JD Roth: The Big Fat Truth Behind The Controversial King of Weight Loss TV

Despite our cultural obsession with weight loss, we've never been fatter. Right now, one out of every three U. S. adults are obese. Another third are overweight. Even worse? 18% of our children are morbidly obese with rates continuing to soar. In lockstep with our obesity epidemic is a shocking escalation of chronic lifestyle illness, including high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, liver disease, and stroke. One out of every three Americans will die of heart disease. Close to 30% of the adult population is diabetic or pre-diabetic. The problem is so bad, 75% of all U. S. healthcare costs are attributable to these conditions — illnesses that quite ironically are avoidable and often reversible through some fairly simple diet and lifestyle changes. So why can't we lose the weight and keep it off? This is the question JD Roth has devoted his life to answering. The man behind a television empire built on the shoulders of a prime-time juggernaut called The Biggest Loser — which aired for an astonishing 17 seasons — JD is the award-winning producer and reality-TV pioneer behind some of the most successful and prolific television programs of our era. More than a decade ago, JD first introduced viewers to the weight-loss TV arena with The Biggest Loser on NBC – now a worldwide, half-billion-dollar brand – and expanded upon it with Extreme Weight Loss on ABC, which ran for five seasons and airs as Obese in more than 130 countries. JD is also author of Big Fat Truth*, and a brand-new television series of the same name (premiering June 11 at 8pm ET/PT on Z Living), which challenges and guides groups of participants unhappy with their weight and health (including some former Biggest Loser contestants who regained their weight), providing them the tools to uncover and tackle the real issues behind the weight while encouraging them to adopt a whole food, plant-based diet over a three month period of mental, emotional and practical mentorship by JD and a panel of experts that include none other than podcast favorite Michael Greger, MD (and a brief appearance by yours truly). Never before has a show advanced plant-based eating as a central conceit. A first in the history of television, I cannot overstate how excited this is for the movement and the world. Today I sit down with the blockbuster producer to unpack it all — including the whirl of controversy that surrounds the successful shows he created. This is a conversation about the cultural phenomenon of weight loss television that JD originated, framed and fashioned. It's about the overlooked mental and emotional barriers that prevent too many from achieving and maintaining optimal weight and health. And it's a conversation about his passion for the plant-based lifestyle, as well as the hows and whys behind his book and new television show that advance this lifestyle as the model way to not only lose weight, but keep it off for good. Irrespective of your opinion on JD's former shows, I can honestly say that JD is truly passionate about helping people — I've seen it first hand, up close and personal. So I urge you to set aside any pre-conceived notions you may have and enjoy! 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?

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

• 0:44Rich Roll?

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

• 1:04Speaker 01

  You need to plant the flag in the sand that says, "This year, I'm going to do X." Make it public. The more public you make it, the more likely you are to be successful. Get other people involved. People want to help. That's what...I think people think no one wants to get involved in their life. Ask for help. People want to help you, and they will support you. If you want to just go out with the same friends and have ribs, french fries, and ice cream, then that's what's gonna happen. You have to change some of those friends if they won't get on board. You have to really want to change something in your life to be successful. Like anyone, not just weight loss. Right? You want to make more money? What are you gonna do? Work harder or work less? It's three easy steps to accomplish anything. First, identify the problem. "Hey, I'm overweight.

• 1:49Speaker 01

  I'm losing all these things in my life I can't do anymore. Gosh, it's terrible. I'm gonna die at a young age." Number two, make a list of what you need to do. I need to move more. I need to eat better. Not rocket science. In the case of a kid, it's usually I need to do my homework. I need to study for the test, right? Number three, it's the only step nobody gets to. It's the only step that matters. And so if anyone's looking for this giant secret that I have on step number three, there isn't one. Step number three is go do it. Stop talking about it and actually do something.

• 2:22Rich Roll?

  That's J D Roth, this week on the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:36Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Let's talk about obesity. On the one hand, we all know that it's an epidemic, but on the other hand, I'm really not sure that everyone fully comprehends just how severe this problem really is. It's an epidemic that is so large that currently one in three US adults are obese and another third are overweight. And when you add to that about 18% of our children being morbidly obese, you realize that this puts an alarming amount of our nation at serious risk for contracting a whole litany of chronic lifestyle-related illnesses. Everything from high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, liver disease,

• 3:16Rich Roll?

  stroke. According to the CDC, more than 30 chronic health conditions are directly attributable to being obese or overweight. And this problem, this problem of obesity is so common in our culture that today's guest was able to build an entire career around the issue, creating and producing a little-known TV show you might have heard of called The Biggest Loser. If you're under a rock and you've never heard of it, it is a primetime juggernaut that aired for an astonishing 17 seasons on network television, as well as another show called Extreme Weight Loss, which was also super successful. My name is Rich Roll. I am your

• 3:56Rich Roll?

  host. This is my podcast. Thanks for tuning in today. And today I sit down with J D Roth, who is the man behind these blockbuster television shows. We sit down to talk about his career. The cultural phenomenon created by his shows as well as all the controversies that swirl around and surround them. We really unpack that in depth. We get into the hows and whys and whatnots behind his decision, a decision that I think might surprise many of you to adopt a plant-based lifestyle. It's a decision he made about two and a half years ago.

• 4:37Rich Roll?

  Okay, J.D. Roth. I guess the first thing that I want to talk about is that I am more than aware that there is a lot of criticism and controversy that swirls around his shows. The Biggest Loser was this crazy cultural phenomenon that I think it's fair to say was essentially built on, in many ways, fat shaming people and the extraordinary pressure that the contestants were under to lose an extreme amount of weight in what many experts consider to be an unreasonable amount of time. And the fact that in many cases, contestants lost the weight temporarily only to put it back on again after their season ended only kind of fueled this controversy and allowed it to sort of, you know, perpetuate well

• 5:21Rich Roll?

  beyond the show. So I wanted to say as prefatory to this conversation that we get into all of this, which is great. J.D. was more than happy to discuss all of this, which I thought was really cool and very open-minded of him. We also talk about food, lifestyle, and the often overlooked mental issues that trigger people into treating their emotional problems with food instead of, you know, doing the work. We talk about J.D.'s book, The Big Fat Truth, which explores the plant-based lifestyle, his decision to adopt a plant-based lifestyle, the mental and psychological barriers that prevent most people from being healthy. And we also talk about his latest TV show, which goes by the same name, The Big Fat

• 6:03Rich Roll?

  Truth, which premieres Sunday, June 11th at 8:00 PM Eastern and Pacific on a channel called Z Living, Z Living, June 11th. And it's really cool. It's this new show that challenges and guides groups of participants unhappy with their weight and their health, including a couple former Biggest Loser contestants who gained the weight back, and provides them with the tools to help them uncover and tackle the real issues behind the weight as they face the big fat truth. And what's super interesting and unique about this new television show, what's fundamental to it...

• 6:37Rich Roll?

  Is that it is adopting this plant-based diet approach to treating these people. It's the first TV show ever to do this, which is amazing. It features friend of the podcast, Dr. Michael Greger, as a sort of medical consultant on the program, which I think is amazing. And I even got to do a day on the show. I'll probably show up in a cameo in one of the episodes and, you know, that was super fun. So anyway, we get into all of this stuff. We talk about how genetics may load the gun, but decisions pull the trigger. We talk about how the mental aspects of health, wellness and weight loss are really crucial and central to resolving these problems, how the real workout begins in your head.

• 7:18Rich Roll?

  And regardless of your thoughts on his former shows, I can honestly say that JD sincerely cares about these issues. I really do think his heart is in the right place. He's a really good guy. I'm excited about his new TV show. And we had a really great conversation that I think you guys are going to enjoy very, very much. So with all that said, here's me and JD.

• 7:42Rich Roll?

  All right, man, let's rock it.

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Let's do it. So good to see you. You too. I always feel lucky to be in a room with you.

• 7:47Rich Roll?

  Oh, come on.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  I admit that it's true. It's true. I'm a, I'm a big fan.

• 7:52Rich Roll?

  Well, I appreciate you taking the time to sit down and, and, and talk to me. You got a lot of exciting things going on right now and I want to just dive into all of it, man.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  There are, there are three books that sit on my desk and yours is one of them.

• 8:03Rich Roll?

  Uh, I appreciate that. And you told me you went running this morning, right?

• 8:06Speaker 01

  I did, I did.

• 8:07Rich Roll?

  That's good. Awesome. Cool. Well, I mean, first and foremost, let's talk about the TV show. I mean, this is super exciting. The first, uh, plant-based approach to lifestyle alteration that is going to go to air pretty soon, right? In April?

• 8:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I think it's going to be in May now.

• 8:25Rich Roll?

  Oh, it's going to be in May.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  A little bit later, but for me, you know, this is how I live my life. So it's such a blessing to be able to have something that you wake up every day excited about and turn that into entertainment. So now, instead of reaching, whatever it is, maybe a doctor can reach 20 or 30 patients a week, right? I can reach potentially millions of people in a week by doing the show. And so it just helps to get that message out there, which is important to me, and I know it's important to you, too.

• 8:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course. So, The Big Fat Truth, where did the idea for this come from?

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Uh, the idea came out of my book, which is the same title, The Big Fat Truth. What I really wanted to do was expose kind of the big fat truth around weight loss and how it really doesn't have much to do with being in the gym, which most of my shows, as you know, that's a priority. It really has to do with the mental work that you do and the food that you put in your mouth. And that's it. And what I've found over the years is the more focus you get on the food, the better the results.

• 9:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you can't exercise your way out of a poor diet.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Not at all.

• 9:27Rich Roll?

  Ultimately, ultimately. I mean, you can get yourself to a place where you look good, but if you're dying on the inside and your arteries are clogged, that's not going to go in a good direction for you.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  You can't run that off.

• 9:36Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  And I think what I learned so far is that people who overeat, and I'm not talking about the guy who's 20 pounds overweight, I'm talking about the people I work with, 300, 400, 500 pounds, they need volume. And so imagine, all these people, their whole life have been told, "You need to go on a diet." What's the first, the real definition of a diet is restriction. So somebody who loves volume, that's a problem, right off the bat. They're instantly, they feel like they're restricting, they're not getting what they want, the more they don't get what they want, the more they want it, then it's a mental game that they can't win. So if I can replace volume with volume, it's no longer a diet.

• 10:13Rich Roll?

  Right. This is something that Chef AJ talks about all the time. Do you know Chef AJ?

• 10:18Speaker 01

  I do.

• 10:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, she, yeah, talking about nutritional density, and she shows these, when she gives her talk, she shows these, you know, pictures of, you know, listen, like pictures of the inside of a stomach and, you know, however many, like 400 calories, if it's oil, it's just a tiny, you know, it's like a couple teaspoons.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:34Rich Roll?

  Or if you're just eating vegetables, you know, like...

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Fill the room.

• 10:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you can fill your entire stomach. And you have all this nutritional density, but it's very calorically low in density.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's the beauty. So I, the way I put it is, I'm going to replace a pound of bricks that you've been eating with a pound of feathers. It's still a pound. Only it's so much better for you. And instead of being calorically dense, it is nutritionally dense, which is what your body needs. And once you give your body what it needs and you start feeding your mind, the two feed off of each other, and then the body follows. You don't have to do much work after that.

• 11:08Rich Roll?

  So how did you arrive at this? Like, what is your story of, you know, kind of being delivered to the plant-based?

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Well, I started by eating a lot of steak, and a lot of french fries, and a lot of hamburgers, and working out a ton. And I definitely ate healthier than the next guy. Right? You know, I mean, I was definitely conscious of what I was eating. I never had a weight problem my whole life. And my wife started going plant-based.

• 11:34Rich Roll?

  What inspired her?

• 11:35Speaker 01

  She had high cholesterol based on a family gene. And of course, as we know, my favorite Dr. Greger line ever is genetics load the gun and decisions pull the trigger. And she decided, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm just gonna make better decisions. And so she got really hardcore about it. She did not want to be on medication, and...

• 11:54Rich Roll?

  I'm sure the doctors were telling her, "Look, you gotta be on, you know, stat... Take the pills, right?"

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Her dad's on the pill, right? Everyone in her family was taking the pill.

• 12:02Rich Roll?

  It's genetic. It's just something you're gonna have to do.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  I fight it. It's too much work.

• 12:06Rich Roll?

  So how did she come into this awareness that there might be another way?

