Ultimate Weight Loss Secrets With Chef AJ

Let's be clear: just because you're vegan doesn't mean you're healthy. To be sure, for so many reasons, eating animal free is awesome. But it's not a wellness panacea. Oreo cookies and Lay's potato chips are vegan. Unless your diet is liberated from the growing abundance of refined and highly processed processed foods, you're prone to confront the same weight management issues and chronic lifestyle illnesses that plague the average consumer subsisting on the standard American diet. Just ask Chef AJ. A vegan chef for almost 40 years, she nonetheless struggled mightily with obesity for decades — prisoner to an addiction to processed snacks, refined sugar desserts, and an array of vegan junk foods that left her not only chronically overweight, but seriously unwell. AJ's salvation came only when she finally became willing to confront her unhealthy relationship with food as a true addiction. It's a journey that required her to completely let go of habits that no longer served her, accept help, and embrace an entirely new relationship with food in the form of a whole foods, plant-based lifestyle. This is her story — an inspiring tale of triumph and personal transformation that will leave you rethinking your own habits. Enabled with the tools required to achieve and maintain your optimal body weight. And empowered to live your best life. A former comedian, today Chef AJ is a renown plant-based chef, culinary instructor, public speaker and member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine with a certificate in Plant-Based Nutrition from Cornell University. An expert in food addiction, emotional eating and creating meals to transform health, AJ is the host of the television series Healthy Living with Chef AJ and has appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Late Show with David Letterman and more. In addition, she is author of Unprocessed: How to Achieve Vibrant Health and Your Ideal Weight*. Her latest book, The Secrets To Ultimate Weight Loss* comes out soon (release date TBA). Full of life, AJ is one of my favorite health warriors, totally committed to serving others. Picking up where we left off in RRP #56 way back in 2013, this conversation is a must listen for anyone who struggles with food addiction, unhealthy cravings and a fluctuating waistline. As impactful as it is entertaining, it's an exchange about the often under-addressed emotional aspects of eating. It's about the hows and whys behind empowering a new relationship with food. And it's about the joy, vitality and self-esteem that can be experienced by breaking the chains of food addiction. I sincerely hope you enjoy this interaction as much as I enjoyed having it. More importantly, my hope is that you put AJ's insights to work — because if she can do it, you can too. A reminder that the podcast is also viewable on YouTube here: http://bit.ly/chefajrrp 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?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  Americans eat over 92% of their calories from animal products and processed food. They're eating a fiberless diet with no micronutrients, and they're always going to be driven to overeat because they're really looking for food with nutrients. To me, what food addiction means is refined food addiction. You're not really addicted to food and eating. If you don't eat, you'll die. But there are particular foods, specifically foods like sugar and flour, that are very highly refined carbohydrates, that when we ingest them, they have a more drug-like behavior than food-like behavior.

• 1:37Rich Roll?

  That's Chef AJ, this week, on the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:55Rich Roll?

  Hey everybody. How are you guys doing? What is happening? How are you? Greetings, podcast listeners of Planet Earth. I am Rich Roll. Indeed, I am your host on this podcast. Welcome to the show, the show where I go deep, where I get intimate with some of the most interesting change makers, thought leaders, paradigm breakers across a wide spectrum of topics and themes, everything from health, fitness, athletics, to medicine, entrepreneurship, entertainment, environmentalism, and in the case of today's guest, diet, nutrition, weight loss, and personal transformation with my good friend, the ebullient, the exuberant, the effervescent, what else starts with an E? The enthusiastic, the earnest, the eager,

• 2:38Rich Roll?

  the energetic, plant-based chef, AJ. She's so great. It's a great conversation coming up in a couple few. But first, I just wanted to take a moment to thank everybody who made last week's launch of our brand new cookbook, The Plant Powerway Italia, a massive success. Thank you so much. Julie and I greatly appreciate it. And it's been super fun to see everybody sharing the book and the recipes on social media. Unbelievable, amazing. The reviews are rolling in on Amazon. They've been great. So thank you for that. And we're just honestly just so happy to finally have it out in the world. So if you haven't checked it out yet, you can pick it up. I think you'll really enjoy it. It's available wherever you buy

• 3:19Rich Roll?

  books. For those who are overseas, you can purchase signed copies through my website at richroll.com and we do ship internationally. Also, we did announce the winner of the spot on our upcoming Tuscany retreat the other day. In case you missed it, huge congrats to Chloe Olivia. She is @Chloe's Clean Cuisine on Instagram. Congrats to you, Chloe. We're really looking forward to meeting you in a couple of weeks. And thank you to everybody who entered the contest. Of course, it goes without saying that we wish we could bring all of you.

• 4:02Rich Roll?

  Chef AJ, you guys are in for a treat with this woman. She's a kick in the pants. She was one of my first guests on the show, episode 56, way back in October of 2013. Amazing, I can't believe I've been doing this podcast thing for that long. And she's just great. She's a former comedian, a chef, a culinary instructor, a public speaker, and an author devoted to the plant-based lifestyle for almost 40 years. AJ holds a certificate in plant-based nutrition from Cornell University and is a member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. She's hosted a bunch of TV shows. She has made appearances on Carson, Leno, and Letterman, and she's the author of a couple of books, including Unprocessed, which is a really great book. It chronicles her journey

• 4:46Rich Roll?

  from overweight junk food vegan to learning how to create foods that nourish and heal. And her newest book is called The Secrets to Ultimate Weight Loss. AJ is just full of life. Her story of personal transformation from chronically overweight to true wellness, how she did it, and how you can too, is truly inspiring. And that's what we're going to talk about today. So, let's talk to her.

• 5:13Rich Roll?

  That's right, I'm going to ask you questions and you're going to answer them.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Just like an interrogation.

• 5:19Rich Roll?

  Just like that. But you buttered me up because you brought these amazing gifts.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you know.

• 5:24Rich Roll?

  Can I, how do I even open this?

• 5:25Speaker 01

  Oh, just the little latches at the side.

• 5:27Rich Roll?

  Right, so this insane cake.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:29Rich Roll?

  Oh my God, what is in this?

