How One Man Overcame Alcoholism, Lost 150 Pounds & Conquered Badwater, The World’s Toughest Footrace

I’m obsessed with the idea that we can all do and be better. That's what this show is about — a loud and clear call to action. A graceful nudge to help anyone and everyone not just understand, but actually believe that we are all capable of so much more than we often allow ourselves to accept. Enter David Clark. It’s fun to interview the celebrated. But quite honestly there is just something far more personally gratifying about sharing the story of an anonymous, everyman hero. What truly moves and inspires me are tales of regular people with regular problems who courageously meet severe challenges head on; do something unexpected and astounding that strains the boundaries of what we imagine possible; and come out the other side transformed with life lessons that can benefit us all. Much like my conversation with Josh LaJaunie ( RRP #63 is a must listen if you haven’t already and in my top-5 most downloaded shows), this interview will move you. It will touch you. It will erase whatever obstacles and excuses you rely on that perpetuate bad habits, keep you stuck and reinforce denial. My sincere hope is that David's story will help you really get that no matter what your circumstances or environment, that you always hold the power to implement personal change that can profoundly alter the trajectory of your life — beyond your wildest imagination even. I was first introduced to David by my friend Mishka Shubaly ( another RRP fave with a shocking 5 appearances on the show ). I didn’t know anything about him, but when Mishka says he's worth investigating, I investigate. I winced at photos of a guy pushing 320 pounds, prematurely aged, red-faced and bloated, cocktail in hand. I know an alcoholic when I see one, and this image of David cut a little too close to home. A guy who looked like hell, red lining towards death without a care while wrecking havoc, destruction and woe in the lives of loved ones and anyone and who happened to cross his path. Then I saw a picture of a fit and slim 165 pound athlete crossing the finish line at insane ultra-marathons like the Leadville 100 and Badwater – a 135 mile run across Death Valley in 130-degree July heat — widely considered to be the world’s two toughest footraces. The 320+ pound guy, who looked like some kind of menacing Archie Bunker-esque uncle you’re scared to talk to bore almost no resemblance to that runner achieving things that would impress even the most accomplished marathoners. To say that I was amazed by the astounding extent to which he had seemingly transformed his life would be an understatement. My first thought was, can this be real? But when I looked closely, it was undeniable. It was indeed the same guy. I needed to know more. I needed to know how he did it. So I reached out to David and he sent me his self-published memoir, Out There: A Story of Ultra Recovery*. 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?

  Eating well rarely falls apart because of one big failure. It's the daily question that wears you down, like, what am I actually going to make tonight? What's in the fridge? And it's exactly why we built the Plant Power Meal Planner. It's a personalized, plant-based meal planning program that matches you with recipes based on your taste, your allergies, your cooking skills, and how much time you actually have. You build, through this program, a balanced, nutrient-dense plan for your entire household in a few minutes. Then it generates a grocery list for you with one click that plugs right into our delivery partners. All the recipes in the program are built by dietitians with culinary training. Plus, you get your own food coach to help you problem-solve along the way.

• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout. Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, episode 113 with David Clark.

• 1:24Rich Roll?

  Greetings, citizens of the earth. My name is Rich Roll, and I am your host. Welcome to my podcast. Thank you for listening. Thank you for spreading the word with your friends. Thank you for Instagramming all the cool ways and places where you enjoy the show. Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter at richroll.com, where you can find tons of great products and services to take your lifestyle next level. And thank you for supporting the show by clicking through the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for your Amazon purchases. Hey, you guys, this show's free. It's always going to be free. Support us with this simple, not time-consuming act. Come on, what are you guys doing? Thank you so much for everybody who has been doing that, by the way. We really appreciate it.

• 2:05Rich Roll?

  So, anyway, each week, I sit down with the best and the brightest in health, wellness, diet, nutrition, fitness, mindfulness, creativity, and entrepreneurship. I got world-class athletes, I got doctors, I got nutritionists, psychologists, yogis, entrepreneurs, artists, and even the occasional inspirational everyman, the guy who has overcome insurmountable obstacles to do the extraordinary, like today's guest. All forward-thinking, all paradigm-busting minds here to share their experience, their knowledge, and their insights to, wait for it, help you discover, uncover, unlock, and unleash your best, most authentic self.

• 2:47Rich Roll?

  I'm obsessed with the idea that we can all do and be better. And if this show is anything, it's really a loud and clear call to action. It's a sounding bell to help anyone and everyone understand and actually believe that you are capable of so much more than you allow yourself to entertain. David Goggins is, if you haven't heard of him, he's an amazing endurance athlete. He's a guy I admire and respect tremendously. And he once said something that really stuck with me. He said, "When you think you're done, you've only accomplished about 40% of what you're truly capable of." I think about that a lot.

• 3:28Rich Roll?

  And I think that quote completely embodies the ethos of today's guest, David Clark. You know, it's fun to sit down with celebrated guests, people that are really popular, people that everybody has heard of, and it's a sure way to get more downloads. But I think there's something far more gratifying to me personally about sharing the story of an everyman hero, a regular guy with regular guy problems, toiling away in anonymity, a guy that meets severe challenges head-on and does something that challenges the imagination about just what's possible and comes out the other side transformed.

• 4:09Rich Roll?

  There's nothing more powerful or palpable about that kind of story. And much like my conversation with Josh LaJaunie, episode 63, which is a must-listen. If you're new to the show and you have not listened to my interview with Josh, episode 63, you gotta go back and listen to it. And to date, it's still, I think it's my most downloaded, most popular show. But anyway, this interview will move you similarly. It will inspire you, and it will erase whatever obstacles and excuses that you rely on to perpetuate those bad habits. That keep you stuck and reinforce denial. And by listening to this interview, my hope is that you will realize that no matter

• 4:53Rich Roll?

  what your circumstances, no matter what your environment, that we all have the power to implement profound personal change beyond our collective imagination in miraculous and fantastic ways. Just takes a decision followed by consistent actions. I was introduced to David by my buddy Mishka, Mishka Shubal, another show favorite. And I didn't know much about him. I'd heard of him, but I really didn't know what his story was. So I decided to look into it. If Mishka says, hey, you should check this guy out, then I take him seriously. And I poked around and I came upon photos of a guy pushing 320 pounds, a bloated face, cocktail in hand.

• 5:38Rich Roll?

  And if I know anything, I know what an alcoholic looks like when I see one. And David fit the bill, top to bottom. He was a guy who looked like hell, redlining towards death and creating a wide path of destruction in his wake. I continued to poke around and then I saw a picture of a fit and slim 165 pound athlete crossing the finish line at Badwater, a 135 mile run across Death Valley, the hottest place on earth, widely considered to be the world's toughest footrace. The change was so astounding, my thought, my first thought was like, can this be real? The 320 plus pound guy who looked like some kind of menacing Archie Bunker you're scared

• 6:22Rich Roll?

  to talk to, decades older than his biological age, bore almost no resemblance to that runner achieving something even the most accomplished runners find absolutely terrifying. But when I looked closely at the faces, I could indeed tell that this was the same guy. I needed to know more about how he did it. So I reached out, David sent me his book. It's called Out There, A Story of Ultra Recovery. And to say that I was amazed by what this man has endured, overcome, achieved, and the astounding extent to which he had transformed his life would be a complete understatement. After reading the first page of his book, I just identified so completely and I knew that I had to have him on the show. David's is the story of a man who never had a chance to find out who he was.

• 7:06Rich Roll?

  Growing up in the hardest of circumstances, homeless, without any formal education. He traveled the country in his father's pickup truck. He's a kid who grew up no stranger to the hard knocks of life. And his story is the detailed, at times quite painful, personal account of what it's like to be obese, what it's like to live as an addict, live as an alcoholic, just how lonely and painful that is. Spiraling towards death, spending years eating recklessly, drinking and drugging himself and growing farther and farther away from everybody around him. Until one day, he woke up and a thought occurred to him. If I don't change today, I will die.

• 7:48Rich Roll?

  If I don't change today, I will die. Ultimately, Dave had enough. Pulling from deep reserves, he found the wherewithal to face and overcome his demons and transformed his life wholesale, accomplishing what most sane people would deem impossible. Recovering from a death sentence addiction to drugs and alcohol that destroyed his career, destroyed his family, and nearly his life until he hit rock bottom. A lifelong addiction to unhealthy foods and lifestyle habits to discover a healthier way of living, hand in hand with a passion for running. David's journey is a journey that led him to not only drop 150 pounds, not only complete

• 8:30Rich Roll?

  a half marathon, not only complete a marathon, and not only complete the Badwater 135, but a whole slew of impressive ultra-marathons, including a stab at a treadmill run world record. It's extraordinary. And amazingly, David today is a loving father of three. He's a running coach, he's a sponsored runner, he's a public speaker, and he's a gym owner. And he dedicates his time to sharing the story of how we can all change everything about ourselves if we want to badly enough. Today, I'm so pleased to give Dave a well-deserved microphone to serve this end. I assure you that his extraordinary tale is well worth your precious time this week. So how did he do it? Well, let's find out.

• 9:24Rich Roll?

  What have you been doing since you've been in LA?

• 9:26Speaker 01

  I've just been kinda hanging out a little bit. I got a chance to go down and meet some folks at a running store, Front Runners, and do a group run there.

• 9:33Rich Roll?

  The one in Brentwood?

• 9:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, no, actually, I showed up at the one in Brentwood, but I was supposed to be at the one in West Hollywood, so I ended up making it to the right one, though, and got to talk about my book a little bit and run with the group.

• 9:44Rich Roll?

  That's cool. Do you have a nice turnout of people, or what was it? Usually those things like, whenever I do that kinda stuff, like, five people show up?

• 9:52Speaker 01

  You know, yeah, I've had both spectrums of the experience, you know, the five and the 50. This one was like, and there was like 20 people there. It was a pretty good turnout.

• 10:00Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's cool. Did you do a run also, or you just talked about the book?

• 10:03Speaker 01

  No, we did a run, and I got a 100-miler coming up this Saturday, so I was supposed to do a nice little taper run, and it turned into be like a five-mile race with everyone.

• 10:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah, usually, that's what always happens when I do the group runs, like, a lot of people that don't, you know, they're not ultra-runners, so they go, they run a lot faster than I run when I'm training. I always get intimidated.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I think it was just because, like, you know, I don't know, some guy, no one knows who he is, shows up from Colorado, so everyone wants to just kinda flex and test.

• 10:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, here comes Scott Jurek, right?

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's hard to not just, you get caught up in it, and you end up running fast.

• 10:41Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  It feels good.

• 10:42Rich Roll?

  What's the 100-miler you're getting ready for?

• 10:45Speaker 01

  I'm gonna go out to Havelina, down in Arizona.

• 10:48Rich Roll?

  Nice, man. That should be good.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:50Rich Roll?

  Have you done, so what races have you done since Badwater 2013?

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Well, I did Badwater this year.

• 10:57Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did? I didn't know that.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Well, actually, it did me, but, yeah, I got, I had, last year was just such a dream come true to get a chance to line up out there and to do it and finish it. And then this year, even with the new course, I wanted to go out and see, see if I could test myself a little bit against it, and I went out a bit aggressively.

• 11:16Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did, huh?

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:17Rich Roll?

  Got a little ahead of yourself.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  I seem to learn the same lessons over and over again in life.

• 11:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, I could tell from reading your sobriety story, it's not a, it's not a linear trajectory for you, nor is it for me, but nor is it for most people.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 11:34Rich Roll?

  You know, I was with, I just got back, I was up in the Bay Area for a week. And yesterday afternoon, I did a podcast with Dean Harnazas, who gave you a wonderful blurb for your book, by the way.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:47Rich Roll?

  And we were talking about bad water and he's like, man, I just can't figure that race out. Like some years I go in, I think I have it totally dialed and it kicks my butt. And other years, I feel like it's not going to go well. And then I have my best year. So he's like, I can't crack that nut.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, that's tough. Certainly he knows a hell of a lot more than I know about that kind of stuff. But I've experienced the same thing. I mean, I was, I was fitter and in better shape and I think even more prepared mentally than I ever was. But, you know.

• 12:17Rich Roll?

  That's the way ultras go, though.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  It is. It's humbling. It'll smack you down.

• 12:20Rich Roll?

  That's sport, you know? I think it's a sport in general. And yeah, I mean, one of the things we were, we were talking about yesterday as well is, is the importance of failure. Not just the willingness to fail, but the failure itself, because that's the place from which you can learn and grow. Like if you had a great race, then what do you take away from that?

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:40Rich Roll?

  Better than I was last year?

• 12:41Speaker 01

  No, that's so true.

• 12:43Rich Roll?

  That's so true. It's, I mean, it's good for the ego, right? You go throw down a PR

• 12:46Speaker 01

  and you have a good day. But you never, I don't remember ever saying, you know, wow, everything went great and I learned so much.

• 12:52Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  It usually happens when everything goes really, really bad. That's when you learn. You're right. Absolutely.

• 12:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like a good stubborn alcoholic.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:01Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? How has the, the process of kind of getting the book out there been for you?

• 13:07Speaker 01

  You know, it's been incredible in every possible way. And, you know, the finish line for me was always finishing the book, writing it, you know? And I never really looked very much beyond that. So everything that's happened since then over the last couple of months has been, you know? Definitely something that I hadn't anticipated and hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about. So, but I've been very blessed as usual to have some guys like Dean, you know, endorse a book and Marshall, all right, to write the foreword. So that's definitely helped, you know, get my foot in the door a few places.

• 13:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you got some big, and you got a, you got Tim O'Donnell too, gave you a blur. Marshall wrote the foreword. So you're in good company with those guys, right?

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. A blessing living in Boulder, too.

• 13:52Rich Roll?

  Of course, right? You throw a rock and you hit a training partner.

• 13:56Speaker 01

  That's right, right. I always say that in Boulder, if you tell everyone you did an Ironman, they won't be impressed. They'll just ask you what your bike split was.

• 14:05Rich Roll?

  I'd be scared to live there, you know? Too many, too many super fit athletes.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:11Rich Roll?

  How long have you lived there?

• 14:12Speaker 01

  I've been in Colorado for about 20 years and.

• 14:15Rich Roll?

  Right, but most of that was not in Boulder, right?

• 14:17Speaker 01

  No, mostly in the Denver metro area. And I still live in, outside of Boulder in Lafayette. I live about eight miles outside.

• 14:24Rich Roll?

  But you go and do you, do you find people in Boulder to train with? Or are you like a solo guy when it comes to training?

• 14:29Speaker 01

  You know, I'm not surprisingly a man of extremes when it comes to that.

• 14:34Rich Roll?

  Shocking.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. But I could spend a lot of time just, you know, running by myself and, and, and I can be very social too, you know? I like, I like it all.

• 14:43Rich Roll?

  Like both of them.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like to be out there in my own head and, and stuff. And also it's good to just, you know, I've definitely benefited greatly from being able to run with guys and girls a lot stronger than me.

• 14:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's, that's, that's what's great about that community, you know? I still, you know, I keep telling my wife, I'm like, let's go live in Boulder for a summer, just for a summer, you know, I'm sure I would get just epic training in, you know? I'm more of a lone wolf though. I like to go out by myself, get the quiet time away from the kids and everything. But, but it's good to mix it up with company, I think. Uh, let's, uh, let's play a little game that I know you know well. It's called, uh, what it was like, what happened and what it's like now.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:25Rich Roll?

  You know that game, right?

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Well, what it was like, man, that's, that's tough. It was, it was pretty bad, you know? It got, it got really, really dark and, and really, really ugly. And, you know, I just kinda, you know, created this, uh, this place for myself where, you know, this whole image of who I was. And, and of course, you know, I found a way to, uh, put alcohol and, and, and using in the middle of that identity. And so it never seemed odd, you know, to, to be in that place. And, and I had, uh, you know, I had like all of us, a tough childhood and, and a lot of things that were, you know, disturbing me in there. And, and I was running away from it. And, um, you know, at first it was chasing the, kind of the concept of normalcy, you know, and just wanting

• 16:12Speaker 01

  to feel attached to society and, and owning a home, which seemed really almost impossible to me at one point in my life. And, and then starting a business and being successful in that. And all these things I was, I was chasing just never really made me happy, you know? So, um, I tried to, uh, silence, you know, those, those, um, those guiding voices, if you will, from the outside in. And, you know, as I did that and as I went along, um, my chemical abuse, my substance abuse, uh, it just got darker and darker. And it went from partying and having fun and goofing off to, you know, just sitting by myself, you know, in, in, in the dark and at night and drinking. And it's funny, it was like all these things

• 16:54Speaker 01

  that I used, used as, um, you know, levels or barometers to, to gauge my drinking and, and how I was normal. Well, at least I'm not drinking in the morning. And at least I'm not, you know, waking up in the bushes somewhere, you know? And one by one, all those things kind of ticked off. Yeah, like, well, yeah, but, you know.

• 17:10Rich Roll?

  But there's always somebody lower.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  There is.

• 17:12Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? And, and you could, you can spin that wheel forever. And, you know, I found, I found reading, you know, that aspect of your story to be, you know, really profound for me. I mean, I emotionally related, uh, with it completely. You know, the circumstances of some of your stories is very different from mine, but it's the same story, you know? And, and what I, what I, what really touched me the most was how you described the sort of, uh...