• 12:10Speaker 01

  She went and did some research online. She went to nutrition.org and started getting... Greger's voice was playing in my head. It was playing so much in the house. And she slowly figured it out, and it was trial and error. And then I have the cancer gene in my family, the BRCA gene. And it's inevitable at some point that I'm gonna be staring that in the face. And all the research pointed to, well, you can prevent this. That you can actually... And that's when the forks over knives. We got into that, and we became friends with T. Colin Campbell. And once you are faced with all the research that's out there, you cannot deny it. It's impossible to deny it. And then slowly but surely, she was like, what I love about plant-based eaters,

• 12:55Speaker 01

  and I'm now one of them for the last two and a half years, but here's what I love about plant-based eaters. They want you in their tents. They want you to just try it. A lot of times what I find is the real hardcore vegetarian or vegan, right there. It's all or nothing. It's like you can't even wear a belt that's this and you can't, it's the planet. But something about whole food plant-based eaters, it's so inviting. It's like, well, just try it for breakfast and see what you think.

• 13:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, don't let perfection be the enemy of progress. And I feel like there's, there's an issue in, in the vegan camp in terms of how we communicate advocacy. And, you know, once somebody dips their toe in, if they make a mistake, then they get ganged up on. And then they retreat. And it's like, well, what do you expect them to do, right? You gotta like create a welcome mat for somebody where they feel comfortable enough to dip their toe in. And it's okay if they make a mistake and you trust them to like move forward and, you know, have their own journey with it.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  It's a much easier sell to say to a friend of mine, hey, why don't you have what I have for lunch? How do you feel? Do you feel better? Maybe you want to try it for dinner too. You know, and slowly but surely, my dream is that one day we have Meat Monday. That's my dream.

• 14:06Rich Roll?

  Right, how about like no meat any, any other time?

• 14:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:09Rich Roll?

  That's getting into the perfection thing, right?

• 14:11Speaker 01

  But can you imagine if instead of Meatless Monday, it got so good on the planet that you actually have Meat Monday? We've reversed it. That's really, in the end, that's really the goal. And I was somebody who I wouldn't think in the beginning could have been converted. And now I'm such a believer and I feel so much better and life is so much easier because of it. Everyone thinks it's so, it's such a hard thing to do. It really isn't.

• 14:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's not. How do you travel? How do you do it when you're here? It's like, I've been doing it for 10 years, it's so rote, like I don't even think about it. It doesn't seem like an imposition or an inconvenience at all.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  So what do you do? You get to your hotel room and what do you do? I'm curious.

• 14:46Rich Roll?

  Well, I mean, first of all, you know, I try to plan ahead and bring things on the plane if it's a long flight. And, you know, if I'm flying American, there's, there's Real Food Daily right in the LAX terminal. So I can get a green juice and something healthy to bring with me on the plane. If not, I make a trip to Whole Foods and get some nuts and some dates and some bananas and, you know, some green juice or something like that, I bring it with me. I try to sort of forecast, like look at where I'm going. Okay, where's the healthy market that's nearest to my hotel? Sometimes I'll take. The cab directly to the market before I even check into the hotel. I try to check into hotels that have little kitchens. If I'm traveling with my wife or my family, sometimes we even bring our Vitamix. So the more armed you are with convenient choices within arm's length, the better off you're going to be.

• 15:31Rich Roll?

  And that's not always the case. Sometimes I'm moving all over the place and then I rely on Happy Cow to tell me where the closest vegan restaurant is. It always works out.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  I'm amazed that when you go to a restaurant that isn't vegan and you say, "I'm plant-based." I would say a third of the time, they come back out from the kitchen and say, "Oh, one of the chefs back there is plant-based too. He just wants to make you something." Are you okay with that?

• 15:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, they're kind of excited because they get to make something different. And you can just, if you don't want to be in a position at the table, excuse yourself, go find the waiter. Go, "Hey, man, just make me like the hugest salad you've ever seen." Or can you just whip up a couple baked potatoes and maybe a plate of rice with vegetables? You know, just whatever. It doesn't matter. It's like, just bring me a huge plate of whatever you got. And it's always fine. It always works out. And I've gone to crazy places. I've been across Saudi Arabia. I've been to Pakistan. I've been to Morocco. Like, I've never had a problem. I mean, worst-case scenario is late-night room service where it's like rice and soggy vegetables. So it's not like you're going to get a Cafe Gratitude-type dinner every time, but you can always make it work.

• 16:39Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? If you're committed and this is your thing, it's just never been that big of an issue.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  I agree. I was walking through Whole Foods Tuesday and I saw that in their restaurant, they had a jackfruit taco special. I stopped everything I was doing, sat down, had some jackfruit tacos. If you're aware and you want to be aware, it's all around you.

• 16:58Rich Roll?

  Right. So two and a half years ago, how long after your wife? Like, was there a learning curve of like getting on board with this? Or you just saw results with her? Or how did that process work for you?

• 17:08Speaker 01

  She was always 105 pounds soaking wet. She always looked good to me. You know what I mean? She was always fit. She was always healthy. She was always the one counting out her nuts. You know what I mean? This was something new and I was definitely not a believer right away. "Hey, I invented weight loss in prime time for television."

• 17:25Rich Roll?

  You're the guy. Don't tell me how I'm supposed to lose weight.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  I know more than you.

• 17:28Rich Roll?

  But what's interesting about both you and your wife is that it wasn't about weight loss for either of you.

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Nope. About strictly a health choice. And, and she would bring things out. And like any normal man, and I have two boys. We're cavemen. Put something in front of us that tastes good and we'll eat it. We don't care what it is. If you can make this table taste good, I'm eating it. And she'd bring something out and if it didn't taste good, we would just shake our heads. And to her credit, she would go back in and she'd read, I don't know what, she threw it up in the air and it came down to something else and she'd bring it back out again and we'd go, ah. And then she'd do it a third time. And when she came out the fifth time and we'd go, yes. She'd put a check mark next to that one and she'd work on a new meal. And when she got 10 meals that were good, she kind of put those in the rotation. And then we became consumed by it. It sort of became, you know, like you, it became kind of our way of storytelling our life.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  And now, nobody will even go to dinner with us without us ordering first.

• 18:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  As you know, which I'm not judging.

• 18:21Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  You know what I mean? This is how I'm living my life. This is the choice I'm making. I will not get cancer one day and say, oh, why didn't I just do what I knew was the healthiest thing? I will, that will not happen. What will happen is, maybe one day I will get it. And I'll be able to say, I did everything I could. And if it happens at 80, maybe it would have happened at 60 if I didn't do these things.

• 18:43Rich Roll?

  Meanwhile, the vitality and the energy and all the benefits you get to experience leading up to that, even if, yeah, because sometimes shit just happens, right? So, you know, we can do the best that we can to avoid these things in certain circumstances, you know? It's not our fault, right?

• 19:00Speaker 01

  And when you work out seven days a week, I have no recovery issues. I am, I'll be 50 years old. I, I, I literally, I'm never sore, I'm never uncomfortable. I never have joint pain, no, no inflammation, all, that's, that's a byproduct.

• 19:13Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, you're preaching to the choir on that one. You know, that's, that's my experience and that's what I'm constantly talking about. And people think like, oh, well, you're just an outlier. You have some enzyme that other people don't have or something like that. There, there are people that are very rooted in their beliefs around food, which is very emotional and I'm sympathetic to that. Uh, you know, they can then be dismissive. Well, you can do it, but most people can't.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Hey, look, is it a loss that I don't take my boys once a month to a steak dinner and do what guys do and watch the football? You know, it's, I think as far as, it's a social image that people have of dads and their son or boys, huh, meat, huh, we eat, we eat meat. But the reality is, we do something else. And it doesn't necessarily have to revolve around food. And it's the same nostalgia that they'll have when they get older to want to do those things. So I have not looked at it as a loss. In the beginning, it felt like a loss. Then you have the out of body experience. When you go with your buddies to the steakhouse and you're a year into being plant-based. And so you think, oh, I'm just gonna, I'll just order the vegetables, veggie sides, I'll be fine. Order the veggie sides and the room, all of a sudden, like, like a car accident in slow-mo.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  You watch everybody cutting into this animal. And you, and you are so grossed out by it. I, if you told me I would have that experience, I would have told you you're out of your mind. And literally, it happened in slow motion for me. Of course, I go home, sleep like a baby, they got the meat sweats, they're sick as a dog the next day and, and I have nothing.

• 20:38Rich Roll?

  So your boys are both plant-based?

• 20:40Speaker 01

  They are at home.

• 20:41Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  So what we serve, breakfast, dinner, hundred percent plant-based. If we go, if we go out to dinner, we tell them they can have whatever they want. And I think the reason for that is, I don't need them going to college and coming unhinged. And I really believe that kids don't listen to a word you say, but they watch everything you do. And I think them just soaking up how important our own health is to us. Moving and also the way we eat, they're soaking it up. And so they understand the lifestyle and they live it, but I don't want to put restrictions on them at, in their teenage years that seem, you know, extreme.

• 21:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that that's a very similar approach that we've taken to our kids. There's, we've got four and they're spread out in ages. But, um, but that's sort of the same rule, like, this is how we prepare food in the house. And my wife is an insane cook, and so they have learned over time to prefer that food. But by not creating rules about what they can or can't do outside the house, allows them to explore themselves and to have agency over their choices. And I think as a developing human, that's really important. If you're too strict about these things, you're setting yourself up for rebellion later. Because every kid is going to, you know, push the boundaries and that's what they're supposed to do as they mature.

• 21:58Rich Roll?

  And, you know, just to say F you to the parents, you know, they're gonna go and do it and, and. That's not healthy, right? So by allowing them that freedom to explore these things, meanwhile educating them as best as you can and walking your talk, which is the most important thing.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  Totally agree.

• 22:14Rich Roll?

  If you're face planting in Haagen Dazs at midnight and you think your kids don't know, you're in for, you know, a big surprise because they know what's up. You know what I mean?

• 22:24Speaker 01

  They do.

• 22:25Rich Roll?

  They're much more attuned than you think and they pay attention to those little subtle cues. And so you're setting them up for success down the line because what's most important is how are they going to be eating 20 years from now? What are the choices they're going to make when nobody's looking at them, right?

• 22:40Speaker 01

  And you think about it too, from their perspective, if they feel that you're going to judge, then it's secretive.

• 22:46Rich Roll?

  Right. Then they're going to lie.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Exactly. And then if they lie and it's secretive, then it becomes like there's some pleasure principle around that they've created around this secret. And I don't want it to be this great thing that they're sneaking around because it isn't. So I tell them, you want to have the ribs at dinner when we're out? Go for it. Knock yourself out.

• 23:05Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  But at home, this is the way we eat and this is the way we live our life.

• 23:08Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  And they're creating great habits. I am not worried. I don't know about you. I'm not worried at all that they'll make the right decision when the time comes.

• 23:15Rich Roll?

  And your wife's cholesterol?

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Unbelievably low and hard to imagine. Everyone in her family is, you know, north of 250. And hers is, I think she had a test the last week, 161, 162, which for somebody with the gene is unheard of. And you know LDL's off the charts, right?

• 23:35Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  So that's where you want.

• 23:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's cool.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  The right high and the right low.

• 23:38Rich Roll?

  So when does it dawn upon you that there might be a TV show baked into this?

• 23:45Speaker 01

  I think when I wrote the book and I felt that the shortcut or the mind games that I have been proprietarily giving to only contestants on the shows for years. Could be useful to a lot of other people. But there's no real narrative for a TV show in that. Right? You know, you show moments of conflict. You show highs and lows and weigh-ins and tears. But there's never any of this off-camera stuff that I thought was really valuable. There's a lot of really valuable stories that happened that aren't television-worthy. But they're worthy to help somebody change their life. So I tried to use those stories as part of the book to share with people how it's really done, where the magic really happens.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  So I took my speeches that I give to every contestant, almost verbatim, and cut them into chapters. And then tried to explore around that and some personal stories in the show about commitment. You know what it's like. Someone says, "I am going to be a plant-based eater." And then one day later, they're at McDonald's. So, "Or I'm gonna go on a diet." And then that same day, they're off the diet. So how do you show them what the picture of success looks like? Allowing them to maybe create their own picture of what success looks like. People need help. And so I was hoping that the book would allow some help. And I don't preach in the book. I just share. And I really thought that that could be a television show after I had written it.

• 25:07Rich Roll?

  Right. And it's a conundrum, right? Because you're trying to approach this from a lifestyle, like a sustainable lifestyle alteration approach, as opposed to fixation on a number on a scale. Because, you know, when you have that, you sort of have a ticking clock, right? And you can create all kinds of tension and drama around that. But if you're saying to somebody, "Forget about what that number is, and let's talk about the psychology. How do you think about food? And what's going on with you emotionally? And how can I, you know, create a new narrative around who you are and what's important to you that can, you know, fuel your decision-making for the rest of your life?" It's harder to like, "Okay, how are we gonna exploit is a negative word?