• 5:31Speaker 01

  So, it's, well, good stuff. It's obviously vegan. It's German chocolate cake. I used to be the pastry chef at Sante for five years on La Brea. So, even though it's, looks decadent, and it is, I don't use oil, I don't use sugar, at least not refined sugar. It's all made with dates and there's no salt. And it's pretty darn good, actually.

• 5:50Rich Roll?

  It looks pretty amazing.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you'll like it. I want you to like it as much as... The thing that stood out for me, Rich, most in your book that I remember the most is when you talked about when you detoxed and you ate your first blueberry. And it was like the best blueberry ever.

• 6:03Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  I hope this is like the best cake ever for you.

• 6:05Rich Roll?

  I think this might exceed the taste of a simple blueberry, but you know, that's amazing. So I should refrigerate this?

• 6:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, at some point refrigerate it. It'll be fine now, though.

• 6:13Rich Roll?

  And then you also brought me this. What is this?

• 6:15Speaker 01

  That's my, that's my rock and nut crunch. That was actually the first product I created out of culinary school. And again, it's, it's just nuts, seeds, and fruit. That's it.

• 6:24Rich Roll?

  Looks amazing.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  It's good. It's good for athletes because I know athletes need more concentrated calories.

• 6:28Rich Roll?

  I'm not gonna eat it now because I'll be chewing on my gum.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  It'll be very noisy, actually.

• 6:32Rich Roll?

  Thank you.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  You're welcome.

• 6:33Rich Roll?

  So, uh, it's great to see you.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 6:36Rich Roll?

  We are, uh, back here again. You were one of the original old guard on the podcast. This is episode 50 something, 53 or something like that, back in like 2013, I think.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  It was a while back. It was amazing. Thank you for having me back.

• 6:50Rich Roll?

  Of course. I'm so excited to talk to you. And I think, um, you know, the best way to kick it off is to kind of share a little bit about your story. I mean, I know we dug into that pretty deeply the first time you were on, but the show has grown quite a bit since then. I'm sure there's a lot of people listening who, who, who were not aware that you were on the show.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 7:07Rich Roll?

  Initially. And your story's great. I mean, it's so, um, empowering and inspirational and, you know, your transformation is really something else.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 7:16Rich Roll?

  So, tell me about that.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Okay. So, or where should I begin? Born in 1960 in Chicago to a morbidly obese mother and a normal weight father. And you probably know that when you have, your parents are obese or overweight, you have more chance of becoming that. And so I got fat when I was five years old and I lived in Chicago and I don't remember because I'm a little bit older than you, maybe a lot. Growing up.

• 7:40Rich Roll?

  You don't look it though.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Well, thank you. I'll be 58 in three weeks, but in the 1960s, there weren't a lot of fat kids. And so when people tell me, no, you can't understand what it's like to be fat because they see me as a slender person. I was fat before it was socially acceptable to be fat. Nobody was fat. There was one fat kid in every grade in 1960 to 1970. That was me. So maybe I wasn't as fat by today's standards, but when you're the fattest one, you're still the fattest one. And there's a lot of things that go on with that that are not comfortable growing up. Like for instance, you can't buy your clothes at a regular store because they don't fit. And so. Became fat at five, but by eleven, I was actually obese. I weighed a hundred and sixty pounds and I'm five six.

• 8:20Rich Roll?

  At eleven.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Eleven, but I wasn't five six then. I wasn't even five feet then. So I was obese. And, you know, it's not fun. And it doesn't matter how fat you are. It's still, it's not fun if you're fat and you're uncomfortable in your own body. So I didn't realize that I was actually suffering from what I know today to be a food addiction, an addiction to refined foods, specifically things like sugar and flour. And I continued to become fatter and fatter. I got into about the two hundred pound range in my twenties, but I was vegan. This is the weird thing. At the age of seventeen, when I was a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, I was studying to be a veterinarian. And instead I became a vegetarian because the first day on the job, I was handed a tank of live salamanders and the doctor said to cut their heads off. And I said, why? He goes, well, we're doing

• 9:06Speaker 01

  protein lens regeneration experiments in amphibian and I just need their eyes. Well, I was on scholarship and there's something about you see a guy in a white coat and I cut off one head and I was like, terrible. I started vomiting. I went to the Student Health Center and I said I would never eat another animal again, or harm one, or wear one. So I became a vegan on September first, nineteen seventy seven.

• 9:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, not cool back then.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was forty.

• 9:28Rich Roll?

  And I imagine not easy either.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  No, no, oh, we didn't even have powdered soy milk in nineteen seventy seven. Now you can go to any town, anywhere in the United States, ninety nine cent store, Walmart, and you get plant milk in probably ten different varieties, oat and soy and rice. There was nothing. Well, there wasn't nothing. There was whole natural food, like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, and legumes, and nuts, and seeds. But that's not what I ate.

• 9:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  I was a sugar addict. I didn't know it at the time. But looking back, starting every day with a Coke Slurpee, with eight pumps of vanilla syrup, and having a Dr. Pepper Big Gulp, forty eight ounces, every day at lunch, not exactly a health promoting diet.

• 10:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  So I did this every day till I was about forty-three years old. Twenty-six years of my veganism was basically eating candies, cakes, cookies, pies, and ice cream. And so, of course, I became... Of course, I became...

• 10:17Rich Roll?

  During that period of time, were you trying to resolve this issue? Like, were you going on diets and trying to restrict your calories and doing all the things that, you know, we do?

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I tried this one diet in my teens, which was called anorexia, where I didn't eat and actually ended up...

• 10:32Rich Roll?

  It's effective for a while.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Oh, it works beautifully. It's not sustainable, you know? So I tried that in my teens and ended up hospitalized. And so that wasn't good because there were so many complications. My hair fell out, my nails, I developed an enlarged liver. That wasn't very fun. But the thing about anorexia is the minute I started eating again, I didn't start eating the way that you eat and I eat now. I went back right away to the junk food and then I gained even more weight. And actually, what a lot of people don't know, and they'll find out in my book, is I actually attempted suicide because then I became bulimic. And in a lot of ways, that was worse than anorexia for me. Because I didn't like being anorexic, but it wasn't that hard. So in other words, to be anorexic, all I had to do was not eat.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  But bulimia required extraordinary efforts because the binging and the purging and the laxative use and the over-exercising, bulimia was a twenty-four-hour job. So was anorexia, but anorexia, you're basically cold and tired. You don't have any energy to do anything. And so that's when I attempted suicide at the age of nineteen. And I never told anybody this, not even my husband, till about three years ago.