• 17:40Rich Roll?

  You know, the drinking and isolation, you know, I think that's something that a lot of people can't really grasp. I think a normal person will read these stories in your book and they'll think, you know, I don't like, you know, how does somebody do that? Like, I don't understand, you know, and I'm reading and I'm right with you, you know? It's like, you know, I couldn't wait to get home from the party so then I could really start my drinking, you know? So I could, that's when the good drinking starts, you know, and, and all the kind of shame that comes with that. And, you know, that, that progressive withdrawal from society. And, you know, as you sink down, then you're, you start surrounding yourself with lower companions, but you always surround yourself with the other people that are doing the kind of same thing that you're doing. So you never have like an objective mirror to reflect the reality of your behavior.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It's funny because, I mean, how could you expect someone who's, who's never been there to understand when even going back and, and reading it and reliving it, I go, how the hell did I not know? That I was just totally out of control.

• 18:40Rich Roll?

  But you did know. I mean, you knew when you were 13, you know, you knew on some unconscious level that this was probably going to be a problem down the line. And I, I remember sort of harboring that kind of semi-conscious thought. Like, you're not really aware, like, oh, I'm an alcoholic, but you have that little tickle, like, early on where you're like, yeah, this might not go so well.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  No, you're right. It wasn't so much as not knowing as, as like, just how could I not, you know, be actively aware of how destructive it was. But no, you're, you're so right. No, I always knew that what I was doing wasn't exactly normal.

• 19:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. You know, drink when it's good, drink when it's bad. And what's also interesting is that, you know, in the midst of like a pretty insane drinking career, you're still able to like put together this amazing business and succeed and make tons of money. I mean, you must be an unbelievable salesman because, uh, you know, I think that, that the kind of outsider perspective would be, if you're drinking like that, there's no way you can function. But the alcoholic is a very resourceful individual, you know, very scrappy. And I thought it was, I thought it was very interesting how you described how you were able to kind of keep all the plates spinning for as long as you did.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that the picture that a lot of people have of the alcoholic is woefully inaccurate. You know, like you said, it's, you know, it's not the bum sitting on the street corner, you know, you know, drinking and sitting around in his own filth, although we can all end up there if we stay on long enough.

• 20:10Rich Roll?

  It's headed, it's headed that way.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  But no, it's, it's, it's the guy that's, you know, doing a pretty reasonable job at creating an illusion of what his life looks like. You know, and, and getting farther and farther away from that illusion as he goes, you know, deeper and deeper in.

• 20:26Rich Roll?

  Right. There's this great disconnect and there's this growing awareness that, yeah, this is, this is a problem. You know, you're getting into trouble all the, I mean, you know, you know, you know that this is not good. You're powerless to stop. And to compensate for that, you go overtime on work and all those other things because you could, that helps put the facade up that your life is actually functional.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it, and it gives you, you know, proof that you are okay. You know, it's like, hey, well, at least I'm doing this, you know, and I'm okay, you know?

• 20:57Rich Roll?

  Right. And, and that kind of feeling of the ego, like there's that episode in the book where you're, you go into that huge pitch meeting, right? And you have, you have, you know, brass balls and you know, you kind of like throw down the gauntlet on this deal, like in a pretty risky way and, and you get what you wanted out of that. So, what I took away from that story is sort of this weird thing that I think only the alcoholic can truly understand, which is having this huge ego, like thinking you're, you're more entitled and better than everybody else, but also simultaneously harboring this like horrible shame that you're a piece of shit and you're worse than everybody, completely worthless and, you know,

• 21:39Rich Roll?

  shouldn't even be breathing air. Like only the alcoholic can like entertain those two thoughts at the same time.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, the egomaniac with the inferiority complex. Yeah. Yeah. And the funny thing is like looking back and reliving it and writing it and. You know, I think maybe at some point I thought, you know, I was doing a really good job at controlling other people and circumstances and manipulating my environment. But really, it was just me that I was manipulating and controlling. And those other things, you know, those could have happened no matter what, just because, you know, I was creating value in the industry that I was in. And I didn't have to go in and totally try to manipulate and control, but you don't know any other way when you're now, I have to control everything that's going on right now. And it's just, it's obviously, it's bullshit. It's impossible. You can't even control yourself. How are you going to control everyone else?

• 22:30Rich Roll?

  Right. Let alone controlling 9/11 and then, you know, the market crashing and everything that happened to your business as a result. Like, all of these kind of things that happened to you, things are progressively being taken away from you. You're holding on stronger and stronger to the drinking, but also developing this awareness that, you know, you're going to have to stop.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was an interesting time, you know. It would have been really, you know, I've always had this kind of like alarm bell, you know, that can, that can go off, even when, when I was falling farther and farther down the hole. There's all these levels where these alarm bells would go off and, and I would sense that I was, you know, dropping down another level. And that, and that was certainly one of them. And, you know, it was really tempting and alluring to blame the loss of my business on 9/11 itself and what happened in the economic aftermath. And it was something that I just couldn't really let myself do because I knew it was going to, to crush me and send me even farther, farther down.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  So I just tried to move on, you know?

• 23:36Rich Roll?

  Well, playing the victim is, is always the easy way out. And the alcoholic is no stranger to playing the victim.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  No.

• 23:44Rich Roll?

  But I, I thought that your wife showed tremendous, or now your ex-wife, but your wife at the time showed tremendous patience with you. I mean, she had to be just coming unglued while this was going on.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, that's a, that's a tough subject. Um, she was, I mean, she was and is an amazing person. She's, she's incredibly patient, but our relationship was, was very odd and, and very hard to really, um, put in perspective, you know? We, um, grew apart, no, no shock there with, with my behavior in, in, over those years, but, you know, we never had any arguments about my drinking, you know? There, there was never that, that place. It was obviously pushing us apart. It was obviously creating a lot of damage in our relationship, but it wa- it wasn't presenting itself as a problem. It wasn't a, a topic of conversation.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Um, I think probably if I had to be really honest, it was because she was afraid of engaging me in the debate because, you know, I'm, I'm a reasonably good debater, especially when drunk and passionate, and I think she just had to step back and, and try to let me figure it out. And, uh, she's, she's amazing and, and we're still really good friends today, but, um, yeah, she's, she's something else.

• 25:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think the, the most, um, heart-wrenching, uh, part of the book for me was the night that you stay up, uh, on Christmas Eve drinking super late and you're just out of your mind and then you realize like you haven't wr- wrapped these presents and, you know, you're just unable to kind of get that job done and, and the presents end up with, you know, masking tape on them or just kind of looking like a mess and, and to kind of shame the next morning of, of, of that dawning on you and realizing that. I mean, I think if there was ever a moment where your wife would be like, "I can't, I can't, you know, I can't have this anymore," that would have been it.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, it's funny, like, of all the, you know how it is, like, when you, when you go about- You know, when I started to write the book, I made a deal with myself that I wasn't gonna hold anything back that I thought would be too embarrassing, or, you know, things I wrote about it, like, you know, driving drunk and stuff like that. I didn't wanna put that in there, cuz I didn't wanna, I know the stigma that's attached to that, and I didn't want people chasing after me. But, I was like, you know, I'm gonna put what's in there, and then, if it's too much, I just won't release the book. But, I'll have a accurate product when I'm done. And, so you go through all these moments, these low moments, you know, and I chose a handful of thousands, you know, and I tend to choose the ones that

• 26:20Speaker 01

  were, for whatever reason, I was present enough at that time to remember it. But the reality is, most of them, I didn't remember, and I had no idea what happened the night before. But, of all the things that I talked about in the book, the other addicts that I talked to, always point out the Christmas present story, and not some of the other ones, like, you know, it's that one. And I think because we've all just been in that place where you're so drunk, you're so out of it, that you can't do this stupidly easy task. And your brain knows you should be able to do it, and it becomes more and more frustrating, and more and more shameful, and humiliating, and everything all wrapped

• 27:03Speaker 01

  into one. And, I, if I could, you know, if I would've written the story as a script, that would've been my low. You know, that would've been the moment that I rose up from the ashes and created a new life, because I don't know that I've ever felt less of a human being than I did that Christmas morning. But, I kept going.

• 27:22Rich Roll?

  Well, you know, I think it highlights, well, there's this idea that the alcoholic will harbor, that, you know, hey, leave me alone, I'm just, you know, I'm allowed to do what I want to myself, I'm not hurting anybody, I'm just, you know, but, that episode really, sort of punctuates, you know, the fact that there are other people involved, and in particular, like, young children on a very important day, which I think elevates the emotional kind of impact of something like that.

• 27:52Rich Roll?

  But you know, I related to, I related to the emotions completely. And, and I related to the kind of, you know, roller coaster ride of saying, you know, I gotta get my life together, it's time to get sober, and then just not being able to do it, or that memory so quickly fading, and then you're back to doing what you're always doing, and how long it took before, you know, I was really able to get to that place to really surrender and be willing to accept help and do the work. But, you know, my lowest moment was a year and a half before I got sober, you know? And if I was writing the narrative, you know, and the movie script, that would have been the moment, you know, but that's not the way it works.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:34Rich Roll?

  You know, that's not the way it works. You're ready when you're ready, and it doesn't always make sense, and it's not always logical.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  And then, you know, absolutely right. And then there's that other aspect too, that I think like a lot of my friends who, who haven't dealt with addiction in their own lives, think that, you know, my sobriety date was August 5th in 2005. And that they think that maybe if it wouldn't have been that day, it would have been August 10th, or maybe in September, but I was, you know, that everything was pushing towards that point, but you know, the reality is that if I wouldn't have jumped off then, I could still be there now.

• 29:06Rich Roll?

  You might be drinking now, yeah, or you might be dead.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's those little cracks in the door, those precious moments where you have just the slightest sliver of willingness, you know, but if you don't act on that then, who knows if that ever, you're ever blessed with that.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:22Rich Roll?

  Opportunity again, you know, it really is a precious thing. The other thing that, that I thought was really impactful was, um, of course now I just lost my train of thought. I had to do, oh yeah, I know what it was. It's a, this idea that, you know, the alcoholic is always trying to solve the problem with their mind, but they're not aware that their mind is... Is being poisoned by chemicals, right? So your perception of the world is altered. And you're trying to solve a problem from, you know, from a place that's not healthy. You know, but you don't have the objectivity to see that. Because everything you're processing, everything that you're taking in through your eyes and your

• 30:05Rich Roll?

  ears is going through this machine that is broken.

• 30:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:11Rich Roll?

  Right? And, and, and so it's all, it's impossible to have any objectivity on the reality of your situation, which makes it all the more crucial. Like, you know, in recovery, you, you hear about surrender. You hear about that willingness to ask for help. And, you know, without the intervention of a third party to kind of come into that equation, it, it's extremely difficult. It's, it's like a miracle that anybody ever gets sober.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Like you, you abusing your brain over and over again and killing your brain cells and then trying to use your, your warped brain to, to convince yourself to not keep drinking.

• 30:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  It is an absolute miracle. And, and we all know, those of us that have made it out, that we got lucky. You know, we, we just, I don't know why, but why it happened on that day, but it did. And, and, you know, along with that comes a huge sense of gratitude, you know, and a huge sense of, of just, you know, bewilderment, you know? I mean, I, you, you look at it and you're like, I don't know how I ever, I don't know how I ever got that low, and I don't know how the hell I ever got out.

• 31:17Rich Roll?

  The other thing that I loved was how you describe, uh, sleep and the lack thereof. And I don't hear that really discussed that often. But for me, like, I can remember so vividly, like, I never just slept. Either I passed out, or I was tossing and turning with bedspins and throwing up, or, or, you know, trying to go a couple of days without drinking. And the sleepless nights that accompany that are some of the most painful nights I've ever had, like the hallucinations and the, you know, the sweating in the sheets and, and just never, ever being able to just get a legitimate night of sleep without being altered.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, there comes this like crazy time warp, right? Where you, you're, you, you feel like you don't have enough time to adequately abuse and, and worship your drug. And you, you don't ever just. Retire for the evening, you just run out of time and or your body just shuts you down before before you get to wherever it is you're searching for. And yeah, it's like you said, there's no sleep. There's no like, okay, the night's over and now I've had my fill and I'm gonna, you know, just go in. Go to sleep.

• 32:27Rich Roll?

  When I watch movies and TV and I see people like drinking and then they just go home and go to bed, I'm like, how does that work?

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. Even my friends are out there and they get home at 2am and go to bed.

• 32:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't understand how that that works at all. Like either I have to drink enough until I completely blackout to go to sleep.

• 32:47Speaker 01

  I would, the last thing I would do, no matter if it was 3 o'clock in the morning or what time it was and how much I had to drink is I would pour, I would take like a rocks glass or a juice glass and just fill it full of 90 proof something and carry it up to bed with me. And I'm not going to feel any benefit or effect of that. It was more of a possession thing. I just needed to have it with me. And and half the time I didn't even drink it. I'd go and set it down in the nightstand next to me and I could sleep because I knew it was there. But it was nonstop drink until the moment that consciousness left. And I was so aware of, and I talked about it in the book, of that first time when I just slept.

• 33:28Rich Roll?

  Right. It's a miracle. Yeah, like when you're like, oh, my God.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  I have never done this.

• 33:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, since I was like 12.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  I didn't know what this was.

• 33:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, that was very palpable, the way you described that.

• 33:54Rich Roll?

  I mean, when you go out and like yesterday, when you talk to people or, you know, you kind of interact with people that have read the book, you know, normal people, non alcoholics, non addicts, I mean, what is their reaction to reading, you know, the kind of drunkology aspect of the book?

• 34:09Speaker 01

  You know, it's a mixed bag, but I think, you know, it's the one thing I hear a lot is I'm glad you're still alive, you know, and it's it's an interesting thing to hear from people, especially people that don't know you and have never met you. And it's it's quite common. And it just drives home that point of, you know, looking from the outside and how destructive and how terrible that behavior was.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  I think one of the most surprising things that's come out of this, you know, I kind of expected that, just very much in the same way when I read your book, I knew where you were, you know, and it triggered that, those emotions in me and I could feel like the weight of the glass you were holding or the thoughts that you were thinking. I expected the book to reach other people who'd been in similar circumstances, but what I haven't expected or didn't expect was some of the family members. And I had a lady, I recently ran a road marathon in Leadville, and a lady came out to the finish line, I was waiting for me to finish, and she wanted to tell me about her son who had just passed

• 35:22Speaker 01

  away. He had OD'd on heroin and he was 26 years old. And she just wanted to tell me that the book, reading it, gave her some insight as to what her son might have been feeling and what he might have been thinking. Because from the outside in, a lot of people just think it's, you know, indulgent, you know, behavior and it's, and it is, and it is, it's selfish and it's indulgent. But, you know, we could talk for hours and hours on whether it's a disease and all these things that are such hot topics, but the bottom line is, once the addict's in, he's in and it doesn't really matter, you know, how you got there or what happened. But, and I had the same exact thing happen at a gym, I own

• 36:04Speaker 01

  a gym in Lafayette, and I had someone just show up whose wife had had back surgery, I talk about my back surgery in the book, and she was prescribed a whole trough of narcotics and she got addicted and she overdosed and she died. And it left her family just-

• 36:19Rich Roll?

  Like Oxy or what was it?

• 36:21Speaker 01

  I never asked exactly what they had her on, but, yeah, I think that, and it's my, it's my hope that it continues to go that way and it continues to offer some sort of, you know, understanding or peace for people who are trying to figure out why a loved one is so lost and so much struggling.

• 36:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think it accomplishes that. I mean, you did a very deft job of describing the powerlessness and the desperation, the desire to change, but, you know, the inability to, and the shame that accompanies that, because I think if you don't, you know, if you haven't had- A close encounter with somebody who's struggling with this disease or condition, however you want to qualify it, it's, it is easy to go like, why can't they just snap out of it? Like what's, I don't get it, you know, just stop. But it's so much more complicated than that. And, and you really painted this, you know, pastiche of the emotional landscape

• 37:22Rich Roll?

  that, that accompanies it. And it was, it was painful to read, but I also, I'm like, yeah, I'm right there with you, you know, but I remember very vividly going to see that movie Leaving Las Vegas with a buddy of mine. And I'm just watching Nicolas Cage do his thing. And I'm like, yeah, man, let's do it. Like, looks like a good time to me. Like, I'm like, yep, I do that too. Yeah, I could see, yeah, I could see why he'd make that decision. You know, like, my friend is just horrified at the whole thing, you know? And I was like, oh, yeah, like, and this was before I got sober, you know, and it was very evident, like, oh, I think differently, you know, I'm seeing the world through a different lens.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Did you watch Flight?

• 38:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah. My, my friend, John Gaitens, wrote that book.

• 38:04Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 38:05Rich Roll?

  I mean, wrote that script. And, you know, he's a friend that I know from recovery, obviously. I mean, he's writing that from probably based, you know, on some of his own experiences, but in very, very powerful, you know, people think it's about a, you know, an airplane crash or whatever. No, this is, this is an incredibly potent story about what it's like to be an alcoholic. A story very well told.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was honestly one of those people. I was, I was absolutely blindsided by the movie. I went with a friend and I was expecting a movie about.

