Natasha Kufa On The 10% Rule: Small Changes, Big Results

After a respite were back in the pod saddle with the stunning & knowledgeable Natasha Kufa. In addition to raising 4 kids, Natasha is an internationally renown nutritionist, certified raw food specialist, chef & food delivery proprietor and über-fit trainer, whose clients include A-list Hollywood celebrities such as Matthew McConaughey, Josh Duhamel & his wife Fergie from The Black Eyed Peas, and more. If that's not enough, Natasha is also the author of The 10% Rule: Small Changes, Big Results and is the owner and founder of Evolution Body — a raw food delivery enterprise servicing the Los Angeles vicinity. Topics covered? Colonics obsession, the joys & challenges of raising an autistic child & the impact of diet on spectrum behavior, the benefits of juicing, becoming a raw food chef, Natasha's fitness & diet perpective, the importance of maintaining a healthy gut microbial ecology, the 10% Rule — Natasha's primer for tackling & ultimately overcoming barriers to healthy eating habits & fitness practices — and of course the question everyone wants to know: what it's like to train a big celebrity? TECHNICAL NOTE: As you will no doubt notice, there are some odd clicking sounds with Natasha's microphone. Despite running some audio EQ, it nonetheless subsists. Apologies in advance and as I keep saying (did I say I'm apologizing?), I'll do better next time. Or maybe it's time to get a real producer involved – which by the way, is in the works… Enjoy the podcast and want to support the show? Make sure you subscribe on iTunes and leave a comment on the iTunes page for the show. Thanks for listening and enjoy the program! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Rich Roll?

  Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, episode 22 with Natasha Kufa and Julie Byatt.

• 1:23Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast. My name is Rich Roll. If you are new to the show or new to me, I am an ultra-endurance triathlete. I am a bestselling author of the book Finding Ultra. I'm a plant-based nutrition advocate, a public speaker, a holistic lifestyle entrepreneur, a recovering attorney, and a family guy and father of four kids. My goal with the show is to share with you conversations with some of the most inspiring and interesting minds in health, in fitness, and in wellness. So what does that mean? That means I have guests on that range from world-class athletes to doctors, trainers,

• 2:08Rich Roll?

  nutritionists, entrepreneurs, and a whole plethora of forward thinkers and paradigm-busting personalities, all of which are here to talk to me in an effort to help empower you.

• 2:24Rich Roll?

  Achieve maximum health and fitness and an optimal balance of mind, body, and spirit. Why? So you can unlock and unleash your best, most authentic self. That's my goal. So, please, if you're enjoying the show, subscribe, subscribe, subscribe on iTunes and throw a comment up. We've been getting a lot of great comments lately. I really appreciate the people who have taken a minute to share a thought or two on iTunes. It helps us out a lot. Also wanted to apologize, apologize for taking an extended break from the podcast. We hit a good stride there for a while.

• 3:06Rich Roll?

  We were doing about two episodes a week and I think one or two weeks in there, we did three episodes in a week. And then suddenly bam, I think two weeks has gone by without an episode. But hey, life intervenes, you gotta make a living. I was traveling, lots of other stuff going on in my life. And for one reason or another, it just, it just kept getting pushed. So, thanks for hanging in there and thank you for being patient and thank you for all the messages and tweets, et cetera, nudging me and saying, "Hey, where's my fix? I need my fix of the podcast. Where did you go? I hope you didn't abandon it." No, I certainly did not abandon it.

• 3:46Rich Roll?

  I love doing this and I'd love nothing more than to find a way to turn it into more of a professional vocation. If I could do so, I would do this like five days a week, believe me. I'd love it. But it's not exactly paying the bills right now. So, you know, you gotta do other things, but I'm happy to be back with you. And on that note, actually, in addition to thanking you for leaving the kind comments on iTunes and on my blog, we put up a donate button on my website last week. You can find it on the blog page or on the podcast page.

• 4:29Rich Roll?

  I think I just threw like one tweet out and said, hey, we have this donate button up. If you're feeling charitable or want to support the show, check it out. And we immediately got a whole ton of donations. I was stunned and amazed. So I appreciate the support. So if you would like to support the show, if you feel like you've gotten something out of the programming, if you've learned a little bit, if it's broadened your horizons, and I think we've got like something like 45 hours of podcast content up already. Hey, you can, you know, throw us a few bucks. You can donate whatever you like as a one-time donation, or you can do a monthly subscription

• 5:10Rich Roll?

  where for a preset amount, your credit card will get charged or PayPal account will get charged, a little bit of money each month. You don't have to think about it anymore. The idea is that we would like to keep this going and make it regular, make it professional, continue to provide great content, and keep it free. It will always be free. So, you know, the donation is at your behest, and of course, we'd love it if you're feeling charitable, but don't worry, the show will always be free on iTunes, and we appreciate the support. So thanks a lot. Today's guest is Natasha Kufa.

• 5:52Rich Roll?

  Natasha is quite an amazing woman, very inspiring. She is a fitness trainer. She's sort of a trainer to the stars. She's trained people like Matthew McConaughey and Josh Duhamel and his wife, Fergie, and lots of cool people like that, but also normal people here in town. She's incredibly fit woman from Germany, full of all sorts of great knowledge, and she is also a mother of four kids, which is astounding. I mean, the woman is ripped and ready to go. There are a few people on the earth that look as fit as she does.

• 6:31Rich Roll?

  And she's also a raw food chef, a certified raw food specialist, as a matter of fact. She's a founder of a company called Evolution Body, and she has a raw food delivery service. Which is pretty neat in addition to the fitness training that she does with her clients. And she's also an author. She wrote a book called The 10% Rule. Small changes, big results. So she's going to tell us what the 10% rule is and what that's all about. So really happy to have her on the show to share her wisdom with all of you. So I hope you enjoy it. And if you do, send us a comment and let us know.

• 7:20Rich Roll?

  So without further ado, Natasha.

• 7:31Rich Roll?

  Do you care?

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Well, I care. I care for the listeners. I care that the listeners have the best time.

• 7:36Rich Roll?

  Should it matter? Should it matter whether we're broadcasting or not? We're just going to sit down and have a nice conversation.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I know.

• 7:41Rich Roll?

  That is the value right there.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  I think it's amazing.

• 7:44Rich Roll?

  Other people want to listen?

• 7:45Speaker 01

  I'm glad that we had this opportunity to have this intimate meeting, the three of us.

• 7:49Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Which we never ever would have. Intimate meeting in the woods.

• 7:54Rich Roll?

  Hey Natasha.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Hi, Rich.

• 7:57Rich Roll?

  Thanks for coming by the podcast, the garage.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me. Garage is amazing. I'm sad nobody can see the view.

• 8:05Rich Roll?

  Well, it's quite messy, but the clutter sort of gives one the impression that there might be some creative endeavors happening in here.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Something is happening.

• 8:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 8:15Rich Roll?

  It might be massively disorganized and I don't know if it's anything good, but...

• 8:19Speaker 01

  No, in my view, I see some bike wheels and a racing bike and then some tambourines and a keyboard and a PA.

• 8:27Rich Roll?

  Cause I like to bring the tambourine with me when I go ride.

• 8:30Speaker 01

  You know, you know.

• 8:31Rich Roll?

  When I go down to Venice.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  You don't even know how mean Rich Roll is on a tambourine.

• 8:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  It's crazy good.

• 8:39Rich Roll?

  But anyway, it's been a little while since we've had a podcast episode.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  That's what's wrong with you, Rich Roll.

• 8:45Rich Roll?

  I know. I've been slacking. I've been getting a lot of tweets lately like, what's, what's wrong with you? People get demanding, you know, like they get demanding with their free content.

• 8:55Rich Roll?

  But life intervenes, we got busy and we hit a good stride there for a while. We were doing two a week minimum. I think there was one week where I did three in a week and it almost buried me because it's a lot of work.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Was it, man? You broke the balance, went over that optimum balance.

• 9:09Rich Roll?

  I know. And Natasha, you were nice enough to allow us to reschedule a couple of times.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I first thought you don't like me.

• 9:15Rich Roll?

  No, just too many things happening and, and, you know, I want to have, when we do the podcast, I want to, I don't want to be distracted with other stuff that's on my mind.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  That makes sense.

• 9:26Rich Roll?

  You know, so I was talking, actually, I was, I was on a run, on a trail run with my friend, Usher Gunsberg. Usher Gunsberg, who we just had lunch with, by the way, met us down in Venice.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  We were just at Cafe, yeah, Cafe Gratitude.

• 9:42Rich Roll?

  Cafe Gratitude.

• 9:43Speaker 02

  I usually see him sometimes when I run there because I was there this morning.

• 9:47Rich Roll?

  The friendliest man on earth.

• 9:48Speaker 02

  The friendliest man on earth. Hi, Andrew.

• 9:51Rich Roll?

  I know. He's a, he's a font of positive energy. But anyway, we were running and he's like, he's like, I'm loving the podcast, mate. You gotta have Natasha on. He told me all about you and he's, she's amazing. She's incredible. You gotta have her on. She'd be a great guest. So here we are.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Well, thank you, Usher.

• 10:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah. We're gonna have Usher on the show, maybe.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Next, absolutely.

• 10:12Rich Roll?

  So, you know, he's a, you know, he gave me high praise because he, you know, he's a television host by profession. He was host of Australia's version of American Idol. And then he did a show here, one of those dance shows, like Like You Can Dance or something like that.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  It was Paula Abdul's.

• 10:30Rich Roll?

  With Paula Abdul, yeah, yeah. And he's a host. He's like a, you know, like a Ryan Seacrest kind of guy.

• 10:35Speaker 02

  Better, way cooler, way better.

• 10:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, way better, of course.

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Smarter and taller.

• 10:41Rich Roll?

  And, and, and of course vegan, plant-based too. So extra bonus points for him.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 10:47Rich Roll?

  And he's running the LA marathon so tomorrow. So it's Saturday afternoon right now. So we're sending him good vibes.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 10:55Rich Roll?

  But anyway, so I guess as the story goes. When he got that gig with that dance show with Paula Abdul, CBS said, "You need to get in better shape," or "You need to get whipped into shape," and "You need to get down with Natasha."

• 11:10Speaker 02

  Look at his suit.

• 11:11Rich Roll?

  So, what happened there? Tell me about that a little bit.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  I have known Andrew when he lived in Australia.

• 11:19Rich Roll?

  Ah.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  And then he would, once in a while, contact me when he was visiting here. And I got to work with him on and off. And then at some point, he contacted me and said, "I'm moving. Are you ready for me? You need to get me in great shape." So, and he came, and I started making his meals. I cooked for him. And I also trained him.

• 11:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  And it was a great adventure.

• 11:45Rich Roll?

  So, you could take responsibility for him being fabulously handsome and fit?

• 11:49Speaker 02

  A little bit, maybe.

• 11:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So, I'll do a little introductory segment after this to explain to everybody who you are, so we don't have to go through all of that now. But I'm interested in, you know, your background and your story and how you came to, you know, be a trainer and to have the sort of fitness and nutrition perspective that you have.

• 12:12Speaker 02

  I'm from Germany, so that's where I started. I used to run track in school. And unfortunately, the sports program in our schools or in Germany, they're not like in US. There's no scouts, and you can't really develop that great. But I was really, really into it. And, but I knew I'm not going to be a professional runner, and I'm not going to do that for a living, even though I enjoyed it so much. Then I decided that I am going to be a physical therapist. I did that, and I worked for the soccer team, the local, the national soccer team in Hamburg.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  And from there, I pretty much did some of the training, some of the recovery, some of the rehabilitation. But offseason, they tend to gain weight when the training wasn't eight hours, six hours a day, and...

• 13:17Rich Roll?

  All the beer, too much beer.

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, and sausages and stuff. They weren't vegan. No.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  No, not at all. I don't think anybody on the team was vegan, but. I don't think anybody in Germany is vegan. There's a few, I think. I know a few people, but I started, you know, doing sessions, talking to them about nutrients and food and, you know, fueling right and fueling right the entire year. And it's very easy to burn that much when you are working out that many hours. But most of us don't work out six hours and have all day exercise routines. So for most of them, it was really difficult to. So it's one thing to know what to eat and then another thing to buy it and make it.

• 14:07Speaker 02

  And it becomes time consuming or it's a new thing and you kind of have to get used to it. And I think that was basically one of the things for Andrew. It wasn't so much that he didn't know. It's one, you have some knowledge and then you need to learn the portions and what to make and what goes together and things like that. So I started making the food and then I wasn't a chef at that time. So and I basically was like, okay, when I'm, if I'm doing this, I should maybe become a chef. So I went to chef school. It was really a conventional, you know, gourmet chef restaurant kind of type of thing. Right.

• 14:51Speaker 02

  Which you, I guess politically, this is the way to go. But after I was done, I basically put my touch into it. So it's not realistic for the person who lives at home and wants to eat healthy to have cream based meals and, you know, very pretty things. Spending hours creating sauces. Exactly. So.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  I advertised a lot, even for the non-vegan clients, that it'd be more beneficial for them to eat clean five days a week, do what they want on the weekends. And if they have to eat animal products, to eat it once a day, not three times sometimes. You know, a lot of people have like eggs and bacon and things like that for breakfast and then chicken for salad and salad and stuff like that for lunch and then another meat product or animal product for dinner. So, a lot of people liked it and had our experience a good change in their body, in their well-being, in a lot of ways.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  And so I kept that, I started basically doing that for a lot of people and had a lot of private clients and would just do that regularly. And then I moved here.