• 11:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I read that in your book and I was like, wait, I don't think I knew that. We didn't talk about that last time and I'd never heard you speak about that.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  It's not something I was really comfortable talking about. But then, when I started, when I spoke at the McDougal Conference, he insisted I tell my life story. And I didn't think it was fair to leave that out, especially since coming out as a food addict or food addict in recovery now, so many people have written me saying that they've contemplated suicide and attempted suicide because of their discordant relationship with food. So I figured, well, I'll tell people. Yeah, it was a dark period in my life.

• 12:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so walk me through that a little bit. I mean, you know, what, I mean, I can't imagine the level of despair you must have been in.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, I remember the day, April first, you know? And it's funny because I don't usually think about this, but it's interesting because I do personally believe in God. I know a lot of people don't, but that's the only explanation for why I'm alive. Because I didn't tell anybody. I didn't even leave a note. And I had stolen, um, I never had to talk about this. I, my grandfather was a medical doctor and I stole medicine from his house. Um, my grandfather, my grandmother was diabetic. She was on a lot of stuff and I just, just stole.

• 12:45Rich Roll?

  What were you, what kind of stuff?

• 12:46Speaker 01

  I just, just all her, my grandmother's pills. I don't remember the names, but my grandmother took a lot of pain medication. So I know it was in that realm of pain medication and I never drank alcohol, but I remember, um, drinking a bunch of alcohol and taking a bunch of these pills and I remember it was Passover and I didn't go, uh, because I had planned to kill myself that night. And, um, what was really interesting is my grandfather, who I had stolen the pills from, he showed up at my door. He said, he said, I, I don't know why I've been directed to come here. And then, you know, then, you know, they take you in an ambulance and they pump your stomach and then, then you end up in a mental hospital, which is like worse because that they don't, that's, you know, then you have the mental, it was not fun. I'll tell you.

• 13:29Rich Roll?

  How old were you then?

• 13:30Speaker 01

  I was, um, I was 20.

• 13:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:34Rich Roll?

  So do you think that looking back on it now with some perspective that, was it a tried and true suicide attempt or a cry for help?

• 13:42Speaker 01

  No, it was tried. I mean, it was from, I, you know, I was tried and true because I didn't tell anybody. I didn't leave a note and I took a lot of pills. I mean, I don't know if it would have worked, but there was a lot.

• 13:52Rich Roll?

  So you're still alert when your grandfather?

• 13:53Speaker 01

  No, I don't, I, I only remember vaguely a shadow of him saying that, you know, I, I just felt like I had to come here, um, because you didn't show up to the Passover seder and, uh, yeah, that.

• 14:06Rich Roll?

  So I want to get into like how you recover, uh, from something like that and the path forward, but, but I don't want to move too far away from this subject of, of food addiction.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:17Rich Roll?

  Like I don't want to just brush over that.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 14:18Rich Roll?

  Um, I think it's a super important topic that deserves a little bit more of a deep dive. Um, and I think there's a lot of confusion about it. What does it actually mean? Is it even really a thing? So describe to me your perspective on food addiction.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  It's true because it is not really a thing yet to many people because it's not in the DSM. So a lot of doctors won't acknowledge it, even some of the plant-based doctors. So to me, what food addiction means is refined food addiction. You're not really addicted to food and eating. If you don't eat, you'll die. But there are particular foods for specifically foods like sugar and flour that are very highly refined carbohydrates that certain people are very vulnerable to the effect of. So that. When we ingest them, they have a more drug-like behavior than food-like behavior. And as a recovering alcoholic, I'm sure you understand that there are people out there that can drink alcohol in varying amounts and not become an alcoholic.

• 15:14Rich Roll?

  God bless them.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Right, but there's certain people like you, one drink, one drunk. And there's people in the world, like my husband, that can eat sugar and flour in almost any amount and be slender and healthy and not have cravings. But there's other people that even a little bit, like maybe if it's the fifth ingredient in a barbecue sauce, will set us off and will set off the phenomenon known as craving, where all we do is want more and more and more. It sets off that insatiable desire for more.

• 15:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's insidious for those that suffer from it. And I think, you know, I started doing a lot of deep thinking about addiction and what it is specifically and what it's not. And I really think that we need to have a broader conversation and expand the definition of what we mean when we talk about addiction. It's not just drunks and people that can't keep a needle out of their arm. You know, I think on some level, it's this, on some level, I think all of humanity suffers to some extent from some type of compulsive behavior or thought pattern or substance. You know, and food is certainly a part of that, but it is a spectrum, right? And so where do you fall on that spectrum?

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Right. That's why it's so hard, I think, because it's a spectrum, you know, and because some people can have a little. And some people, there are people that identify with the title of food addict, but maybe can have the barbecue sauce as a condiment with the fifth ingredient. And because it exists on a continuum, it's so hard to quantify. Whereas like with high blood pressure, we can say, if your blood pressure is this, you're hypertensive. And there's no real direct test for it.

• 16:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and the substance is, whether it's food or a drug, is the catalyst. The condition really has to do with your mental, emotional, and physiological state. You know, there's a certain person who's going to be sensitive, like you said, to sugar or alcohol or cocaine, and it's going to activate them in a way that it isn't for somebody else. But ultimately, the addiction lies within the soul, really. I mean, it's, you're trying to alter your state, your state of mind, your physiological state. And you're reaching out often, you know, mostly compulsively, but often even unconsciously to medicate yourself in some way because you have some level of discomfort.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:30Rich Roll?