• 38:34Rich Roll?

  You don't know what it's gonna be.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  No, I had no idea. And I was, I had tears spilling out of my eyes, rolling down my cheeks the whole time. I was, it was, it was very emotional. And I think they did a really good job at showing that, you know, it's not a matter of what you're gonna do. You know, you're gonna drink. It's gonna happen. It's just a matter of whatever, what you're doing at the same time.

• 38:53Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. And also, the way that you describe kind of your trigger situations, like that first time you had to go to the airport, you know, and what airports represented for you. I mean, for me, it's like hotels or like going to a foreign city where no one knows me, you know, and you're like, ooh, you know, I could, I could get away with something here and no one would know. And like that demon on your shoulder is right there. And, and trying to kind of prepare for those situations, the amount of like, Work, you know, recovery work that has to go into getting ready to, you know, walk through a scenario that you're so programmed to drink or use and is, is, you know, is challenging and like just, God, you know, just reading you, feeling you like going into

• 39:35Rich Roll?

  that airport and the guys that you're with are at the bar and they're, they're encouraging you to drink like, so it's so brutal.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  I honestly have no idea how I made it for that, through that first two weeks.

• 39:46Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  I mean, of all the times that I had everything perfectly aligned for me to get clean and I didn't do it, you know, I had the time, I had the time away from work, I had no stress, had all these things and it just didn't matter. And then, you know, once I finally did make the decision, everything kind of aligned to, to screw me up and knock me off track and it just didn't matter at that point. And, but that's the way it works.

• 40:07Rich Roll?

  It reminded me of the story in the big book where, where Bill W. is newly sober and he has to go out of town and he's in this hotel and he's so close to drinking and he just goes to that payphone and calls the hospital and says, do you have any alcoholics, you know, that I can go talk to?

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:23Rich Roll?

  And that saves him and he's like, if that payphone wasn't there, he was a goner.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  You know, and it's funny because like I'm talking to, to family members and stuff who are just really struggling and in the whole enabling addicts and stuff like that is something that is just so hard and, and occupies so much of my time and talking to other people and I'm dealing with it right now with my own brother.

• 40:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I wanted to get into that a little bit.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  And, you know, it's, you have to be there for them and you have to love them, but the point being that once the alcoholic truly makes up their mind that they're done and it's real, ain't nothing gonna stop. You know, so we have this tendency that, you know, the family members are like, oh, if I say the wrong thing, if I do the wrong thing, if I look at him the wrong way, it's gonna screw it all up. And the reality is, no, no, there's, there's nothing you can do to make him use. He's gonna do that all by himself and there's nothing you can do to, to get him better. Once, once he makes up his mind, he'll need support, he'll need help, he'll need all these things, but nothing's gonna stop him, you know, that has to come from inside.

• 41:23Rich Roll?

  So your brother is out there still?

• 41:25Speaker 01

  He is, he is and.

• 41:27Rich Roll?

  Older, older brother, right?

• 41:28Speaker 01

  Younger brother.

• 41:29Rich Roll?

  Oh, younger. Oh, 10 years younger.

• 41:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have, I have three brothers. I have one older and two, two younger and two of us have the addiction. Demons chasing us around and two of us don't.

• 41:40Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Go figure.

• 41:41Rich Roll?

  And so how is, you know, how do you navigate that? Like, what is your communication like, if any? Like, for somebody who's out there listening, who's dealing with the same thing as a family member?

• 41:50Speaker 01

  It's fucked up, man. I mean, it's really hard because I hear my own advice echoing in my ear. And I know it's right because other people have told me it. And it's just part of the truths of addiction. But I feel the same thing other people feel. I want to, you know, help him out, you know? And I want to believe, you know, that, you know, I can send him 20 bucks and he's not going to buy heroin with it. You know, that, you know, all those same things, but I know, I know I can't. And, but honestly, it's, it's almost like you would think that being an addict would give you a certain amount of insight in helping another addict. And that's true. But really, it's, it's almost unrelated.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  I feel like what I'm going through as a family member trying to help my brother is almost entirely unrelated to what I went through as an addict myself. It allows me a window to understand what he's thinking and to have some empathy. But it's, it's such a difficult experience. And, and it's, it's up there with one of the toughest things I've ever gone through in my entire life.

• 42:57Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, well, that's interesting that you say that because the cornerstone of recovery is one alcoholic talking to another. And certainly you've endured enough to be able to have, you know, common ground with your brother, to have that dialogue. But what you can't do is gift him with the willingness that's required for him to even listen to you, let alone take action on anything that you're telling him.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and absolutely true. And maybe I should be a little more clear. It's like, I don't, in dealing with just me and another alcoholic, it's an entirely different dynamic in me dealing with my brother. Because I'm feeling

• 43:32Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  That emotional component.

• 43:34Rich Roll?

  Familial bond and all of that.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's definitely clouds it and makes it really hard. And it's given me a whole new way to understand, you know, what the family members are going through with their loved ones. Because it's, it's real easy to just You know, to be in that sponsor role and say, well, yeah, I know what your problem is. You haven't screwed up your life enough yet, you know? It's not bad enough for you yet.

• 43:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  As soon as it gets bad.

• 43:57Rich Roll?

  You need to go out and drink a little more.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Right. And to do that with your brother is really hard.

• 44:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Especially when they're calling and they're saying, I'm gonna be on the street and, you know, can you take me in and all this stuff?

• 44:07Rich Roll?

  And you're thinking, if I don't, then, and he dies or something happens, you know, I have to carry that with me. Yeah, you can't be that dispassionate, you know, sounding board. Because, yeah, you're dealing with other people at an arm's length. You're like, here's what you do. Do it or don't. I'm not attached to it.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:24Rich Roll?

  Here's the solution. And then you, you're not thinking about it the rest of the day.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's been a process because that's kind of where we are now. That's kind of the way it's had to go. And so our relationship isn't real good right now, you know? But I was just telling my mom that, you know, he's, he's gotta, he's gotta be the architect of his own recovery. And when that happens, there's nothing we won't do to help him.

• 44:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  But I can't tell him how, I mean, I can tell him how I did it. I can share with him how I did it. I can tell him what I thought, what I felt, and point him in the right direction. But ultimately, you know, he's, the truth comes from within, right? It's, it's not something we find from the outside and bring into our lives. It's, it's something that was always there that we just kind of discover.

• 45:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and I think that it's important for family members out there who are, who are dealing with this to understand that that's a very, that's very different from trying to cajole, cajole a family member into getting sober to get you off their back.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:27Rich Roll?

  That's not willingness.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  No.

• 45:29Rich Roll?

  That's a temporary Band-Aid that will not hold ultimately. I mean, there's, of course, there's the, the occasion where, you know, you do an intervention and somebody begrudgingly goes into rehab and then they get it when they're in there. But the more typical case is, you know, it doesn't stick because they're not ready.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 45:46Rich Roll?

  Because it's not being driven by their own desire. It's being driven by the fear and the love of family members who are desperate.

• 45:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:56Rich Roll?

  You know? So it's complicated. It's hard, man.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  It is.

• 45:59Rich Roll?

  I mean.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  We're crazy creatures.

• 46:02Rich Roll?

  So what was that moment in August that tipped the scale for you?

• 46:07Speaker 01

  You know, um, it was just, uh, I think it was, we kinda talked about before, you know, alarm bells, you know, and I kinda was aware of each time my, my drinking and my, my use was going to a new level of destruction. And, and, um, that morning, there was just something really heavy about it. And I think that, um, I think that that was going to be a significant day for me, one way or the other. And I think I was gonna either entirely give up and just go, go about the process of, of ending it, you know, maybe slowly, maybe quickly, or I was gonna stand up and start to fight. And, um, and I just felt

• 46:50Speaker 01

  like I had that, that one, one, one shot, that one little glimpse, and I just jumped on before I could think about it. I, I've related it to jumping out of a car, you know, like I was driving in a car and I thought I was driving the car and taking it to all these nice places. And one day I realized I was in the passenger side and I had no control over where the car was going. And I kinda hung out there for a while too. And it's like, okay, well, we'll just see where this thing's going. And then that, that day I just opened the door and I jumped out and before I could even think about it. Like all the times I tried to, you know, wrap it into this perfect thing that made sense and, you know, wrestle every demon out into a perfectly, you know, understandable thing and, and it never worked, obviously. So I had to trust the process. And, you know,

• 47:34Speaker 01

  it's kinda just like talking about running a hundred miles or something like that. You can't get to that place where you're doing some run and trying to convince yourself why it's a good idea, because it's not a good idea. You just gotta run. And that's, that's what I did with the recovery. I just, I just took the moment and kept moving forward.

• 47:50Rich Roll?

  Right. And, and the, you know, what you learn in recovery is that you're always in the passenger seat ultimately. And it's, it's when you think that you're in the driver's seat, or you try to take the wheel, that you end up veering off into the wrong direction. And that's a, that's a, you know, kind of an ephemeral idea that we could spend hours talking about. But, but just, that's part of the surrender of realizing like, not only am I not in control, like there are very few things that I actually can control. One of them is whether I drink or not today. But most things, you know, are pretty much beyond my reach. And it's interesting that, that the day that you had that moment was not, you know, after a car wreck or being put in jail. I mean, it was similar with me, like.

• 48:35Rich Roll?

  It was a really uneventful morning, like in terms of like events that had happened to me. You know, nothing, you know, I was hung over, but it wasn't on the heels of anything super traumatic. But there was just, it was different. You know, I woke up and I was like,

• 48:51Speaker 01

  I'm gonna die.

• 48:51Rich Roll?

  I'm ready. Yeah, like I'm ready or, or, or yeah, there's no turning back.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:56Rich Roll?

  You know, it was very inexplicable. It wasn't, you know, unicorns and rainbows and angels, but you know, I still would qualify it as, you know, a spiritual experience.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  No doubt.

• 49:08Rich Roll?

  Because it was, it, it came out of nowhere. It wasn't, it wasn't triggered by any, any particular event. You know, it was triggered by the accumulation of many years and terrible things, but that little gift of willingness just sort of materialized.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  It's funny because I, I asked for help that day and I'd probably asked for help before, but it was always just some sort of exercise and melodrama, you know, and, and, and wanting to be pitied more than anything.

• 49:36Rich Roll?

  Alcoholics are good at that.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. But I, I meant it. I meant it that time. I felt that the realness that I was not able to do this anymore. And I, I was totally powerless, you know, I was, I was, I was in over my head. I was getting my ass kicked and it wasn't going to get any better. And, and I felt myself giving up. I felt that was, I think that was the most scary thing is I felt myself like I always kind of had a little bit of fight. You know, I'm going to figure this out one day. And I always had a vision that, you know, there'd be a big intervention and they'd send me off to rehab and I'd come back and everything would be great, you know? And, but I felt, I, all of that was gone, you know? I didn't even have any, any visions of getting better anymore. And I didn't like that feeling. I didn't like the idea of giving up.

• 50:22Rich Roll?

  But you had never been to an AA meeting before. It wasn't like you had kind of made fits and starts or tried.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I'd been to a lot of AA meetings.

• 50:28Rich Roll?

  Oh, you had? Okay.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  In fact, usually what would happen is I would, there'd be one of those, those bad days, like that should be your bottom. You know, I'd wake up and not remember where my car was and, and, you know, just have all that.

• 50:40Rich Roll?

  That's not so bad. That's every day.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  No, it really wasn't.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  But or like the the time I talked about in the book where I was vomiting out of my truck window, driving home. That should have been, that should have been my last day, you know. I should have said, oh shit, I didn't kill anybody today. That's, that's good. Let's jump off this roller coaster now. But um, I totally lost my train of thought.

• 51:01Rich Roll?

  Uh, going into AA.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. So I would have one of those mornings and I would, and I, and I would wake up and I'd go to AA that night and I'd go, see, I knew it. I don't have a problem. I don't have anything in common with any of these people, you know? These are the guys that the problem. And I would, it was like an affirmation or an excuse to go drink some more. And, and I briefly do talk about in there where I talked about the fine, the time I really did go to a meeting. And I found what I did have in common with all those guys, which is, you know, alcohol, obviously, namely. It was, uh, it was the same experience we talked about with sleep. It's like, how could you do something over and over again and never experience it? And I'd been to probably fifteen or twenty AA meetings and they just never meant anything to me.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  And, I mean, I think I tried to do the ninety and ninety, like five or six different times.

• 51:50Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did?

• 51:51Speaker 01

  And I think I made three or four days. And then I'd be like, what am I doing? I own a company, you know? This is fucking bullshit.

• 51:56Rich Roll?

  I was court ordered, so I did it for that reason. And I was just a, you know, it was okay and I was well intentioned when I went. I was gonna get sober, you know? But then it just, I was kind of a tourist, like I intellectualized the whole thing. I get it. I understand, like, I'm not gonna do all this writing stuff down. I don't need to, like, I can make that list in my head. So I've done that. Yeah, I've done that, on to the next thing, like, I've solved this problem. And, and of course, that didn't work, you know? But you have to have your, you know, you gotta go through all those experiments, I think.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:34Rich Roll?

  And I think people, you know, a lot of people out there don't, they don't know that. They don't know how nonlinear the, uh, the journey to recovery is for, you know, ninety-nine percent of the people that are sober out there. They think, oh, they go to rehab and they're fine, or they go to AA and everything changes, or a therapist, or whatever, you know, version it is. But it's usually, you know, a lot of, you know, ups and downs and relapses and, you know, people are always. You know, surprised when somebody relapses, but that's the natural state of the alcoholic. The miracle is that all those days that they didn't drink, you know, they're like, they're wired to drink.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:17Rich Roll?

  We're wired to drink. So every day that you don't is the gift.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I just had nine years and it's a good start.

• 53:24Rich Roll?

  It's amazing. Congrats, man.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  It's a good start.

• 53:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's fantastic. Congratulations. Very cool. So let's talk about the weight thing.

• 53:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so I mean, you got fat.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  I was fat as hell, man.

• 53:37Rich Roll?

  Three hundred and twenty pounds.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  Three twenty. Yeah. Yeah. And I.

• 53:42Rich Roll?

  I can't, I mean, looking at you now, it's really hard to picture that. I mean, I saw the pictures in the book, but you know, you were a big boy.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  Yes, I was ultra before I knew it had anything to do with running, man, eating, drinking, whatever, man. And it's funny because I have people say to me, you know, isn't all that running bad for your knees? And I always say, you know, waiting in line for my third Big Mac weighing three hundred and twenty pounds was bad for my knees. But yeah, I, you know, food was the same thing, you know, I mean, the process was, was pretty much identical, you know, between what was going on with my weight and what was going on with my drinking. And I didn't think about food as anything other than making me feel good, you know, that's what it was for. And even though I knew better, at some intellectually, I knew better. I mean, I could, I could have written it out for you and told you exactly how all this stuff works, but it didn't matter because that's not how I saw food.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  And, and it's funny because I talk a little bit about there and that, that I had this, this concept of food and who was thin and who was fat. And I had it all, of course, figured out. I had everything figured out. I knew exactly how everything worked, right?

• 54:45Rich Roll?

  But let me tell you how it is.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  But I would see.

• 54:49Rich Roll?

  Standing at three hundred and twenty pounds and like with a fifth of, you know, bourbon. I got this figured out.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Well, you know, that's interesting because I remember telling my dad, and you know how it works, like your family members, they want to let you off the hook, right? They don't want, you know, a lot of times, you know, for, for the, the high bottomers, if you will, the ones that didn't end up on the street, you know, um, especially if you've had a, a level of success at some point in your life, your family wants to believe, they want to let, let you off the hook. And they don't want to think you have a problem and, and you, you drink too much, obviously. You need to stop that, but there's nothing wrong with you, you know?

• 55:22Rich Roll?

  Well, that because then it becomes a reflection of them.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, but I told my dad once, I was like, you know, I used to have this, this concept of like, well, yeah, I'm overweight and yeah, I drink too much, but other than that, I got life figured out.

• 55:36Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  And I'm like, I realized the stupidity and the insanity of that now, you know? And I like to say, you know, I wasn't overweight. I wasn't an alcoholic. I was broken. I was a broken human being. The, the food, the alcohol, that was a symptom, you know? I, I didn't know how to live life at all. Had no idea how to live life, had no idea how to be happy. I had no idea how to sit and just be still. And, and the, the food and the drugs and the alcohol was just something I could do in the meantime, because I couldn't be still.

• 56:07Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's the other thing that, that, that I think a lot of people aren't really fully in touch with, that, that alcohol is the solution for the alcoholic until it's the problem. And the alcohol and the effects of alcohol on the alcoholic are symptomatic, you know, manifestation of a disease that's really kind of a spiritual malady. It's like there's something wrong with this person. Drinking alcohol or taking drugs solves that temporarily until it stops working. And the drive to use is, is the kind of, uh, confused path, you know, of the diseased individual to solve this problem because they don't have any other answer. And recovery is about.

• 56:53Rich Roll?

  You know, blazing this frightening trail of trying to repair this broken soul. You know, that's what it, that's what it really is.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 57:01Rich Roll?

  And, and you know, the, the running and the journey that you've been on, I mean, those are kind of outward manifestations of this path towards healing, this path towards wholeness, this path towards self-knowledge, self-understanding of, of putting those pieces back together.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, undoubtedly.