• 16:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so this was in Hamburg though, right? And so from coming right out of the gate, were you a vegan or plant-based? Or so what was your nutrition perspective at that time?

• 16:26Speaker 02

  I personally never cared so much for meat or it wasn't for me, a meal wasn't, it has to be vegetable and potatoes and meat. I just, I just needed to get some fuel. Like I didn't care so much about how it looked. It wasn't so important to me. So I was not a huge meat eater or I wouldn't have eggs all the time for breakfast. And it changed after my twins were born, pretty much. That's when, like about eight years ago.

• 17:00Rich Roll?

  And that, was that when you were still in Germany? Or that was after you moved here?

• 17:04Speaker 02

  I moved here.

• 17:05Rich Roll?

  So when you're, when you're, when you're working with these athletes in Hamburg, you're trying to give them healthy meals and options, but you're sort of veering away from the traditional meat and potatoes and all of that and dairy and stuff?

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, because most of the time it's easier for people to keep the structure during the week when they're busy. And then on the weekend, it's less structure and then they can go to the things that they like to do. Sometimes it would be so radical to do like a complete change.

• 17:33Rich Roll?

  Right, to just adjust slowly over time.

• 17:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:37Rich Roll?

  And what kind of results were you seeing with the people you were working with?

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Definitely better muscle quality.

• 17:46Rich Roll?

  What do you mean by muscle quality?

• 17:49Speaker 02

  I, myself, even made the experience by eating too much animal products, you kind of look spongy. And if you are eating very plant-based, and I have to say, I'm not a big fan of tofu at all. I rather eat the soybean than tofu.

• 18:09Rich Roll?

  We can get into that, we'll get into that.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  So, the less processed, the better.

• 18:14Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  So, the look and the shape of the muscle to me seem to be less spongy, or the fat under the skin, which you, you know, create when you have a lot of animal products.

• 18:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  So that's, I mean, that's very different, that seems very different to sort of the standard, you know, awareness of a lot of people, that they say you should eat animal flesh and a vegetable, yeah, to get that kind of muscle tone.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  No, I, yeah.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  So you are a trainer and you're saying you experience different.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, totally, I disagree with that. And I know everybody has their opinion, but I'll have to say, Mike Tyson.

• 18:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  And there's a lot of athletes, Carl Lewis, there's a lot of athletes that are vegan or vegetarian and, you know, have maybe not over a long period of time, but they started doing it and they, they say they are different. It's their, their health and their, just overall wellbeing, they feel better, they have more energy. Because fact is, eating too much meat is just makes you tired, you produce so much tryptophan and you, you know, you just get tired, your body works so hard to digest it.

• 19:28Rich Roll?

  Right, I mean, there's a lot, there's a lot that comes along, you know, for the ride when you eat the meat. In addition to the protein source, you have the saturated fat, you have all these other things going on and...

• 19:41Rich Roll?

  The result generally is inflammatory.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:44Rich Roll?

  And so, and that inhibits recovery. It also creates an environment that's more rife for getting sick, or run down, or feeling tired. And definitely that sort of post-meal lethargy, because it requires so much energy to digest. So, the net overall gain is diminished somewhat, because you have to exert so much energy to reap the benefits of what that food product avails itself to you.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Correct. And also, I had worked with clients that would do a colonic almost monthly, due to them.

• 20:23Rich Roll?

  Monthly?

• 20:23Speaker 02

  Monthly, like literally doing. And how do you feel about that? It's crazy. And I think if you have to do it once a year, it should be plenty. And do.

• 20:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, people get addicted to colonics.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  And I can't even, I don't know why.

• 20:36Rich Roll?

  Well, you can't, if you're cleaning yourself out too much, then you're getting rid of all that microbial activity in your gut that you need to be healthy and digest your food.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. So, that particular person had issues going regularly to the bathroom, because that was already, it was damaged so much, that unless she would do colonics, she wouldn't be clean. So, you do the colonics, and then you eat maybe healthy for a few days, and then you go back to the whole like salad and meat and salad, and or vegetable, and some sort of chicken or meat, or anything like that. And you do it so much, and then you have the urge to do another colonic, and it's just like this cycle. And she was doing it for years. So, there is always this thing about doing cleanses, and I think they're great. But once you start doing cleanses,

• 21:30Speaker 02

  whether it's a juice cleanse, or some kind of liquid cleanse, and colonics, this, it creates such a disbalance, that your body's not even able to do the things that it needs to do on its own anymore. So, you have to constantly help with stuff.

• 21:44Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 21:44Speaker 02

  Even if they are herbs. It doesn't make it, it doesn't make it better just because it's some kind of herb that you're taking to clean out. Because if you are eating regularly very clean food, and I'd say 85%, then you shouldn't be needing it.

• 22:02Rich Roll?

  Exactly. Yeah, I mean, my whole journey started with a juice cleanse and, you know, but since then, I think I've only done one other one.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, for us, it's more about the lifestyle. It's about actually living the lifestyle and eating that way on a consistent basis. And, you know, of course, we're not, you know, we're human and, you know, occasionally something slips in that, you know, is not the highest quality. But overall, it's not, because we're living that way on a daily basis, there's not really the need to be doing the cleanse. And I think that the obsession on the cleanse, and I mean, I talk to people every day who are trying to lose weight or get themselves balanced, and the cleanse is only, it's just one part of the yo-yo of the, you know, of the seesaw, right?

• 22:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, exactly. It's one part on that cycle. So people eat like crap, they get disgusted with themselves, then they do a cleanse, they feel great, they start off, you know, on a sort of a new path for a little bit, and then it devolves into old habits, and then they're back on the cleanse again. And it, there's no, you know, it should be a palate cleanser, or a tablerraza, or wiping the slate clean to start fresh, and then adopt a lifestyle that you can sustain and maintain over time.

• 23:15Speaker 02

  Absolutely. I experience that all the time for New Years, for a project, it's, it always is just starting over on doing things. Eating clean, going back to old habits, doing a cleanse, starting over, and then it goes back again to the same thing.

• 23:34Rich Roll?

  Because we're human. It's not like a judgment, you know, it's like, we're human beings, we have cravings, we crave foods that aren't good for us, you know? I mean, it's a natural tendency.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's why I think it'd be important if you do five days, to stick to five days, and you don't go, it's either this way or that way. If I don't do all the time, seven days a week, then, you know, then it doesn't work anyway, so I might as well just eat whatever I want. You do five days, you stick to a routine, and it could be as boring as every time, every breakfast is the same. Because at the end of the day, we're fueling with food. You know, if you're driving a Ferrari, you're not going to put very cheap gasoline into it because it's going to... Ruined the engine.

• 24:23Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  So you putting very good fuel into your car. So it runs better. So it should be the same thing with your body. And then on the weekends, you can have your cravings and, you know, and be a little bit looser. And, um, but the exercise and the diet during the week is like brushing your teeth and taking a shower.

• 24:42Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  Literally.

• 24:43Rich Roll?

  The problem that I, that I have, and it's just my own personal problem, is that, you know, I'm a, I'm an addict. I'm a recovering alcoholic. And so I, I can be incredibly obsessive about whatever.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  You could just be planning for that weekend binge.

• 24:58Rich Roll?

  Oh, I mean, yeah. See, the thing is like, I can't do that. Like, I know that the sort of cheat day thing, or the, you know, do whatever you want one or two days a week is very popular and it works a lot for, it works really well for a lot of people. Like Tim Ferriss has this low carb diet and one day a week, you eat whatever you want. You got an In-N-Out Burger, you go to, you know, Taco Bell and have 50 tacos and you go to Cheesecake Factory and it doesn't matter because you're eating so much that day, your body can't even take it in anyway and you'll pass it through. The problem with that for me, and again, this is just me, is I'll just obsess all week about that day and I'll never, I won't be able to be present in whatever I'm doing because I'll just be sitting there thinking about, God, three more days I can go to In-N-Out Burger, you know?

• 25:39Rich Roll?

  And, and so I had to completely let go of the idea of doing a cheat day. And that meant, you know, a period of time that was very difficult to kind of weather the cravings that come with that. But, but ultimately, once you break that craving cycle, then you're free. You're no longer a prisoner of those cravings. And if you can break that cycle, then you can go on a new path and, and not sit around going, in two more days, I can go to In-N-Out Burger.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  And that's amazing. Um, that's.

• 26:11Rich Roll?

  But I had to. I mean, I didn't have a choice. Like, listen, if I could eat whatever I wanted to, you know, two days a week, I would, I would do that. But that wouldn't work because two days would become three.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:20Rich Roll?

  And then three days would become four. And then I'd be doing a cleanse and a colonic every month.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  You know, and that's, that's a good example, actually, because, and that calls, I think, addictive personality.

• 26:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  Which is good, because then you're addicted to a lot of really good things that you can do, which some of us can, and I have read a little bit about you, and I think it's mind blowing what you have done. And that's something, if, I guess if you didn't have that kind of personality, you're not able to do.

• 26:51Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  And that's my opinion. But for, and I guess if you have that kind of weakness, that if you do that one or two cheat days, and it becomes three, it becomes four, and that's totally possible. I remember an interview with Francesca Fananzing, she's a, she was a German swimmer, from the, from East Germany.

• 27:17Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  And she would never skip, she, she won the Olympics, she was amazing, very young girl, and she was in an interview, and then she was asked, why are you not ever skipping a workout? Because that was her thing, she would never skip a workout.

• 27:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Never, ever, ever, not even offseason. And she said, because I'm a lazy person. I, if I skip a workout, it's gonna be, oh, this is, feels really good, maybe tomorrow I can skip another workout.

• 27:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 27:43Speaker 02

  It just gets like that.

• 27:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and hey, nothing bad happened when I skipped this workout. I, I relate to that completely, like, that's my kind of mindset.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, definitely, it's something that you cannot generalize, and it works for some people, it doesn't work for, for some, but I think for the general population, it's better than going, eating all kinds of things during the week.

• 28:14Rich Roll?

  Of course, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, people every day say, you know, I'm interested in this plant-based diet thing, like, how can I get started? Do I have to do it like you? Because I had to go whole hog right out of the gate. And I say, no, you know, start small, start with, you know, a couple things, focus on the new things that you can eat, don't obsess about the things you're suddenly not eating, and, you know, take your time. With it and your body will adapt and change. You'll see how you like it. You'll be more interested, the better you feel. And you know, that, that, that is what works for most people.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:44Rich Roll?

  You know, so of course.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  And my, my version of that would be if we did what, what Natasha was suggesting and you ate five days really well, then in my experience, it would start to shift your microbial environment and you would stop craving those things that you need to eat on the weekend. So, you know, I had a friend over who, you know, is really struggling with weight and she said, you know, what should I do? And my intuition was just to tell her to get a couple Vitamix, you know, with a lot of plants in her body.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  And just start there.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  And just please focus on that. Because I really feel that when your body starts getting what it needs, it starts to drop those habits. So you don't have to drop the habits.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  The habits drop you.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Correct. That's why I'm a big fan of the 10% rule.

• 29:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and I want to talk about that. So this is the title. Well, before we get into the book, I just want to say one more thing. Yeah, that is the first thing that I always say to anybody. I go, if you can change one thing or just do one thing, if you had a green smoothie in the morning every day, and that's the only thing that you change about your diet, that is a huge step. And I think that that's a great first step. And that will start to create a shift in people. Because you, there's, there is absolutely nothing in the world that will make you feel immediately better than having like a kale and spinach, like Vitamix or juice in the morning.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 30:09Rich Roll?

  You can feel, you can actually feel your body coming alive when you do it. And you go, wow, that's amazing. Like, I should maybe do more of this, you know? And that will take that person on a, on a journey. So, anyway, the book, The 10% Rule. So, tell me about the book. What is the book about?

• 30:26Speaker 02

  I started this book, I didn't even want to, really, because I was asked so many times, do a video, do this, do that, why don't you write a book, why don't you come up with this? And I, I think everything has been already out there. I don't really think any DVD, fitness DVD, or anything like that, or any new hype, anything, I don't think there's anything new.

• 30:51Rich Roll?

  It's all been said.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and I didn't want to do anything that was already been, has been already out there. And it's just, you know, repackaging it, basically. I was like, I don't want to do that. So. I had talked to a lot of different people and it was the experience with my clients, their journey, what they have been through and how someone who was 400 pounds had lost so much weight and did a race and people who have never been runners before did a marathon and their mom that, you know, would never believe that she could do certain things and is now, you know, so fit back to work and is, you know, does things that she would never think she would have done.

• 31:34Speaker 02

  So I thought, a lot of times I would do interviews and, you know, I was asked, like, what is that one thing, like, what is this person's secret, who, what do you do to get these legs? What do you do to get these abs? I can't really, I can't really answer that because somebody has great genetics and has great abs and then the other person has great legs or great calves.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  Rich has great calves.

• 31:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but like, that's because of my mom.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  It's not because he's ultra man.

• 32:04Rich Roll?

  No, I can't, I can't, there's, actually, the more I train, the smaller they get. When I'm not training, they get all big and beefy.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  It was hilarious, was Sly Stallone met Rich once and just followed him all around, asking him about his calf workout.

• 32:18Rich Roll?

  I was wearing, yeah, I was wearing shorts that day. Hey, where do you, how do you get those calves?

• 32:23Speaker 02

  Oh, I like him so much.

• 32:25Rich Roll?

  Anyway.