  And sugar hits the spot for a lot of people, but it's about getting at the root of what is activating that. And something that I thought was really cool and interesting about your book is that you get into the emotional trauma that you suffered as a young person. And, you know, I think that there is a direct nexus between the trauma that we suffer as young people and how we kind of navigate the world as adults. And I've explored this at length on the podcast. I had Gabor Maté on the show.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's great.

• 18:00Rich Roll?

  He's all about that.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  I love him.

• 18:01Rich Roll?

  And so to hear you speak to that, I think is really powerful. So walk me through kind of what that experience was like as a young person because, you know, you did have some challenges as a kid.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Sure. I thank you for asking that. First, I want to agree with what you say about how addiction often starts because of something like that, that trying to medicate, feel better, especially as a child when you're helpless, you're not, you know, you can't go to a bar and have a drink or things like that. But I think that often it continues because now it is an addiction. Does that make sense? So like when I was 43 years old and happily married, I was still using, not because of what happened to me when I was five, but because I was really addicted.

• 18:37Rich Roll?

  There was so much energy behind that, that habit at that point.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, my father was psychotic. He, it was not his fault. He was kicked in the head by a horse when I was little.

• 18:49Rich Roll?

  Like psychotic, like clinically psychotic.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Like, yes, like he was, and I didn't know him before the accident, but the people that did, like my grandmother said, that that changed him. Now, today, he would have been a neurologist, there would have been MRIs, but he, my dad had a gash in his head from being kicked in the head by a horse. And that changed his behavior. So he was violent and he was abusive to pretty much everybody in my family. He never physically hit me and my sister, which was interesting. But in a way, I had survivor's guilt because he hit my brothers and my mom. But the worst was watching him torture my dog. And, and that's, it's interesting because I think the reason I became vegan so young is because I couldn't protect my dog from my dad. And he would just, he would just brutally beat, I love my dogs. I love dogs. I saw a dog here. I love dogs so much.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  And that was my best friend, Snoopy. And Snoopy was an epileptic and he would have seizures and my dad would just beat my dog. And I- Couldn't do anything about it. And that was the worst thing is like, you know, my brothers and my brothers were older. My mom was an adult. Not that it's good to watch humans being beat either. But like when it's a defenseless animal like that, and I hated him so much and like I wanted to kill him. But like when you're five, what do you do? You know? And so, you know, you have cookies.

• 20:02Rich Roll?

  Do you think your dad's rage or anger outbursts are, I mean, what was that an expression of? I mean, was it just a neurological tweak because of the injury that he sustained?

• 20:14Speaker 01

  I didn't know him before. I mean, I don't know if I should even say this because then people think I'm really crazy, but I did contact a medium that could talk to him since he's dead.

• 20:22Rich Roll?

  I'm all about mediums.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. So I finally did a few years ago. And part of it was his personality. But the thing is, the personality plus the injury just made a bad situation worse.

• 20:33Rich Roll?

  And what about your mom?

• 20:35Speaker 01

  My mom was a helpless victim. She was, you know, she had four kids. So it's not like she didn't have a job. So it's not like she could leave. And I don't think there were shelters back then. But finally, she got the courage to leave. They were married, gosh, a long time. I think it was when I was 11. Finally, when he brutally attacked her, she finally, my grandparent, my grandfather, thank God for my grandfather, finally got her to finally leave once and for all. So yeah, you know, I grew up kind of scared because he was really mean and I was really little and I couldn't really do anything about it back then. And, you know, there was nobody to talk to back then about it.

• 21:06Rich Roll?

  Do you have a specific memory of turning to food to comfort you? Or is it just a blur of like, it just was always there?

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Trying to think if there was an actual incident. It kind of was always there because it was in the environment. You know, we had all the treats there. So that's a good question. I'm gonna, I'm gonna let it marinate because I, right now.

• 21:28Rich Roll?

  Right. But you grew up with Fruit Loops and Oreos.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, my God. I love that stuff. Yeah. And, you know, it's funny because my mom would pack my lunch. I went to school. And one of the things that one of the, again, you know, I think about these things as traumatic memories, but when I went to school, there, I sometimes go to this place called Farmer's Market at Thirn Fairfax and they sell these vintage lunchboxes that were so cool.

• 21:50Rich Roll?

  I know exactly what you're talking about.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  And, and all the kids had those, but mine was gray, like the construction workers, the big gray lunchbox with the thermos. And when I think back to the kind of food she fed me, because obviously she was a food addict herself, I mean, I wouldn't just have like one little dessert, like I would have like the whole double thing of Suzie Q and then I would have a soda, I would have like just, it, part of it was just that I wasn't being fed the right food either, that I was fed a diet that was going to probably make me fat and sick unless my genetics were such that it wasn't. So part of it was that, let's see, I, I just, you know, I remember I have to, I had to crawl on this counter to get to the good stuff in the thing and I remember the, you know, the boxed cereals, like Lucky Charms, I remember picking out the charms, I wouldn't eat the Lucky, because Lucky was the, was the oat bran thing, that was terrible, I

• 22:36Speaker 01

  just wanted the marshmallows, you know?

• 22:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so you're in, you know, fifth, sixth, seventh grade, you're the one overweight child in your class and, and I remember that too, there was, you know, there was generally one kid who struggled with his weight or her weight, um, now it's very different, there's lots of kids, maybe most kids at some schools, um, but that had to be, I would imagine, I don't want to project onto you, but, but I would imagine, you know, that's isolating.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I was lucky that I was funny and I was, I made up, you know, it was the kind of thing where like, I, I've since have done stand-up comedy of another Tonight Show, one of the things they learn is, is that you make fun of yourself before they make fun of you. And so I was very funny, I was, I was intelligent, I was always the teacher's pet, I was very bright, but I was really funny and so people still liked me even though I was fat, I mean, the boys didn't like me, I mean, they liked me because I could do their homework, but they didn't like me like, like, like they would like a normal girl. So I didn't get a lot of teasing, you know, there was a little bit, but it wasn't like the bullying that goes on today because I really was popular because I was funny and people like funny people, you know?

• 23:44Rich Roll?

  It's so hard to imagine you like 200 pounds. Like I can't even, I can't even picture it.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  And that's, that's a lot.