• 25:48Rich Roll?

  But how can we, you know, take that and create something adequately dramatic enough that it's gonna play to a television audience?"

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Hey, look, nobody is hungry enough to eat themselves to 400 pounds.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  What they perceive as hunger pain is emotional pain. Done. That's open, shut case. So if that's the case, then at what point in their life, where did it happen? Where food became the moment of pleasure? And that loop of miserable to pleasure, miserable to pleasure. I need this to be happy, I need this to be happy. When did that happen? How many thousands of times have you repeated that loop? And then how do we break that loop and show you a new way to exercise pleasure?

• 26:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because you've got to get into why people are using food to medicate their emotional state. And just to get people to understand and realize that that's what they're actually doing. As opposed to just, you know, reflexively responding to a hunger impulse. Requires some psychological heavy lifting.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  A lot. You think about it. The number one thing I would tell everybody about weight loss, because you can imagine everywhere I go, first question is, hey, man, how can I lose 10 pounds? There's only two ways to guarantee it. One way is when you wake up in the morning. What's the first thing you see? The bedrooms I've been in, every 50 pounds overweight, 50, 100, 150, 200. Every 50 pounds overweight is a bedroom that is in more disaster and chaos than you've ever seen before. So by the time you get-

• 27:17Rich Roll?

  Meaning the relationship? Or what is physically present in the bedroom? What are you talking about?

• 27:22Speaker 01

  Literally what is physically present in the bedroom.

• 27:24Rich Roll?

  Like open pizza boxes on the bed?

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Beyond. A big gulp with a sweat mark on it. Mail piled up to the ceiling. Laundry, piles of laundry, unopened boxes. It's a disaster. And my vision of how you can really, if you really want to lose weight, what you should do is empty your bedroom is the first thing you should do.

• 27:42Rich Roll?

  As sort of a metaphor for the clutter that exists in the mind.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Of course. It is a microcosm of what's going on in your mind. And it's the first thing your eyes, when they open, see. They see chaos. So chaos begins in your mind. Now you walk into the shower and I've seen people with pliers for their hot side of their water because the handle broke off and the shower, it's all beat up and disgusting in there and they don't, and the towel's 20 years old. And then they get dressed, they go downstairs, they step over dog crap in the sidewalk, they get into their car where the door doesn't work, car, by the time you get to your office, that top left drawer that has the candy bar in it is the first reach you're gonna grab and it ain't even 9 a.m.

• 28:22Rich Roll?

  Well, it's a physical manifestation of how somebody feels about themself, right? Because once you start to tip those dominoes and the weight goes on and you feel less great about yourself than you did yesterday, that sets into motion a whole series of events that get you less and less interested in taking care of yourself. And so all those other things start to fall by the wayside.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  And pretty soon you won't even look at the reflection of the spoon you're lifting up to your mouth every time.

• 28:47Rich Roll?

  Well, who cares?

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. So I say, clean the bedroom out completely. Put a bed, put a chair, put some dresser, a dresser in there and that's it. Literally, nothing else is in that room. And then, when your eyes open in the morning, you see calm, you see organized, right? And take a minute, sit there, like, I love meditation, I know you do too, but I love the idea of sitting in a space that you're comfortable in. Start the day off happy. If you make one good decision, first thing when your eyes open, chances are you'll make two. You'll stack good decisions on top of each other. You make a bad decision to start with the day, it's going downhill from there for sure.

• 29:24Rich Roll?

  What is the kind of typical psychological makeup of the, you know, standard person that shows up on one of your TV shows?

• 29:36Speaker 01

  You can divide it into one of maybe five or six categories and a lot of it has to do with not having the, um, the ability to process certain things that happen in their life. So let's say, um, you have a loss of a parent. Ninety-nine out of a hundred people can go through the grieving process. They're fine, they get past it, they move on. One out of a hundred does not have the tools in the shed to deal with it. And because of that, life freezes in that moment. I've met with people that still have their parents' insulin needles in their refrigerator nine years after their death. They still have stuff in the refrigerator for their parent. They haven't dealt with it, and they're not equipped to deal with it. And so their life becomes frozen in that time.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  There could be twenty people that you know that had some form of abuse in their life. Fifteen of them move on with their life, successful relationships. Five couldn't process it emotionally. And didn't have the tools, or the parents around them, or the people around them to help them, and got caught in a trap. And so I feel like we shouldn't be, treat these people in a negative way, just by how they look. We should look at them. What I see when I see someone super overweight is, I know someone's in pain. I know something happened to them, whether it was a loss, whether it was a parent divorce, whether it was abuse, something happened to them that they, they weren't equipped to handle. They didn't have the tools to deal with it. It's our job as human beings to reach out to those people and help them. And I find that the largest person in the room is the most invisible.

• 31:03Speaker 01

  And that's tragic to me. The bigger you get, the less people see you.

• 31:08Rich Roll?

  And you could put somebody like that on a diet and get them to lose a little bit of weight, but that's never gonna...

• 31:14Speaker 01

  Oh, it's coming right back.

• 31:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's gonna come, it's gonna come right back on. So what is the process of starting to treat an individual like that, other than clearing out their bedroom, like the psychological work that has to go into, you know, reframing their perspective on themselves and, and ultimately, you know, reshaping their relationship with food?

• 31:34Speaker 01

  And those are the people that lose the weight and keep it off. The majority, as we all know in the real world, you lose a hundred pounds, it's less than five percent of the people two years later have kept it off. Which by the way is the same percentage for alcoholics and drug addicts who went to rehab. So it seems like that recidivism rate is very similar across the board. On our shows collectively, it's about 50%. So it's 10 times the national average. So clearly, we have a good mousetrap. It's just we can't handle as many people as we'd like. I'd like to be able to handle millions of people like that. The world would be a better place. Because the work is very significant. You've got to have people who want to look at the view less than they want to look in the mirror.

• 32:17Rich Roll?

  Well, want is the critical word, right? Because they have to be willing. You know, they have to be in enough pain or they have to be motivated enough by, you know, the foreseeable, you know, imagined future of what they want to be and achieve in order to get them into that place where they're willing to like, do the hard work that it's gonna, that's gonna be required to make that shift, a shift that's gonna actually stick.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  I'll give you the perfect example to what you just said. One year on The Biggest Loser, we had our finals for casting. You know, maybe 40 people come in, we're only gonna take 15 of them after we've narrowed it down from 10s of thousands. And we watched them work out and we do speeches and we watch what they order, you know, room service and we really take a look at these people. I've gotten good at weeding out the people who aren't gonna spend the time looking in the mirror. I get back from our medical team, two of the people, um, for medical reasons cannot continue. One of them was a pizza owner, owned a pizza shop and his name was Mario. And he looked like a guy who owns a pizza shop named Mario. Right? But look in the dictionary under Mario, it's a picture of him. The other guy was a white collar guy, um, who had a heart issue and they weren't gonna

• 33:25Speaker 01

  let him continue because he was too sick to be on The Biggest Loser. Let me tell you the story. The pizza guy got so upset and so angry at the situation, he zipped his bag up and left immediately without saying a word to anyone. The white collar guy said, you know what I'm gonna do? Do you mind? I'm already here. There's four more days left of casting. Do you mind if I just listen to the speeches and see what people are working on in the gym and try to soak up as much knowledge as I can before I leave? I said, no, not a problem.

• 33:55Rich Roll?

  Right, like the difference being the guy who was just in it for being on TV versus the guy who actually had a legitimate, genuine interest in changing his life.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  And the end of the story is, after four days of watching this guy crush it and learn and be around people and inspire, I went back to the doctor and I said, is there anything we could do? Is there any test we could give him? And he said, actually, there is, but it's $5,000 more. But it would clear him to be on the show. I said, run the test. The guy got on and lost almost 200 pounds. The pizza guy, six months later, died of a heart attack. And I can't help but think, and it was his fourth time auditioning for the show. I wrote about it in the book. I can't help but think, what would have happened if after the first audition that he didn't get it? If he went home and did it? Would his wife still have a husband?

• 34:47Speaker 01

  Would his daughter still have a dad? Would he still be on the planet to make people smile? He was one of the happiest guys I ever met. And it's too bad that in the end, he was so counting on the biggest loser solving all his problems versus him solving it and him inspiring himself that he ended up dying way too young.

• 35:05Rich Roll?

  That's tragic, but it also speaks to what we were talking about earlier about agency. You know, if you're always looking at outside yourself for somebody else to solve this problem for you as opposed to taking, you know, shouldering the responsibility yourself and taking it seriously and doing the heavy lifting and the hard work and, you know, weathering the difficult moments that are inevitably going to be required of you, that's how you make the shift, right?

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Yep, yep. Although you make me nervous when I hear you say, "agency." I turn around and think someone's coming to take 10%. In my world...

• 35:37Rich Roll?

  We're actually doing the podcast at CAA at an agency, right? So there's plenty of agents walking around outside this door at the moment.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Take 10 percent of what's in my pocket as we speak.

• 35:46Rich Roll?

  That's funny. Well, let's, let's, uh, let's talk about The Biggest Loser. All right. Let's, uh, let's explore this a little bit. I mean, first of all, co-creator of the show, right? And your background, I mean, you were like a child actor, right?

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:00Rich Roll?

  And then like a voiceover actor, and then like a game show host. Like you did it all as a young person, right? So you got into this business like super young.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  I did. 10 years old. It's been 40 years in show business for me.

• 36:11Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  And I don't think if someone said to me, "Hey, you're gonna be producing weight loss shows," you know, I would have laughed. I would have been like, "No, no."

• 36:19Rich Roll?

  What was the plan?

• 36:20Speaker 01

  I was, I was gonna be Pat Sajak. You know what I mean?

• 36:23Rich Roll?

  So it wasn't Marlon Brando or Robert Redford? Like you knew, that was, you wanted to be like a host?

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure. For sure.

• 36:30Rich Roll?

  What is that?

• 36:31Speaker 01

  I was really good at playing myself.

• 36:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Were you like in the mirror as a kid with, holding a microphone, pretending like you were?

• 36:37Speaker 01

  Worse.

• 36:38Rich Roll?

  Wheel of Fortune or something?

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Worse. I would roll up the TV guide, this is the story my parents say, and when the mailman would come over and, you know, drop the mail off, I would interview him at the door. You know, I was always fascinated with that idea that you could be yourself. You could go on and kibitz and joke around and still flex that muscle of understanding a format, when to push, when to relax, when to lean in and move things forward, when not to. So when my family would sit home watching Wheel of Fortune, I would say Pat's lines, and they would try to solve the puzzle. And they would drive them crazy. But that's always what I wanted to do, is be a producer. And honestly, the convergence-

• 37:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because most people, when they watch that, they're in the seat of the contestant, trying to solve the puzzle, right?

• 37:19Speaker 01

  I had no interest in that. Yeah. And the convergence of game and reality around the year 2000 is what changed my life, because reality was starting to be a real thing.

• 37:31Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  And in the end, they needed people who understood game compliance and storytelling, and there weren't many that were young. Game show guys were old and salty dogs. And here I was at the time, you know, I was 30 years old and had several thousand episodes of game shows, both in production and hosting behind me.

• 37:51Rich Roll?

  What were some of the shows that you hosted?

• 37:53Speaker 01

  Um, I hosted, the first big show, I was in college at SC, and I booked a show called Fun House in the late 80s. And it was supposed to be 22 episodes for the first season. By the end of the first week, it was the number one, number one show in America.

• 38:07Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh. And you're still in college?

• 38:09Speaker 01

  I'm still in a dorm. And I literally went from the dorm room to the cover of Teen Beat in less than a month. And they ordered 195 episodes of the show.

• 38:19Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  And that changed my life completely. And I always knew, I met Dick Clark back in those days, and Dick said to me, "Hey, you're great, you're great, you're the next me, kid." And he said, "But remember, ownership is everything. Don't just be a meat puppet." These are his exact words. And I realized in the end...

• 38:36Rich Roll?

  And he was, like, he created this huge production entity, right?

• 38:39Speaker 01

  That's right. And that was what really made him the money. You can be a meat puppet, you can look good, right? That's great. But owning the shows and controlling your destiny, giving yourself the jobs, owning formats, creating formats, producing formats, that was where it was.

• 38:53Rich Roll?