• 57:18Rich Roll?

  And you know, and that's what I see. I mean, I'm sure a lot of people are like, well, the running, you just transferred all your addiction to the running.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:24Rich Roll?

  You know, so all right, what's your take on it? So many times I have people in recovery who have become ultra-athletes, so I have to ask the question. I had Charlie Engel on, we talked about, you know, like, it's gonna come up. So I'm interested, everybody has a different answer to the question. So how do you?

• 57:40Speaker 01

  Did I trade addictions?

• 57:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  That one?

• 57:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that one.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  You know?

• 57:44Rich Roll?

  I get that one. That's the, the one I get, that's the second most popular with me. The first one is, where do you get your protein?

• 57:49Speaker 01

  Right, well, yeah.

• 57:50Rich Roll?

  Anyway.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  You know, um, first of all, um, as you know, addiction has a huge destructive component to it. You know, you can't be addicted to loving your children. You can't be addicted to, you know, trying to be more spiritual in your life. You can't be addicted to anything that is overall in improving the quality of your life and making you a better human being. Can you be addicted to running? Sure. I, I think that's that point is when it, when it transfers over, you know, is, is when is it becoming destructive? When are you engaging in the behavior compulsively despite all these negative consequences?

• 58:29Speaker 01

  I tried to switch addictions a million times. In fact, it was my preferred method of trying to find sobriety, right? I'd go, you know what? I'm gonna become an outdoorsman, you know, and I'm gonna give up drinking and I'm just gonna go fly fishing and I'm gonna go camping and I'm gonna go to Alaska and, or I'm gonna go to the gym and I'm gonna, I tried the working out and all that stuff.

• 58:52Rich Roll?

  Or moving cities, pulling a geographic.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  I tried running. I tried to switch my addictions to running and I, I always kind of wanted to be that runner person, you know, I just kind of. It was appealing to me for whatever reason, but as you know, that was, that was just changing the symptoms. I may as well have been trying to switch from beer to wine, or from whiskey to cigarettes. I mean, it just didn't matter. It wasn't going to work that way. When I finally addressed the spiritual problems, what was causing me to live this way, and once I had to tackle some of those issues, I had this tremendous amount of mental energy and time available to me that I could have chosen to do anything with. I could have chosen to write music, or poetry, or go camping, or go running. And that's what I chose, but

• 59:38Speaker 01

  it was very much after the fact. And that's the only way it would have ever lasted for me. Because I could go to the gym, you know, how many times have I sat on a piece of equipment at the gym reeking of alcohol, you know, and still smelling like Big Macs because I vomited when I woke up in the morning? And that's, that's real. And that wasn't going to work.

• 59:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  It was never going to work.

• 59:58Rich Roll?

  I have to remain diligent in my sobriety to remember that training is not the same thing as tending to my sobriety. Like, going out and riding my bike and running, no matter how long that run is, that does not take the place of actually working a program of recovery. Because that's what I forget. You know what I mean?

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:00:21Rich Roll?

  I think, I'm fine now. Like, and now, as I go get my meditation when I'm running, like, no, that's, that's not, that's not it. That is not the solution. The minute I start to think about that, that is when I start to regress back and move towards that relapse.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  Start feeling some of those old behaviors, yeah.

• 1:00:38Rich Roll?

  You know, running, triathlon, all these things, they can be, you know, they can become addictions. You hear about the Iron Man widow, you know, or like, you know, when it starts to be this thing that someone escapes into because they're not happy with their life, or they're avoiding other things in their life, then I think you have to have, you know, hard discussion about what the addictive aspect of it is, or what it is that you're running away from. But, but as Mishka Shubaly said on the podcast, he's like, running is hard, drinking is easy.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's profound.

• 1:01:11Rich Roll?

  He's like, I don't want to get out of bed and go run, you know, but I always want to go to the bar.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:17Rich Roll?

  And so, I think that's something to think about as well.

• 1:01:31Rich Roll?

  But I think running is really this platform of self-discovery, you know, and that's what I've found and from reading your book, I mean, that's clearly, I think, I gather that that's your approach to it.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  It is very much so, and I also, you know, I think that we were talking earlier about, you know, that feeling of being lucky, you know, that why was that moment the moment? And once we arrive at that moment, and once I was there and I put forth this journey of figuring out who I was and trying to trust the process and allow myself some time to heal while I was trying to figure these things out, it took a tremendous amount of faith and discipline and trust and all these other things that fit into running nicely. And, you know, when I'm in a 100-mile race, you know, and there's always going to be a moment for me, I hear other people say, "Oh, I never wanted to quit, never want..."

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  I'm like, "Well, good for you, man, because when I'm out there, I want to quit all the time." And to be able to access that place where everything is uncomfortable, everything sucks, and there's an easy way out, and you don't take it, is very valuable. And it brings me back to that place in my early days of sobriety, and it actually gives me that feeling that, you know, I'm going to be okay as long as I can continue to identify those things in myself and realize that I'm not, I'm not just a victim of the moment, that there is a choice in the moment.

• 1:03:00Rich Roll?

  What do you think it is about discomfort or, you know, that willingness to, you know, go beyond the self-imagined limits of your capabilities that is so important to this idea or this feeling of being alive?

• 1:03:22Speaker 01

  You know, I can answer it for me, you know, and I think that discomfort is a huge part of the addict's problem is that, you know, life can be uncomfortable. Just the normal living of life is uncomfortable. We do all kinds of things we don't want to do, you know, whether it's following up with customer calls or, you know, doing things. That's part of life and the addict has nothing to do with that, right? I'm not going to be uncomfortable in my life. There's no such thing I'm going to use if I'm uncomfortable. I'm going to use if I have a second that's, you know, that's available to me. And so I think being in that uncomfortable place is a thing that most people are okay with and

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  addicts aren't. So I think that for me, it appeals to me in that place that to be, not just to be able to deal with discomfort, but to deal with it on a big level, you know, is empowering in a way. And it's an affirmation of life and of recovery and of sobriety. So.

• 1:04:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well put. You know, I think that that being ultra sensitive, to continue to use the word ultra in every context possible.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  I know, I'm sorry, I do that.

• 1:04:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think in general addicts and alcoholics tend to be people that, not everybody, but I think it's fair to make a generalization that they tend to be sensitive people. And, you know, when you're talking about when you were a kid and being kind of ultra, I said it again, you know, compassionate towards some other kid that you thought was having a hard time, that heightens everything, right? So as you grow older, that becomes more painful or more difficult to bear. And then it's the easy choice to use to numb that. And then you get sober and suddenly you're just, your emotions are charging, you know, firing in all different directions and you have no skills for how to manage

• 1:05:19Rich Roll?

  that. And you honestly think that these emotional impulses that you're experiencing are going to kill you. You know, it feels like you're going to die.

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  No, that's perfect. Absolutely.

• 1:05:30Rich Roll?

  And so the process of getting sober and recovering is learning how to manage your emotions because Your coping mechanism gets shut off when you start your drinking career or your using career. And so you've got, you know, whenever you started your, you know, career, 13, whatever it is, and until, you know, 33, right, 33. So you're a 33 year old man, and you have the emotional maturity of a 13 year old.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:02Rich Roll?

  And then, and you're in the world, right? And you have responsibilities. And, you know, that leads to panic attacks and freakouts and all sorts of things that, you know, without really having a solid foundation for sobriety, you're going to return to using ultimately.

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's the perfect analogy. And, you know, we all see those, you know, kids that can't cope and they're throwing tantrums and they're doing all this. And that's, that's like our behavior. That's the addict right there. That's a stereotypical addict. I can't have it my way, you know, I'm going to freak out and take everybody down with me.

• 1:06:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, what I always hear is, emotions are just emotions, man. You can feel them, and they change. And you'll get to the other side of it. They will not kill you. Like, so I have to think, like, it's not going to kill me. It's not going to kill me, you know? And in some sense, the pain of, of running an ultra is much more tolerable than some of the emotional pain that, that I've experienced.

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Physical pain is, is a lot easier to deal with. And, and I think that's, I think that's ultimately what happens in, in ultra, is that you have to learn to divide physical pain from mental pain and, or emotional pain. Because you have, what's going on in your legs, which is actually kind of the smallest part of it. It's, it's the emotion and the meaning your mind's putting into that and, and telling you, hey, this could all be over really quick. You're probably injured. You need to sit down and you need to go on. This was a bad idea, you know? And being able to separate those, exactly like what you said. It's okay. You're okay. You know, just slow it down, breathe a second, and, and it's going to be all right. Emotions, there's no such thing as an inappropriate

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  emotion, right? Just inappropriate times to feel them. And I think that was the big thing for me, is I never had the emotion and the occasion aligned up to be appropriate.

• 1:07:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  Why am I experiencing anger here?

• 1:07:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, being able to create that divining line between physical pain and emotional pain, you know, particularly in the context of of sport or running an ultra marathon, I mean, that's the that's the keys to the kingdom. You know, when you're talking about 100 mile run, it's it's it's not the physical that's going to bury you. It's it's the mental, right? I mean, as David Goggins famously said, when you think you're done, you've only accomplished about 40% of what you're truly capable of. So it's all about your mental state, your emotional state, you know, your spiritual connection and whatever form that takes that is either going to carry you across that finish line to some kind of triumphant victory or just bury you.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, my my take on the the cliche, the yogiism about how much of it is mental and how much of it is physical. And, you know, there's there's a thousand of them out there. Mine is, um, it's all mental, even the physical.

• 1:08:48Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. I'll take you I'll I'll take it one further.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:08:53Rich Roll?

  It's all spiritual.

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  All right. There you go. I like that.

• 1:08:55Rich Roll?

  You know, because

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  It's not supposed to be anything, right?

• 1:08:59Rich Roll?

  Well, it's like, look, I'm gonna come off like a woo woo new age guy. But the truth is, like, it's all spiritual journey, you know, all the things that I'm doing, the things that you're doing, were all born that day that you made that decision to get sober and and get in the passenger seat. And it's taken you on this remarkable, amazing journey, some of which, you know, you've played a small part through the actions that you've taken. But on some level, you know, you're this is your this is your path, man. You know, this is this is this is your divinely inspired journey that you're on. And it's a beautiful thing to see. So when people say to me, oh, you know, what do you think is your strength

• 1:09:42Rich Roll?

  and your weakness? And how do you do these things and all that? I'm like, dude, I have no idea.

• 1:09:50Rich Roll?

  I mean, I can give the flip answer, you know, I can give the five things you can think, I can do all that, but I'm like, the real truth, like the honest truth is, I don't know, because it's about, it was, it all began when I threw my arms up and said, I don't know what I'm doing.

• 1:10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Your strongest, your weakest moment was your strongest moment?

• 1:10:11Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. And I think that, that's tough, especially for guys, you know, we're, you know, we're not reared to say, I don't know, or to say, I need help, or will you help me, or, you know, I'm lost. These are not the characteristics of, of the successful man in Western culture.

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  No doubt, man. I mean, it was an absolute, the biggest obstacle that I faced in, in trying to, what I called, you know, get sober, because, you know, there's, as you know, there's such a big difference between sobriety and recovery, and, and not using, you know, not using is, is not even remotely related to being sober, you know, you're just not using anymore. And that's where I was, is like, I was almost, I was willing to kind of do the work, if someone would have given me, you know, what, here's what you need to do, I think I was willing to try to do that and make it happen, but what I wasn't willing to do was admit that I wasn't capable of doing the work. You know, like, well, I'm a man, I can take care of this, you know, I'll, I'll do this,

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  I'll fix this, and, and I, I could never get to the first step, because that, that was the problem, right there.

• 1:11:20Rich Roll?

  Right. Until you can get to that place where you will literally do anything, and you will take direction from somebody, even if you think that person is crazy, or has no business telling you what to do, because don't you know who, who I think I am? You know, until you can get over that, and really destroy the ego to get to that place, you know, it takes, it takes destroying the ego to get to that place where you can actually grow.

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  And it felt so good.

• 1:11:46Rich Roll?

  It's completely counterintuitive, but yeah, it's the greatest feeling, when you can finally let go of that.

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:51Rich Roll?

  So.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  And I think there's a lesson in there, you know, to, you know, competing and stuff like that, is that, is giving over that control, even when you get to a place where you want to be competitive. I have to accept any possibility in a race. I'm gonna accept the two extremes, right? I could win, or I could not finish. And once I'm okay with either scenario, then I can just run. I can just be in the moment, run.

• 1:12:15Rich Roll?

  You're not attached.

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's freedom.

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:18Rich Roll?

  That's freedom. All right, 320 pounds.

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:12:21Rich Roll?

  We got it.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  So, all things being equal, I used to use a lot more soap.

• 1:12:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you did. A lot more of a lot of things, I think, right? Yeah, 320 pounds. I mean, the only other person I've had on the podcast who was, you know, pushing the scale at that level was Josh LaJaunie, and it was fascinating to hear his story of how he finally kind of came to grips with it and got on top of it. And I saw similarities in your story. And one of the things that really struck me, actually highlighted it, you said, uh, I'll find it.

• 1:13:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you said, "Changing your body and losing weight long-term is not about willpower." And you go on, and then you say, "You have to change the way you think and change the way you perceive the world." Right? So, it's not about a diet or some kind of short-term goal. It has to do with like, doing the inside work to change your entire kind of orientation about how you're interacting with the environment around you.

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely, yeah. And we started talking about that earlier when I was like, I used to have this weird perception of food and what people are. And I would think, you know, like, I would see some, you know, fit-looking person, and they're, you know, eating a salad or something, and they're eating something really healthy. And I go, "What the hell are you doing, man? You're thin and fit. You can eat whatever you want. Why aren't you eating a Big Mac?" I had it like, totally screwed up in my head. I wasn't thinking, "Wow, that person is healthy and vibrant-looking because they eat well." I thought, "That's just who they are." And it has nothing, you know, that was almost a by-product of it, and I certainly...

• 1:14:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like, if I look like that, I'd eat a Big Mac. That's the same, that's the same. It's like saying, "If I wasn't an alcoholic, I'd get drunk every night."

• 1:14:15Speaker 01

  I'd drink all the time, exactly. Well?

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  So, I mean, so much of it is image, right? And how we see ourselves. And I didn't see myself as someone who needed to lose weight at that point. I saw myself as a fat person. And I was always gonna be a fat person. And if I was going to not be a fat person, I had to figure out a way to trick my body, you know, or trick the universe and trick the world into getting me skinny, you know? And I think that-

• 1:14:42Rich Roll?

  But what is it, let's sit there for a minute. I mean, what is it, what is it like to be that heavy? You know, just the day in, day out, like, you know, shopping for pants and getting a belt and sitting on an airplane and standing in line, like, just the simple things of navigating a typical day?

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. The airplane's a big one, cuz I used to, you know, I was traveling a lot and I would get on a plane and I would walk down the aisle and I could see everybody looking at me. And they're just going, "Oh, fuck, shit, no, please, please, no, no, no." And then, you know, someone would lose the lottery and I'd plop down next to them. And, you know-

• 1:15:18Rich Roll?

  You need that extra, like, to have that little, like, thing for the seatbelt with the extender on it?

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  You know, I did never, I never needed that. But, you know, I would definitely spill over into the chair next to me, you know, and that person would have to twist sideways a little bit. I was not the type of person who could let something like that go. I would have to joke about it, you know? So I would, I would start the conversation right and go, "Oh, you know, what did you do in your past life? You know, sorry, you lost the lottery today. And, you know, if you'd have waited 10 more minutes, you would've got a different seat on the plane, you know, you shouldn't be in such a hurry," you know, that kinda stuff. But-

• 1:15:53Rich Roll?

  But all of that is just like reaffirming this, like, sense that you're a piece of shit?

• 1:15:59Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Absolutely. And I hear that from people all the time. They go, "You know, I'm, I'm, I'm just this way and I'm happy." And, you know, I can't presume to know exactly what another human being is really feeling, but I can say, "Well, I used to say that too, and, and it wasn't true. It wasn't honest, you know? I wasn't happy with, with how I looked. I would joke about it, I would talk about it, but I wasn't happy."

• 1:16:22Rich Roll?

  That's a defense mechanism, yeah.

• 1:16:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, when I first started losing weight, you know, I was wearing size 50 pants with a 30-inch inseam. That's, that's as big as it got for me. I had the stretchy waist pants, you know, I had to have the little elastic bands in them and- You know, I size was became much more of a concern than fashion, you know, just finding things that fit was, you know, hard to do. So if I could find something fit that I actually that fit and I liked the way it looked, that was a bonus, you know, so you end up kind of looking like you eventually end up looking like a clown, no matter what, because you're wearing like a flannel shirt and plaid pants and, you know, because that's all you can

• 1:17:02Speaker 01

  find in your size. So I noticed when I lost the weight, I went and played golf and I hadn't played in a long time. And it was the most strange sensation because when I went to line up a putt, my hands were right up close to my body and it felt so odd because my hands were way out here past my belly before when I was when I was putting and changed it to actually changed my my entire golf swing too, because I wasn't

• 1:17:29Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  slicing the ball as much, but I digress.

• 1:17:32Rich Roll?