• 23:49Rich Roll?

  Do you have pictures from that time?

• 23:51Speaker 01

  You know, here's the thing. I thought you might ask that because so in 90, I think it was 94, we had this huge earthquake in Los Angeles. And I was in Sherman Oaks and I lost everything except for, you know, little, the clothes that I had. And so all the pictures, because the water pipe broke were gone. So I don't have pictures at that weight. But if you go to my YouTube page, Chef AJ, and watch me on the Tonight Show, you'll see me at least at 180. But I, I did have a pair of shorts.

• 24:18Rich Roll?

  Oh my God.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  That I used to wear. So these were pretty big.

• 24:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, those look like 42 or something like that.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  So I do have that. And then I have also pictures, you know, not quite 200, but you know, most of them topped out at 165.

• 24:31Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. That's wild. So, all right. So let's pick it back up from, you know, after this suicide attempt. Um, I mean, was that a, like a moment of reckoning where you're like, I gotta figure this out?

• 24:44Speaker 01

  Uh, no.

• 24:44Rich Roll?

  You know, what happened after that?

• 24:46Speaker 01

  No, it was dark. I, I just, the, the shame and humiliation. My brother's a psychiatrist. I mean, so it was like, kind of brought a lot of shame to my family. And, uh, you know, I remember, you know, people saying to me, why don't you just pull yourself up by your bootstraps? And I'm like, you know, it's like saying in alcohol, you know, why don't you just stop drinking? Right? It's not that easy. And so, you know, I was depressed and it was, it was, it was bad. It was bad.

• 25:08Rich Roll?

  And how long did that period go on?

• 25:11Speaker 01

  How long was I in the hospital for? You know, they put you, they, they put you in a locked ward of a mental hospital.

• 25:17Rich Roll?

  How long were you there?

• 25:19Speaker 01

  I want to say like three months and.

• 25:21Rich Roll?

  Oh, whoa.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  And it was, it was, it's crazy. I mean, because some of the people there, I mean, no disrespect to mentally ill people are actually crazy. And so it's, it's, it's sort of like in prison, like they mix like hardened criminals with, with less hardened criminals. They just put everybody together. And there's something about when that door closes, you know, you can't get out. And I remember my mom visiting me with my dog and it, it just, you know, it's almost, I didn't know you were going to ask about this or I would have brushed up on my past. Cause it's really something I don't think about, but it was, it was not a good period.

• 25:49Rich Roll?

  Three months. So did they have you on a battery of all kinds of crazy pets?

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Well, they were, they, you know what? They tried medicines, you know, I'm lucky that I'm a real sensitive and allergic person because none of them seemed to work and none of them, either I would throw up or get a rash. So no, I wasn't, they didn't put me on Thorazine, thank goodness.

• 26:05Rich Roll?

  And were they just warehousing you or were you getting help?

• 26:07Speaker 01

  You know, you go to, you know, you go to groups, you know, I mean, I mean, again, I don't want to sound like I'm belittling them, but like, you know, they have like art therapy and music therapy and psychodrama. So I mean, if I wish I had remembered it more, if I knew I was going to be at a point in my life where I'd be able to tell the story, I would have taken notes because it would have made a brilliant, you know, like comedic movie at some point.

• 26:30Rich Roll?

  Well comedic, but also, you know,

• 26:32Speaker 01

  And heartbreaking.

• 26:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's heartbreaking. I mean, and it is that thing, like, once you're in, like, you know, a lot of people never make it out.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, it's, it was, it's really, really scary. It's, it's, I don't wish it on anybody. Maybe they're better now, but, but you want, you want to hear a funny story. So later in life, I became a respiratory therapist.

• 26:51Rich Roll?

  What does that mean?

• 26:52Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a, it's like an allied health profession where we go around with like machines and give breathing treatments. It's like in the hospital. And I ended up working at the same hospital where I was locked up as a mental patient, but the mental hospital is across the street. And I never liked going there to give the breathing treatments because I thought, God, what if they lock me up again?

• 27:10Rich Roll?

  You're not going to make it back out?

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 27:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Oh, my God.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  So it's not like, because most people up until now were, you know, nobody knew about this. But I remember going there to give a breathing treatment to a patient. And then I saw a patient that was one of the staff members when I was hospitalized. In other words, the people that were our staff

• 27:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, still there.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Were just as crazy as the people they were trying to help. And again, I apologize if people are offended by crazy. I mean it like in a more loving way. I don't mean crazy, but, but the people that was my psychiatric aide when I was hospitalized was now an incoherent psychiatric patient.

• 27:43Rich Roll?

  The staff person became a patient?

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Yes. And I was like, oh, my. I couldn't believe it. It's like, and these are the people that were tending to us. It's scary, you know?

• 27:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's heavy.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  It's very scary.

• 27:53Rich Roll?

  So, so you get out of that?

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:54Rich Roll?

  And then, then what happens?

• 27:56Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. So I went back, I had to go back to live with my mom. I couldn't go back to the University of Pennsylvania. And, you know, she basically said, you have to get a job. And I am trying to remember, what did I do? It's like my 20s, it's like my 20s were a blur. But eventually, you know, I did get a job. Actually, I got a fun job, actually. I became a dog walker, believe it or not. And I remember I was the dog walker for Michael J. Fox. And that was the funnest job I ever had.

• 28:21Rich Roll?

  Did you get like the plum dog walking job?

• 28:23Speaker 01

  I know. It's like, it's like, literally, he was so generous. And he had two beautiful golden retrievers named Jamie and Rosie that he wanted taken out for like several hours twice a day. And at that time, that was like the only, only client I needed. Like, that was the best job I ever had.

• 28:37Rich Roll?

  So you were out here?

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I lived here. I moved here in 1971 from Chicago.

• 28:42Rich Roll?

  Right. Gotcha.

• 28:49Rich Roll?

  All right. So let's play this forward. When does it, when's the final reckoning moment with weight? Like, you know, I know you have sort of fits and starts.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:58Rich Roll?

  You're taking stabs at trying to get this under control.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:01Rich Roll?