  And were you studying film and television at USC?

• 38:56Speaker 01

  I was. And I left early because the show just became so big, I could no longer live in the dorm room. And I remember telling my Jewish mom, "Hey, the first year I don't have a TV show on the air, I'll go back and get my degree."

• 39:10Rich Roll?

  Have you gone back?

• 39:11Speaker 01

  That was 1988. I've had a show every year since.

• 39:22Rich Roll?

  All right, so that set you up. You're the new guy, right?

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 39:26Rich Roll?

  And so, at some point, so this was, so this was a long time ago, right? So just hundreds and hundreds of shows in between, right?

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, lots.

• 39:36Rich Roll?

  And then, reality kind of enters the picture and blows up as...

• 39:39Speaker 01

  And I was a storyteller. I loved telling stories. Fact that I could add game and story together, no brainer. Coming up with formats, I did that every day, for fun. So to come up with formats that were story-driven, it was like a dream come true. Was I trying to come up with a weight loss show? No, I was trying to come up with a show I could sell. I remember when the network bought the show, they said, "How much do you think someone can lose?" I was like, "A good salesman tells them whatever they want to hear." I go, "100 pounds." Guys, like, 100 pounds? Seriously? Absolutely. I didn't even do the math to defied how many weeks of production by 100 pounds to see how much they'd have to lose. Turns out, it was a shitload. It was too much.

• 40:21Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  There's no way. So I started calling experts around the country, weight loss experts, doctors, medical institutions. They all gave me the same answer. And like any good salesman, when you don't get the answer you want, you just hang up the phone and call somebody else. So I got one to two pounds a week. Click. Call the next one. One to two pounds a week. Click. Now I'm panicked. Production starts.

• 40:42Rich Roll?

  Right. You sold the shit. You sold it, right?

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:44Rich Roll?

  And it's there had never, there had never been a weight loss reality show, right?

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Never.

• 40:49Rich Roll?

  Like this is brand new territory. And if my memory serves me correctly, it was, I mean, it was sort of a hard sell, right? Like who's going to want to watch this?

• 40:57Speaker 01

  TV is about one thing, wish fulfillment. Beautiful people, beautiful cars, beautiful locations, hot girls. It was not about a 300 pound woman. Can you imagine pitching that to the network?

• 41:10Rich Roll?

  But it is about emotionally connecting with a protagonist, right?

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Ding ding. That was the thing. That was how it ended up getting sold. To be able to say to them, hey, look, these are emotional stories of people like your sister, and your brother, and your parent, and your coworker, and your best friend. You know these people. And I really wanted to change the conversation at the dinner table. But I didn't know. I was a TV producer, not a weight loss fitness guy.

• 41:34Rich Roll?

  And you were 30 at this time?

• 41:36Speaker 01

  I was. It was 14 years ago. So I was, I was 30, 34, 35 when the show premiered.

• 41:42Rich Roll?

  And had you created other shows prior to that?

• 41:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. I had, had big success with a show called For Love or Money. 28 million people watched the first finale, four seasons of that show on primetime at NBC. So this was the next NBC show that I was gonna do.

• 41:56Rich Roll?

  Gotcha.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  So then I go back to the president of NBC and I say, kind of in a whispered voice, hey, uh, I know we started, but it turns out, I called every expert in America. Turns out you can only lose one to two pounds a week. And I'll never forget this moment. We're still friends. The guy leaned forward, across the table, and he said, it turns out, if they lose only one to two pounds a week, you'll never work at this network again. You promised me 100 pounds.

• 42:24Rich Roll?

  And this sets in motion a series of events.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  Panic.

• 42:27Rich Roll?

  For better or worse, have created success, but also quite a bit of controversy.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  You know what? I actually would argue the opposite, which is it has done more good for millions of people and inspired millions of people. In the beginning, I was just trying to get people to order the side salad instead of the french fries.

• 42:44Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Trying to get people not to hit their snooze button. Who knew that there'd be a movement so big, it would almost be a new religion? You know, you think about it. Here's how I got the weight off of them. I looked at doctors and scientists and thought, all they're doing is measuring calories in versus calories out equals one to two pounds a week. Nobody measured love. Nobody measured hugs. Nobody measured inspiration.

• 43:08Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Scientists don't measure shit like that because it doesn't interest them. Because that's not something they can calculate. So I loved the weight off of them. I ran next to them. I worked out with them. I cried with them. I hugged them. I was not afraid of their fat, of their sweat, of their smell, none of it. And I looked them in the eye and told them they could do it. And do you know how many years it had been since somebody looked them in the eye and said, "You could do it"? Decades. They were in a dark room with every light bulb out. I showed them how to turn those light bulbs on. And in that moment of inspiration, we realized tears really dealing with your emotional stuff, tears, way more than fat. And you could have a week where somebody lost one pound, a

• 43:52Speaker 01

  week where someone lost zero, and another week where they lost one, and then they have an emotional breakthrough, and they lose 10 pounds, 12 pounds. And those tears do way more than fat. And you cannot have a breakthrough without a breakdown. I know that for sure.

• 44:08Rich Roll?

  Well, that is the reason why the show was so successful, right? It's the emotional component of it. It is the breakdown. It is the breakthrough. And it is the love and the support and the inspiration that comes from that. When you see these people that, you know, the average audience member can relate to, they see themselves, or they see their relative, or somebody that they care about deeply, in that individual, and they go on that journey, that like hero's journey. Of course, you're gonna, you're gonna captivate people with trying to figure out what's gonna happen next.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  I mean, how many, I know the most miserable people on the planet can run a 7.0 on a treadmill for an hour. Big deal. Doesn't mean they're happy, you know, so what makes you happy? How are you gonna get happy inside, whether you're fat, thin, tall, short, doesn't, none of that matters. It's, uh, it's a game of endorphins, right? We're all chasing endorphins, so we can all be happy.

• 44:58Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  And that's really, I, I, I try to show them how to find that in their life again.

• 45:03Rich Roll?

  And how many, how many years has the show been going on, like?

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Uh, show's been on 14 years, we've done 18 seasons.

• 45:09Rich Roll?

  Wow, 18 seasons. And how have you seen, have you seen the show change over that period of time?

• 45:16Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 45:16Rich Roll?

  Did it morph into something different than, than, you know, it originally was?

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Well, like all successful shows, you know, there becomes a lot of people who jump onto that success, right? And then they all want their share, they all want a bite of the apple. So, yeah, of course, it changes and it isn't as pure as it was in the beginning and it's a competitive show. So you got people trying to outdo the people from before and outdo, right? So it's all of that that you try to manage in any hit, whether it's scripted, unscripted, film. All has the same problems, is that in a lot of ways, shows eat themselves from the inside. The audience doesn't get tired of them, the people making the show get tired of figuring out how to make it new and fresh and exciting for them.

• 46:04Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm, and it becomes such a juggernaut, it's, it's generating so much income for everybody involved that you gotta keep it going.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  No doubt about it. And, and I really felt like we were doing some, something really good. Think about it, Thanksgiving dinner, you're around the table, every table in America, right? It's got a Thanksgiving dinner. You always pick on people at Thanksgiving dinner. First person you go to is the smoker. Hey, man, you know that stuff can kill you. Put the cigarette down. You can't smoke anymore. Next person they go to, the drinker. Hey, man, you could definitely have one or two less. Before our show, you would never go to the third person, which was your aunt, who was 100 pounds overweight, and say, you know, there is a way for you to get that weight off. You would have never done that. And because of this show, the conversation has changed the dinner table. In fact, you might go to the overweight person first and say, you know, it's unhealthy.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  I've seen these people go on these shows. It's amazing what they can do. You can, I can inspire you to do the same thing. You can do it, Grandma. You can do it, Aunt Sophie. Right? And I think that if that is the public service part of what we've done, then we've created a movement, which is what I was hoping for.

• 47:11Rich Roll?

  What is, you know, amongst these 18 seasons, you know, are there standout examples of people that meant the most to you, their stories or, you know, successes or failures that have, that sort of rise above the fray as memorable for you?

• 47:27Speaker 01

  Sure, lots, right? So there's one contestant, Pete Thomas, who every year, he was in season two, so 16 seasons ago, every year on the date of his final weigh-in, he sends me a picture and a video weigh-in of himself to keep himself accountable.

• 47:44Rich Roll?

  And he's kept the weight off.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  And he's kept the weight off. He's the only one out of all the contestants I've ever worked with that every year on the anniversary of his finale, he sends me a picture of himself and a picture of his feet on a scale. That is someone who's not going back. Guy lost 200 pounds. He's never going back.

• 48:02Rich Roll?

  But let's, so let's talk about the criticism, the controversy, the, you know, there's another side of this whole thing. It gets a lot of press. The recidivism, the people that are putting the weight back on and the sort of harping and sniping about theories about things that go on behind the scenes. You know, there's, you know, stuff about weight loss drugs and a lot of yelling and screaming and a lot of pressure for people to lose massive amounts of weight in an irresponsible amount of time, driven by the pressure of primetime network television, only to then graduate from this experience and go back and, you know, put all the weight back on and all the talk about.

• 48:44Rich Roll?

  Metabolic rate and the impact of extreme weight loss in a compressed period of time has on a person's ability to manage their weight going forward long term.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  Oh, I love this. This is the stuff that I could talk about all day, and here's why. One of the episodes of The Big Fat Truth, I bring five contestants from The Biggest Loser who gained all the weight back, and I bring them on the show.

• 49:07Rich Roll?

  And Ryan's one of them, right?

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Ryan Benson's one.

• 49:10Rich Roll?

  Ryan. So I saw Ryan last night. He came to the screening of What the Health.

• 49:14Speaker 01

  No way.

• 49:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. And he came up to me, and we were chatting a little bit after the screening. And he's telling me his whole story. And I was familiar with it because I'd read about it, and I knew he was part of the show. And I was like, I'm gonna see J.D. tomorrow. And he's like, say hi to him for me.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  But you know, as soon as you said I saw Ryan Benson, my first thought was, I'm so proud that he went to an event with you about plant-based eating. Isn't that transformation? Isn't that amazing that this guy, he didn't just settle for, ah, I lost it, I gained it back, alright, I'm done. No, he's back in the game, still trying to better himself, which I love.

• 49:51Rich Roll?

  And just for context, he was on like the first season or the second season?

• 49:56Speaker 01

  He was the first winner.

• 49:57Rich Roll?

  First winner.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Of the first season.

• 49:59Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  Of Biggest Loser.

• 50:00Rich Roll?

  So OG.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  Right. And part of this big New York Times front page article, which I was on a run in Central Park, when up on my phone, the headline came in. Amazing that you can have an article about Biggest Loser and the effects of Biggest Loser, and never even call the guy that created the show to talk to him.

• 50:17Rich Roll?

  It's a big article. It's a long article. I reread it this morning.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  Amazing. And so here's my point with that article, and I think there's a lot of takeaway there. And it's worth reading. Everybody should read it. I wanted to get to the core of why the people that gained the weight back did gain it back. Was it metabolism, or was it something else? I was interested. And to me, Danny Cahill, the guy that the whole article is about, who I knew very well, and who at the time had lost more weight than anyone in the history of the show, was a land surveyor. And he gained all his weight while driving from survey to survey, eating fast food in his car. He hated his job, hated his boss. It was an emotional upheaval for him to go to work every day. Gained all the weight, over 400 pounds. Lost 200 pounds. Now, follow me for a second.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  He then trades and makes his money on speaking engagements standing next to the picture of his old self.

• 51:12Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 51:14Speaker 01

  Keeps the weight off for four years doing these speaking engagements, trading off of the success.

• 51:19Rich Roll?

  Right, well, there's accountability. There's external pressure there to maintain it because his livelihood is dependent upon it.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Now, all the speaking engagements dry up because they want the new skinny person from The Biggest Loser. So what does he do? He goes back to the only thing he knows, land surveying at the same job. And the second he goes back to that job, what happens? He gains all the weight back. And my point is, nobody, no doctor, no scientist in that article dealt with the emotional impact of a moment of my memory, my subconscious, which works on survival every millisecond of the day, goes back, click, click, click, click, click, boom. What happened when I did this job? Oh, I ate my weight of 400 pounds. The second you get back to the job, the same thing is gonna happen. There's no running from it, there's no changing it. That is what's going to happen.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  So is that, is that a medical condition? No. It's an emotional condition.

• 52:14Rich Roll?

  It's, yeah, I think it's two things. I think it speaks to the difference between external pressure and that internal willingness, like the difference between wanting it for yourself versus doing it for, you know, the sort of rewards that come with it.