  Change more than that, I would imagine. And and at the time, you know, what's it look like McDonald's, Hardee's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, I mean, what's what's the daily routine?

• 1:17:43Speaker 01

  You know, yeah, fast food, lots of fast food. I would towards, you know, my my weight gain and food consumption was really getting worse in the same way that my drinking was, you know, it was progressing, you know, and towards the end, I was eating fast food three or four times a day. And I would go to McDonald's and I'd get two sausage McEgs with biscuits, sausage biscuits with egg and cheese and hash browns and of course the Diet Coke. And then I, that's just the way it is.

• 1:18:15Rich Roll?

  Don't want to spike that blood sugar.

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. I don't need that extra 200 calories. But, you know, and then and then in the the afternoon, I'd go to, you mentioned Arby's, I'd go there a lot, but I'd always get the, you know, those potato cake things they have, and I'd get like four of those, you know, to go along with whatever sandwich I had. And then that would usually be it, because then I'd start drinking. And

• 1:18:37Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  And then the usually the last meal of the day came late, you know, where it was just, you know.

• 1:18:46Speaker 01

  Just gluttonous. I mean, just, you know, just I'd go get a double quarter pounder with cheese, a Filet-O-Fish, French fries, and those French fries would come back the next day like in whole French fry pieces, like not.

• 1:19:00Rich Roll?

  The way, the way that would work for me is I, you know, I didn't want to eat because that would interfere with the buzz.

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:08Rich Roll?

  So I would go as long as I could without eating when I was drinking because I didn't want that in my stomach because that would make me feel tired or it would, you know, take longer to get drunk. And inevitably, at the end of the night, you're starving.

• 1:19:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:19:23Rich Roll?

  So you do this massive binge and I would wake up, you know, I'd wake up with, you know, a pizza box, you know, open on my bed and like Big Mac wrappers in my sheets and just, it's just the worst.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  Terrible. I can almost smell it.

• 1:19:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's really pathetic.

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  But that's why they invented like hundred proof schnapps. So if your, if your stomach was really full, and it's dessert like, it's peppermint.

• 1:19:49Rich Roll?

  Maybe I should go back and start drinking and try that. So, all right, so, so you're getting sober and you're realizing like, I gotta, now this is the next thing that I have to address. And, and, and you take a very interesting kind of approach. I mean, first you try all these diets, Mediterranean diets, whatever it is, all, all of them. And then you kind of, you know, flick the switch and say, I'm going to put my scientific hat on because you have this background and approach it from a different perspective. So, you know, walk me through that.

• 1:20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the, the main thing I was cognizant of was behaviorally, that whatever the process I used to get me to where I wanted to be, had to be sustainable, you know, and, and I knew I was never going to be able to eat all protein for the rest of my life, you know, or I was never going to be able to restrict my calories for the rest of my life.

• 1:20:38Rich Roll?

  And you, because you'd, you'd lost weight and gained it back. You'd, you'd done the yo-yo thing.

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  Bunch of times. I lost 50 pounds at least eight or nine times, you know, and, and I'd always do it on some crazy, you know, diet. And, and usually it would, you know, come undone because number one, I didn't want to just, you know, keep eating that way. And number two, I wasn't drinking and that wasn't going to last very long, you know. So. Yeah, I figured, um, I had to figure out a way to have a healthy relationship with food and I had to eat. And that was really difficult because I totally linked up losing weight with not eating, obviously, or, or just eating, or eating in some extreme way to, to trick my body, like the, the Atkins thing is 100% protein is what I used like the last five or six times.

• 1:21:23Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  You know? And, and it's funny because-

• 1:21:26Rich Roll?

  Which is very effective at losing weight, but you know, people have a lo- have a hard time staying on it.

• 1:21:31Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. And, and I talk a lot about weight loss now and whenever I have a group in front of me, I say, "How many, how many people have been on a successful diet?" And, and people raise their hands and I'm like, "Good, keep it up there." So your idea of a successful diet, gaining weight, losing weight, gaining weight, losing weight, like, because if it's not, you should put your hand down.

• 1:21:47Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:21:48Speaker 01

  So, I mean, but-

• 1:21:51Rich Roll?

  But just the word diet alone, uh, sort of infers temporary.

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. Yeah, so I, I changed the way that, that I ate and, um, you know, the glycemic index to me, um, made a lot of sense, um, just because I knew that there is a way that food was affecting my body outside of just calories in and calories out. I knew that there was something bigger in play. And, you know, we used to, I think, you know, in, in 50, 100 years ago, whatever, or, or longer, that the way that you would be overweight is, is by being gluttonous, right? I mean, you had to just eat all the time and certainly I was guilty of that. But it seemed like there was so much more in play now with the, with the types of foods that we have that are, that are causing, you know, eat us to, to crave things that we

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  wouldn't normally crave and, and that we're just kinda in this, this cycle, you know, this, this, that our biology wasn't working for us, we were kinda working against us. And so, um, I became a real student of the glycemic index and, and how my blood sugar was, was affected and, and I became an absolute stickler on it. And, I mean, I wouldn't have anything with sugar in it at all.

• 1:23:04Rich Roll?

  And just to paint the, the complete picture, I mean, when you were tipping the scales at 320-

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:09Rich Roll?

  Not only were you overweight, you had a heart condition, you had extremely high blood pressure and you had been diagnosed with diabetes, right?

• 1:23:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:16Rich Roll?

  So this is not just fat guy, this is like sick fat guy.

• 1:23:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, when, when they took my, the last time I was at the doctor and, and my blood pressure was so high, and I wish I could remember the numbers, I'll have to, I'll have to go back and get them, but- There was a two in there.

• 1:23:32Speaker 01

  And, uh, but they didn't want me to leave the, the doctor's office. I mean, they were like, you're going to have a stroke. I'm not telling you, you might have a stroke. You are going to have a stroke, you know, it could be in three minutes. You know, you need to be on medication, you need to be on now. And I didn't like that, you know? So I, I, I never, and my, my reasoning was I never went on, on medication because I had read that medication is unhealthy.

• 1:24:00Speaker 01

  I don't want to be on that blood pressure medication, then that shit'll kill ya.

• 1:24:03Rich Roll?

  Your brain, you're still perceiving the world through a warped brain at this point.

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  Absolutely, so of course I left there.

• 1:24:09Rich Roll?

  The, the smart thing would have been, I'm on that medication right now, I'm gonna work my way off it, but let's not have a stroke in three minutes.

• 1:24:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was not capable of the smart thing. In fact, I had to go, I was, I was meeting my friend at the bar, and that's a fact. I, I had someone, my buddy Dan was waiting for me at the bar while I was at the doctor's.

• 1:24:26Rich Roll?

  You're like, I can't hang out in this doctor's office.

• 1:24:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, and of course I told him.

• 1:24:29Rich Roll?

  It's pretty gonna be done.

• 1:24:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, we sat and laughed about it and, you know, drank ourselves silly.

• 1:24:32Rich Roll?

  Oh my god.

• 1:24:33Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I was really, really unhealthy.

• 1:24:38Speaker 01

  But, uh, um, yeah, I, I became a science or a student of the, uh, the glycemic index, and that was kind of the, the end all be all for me while I was losing weight. And it was like everything else, a progression, you know, that eventually led me to adopting a plant-based diet and all that. But during those initial stages, it was really no sugar, no breads, no processed foods. Um, and I just, I, I went into it with that mentality that my body's gonna heal, you know, and I, and I need to give it time to do that, that I'm gonna trust that this is kind of part of the same process I was on with alcohol, that I was sick and unhealthy, and as time went by, I was gonna get better. And, and I looked at food being the same way, that I crave all these things that are killing me, and if I just give it enough time, that, that I'm not gonna crave those things anymore,

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  and, and, and I'm gonna get to a, a better place, and I'm not gonna be... In war with myself the whole time.

• 1:25:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the analogy with, there's a couple analogies with Josh's, Josh LaJaunie's message. And that is this place that you came to, that he also came to, which was, I'm not doing this, I'm taking my focus off the scale, I'm taking my focus off of losing weight. I'm looking at this from a perspective of how can I be healthy and how can I be an athlete? And there's this thing in the book where somebody says, well, if you're trained for ultra marathons, who cares what you eat, right? But you're saying, I want to be a healthy human being. And that's very different from, I want a slimmer waistline.

• 1:26:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, and I mean, there's a big difference between a slim waistline and even health and even fitness. And there's no shortage of people out there now who are extremely fit, but they're not healthy. You know, they eat poorly and they have high cholesterol and they have high blood pressures and other things, but they can run, you know, five and a half minute miles. They don't usually work that way, you know, but usually if you're taking that much time to train your body, you're trying to treat yourself right. But we know that they're not mutually exclusive.

• 1:26:35Rich Roll?

  Right. So you adopt this approach and so what happens? Like how long before, you know, you get to a place where your blood pressure starts to normalize and the weight's coming off? Like walk me through the evolution a little bit.

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  So I logged every workout that I've ever had since I was started at 320 pounds. And I have these notebooks, these little day planners where I was writing down my calories in there. And typically what I'd have is, I was eating a carbohydrate restricted diet, but I was, I just, I said that I could eat as many carbohydrates that I wanted, as long as they came from vegetables, you know, and, but I wasn't having any starches or anything like that. And I wrote down everything in the little, the little journal on each day. And I was weighing myself religiously.

• 1:27:20Rich Roll?

  So no rice, no potatoes?

• 1:27:22Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 1:27:23Rich Roll?

  No fruit?

• 1:27:24Speaker 01

  Um, I didn't really restrict fruit, but I was, I was avoiding it at. Times, you know, but if I wanted it, I needed it, I had it, you know, because it was on a healthy list, you know.

• 1:27:36Rich Roll?

  What about potatoes, sweet potatoes?

• 1:27:38Speaker 01

  Sweet potatoes I would have for sure. Again, I all boiled down to the glycemic index. So I kind of had this, this, um, this pass or fail grade, you know, it's like, I think it was 50. If something was higher, you know, than a 50 on the glycemic index, I wouldn't have it. And if it, and if it was close to that 50, it would be something I wouldn't have very often, you know? And then the lower down the spectrum they went, um, you know.

• 1:28:00Rich Roll?

  Interesting. And, but you're still eating meat and dairy at this point?

• 1:28:03Speaker 01

  I was, yes, absolutely. Um, and, uh, you know, as, as weight does, my weight started, you know, bouncing around a lot, you know? I'd lose, you know, when you've been out of shape and you're drinking a lot and you're just living so horribly, you're gonna see a dramatic result at first. And I was no exception. I want to say I lost 40 pounds the first month, you know?

• 1:28:24Rich Roll?

  In one month?

• 1:28:25Speaker 01

  In one month. And then it leveled off.

• 1:28:27Rich Roll?

  So that's like 80%, 90% booze, right?

• 1:28:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:28:31Rich Roll?

  Well, and, and the bad decisions that come with booze, like all the late night McDonald's and all that kind of stuff, right?

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  But interestingly, um, actually I need to back up one quick second because, um, for the first couple of weeks after I stopped, and maybe even 30 days after I stopped drinking, um, I was eating really terribly still. Um, I just quit drinking and that was, that was enough.

• 1:28:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  That was enough.

• 1:28:50Rich Roll?

  I hear you.

• 1:28:51Speaker 01

  And in fact, um, in my hotel room, um, I looked at my refrigerator one day and I just started laughing because it was like top tarts and the little chocolate covered donuts and frosted flakes and every Wonder Bread. I bought a loaf of fucking Wonder Bread. I hadn't had a Wonder Bread since I was like eight years old, but I was just craving sugar.

• 1:29:09Rich Roll?

  You need like a little comfort, you know?

• 1:29:11Speaker 01

  I was definitely looking for.

• 1:29:12Rich Roll?

  You just broke up with your best friend, so.

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  Absolutely. My, my abusive marriage came to an end, but I still missed my partner. And, uh, so then I, then I kind of, I was in that place where I'm like, okay, I need to address these, these things together. Um, but I stopped weighing myself because I was that old addict brain, you know, and I was just trying to control that number and it wouldn't listen to me. And it kept sending me back into that, that place. And, you know, you know what addiction feels like? And it felt like that, you know, it felt like that ugly place to me again, where I was obsessing about it and I was thinking about it all the time. And I was, so I just had to let it go. And I eventually thought, you know? I'm in this for health. I'm in this because I want to live. And if I ultimately can do

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  the things I want to do, and I can look the way I want to look and feel the way I want to feel, I don't care if that number ever changes. If it stays 320, that's okay. That's okay. So I started-

• 1:30:09Rich Roll?

  Another surrender.

• 1:30:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, absolute, total, complete surrender. And it was, once again, very empowering to me. And it gave me a new focus. And it allowed me to put more energy into what I was doing, instead of less. And I still threw the measurements on occasionally, to just make sure everything was moving in the right direction, because there's not that emotional component to a measurement, right? If I see a movement, and this is what I try to do with people that I help lose weight, is go with the emotion, the scale, man. If you want four pounds of weight loss, and you get three, it's a failure. But if your measurements go down an eighth of an inch, it's success. Because there's not that emotional part

• 1:30:50Speaker 01

  to it. So, and I could obviously see my clothes changing, and I was feeling better, and I just kept going.

• 1:30:58Rich Roll?

  And so how does it continue to evolve? You have this, you know, it's pretty rigorous kind of glycemic index approach. And then how did it kind of morph over time into what you do now?

• 1:31:11Speaker 01

  So I was becoming fitter and fitter. I decided I was going to run a marathon somewhere along the way. I did a 5K, which was the scariest thing that ever happened to me in my-

• 1:31:21Rich Roll?

  Right. And, yeah, and this is not an overnight thing. You know, this is, this is running for 15 seconds-

• 1:31:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:31:29Rich Roll?

  Because that's all you could do.

• 1:31:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:31Rich Roll?

  And that description of the little bump on the sidewalk, that elevated the sidewalk, you know, a foot, you know, was the big terror.

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  It was, man. I could see that thing coming, man. It was like an eighth of a mile loop around the park, and I could just feel the weight of that 10-foot rise coming, like it was Hope Pass, you know?

• 1:31:47Rich Roll?

  But what was it that, that you think clicked in you that said, running? Or, you know, I have this dream of running a marathon. Like, why running? Why not? I mean, what was it, do you, is there anything specific that you think made you gravitate towards that as this litmus test for growth?

• 1:32:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it seemed impossible. I mean, and I really think that was it. And, you know, I think that-

• 1:32:15Speaker 01

  I think all human beings to a certain extent kind of have that that thing that will rise to the occasion, you know, and I felt like if something didn't seem impossible, it didn't seem like it was worth doing. And I wanted it to be big and I wanted it to be meaningful, you know, I wanted it to be something, something worthy of creating a whole new life. And, and I don't know, it was running and I do firmly believe that it could have been something else, you know, as long as it had those same components to it, but

• 1:32:43Rich Roll?

  The emotional stakes had to be high, very high to get you out of bed and to really kind of be powerful enough for you to really restructure how you were living your day every day.

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. And because I'd tried to do it in the past and I couldn't, it almost became this thing where, you know, when I ran the first time for 20 minutes nonstop, I mean, that seemed like a really big success, you know, and, and, you know, kind of, you know, proof that things were going in the right direction, that I wasn't just spinning my wheels, even though I was running on a treadmill. So technically I was exactly spinning my wheels.

• 1:33:16Rich Roll?

  So, so from that first, you know, 15 second run and panting to the first marathon, how long are we talking?

• 1:33:27Speaker 01

  August of 2005 to October of 2006.

• 1:33:31Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  So a little over a year, a little over a year.

• 1:33:35Rich Roll?

  A year, but that's a, that was a very focused year.

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  It was.

• 1:33:39Rich Roll?

  And from, and when you ran that first 15 seconds, what were you weighing then?

• 1:33:45Speaker 01

  320.

• 1:33:46Rich Roll?

  320. And at your first marathon, what were you clocking in?

• 1:33:49Speaker 01

  180.

• 1:33:50Rich Roll?

  180.

• 1:33:51Speaker 01

  And it was very

• 1:33:51Rich Roll?

  Which is still 20 pounds heavier than where you ended up at Badwater.

• 1:33:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it was really important to me and, you know, we're all on our own journey, you know, and everyone has their own, their own kind of thing they're trying to do. But for me, it was really important that I approached the marathon, I wanted to be a runner when I got there and I wanted to run it. I didn't need to run it really fast, you know, but I wanted it to be my victory lap. So I wanted to achieve all of my weight loss goals and my health and fitness goals along the way. And I didn't want it like the old me would have just been like, okay, what's the minimum amount I can do and still get this finisher's medal? You know what I mean? And can I fake it? Can I walk it? Can I get through it?

• 1:34:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because that's about saying you did it as opposed to really embracing the experience and what it actually means to tackle that and give it your best go.

• 1:34:39Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I didn't want to run a marathon. I wanted to be the type of person that could run marathons.

• 1:34:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's, that's, say that again. That's an important distinction.

• 1:34:47Speaker 01

  I didn't want to run a marathon. I wanted to be the type of person who can run marathons.

• 1:34:51Rich Roll?

  To be a runner, not somebody who did a marathon.

• 1:34:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That was, that was a really big, really big part of the journey for me and it kept me motivated and it kept me going out there. And I did the 5K.