• 32:26Speaker 02

  So I, basically, I try to explain that there is, you don't have to shift your entire life. You either do 100% or you're nothing. So either I change everything or I don't. There's not, none of that. So a lot of times I would start with clients, they would come to me, I want to change my diet, I want to do this, I want to do that. I would work with clients that have an eating disorder that they would come right out of rehab to me and I'm also a dietitian, so for me to help them to get back on track. Most of them always want everything at the same time.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  Workout, training, diet plan, cleaning out everything and starting over again. It doesn't work. It's a, it'll be a short term goal. And then long term, it'll be exhausting. It's like a, it would be like a marathon. You don't run a marathon within two, three weeks. You have to properly train for it.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  And so I started saying, like you said, with the juice, you just change one thing, you know? And if it's the workout, you start doing the workouts. You start showing up. And as that go, we start working on the diet. If you're gonna work on everything at the same time, it's gonna become so overwhelming. It's like the planning and it's buying food, it's family. We have kids, we have to like manage everything. And it doesn't work for most of them. And then they just, they don't show up anymore.

• 34:00Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 34:00Speaker 02

  They just stop.

• 34:00Rich Roll?

  It becomes too overwhelming and they give up.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so I put some, you know, some of my knowledge and some of the experience I had with my clients. And nothing in the book is really, it's no secret in there. There's no secret to losing weight or no secret to.

• 34:17Rich Roll?

  Oh, come on.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  There's no magic pill?

• 34:19Speaker 02

  No.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  No one?

• 34:20Speaker 02

  I think the only, the only thing that I always advertise for people is when, when they come to me, drink apple cider vinegar. It'll be very good for you.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Oh, I love apple cider vinegar.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Well, how do you know that? Like, what does it do? Like, is it something new? Is it new? My grandmother did it, her grandmother did it. Everybody used to do it one day and now nobody does it anymore.

• 34:40Rich Roll?

  I talk about that in my book too, and I get tweets all the time. I'm having apple cider vinegar. I never heard of such a thing.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Almost all of our salad dressings in our book use apple cider vinegar.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Right?

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's, and I, and I think it's something that has no side effect and you can always take it. It will never do something bad to you.

• 34:56Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  But besides the apple side of vinegar, I start talking about how to slowly adjust your diet, how to bump up your workouts, or you change your lifestyle. And the 10% rule applies to everyone. It applies to the person who has never moved anything, has never exercised, or it applies to the person who has always been exercising and just wants to change a little bit or become better. So it's a tool, not a secret. It's a tool for people, like motivation, that they can, you know, they read, and if there's any interesting thing that they can pick up and use in their lifestyle, that's great.

• 35:41Rich Roll?

  Right, so the 10% refers to changing 10% of what you do, right? 10% at a time. I like that. That's good.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  Nothing big, nothing too crazy.

• 35:50Speaker 01

  But then when you make that 10% shift at this point, then over a long time, it makes an incremental shift.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, because even Rich could do 10% change.

• 36:03Rich Roll?

  Well, everybody can, everybody, life is a journey of growth and improvement, right? You're either moving, you're either growing or you're regressing, so there's no endpoint to that. There's no destination, you know, unless somebody becomes fully actualized and enlightened and just, you know, transcends the mortal coils, which, that's Julie's plan. You know, you, every, I don't care who you are, you have, you know, most people, you know, everybody can be always improving. There's always an extra 10%. Michael Jordan, or, you know, Kobe Bryant, or whoever, you know, whoever it is.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it just, it applies to everyone, and it could be, you know, 10% in diet, 10% in just, you know, how do you do things, and exercise, it just, but like, all, like, day-to-day stuff. So that's what the book is about.

• 36:53Rich Roll?

  Right, it's great. It's interesting what you said about, you know, being reluctant to write a book at first, and, and having this pressure to kind of come up with something new and revolutionary when it seems that it's all been said, because it's so, so much of it is just elementary, you know, and it's not that people don't... It's, you know, they kind of know what they need to do. They just want a really tight instructional manual and then they want to be inspired. You know, and that comes in many forms and that's why there's a million of these, you know, books come out every year with this diet and that diet and this new exercise routine. And some of them, you know, capture the fascination of the public and some don't.

• 37:35Rich Roll?

  But it is weird because it's almost like snake oil because there's so many of these books and right now I'm in a similar position like, you know, I'm starting to think about a next book and it's like, well, what are you going to say? And I'm facing the same thing. I'm like, well, I could write a book about plant-based nutrition, but there's already a whole bunch of those out there. I'm not going to say anything that isn't in those books or, you know, are you going to try to reinvent the wheel or what is it that you, you know, have that's personal to you, that's unique to you, that's authentic to you that you can share? And it sounds like you've found that. I mean, it's sort of the stories of the people that you've helped and what's unique in your approach to delivering this information and this message that isn't anything brand new.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  I read a lot about or hear about the new way to shred or five-minute abs.

• 38:35Rich Roll?

  Five, yeah, exactly.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  Things like that. And I always like wonder, it's packaged so, I guess nicely that people really believe it and then they think if they do 200 app crunches that they're going to have a six-pack. And it's like the information behind it is, there's no such thing. There is no easy way of doing anything, not just exercise. There's nothing is easy. I mean, if you want to be an engineer, you have to go to school, you have to study and it goes on and on and on and on. It's not easy. It's not like you can go and just learn it from the person who is an engineer. You know, there's always a process to things and that's the way it is with.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  Either reinventing yourself, or changing your lifestyle, or anything you do. It's climbing from the bottom and getting to the top at some point.

• 39:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's it's hard work, no matter what. If you you gotta want it, it's not for people that need it, it's for people that want it.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:33Rich Roll?

  And, you know, you can't, if you're trying to find a shortcut, or a way to short circuit something, you know, that's sort of like borrowed time and borrowed energy. And that's why you see all this yo-yoing and the ups and downs. And, and, you know, in turn, as opposed to true lifestyle change, where all these things that you're kind of seeking as a destination, become a byproduct of just changing your life.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 39:58Rich Roll?

  You know, but that that's a harder message to sell in a book, right?

• 40:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, nobody wants to hear that. It's always, I get so many phone calls from different magazines, like, especially at the beginning of the year. So what's the, what's new?

• 40:12Rich Roll?

  The ten tips, the five things, yeah.

• 40:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, what's new? Nothing.

• 40:16Rich Roll?

  Right, nothing.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  There are no, put your shoes on, start running.

• 40:20Rich Roll?

  I know.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  There's nothing, there's really nothing, there's nothing to it.

• 40:23Rich Roll?

  It's true. And yet, at the same time, you know, don't be disillusioned, because change is possible. It's it's within all of us. We all have the power to change at any given moment. You don't have to have the earth fall on top of you. It doesn't have to be New Year's Day. You know, at any given moment, you can make that decision and set into motion a course of action that will change your life completely. And, you know, the 10% rule, or whatever it is that inspires you, you know, that information is available to you. I mean, everybody needs the inspiration. And they need the roadmap. It's just, there's not gonna be, you know, the roadmap doesn't have to change every year. And it shouldn't, and it doesn't.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  I don't know, I think the power comes in, in, from people just sharing authentically from a very personal perspective. And I think for all of us, we think, maybe we feel in the beginning like, well, that's just me personally. But it's from that point that you can share something that's very powerful and authentic. So I think what you guys are speaking about is just, you know, really writing about something that's really true to your heart, or true to your path, and not, you know, not coming up with a gimmick, or something.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  But just really, really speaking the truth. And sometimes that's scary, and it makes you vulnerable, and you have to say things that, you know, maybe aren't, you know, all glossed over, but in the end, the impact is, you know, great.

• 41:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:46Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 41:47Speaker 01

  So. I'm looking forward to both of your next books.

• 41:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  I'd like to get a project with like very overweight people.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Really?

• 41:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  Let's, yeah, let's talk about that.

• 41:59Rich Roll?

  There's no shortage, there's no shortage of those people.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  I know, I know, but when we were speaking of inspiration, a lot of times I really get inspired by my clients. And I started working with a guy, I'm still working with him, his journey is not over yet.

• 42:19Speaker 02

  Amazing just experience so far and he started, I think he's 41 or 42. He started off with almost 400 pounds and his doctor was saying, "Don't run, don't know this, know that."

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Lie down.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Lie down and take some pills.

• 42:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, take it easy. And when I started working with him, it was quite a challenge because weighing that much for so many years has obviously damaged some cartilage and joints and things like that. And so we had to take it very easy. Also on his heart, he ran his first race two weeks ago.

• 43:03Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  He has lost 45 pounds so far.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 43:08Speaker 02

  And it's a slow process, 45 pounds, it's not like the Biggest Loser type of 45 pounds.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Right. So this is a lasting 45?

• 43:17Speaker 02

  Yes. He hasn't gained any weight. He's losing, sometimes it's a little bit slower than others and then we bump things up a little bit. He has, for his standards, changed so much and feels so much better and he's so motivated. And he'll be running a half marathon in April and it's just so, I'm so thrilled to just see that and see that kind of change. And about two years ago, I worked with a family. It was like a volunteer work.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  Mom and dad and two kids and dad was so overweight, he was, he couldn't even be weighed. He weighed that much at the doctors, so um. And I couldn't really just work with him alone. I start going into their house once a week and then see him individually twice. And then I would teach mom how to cook, what to use, like I said, what is it that you guys usually eat? Show me and then you swap things out before you make too big of a change. So you start swapping things out, use this instead of that. And so it was a process over six months. He had lost a lot of weight and they um continue to still learn.

• 44:42Rich Roll?

  What would be some of the examples that you would swap out?

• 44:45Speaker 02

  Lard.

• 44:46Rich Roll?

  Lard?

• 44:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:47Rich Roll?

  And and exchange it with what?

• 44:49Speaker 02

  With like coconut oil or olive oil. And just not to, you know, fry your vegetables with lard and um. Uh, they have never had Brussels sprouts before. So, you know, introduce new things. Um, and then I usually would look at Brussels oil, they're not good, they're gross and they bitter. So then you show them how to cook them, you know, um stir fry them with with um onions and with um garlic and. Apple cider vinegar. Yeah, well, apple cider vinegar.

• 45:21Rich Roll?

  That might be a little too radical for us for early.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  It was, he, he, I, I remember his look, he just looked, he was like, are you serious?

• 45:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 45:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it was, you know, um, how to prepare, let's say the meat. Um, it would be like really a lot of fat on it and then um which kind of meat to buy that it hasn't, has not that much fat on it. And how to cut it off and then how to prepare meals that are not deep fried. Like that was one of the problems. Everything is like in so much oil. And is this like a cultural thing or are you? I think so, it's a, it's a cultural thing. Um, but problem is, and this family was Hispanic, problem is.

• 46:04Speaker 02

  That Hispanics or Mexicans that have great genes in their legs, they have all great legs. They have all great legs and where they gain weight is usually in the midsection.

• 46:18Speaker 02

  If they would live in Mexico back before all the bad foods came. Right, all the processed foods. And things that they're not used to, everything they would eat would be just corn and beans and things like that, you know? Not like very natural foods. And now is soda in a baby bottle, kind of thing. So it starts at a very, very young age. And their bodies, they're not made for this. So it's a huge shocker. So when they gain weight, it just goes where it's really dangerous, in the midsection, and it stays there. And some of them develop this apron, which is, you know, when the stomach is so big that it just goes on your legs.

• 47:02Speaker 02

  And it's very difficult to get rid of that. And it's, I mean, even to this day, even here in America, they use lard to cook literally beans, everything, everything with it. And I understand, like, you know, it's when you cook with bacon. A lot of people say, "Well, you can't mimic the smell." And it's, let's say you go to a restaurant, you have bacon, smell whatever wrapped steak. But that's something you eat in a restaurant, not constantly at your home. So it's like chocolate would be a treat, so it has to be treated that way.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  If your diet is based just on those kind of things, and you cook daily meals with it, it'll start showing and it's, you know, you start feeding your kids with that and they're gonna have the same issue as they grow up. So it is a cultural thing, but I do think that just people that live here, even in Europe, it has, um, fast food has become so accessible and it's so cheap. And, um, and you know, it's easy and everybody does it. But, um, I don't think, um, people are that well educated about it.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  And especially when you really think about, let's say 20 years ago, 30 years ago even more. Um, in Germany, meat would be Sundays. Sundays, people would have meat. So not as, not as a daily part of the diet?

• 48:35Rich Roll?

  Really? Is that true? That's really, I would, I'm surprised by that. I would not have expected that.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  Like second, um, after the second world war, it was, it's expensive. It's very expensive to buy meat and it should be expensive if you think about it.

• 48:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  But now, um, uh, raising animals has become so cheap and they, it's such a mass production that when you, when you are able to buy a burger for 99 cents, you need to think about it. What, why can I buy it for 99 cents? Why? It's like, why is it so cheap?

• 49:11Rich Roll?

  Well, the amazing thing is that I think somebody did a study recently, I talk about this all the time, but, um, I think one, there was one or two fast food restaurants where some of the entrees are actually cheaper now than they were like 20 years ago.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:26Rich Roll?

  And, uh, and it's already so unbelievably cheap. So it becomes a socioeconomic issue, you know? So if you're dealing with an underprivileged family that is having health problems and, and people are overweight and you're coming in and you're saying, well, you know, you can't go to Taco Bell anymore where you can get 200 tacos for $10. You gotta go to Whole Foods and buy kale. It's like, it's not gonna work.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:49Rich Roll?

  You know, I mean, it's, it's, it's really, you know, when, when, when McDonald's is the most affordable food option.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:56Rich Roll?