• 52:33Speaker 01

  You don't think it's pride? Come on, you don't think that when you're doing these speaking engagements, you don't think there's like, you're proud of yourself. Look, all these people are in this room because of, look at me, I did this.

• 52:43Rich Roll?

  But when that goes away, there's a psychological shift, right? And how you feel about yourself. Well, I don't have this anymore, people don't love me for that. And that sets in motion, you know, another domino effect that is going in the wrong direction.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  So you tell me, is that metabolism? Or is that, hey, I started making bad choices? And so I wanted to explore that personally. Look, think about how many producers who created a worldwide phenomenon like this show would lean into bringing five people back who gained all of the weight back and who are an example of exactly what you don't want to show. I wanted them on the show to look them in the eye.

• 53:21Rich Roll?

  For the new show.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  For the new show and look them in the eye and say, you tell me, is it your metabolism? Or is it your choices? What is it? And Ryan Benson looked me right in the eye and I had not spoken to him since the end of first season. And he said to me, I won. I collected my $250,000 check and drove directly to my favorite hamburger place and never looked back. So it's choices. It's, it's the difference between him and Pete Thomas, who every day looks at himself in the mirror and says, I'm gonna make sure I keep doing this today. I'm gonna make the right decisions that I need to make. And it's hard. If you've been, well, you can't weigh 175 pounds. If you went from 175 pounds to 400, right?

• 54:05Speaker 01

  And you went back to 175? You definitely have to work harder to stay 175 than I do. And my answer back is boo hoo. You did the crime to get to 400. You did the work to get back to 175. It's your job to make sure it stays that way. And so if you have to work a little more and you can't have the double cappuccino at Starbucks and, you know, get over it.

• 54:28Rich Roll?

  Right, but will you, I get that. You know, I'm with you on that. I think there is, like, let's, would you concede that creating an environment in which somebody is expected or pressured to lose that much weight in that short a period of time through some pretty, you know, severe restriction calorically and also, you know, a lot more exercise than they're used to, creates a scenario that ultimately is doomed from the get-go. And, you know, I'm not a scientist, so I don't know the impact of like, long-term metabolic rate as a result of that. There seems to be some science to suggest that there's validity to that. But I think just the unhealthy nature in and of itself of creating that kind of environment. Like, how, you know, what's your, how do you think about that?

• 55:13Speaker 01

  I guess if the article had shown both sides and compared 12 people who gained the weight back with 12 people who kept the weight off, I'd be more interested in the science.

• 55:24Rich Roll?

  So in other words, you're saying like, just, it's, it's, it's in, not necessarily inaccurate, but incomplete to point a finger at metabolic rate without taking into account and really evaluating all the environmental factors and psychological factors that came to play.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  Which is no different than drug addiction, alcohol addiction. It's the same thing. You know, when you got out of drug rehab, did you go back to the same street corner with the same friends?

• 55:50Rich Roll?

  No, you have to change everything.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. And the people that do, keep it off.

• 55:53Rich Roll?

  Well, they say you only have to change one thing, everything.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:56Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 55:57Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 55:58Rich Roll?

  And food is very similar. And my approach to, you know, how I change my relationship with food is premised upon what I learned in rehab and in recovery about my relationship with drugs and alcohol with substance. You know, you have to keep eating, right? So it's qualitatively different in that regard.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  Worse.

• 56:17Rich Roll?

  But there are certain principles about, you know, the environment that you surround yourself with, the people, and all of those externalities that come into play that either move you forward towards recovery or towards, you know, being healthier, or move you backwards. And there is no, the illusion is that there's a stasis point, right? Where you can either, you can go on cruise control because you got it figured out. No. Every thought that you entertain, every conversation that you have, every, you know, single thing that you put in your mouth is either moving you in a positive direction or in a negative direction. It's always in flux. And to be able to be mindful of that in every moment is the trick, or the, you know,

• 57:00Rich Roll?

  if you can, if you can master that, then I think you set yourself up for long-term success.

• 57:04Speaker 01

  Sure. And I'm looking to give people pictures of what success looks like, so that they can reflect on that when they're deciding whether to pat themselves on the back for a job well done that day. So, I'll give you another example. A girl in The Biggest Loser, our weigh-ins take four hours to shoot. Okay? It's a long time. One of the girls in the gym, contestant, was swaying back and forth. So she would go into the shot, out of the shot, into the shot, out of the shot. So I go on my walkie-talkie and I say to the assistant director, "Go in and tell that girl, stop swaying back and forth. She's in and out of the shot. She needs to stand still." He goes over, they get in an argument that I can see on camera. Comes back, she's not going to stop. Sorry. I go, "Go tell her to stop swaying back and forth."

• 57:48Rich Roll?

  What do you mean, swaying back and forth?

• 57:50Speaker 01

  Like, literally standing in place, just swaying back and forth. So lean one way, lean another, lean one way, lean... So he goes back and they get into another argument. I go, "That's it, I'm coming down there." I walk down to the gym, I pull her aside, "Come here."

• 58:03Speaker 01

  I got 150 people on staff here. It takes four hours. It's late at night. Can you just stop swaying back and forth? I'll never forget this moment as long as I live. She leaned into me in a whisper and she said, "I've done the math. If I sway during this four hour weigh in, I lose 175 calories more than if I don't." I said, "You go ahead and keep swaying. Widen the shot out." And I guess what I'm telling you, why I'm telling you that is, her level of commitment and a decision, instead of to sit in on a couch the rest of her life eating bonbons and doing what she was doing, a switch had been flipped. And once that switch is flipped, it's a, the power of the mind is so incredible. It can't be harnessed.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  And so you could, one argument could be like, "Hey, that's a little unhealthy. She's even worried about swaying." No. She's just re-found herself and she's willing to do anything to be successful and that I can admire.

• 59:00Rich Roll?

  But you have to balance that against, I mean, there is some aspect of that that is perhaps unhealthy and might be setting her up for, you know, a dysfunctional relationship with food going forward.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  For the rest of her life, the swaying? Yes. In that moment in time-

• 59:14Rich Roll?

  She's swaying all the time or she's overly focused on every single calorie.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  Absolutely. But in that moment in time, in a game, in a competitive situation, in doing something that's legal, moving, she's allowed to move, I'm all for it. And the reason I'm all for it is there were so many switches in her life that had been turned off and so many things she wasn't doing. Was she the best mother, the best wife, the best friend? No. She wasn't the best her. And so you might have to go to an extreme in the other direction to then find the middle ground once it's over. But you need to taste both sides to be successful.

• 59:48Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. And what about all these allegations of, you know, treadmills in the sauna, you know, trying to drop weight like wrestlers and mysterious brown bags full of, you know, weight loss pills and things like, I mean, there's a lot of press about, a lot of bad press about these kinds of things going on.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  If you would've said, "Hey, if Bob or Jill, if one of their people wins, they get paid twice what the other gets." Then I would go, "Oh yeah, there's a reason to do stuff like that."

• 1:00:20Rich Roll?

  But ratings are driven by, you know, extreme extenuating circumstances and the drama that evolves from that.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  I think the ratings are driven by really great storytelling of emotional battles with transformation and overcoming obstacles in your life that you never thought you could overcome. To me, the best, highest ratings we've had were those moments. And moments of failure. Moments when someone says, "I just can't do this anymore." So, I never saw those things. And like, any show, whether it's scripted or unscripted, drama tends to follow success. So, on the way up, everyone's pushing you up the mountain. The second you get there, the rocks start getting thrown and you gotta put on a helmet. So, I never saw that. I always felt that Bob and Jill had the right priorities set, that they wanted people to transform.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  People like Dolved and Jen, they really want change for people. And so, all the stuff that I saw was very positive. Was it competitive? Yeah. But that's why I make Extreme Weight Loss, too. Non-competitive show, single contestant, follow them for a whole year. I got tired of people saying, "Oh, but can you do it at home?" "Ah, sure, in a Malibu mansion with trainers, you know, food given to you." So, we did another show. Extreme Weight Loss, 500-pound people doing it at home, alone, for a year. So, we tried to spread the idea, when anyone would throw stones, we tried to create something else to show that it could be done. Now, of course, then they say, "Oh, yeah, but working out five hours a day and eating only healthy, you know, food and animal protein."

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  "Oh, I can't do that." So, that's why I came up with another way to do it. It's like, hey, you don't even have to exercise. You can just really watch what you eat and look at the results.

• 1:02:01Rich Roll?

  So, do you look at The Big Fat Truth as, do you perceive it as somewhat, on some level, like... Redemptive from The Biggest Loser?

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Evolutionary is how I look at it. A little more evolutionary that I love The Biggest Loser. I love what we accomplished. I love the brand. I love everything that we did.

• 1:02:27Rich Roll?

  And you wouldn't, like, looking back on it? You wouldn't change any of those extreme circumstances?

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  Hmm. Would I change any? I wouldn't. No. Because I think that the amount of people we helped, even outside the brand, far outweigh the few moments where someone could take it too far. You know, look, even in education, people take it too far. They got their kids studying morning, noon, right? Seven days a week till midnight every... What's the advantage of that? There is nothing in society that has not taken to an extreme. Look, hey, look at you, Rich. Took it to an extreme, right? Five Ironmans in five days on five islands. The unthinkable. Did you take it too far?

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  Was that healthy to eat 50, you know, almond butter sandwiches and bananas a day? And that, you know, you know what I mean? So I can admire what you did and then add it to my life. And so what I do is I say, "Man, I'm going on a 10-mile run. If Rich could do five Ironmans in five days on five islands, this runs nothing." So that inspiration of you going too far actually encouraged me to do something that was good.

• 1:03:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I appreciate that. Thanks. And I get that. And kind of the way that I message it is similar to that. I don't expect, you know, somebody hearing my story to go out and mimic exactly what I'm doing. But hopefully, it will recalibrate how they think about fitness and food, and they can meet me, you know, at the 15% mark. You know what I mean? Because if I could do it this far, then maybe, you know, you can, you can, like, you know, inch yourself forward in a way that perhaps before hearing that story, you might not have thought possible for yourself.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  You're the glossy trophy. I just want to rub up next to it.

• 1:04:10Rich Roll?

  But, you know, like, but I'm also going to say that I don't know that doing five Ironmans in a week on five islands is a healthy thing. I don't know that that's going to make me live longer.

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  But what did it do? It created a lightning rod for you to get your message and your movement out there.

• 1:04:22Rich Roll?

  Right. And so doing extreme things as a way to, as like an attention grab, or that's, that has a negative connotation, but as a, as a way of, you know, putting your own perimeter on, on the world and saying, "This is possible."

• 1:04:35Speaker 01

  And I'll, and I'll put another thing out to you. The New York Times once called me very aggressively on the phone. Angry. "We went to your website, and do you know what we found?" And I said, no, what did you find? Only half the people on your website kept the weight off from the finale and are still at the current weight. What do you have to say about that? So here's what I would say about that. If half of America that's obese, lost all the weight they needed to become healthy and stayed at that weight, we would save billions of dollars a year in healthcare. And people would live longer and had a better quality of life. Is there something wrong with that? Phone call over.

• 1:05:18Rich Roll?

  Do you feel like you have some responsibility to create kind of a little bit of an outpatient model for these people, once they depart the show and suddenly they're just back to their lives without, you know, people buzzing around them all the time, you know, being of assistance to this goal, right? Like, suddenly, suddenly they're just, they're freewheeling on their own, right? Like, you get out of rehab and you can go to a 12-step program and continue to, you know, maintain your sobriety. But if you're just going home after the biggest loser and you're going back into your life, you're armed with whatever you learned as a result of that experience, but you don't have the infrastructure to, you know, sort of hold you accountable. Like, you have to create that for yourself.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  And one day, your four kids are gonna leave the nest and they're gonna be on their own, too.

• 1:06:05Rich Roll?

  So you don't feel any obligation like you-

• 1:06:08Speaker 01

  Hopefully, the basis of information that you gave them, and that foundation, that pure foundation of knowledge and being a good person, right, that you gave them, is gonna pay dividends, and they're gonna use that later. And if you're really wanting to be successful, and you soak up everything, and you get my email, and you have my phone number, and you stay in touch with Bob and Jillian, and you utilize all the resources of the dieticians, and the nutritionists, and the doctors, and you keep all that, that is a quiver with a thousand arrows in it, that you can reach for at any moment. Or you can gain the weight back and blame that you didn't have an after-school program that gave you what you needed. And so the Pete Thomases who send me a picture of themselves, people who reach out by email

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  regularly to me that need help, we're there for them. And so I would argue that the people who really want to stay off the drugs and off the alcohol and off the food and live healthy lifestyles, they have the tools to know what they need to do it and they don't blame. They're not victims. They actually take control of their life and they make decisions that put them in a place to be successful.