  Walk me through that to the breaking point.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  So, like I said, I didn't have a big history of dieting or trying diets because I saw my mom fail at every diet. I had the stab at anorexia from 14 to 19, which worked, but was unsustainable. I got married when I was, I was gonna say 95.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  35 in 1995 is when I got married. And, you know, I didn't want to be a fat bride. And as luck would have it, fen-phen had hit the market then. It was very popular. And I wasn't quite really fat enough for it, the doctor said. But because I had a knee injury from all the years of over-exercising, he allowed me to have it. And I was able to get my weight down to pretty close to what I am now. Well,

• 29:43Rich Roll?

  Powerful stuff.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:44Rich Roll?

  Anorexia in a pill.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. So, exactly. They both work, but again, they're both dangerous. They're both life threatening and neither of them are sustainable. So I was so happy when I was on Fen-Phen because it allowed me to keep eating the crap that I was eating. But it tricked my brain into thinking I was full, so I could eat just smaller amounts of crap.

• 30:04Rich Roll?

  And were you all jacked up too?

• 30:06Speaker 01

  No, it actually had an antidepressant effect on me. So it actually made me feel really good. I, I felt fantastic on it. Things rolled off my back like water off a duck's back.

• 30:16Rich Roll?

  How long were you on it?

• 30:17Speaker 01

  I was on it for probably six months.

• 30:20Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's, that's pretty long. Don't you get a tolerance though? Where you still have to take more and more?

• 30:24Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, you do, but here's what happened. It got removed. The FDA took it away. So, and I remember, this shows like

• 30:30Rich Roll?

  It was two drugs, right?

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was phentermine and fenfluramine. That, that separately worked okay, but together were like this magic bullet that was going to annihilate, the obesity epidemic. So what happened is people were getting heart lung damage like from it. And so I remember going to the mailbox one day and there was a letter from the FDA. And I'm like, why is the FDA writing me? You know? Well, they had removed it from the market. We were told to stop taking it and to go immediately to a cardiologist to have an echocardiogram. So I was fine, but I really still wanted the drug. So I went online and I tried to buy it in other countries, but I couldn't buy the potent combination. I could only buy, I believe, the phentermine illegally.

• 31:09Rich Roll?

  Right, there was no Silk Road then.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Didn't work. So guess what? Within three months, the weight came right back on. I learned nothing.

• 31:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  And so I just assumed that I was destined to be fat. A hundred and sixty, one sixty-five. I just figured that's my set point. Mom was fat, my grandma was fat, my great grandma. That's it. So I'll just learn to accept it.

• 31:28Rich Roll?

  In your makeup genetically predetermined.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  I figured that's it, you know? And I remember because as a vegan, you know, I had started to teach cooking. And I remember thinking, you know, like it was a little bit embarrassing because you think of people in the vegan world that are like influencers, like, you know, if you go like Mary McDougal, she's very trim. And, you know, Aunt Esselstyn. And I just figured, you know, it's not in my cards. It's, and so I was gonna do the best I could. But what was happening is I started teaching. I remember teaching at Whole Foods Pasadena when they opened that big store. And I was very popular as a culinary teacher. I had the biggest class, seventy-seven people. And I was doing a culinary class. I remember this gentleman raises his hand, you know, I'm thinking he's gonna ask about the garlic or the onion. He said, I go, yeah? He goes, if the vegan diet's so good, why are you so fat? And I felt like saying, I don't know, why are you such an asshole?

• 32:15Speaker 01

  But I didn't say, yeah. And then people were, and once I started putting these little videos on YouTube, people were saying the same thing. It was generally men saying that. And my husband would delete the comments. And I didn't, it didn't really hurt my feelings so much because they were right. Because I really didn't know why I was so fat. I really, like, then I found out. And I went to a place called True North on January of 2011.

• 32:39Rich Roll?

  What, what motivated you to go there, though?

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Well, that's, this is it. This is interesting. It wasn't because I was fat. I, in my first book on process, I talk about my string of fetal deaths. The babies weren't quite yet born, but I had four miscarriages right one after the other. Yeah, yeah. And the first one was like almost a live birth. And so that set me into a pretty bad depression. This was in two, in the year 2000, February 1st, 2000 was when the first baby died, the one that was almost born. And I was 40 years old. And so it was tough. It had four of these in a row. And at the same time, my mom and my dad and my dog died. So it was like, so I was, I was like, I developed something called panic disorder. And I couldn't leave my house for a year. I lost my job and my house because I kept having panic attacks.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  And I wouldn't go on meds because I don't like meds. I don't like the, it's not, I just didn't like the idea of meds, especially psych meds. Well.

• 33:32Rich Roll?

  Well, you had, I would imagine you associate that with being in that institution. Like, that's a highway back there.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  I do want to be on psych meds, you know? And especially because, you know, I'm vegan and I keep thinking, well, I'm vegan. I should, you know, a diet should be enough. I should be able to, you know, do this. Right. The problem is I had already had that major depressive episode, you know, in childhood, which again, sets you up for another one. So I was depressed, but now it wasn't just depression. I was having panic attacks and I, they're scary because, you know, I'd be walking my, I had two dogs at the time and I'd be walking them. I'd get a panic attack and then I'd lose control of my arms and then. Dogs would go. And so it got so scary, especially when I was driving, that I just checked out and I just stayed home for nine months.

• 34:13Rich Roll?

  Like a shut-in, like an agoraphobe.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  Agoraphobia. And so the problem was if you don't go to work for nine months, you know, you don't make any money. And so what happened was, is this is actually outlined on a show called The Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan, is I found out that my dog, Sparky at the time, was able to predict if I was going to have a panic attack. He just knew, just kind of like my grandfather knew.

• 34:36Rich Roll?

  Right, like they know about earthquakes.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Right, like he could sense it. And so if it was coming on, he could, he just, like, he would stare at me, he would paw at me, he would lick me, he would bark. And I didn't train him to do this. And so I, the problem is he was a little bit dog aggressive. And I found out there was a thing called a psychiatric service dog, a service dog. And what happened was, is I, I went on The Dog Whisperer, and he became my service dog. And I was able to re-enter the workforce using the service dog, go back to work. And I did start taking medication at the

• 35:07Rich Roll?