  You know, we have a big problem that is difficult to tackle because... The dollars, the dollars, the dollars don't add up to eat healthy. And so how do you deal with that with somebody who's dealing with a budget?

• 50:10Speaker 02

  But that family that I worked with, they had that problem. They were dealing, it was a money issue. But there is.

• 50:18Rich Roll?

  But you can buy, you can buy a 50 pound bag of beans at the

• 50:21Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 50:21Rich Roll?

  Mexican market for like a couple bucks. I mean, it's, you know.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  It's, it is possible, but I also think, again, it's the educational part of it. To, or to just show this is possible if you buy this and this and this in bulk. Even smart and final, there's, there's places that you can buy vegetable cheap. It might not be organic and it might not be from the farmer's market and local, but it is better than eating fast food. And if, like we said, if kale becomes more expensive than a burger, that's an issue. That's a huge issue and it is. When you go to Whole Foods, kale costs like

• 50:58Rich Roll?

  It is.

• 50:58Speaker 02

  Two something.

• 50:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  And the burger is Two ninety-nine. Yeah. So it's, it's, that's, it's weird. And I think if you think about it or for people to think about it, it starts making sense. But, you know, it's, I think when I moved here, literally every corner you drive, there's a fast food place.

• 51:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 51:19Speaker 02

  Everywhere. They saw like they're back to back, back to back. And especially in certain areas where people don't have that much money, they're everywhere.

• 51:29Rich Roll?

  Right. And so what do, what do Germans think of Americans when they look at the way the Americans eat? And what, what would they say if there were no Americans around to hear?

• 51:40Speaker 02

  I unfortunately have to say Germany is actually declining in nutrition as well because.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  Fast food there, like when I, before I moved ten years ago, when you would drive in the street where I lived, there was in like, I have no clue in how many miles distant, there was like one Burger King and maybe half an hour drive the other direction was one Kentucky Fried Chicken and everyone all over Hamburg would have to drive so far to get to that place. Now, it's getting like here.

• 52:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 52:20Speaker 02

  They're opening up everywhere. And so it's

• 52:23Rich Roll?

  Same thing in Asia.

• 52:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. So they're getting there. There's a lot more overweight people now.

• 52:31Rich Roll?

  Right, right. And I think it's interesting to look at, you know, European culture as a whole and you see people eating a lot of sort of fatty foods and calorie dense foods and, and yet, you know, at least before the proliferation of fast food restaurants in Europe, you don't see obese people. Like even in Germany, which would be considered a heavy meat eating culture, people look relatively fit when compared to Americans.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  I don't, I think here, people don't move as much. In Germany, a lot of people still walk everywhere. There's High. Yeah. Public transportation, there's not that much driving.

• 53:11Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 53:12Speaker 02

  Everybody who wants to go into the city, like what we call here downtown, our downtown is not like downtown here, but it's, you know, there's shopping and, you know, clothes and all kinds of boutiques out there. A lot of people go there for shopping. And nobody drives there because it's a pain to park. Now, everybody takes the bus, you walk all over the place. You walk, walk everywhere. Everybody walks to school. My mom still walks my children to school here.

• 53:41Rich Roll?

  Right. And it's just interesting and ironic because, you know, we're so fitness obsessed and it's just all about fitness and weight loss constantly 24 hours a day here. And yet, that doesn't match up with the way most people live their lives here in America. So, you know, it's just bizarre to like, I mean, the weight loss industry is so gigantic and it's all about, you know, the abs and this and that, five minute abs, like you said. And, you know, we're all fat.

• 54:11Speaker 02

  The other issue is the drive-throughs, and not only for food. At Starbucks, it's the bank has a drive-through.

• 54:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  No, I saw a pharmacy the other day that had a drive-through.

• 54:26Speaker 02

  So you don't have to get out the car at all to get your drugs?

• 54:29Rich Roll?

  I know. Asher, the other day, Asher said that he used to have the window diet. I go, what's that? And he's like, if I could roll down my window and they would hand it to me, I would eat it. And I go, I'm stealing that line.

• 54:40Speaker 01

  But you know, this is actually kind of surprising, I mean, surprising for me to hear and again, because I'm so aware of Germany's connection to real health and like all of the natural medicine. And, you know, one of my dearest friends is an osteopath and she's doing incredible work with children there, all this cranial sacral, you know, energy work. And so there is a big, there's a very large part of Germany that, you know, has that natural healing awareness, like from the Black Forest and so.

• 55:10Rich Roll?

  They're not just sitting around eating sausages all day?

• 55:13Speaker 01

  No, and I find too that, you know, I have had the pleasure of having a lot of close German friends and I've been to the country, you know, a few times. But it seems like those moms were already, already using natural remedies right off the bat before they were calling the doctor, before they were going to the drug. And so, and they have a very strong constitution and awareness and competence about that. So.

• 55:36Speaker 02

  But that's, I'd say that's still like that. It's the...

• 55:43Speaker 02

  I think the pharmaceutical industry in the United States is way ahead of Europe even, not just Germany. And you say ahead, what do you mean by that? Ahead, oh, well, not in a good way. Not like, not like they are doing better things. But I think medication is great. I think it's good that it's available. But it should be available for things that are not life-threatening. For example, I had a conversation once with a professor about my kids. And it was about the vaccine, chicken pox.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  And I said, I'm not going to do that. And then he said, well, I was first a doctor. And then the doctor said, why not? And I said, because in my country it's not even allowed. You know, we get, we have the chicken pox and it's just, we have to just suck it up and just get sick and then have to recover from it. So for some reason, I think she thought that I'm from some different country. So she brought in the professor to educate me a little bit. And that was very funny. And so he started like asking me what, is it a religious thing that why I don't want to vaccine the kids? And I said, no, it actually has nothing to do with religion.

• 57:12Speaker 02

  When I grew up, I had everything. I had to get sick with everything. And so I had to go through that. And here, with everything you guys have a vaccine for, and nobody even knows in a few years from now what these vaccines are going to do. And vaccines are, it's a, you know, it's okay if people want to do it, but it's also okay if people don't want to do it. So. I said to him, "Explain to me, if you give me one reason, one good reason, why I should do chickenpox vaccine for their kids, I might consider." So, his reason was, or the only thing he could come up with is,

• 57:56Speaker 02

  "We live in America and mom and dad have to work. If the child is sick, then somebody has to stay home. It becomes an economical issue." And I just looked at him, I was like, "What?" I was like, "That's what parents have to do. That's when you decide to have children. Somebody has to stay home and take care of them. Okay, that's how it is. Unless, I mean, if you don't want to do that, then you don't have any kids." But I can't, there's not a shot for everything. And when you have kids, you take it in, it's a given. They're gonna be sick, they're gonna have everything, and you cannot... They're gonna go through their normal...

• 58:33Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 58:34Speaker 02

  They have...

• 58:34Rich Roll?

  Well, I think, you know, I think that, that nobody would sort of discount the importance of certain vaccines and eradicating polio and all of that. So, nobody is making the statement that there's something patently wrong with, with vaccines as a, as a whole. And we had a little chat about vaccines on the podcast, podcast, a couple, I don't know, a couple of months ago, or whatever. And it created quite the, quite the stir. You know, it's a very, it's an extremely controversial subject, and people have very, very strong feelings about it. And, you know, vaccines play, play a very important role in sort of controlling and preventing and eradicating, you know, some death, you know, deathly diseases.

• 59:18Rich Roll?

  But I also think that there is room for rationality and a discussion about just how many vaccines, you know, are we gonna get? And for things like chickenpox, I mean, I had chickenpox when I was a kid. I mean, you know, I understand that it can be...

• 59:35Rich Roll?

  That it can be severe if you get chickenpox later in life. But you know, when I was a kid, every kid got chickenpox. And that's different from smallpox. And that's different from polio and all of that. And also, you know, there probably isn't enough debate or discussion about the number of vaccines that a baby is expected to have all in a very short period of time when they're newborns, you know? And I think that there's room to discuss spacing those out. Or is every single one of those vaccines absolutely critical to, you know, that person's life and society as a whole?

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  I totally agree. I did vaccine one of my kids, the baby. All three of them, the other three, the older three, they have never had vaccines. The baby got very sick and she was about six weeks old. And she had very high fever. Having other small children in the house exposed her to getting everything they bring home from their friends. So the baby got really sick and I had to go with her to the hospital. And her risk of meningitis was really high. So I decided, I had a very great conversation with this Indian doctor who was there. She was head of pediatrician, head of pediatrics.

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  And I, you know, she would come in and would have 45 minute discussions. It was a lot of fun. It's hard to her. She had so much knowledge, but she was also really open to listen to my concerns and print out lists of vaccines and their, what kind of preservatives they would use, which ones have preservatives and which ones don't. And all the questions that I had, she did answer and I did space them out. I went only with the ones that were highly crucial for her. And it is a very personal decision to make. And I think.

• 1:01:38Speaker 02

  Most of us never go blindly into making decisions for our kids especially. But I would never be ignorant when there is an issue that would maybe cause her, cause any of the kids have major health problems. Then you have to make the decision that's right at a time.

• 1:01:58Rich Roll?

  Right, and the counterpoint would be, yes, it's a very personal decision, but it's also a social decision for everybody else. Because if you're not going to get this vaccine for this life-threatening illness, then you're putting everyone else at risk.

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  Exactly, I agree.

• 1:02:13Rich Roll?

  So, anyway. But I think getting back to the original question, which was about pharmaceutical companies as a whole, and kind of how we've become a very drug-addled society in a lot of ways. Certainly, you know, many pharmaceuticals are incredibly important in treating disease. And, you know, I'm the last person to say that, that, I'm not going to say, oh, Big Pharma is absolutely 100% evil. But I think that we have lost sight of preventative medicine completely. And when somebody goes to the doctor and says, you know, whether it's anything from, you know, my knee hurts to, you know, I can't get an erection, or I'm feeling depressed,

• 1:02:55Rich Roll?

  you know, the first thing that happens is drugs are prescribed. And, and many of those drugs are very effective at treating, you know, that condition. But they're not treating the condition, they're treating the symptom. They're not, nothing is getting at the underlying cause of what is making that person depressed, or why that person's knee, you know, continues to hurt, or, you know, whatever the case may be.

• 1:03:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  And I think it's just, you know, exercising your own personal will and judgment, and your awareness of your children, and this is, I-

• 1:03:25Rich Roll?

  But it's hard. You go to the doctor, the doctor's the expert. He's telling you, this is what you need to do, you know. So, for most people, they feel, they don't feel empowered to challenge their doctor.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  Right, and there's an opportunity to make a shift in that awareness, and understand that you do have, you know, your own will, and your own choice, and your own responsibility. And that's why I advocate and really stand by parents, mothers, knowing their kids, and knowing in the moment what's best. So that it's just not the idea that the doctor is somehow above you, or, you know, so you just, you use everything available to you and make the best decision that you can at the time.

• 1:04:03Speaker 02

  And I also have to say, it's- It's something that you you learn by experience and sometimes people don't. And I had to go through so many different stages with the kids. So now I don't freak out as soon as something is. I ask the questions. I constantly ask the questions so much until I get the right answer that it's comfortable for me to make whichever decision I have to make at that time. But I would definitely say, I mean, if it's your first child or your fifth, I mean, always ask questions, you know? It's not, at the end of the day, it's just more enlightening for you to, or more comfortable for you to make whatever decision you have to make.

• 1:04:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  So getting back to, we were talking about, she was talking about that you would like to do some project with really overweight clients. So what would be your dream project? What are you envisioning?

• 1:04:59Speaker 02

  My dream project would be maybe three or four families that I would go visit. And over a course of a year, see where they are. You know, I love this kind of challenges. I was one of the schools of my kids. I, that was before my daughter had all her, of her services in place, my, one of the twins. I had-

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  Just to, just to, for the listeners, so you're a mother of four children-

• 1:05:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  Actually, so tell us a little bit about your kids' ages and-

• 1:05:37Speaker 02

  I, my oldest one is 15 and I have eight-year-old twins, boy and a girl, and a three-month-old baby.

• 1:05:45Rich Roll?

  Wow, three-month-old.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  I can't believe you have a three-month-old. She's, she's like amazingly fit.

• 1:05:50Rich Roll?

  I know, super hot.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  She went out-

• 1:05:52Rich Roll?

  Incredibly fit woman.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  She said you were, you were already training, three days after the birth?

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  Three days after I took her with me.

• 1:05:59Rich Roll?

  Right. Oh, my God.

• 1:06:00Speaker 02

  She came training with me. I carried her.

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  I couldn't do that.

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  Wrapped around myself.

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 1:06:06Speaker 02

  And my eight-year-old is autistic, so-

• 1:06:11Speaker 02

  Before we had everything figured out for her, I basically took, let's say about six or seven months off work. I completely, like, I really did super early clients and I would go to school and be her aide. I was there, she had a really tough time. And I'd be there and I started observing the school lunches and I thought I'm gonna pull my hair out. And this was, I used to live in Bel Air. And this was a very, you know, good school and a very good neighborhood. And just like, it was unbelievable what they would eat. So I started talking to them. And like, why can't we, um, why can't we do something different? And I wrote letters to the school district.

• 1:06:56Speaker 02

  And then I was told that, uh, well, we offer vegetables and fruit. And we don't only offer chocolate milk, we also offer regular milk. But the problem is, um, there was, there was vegetables. There was, um, like a container, um, individual containers with broccoli or some kind of vegetables, every time different. There was a container with a bunch of fresh apples or banana or orange. Um, maybe occasionally, out of all these kids, one took an apple.