• 1:07:14Rich Roll?

  Right. I get that. I get that. Do you, is there gonna be, is there another season of Biggest Loser coming up?

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  Not currently.

• 1:07:21Rich Roll?

  No. So, okay, so that, is that over now?

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  I would say as for right now, it definitely is. And Extreme Weight Loss had its last season last summer as well. I think that the notion of an overweight person in a gym with a trainer yelling at them is a little long in the tooth. And that the reinvention of that is necessary. Just like for a while, a sitcom was dead and then Modern Family brought it back. Right? And all of a sudden then the sitcom's alive again. Just like the drama, just like any genre of television, it has its pendulum that swings both ways. And I think in this specific genre of reality, I think it needs a little roadside CPR.

• 1:08:02Rich Roll?

  Right. Do you think back on that experience and wish that you could have leveraged some of the information that you have now about plant-based nutrition into that equation? Or would that not have been possible?

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  I don't know if it was the right time or place. I think that the movement has picked up so much steam in the last three or four years. And I don't know if it's just because I'm involved in it, so I'm more aware of it. But it certainly feels a lot more mainstream. You can walk into any grocery store and see Ripple Milk and, right? And everything is driven by plant-based milk, nut-based this. Like, so it seems to be more on the tip of people's tongue. Maybe that's LA and New York, and I'm not in Cleveland, so I don't know. But it certainly feels like it's becoming more mainstream. I think that would have been ahead of its time. I think we were ahead of our time then in dealing with people in the emotional side of weight loss. Hey, no one did that. Now, it is actually the way

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  into weight loss. Now, they start with the emotional decision before they even start with food. So, there's been so many positives that have come out of a brand as big as the Biggest Loser that for me, you know, I don't think that will ever be equaled again. Much like, I don't think there'll ever be another American Idol. You know, in that genre, it was a... It was the only one of its kind.

• 1:09:21Rich Roll?

  How did you originally find Bob and Jillian?

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's crazy, right? Because there's so many trainers and they all thought they were great. And how do you know which one to choose? And I went for against type. And what I mean by that is Jillian was acted more like the guy. Angry, yelling, screaming.

• 1:09:40Rich Roll?

  She's super alpha.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Right, but she's hot. And you're like, okay, well, that's against type. And Bob was tatted up and looked like he might rob you, but he just wanted to hug you.

• 1:09:49Rich Roll?

  He's like a sweet guy, yeah.

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. So having opposites like that, to me, always works in television. And I always look for things that are against type. It didn't hurt that Bob had a Saturday morning class, a treadmill class, that was packed. You had to sign in an hour before. And in Hollywood, right, I mean, you know, only the good ones are going to survive like that. By the way, to his credit, he still teaches that Saturday morning class.

• 1:10:12Rich Roll?

  Oh, does he really?

• 1:10:13Speaker 01

  Fifteen years later, it's still something he does, which is the roots. And so when you think about people that, to their core, really want to help people change their life. Bob used to show up on set with a car that would break down every week. He had no money. He had nothing. He just wanted to help people. And Bob and Jillian moved into that house the first year and lived for six months, 24 hours a day with these people, helping them to change their life. So the core of our belief system, what we all want, is for people to be happier. It's actually that simple. We just want people to be happier and live a better life. That's it.

• 1:10:45Rich Roll?

  So Bob had flirted with being plant-based. I think it must have been 2008, I think, maybe, around that time, 2008, 2009?

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  It was not only plant-based, but it was also very small portions of plant-based things as well.

• 1:10:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so I knew, and it kind of made news because he was, you know, playing around with that and seemed to be somewhat of an evangelist of it for a brief period of time. And then he kind of moved away from it and...

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  Paleo.

• 1:11:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, he went paleo. And it made a lot of news, maybe, what was it, a month ago? About a couple of weeks ago, when he had a heart attack at age 51, right? So have, which is awful, you know, I wouldn't wish that on anybody. Have you, and he was, I guess he was unconscious for like two days or something like that? So it was like a significant, yeah, like, so I wanted to know, like, how is he doing?

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  First of all, I love me some Bob Harper, right? I mean, this guy, he's the ultimate. And what I give him credit for is, he tries everything. Tries plant-based, tries paleo, tries all different extras, tries CrossFit, tries no weights, tries all body movements. He wants to know and be in touch with everything that's out there. And he does become very evangelical about the thing that he's in in that moment. And there's a certain beauty to that. He doesn't just try it, he dives in and it becomes the flavor gum he chews, right? And everything. He's into it. And I love that about him. That kind of passion, you can't teach. That's a beautiful thing. I don't, I'm not a fan of CrossFit. I love the community that CrossFit creates. I don't like that in a very fatigued

• 1:12:16Speaker 01

  state, to have giant heavy weight on someone who's 50 years old, snatching it up over their head and, you know, in other ways, that seems more violent than beautiful, is a, is a, is a thing that you need at that age. I just, I just don't believe it. I don't see it. He is a CrossFit diehard guy. And so that's a big part of his life. And that, and the combination with paleo, combination of heart disease that runs in his family, who knows if those were factors, you know, that, that all got involved together in this, in the same way? I don't know. None of us will ever know. But if anyone is going to overcome it and continue to be healthy and find the best way to be healthy, it'll be Bob.

• 1:12:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I hope so. I mean, I think in the press release that I saw, you know, he was attributing his sort of genetic predisposition to what had occurred because his mom had suffered a heart attack. Although I believe she, her heart attack was when she was like in her seventies, right?

• 1:13:11Speaker 01

  I don't know when it was, but his mom definitely did have a heart attack.

• 1:13:14Rich Roll?

  And as somebody who now, you know, we spoke at the outset of this podcast about this sort of disease prevention and reversal aspects of eating a plant-based diet, do you feel like, you know, like when you talk to Bob, are you like, come on, man, like get back on the plan here?

• 1:13:29Speaker 01

  Compelled. Absolutely compelled to say, hey, again, genetics load the gun, decisions pull the trigger. What are you doing? We gotta make good decisions. Bob's a really smart guy. I guarantee you, he's already done the research. And if he hasn't already gone plant-based, my guess is, he doesn't need me to tell him. I think he knows enough about the research and, and medical support that's out there, um, to know what he needs to be doing.

• 1:13:53Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:13:53Speaker 01

  Um, he, he, he's a smart guy. And even people like Jillian, who, you know, sort of are open to everything. Try everything, look at everything. I think she understands the importance and, and the basis of it as well. I don't think people are gonna take it to the level that you and I do. I think they use the more 80/20 rule. You know, it's like, okay, well, if I have a four-ounce piece of meat and I surround it with a gigantic plate of vegetables, ah, that's just as good. And it is a good step. That is a step in the right direction. But I think you and I have taken it to a different level.

• 1:14:22Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, we, uh, before we started recording, we were talking about What the Health, the new movie by the guys who made Cowspiracy. And they addressed that kind of 80/20 rule in this movie. You gotta check it out.

• 1:14:33Speaker 01

  I can't wait.

• 1:14:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you gotta watch this movie. Um, it does an amazing job of, of advocating that, that position of why, why going all, all whole hog and all the way in really is, you know, an important aspect of it.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  Look, there's so many ways to think about this. My mom has stage four pancreatic cancer. I said, "Mom, now's the time. You gotta go plant-based. Please, I'm begging you. Like, I'll help you, I'll make the food, whatever you need me to do." And she said, "If ever there was a time to eat a donut, now is it."

• 1:15:02Rich Roll?

  So... What can you do with that?

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  You, you say, "I love you."

• 1:15:06Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  And, "Where do you want me to go get you the donut?"

• 1:15:08Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  And so, everybody's at a different stage of their life, in their needs, in their wants, what they're comfortable with, what they're not comfortable with. And so, all guys like you and I can do is say, "Hey, here's what I'm doing." And by the way, what we're doing is extreme. Right? So, I don't expect anybody to get all the way there to where my family is. We go out to dinner, my wife and I, people won't even order until we've ordered our food.

• 1:15:30Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  I don't wanna make it uncomfortable for anybody, but it is something I'm extremely passionate about. This is how I live my life. When I do the show, I invite the contestants over, we make them smoothies in my house. I work out with them. I show them how to live their life and how to eat, and I do it by example. And I think that's the best that you and I can do.

• 1:15:48Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. So the new show, you've got these contestants and what is the kind of the through line? You know, how are you organizing it like episode by episode? Like, how are you teaching these people and what are the paces that you're putting them through?

• 1:16:04Speaker 01

  Right, well, the show, the basis of the show is I think there are a lot of unsung heroes in America who are unappreciated. So, and I want to deal with them one group at a time. Lot of them, they pick a job, guarantees just by the job they pick, they're going to be overweight. So, take a night nurse, for example. Nine times more likely to be overweight than the average population. Yet, they stand next to skinny doctors all the time.

• 1:16:28Rich Roll?

  Because they're up all night and they're off their rhythm?

• 1:16:30Speaker 01

  Off their rhythm, up all night. And it even goes down to the lighting. It goes down to switching from nights, three days a week, to days, when you're not working, right? The switching back and forth. And when you, and they, they live seven years less than the average population as well. These are health professionals. They know better than anyone. Why is it that there's, I go to the hospital to visit my mother. I'm stressed out. I'm there 12 hours in a room, we just stare at each other for the 12 hours. Why is it there's not one hospital in America that has a gym for patients' families that come in, they need to go downstairs and blow off a little steam for 45 minutes, work out, get a healthy smoothie, shower, and go back up to the room, like, endorphins running, smiling, to show some love to their family?

• 1:17:12Rich Roll?

  You'd think, right? Instead, there's McDonald's.

• 1:17:15Speaker 01

  Instead, it's worse. Right? It's not only McDonald's, what comes up in the elevator? All the patients that they got well, that bring donuts and all the rest of the garbage to thank them. There should be someone down at the bottom of the elevator, doesn't even allow that stuff to go in the elevator. This is the place of health. That, there's nothing healthy about it. Do you know where the most Coca-Cola is sold in America? Hospitals.

• 1:17:38Rich Roll?

  Is that true?

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  That is a true fact.

• 1:17:40Rich Roll?

  That is shocking.

• 1:17:41Speaker 01

  More Coca-Cola sold in hospitals than anywhere on the planet. You start adding all of those things up, that's a problem. As health professionals, as health organizations and corporations, they should make a decision to make sure that health means health everywhere. McDonald's aren't in cafeterias. Fried food is not in cafeterias. Night nurses, guess what? All the food's already closed down. Done. They can't even get food. They have to order Thai food from some place in the middle of the night with some guy coming trying to get up the elevator. So what do you think they're gonna get? It's gonna be terrible for them.

• 1:18:13Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:18:13Speaker 01

  There's no system set up where they can put their order in the day before? And the cafeteria, when it closes, could leave it in the cooler for them? And it could be a healthy salad or something that you and I would eat? It seems like the system's so broken and there's so many obvious, easy fixes. But follow the money.

• 1:18:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you gotta follow the money and also appreciate the fact that even a conversation about nutrition with respect to a treatment protocol for a patient in an acute situation in a hospital isn't really even on the radar. Or if it is, it's only recently that that has become something to even talk about.

• 1:18:50Speaker 01

  Very new information that a friend of mine's father, who has cancer, went to interview at Cedar Sinai, USC, and UCLA, at all the hospitals. First thing, all three oncologists said, "You need to go on a plant-based diet immediately." Now, that is earth-shattering news.

• 1:19:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  Yet, they don't serve that food in the very hospitals that they work in.

• 1:19:14Rich Roll?

  It's Salisbury steak and jello.

• 1:19:16Speaker 01

  I talked to a doctor who shall go nameless at Cedar Sinai, who told me the only thing that matters, he said, I like this, "Meet people don't agree with the plant people and vice versa, but one thing everybody can agree on, sugar, when I inject sugar into a tumor in a Petri dish, I can watch the cancer cells multiply when I put sugar in there." It's the only thing I can put in there when that happens. And we know that exercise helps a lot. So I say to him, "Well, what do you do? You're the, one of the greatest researchers at Cedar Sinai in health and cancer, what do you do?" And the quote he gave me was, "I have a sweet tooth and I don't like to exercise."

• 1:19:57Speaker 01

  I said, "Well, if you're not gonna do it with everything that you know, you're not doing it, how do you expect your patients to do it?" And he said, "Well, I have disease on my side."