• 1:35:04Rich Roll?

  When you, well, hold on a second. All right. So when you're 320 and you have this idea that you're going to run a marathon, I mean, how long before you said, said those words out loud to another human being?

• 1:35:15Speaker 01

  It didn't take too long.

• 1:35:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So what's the reaction you're getting?

• 1:35:20Speaker 01

  Oh, they would look, look me up and down and.

• 1:35:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, all right, buddy.

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, Dave.

• 1:35:25Rich Roll?

  Ready to go back to Arby's?

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember, I remember last time you said you were never going to drink again, seriously. But, you know, I think insanity is an amazing tool.

• 1:35:35Rich Roll?

  You just gave me the, the tagline for this episode. RRP episode, whatever. David Clark, I think insanity is an amazing tool.

• 1:35:50Speaker 01

  It is because it can create leverage to produce anything you want, right? You know, and you got to be afraid of the person that's too crazy to know better, right? And so I didn't mind. I was just like, you know what? Screw it, you know? Go ahead, laugh, you know? And I went and I had these little silicone bracelets made up that said 26.2. And I just thought that was like really archaic, like an obscure and like no one would know what it meant or anything like that.

• 1:36:15Speaker 01

  I thought it was so original, right? And, um, you know, and, and that was it. What is that mysterious number? What is that number? I feel like, oh, wow.

• 1:36:24Rich Roll?

  It's the same number in that like white oval sticker on the back of every car that you see.

• 1:36:28Speaker 01

  I know, and I still lived in Colorado at the time.

• 1:36:30Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right.

• 1:36:32Speaker 01

  But, yeah, um, so I decided I was a runner and, and I wasn't going to live to a reality getting, getting in the way of that.

• 1:36:40Rich Roll?

  Get in the way of that, that you redefined yourself. I mean, that is, you know, a transformation, a mental and emotional transformation that precedes the spirit, the, the physical transformation.

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:54Rich Roll?

  Right? Like you stepped into this identity before it had been manifest and assumed the role.

• 1:37:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, I think that that's a, a big thing. And, um, I think we, we pigeonhole ourselves and we create these images of who we are and rarely are they based in, in facts. They're just emotional attachments that we made, you know, somewhere along the way in childhood, we were, we were told you were the smart one, or you were the stubborn one, or you were the fat one, or whatever it is. And, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. And it's really important, I think, for human beings to be in a place where how you view yourself and who you are matches with what you're doing. And, and I think I talk a little bit about it in the book, that we create this conflict. And, and with the, with the attic me, whenever I tried to stop drinking, that was my behavior.

• 1:37:47Speaker 01

  I was trying to not drink, but I knew I was a drinker. So that wasn't going to ever last very long, you know? Cause I was in battle with myself and I had to look at myself as someone who wouldn't dream of drinking alcohol, who would never consume, you know, recklessly and, and destroy myself like that. And once I did that and addressed that, that spiritual part of that and was able to get myself to buy into that, then the behavior changed a little more naturally.

• 1:38:13Rich Roll?

  But what is the process of changing that identity?

• 1:38:18Speaker 01

  Insanity.

• 1:38:18Rich Roll?

  From saying, yeah, cause you're saying, you know, going from knowing you're an alcoholic to saying, not saying, but, but believing I am somebody that doesn't drink, or I am somebody who, I am a runner, I am somebody who runs marathons. Like what is the process of that? Because I think.

• 1:38:38Rich Roll?

  You know, listen, the truth is, is that most people that weigh three, most people, most people who are alcoholics don't get sober, and most people that weigh 320 pounds don't lose 160 pounds. So what is it that was different about you? And how, you know, how did you kind of create that, you know, create that new path for yourself? I mean, I guess I'm looking for, you know, I'm looking for you to be able to articulate the process a little bit for somebody who's out there who's like, please tell me how you did this.

• 1:39:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and I was joking about it when I said the insanity thing, but there's actually a modicum of truth to that. And you have to, I had to drink the Kool-Aid, right?

• 1:39:19Rich Roll?

  You had to believe it.

• 1:39:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:20Rich Roll?

  It's not about like, looking in the mirror and saying, you know, trying to convince yourself of something you actually don't believe.

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  Right. So that meant, moving forward, once I decided that I believed that, I had to only engage

• 1:39:32Rich Roll?

  Act accordingly.

• 1:39:33Speaker 01

  ... thoughts and behaviors that supported that view of who I was. And anything that would come up, because all kinds of things would come up to tell, show me, and prove to me on a daily basis that I wasn't that person, I'd be like, I've always been that person. I'm just off track now. I'm getting back to where I'm supposed to be. This was, this was who I was supposed to be all along, and I screwed it up. And so, I think, you know, there's so much information that comes into our, our daily lives, and, you know, we can't, we, we tend to grab onto the things that support our predetermined ideas, right? Even if it's like, oh, that guy's a jerk. That guy can do something really nice, and you're gonna go, yeah, but that's not real. He's an asshole, I know him, you know? And it's the same thing, I think, with our behaviors. And, and there's a big difference between

• 1:40:15Speaker 01

  being someone who needs to lose weight, and someone, you know, who's a fat person. And so, I started deleting all of the information that came my way that supported that I was supposed to be overweight, that I was, you know, supposed to be an addict, that it was just genetically wired into my DNA sometime. I was like, bullshit. I'm not even gonna entertain that idea. Store it, throw it away. And I would shift my direction over to something else. I would You know, take a physical action like getting online and looking up marathons and reading about marathon training plans and, and reading about running shoes and, or just go for a run, you know, like there's no greater way to prove to yourself you're a runner than going for a run, you know, so, and I would do that. And it's like, everything became an affirmation.

• 1:41:00Speaker 01

  It's like, okay, this is it. This is, this is real. And, and I believe-

• 1:41:03Rich Roll?

  I would imagine it starts with a little fake it till you make it.

• 1:41:07Speaker 01

  Damn right.

• 1:41:07Rich Roll?

  What would a runner do? Well, I don't know. A runner would probably go running.

• 1:41:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:11Rich Roll?

  A runner would probably go on a website and try to learn something about running shoes.

• 1:41:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. You have to be willing to be a little stupid, you know, and a little crazy at first. And, and it's hard and you'll try to talk yourself out of it. I certainly did, you know?

• 1:41:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there had to be those moments where-

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  You're kidding yourself.

• 1:41:28Rich Roll?

  You're like, what are you doing?

• 1:41:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I just, I figured, you know, that I wasn't a 320 pound alcoholic addict by accident, right? And, and it was all of the crap that I put on myself that, that got me there. So it was that surrender thing. It was like, it's really easy for me to say, I don't have it all figured out, you know? I don't know. If I did, I wouldn't be here. So I'm going to say that this is, this is the way it is. And, and I have no proof otherwise because I don't have anything figured out.

• 1:41:56Rich Roll?

  Interesting. And did you try to surround yourself with a community of people that could teach you and support this dream? Or are you going lone wolf on this?

• 1:42:09Speaker 01

  Um, at first I was very much alone. Um, I think the first outward action I took um, into the running community was, was going to a running store in Boulder and-

• 1:42:19Rich Roll?

  Which could be an incredibly intimidating thing.

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  It was, it was really intimidating. And, and it was really hard. I sat out in front of the store for a long time. And, you know, it was like, it's, it was a little better buying my shoes at, you know, the, the sports store.

• 1:42:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you go to Sports LA or something where you know it's-

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  A little more anonymous.

• 1:42:36Rich Roll?

  That's easier. Right.

• 1:42:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. But, you know, again, it was like all those things. I was like, you know? The old me would have just left and gone somewhere else, you know, I'm gonna do things differently now. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go in here and I'm not only-

• 1:42:47Rich Roll?

  A real runner is gonna go to the real running store and he's gonna ask the, the real questions.

• 1:42:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and not only am I gonna go in, I'm gonna just tell him who I am and why I'm here. You know, I'm not even gonna candy coat it, you know, I'm like, hey, you know, I've lost sixty pounds and I wanna run a marathon. You know, and it's almost like daring him to, to, you know, laugh or scoff, you know, it's like, this is it.

• 1:43:10Rich Roll?

  How'd that go?

• 1:43:11Speaker 01

  You know, they was, they were incredibly supportive, you know, and then now I know that, you know, it's a great community of people. But, uh, yeah, um, they were incredibly supportive. He asked me questions about, you know, what speed I was running at and, and, you know, how many miles I was doing and, and I shared all of that willingly and, and he was very encouraging and thought, said, you know, hey, you did a great job and, you know, good for you. And that was, that was important for me because it was an affirmation that I hadn't gotten. You know, before, so I think it was very-

• 1:43:43Rich Roll?

  He's looking at you like you mean business. He's not questioning you.

• 1:43:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:48Rich Roll?

  So it's another little like notch.

• 1:43:50Speaker 01

  You know, and it's interesting that once, once it came full circle and, you know, I'd done the marathon. And then I was, I was getting involved more in the running community and doing more group runs with people and things like that. I never hid my story, you know, ever, um, but I didn't willingly share it. And I think, you know, you talk about part of the process, you know, there was, there was a growing process along the way. In that first two years, I was kind of fumbling my way through my sobriety. I was fumbling my way through the weight loss. I was fumbling my way through everything and I, and I hadn't really put it together yet. I was certainly better than I, I was before, but, um, I thought somehow if I shared where I'd come from,

• 1:44:34Speaker 01

  that people would think less of me. They wouldn't accept me as a real runner, you know? So that was like the last little bit that was, that was holding on.

• 1:44:40Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 1:44:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:42Rich Roll?

  And the iron, the great irony is that the story's so powerful. And it's a journey towards willingness, another level of willingness.

• 1:44:53Rich Roll?

  And surrender to be vulnerable enough to share the story.

• 1:44:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I felt like I worked to get to a certain place and I didn't want anything to detract from it.

• 1:45:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:45:04Speaker 01

  And I felt that ego coming in.

• 1:45:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I don't want people to see me as that other guy because I worked so hard to be this new guy. That's, that's in the past. So, so when you sit down to write the book, I would imagine you might have been, you know, struggling or grappling with a little resistance, you know, when it comes to filling in the gaps and, and really fleshing out the details of, of your story. I mean, I know I experienced that when I was writing my book, but I also was very aware that that was the only thing that was going to make the book work, was whether I was willing to do that.

• 1:45:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, it was definitely a, a test, if you will, of, you know, how, how much you're willing to put yourself out there. I mean, there's so much went into that title, you know?

• 1:45:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:50Speaker 01

  From just the crazy part of just, you know, you're out there to putting yourself out there to, as you know, what we call people who are still out there struggling. They say they're out there. But it was, it was the most incredible journey of self-discovery that I've ever been on. And I, I still, I've been asked a couple of times if I, if I do a little book event or something, I'll say, you want to read something from it? And I'm, no, I can't.

• 1:46:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:13Speaker 01

  You know, I can't. And it was just times where I was literally laughing out loud while I was writing it. And other times I was just bawling and crying and I'd have to walk outside and pray and thank God that I made it out. You know, and because when you, when you relive something, as you know, from the writing process, it's, I just couldn't believe the amount of emotion and detail that would come back when I sat down and started to write.

• 1:46:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you start remembering stuff that, you know, you forgot about or, or it just comes back in technical or.

• 1:46:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:49Rich Roll?

  And it's not always welcome.

• 1:46:51Speaker 01

  No, no. But, you know, there were, there were certainly times where I was like, this is just too much, you know? And, you know, I really wasn't sure until.

• 1:47:02Speaker 01

  Till probably, I'm not even sure when the, the exact moment I was a hundred percent sure I was gonna actually like, release it or publish it or anything like that. I knew I had to write it for, for me. And then I figured, hey, I knew my mom would buy one, you know? I couldn't imagine anyone would read my crap, you know, but it was like, if, if someone does, then that's just a bonus.

• 1:47:20Rich Roll?

  Well, when you, when you make that decision though, you're like, alright, you know? It's, it's a scary thing, you know, it's a scary thing. And I, and I, you know, when I was writing the Drunkalogue part of my book, listen, you know, I could, like yourself, I could tell stories all day long and I have a lot of, you know, I have plenty of stories that are a lot worse that are in the book, but it's like, what is the purpose of this book? Like, you know, I need to establish that this is my past, but, but you also, you can, you can attach your ego to those stories, like, look how crazy I was, you know? And it's like, it's not about that, you know? It's not, it's not for shock value. It's like, okay, I need to, people need to understand that this is the place that I'm coming from, but, you know, I didn't want, I didn't want to freak people out either. Like, you can go too far with it.

• 1:48:04Speaker 01

  No doubt.

• 1:48:05Rich Roll?

  You have to find that balance.

• 1:48:07Speaker 01

  For me, I went after the stories that I had the most humiliation attached to, because they're the ones I didn't want to share, because they're the ones you're talking about, the ones that you talk about with your buddies and that are, that are kind of, kind of funny, kinda, you know, you laugh about them and, and, you know, they're the, the crazy rock star kind of stuff, but, you know, I didn't want, like you said, I didn't want to glamorize it and, I figured, well, I'll share the ones that would-

• 1:48:30Rich Roll?

  It can be like romanticized.

• 1:48:32Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. But sitting on a park bench and shitting yourself in LA is not-

• 1:48:36Rich Roll?

  That's not so romantic. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:41Rich Roll?

  And the thing about it though, is by making that decision to say, okay, it's out there, I mean, that's freedom.

• 1:48:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:51Rich Roll?

  You feel that though, right?

• 1:48:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. If, I've, I've told this to some friends, like, if you ever want to experience true freedom- You write down every piece of shit moment you've had and put it out there for the world. And you will experience-

• 1:49:06Rich Roll?

  You wanna feel like you're walking through Times Square naked. That's what it's like.

• 1:49:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, but and there's such a difference between, you know, telling your friends or even a group of a hundred people, some of your personal things and actually putting it in print. Where people can reread it and pick it apart and analyze it and but I-

• 1:49:27Rich Roll?

  And criticize it.

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  And criticize it and that's was my kind of um deal with myself or whatever. It's like, once the book is done and once it's actually published, it's not mine anymore. And anything that anyone wants to think about it, want to, how they want to interpret it is up to them. They bought the book, they read it, they have their right to what they feel about it. It's it's it's theirs now.

• 1:49:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and part of the deal also is criticize away.

• 1:49:54Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:49:55Rich Roll?

  But if one person out there reads it and gets sober, like it's all worth it. Or one person out there, you know, changes their diet and does something that they didn't think that they could do, then that's that's great.

• 1:50:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:08Rich Roll?

  Because that's what it's about.

• 1:50:09Speaker 01

  They just stop giving up on themselves.

• 1:50:10Rich Roll?

  And I've no doubt that that is the impact of this book.

• 1:50:13Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:50:14Rich Roll?

  Whether you've experienced it directly or not yet, you will. How long, how long is it, when did it come out?

• 1:50:19Speaker 01

  It's been out for two months now.

• 1:50:21Rich Roll?

  Okay, so brand new.

• 1:50:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:23Rich Roll?

  It's just starting for you, man.

• 1:50:24Speaker 01

  You know, it's it's been um more than I could have ever imagined so far and it's just starting, hopefully.

• 1:50:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, with it comes, I think, a little mantle of responsibility now because you kind of carry this inspiration torch, you know, and people are gonna look to you and say, "How did you do it? Help me, you know, help, can you, can you help me?" And and and you're gonna find yourself in this position where people are gonna be, you know, wanting you to guide guide them. I mean, have you started to experience that?

• 1:50:59Speaker 01

  You know, I I have and-

• 1:51:01Rich Roll?

  I mean, I know you're training and coaching people and and all of that, so you're you're already engaged in that professionally, but just sort of the emails will come in and stuff like that.

• 1:51:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and and I'm I'm always thankful for those emails. But it is tough, it is tough because, you know, you don't always have the the piece of advice that people people want, you know, and I'm never gonna tell someone what I think they wanna hear. I spent my whole life doing that kind of shit, so I'm just gonna live the truth. Like the way, you know, some, sometimes the truth just demands to be said, so.

• 1:51:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:51:33Speaker 01

  You know, cause I, you're right, like a lot of people, you know, they have these passive, passive aggressive reach out for help kind of thing. And I did it, you know, I remember I called an AA meeting one time and I was like, you know, when is your next meeting? And they're like, I don't know, let me find someone who knows and this and that. And I was like, you know, you should be ready to take someone's fucking call when they call, you know, and I hung up and now they were just laughing their ass off at me. They're like, look at this drug, you know? But I think a lot of people do that. They'll reach out and they expect you to be able to, you know, like, make something happen. It's like, I'll share with you every corner of my soul and everything that I've ever been through, but that's all I can do. I don't have any secret pieces of wisdom.

• 1:52:16Rich Roll?

  It's on them to actually, you know, take what's in the book or what's out there and actually implement it into their lives. And that's, that's the hard piece, right? I mean, looking back, you know, put yourself back at 320 pounds at the end of your drinking career and, and, and just imagine that you would be somebody who had not only run bad water, done all these crazy races that you've done, have written this book, you know, be a source of inspiration to other people, be actually, you know, coaching and training other people. I mean, is that, could you have possibly imagined that?