• 1:07:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, who's gonna, who's gonna choose that when you can get french fries every day? I mean, the school lunch situation is just an absolute embarrassment and disaster.

• 1:07:39Speaker 02

  Totally. And unfortunately, I wasn't really able to get anywhere. This would be another project I would like to do. I was asked, two years ago, um, I think it was Jamie Oliver when he did something with the school lunches. And it's a good idea. I like the idea. But in East LA, nobody has money to pay five bucks or more for a lunch. That's just, they get free lunches from the school. They, um, they don't have to pay, actually. Um, and the school lunches at this time, I think they run between a dollar, a dollar twenty-five for lunch. You can get a Big Mac for that. Yeah. But, um, it's, um, Jamie Oliver, um, or his plan.

• 1:08:27Speaker 02

  Great in private school.

• 1:08:29Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:08:29Speaker 02

  Parents pay for it.

• 1:08:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:08:31Speaker 02

  Um, in the more, um, low income family areas, not it's a no go because they either on food stamps or they have free lunches in school and sometimes their kids even stay until five or so and they get another meal and and sometimes they even have breakfast there. But I'm not so sure how to do this, like how to.

• 1:08:55Rich Roll?

  It's a huge juggernaut of a problem and and and I'm probably wrong in my recollection, but I seem to remember that when Jamie Oliver, you know, he did that Food Revolution show where he took on a school, I think it was in Pennsylvania or something like that, right? And they had the TV show and he was able to kind of revamp their school lunch program. And he had all this great, he came up against all these obstacles and they were over able to overcome a lot of them and it was considered a success. And he came to LA and his whole thing was he wanted to look at the LA school district, school lunch program and, you know, do the same thing there and make it, you know, another season of this television show.

• 1:09:36Rich Roll?

  And he ran up against so much politics that it just became untenable. It wasn't going to happen. There was no way and there's too many vested interests involved, too many people with their hands in the cookie jar and he just, I think he abandoned even trying, right? It just wasn't, because it wasn't going to work.

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's, it's, it's not, I mean, it's not just the financial part. It's true, the school district, it's very tough to get any kind of change.

• 1:10:02Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  Um, without, I don't even know what you have to do to kind of get closer.

• 1:10:10Rich Roll?

  Right, well, the system, the entire system has to be overhauled. It's not just school lunches. It's, you know, all the bureaucrats who are trying to keep their jobs and all the big companies that are supplying these foods and the rates that they get. And there's too many, there's too many people involved that that have an interest in keeping it the way that it is.

• 1:10:37Rich Roll?

  Anyway, but I wanted to get back a little bit into, I want to talk about your kids, but I also wanted to finish kind of telling your story. I mean, we kind of left it off with you're working with athletes in Hamburg and then you decide to come to the United States. So how long ago was that?

• 1:10:51Speaker 02

  About 10 years ago.

• 1:10:53Rich Roll?

  10 years ago. And why did you decide to move?

• 1:10:55Speaker 02

  I needed a personal change and I got a kind of a job offer to work with a high-profile client and I just went for it. And I thought I had it all planned out.

• 1:11:08Rich Roll?

  A high-profile, like big celebrity? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is what I'm fascinated, you probably can't speak, talk about this.

• 1:11:14Speaker 02

  Some of them I can.

• 1:11:15Rich Roll?

  You can't speak out of school, you know, it's like trade secrets, but like I'm fascinated by how this whole like celebrity trainer thing works. Like I'm like, where's, what is this network of people? I mean, how do you like get into this world and like, what is going, what is going on here?

• 1:11:29Speaker 02

  It's very boring.

• 1:11:33Rich Roll?

  Really? Yeah. See, it sounds so glamorous.

• 1:11:36Speaker 02

  It's not, it's not my world, to be honest. I love the experience and I go and I enjoy it and I walk out, I go home and I'm a gypsy.

• 1:11:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:11:46Speaker 02

  So it's, it's, I really much never had an agent to, you know, get me any jobs or I was just very lucky to just put it that way. I met the right person at the right time, I guess, or I was at the right place, or however.

• 1:12:09Rich Roll?

  So there's this like Underground Railroad of phone calls going on, like, hey, you know, she did great things for me, you should use her.

• 1:12:15Speaker 02

  It was, it was even, even less eventful than that. I, my first celebrity client was Brian McKnight, he's an R and B singer. And I started working with him, I cooked for him and

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  Then I was, I met an assistant of someone when I was pregnant with my twins. And I'd be huge. I mean, literally, I was huge. Not everywhere, just my tummy was like hanging down. It was so big. And I was told by the doctors, well, you're not going to make it all the way to 40 weeks. It's going to come at seven months or eight months. And I made it full term.

• 1:13:04Rich Roll?

  Just with the twins?

• 1:13:05Speaker 02

  All the way, yeah.

• 1:13:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:06Speaker 02

  And I would go to the gym at the end, pretty much, and sit on a spin bike and just do my own thing. Have like headphones and I would, you know, try to get some kind of movement in before I have to deliver. And there was this woman or girl that I guess was really fascinated by me. And then I didn't ever see her again after birth. And through someone else at the gym, she got my phone number. And then she ended up being a personal assistant to Josh Duhamel.

• 1:13:39Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 1:13:40Speaker 02

  And that's how I got into Rover, really. So.

• 1:13:44Rich Roll?

  So it was sort of like you were just being.

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  The twins did it for you.

• 1:13:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess.

• 1:13:47Rich Roll?

  The twins, yeah.

• 1:13:48Speaker 02

  It was their life.

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  That's what, that's what made you stand out. You were the only trainer that was carrying twins.

• 1:13:54Rich Roll?

  Well, it was supposed to happen, you know. She made the right call.

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:57Rich Roll?

  She, you know, she, she saw what she needed to see.

• 1:14:01Speaker 02

  And then she, she contacted me. She, she trained with me, the assistant first. And then she told me her boss wants to meet me. So I didn't even know who he was.

• 1:14:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  And to be honest, I don't, I don't really care who they are. I show up and do the same thing I do with everybody. Same thing. Same way rude to them.

• 1:14:26Rich Roll?

  Well, it's gotta be, it's, it's probably refreshing for them too, because most of those kinds of people are surrounded by yes people that agree with them all day long. And you come in and say no.

• 1:14:35Speaker 02

  No, I don't think. I a lot of times tell them not to talk so much BS.

• 1:14:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is a lot of BS sometimes, so but it's it's it always works. And I had a lot of great experience with so many people. And I've been so lucky that everybody that I worked with so far has been so incredibly nice to me. And and it has been always a great experience. And I can't ever say that anybody has misbehaved or wasn't nice.

• 1:15:10Rich Roll?

  Right, so you're not you're gonna write a tell all book about it.

• 1:15:13Speaker 02

  No, no, I can't. Nobody has done anything.

• 1:15:16Rich Roll?

  Nobody's done anything. And if they had, you wouldn't say anyway.

• 1:15:19Speaker 02

  No, I mean, it's I have learned through, you know, just working with so many different people all my life to adapt to whatever, you know, you're an hour with them. So you should be able to kind of, you know, make it work.

• 1:15:36Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:15:36Speaker 02

  And it usually works.

• 1:15:38Rich Roll?

  Do you get are some of your your gigs through studios contacting you say, we have this person and we want them on the show, but you're gonna have to, you know, do a Biggest Loser on them and they're gonna have to lose, you know, 20 pounds in incredibly short period of time or anything that kind of puts you in a situation that could be somewhat ethically compromising in terms of what's responsible to that person's health?

• 1:16:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have had one and it wasn't through a studio. It was to that person. And she's a high profile actress and she was pregnant with her third child, but after having a few miscarriages and she couldn't really expose that she was pregnant for that because she had already signed a contract and she was trying not to gain weight. And she was planning or wanted me to put on a very low calorie diet and cook for her. And I couldn't do it like I just it was.

• 1:16:36Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:16:37Speaker 02

  Especially given the circumstances of the previous miscarriages.

• 1:16:42Rich Roll?

  Right, interesting. So, let's get into a little bit about how your nutrition philosophy has evolved, you know, coming from Germany and, and, you know, studying what you studied there and, and going to chef's school and all of that. And, you know, to this point now where you have this Evolution Body company and the foods that you prepare for clients and, and all of that, like, talk a little bit about how that came about and, you know, and, you know, beyond sort of the 10% rule, what your sort of take is in terms of raw foods and, and eating plant-based and all of that. Because that's, you know, a lot of people that listen to this podcast, they're, they're not necessarily all vegans. And I've had people on, on the show with all different kinds of diets. Like, it's not just, you know, hey, if you're not vegan, you can, it's, you know, we're open to talking about

• 1:17:27Rich Roll?

  all of it. But I am, you know, there are a lot of people that are interested in, in eating, you know, if not a 100% plant-based diet, they're like, I call them plant curious, you know, like, how can you eating more plants? Or how do I do this? Or why should I do this? Other people are telling me this is unhealthy, or, you know what I'm saying?

• 1:17:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, after I moved here, I went also to raw chef's school and became a raw food chef.

• 1:17:50Rich Roll?

  Why did you decide to do that?

• 1:17:52Speaker 02

  I was really interested. I was fascinated, to say the least, by raw food and I'm-

• 1:17:59Rich Roll?

  I mean, was there somebody that you knew that ate that way? That made you think this is something interesting about it?

• 1:18:03Speaker 02

  No, I actually went to a restaurant. I went to a restaurant-

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  Which one?

• 1:18:05Speaker 02

  Um, Giuliano's.

• 1:18:06Speaker 01

  Giuliano.

• 1:18:07Rich Roll?

  Giuliano, yeah.

• 1:18:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I went to Giuliano's.

• 1:18:09Rich Roll?

  For the, for the people listening, Giuliano is this crazed, you know-

• 1:18:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:13Rich Roll?

  Crazy, awesome, you know, guy who started this raw food restaurant in Santa Monica. It's been there for, it's been in different, a couple of different names or whatever. But now I think it's called-

• 1:18:24Speaker 01

  It's Giuliano Raw.

• 1:18:24Rich Roll?

  It's called Giuliano Raw now, and he has a cookbook-

• 1:18:26Speaker 02

  I think it's called Planet-

• 1:18:27Rich Roll?

  Planet Raw. Now it's called, yeah, it's called Planet Raw now. And he has a cookbook called Giuliano's Raw Cookbook or something like that.

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  And he is, for all purposes, the founding father of raw-

• 1:18:36Rich Roll?

  He really is. And he's, he's, he's a fascinating guy. He's got super long blond hair, and he kind of wears a midriff shirt, and he prances about, and, you know.

• 1:18:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  He's the bomb, though.

• 1:18:48Rich Roll?

  He's, yeah, he's cool. Like, I think one time we went, I saw him, and he was like wearing pigtails or something.

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  Of course. He's very, you know, kind of merged in both genders.

• 1:18:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he's, he is. He's sort of half female, half male, I think.

• 1:19:02Speaker 02

  Juliana, you're crazy, but we love you.

• 1:19:04Rich Roll?

  We do, no, we do love you.

• 1:19:06Speaker 02

  He's, he's.

• 1:19:07Rich Roll?

  He's a beautiful man, and if he wanted to be a woman, he'd be a beautiful woman.

• 1:19:10Speaker 02

  I mean, he, it was, it was his restaurant. I wasn't, I had no clue anything about raw food or any, even like the restaurants, it was just, it was very new to me here. So I went to his restaurant and I, I literally, it was food orgasm. It was so good. It was so delicious and the desserts were delicious. I go, I want to do this. I want to be able to do this. And it's not really that you have to go to chef's school to learn, you know, it's really simple, right? Yeah, it's very simple. You just have to know the technique. Yeah, and so I did, and it was a great experience.

• 1:19:52Speaker 02

  And then I became member of the Raw Vegan Network and would get a lot of clients through them.

• 1:19:59Rich Roll?

  What is the Raw Vegan Network? I don't even know what that is.

• 1:20:02Speaker 02

  It's a website. It's this lady that, her name is Vicky, she's doing these, she just, you know, has people all over the, like, the nation contacting her.

• 1:20:11Rich Roll?

  Like a resource?

• 1:20:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, do you know anybody who can prepare me raw vegan or vegan food? So it was a very great experience and I always combine that somehow. I, I don't make it like in the restaurant like Juliana makes it. But I think a lot, or the majority of your food should be raw. And less, especially vegetables shouldn't be cooked. I mean, as much as you can. Broccoli is a broom. Broccoli is the internal broom if you eat it raw.

• 1:20:48Rich Roll?

  That's right, it'll scrape. You won't need to do a colonic, it's its own colonic.

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, so.

• 1:20:54Speaker 02

  And I I try to incorporate that into my meals and for my clients. Sometimes I don't even tell them because I experienced especially with the high profile clients. If I say tomorrow, you're gonna be getting a kale pineapple smoothie with E3 and this and that. And then I go like, ew.

• 1:21:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:21:17Speaker 02

  So and I'm just do it and I send it.

• 1:21:19Rich Roll?

  Just give it to them. Drink this.

• 1:21:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I just said, I just say, drink it. And then they do. And I haven't had so many people drink kale juice ever.

• 1:21:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:21:29Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:21:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and I think when you remove the, it goes back to another thing we talk about all the time, which is labels. And if you're, if you're putting a label on it, this is this, this is raw food. You know, then somebody has their association in their mind with what that means. And they've already decided that they don't like it before they eat it as opposed to just, hey, here's your lunch.