• 1:20:09Rich Roll?

  What does that mean?

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  I asked him the same thing.

• 1:20:10Rich Roll?

  Oh, because the patients have disease, so they're more motivated.

• 1:20:14Speaker 01

  They're compliant, because they're gonna die. So, why do you gotta wait till that point? I just, to me, it baffles my mind.

• 1:20:21Rich Roll?

  It goes back to psychology.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:20:23Rich Roll?

  You know, it's so complicated.

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  But that's the doctor that's messaging out to the patient. Waiting for disease to become compliant. The doctor doesn't even do the things he knows would help. So, how do you get a regular person to do it?

• 1:20:37Rich Roll?

  Right, and then backing up from that, when you look at, you said, "Follow the money." The extent to which, you know, big food companies are embedded into the hospital system, and the amount of money that's made on those contracts is massive. And there are, you know, powerful lobbying groups, et cetera, that have a lot to say about how that goes down.

• 1:20:57Speaker 01

  Someone should do a study on how much they make on soda versus how much they make on beds in the hospital. I would almost bet you they make more on soda.

• 1:21:06Rich Roll?

  That would be an amazing study.

• 1:21:09Speaker 01

  I would almost bet.

• 1:21:10Rich Roll?

  But a lot of that soda's gotta be people in the waiting room.

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  Sure. They shouldn't be drinking it either. Again, if you walk into a hospital, it should be a picture of health. That's what it's about. Nursing people back to health, right? And the people that visit should see that written on everyone's faces.

• 1:21:26Rich Roll?

  How about getting to the root cause of what's causing the problems that deliver people to the hospital in the first place, as opposed to treating the symptoms with pharmaceuticals?

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  Sure, well, food is in, last time I checked, is not reimbursable. That's the problem.

• 1:21:40Rich Roll?

  That's the problem.

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  You get someone on insulin, every two months, they gotta come back to get that checked out, to make sure it's working properly. Tell somebody to eat more broccoli, they never come back. Because they won't need to. And then what? Then the whole system breaks down.

• 1:21:55Rich Roll?

  It's beginning to shift, though. You know, I think you're seeing, people are waking up to this, and they want more from their medical practitioners, and so clinics are popping up that are about preventative care, about functional medicine. You know, people like, do you know Robert Osfeld? He's a doctor in the Bronx. I've had him on the podcast. He's created a whole program in this, you know, underprivileged section of New York, where diabetes rates are through the roof. He brings them in, he gets them on a plant-based diet, and there's all this... Very significant outpatient care to keep people on track. And that's at odds with the typical system of you get 15 minutes and you diagnose and

• 1:22:40Rich Roll?

  you prescribe and you get them out the door and that revolving door kind of thing. You have to create a new model that on some level has to be financially, economically viable, not with the margins that you're getting in the old system, but in a way that's actually getting at the cause of what's getting people sick and getting them on preventative measures that are going to put them on a healthy trajectory.

• 1:23:01Speaker 01

  The way to do that is to help somebody's pocketbook. And what I mean by that is start with something simple. What if, think about how gyms make their money. They make their money with people who are asleep at the wheel. I give you my membership, you automatically charge me every month, I feel guilty and shame because I don't go, I don't cancel my membership, thank God, because they have 10,000 members and if they all showed up on the same day, place would shut down because of the fire code. What if you did the reverse? What if you had a gym that said, hey, it's $250 a month, but if you swipe your card five times and come, it's half off. We'll refund you half the money.

• 1:23:38Rich Roll?

  Right, give them their money back when they use it.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  The more you use, the less it costs. To me, that's making a statement. That's saying, hey, I care about your health. I don't care about the fact that all you're doing is you're paying me a monthly sum and you're asleep at the wheel and you don't come in.

• 1:23:54Rich Roll?

  So how would that work in a medical context? You pay a doctor a lump sum and then when you make progress, he gives you your money back?

• 1:24:01Speaker 01

  Absolutely. The better you do, the more you're rewarded. In the end, that's the only way to get people to be compliant. For instance, I had an uncle say to me, ah, I'm getting ready to go on vacation, I need to lose 10 pounds quick, how do I do it? I go, easiest thing in the world. He goes, how? Cut me a check for five grand. I said, what are you talking about? I said, you lose the 10 pounds before your vacation, I give you the check right back. You don't, I'm taking my family on a vacation that weekend. And then I saw the light bulb go off in his eyes. He's like, oh, I need to have skin in the game. I need to have something that I'm afraid of losing to make sure that I do what I'm supposed to.

• 1:24:37Rich Roll?

  But that's also a quick fix, right? If you want to get somebody to really change how they think about themselves long-term, like really adapt their lifestyle to new patterns that are going to serve them better, it's going to take more than that.

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:52Rich Roll?

  Because as soon as he wins that bet, he's going to go back to whatever he was doing.

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  Or he wins that bet.

• 1:24:57Rich Roll?

  There's no negative external pressure anymore.

• 1:24:58Speaker 01

  He feels better. He looks better in the mirror. He's happier. He doesn't get up. He's not in pain when he gets up. His joints don't hurt. And he's like, this feels pretty good. Yeah, I'll keep this up a little longer. That's what I'm hoping for. I'm hoping it's somewhere along the way, click, oh, wait a second. I like this. And so if I can get somebody to that place, and even one out of two end up doing that, it's a win. You want to lead people, show them what success tastes like, and then once they taste it, they always want more.

• 1:25:29Rich Roll?

  The promised land, though, I think, has to do with the mental shift from somebody who thinks of themselves as a fat person, as a 400-pound person, to embracing the idea that they are something else, right?

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  Well, that's two different things.

• 1:25:46Rich Roll?

  Fundamentally.

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  One is losing 10 pounds. The other is a 400-pound person, which guaranteed 100% of the time, there's darkness. That's not, hey, I really like pizza and french fries. So you're right. A 400-pound person is a completely different structure that needs to be unwrapped and figured out.

• 1:26:04Rich Roll?

  Right. And that's a trickier puzzle.

• 1:26:07Speaker 01

  No doubt about it. But it's so doable. It is so doable. I had a 400-pound guy. I have everybody write down three victories a day that are very small. And I never put that on the show. It's a private thing that we do. And one guy wrote down, like, four days into it, "I tried today, even though no one was looking." Now, on its surface-

• 1:26:27Rich Roll?

  That's the whole game.

• 1:26:28Speaker 01

  Most people would have read that and not thought anything about it. It brought tears to my eyes. And because here's why. Where else wasn't he trying when no one was looking? As a husband, as a father, as a worker, as a friend? Now, he just, the button was flipped in four days. He tried when no one was looking and he saw the value in that. So that goes way beyond what the scale says.

• 1:26:51Rich Roll?

  Because that's somebody who's doing it for themselves, not for any other reason.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And that is transformation.

• 1:26:56Rich Roll?

  That's where you have to get, that's where you have to drive people towards.

• 1:26:59Speaker 01

  And that was a Biggest Loser contestant. So we can say, hey, yeah, are there people that push the boundaries on The Biggest Loser? Yeah, people push the boundaries in everything. Right? First, it was send someone around the world, next thing you know, it's send someone to the moon. Next thing you know, it's send someone to Mars. Next thing you know, it's, well, there's gotta be an alien somewhere. Right? We're always pushing the boundaries. But there are also people that just have that small moment of wow. I tried when no one was looking, that are, to me, just as important and need to be recognized in the same way.

• 1:27:30Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. What have you learned from The Biggest Loser? Like, what are the kind of tools and tactics that have worked that are, that you're applying in this new show? And what hasn't worked that you've had to change?

• 1:27:48Speaker 01

  Well, the thing that always works, and it doesn't have to be with weight loss, is the body's no match for the power of the mind. For sure. Look at you. How many times did your body tell you, uh, what are you doing? Just stop. And your mind said, uh-uh, you're not stopping. No matter what, you're not stopping. The beast wraps you up and tells you, you're done. And your mind goes, nope, I'm not done. I needed a friend on this run. Thanks, beast. Go ahead, you can join me. That is something you can't teach somebody, right? That's something you have to have inside you. And so I believe that training people to work the power of the mind is the greatest asset you can have.

• 1:28:29Rich Roll?

  And how do you do that? Like, what is the, how do you, what's the way in for you? Like, how do you approach that?

• 1:28:35Speaker 01

  Well, believing you can do it and believing that you're worth it. And those two things may sound like a fortune cookie, but they're not. There are more people walking around on the planet today who don't think they're worth having, "I didn't deserve that guy, I don't deserve this car." They get comfortable with taking shots in the face. And I teach people how to throw punches, not how to take them.

• 1:28:55Rich Roll?

  But to get to that point, you have to delve deep into that pain, right? And push that button and get it exposed, bring it into the light and have people wrestle with it, right?

• 1:29:06Speaker 01

  People have exposed secrets that they've had for thirty, forty years to me in under five minutes. So it's getting a trust with them and looking them in the eye and not accepting their bullshit. So when you say, "Hey, well, why are you 300 pounds?" "Oh, I just, I just love food. I love..." "No, that's not it, try again." "Don't tell me that's not it. I told you I love food, I love barbecue sauce, I love ice cream." "No, that's not it." And really not accepting their bullshit, which everyone in their life does accept. And then breaking through that and having them admit what it really is. And once they admit what it really is, I just get out of the way and the weight falls off of them. So that tactic's never gonna be different.

• 1:29:49Speaker 01

  It's no different than with, with my son as well, when he comes home with a problem from school. It's three easy steps to accomplish anything. First, identify the problem. "Hey, I'm overweight, I'm losing, you know, all these things in my life I can't do anymore. Gosh, it's terrible, I'm gonna die at a young age." Number two, make a list, what you need to do. "I need to move more, I need to eat better." "Not rocket science." In the case of a kid, it's usually, "I need to do my homework, I need to study for the test," right? Number three, it's the only step nobody gets to. It's the only step that matters. And so if anyone's looking for this giant secret that I have on step number three, there isn't one. Step number three is go do it. Stop talking about it and actually do something.

• 1:30:33Rich Roll?

  But what is the barrier that prevents people from the doing?

• 1:30:36Speaker 01

  That activation.

• 1:30:37Rich Roll?

  There's that, you know, there's the huge, I talk about this all the time, but it's like the crevasse between... The intellectual understanding and the actual action, right?

• 1:30:49Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:30:49Rich Roll?

  You can totally understand, yeah, I need to stop doing all these things. But what is it that activates people and motivates them and gets them moving?

• 1:30:58Speaker 01

  For the people I work with, activation is about being worth it. It's about feeling like you're worth it, feeling like you matter, feeling like someone wants to hear you, feeling like somebody loves you. And that's where I come in. And if you, again, if you would have told me before I did these shows I was gonna be that guy, I would have told you you were crazy. And I've always been a passionate guy. I've always loved to solve problems. But I was a producer. You know, I have zero, I don't even have a college degree. I have zero background in nutrition, zero background in exercise physiology. I got zero background in all of this stuff. So why is it that I can get more weight off of people than the professionals? Because I'm dealing with something they're not. That's the game.

• 1:31:41Speaker 01

  You don't need to go somewhere to get advice on how to eat better. You know what you should be doing. It's all the emotional stuff that you need to fix. And when you do the emotional work, the benefits are massive. And so every show, in my opinion, that I've done, all starts at the same exact entry point. And that's the emotional decision of why food gives you more pleasure than anything else in life.

• 1:32:03Rich Roll?

  So if someone's listening to this and they're thinking, you know what? I just, I rubber band diet, I'm okay for a while, I go back, I lose weight, I put it back on. And maybe I'm not looking at that emotional component and I'm ready to look at it. But, you know, I'm not gonna be on a TV show and JD's not available to me. Like, what should I do?

• 1:32:24Speaker 01

  You just described my book. So in the book, I make you a contestant. Because not everybody does want to expose their life. I give the same questionnaire I give to the contestants to fill out. I ask you to make a tape of yourself as if you were gonna be on. Because when you ask your friends, hey, why do you think I'm fat? And you really want to know, they will tell you. When you ask your kids, "Do you think mommy's fat?", they'll be honest with you and they'll tell you. And you need to hear these things. You know, you can't hide behind the forty pairs of shoes you have in your closet, hoping everyone's gonna look at your feet and not your face. Because it doesn't work that way. Everyone knows. Everyone knows what you feel like inside. Everyone is aware of it. And you need to actually ask the questions.

