right? Because if you don't, like, and you're just doing it when you're feeling it.

• 3:14:51Rich Roll?

  And my feelings are not a good barometer of anything. And if I listen to them, I'm gonna make all manner of bad decisions.

• 3:14:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, John Deloney says, feelings are important, but sometimes they can inform you of things. But making big decisions based on feelings is usually not a great way to live your life. And I think bringing it back to weight loss and people out there, if, first off, try to figure out, like, why are you gonna do this? And try to develop a very strong why. Because that, when it gets hard, because we can talk, we can sit here and talk about, yeah, you know, failure is so important, success is just a pile of failures that you stand on top of and all the cliche stuff out there. And guess what? When you and I fail, even to this day, knowing all this stuff, it still sucks.

• 3:15:43Speaker 01

  And we're still like, screw this. I'm sure you feel the same way, right? When you're in the throes of it, nobody likes it. Nobody's sitting here like, man, I just love this failure because I'm gonna learn so much from this, right? But you have to go through that. And so that is where it is so important to disconnect your feelings from what you're doing. And that is what I would tell people out there. Don't wait to feel it. Don't wait to feel inspired. Don't wait to feel motivated. Just try to have a very cold calculus of what do I wanna get?

• 3:16:24Speaker 01

  And whatever it is, it's gonna be some combination of work over time. And you may put in that work and time and maybe you don't get exactly what you want. But if you don't put the work and time in, you're definitely not gonna get it. And I promise you, if you put the work and time in, you may not get exactly what you want, but you'll end up way better off than you are right now.

• 3:16:43Rich Roll?

  And you certainly aren't gonna get it if you don't begin. So maybe start with the one thing that you can do today and try to string a few of those together and build a little momentum. Because momentum has its own unique, mysterious, like, energy source.

• 3:16:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I tell people, like, You know, don't sit out and be like, if you haven't been going to the gym, so I'm gonna go five days a week, like, because you're gonna fail, then you're gonna get in that shame spiral, and then you're gonna feel less confident. Like, start building your confidence one day at a time. I didn't walk in the gym saying, I'm, I'm gonna squat 600 pounds one day. I walked in going, well, I squatted 85 pounds, and that was really hard. And then the next time I squatted a little more, and then a little more, and then eventually, one day, I was able to do that. But I couldn't see that.

• 3:17:28Rich Roll?

  No, no, no, no, no. No, maybe that wasn't even your goal then. That's the thing. Yeah. And when you started, you wanted to study sharks. And here you are doing podcasts. So that's the point. Like, you don't know, but you have to go on the journey.

• 3:17:42Speaker 01

  But if you go do hard stuff, and you, you walk that path, and

• 3:17:46Rich Roll?

  There will be richness in your life.

• 3:17:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:17:49Rich Roll?

  On one level or another. Good talking to you, man. This is great.

• 3:17:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I loved it. Thanks for having me.

• 3:17:54Rich Roll?

  Super fun. Of course, I told you I had an outline 10 miles long. We didn't, we didn't get to any of it. So I'd love for you to come back and we could get like really specific and kind of go, you know, narrow and deep on a few things if you're, if you're up for that. It's so fun. So yeah, thanks again. You really do perform a public service. I want to thank you publicly for that. Keep doing your thing. I'm at your service. And everybody, if Lane is new to you, he's probably not, but if he is, BioLane, pretty much everywhere, on YouTube, on Instagram. So yeah, cheers, dude.

• 3:18:26Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

• 3:18:38Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com.

• 3:19:09Rich Roll?

  If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is, of course, awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at ritual.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the

• 3:19:51Rich Roll?

  podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg. Graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis. Thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.