• 1:21:47Speaker 02

  It's a salad.

• 1:21:47Rich Roll?

  Right, exactly.

• 1:21:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:50Rich Roll?

  And so, and so now you have, so now you have this company, actually, that you prepare these foods and you do like deliver. Is it, how does it work? Like you sign up for like weekly meal delivery service or something like that?

• 1:22:03Speaker 02

  It's very, it's a personal chef service, I would say. But a lot more affordable than most of the delivery services. It's not more expensive.

• 1:22:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:22:16Speaker 02

  And you get your meals delivered every day to your door in a cooler bag. And they're labeled, portioned in different containers. And then you just put the bag outside and then you get the next day, same thing.

• 1:22:33Rich Roll?

  Right, that's cool. So how does it?

• 1:22:35Speaker 01

  What's your network? Like, how far, what is your territory? How far can you deliver?

• 1:22:39Speaker 02

  I deliver to Whittier.

• 1:22:41Rich Roll?

  Oh, you do? Wow, so where's the facility, where's the kitchen or the facility where you?

• 1:22:46Speaker 02

  That's where I live.

• 1:22:47Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 1:22:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:48Rich Roll?

  So do you do it all out of your house or you have, you do, wow.

• 1:22:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have a huge kitchen. Small living room, huge kitchen.

• 1:22:56Rich Roll?

  Uh huh, that's great.

• 1:22:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:59Rich Roll?

  Very cool. And how long have you been doing that?

• 1:23:01Speaker 02

  Um, here in US for about nine years.

• 1:23:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, shortly after I moved.

• 1:23:07Rich Roll?

  Interesting.

• 1:23:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  You fascinate me because you're, I was listening to you talk about the, your family who uses lard to fry. And so you, you're so allowing of sort of their process. You know what I mean? Like, you're not saying, "No, I'm wrong. I'm not doing that." You're sort of, you're really, you're really sort of walking through their transition with them.

• 1:23:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. I, usually when I go, or when I went to this house, I opened all the cabinets and looked through things and I didn't say anything and then didn't start throwing things away. And I started, you know, preparing a shopping list. And then I would say, "Buy this and this and this." And when she bought this and this and this, I would say, "Okay, this you can swap in exchange to that."

• 1:23:54Speaker 01

  You don't need this anymore.

• 1:23:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. You don't, you can, you know, it's gonna be tasting as good if you do it that way.

• 1:24:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:24:01Rich Roll?

  Right. And so, talking about allowing, what? My wife's pointing at me. What am I doing? It's okay. We're not on, it's not live radio. What am I doing? She's laughing at me. Do I have a booger or something?

• 1:24:17Speaker 01

  Just back, just come back.

• 1:24:19Rich Roll?

  Oh. So, I'm making like mouth noises in the microphone?

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  But when she's speaking, come back.

• 1:24:26Rich Roll?

  All right. Thanks for the pointer.

• 1:24:28Speaker 01

  We don't have a producer here today.

• 1:24:30Rich Roll?

  I know. All right. Well, you know, I wanna get a little bit more concrete, if it's possible, for people listening out there who are interested in making some food changes, or interested in kind of taking their exercise or fitness game to the next level. So, you know, what are some, I feel like the magazine editor who's now telling you, you know, what's new? What can you tell people? But I do always like to give people some takeaways. Like, if they're, you know, when you, with all these personalities that you meet and all the people that you're interacting with, whether they're celebrities or normal people or what have you, I mean, there must be consistent themes that you come across and things that people struggle with, or, you know, if you had to just sort of remove one or two things from somebody's kitchen, or gave them, you know, a couple of simple pieces of advice

• 1:25:15Rich Roll?

  about exercise, or, you know, taking their fitness to the next level. I mean, what would, what would be some things that we could share?

• 1:25:24Speaker 02

  In terms of exercise? Huge advocate of outside. I don't like the gym. I would say quit your gym membership.

• 1:25:32Rich Roll?

  I hate the gym.

• 1:25:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, we love that one. Yeah, so I don't exercise inside. Really rarely. We do some things inside. But any movement, anything, even like climbing in the bushes and things like that.

• 1:25:48Rich Roll?

  What about the guy? I mean, we're, it's a beautiful day here. We're in Los Angeles and a bunch of angry people in Chicago right now saying, yeah, fine for you. But, you know, we have two feet of snow on the ground. It's raining out.

• 1:25:59Speaker 02

  I'm from Hamburg, way up north where it snows a lot. And I'm sure people that who live in the snow are used to the snow, so they don't stay the entire winter inside. Besides, you burn a lot more when you go outside in the snow. You know, your body is constantly warming up, so it's a good benefit. And, you know, if you really have to go inside for your workouts during the winter seasons, then so be it. That's okay. But we have, you know, spring and summer and fall. There's a lot of weeks in fall that's possible, even if you live in those areas where.

• 1:26:39Rich Roll?

  Right. Find something you enjoy doing and take it outside.

• 1:26:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, running for me, I hear so much, it's not good for you. It's not good for your joints. You know, you get injured. I really don't think there is bad joints. I think there is just weak muscle. And I think if you do it the right way and do some kind of cross training and mix it with running. And that's how you bump up slowly your mileage. You'd be able to run. I've experienced it with so many people. And I don't, I think it's the most natural way of doing exercise. This is what you do when you're a baby and the first thing you can do is running. And I can't, I.

• 1:27:23Speaker 02

  I can't really say it's a bad thing.

• 1:27:26Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:27:26Speaker 02

  And I, you know, always, even if you have to go up that big mountain, you know, that's gonna raise your heart rate. It's, to me, you know, the green from the leaves, you know, it's something that you can experience indoors. And running outdoors and not on the treadmill, you have so many, it trains the balance, you know, you have to, you have to work with the weather, you know, it's always different, it's never the same, even if you run the same route. It's uphill, it's downhill, different surfaces you run on. And it's a completely different experience. And I have never met anybody who can run 12 miles on the treadmill.

• 1:28:08Rich Roll?

  Right, I've done it, but it's not the most fun.

• 1:28:11Speaker 02

  Shoot me.

• 1:28:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah. No, I mean, when you're out on the trail and you have to, you have all the lateral movement, the up and down, and the turns and all of that, you know you're working all different parts of your, you know, your ankle, the supporting tissues around, you know, your hips and your knees and your ankles. And, and, you know, I think that, listen, you know, running injuries are real. I think something like 80% of the people that run get injured. But a lot of that, I think, stems from poor running form. And I think it's from imbalances where certain muscles are underdeveloped, some of the supporting muscles, and people start running too much too soon.

• 1:28:47Speaker 02

  Too much too soon.

• 1:28:48Rich Roll?

  They start running every day, and, you know, even when I'm training super hard, it's rare that I'll run two days in a row, I'll do something else on that day in between.

• 1:28:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. I got injured really badly, myself, running. And I have a very good friend who is head of orthopedics at Cedars-Sinai, and he always said, "Don't run, don't run." And I got injured at the L.A. Marathon, running it three years ago, two years ago.

• 1:29:19Rich Roll?

  Was that the one when it rained, really?

• 1:29:21Speaker 02

  I ran that one, actually, no, that was the one before, that one. That one was something else.

• 1:29:26Rich Roll?

  Sound like a nightmare.

• 1:29:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was a nightmare. But I haven't run a marathon on my own for a really long time. I usually run it with someone, with a client. And that one, the rain one, my client, what a trooper.

• 1:29:39Rich Roll?

  You got through it.

• 1:29:40Speaker 02

  Oh, man. We both had hypothermia. We were like completely.

• 1:29:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:45Speaker 02

  It wasn't fun, but it was, it was a.

• 1:29:47Rich Roll?

  Are you running tomorrow?

• 1:29:48Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 1:29:48Rich Roll?

  No?

• 1:29:49Speaker 02

  No, I'm not running tomorrow. I didn't have really enough time to prep for it.

• 1:29:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, that brings up another like important thing that I wanted to talk about. I mean, you're incredibly fit, you know, for somebody who is a mother of four. And obviously, it's your profession to work with clients. So, you know, it's kind of your job to be exercising. You know, I assume you do some of it alongside with them. But, but still, to be able to be, you know, so fit after having four kids and balancing, you know, everything that you have to balance with taking care of the kids and priorities and all of that kind of stuff. I mean, how do you sort of arrange your day so that you're a present mom and the kids' needs are met? And yet, you're still attending to yourself? Because I think a lot of people say, well, they fall off the bandwagon when they start

• 1:30:37Rich Roll?

  having kids and then they feel like they're being selfish or indulgent if they're, if they're taking time to exercise when they could be spending time with their kids.

• 1:30:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. So basically with me, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna also answer the one, the question that you just asked with people feeling guilty if they take time away from their kids or the spending time with their kids. For me, I start my days really early, four o'clock, you know, in the morning and I'm already out of the house like 3:15. And I start really, really early with my clients. And I have a few evening clients that I work with and usually it's after bedtime from, from the twins. But I try to manage it somehow that I'm always home when they come out of school

• 1:31:29Speaker 02

  and usually I'm unless there's something else going on. The time that I do spend with them is just their time. There's nothing else around it. And we really hands-on parents and do everything with them. And I told, I don't know if I told you that my son just did a 5K.

• 1:31:52Rich Roll?

  No, you didn't say, no, a 15-year-old.

• 1:31:55Speaker 02

  No, no, no, the seven-year-old, almost eight.

• 1:31:58Rich Roll?

  Oh, my goodness, wow.

• 1:31:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's, you know, I've never pushed the kids to do any kind of sports or say you need to. I expect them to do some kind of exercise, especially the 15-year-old. But my son, Christopher, he is a running genius animal, something like that. He just doesn't want to ever stop and he's, he has to be grounded. Like you have to stop, you have to calm down, you have to take it easy. But he finished a 5K two weeks ago and was the fastest in his age group.

• 1:32:33Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 1:32:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, but we are really active and we're a lot outdoors. And so weekends are usually dedicated always to family. And I work Saturdays very early, just two clients. And then I'm home by the time that I kind of up and going.

• 1:32:55Rich Roll?

  Right, but when you work with clients, are you driving all the way across town to go visit them personally?

• 1:33:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And I run with every single person. So that's how I get my exercise in.

• 1:33:06Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:33:09Speaker 02

  I don't usually stand beside them and say, okay, now you go over there, come back in half an hour and then I'll see you. But I do run with them and I do all the exercises with them. Um, as far as other parents or mothers and spending quality time with their family or with their kids and also doing something for themselves, I can really, really encourage every mother to, it's one hour out of your day, really, or even half an hour out of your day. It, I don't want to say it makes you a better parent, but it calms you, it settles you. It's a, it's a good experience to have, to be a little bit on your own.

• 1:33:52Speaker 02

  And really, if you can't be on your own or have nobody to watch the kids, it's something that you can do with the kids, you know?

• 1:34:01Speaker 02

  I had a lot of times clients bring their kids to workouts just because they didn't have anybody watch them and it's, and it works, you know? We go to the track because they can run around the track themselves. And there's, it doesn't, I know it's a, it's a very easy mom thing to feel guilty if you take time, if you do something for yourself, but it helps your relationship with the kids and it's, it's a setting, you know,

• 1:34:32Speaker 02

  how do you say that? It's, you know, teaching them that, you know, you take care of yourself, it's, you be healthy, you, you exercising and it just, you know?

• 1:34:44Speaker 01

  It's like a great example.

• 1:34:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a great, yeah. That, I mean, my kids are so active, I don't even have to tell them anything.

• 1:34:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:34:50Speaker 02

  You know, it's different when they become teenagers. It's, becomes a little bit more challenging. But what I told my daughter was, when she started high school, I said, "I don't care what you do, anything that is, has something to do with movement, I want you to pick." So she did, she picked track. And she, you know, is not a track star, but, you know, she goes to her practice. She, for me, it's just important that she does some kind of exercise and she, you know, it's something that she hopefully is going to continue as she gets older.

• 1:35:25Speaker 02

  But there's a lot of things we can do within the family hikes, you know, and you can definitely go with your kids to the track and just exercise there if you have no babysitter.

• 1:35:36Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I definitely experienced that in my life as well. It's I really need my yoga practice to show up the way that my kids deserve me to be. And what happens is when, you know, we're really busy and Rich can't miss training. And, and, you know, I think as women, most of the time when we can find an extra, an extra way to give or allow somebody else to get what they need, you know, or, you know, that one condition where you're, you're starting to eat and like some child just not, you know, needs to eat, so it goes to them and not to you. But, but I know that that's a balance that, you know, is vital to our family. And actually, we just experienced it this week because I, you know, things got really busy

• 1:36:19Speaker 01

  and I started to go to the back of the priority. And so we have to reset our schedule and, you know, I just, I have to get to yoga. I have to be able to have that practice. And, and even though I get up really early as well, I get up, you know, most, most mornings between, you know, four 30 and five. But that's my meditation time and my time to just, you know, connect. But I don't, you know, I really, really, really do well with a strong asana practice.

• 1:36:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:48Speaker 01

  You know, really makes a huge difference.

• 1:36:50Rich Roll?

  I'd go on a killing rampage if I couldn't. The problem is now I need so many, you know, like, like you were talking about, like to be grounded, you know, like I need to physically move my body in order to be grounded. But now, because I've done so much crazy endurance stuff, like, like going out for an hour is like not enough.

• 1:37:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:10Rich Roll?