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  And I would argue that you need to plant the flag in the sand that says, "This year, I'm going to do X." Make it public. The more public you make it, the more likely you are to be successful. Get other people involved. People want to help. That's what, I think people think no one wants to get involved in their life. Ask for help. People want to help you. And they will support you. If you want to just go out with the same friends and have ribs, french fries and ice cream, then that's what's gonna happen. You have to change some of those friends if they won't get on board. You have to really want to change something in your life to be successful. Like anyone, not just weight loss. Right? You want to make more money? What are you gonna do? Work harder or work less?

• 1:33:46Rich Roll?

  I also think that we have to be honest about what's really going on. I mean, nobody wants to fat shame. You know, nobody wants to be somebody pointing fingers and blaming and sort of exploiting people that are overweight. But at the same time, we have to recognize and talk about the fact that we have an obesity epidemic right now that's leading to all of these chronic illnesses that are killing people unnecessarily. And to just normalize it is not okay either, right? To just say, "Well, this is..." You know, it's like you look around, like seventy percent of people are obese or overweight.

• 1:34:29Rich Roll?

  And we're just supposed to sort of accept this as the new normal and we're not allowed to like, talk about the fact that, you know, maybe this isn't the best way to go?

• 1:34:39Speaker 01

  I had to defend it. The night before Biggest Loser came out in 2004, the Fat Women's Association of America, and I'm not exaggerating, went to Entertainment Tonight, who asked me to come on the show, and defend the fat shaming that the TV show Biggest Loser was gonna, you know, be involved with. And I said, "First of all, nobody has seen a frame of the show." So I don't understand how people could be so unhappy or so upset. So I agreed to go on. People were very nervous at the network about me going on the show. I went on. The two women that represented the association were over 300 pounds, balding, did not look healthy. They said, "How dare you make a show? These are the last people on earth. You know, leave them alone.

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  They're not bothering you." And there are plenty of overweight people who are overweight and happy. Why can't you leave them alone? And just like every good TV show, the camera cuts to me on an extreme close-up. The red light goes on and the host says, "Well, what do you have to say about people who are overweight and happy?" And I look right in the camera and I said the following. "I'm looking for people who are overweight and unhappy. And I think there's millions of them. So if you're overweight and happy, fine." Of course, off-camera, I would argue, they're not happy. They're acting like they're happy, but they're not. There are millions of people who are unhappy because they're overweight. Why don't we try to help those people? Why do we have to ignore it because there are some who claim that they're overweight and happy?

• 1:36:09Speaker 01

  I've never met one. I've never met an overweight person who in less than five minutes, I couldn't have in my arms in a puddle of tears about how they're not really happy, it's just a show.

• 1:36:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a huge problem, man.

• 1:36:23Speaker 01

  Right? And you're not gonna eat your way out of it.

• 1:36:27Rich Roll?

  And normalizing it is not the solution either.

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  No, and then what happens is, it's a multi-generational problem of what people refer to as the fat gene, which I refer to as the bad decisions gene. So you're now educating young kids how you eat. And then they do it to their family. Now you've got multiple generations of people who are unhealthy, taxing the healthcare system, and more importantly, not living the best life they can live. And so, and there's not major changes that need to happen to help those people. You just have to educate them.

• 1:36:56Rich Roll?

  Right, and the progeny feel disempowered. They feel like they're just destined to be overweight because, you know, their forebears are as well. Their parents, their grandparents, their uncles, their aunts.

• 1:37:08Rich Roll?

  But they're being deprived of an alternative perspective on that.

• 1:37:12Speaker 01

  And they think that the, you know, a $1 hamburger at a fast food restaurant feeds their family and at least their family doesn't go to bed hungry, but they don't realize that if they buy the appropriate things, vegetables and veggie broth, and they can make soups and lentils and quinoa, and that it's actually in the long run serves more meals than if they just go get the salty, you know, calorically dense hamburger that's going to kill them at a young age.

• 1:37:40Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. All right, well, we got to wrap this up, but maybe a good place to kind of end it is to leave people with some suggestions for how they can embark on a more plant-centric, plant-based diet, if they're flirting with it.

• 1:37:56Speaker 01

  I mean, look, the best way to go plants is to listen to you, because that's inspiring to me.

• 1:38:03Rich Roll?

  I'd agree with that.

• 1:38:04Speaker 01

  And so that would be the number one rule. If they can't listen to you, or they can't listen to you all the time, I would say start very simple. And so the way we started is, we gave each one of our kids $5, and we went to the farmer's market and said, "You can buy whatever you want with it." That's empowering for a kid. And so they went and bought what they wanted, and that made them want to eat it, and it made them want to go back again.

• 1:38:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because then they're invested in it.

• 1:38:30Speaker 01

  They have ownership. The other thing is, when kids are young, and by young, I mean under eight years old, if you grow one green bean in a little pot in your backyard, they will eat a whole bowl, because they think they grew them all. So encourage them to watch a little plant grow, and watch that green bean, or that tomato, or, right, to see it grow, and then have them pull it off the little tree and bring it inside, and then cut it into 20 tomatoes, right, or 20 green beans, and it shows them the process of where food comes from, and once they understand that, they also have ownership in that part of it as well.

• 1:39:05Rich Roll?

  That's huge, you know, because then they're also fully connected to the entire, you know, the entire process of where the food comes from, in a really powerful and potent way, in a culture in which we're completely disconnected from that.

• 1:39:18Speaker 01

  Which... I think is exciting for kids.

• 1:39:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:22Speaker 01

  And then. And then lastly, I would argue that anything that seems overwhelming is. And so when you're going from a diet of eating whatever you want to completely restricting yourself of everything, it's very hard to sustain. And so what I would do is I would make one change a week. And when you start stacking those decisions on top of each other, after a month, you got four good decisions. After two months, you got, you got eight. And so the easiest way to do it would be start with one meal a day. That you're gonna go all plant-based. Then cut soda out, then cut, right? And once you start doing those.

• 1:40:06Speaker 01

  Once you start doing that and getting one decision stacked up on another, then success becomes easier.

• 1:40:13Rich Roll?

  And if you slip up, and you probably will because you're a human being, you're part of the human race, to not flog yourself and use that as an argument for why you can't do it or why it's too hard. Instead to just look at it as a learning experience and, and think about what led you to that bad decision and try to do better in your next decision as opposed to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

• 1:40:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, Rich, hey, I've, I've sat there with a sleeve of Thin Mint Cookies from the Girl Scouts and eaten the entire thing. The difference is, the very next meal I eat is perfect. And so if you're gonna bang your head against the wall and it hurts, the craziest thing to do would be three hours later.

• 1:40:54Rich Roll?

  Bang your head again.

• 1:40:55Speaker 01

  Bang it against the wall again. And you're building up scar tissue and then the next three hours you do it again. But if you back off and just let your head heal, right? Chances are you'll be fine. So if there's a slip up every now and then, like you said, you can't beat yourself up. We're all human beings and you let a little life creep in in those moments and laugh about it. And I think that finding the joy in a lot of the sadness that we all have would make life easier for everybody. That shame is the thing that I, I have the biggest problem with in what I do. Shame is a killer. And when you get shame, you're in a room alone with the ice cream. And so if you can eliminate shame, chances are you could be success.

• 1:41:32Rich Roll?

  And the process to eliminating shame is to shine a light on it. You gotta bring it out into the open.

• 1:41:37Speaker 01

  I tell people, you're mowing down a bag of potato chips? Get someone on the phone. Hey, I'm mowing down a bag of potato chips, somebody help me quick!

• 1:41:45Rich Roll?

  Which is the last thing you want to do, but that's the key to transcending it.

• 1:41:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, because when you get rid of that shame, it's very empowering. Then instead of being the guy who the strings are getting pulled on, you become the puppeteer and you're pulling the strings, and that feels good.

• 1:42:02Rich Roll?

  Alright, man, I think we did it.

• 1:42:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, now it's time to go for a run.

• 1:42:05Rich Roll?

  How do you feel?

• 1:42:07Speaker 01

  I feel good, I feel like I'm ready for some more plants.

• 1:42:09Rich Roll?

  You're all fired up.

• 1:42:10Speaker 01

  Let's go!

• 1:42:10Rich Roll?

  Awesome, so The Big Fat Truth, the book, you can get it on Amazon. Use the banner ad at richroll.com to purchase that, check it out. And the TV show sometime in May, we're not quite sure yet.

• 1:42:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, Zee Living, you can go to zeliving.com right now and there's information about the show on there.

• 1:42:26Rich Roll?

  Oh, cool, zeliving.com, check it out. Starring the great Dr. Michael Greger, of course, our favorite.

• 1:42:33Speaker 01

  And the great Rich Roll.

• 1:42:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, I always thank you for having me on the show for one day, that was super fun.

• 1:42:40Speaker 01

  You guys are like the Michael Jordan of this world for me, so to have a guy like you and Greger on the show, I'm like a little kid in a candy store.

• 1:42:48Rich Roll?

  Oh, Greger's the star, come on.

• 1:42:50Speaker 01

  I don't know, man, you're up there!

• 1:42:52Rich Roll?

  I came in to give a few pats on the back.

• 1:42:54Speaker 01

  Your book is right next to his on my desk.

• 1:42:56Rich Roll?

  Cool, man, well, great talking to you, dude.

• 1:42:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, you too.

• 1:42:59Rich Roll?

  Alright, thanks, man.

• 1:43:00Speaker 01

  Peace. Plants.

• 1:43:04Rich Roll?

  Alright, I hope you guys enjoyed that, I really dug talking to JD, I really like that guy, I think he's a good dude. I'm excited about his new TV show, once again, The Big Fat Truth. It's premiering Sunday, June 11th at 8:00 PM Eastern and Pacific on Zee Living, so check your local cable provider to find out what channel number that is. Hey, do you guys want to come to Ireland with us? July 24th through 31st, we're going to this incredible manor called Ballyvallane for Plant Power Ireland. It's like this crazy James Bond-like estate on 90 acres in the Irish countryside. It's really beautiful place, we scouted it last year, I'm really excited to go there. We're gonna be doing stuff with the Happy Pair lads, remember those guys from the podcast? It's gonna be really cool, Seven Days of Transformation with Julie and I.

• 1:43:48Rich Roll?

  We're gonna cook, we're gonna eat, we're gonna run, we're gonna meditate, we're gonna do tea ceremony, we're gonna do some pretty intensive... Workshops on relationships and creativity and nutrition. There's going to be Ayurvedic treatments. We've got glamping tents. It's going to be really fun, also intense. It's all designed to help you unlock your best self and transform your life wholesale. So if you think this is something for you, you can learn more at ourplantpowerworld.com. If you'd like to support this show and my work, share it with your friends, leave a review on iTunes, subscribe on iTunes, or wherever you listen to your podcast content. We have a Patreon. Thank you so much to everybody who has contributed financially to my work. I really appreciate that. And that's it. Also, if you'd like to receive

• 1:44:32Rich Roll?

  a free weekly email from me, I send one out every Thursday. It's called Roll Call. It's just got some tips, some tools, some resources that I came across over the course of the week. Usually, an article I read, a documentary I watched, or a podcast I listened to, the book that I'm reading, blah, blah, blah. Things that have inspired me, that I got something out of, that I found useful. I'm never going to spam you. There's no affiliate links in this. It's totally free. And I'm enjoying sharing this with you guys, and you guys seem to be enjoying it on your end. So if you want in on that, just throw your email in one of those email boxes on my website at richroll.com, where you will also find signed copies of Finding Ultra, as well as The Plant Power Way. We've got t-shirts,

• 1:45:13Rich Roll?

  tech tees, and other kind of merch, and schwags. Schwags. Is it schwag? It's schwag, right? I want to thank today's sponsors, Harry's, a superior shave at an affordable price. Friends of the Rich Roll Podcast can visit harrys.com/roll to redeem your free trial set, which comes with a razor, five-blade cartridge, shaving gel, and post-shave gel. All you've got to do is pay shipping. Also, MeUndies, the world's most comfortable underwear. Visit meundies.com/roll to get free shipping in the US and Canada, and 20% off your first pair. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiello for audio engineering and production, Shawn Patterson for all his wizardry on the graphics, including all those cool motion graphics that I'm sharing on Instagram and Instagram

• 1:45:54Rich Roll?

  Stories. Theme music by Analemma. Also, if you guys are into what I'm doing, fitness-wise, training-wise, follow me on Instagram. I'm essentially vlogging. All of my training on Instagram stories, every single day, I kind of share what my workout is. I do a before and I do an after. You can also follow me on Strava to get the details on that. And that's it for now. Thanks for the love, you guys. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.