• 1:52:56Speaker 01

  No. Well, I don't know. No.

• 1:52:59Rich Roll?

  No.

• 1:53:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:53:00Rich Roll?

  I mean, where did you, you know, what, what would have your, what would your dream have been?

• 1:53:07Speaker 01

  Like what was the farthest I could see?

• 1:53:08Rich Roll?

  Like where, yeah, like where did you, you know, what were you aspiring to?

• 1:53:11Speaker 01

  I wanted to run the New York City Marathon one day, I thought, you know, and, and it's funny because like I remembered seeing the Ironman triathlon when I was a kid. And I couldn't quite get to the point where I could ever see myself doing that, but I had this idea like, I wonder if I could train for it, like not actually do it, but could I just train for it? Could I just, could I just like?

• 1:53:35Rich Roll?

  Like what a weird thought, though.

• 1:53:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:53:38Rich Roll?

  And what do you think that's about? Like, doing the race would actually mean that you'd be accountable to other people or?

• 1:53:46Speaker 01

  I just don't think that I could put it out there. I think that I saw that as a certain type of person that could do that, and I wasn't that person. But maybe I could be the type of person who might be able to train for it.

• 1:53:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, interesting. Alright, so you get the marathon done, and then where does the idea of like, taking it to the ultra level start to creep into the consciousness?

• 1:54:07Speaker 01

  I read Dean's book, and actually, before that even, right after I finished the marathon, my ex-wife, I was sitting there, I was still like, still jacked up, you know, walking downstairs backwards and stuff, and I don't think I'd taken my blue Denver Marathon hoodie off yet, you know? I think it was like 30 days before I stopped wearing that every single day. And my ex came down and said, "Oh yeah, there's this guy, he ran 50 marathons in 50 states in 50 days." And I was like, "No, he didn't." I mean, I didn't even hesitate, like, "No, he didn't."

• 1:54:38Rich Roll?

  Or you're like, "Are you trying to make me feel like shit?"

• 1:54:39Speaker 01

  I was like, "No, he did not."

• 1:54:40Rich Roll?

  "I just ran a marathon."

• 1:54:41Speaker 01

  Like, "You read that wrong. There's no way." And I just remember being just like, there wasn't anything more insane someone could have said, you know? I mean, like, I don't even know, I don't even know how to respond to that, you know? So I like Googled Dean Karnassas, and I read Ultra Marathon Man, and I saw Running on the Sun, and Running on the Sun, just, man, I don't know.

• 1:55:09Rich Roll?

  It's a documentary about bad water.

• 1:55:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:55:11Rich Roll?

  For people that don't know, yeah. Can you, is it online? Can people?

• 1:55:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's still out there.

• 1:55:16Rich Roll?

  If it is, I'll find a link, I'll put it in the show notes.

• 1:55:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, sorry about that.

• 1:55:20Rich Roll?

  But, uh, no, go ahead.

• 1:55:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it, um, man, it just, it really, it really touched something like, that scared me. It scared me because I thought that I was probably gonna want to do that one day, and that scared the eff- shit out of me. And, uh...

• 1:55:37Rich Roll?

  So that seed was planted.

• 1:55:38Speaker 01

  It really was.

• 1:55:39Rich Roll?

  That documentary and by Dean's book.

• 1:55:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and interestingly enough about that, I talk about Full Circle and just, you know, my life is just...

• 1:55:48Speaker 01

  You know, tipped so far the other direction that, I mean, I'm just, I can't even believe, you know, what my life is today. And I saw Marshall Ulrich on that, that film, and he wrote the foreword for my book. And I met Marshall out at Badwater when I did it. And it was just so insane. You know, like, I was like, my life is, I have the most bizarre life in the world, you know, it just seemed, I mean, it's, it really does feel like, you know, I actually put it out there on a Facebook post the other day. I was like, you ever just realize you're absolutely 100% living your dream life? And that's the way I feel. I feel it's just.

• 1:56:26Rich Roll?

  I felt that yesterday when I was sitting up in Dean Hernaz's house, doing a podcast with him. And he's talking to me and I'm looking at him, and I'm not hearing anything that he's saying, because I'm just thinking, what am I doing here?

• 1:56:42Speaker 01

  You just described the first five minutes of the show.

• 1:56:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:46Speaker 01

  For me.

• 1:56:46Rich Roll?

  How did my life get to this point where I'm sitting here having a conversation with this guy? Like, it just, it just hit me like a ton of bricks, and in a beautiful way.

• 1:56:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's a heavy weight, too. Like you said, there's a certain amount of responsibility that comes with.

• 1:57:03Rich Roll?

  But it did not happen because I, I plotted it out.

• 1:57:06Speaker 01

  Oh, right.

• 1:57:06Rich Roll?

  Or I made some goal and said, I'm gonna do this. Like, there, it just, there's just no way.

• 1:57:11Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:57:11Rich Roll?

  You know, there's no way left to my own devices that it happens.

• 1:57:14Speaker 01

  No. No. You'd screw it up.

• 1:57:18Rich Roll?

  Oh, for sure. Big time. You know? I'm trying to derail it every day, you know? So you see this movie, and, and you read Dean's book, you know, the movie is about just how insane this Badwater race is, the seeds planted, and this is 2007?

• 1:57:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, 2006.

• 1:57:42Rich Roll?

  2006 still, right?

• 1:57:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:44Rich Roll?

  And, and your first Badwater is 2013.

• 1:57:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:57:49Rich Roll?

  So we're talking about a seven-year span here, during which period of time you run the Leadville 100 twice.

• 1:57:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:57:57Rich Roll?

  And a bunch of other crazy stuff, too.

• 1:57:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 1:57:59Rich Roll?

  So you're creating this, you know, it's not, the narrative, the easy narrative is, you know, 320 pounds to Badwater, you know?

• 1:58:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:58:07Rich Roll?

  That'll probably be the title of my blog post, but.

• 1:58:11Speaker 01

  We can all subtitle.

• 1:58:13Rich Roll?

  I know, because it well, that's like, you know, it's it sounds so crazy dramatic and and it is. But we're talking about many years of of brick by brick, lot of miles.

• 1:58:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I never really exercised any level of patience in my past life, so I've been trying, you know, and I didn't want to do the same thing and just say, just like with the marathon, I didn't want to go, OK, well, how can I go fake bad water, you know? I I didn't even know that you couldn't fake bad water. That was really hard just to get in it.

• 1:58:42Rich Roll?

  They won't let you fake it.

• 1:58:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:58:44Rich Roll?

  They'll weed you out beforehand.

• 1:58:45Speaker 01

  How much is race day registration?

• 1:58:49Speaker 01

  But, yeah, and then reading about Dean's book and just reading about such a thing as an ultra marathon, I found out that the Leadville 100 was right in my backyard. And it just seemed kind of um, kind of shitty to get on a plane and fly somewhere else to do an ultra when you have one of the most iconic ones right in your backyard.

• 1:59:06Rich Roll?

  Right. And in certain respects, maybe even, I mean, harder in a different way with that crazy elevation and

• 1:59:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:13Rich Roll?

  thin air and everything else. I mean, what was that, what was that first Leadville like?

• 1:59:19Speaker 01

  It was, you know, when I wrote the book, um, the the finish line of my first Leadville was the finish line of the book. And and I actually, um, I had to, it was a huge process of, um, you know, I'm getting ahead of myself, but but um, bad wa- or Leadville, my first Leadville finish was really the the true birth of me as as a runner.

• 1:59:46Speaker 01

  Not that anything else I did before wasn't, you know, running, but it was that moment that I really accepted that I wasn't going to dismiss anything that I'd ever done or that I that I did and that I wasn't going to live that life anymore. But because up to that point, like I I did the marathon and I was like, OK, what's next? And then I did, you know, started doing triathlon, like, OK, what's next? And I was I was still searching. And and so I I think I stopped searching at that point. Um, I just, I decided that I I was here and then I just needed to be here as much as I could. I needed to be in that moment and and be.

• 2:00:21Rich Roll?

  And just own it.

• 2:00:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:23Rich Roll?

  Well, in a tangible way, I mean, you went from running a marathon, which is something that hundreds of thousands of people have done, to running Leadville, which very, very few people have done or are capable of doing.

• 2:00:36Speaker 01

  And the process of getting, thank you for saying that, the process of getting there was, it was wrought with lots of complications along the way, including back surgery and...

• 2:00:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you have the two herniated discs.

• 2:00:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:52Rich Roll?

  I mean, there's, there's a lot, you know, we don't want to have too many spoiler alerts.

• 2:00:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:57Rich Roll?

  But there's a lot, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of ups and downs. You're gonna have to read the book.

• 2:00:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:00Rich Roll?

  We could be here for eight hours.

• 2:01:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:01:02Rich Roll?

  And I could, I could talk to you forever.

• 2:01:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks. Yeah. This is another example of how cool my life is.

• 2:01:08Rich Roll?

  Listen, it's cool for me, you know, this is, this is awesome. I'm fascinated. So, but walk me through the Leadville. I mean, like, you know, paint the picture of just how difficult that race is.

• 2:01:21Speaker 01

  Well, training for the race was, was more difficult than I had imagined. And in fact, it smacked me down and humbled me in a, in a big, huge way. And there presented a, a moment where I was either gonna walk away and just go back to doing triathlons, or I was gonna, you know, step up and, and do some things differently. And it's where I got serious, the next level of serious, you know? And I changed my diet. That's when I adopted the plant-based diet. I went from 180 to 160.

• 2:01:50Rich Roll?

  What was the decision that, that drove that?

• 2:01:53Speaker 01

  A dare.

• 2:01:54Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:01:56Speaker 01

  Pretty much a 30-day challenge by a friend. And I was like, you know, and at that point, I was eating really clean. I mean, I ate, you know, fruits, vegetables, lean, lean meats, you know? And I really didn't eat much other than that. I mean, I had my occasional thing. I would, you know, have a treat here and there. But, I mean, 90% of my diet was, was what most people would call super clean.

• 2:02:16Rich Roll?

  Right. And training a ton, and you just kind of stabilized at 180.

• 2:02:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd been there for a few years, and I felt fit and able to do, you know, big runs and, and things like that. I'd done some 50-milers and... Stuff like that, but um.

• 2:02:31Rich Roll?

  And then a dare, like what, like, no way could you possibly eat a plant-based diet, or?

• 2:02:36Speaker 01

  Not, no, just, you know, from a friend like you who got tired of me and asking him where he gets his protein, you know, because he was a vegan.

• 2:02:43Rich Roll?

  Oh, because you are, I see, now I get it.

• 2:02:45Speaker 01

  And then he's like, why don't you just do it for thirty days, you know, what are you afraid of? Just try it, see if it works for you. And I'm like, alright, I got nothing better to do. It's like, but if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it. And I'm gonna do it. And I actually did it like more strict than he was doing it. Because he was telling me like, well, every once in a while, I'll do this for that. And I'm like, well, if I'm gonna do it, I'm just gonna do it. And I'm not gonna have anything, I'm not gonna consume anything that has animal, any trace amount of animal.

• 2:03:08Rich Roll?

  You were very alcoholic about it.

• 2:03:09Speaker 01

  Yes, of course. I was very addict about it, exactly. And so I did it for thirty days and, I mean, I felt like I was on drugs. I mean, I felt so crazy good, you know, I felt aware and light and fast and my, I was recovering from my workouts better and, you know, lots of things were changing at the same time. I was changing the volume of training, I was changing my mental focus, and I changed my diet all at the same time. And it was just like the perfect storm, I think, for me as an athlete. And I just never looked back. I've said all along, the day I feel I'm missing something from my diet, I'll go have it, you know? I'm not on a moral mission, you know, to make the world vegan.

• 2:03:51Speaker 01

  It's just about feeling better and being healthy. I understood a whole new level of what health was.

• 2:03:58Rich Roll?

  Interesting. Yeah, and how long ago was that?

• 2:04:01Speaker 01

  Four years.

• 2:04:02Rich Roll?

  Four years, and still haven't gone back, huh? That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I mean, I like that, that, I like the openness, you know, the idea that you're listening to your body and this is working for you. And if it wasn't, you would change. You don't seem to have a dogmatic approach to it, but rather a pretty, you know, scientific, kind of rational perspective on it. And hey, if it's, if you think it's making you faster, certainly you dropped an extra twenty pounds, so there's something right there. But that's cool.

• 2:04:35Speaker 01

  I try to apply my insanity in very logical ways.

• 2:04:40Rich Roll?

  How to apply insanity to improve your life. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna grapple with this over the next couple of days.

• 2:04:48Speaker 01

  There's a difference between crazy and chemically imbalanced. It's the chemically imbalanced you gotta watch out for.

• 2:04:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, after the podcast with Dean, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't a nutrition. I mean, I was talking to him about how his nutrition has changed, but you know, he's certainly not vegan. I mean, he eats, you know, he eats kind of like it's what it sounds like you were eating before you made the switch. But after we were done, he's like, really? You know, like, how does that work? And he was inquisitive, like, he's interested, but he was also very, like, dubious. Like, I wanna see your hematocrit.

• 2:05:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:05:18Rich Roll?

  I'll send it to you.

• 2:05:19Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:05:20Rich Roll?

  But yeah, I mean, I feel the same, I feel the same way in the sense that if my body started to feel like things weren't working, you know, then I have to be open enough to reevaluate. Like, I have to be willing to step outside, you know, the label and the dogma. You know, I've kind of painted myself into a corner here with this thing. You know, I'm the, I'm the plant-based athlete guy, but the truth of the matter is, it's been eight years and it's been fantastic. So I've no reason to, to, you know, second guess it unless something changes, but so far, so good. And it's encouraging and cool to hear that that's been part of your journey.

• 2:05:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, a big unexpected part of it that's, you know, just, I think, made my life better in lots of different ways.

• 2:06:02Rich Roll?

  I mean, what, what was, you know, when you were going out and you were, you were able to recover better, I mean, you know, is there anything more specific, just being able to bounce back between big runs?

• 2:06:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, just really tangible things of noticing, you know, that I'm increasing my level, my volume, overall volume of training. I started doing, you know, two, three-hour runs several times a week, and I was okay, and not just okay, but getting stronger. And a lot of the trails that I was, you know, hiking up, because they were super steep, like, I have this one route, Bear Peak and Boulder, that I go up, and I was running things that I couldn't run before, you know? And that's, that's a real difference. It's like, I struggle from this section to this section, and now I'm, I'm pushing it faster, I'm going faster. That's always like the big fear, especially if you dealt with injury in your life, that you're gonna increase your training volume and you're just gonna go backwards. So I was very...

• 2:06:59Speaker 01

  I had to learn the hard way that if my brain's tired, you know, if it's my brain pushing back at me, that I keep going, but if it's my body pushing back, I listen to it. And that's a, that's a hard thing to balance.

• 2:07:11Rich Roll?

  Have you, do you work with a coach? How do you come up with your training protocol?

• 2:07:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do. I, I think coaching is, is a very valuable tool, you know? And, you know, Michael Jordan had a coach and everybody has a coach and you just, I, I, I, I can't trust myself to manage me, you know, in that way. Um, so yeah, um, I've, I've benefited greatly from having Marshall Ulrich.

• 2:07:34Rich Roll?

  Oh, he's your coach.

• 2:07:35Speaker 01

  In my Rolodex.

• 2:07:37Rich Roll?

  Oh, cool.

• 2:07:37Speaker 01

  Um, he doesn't have time to be full-time coach, but I certainly bounce all of my trainings by him or through him and get his input on it. And, you know, like when I was, I did a 12-hour treadmill run recently where I tried to, tried to set the world record on that and I bounced it by Marshall.

• 2:07:53Rich Roll?

  I didn't know that.

• 2:07:54Speaker 01

  He's like, you gotta do your back-to-back long runs on the treadmill. And I'm like, ah, damn it, he's right. But I would have never done that myself, you know, I would have.

• 2:08:03Rich Roll?

  Hold on a second. You tried to break the 12-hour treadmill record?

• 2:08:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:07Rich Roll?

  How'd that go? When did you do that?

• 2:08:09Speaker 01

  I set the American one.

• 2:08:10Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did?

• 2:08:11Speaker 01

  Well, it depends. I mean, there's, there's two, a couple of different sources that track, you know, all of the different stuff. So I was going for the Guinness record and it was, um, quite honestly, kind of a soft record. So I knew it was kind of some low-hanging fruit. It was like 63 miles and I was gonna try to run 72, 73 miles, which is, you know, decent. And, uh, what happened is, um, two days before it, somebody else broke the record. And so they reported that he'd run 90 miles. So I was like, you know, I had all my friends out at my gym and I had this big thing set up. And I was like, that's all right. I'm just gonna go do the best I can. I wasn't doing it just for the recognition. I was doing it to test myself. And I ran 74.5 miles, something like that.

• 2:08:54Speaker 01

  Turns out that the numbers were reported wrong and he'd only run 76 miles. So.

• 2:09:01Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 2:09:03Rich Roll?

  Oh, my god.

• 2:09:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that kinda sucked.

• 2:09:06Rich Roll?

  You gotta do it again.

• 2:09:07Speaker 01

  I am, in January.

• 2:09:08Rich Roll?