  Now I need like many hours a day. So I've boxed myself into a corner with that, I guess, but. You know.

• 1:37:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I usually tell people, anything is better than nothing.

• 1:37:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:23Speaker 02

  You know, and even if it's, there's a lot of times I hear, well, it's 20 minutes, it's not really worth it. It's totally worth it.

• 1:37:30Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:37:31Speaker 02

  Anything is worth it, you know, any, just going around the block, it's worth it. It's moving versus not moving at all. So.

• 1:37:38Speaker 01

  I mean, don't you find like, you know, I mean, I've been practicing yoga for maybe, you know, going on 20 years now. And, and the thing that always amazes me is even if I, you know, if I don't practice and I just get in for a little bit, my body has the memory of that.

• 1:37:53Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:37:53Speaker 01

  Like, it's recorded in there. So I almost don't have to go as deep.

• 1:37:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  And it's really, I'm so grateful that I have that established.

• 1:38:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:01Speaker 01

  You know.

• 1:38:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, definitely. And I worked with a client who didn't have kids before, and then she got pregnant during the, with her first kid. And then we, she was really worried about getting back into shape. That was like her main concern, because she found, she had never experienced a body changing like that before.

• 1:38:23Speaker 01

  A lot of freaky.

• 1:38:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's really freaky, especially the first time.

• 1:38:27Speaker 01

  Especially with twins. It must have been something.

• 1:38:29Speaker 02

  That was crazy.

• 1:38:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's amazing.

• 1:38:31Speaker 02

  But I think that was my mom's curse, because I'm a twin.

• 1:38:33Speaker 01

  Oh, you are?

• 1:38:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:38:34Speaker 01

  That's incredible.

• 1:38:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I have a brother. And she always said to me, you don't know what it means. Yeah, you had never had twins. And then after the first one, after my first child, I was pregnant with twins. And I thought I knew I was pregnant with twins, because I felt so sick. It was normal. It wasn't like, it was beyond anything I ever known.

• 1:38:54Speaker 01

  It was exponential.

• 1:38:55Speaker 02

  And I went to the doctor, three and a half months pregnant, and I said, I'm so sick, like, I'm so sick all the time. And then she, I said, I think I have twins. And then she listened for the heartbeat, and she goes like, no, you have only one, it's only one heart. I'm like, all right, then I guess this time is weird. So and then. A little bit over four months pregnant, I had my first ultrasound and a technician was like, "Oh my God, you have twins."

• 1:39:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I knew it. The mother's intuition.

• 1:39:23Speaker 02

  It was, I mean, I was, I felt so horrible. I couldn't keep nothing in.

• 1:39:28Speaker 01

  Oh, man. I have that experience. All my pregnancies, I'm just, I'm, I have four days where I eat and the food tastes so good. And then after that, I can't even unload the dishwasher. It's horrible. I mean, I, the baby's totally safe. There's no problem. And then I have super easy birth.

• 1:39:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. My births were actually pretty, this, with the, with the three months old, it was just so amazing.

• 1:39:52Speaker 01

  It was like 30 seconds.

• 1:39:53Speaker 02

  No, it wasn't that quick, but it was kind of quick. And it was, she was so easy. I think with the twins, that was the worst that could ever happen. My son's head was just ginormous.

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  Oh, goodness.

• 1:40:05Rich Roll?

  I can't imagine.

• 1:40:06Speaker 01

  It's just crazy.

• 1:40:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:40:08Speaker 01

  So how is, how do you, how is the diet with you? Like in your, in your household? Are you 100% raw family? Or how do you manage all that with your kids? Share with us.

• 1:40:19Speaker 02

  Basically, at home, everything is gluten free.

• 1:40:23Rich Roll?

  And I want to talk about, I have something I want to talk to you about that, too.

• 1:40:27Speaker 02

  So I, I started that, not that we ate a lot of gluten, but I just started that because of my autistic daughter.

• 1:40:35Speaker 01

  And so share with us, what's the background on that?

• 1:40:39Speaker 02

  With the...

• 1:40:40Rich Roll?

  Oh, no, go ahead. Let me just, can I just preface this with an experience I had last weekend?

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  You can.

• 1:40:46Rich Roll?

  That will sort of set the stage for this. I was in, sorry to interrupt everybody.

• 1:40:50Speaker 01

  It's your show.

• 1:40:51Rich Roll?

  Hey, it's my podcast. I'm gonna do what I want.

• 1:40:54Speaker 01

  You do. And we, and we love that.

• 1:40:56Rich Roll?

  I was in Toronto last weekend. Toronto, I wasn't in Toronto. I was in Tucson.

• 1:41:02Speaker 01

  You're going in like two weeks.

• 1:41:03Rich Roll?

  No, I was in Tucson, two weeks, last weekend, for a speaking engagement at this event. And there were a couple other speakers there. And there was one guy who I'd never met before named Jeffrey Mason, who's a like the 72 year old guy who's written like 27 books, I think. And he was a fascinating guy. Got to spend a good amount of time with him and I actually flew back with him to Los Angeles on the same plane. So I chatted with him for quite some time. And, and he's a sort of a vegan advocate activist. He's written a lot about animals. He kind of comes from it from an ethical animal advocacy point of view. But his perspective was really fascinating.

• 1:41:44Rich Roll?

  And then he's incredible intellectual who's had this like Zelig like life where he's he, he got his PhD in Sanskrit from Harvard and he was a professor of Sanskrit, I think at University of Michigan. And then he became an analyst, like a psychoanalyst and became director of the Freud archives and then started writing books about how he didn't like Freud. And then he got ostracized by the psychoanalyst community, something like that. Anyway, really, really fascinating guy who now lives in New Zealand with his wife who's German. She's a German pediatric, what do you call that? Pediatric doctor.

• 1:42:26Speaker 02

  Pediatrician.

• 1:42:27Rich Roll?

  Pediatrician. Yeah. And she, and they, they live on the beach in Auckland, New Zealand, and she treats children on the autism spectrum. And so I was asking him all these questions about that. And, and he was telling me about the amazing results that he, that she has seen treating these kids with diet. And the biggest thing, this, the thing that seems to have a very dramatic impact on their sort of disposition is removing gluten and dairy from their diet. So yeah, I just wanted to, as a, as a starting point to kind of, you know, and hearing that, I was like, wow, I've never heard that before. That's really interesting. And now to, you know, hear your experience with that, I'd love to hear more about.

• 1:43:07Speaker 02

  It's gluten free diet is, has become very big in the autism community. I, we have very

• 1:43:22Speaker 02

  Our household around my daughter is very much sterile. We don't have so much stuff everywhere, so it's not so Minimal. stimulating to her. And she is very, a lot outdoors and she's really much into animals. So we kind of, everything is like, you know, so she feels at home extremely comfortable. But what she had was her digestion. She had a really hard time going to the bathroom. She would just sit there and had a hard time just going to the bathroom.

• 1:43:59Speaker 02

  And I just tried to, you know, things like crackers and, and cookies, or if we would make brownies, or just like other things that would have gluten, I completely cut them out. And then I thought she had a little, like, her digestion got better and then we completely cut gluten, completely out. And would not, I, I had read about experiences with kids that would stop eating gluten, they would start like licking things off the floor. And whatever had gluten, they would be craving for it. But when they would go cold turkey, basically, like, you know,

• 1:44:44Speaker 02

  like some kind of chemical reaction it does in the brain. And they would need it. And I never made that experience with her, just because she didn't eat gluten so much, or she, we wouldn't have it at home all the time. And, but now completely cutting everything out, even if we would make cookies or brownies or anything that would be a treat, even those are gluten free. So with her, I really made the experience that is

• 1:45:14Speaker 02

  It's, she's a lot calmer. Uh, and she does have tantrums, uh, like autistic kids do, but not, not as severe. And they don't even, they, they don't last three hours.

• 1:45:29Rich Roll?

  What do they think that the connection is between the gluten and the behavior?

• 1:45:34Speaker 02

  Um, one of the connection is that, um, this chemical imbalance in the brain that it causes. That's one of the things, but most of them are not, it's not a proven thing. It's not, um, clinically, you know, proven that it's going to, or it's helping with autism. But, um, I haven't met a parent, um, that has, uh, tried the gluten free and said, it doesn't do nothing for us. Everybody that I know and has done it says that it does, they, they do see a difference, especially in their digestion.

• 1:46:15Rich Roll?

  Interesting. That's great.

• 1:46:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:17Rich Roll?

  It's interesting. I mean, in, in digestion, but also in mood and behavior. I mean, you know, and then it makes you wonder, well, if it's, it's sort of, everything is- What it would do for your mood. No, you are gluten free. Well, first of all, where do I fall on the spectrum?

• 1:46:33Speaker 02

  I think we all are a little bit autistic.

• 1:46:35Rich Roll?

  We're a little bit, all of us. Well, no, I think if, if, you know, somebody who's autistic, they're, everything is amplified, right? So, so, so removing the gluten, you can sort of see a result, but, you know, if it's having that kind of impact on, on these certain individuals, what kind of impact does removing it have on the rest of us, you know? And I know personally, I feel a ton better when I'm eating gluten free, but I'm not perfect at it. You know, I end up, you know, I end up craving and eating bread or whatever and things that, that, you know, I know. I probably shouldn't.

• 1:47:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:12Rich Roll?

  But, but the behavioral thing is fascinating.

• 1:47:15Speaker 02

  Well, the behavioral thing, if, if it is true that it, that gluten causes some chemical imbalance in the brain, and if that would prevent that chemical imbalance, then it would make sense why the tantrums.

• 1:47:31Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:47:32Speaker 02

  And the mood is not as bad.

• 1:47:33Speaker 01

  With balance.

• 1:47:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:34Speaker 01

  And, and what are the other things, just as a mother, you know, with this child and your journey, you know, and also having three others, so you have the full spectrum and you can really feel each of their personalities and, but what are the other things that you, that you've experienced in your life that have been helpful to her balance and harmony within the family?

• 1:47:56Speaker 02

  One of the things, I mean, besides the diet, is really, everybody in our family accepting or knowing that this is who she is and this is who she will be. And it's not something that you can go out and say, I want to fix it. You can fix it. This is what it is, and this is who she is, and she will be that. And you can give her tools to learn how to deal with things in the outside world better. But she will always be autistic, and she will always have, or be more withdrawn. And I think the first thing you have to be okay as a parent, and not want her to have

• 1:48:37Speaker 02

  playdates and, you know, go to tea parties and, you know, think, why can't you have fun at Disneyland? Why is it not fun to you? It's, it's fun to her, but it's fun to her maybe for two, three rides, and then she's done, because it's a lot of noise.

• 1:48:57Speaker 01

  Too much stimulation.

• 1:48:58Speaker 02

  A lot of people. And there's nothing wrong with her, and I, what, my experience during this whole time, like, she was about two and a half when we, you know, when I thought something is off with her, and people would be...

• 1:49:15Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. And it's, it's, um, I have to say, I have an amazing relationship to her. A lot, I don't wanna say deeper than with the others, but so different. Of course. She, she makes me cry. It's so deep with, like, because if she loves, she loves you so different and so much that you have never experienced, but if she doesn't like you, oh my gosh. You're gonna know it. Yeah, she doesn't like you. And, and she has been, I have experienced with her, I mean, sometimes we have people at the house that she doesn't know. She's never met them before and she would, we have family members that she has never talked to,

• 1:49:59Speaker 02

  or she doesn't just care, like she just like looks down and she just doesn't respond to them. At, one time a friend bring another friend of his that I didn't know, and then my daughter, always walking barefoot everywhere, had, um, hit her foot and a nail. And, um, not bad, it just was bleeding a little bit. And she's such a tough kid. Uh, she's such a boy. I mean, she's, not, not a boy, but she's so hardcore. She, you, she doesn't like, she doesn't feel pain, or she doesn't care, or she doesn't make a fuss over it. So she comes to this guy, puts her foot on his, um, chair and says, "I need a Band-Aid."

• 1:50:41Speaker 02

  And she has this very raspy kind of like Tony Braxton kind of voice. And she, like, she has an amazing voice and she goes, "I need a Band-Aid." And then he looks at me and I go like, like, "What?" And it's so, like, she shocks me sometimes, like, she has never met this guy before. She doesn't even know who he is, she doesn't even know his name. And then all of a sudden she start talking to him about Kung Fu Panda. And you just wonder, "Why? Why is she doing that?" And that's, like, some, certain people give her, I don't know, it makes her so comfortable to talk to them. Well, it's their energy, right? Yeah, I guess. And she connects with them in that way. Yeah. And then you were telling me she's an amazing filmmaker. She is an amazing artist in every way. She just, she makes books, she draws them and she illustrates them and she, um,

• 1:51:26Speaker 02

  uh, writes the stories. And, um, she gets fixated with one thing. So when she does one thing, that is, like, she, um, really got into the series of, um, the Wimpy Kid books. So she's drawing them. She makes new stories. And then she is amazing in drawing and she, her memory is just insane. And, and she makes movies. She has so many cameras and she was, her wish list for Christmas. So she has, she doesn't care about toys, dolls, things, none. So she was, on her wish list was a water camera, a camera that she can take underwater.

• 1:52:08Rich Roll?

  Underwater.

• 1:52:09Speaker 02

  So she can make movies in water or under the shower, stuff like that. And then she sets up like different cameras everywhere and then the iPad. And then she, she posts things on YouTube and she has viewers.

• 1:52:23Rich Roll?

  Oh, cool.