  Hold on a second. I went on, I went on The Dog Whisperer, like, what?

• 35:13Speaker 01

  Okay, well, so what happened was, is, okay, sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself. A lot of this is

• 35:17Rich Roll?

  I just called up Cesar.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  I wish I could do that. So what happened was, is I saw it on the LA Times, we had newspapers back then, the Sunday Times, I believe this would have been 2006 now, or 2005. And I, the show had only been on one season. He wasn't as huge of a star then as he is now, because this was casting for season two. And I found out, because my psychiatrist was willing to write me a letter, because, to have this dog, because I felt safe with him, because I knew that if he could predict that I was going to have a panic attack, if I felt one coming on and I was driving, I could pull over, I could get to a safe space. And so Cesar Millan helped me get him certified, so that he would be suitable in public. And it was great. It was a wonderful, heartwarming episode. The thing is, I did

• 36:03Speaker 01

  go on a small amount of medication at the urging of, believe it or not, a naturopathic doctor, who said, I can't help you, you need these drugs. So I went on an antidepressant called Lexapro in 2011. 10mg, not that much. And it did stop me from having panic attacks. It did work. The thing was, is it does, it also has other effects and it just, you don't have as joyous or vibrant as life when you're on these medications. You're just kind of like, yeah, you know, so in a way it was good because here, having panic attacks, you know, I remember one time, the scariest panic attack was I was taking a bath and we had at that time a sunken tub and I got a panic attack in the bathtub. And when I was getting panic attacks, my arms and legs would go numb and I couldn't

• 36:47Speaker 01

  get out of the tub. And then you just end up being naked and freezing. It was really scary. So, so I went on this medicine, but again, I wasn't really having, like you say, it was more of a flat affect. I wasn't really having a joyous life and plus, I didn't like the idea of being on medication, you know? And I tried to get off them by titrating the dose. I went to these specialists, I flew around the world and I could lower it to 7.5 to 5 to 2.5, but the minute I went lower than 2.5, the panic attacks were coming back and I went back on. So, in about 2010, I heard about a book called The Pleasure Trap by Dr. Lyle and Dr. Goldhammer, my two mentors and now friends. And I read the book, it's a great book by the way, about addiction and more, and I found out that Dr.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Goldhammer had this center in Santa Rosa, California, and that if you fill out the form online, you can have a free consult. So, I did that and I said, listen, I'm on this psychiatric medicine, I'd really prefer not to be on it, can you help me? I was, I was fat, but that's not why.

• 37:46Rich Roll?

  It wasn't about weight loss.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Not yet, but it's interesting because that opened the door because then I met the secret weapon, him and Dr. Lyle. And he said, yeah, you're going to come to the center, I'm going to put you on disability, we're going to fast you for six weeks and we'll get you off the meds. Well, I get to True North, Martin Luther King Jr. birthday weekend of 2011, I go with a friend of mine, Tim, you know, for support and my service dog, Sparky. And the first thing you do before you water fast is see one of the actual medical doctors. He said, can't fast on psych meds. So, couldn't fast, they did a juice fast, you know? But the thing is, is what happened is I met Dr. Doug Lyle, who is the best. You should interview him. He is so.

• 38:21Rich Roll?

  No, I'd love to have him on. I've heard him speak many times.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  He's a good friend.

• 38:23Rich Roll?

  I love the book. The book has come out many times on the show.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  And you know, the book is going to be on audio now. And guess who got to record it?

• 38:31Rich Roll?

  I don't know, you?

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Yes, I was chosen. I know, that's like the big, that's like the biggest feather in my cap that I was.

• 38:36Rich Roll?

  It's a full circle moment for you.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  Well, it is because it was like neither of them wanted to do it, but the publisher needed the book out. And because I relatively understood the material, they let me do it. So it was really very nice.

• 38:46Rich Roll?

  So this is 2011?

• 38:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, January of 2011.

• 38:49Rich Roll?

  That's not that long ago. I thought like this went way back for you, much further back.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Well, the trauma and trauma goes further back, but this particular.

• 38:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but the sort of turning point for you was much more recent than I recall.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  I'm the nouveau fin. I've only been thin for about six years now. So, yeah. So I met Dr. Lyle, who's fabulous and I love his book and his lectures. And I actually had a, you know, an individual appointment with him then. And again, we still hadn't talked about weight loss then. It was just about, can you help me with my panic disorder? And he helped me more in that one session than all the doctors did my whole life.

• 39:23Rich Roll?

  So you went up there for the session or was that on the phone?

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Up there because he works there. He works there and he works at the McDougal Program, both in Santa Rosa. And he gave me some really good techniques, explained what panic disorder was, and he really helped me. So I still could not yet get off medication. I tried. And then it was now September of that year and what happened, and this is interesting because I really believe that sometimes when things in life, and you might believe this too, there's no real accidents. Is sometimes when things are difficult and painful in the moment, you look back and you go, wow, that was really a blessing. So we're now talking.

• 39:53Rich Roll?

  Story of my life.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, right? Yeah. So September of 2011, like I was really embarrassed that I was on psych meds and I didn't want anybody to know. I felt that as a personal failure, like that what's wrong with me that I have to take these drugs? And what's wrong with me that I can't get off of them? Because they tell you they're not addictive, but they are because you can't get off of them. So in September of 2011, I got a job as Chef AJ, like doing a really cool presentation at a high end kind of thing. And I got there and I was going to be there for almost a week in New York and I forgot my meds. And my doctor, of course, would have written a prescription for me and I could have got them, but the people that I were staying with said, "Oh, no problem." So-and-so, their neighbor, was a pharmacist. "Just tell me what you need and we'll get it for you." And I was too embarrassed.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  As it turns out, I was on thyroid meds too, so I just said, "Well, this." Well, after not taking them for a week, you go through, oh, it's tough. That's not the way to get off psych meds, by the way. It's sort of like, if you ever-

• 40:50Rich Roll?