  You are, alright, cool. And when you want, when you want it to be Guinness certified, that's a whole thing, right?

• 2:09:14Speaker 01

  It is, the certification.

• 2:09:15Rich Roll?

  They make you pay a ton of money and they want all sorts of people out. Like, I know when, cause when Patrick Baboomian wanted to break that most weight carried, you know, it was a whole thing to like, make sure that it was all like copacetic and above, like it was gonna meet the requirements to qualify for that, because it's pretty stringent, right?

• 2:09:35Speaker 01

  It is, it's really strict. You don't have to give them a bunch of money if you don't want to, but it speeds the process up. You know what I mean? They'll like, you know, certify the record right away and they'll send someone out and you can use their logos and marketing and all that. But, um, no, we had to have like, the whole thing had to be video recorded and I needed witnesses and judges and, you know, obviously the treadmill.

• 2:09:54Rich Roll?

  They had to calibrate the treadmill and all that kinda stuff.

• 2:09:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, there's another place called like recordholders.org that tracks it. Um, according to their information, I think I ran like the third best time by an American.

• 2:10:06Rich Roll?

  Nice, man.

• 2:10:07Speaker 01

  According to Guinness, it was.

• 2:10:08Rich Roll?

  That's insane.

• 2:10:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:10Rich Roll?

  That's so cool.

• 2:10:11Speaker 01

  For a former fat guy.

• 2:10:12Rich Roll?

  Right, that's incredible, man.

• 2:10:13Speaker 01

  But, I mean, there's, there's so many other people who have run so much farther than that out there, but.

• 2:10:18Rich Roll?

  Listen, there's always somebody who's done some crazier thing, especially now in the ultra world, like, you know, look, man, you know, there's no end of nutty, you know, so.

• 2:10:28Speaker 01

  There's always someone crazy.

• 2:10:29Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? If you can find, you know, a stone that's unturned in that world, then that's, that's a stone worth overturning, I think. So, uh, alright, so a couple Leadvilles, Badwater 2013, and then you went back to Badwater this year.

• 2:10:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:45Rich Roll?

  Didn't things go, didn't things quite go as planned? I mean, what is, what's next? Like, what, what's getting you out of bed? What's motivating you? Like, what is the, what is that stone that's left unturned out there for you?

• 2:10:56Speaker 01

  Well, to me, it's to stay in the game and to, to, to keep in the process, right? Um, I always say, you know, my running, my journey, it's not supposed to be anything, it just is what it is. So, I just wanna keep going, um, whatever that means. So, I'm always aware and looking around for, for new things to do and, and I do have something kinda big planned for, for next year. It's my 10th sober birthday, so I wanted to do something kinda special. For that, something I wasn't prepared.

• 2:11:25Rich Roll?

  You're like, you got a little smile. I could tell you don't really want to tell me, but you kind of do.

• 2:11:31Speaker 01

  Well, I'll tell you.

• 2:11:34Speaker 01

  So, um, I decided that I was going to go try to run the Leadville 100 twice. I was going to do the, do the double.

• 2:11:43Rich Roll?

  Whoa.

• 2:11:43Speaker 01

  And, um, the reason why I haven't put it out there is not because I'm afraid of it or anything.

• 2:11:48Rich Roll?

  It's out there now. Well, it will be when I.

• 2:11:51Speaker 01

  No, that's fine. You know, I've, I've talked to people about it.

• 2:11:54Rich Roll?

  No, go ahead. Sorry.

• 2:11:55Speaker 01

  But, um, you know, people have done double Badwater, triple Badwater, quad Badwater, all that, but no one's done Leadville. So.

• 2:12:02Rich Roll?

  Nobody's done a, a double Leadville?

• 2:12:04Speaker 01

  No one's done it. Um, so I'm sure someone will come along and do it really, really fast. But, um, um, that's okay. I'd, I'd like to be the first person to do it, but if someone comes up out there and, and does it at the same time I do, then we'll just share the trail together. So. But I hope no one does it.

• 2:12:20Rich Roll?

  That's pretty cool, man. That's a big deal.

• 2:12:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:24Rich Roll?

  Exciting.

• 2:12:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:26Rich Roll?

  So wait, when is Leadville again?

• 2:12:28Speaker 01

  August.

• 2:12:29Rich Roll?

  August. Okay. So.

• 2:12:33Rich Roll?

  You got a little time. You must be training pretty hard right now, though.

• 2:12:36Speaker 01

  I've got a Havelina 100 in a few days and I got some other, I got the treadmill run planned too in January.

• 2:12:42Rich Roll?

  In January.

• 2:12:43Speaker 01

  Hundreds and I'll be back at Badwater too. We're a little unsure exactly when it's going to be with the new, the new changes to the park, but.

• 2:12:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Interesting.

• 2:12:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:52Rich Roll?

  Um, yeah. In 2013, you ran what is probably the last time that anyone will run that original course.

• 2:13:00Speaker 01

  I think it actually is going to be back in the original course.

• 2:13:02Rich Roll?

  Oh, really?

• 2:13:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's just going to be different because the, the new study they did and everything won't let them do it between June and July or something. I don't want to misquote the study, but, but they can't have it in the, in the hottest part of the year.

• 2:13:15Rich Roll?

  So they could have it in August then instead or something?

• 2:13:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're going to do something and, and no one really knows what yet. It's kind of hush, hush. I don't know, but hopefully it's not, you know, the week before Leadville or something like that.

• 2:13:26Rich Roll?

  Right, right. I mean, what was the biggest difference that you noticed from the course change from 13 to 14?

• 2:13:33Speaker 01

  It was just a different race and it was a great race. It was put on really well. It was really challenging, super challenging. But, you know, it was hot, but not bad water hot. And the heat came late in the day, which definitely posed different, you know, different challenges. And the first like 23 miles is straight uphill.

• 2:13:52Rich Roll?

  Right, that was the thing.

• 2:13:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, that's kind of my problem. I ran the first 46 miles in like eight hours this year.

• 2:13:59Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:14:00Speaker 01

  And then just kind of fell apart like at the worst possible time. There's another big climb that goes up like 5,000 feet, over seven miles, and there's no crew access or anything. You're just kind of out there. And that's when I was really suffering.

• 2:14:16Rich Roll?

  Just another learning experience.

• 2:14:18Speaker 01

  You know.

• 2:14:19Rich Roll?

  Got to go back, unfinished business.

• 2:14:21Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 2:14:23Rich Roll?

  We got to wrap this up soon. How long have we been going? Oh, man, we're over two hours. But I want to get back to this idea of transformation, of reinvention. You know, you went from this place of complete despair, complete, you know, disrepair in your health to, you know, attempting Guinness Book of World Record, you know, holding runs. I mean, the arc is just mind blowing. So for somebody who's out there listening, you know, what is, what is something that you could leave us with to try to help that person out there

• 2:15:07Rich Roll?

  who's stuck, who can't take that first step, or just is paralyzed, you know, knows that there's a better life for him or her out there and can't see their way through it?

• 2:15:21Speaker 01

  My advice would be that you don't have to see it, you know. In fact, you probably won't be able to ever see it from, the view's obstructed, right? You can't see it from where you are, that you have to trust that there is a way out and that it's not always going to seem hopeless. And you just have to take that blind first step forward. And that's, that's why this ultra thing speaks so well to me, because the process is the same. You know, the process was the same to wake up on my bathroom floor and say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give this all up as it is to line up for bad water. You know, if you, if you try to hold the weight of it, it'll crush you and fold you up. You know, you can't do it. So.

• 2:16:01Speaker 01

  You gotta trust the process and and just be willing to not wrestle every single voice, every single thought down into the ground and just just keep moving forward blindly. And, you know, that was the process when you talked about that that arc. You know, I became a runner and did all these things after I found sobriety. And I did that because I changed kind of my image of who I was. I I decided I was a different person. But then I realized that I had also pigeonholed who I was as a runner, too. And I was, I'm, I'm just doing this, you know, because, you know, I'm always gonna be slow. I used to joke, you know, I'm, I'm, I start out slow and then I taper off and, you know,

• 2:16:46Speaker 01

  all this kind of stuff. And I was like, well, maybe that's not true either. You know, maybe, maybe, maybe that's just a bunch of crap I sold myself to. So, you know, I'm gonna put it out there and just see what happens. And if I'm, if I can't be any faster, that's fine, but I'm not gonna not be faster because I decided I was before I ever tried it. So, don't decide who you are, you know, because of where you are right now.

• 2:17:05Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. That's beautifully put. You know, I think that that the approach that I take to sobriety is the same approach that I take to food, is the same approach that I take to training. And what you learn in recovery is, as stupid as it sounds, and it's really fucking stupid, it's one day at a time, man. You know, it's about making sure that my head hits that pillow tonight sober and that's all I gotta worry about. In the context of food, what am I eating right now? What's my next meal? In the context of training, what's the run or the ride that I'm doing today? If I start thinking about some crazy race, you know, you just get, you, you, you get

• 2:17:47Rich Roll?

  scared, you get stuck, you start running stories and scenarios in your mind that, you know, probably are not productive. So I find it super helpful to just be. In the moment of what you're doing and getting comfortable with the idea that you don't know where it's going, nor should you, you know? It's like, part of that surrender is saying, "I'm not gonna drink today. I don't know what that means, but that's not what I... You know, I'm not somebody who drinks. I'm not doing that today." And it's, it's not what you say, it's what you do.

• 2:18:19Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 2:18:20Rich Roll?

  And when you wake up every day and you go running, or you wake up every day and you don't take a drink, then you string that together over a little period of time, and the story about who you are begins to change, and the way that people interact with you begins to change, and how you start to feel about who you are begins to change.

• 2:18:38Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah. It's beautiful.

• 2:18:40Rich Roll?

  And then a whole new journey takes place, right?

• 2:18:43Speaker 01

  You learn something you don't know about yourself.

• 2:18:45Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. David Clark, you are an inspiration, man. This was awesome. Thank you so much.

• 2:18:52Speaker 01

  Thanks, man.

• 2:18:52Rich Roll?

  For coming down. I really appreciate it. Uh, the book is called "Out There", and you can find it everywhere. It's on Amazon, right?

• 2:19:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:19:00Rich Roll?

  It's in bookstores. Um, use the Amazon banner at richroll.com to pick it up. I highly recommend it. It's amazing, uh, it's an amazing story of, like I said before, despair to triumph. It's pretty cool. I can't wait to see what you're gonna do next, man.

• 2:19:16Speaker 01

  Thanks, bud.

• 2:19:16Rich Roll?

  And if people wanna connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

• 2:19:21Speaker 01

  Um, you can find me on Twitter at @WeAreSuperman. Um, you can also email me at [email protected].

• 2:19:29Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. So, we didn't even talk about that. I mean, you have, you have this Superman Foundation, but did you rename it the Hero Foundation? Or I couldn't, I couldn't figure out which one it is?

• 2:19:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, we had, we had talked, we were starting to get some, some pushback that the name was not gonna be okay, but it turns out we're okay with that.

• 2:19:47Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 2:19:48Speaker 01

  We just changed our logo and stuff like that. So, it's the Superman Project.

• 2:19:54Speaker 01

  It's a small coaching resource, more than anything, just a fellowship. You know, anyone who's looking at doing something crazy like training for a marathon or an ultra marathon, or climbing a mountain, you know, they can shoot us an email and we'll write them a training plan and give them some support. And, you know, I've said all along that ultimately, the most power that the story has is if it's not just me, you know, I'm not the only one with this story, especially sitting here talking to you. There's lots of people with this story. I just get lucky enough to be able to talk about it a lot. If it's just one person, you know, it's, oh, that guy's special, you know, he's just stubborn or whatever, he's got something that I don't, but that's just not the way it is, you know, there's a lot of us out there. And so the more the merrier.

• 2:20:39Speaker 01

  If you're out there running and doing crazy things and experiencing life and you want some other people to do it with, you know, we're there.

• 2:20:46Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Very cool, man. All right, David, thanks so much.

• 2:20:50Speaker 01

  Right on.

• 2:20:51Rich Roll?

  Peace.

• 2:20:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20:53Rich Roll?

  Plants. All right, everybody, I hope you enjoyed that. If David doesn't make you question your own glass ceiling, then you know what? I'm just not sure what will. Maybe check your pulse for a heartbeat. Before I sign off with this week's assignment, a couple of quick announcements. You heard David explain the difference it made in his health and in his running when he adopted a plant-centric approach to his diet. Well, if you want to learn more about how you can do the same, a good place to do that would be to check out my online course. It's called The Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition, and you can find it at MindBodyGreen.com.

• 2:21:38Rich Roll?

  It's three-plus hours of streaming video content, downloadable tools, and an interactive community. Basically, everything you need to get more plants into your active life and take your athleticism to the next level. You also heard David talk about how he achieved his goals. So if you're feeling stuck and you're just not sure how to exactly move forward in the direction of your dreams, or unlock a better version of yourself, well, I got a course for that as well. It's called The Art of Living with Purpose. It's all about the inside work, it's about goal-setting and potential-achieving, and this one is a little over two hours of streaming video content, downloadable tools, resources, interactive support, also at MindBodyGreen.com. So for both of these courses,

• 2:22:21Rich Roll?

  Just click the menu tab Video Courses, which you can find at the top of the homepage at MindBodyGreen.com and you can learn more. And of course, at Richroll.com, we've got nutritional products, we have a digital e-cookbook, we have a meditation program, we've got merch, we've got t-shirts, all kinds of good stuff. So find out more about that at Richroll.com and don't forget to subscribe to my newsletter for a free seven recipe download and to stay clued in to what's what. I will not spam you. Basically, one email a week. That's it. Just good stuff. And, big announcement, we have a cookbook coming out this spring. I've been pretty tight lipped about it and I'm going to be telling you more about it

• 2:23:04Rich Roll?

  soon, but for now, just know that it is amazing. This past week, I've been locking down the manuscript, Julie's been double testing all the recipes and we're pretty locked in. It's going to be coming out at the end of April. We've been super hard at work finishing it and I could not be more excited. It's going to be really cool. It's a gorgeous lifestyle primer, almost like a coffee table book that you could use in the kitchen, but you'd also feel proud to kind of leave out for everybody to page through. It's a very family-friendly approach to the plant-based lifestyle with 120-plus incredible recipes, extraordinary photography, and lifestyle guidelines to take you, your kids, your whole family to the next level of wellness.

• 2:23:47Rich Roll?

  So I'm going to be making announcements about the book and special preorder incentives and all that kind of good stuff, filling you in more as the new year approaches, but I just wanted to kind of plant that seed for now. And please, if you haven't already, give us a review, a review, a blah blah blah, a review on iTunes. It only takes two seconds, you guys. Come on, hook us up, please. If you're in LA, please, please, please stop by our new restaurant, Joy Cafe, J-O-I Cafe. It's feeling awesome. We're in Westlake Village, off Agora Road. Take the Westlake Village exit off the 101. If you're in the Los Angeles area, you want to learn more about the restaurant, go to JoyCafe.com, J-O-I Cafe.com. I eat lunch there a couple of times a week, three or four maybe, the occasional dinner.

• 2:24:32Rich Roll?

  So, good chance that if you stop in, you just might find me there. So, even if I'm not there, say hi to Nick and Joy, the feet on the ground, the ones who are really running the restaurant, get some delicious food, engage them in conversation, and leave feeling great. And also, get my app. The iTunes catalog for the podcast only lists the most 50 recent, the recent most 50, the 50 most recent episodes of the podcast, which means there's 63 out there that you can't get on iTunes. And the only way to access the entire catalog, other than kind of poking around my website, is to get the iOS app in the iTunes App Store.

• 2:25:13Rich Roll?

  It's totally free, and it's the only way to easily access every single episode in the RRP canon, the RRP of. And give us a review. If you just go to the iTunes App Store and type in Rich Roll, you'll find it there, totally free. And I got a banner ad at richroll.com for the app as well. Thank you for supporting the show. Continue to tell your friends. Continue to use the Amazon banner ad. You can donate to the show and keep Instagramming. Just don't forget to tag me, @RichRoll. All right, let's close it down with this week's assignment. This week, I want you guys to really focus on your journaling. I want you to journal every morning this week before you start your day. And the focus should be on identifying your limiters. Ask yourself the hard questions.

• 2:25:58Rich Roll?

  What is holding me back from change? What is holding me back from improvement? What is holding me back from moving forward in the trajectory and the direction of achieving my dreams? I want you to think about that David Goggins quote that I gave you at the top of the episode. And I want you to think about David Clark and what he faced and overcame. Use that as fuel for your fire. What can you learn about how he changed that is applicable to your experience? Because generally, we're our own worst enemies, right? And at the end of this week, of this long probe of journaling every day, I want you to make a list of the top five or top 10 things you tell yourself about what you can,

• 2:26:41Rich Roll?

  and more importantly, what you can't do that are holding you back. I want you to pick the biggest limiter, and I want you to start unpacking it. I want you to deconstruct it. And I want you to get to that place where you understand objectively that that story isn't reality. It's just that. It's a story you tell yourself, based upon some life experience that you decided at some point consciously or unconsciously to attach meaning to. And then I want you to take an action that flies in the face of that old tale and start forming a new reality for yourself. Alright you guys, until next week. Peace. Plants.