• 1:52:24Speaker 02

  And she, it's that, like, that's her project every day. She has to make certain amount of movies and review video games and put them on YouTube and talk about them.

• 1:52:36Rich Roll?

  That's great.

• 1:52:36Speaker 02

  And she's, when, when you see her on a video, you go like, that's that kid? What? She can speak? So she did one thing where, you know, she has these Apple headphones in there and it's all dark in her room and then she goes to the microphone like this and then she goes, "My name is Tatiana." Like, she goes, it's bizarre stuff that she, like, you crack up. But then you wanna talk to her and she goes like this. And she looks at the floor.

• 1:53:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:06Speaker 02

  She won't, she won't respond.

• 1:53:07Rich Roll?

  It's interesting, that focus and, you know, it sounds like as a parent, you know, a big part of it is just sort of, you know, sort of cultivating that, you know, those channels where they do have that focus and supporting that. I mean, you know, she's making YouTube.

• 1:53:20Speaker 02

  It's not like she's not focused. She can't execute on something she wants. Oh, she can do that for eight hours. Like she, if you, if you say, "Hey Tatiana, I'm going to shop" because I, sometimes I make her go with me, like just her alone so she can, you know, rely to, get out, getting out and doing certain things. And I tell her, because she sometimes makes videos with vegetables. And then she gets the vegetables and she draws faces on them. And she wants me to get a program for her that makes the vegetable, like the mouth talk. Oh, the mouth, yeah. Sounds awesome. Yeah. So I said, "Well, you can come with me and you can pick your vegetables" so you can make a video because they're rot at some point and get all shriveled so she can't use them anymore. Then she comes with me and then, but she's just, you know...

• 1:54:03Speaker 02

  She's so different in certain ways and then in other ways she's such a kid, but she's so mature and she, um, when, when she, she says, I, I need to get home, I need to do these, I need to do videos, I need to do all my reviews, like it's so important. And she's always, when you ask her, what do you want to be? I want to be famous movie maker. She always says that and, um, but my mom always says, you have to put her in some program. You have to, but the thing is she won't. She doesn't want to go in a program. No. She has her own. She knows what she wants to do. She, and if you tell her, it is great how you do it, but this would be the proper steps to take. She was, she was like, nope, not doing it that way. It's not right. Right. Yeah.

• 1:54:48Speaker 02

  That's amazing. Yeah.

• 1:54:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, interesting.

• 1:54:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for sharing that.

• 1:54:52Rich Roll?

  Is there, you know, what kind of things could you say to, you know, other parents out there that might be struggling with an autistic kid or, or might not have the community or, or kind of the knowledge base that you have or, or looking for some help? Or are there some resources where people could go or?

• 1:55:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, there is a lot of resources. Um, I mean nowadays, thank goodness, um, I don't, I forgot this, the name of this lady.

• 1:55:19Rich Roll?

  Well, you can email me. I'll put it in the show notes.

• 1:55:22Speaker 02

  No, it was way back.

• 1:55:23Rich Roll?

  And I want to put her, can I put her YouTube?

• 1:55:25Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:55:26Rich Roll?

  Can I link to her?

• 1:55:27Speaker 02

  She'll love it. She'll love it. Because she, she sees like how many people.

• 1:55:31Rich Roll?

  Come on people, like watch her videos, give her like mad views.

• 1:55:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, so she, she loves that. And, um, there was this movie made, um, uh, what was her name? It was a HBO movie, it was a real story.

• 1:55:45Rich Roll?

  Temple Grandin?

• 1:55:46Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:55:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:47Speaker 02

  This, I, I showed it to my oldest daughter when it came out because my oldest daughter would sometimes get so frustrated with Tatiana and, um, wouldn't understand why she is the way she is and why she's driving her so crazy. And I said, I want to, I want you to watch something. And I actually was looking for Rain Man. I couldn't find it. So, and I saw that and I was like, okay, that's good enough. I, I didn't even know what it was. Um, it really, really, I mean, I cried watching that movie and I got to meet her at the Golden Globes.

• 1:56:17Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:56:17Speaker 02

  She's an amazing lady. And at that time, back then, there was no resources and there's like today, it's so open, it's so much there.

• 1:56:29Speaker 02

  Definitely read and you know the internet is a great resource. You know, look things up. There's so many different places you can even contact Autism Speaks. There's so many different autism network groups, you know, social skills groups for parents, even support groups for parents. And just know that your child is incredibly, incredibly amazing and they all have a very great gift, something that they're really, really good at. One of my clients sent me something on Facebook on this guy that flew over New York and then

• 1:57:10Speaker 02

  he landed and drew New York on like every, out of his memory.

• 1:57:15Rich Roll?

  Right, I think I heard about that too.

• 1:57:17Speaker 02

  It was, I, it was crazy and that's, that's a gift that I don't have.

• 1:57:22Rich Roll?

  It's amazing and you think like certain tweaks in your brain and that, you know, human could be possible, it's possible for a human to do that. Like it's just extraordinary. Like what else are we not tapping into?

• 1:57:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think, you know, the big awareness for all of us is to realize that, you know, everybody has something to offer and to share with us. And I was a speaker at this conference I was telling you about called Shift Us and there was like 20 educators and parents, you know, of full spectrum kids. We call them diagnosed autistic because who even knows what that means?

• 1:57:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:56Speaker 01

  But the main beautiful sort of message of the whole weekend was that there is nothing wrong with any of these individuals, they're just wired differently. And so if we shift our perspective and just start to embrace them as already whole now, not like I wish you could sit longer or talk to people when they come in or, you know, whatever, whatever the, whatever the social behavior is that's comfortable to us.

• 1:58:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:24Speaker 01

  Then there is a whole world of discovery waiting there.

• 1:58:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:29Speaker 01

  And it's really our gift because I can see the love in your, I mean, you wouldn't trade.

• 1:58:33Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 1:58:34Speaker 01

  For anything in the world.

• 1:58:35Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 1:58:36Speaker 01

  No way.

• 1:58:37Speaker 02

  I mean, literally in eight years, she has given me so much. And I, like I, if she was any different, I don't know if I would be the way, like I had to learn a lot during this eight years and, you know, experience things with her and, you know, figure things out and.

• 1:58:55Speaker 02

  I don't know if I would be speaking the way I am and I don't even know if I would be the same way or having the same perspective about things if it wasn't for her. So she has, she's definitely teaching me a lot.

• 1:59:06Speaker 01

  She's been your transformational agent.

• 1:59:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:59:09Rich Roll?

  Good. Well, I think that's a beautiful place to end it.

• 1:59:13Speaker 01

  So nice to have you and meet you and experience this time.

• 1:59:17Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:59:18Speaker 01

  And we hope to meet all your children.

• 1:59:21Speaker 02

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:59:22Speaker 01

  And we're in the hood, so we gotta get together.

• 1:59:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, we will have a playdate.

• 1:59:26Rich Roll?

  Feel good. Anything else you want to talk about?

• 1:59:29Speaker 02

  Um, you know, there's so much.

• 1:59:32Rich Roll?

  I know. Well, you can come back.

• 1:59:34Speaker 01

  We'll come back.

• 1:59:34Rich Roll?

  Come back. All right. So, thank you so much, the beautiful and fabulous Natasha Kufa. You say Kufa, Kufa?

• 1:59:43Speaker 02

  Kufa.

• 1:59:43Rich Roll?

  Kufa, right.

• 1:59:44Speaker 02

  But I'm, I got married and I have a new name.

• 1:59:47Rich Roll?

  Oh, you do? What's your new name?

• 1:59:49Speaker 02

  It's Fet. It's almost the same, yeah.

• 1:59:51Rich Roll?

  Kufa Fet. Kufa Fet. Cool. So, the book is The 10% Rule: Small Changes, Big Results. I like the subtitle. So, check it out. You can get it on Amazon, right?

• 2:00:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, on Amazon, my website as well.

• 2:00:05Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 2:00:05Speaker 01

  What is your website?

• 2:00:06Speaker 02

  It's natashakufa.com.

• 2:00:08Rich Roll?

  K U F A. That's right. And, or you can go to, you can click on the Amazon banner on ritual.com and then buy the book. That way, she wins, we win, and you win. Or whatever else you're gonna buy on Amazon, you know how to do it, people. Also, we put up last week a little donate function for the podcast. So, if you have been inspired or you feel like just contributing so that we can keep this thing going, feel free to throw a few nickels at us. And if you don't want to, that's cool, too. The show is free and will always be free. Right?

• 2:00:49Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:00:50Rich Roll?

  And so you don't have to do anything you don't want. We'll keep coming at you, right?

• 2:00:54Speaker 02

  Somehow, somewhere.

• 2:00:55Rich Roll?

  We'll keep bringing people like Natasha on the show. It was a pleasure having you. Thanks for coming.

• 2:01:00Speaker 02

  It was great. Thank you.

• 2:01:02Rich Roll?

  And also, where else can we find you? We can find you on Twitter at Natasha Kufa, right?

• 2:01:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, Twitter, Facebook, I have a Like It page. I have people writing me all the time about all kinds of things. And I get usually to them, sometimes it takes a few weeks.

• 2:01:17Rich Roll?

  Right. And if you're in LA, are you taking on clients now? Or are you full?

• 2:01:22Speaker 02

  I do. I always do. I work with my husband, like you guys do. And

• 2:01:28Speaker 01

  What's your husband's name?

• 2:01:29Speaker 02

  Sebastian.

• 2:01:30Speaker 01

  Sebastian.

• 2:01:31Speaker 02

  He's German as well. And he trains, he does a lot of the running. He does boxing and he was a Muay Thai and kickboxing

• 2:01:42Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:01:43Speaker 02

  champion.

• 2:01:44Rich Roll?

  And He's a man's man.

• 2:01:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's man's man. And so, yeah, we train together. Sometimes we train both of us with clients, sometimes individually. So they always get some funny thing. He has an extreme German accent.

• 2:01:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm scared of him already. But it's so, so if somebody wanted to reach out to you and kind of learn more about your, your training and what you offer, they just go to your website? Is that the best place?

• 2:02:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, to my website and then you can contact me.

• 2:02:13Rich Roll?

  All right, good.

• 2:02:13Speaker 02

  There.

• 2:02:14Rich Roll?

  Hopefully you get some emails. And we're gonna, we're gonna put the link up to, to the YouTube channel.

• 2:02:19Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. She'll be like thrilled.

• 2:02:22Rich Roll?

  All right, awesome.

• 2:02:23Speaker 02

  I think she's a superstar.

• 2:02:24Rich Roll?

  Cool. Thanks for, thanks again for coming.

• 2:02:27Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:02:27Rich Roll?

  Again, you want to check out what Julie and I are doing? You can follow Julie on Twitter at, is it Srimati or Jai Seed?

• 2:02:36Speaker 01

  No, it's Jai Seed.

• 2:02:37Rich Roll?

  It's Jai Seed.

• 2:02:37Speaker 01

  Jai Seed on Twitter.

• 2:02:38Rich Roll?

  I can't keep track. J A I S E E D on Twitter. You're Srimati on Instagram.

• 2:02:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, Instagram Srimati.

• 2:02:45Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 2:02:45Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 2:02:46Rich Roll?

  I'm simple. It's just, I'm Rich Roll.

• 2:02:47Speaker 01

  He's Rich Roll.

• 2:02:48Rich Roll?

  Wherever, wherever you go.

• 2:02:49Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 2:02:50Rich Roll?

  And you can find out a little bit more about what, what we're doing at jailifestyle.com. We've got my Jai Repair Athletic Recovery Supplement. We have B12. We've got the Cookbook. We've got the Meditation Program. And we're going to be coming out with some new products soon. I think we're going to just do a Pure Tri Blend. Plant-based protein product that we're working on right now that will have a much better, more affordable price point for people out there who want to check out the Jai Repair, but it's just a little bit too expensive.

• 2:03:24Speaker 01

  But the protein's a great blend.

• 2:03:26Rich Roll?

  It is. Yeah. Pea, sprouted brown rice and hemp, there's nothing wrong with that.

• 2:03:32Speaker 01

  You don't need anything else besides that.

• 2:03:34Rich Roll?

  It's awesome. And also, we're working on a vitamin D supplement as well, which is cool. And Julie?

• 2:03:40Speaker 01

  It's like the sun in a bottle.

• 2:03:41Rich Roll?

  If somebody wanted to listen to your music, where should they go? The sun in a bottle. Sunny D.

• 2:03:46Speaker 01

  There you go. Sun in a bottle. They should go to srimati music dot com. S R I M A T I music dot com. I've got my debut album, Mother of Mine, there. And soon, I'm going to have a new release of my second record called Be Loved.

• 2:04:03Rich Roll?

  Cool. And I'm going to be in Worcester, Mass. for the Veg Fest there in, I think, the second weekend in April. And then I'm going to be in Ottawa, Canada, for Plant Powered Ottawa. If you want to find out more about that, if you're in the area or around Toronto or Ottawa, check out plantpoweredottawa.com. And of course, I can't remember the dates right now, but...

• 2:04:24Speaker 01

  It's all right.

• 2:04:25Rich Roll?

  I'll put them in the show notes.

• 2:04:26Speaker 01

  In some month. No, April. It's in April.

• 2:04:29Rich Roll?

  All right. We're done. All right. Let's get out of here. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody. Peace.

• 2:04:36Speaker 01

  Peace.

• 2:04:37Rich Roll?

  Plants.

• 2:04:38Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 2:05:22Speaker 01

  The.

• 2:07:32Speaker 01

  The.

• 2:09:42Speaker 01

  The.