  You were on a very, you were titrated down to a pre-load dose, too.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  No, I was back up to 10. I was back up to 10. If you ever saw those dolls, they're like gray and you, they're rubber and you squeeze them and their eyes pop out and their ears pop out. When you go off psych meds like that, you actually, it's almost like you feel your brain wiring. And it's not a pleasant thing and like you have to kind of lay there in the dark and you, it was a horrible, horrible experience, but I was so embarrassed. I went through this and Doug Lyle, Dr. Lyle, really helped me through it. He called my husband. I was, it was not pretty going through this detox. But after I got through it, just like anything else, you know that withdrawal sucks.

• 41:26Rich Roll?

  So, but you were staying with people at the time?

• 41:28Speaker 01

  I was staying with people.

• 41:29Rich Roll?

  And you didn't tell them that this was going on? It wasn't been like, "What is wrong? What's going on with her?"

• 41:33Speaker 01

  I was too embarrassed. I was, I was still able to do my-

• 41:35Rich Roll?

  Were you able to do your event?

• 41:36Speaker 01

  I was, I was able to do my job and I was able to do it well, but the rest of the time, I just kind of laid there like in, in a fetal position, just feeling my brain just go crazy. But I got through it and it's just the same thing, whether it's drugs or alcohol or food, withdrawal is a bitch, but addiction, I think, is worse, actually. But when you get through it, you know what it's like. I mean, have you ever met anybody in recovery from anything that ever said, "You know, it was much better back then"? No! So, so I was off it and it was great. And by now, I had some techniques, some actual cognitive behavioral techniques that I learned from Dr. Lyle about what to do when I had a panic attack.

• 42:10Rich Roll?

  Like what?

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Okay. For example, all the other doctors said, "Oh, you need to meditate, you need to breathe." Well, when you're in the throes of a panic attack, you can't all of a sudden ask your body to relax. So, Dr. Lyle would say, "No, what you do is you run in place, you do jumping decks, you, the panic disorder is like, there's a lion, you need to run." I was what they, there's fight, flight or freeze. I was a freezer. And Dr. Lyle taught me, "No, you have to run." I go, "But what happens when I'm having, you know, I'm in the car?" He goes, "You just squeeze your arms like this with the steering wheel." So, I was able to use the techniques he taught me. And what happened is, do I still get panic attacks? Occasionally, but the stakes have to be high now. Like, like there was a pit bull in the neighborhood coming towards me. I got a panic attack. But a regular person might have too, right? I was in a car accident a couple of years ago. I got a panic attack, but I'm not having them every day.

• 42:57Rich Roll?

  They're commensurate with a threat.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  Exactly, but whereas before, nothing would happen. And so, so, yeah, so, so that's what happened. So I was using Dr. Lyle really for panic disorder and psychiatric medication withdrawal. He told me to read a book called Anatomy of an Epidemic, which is, explains that these medicines not only don't work most of the time, but actually are harmful and that in trials, clinical trials placebo was more effective. And so if I had read that book, I would not have chosen to go on meds. But I was starting to work as Chef AJ in the Vegan World Conference here and there. Dr. McDougall had had me a couple of times. And in the, the weekend after Thanksgiving 2011, Dr. Lyle and I, we'd become friendly. We were on a job together and at a break, I said to him, I said, Doug, I get to call him Doug. I said, I know that you hear this all the time.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Because now by then, I was eating a really health promoting diet, by the way. I need to backtrack a little bit. From August 1st, 2008, when I first heard Dr. Esselstyn speak, I stopped eating sugar, oil and salt. I was eating a health promoting diet. And I wasn't eating the mass copious amounts of candies, cakes, cookies, pies and ice creams. I was able to make rich date nut treats, but I wasn't eating sugar, oil, salt. But I was still 50 pounds heavier and I couldn't figure out why. Well, I know now why and it's in the book. But I said to him, I said, Doug, I said, I swear to you, I'm not cheating. I'm eating a whole food diet. I don't eat sugar, oil, salt. Why am I so fat? And he basically sat me down and explained calorie density to me, which is...

• 44:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and this has become your thing. I mean, I've seen you give your keynote presentation many times. And it's super powerful, but it's also like, oh yeah, duh. You know, like it's so elementary in many ways. But I think the concepts elude most people. So, so, you know, walk us through that. Because I think it's really important information for people to know. And also, sorry to jump on you like that. But I think, you know, it helps.

• 44:48Rich Roll?

  With this confusion that you've lived through between what it means to eat a vegan diet and what it means to eat a whole food, plant-based diet and what it means to eat, like, you know, the ultimate sort of health-promoting, longevity-promoting, disease-reversing type of diet, because those are very different things.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  And I've been through them all, you know? So, yes, thank you. That's a great question. So, I was eating a whole food, plant-based diet without sugar, oil, salt. I wasn't cheating, but not having understood caloric density, I was eating way too much of the whole plant foods that were calorically dense, such as the nuts, the seeds, the avocados, and the dried fruit. And there's nothing wrong with those fruits. An athlete such as yourself, you need those calories. But somebody that's a female, and as Dr. Goldhammer says, females are energy-conserving, estrogen-producing, fat-storage machines. And somebody that was already fat didn't need so many calories from those calorically-dense foods, even though they have nutrients and they have fiber. And when Dr. Lyle explained to me what Dr.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  McDougal had been saying for 40 years, but for some reason, it eluded me until it was like face-to-face, and he explained it to me, the concept, at least for me, the fat you eat is the fat you wear. And, yes, there are people that can eat more fat and not be fat, but if you're fat, it might not be you. When I ate a more McDougal-type diet, you know, and didn't add any fats, like, the weight just came off. It was, like, so weird, because I wasn't even eating that many nuts. I was weighing and measuring an ounce a day, thinking I needed them, or I would die without them. And I remember, it was so funny, because for the, Dr. Lyle, he's funny. He tricks you into doing things. He has you do these experiments. And so, he said to me, he goes, you know, "Just for a month, I want you to not eat any added fat. No nuts, seeds. You know, just for a month, I want you to do it."

• 46:32Speaker 01

  And I go, "That's..." Can I say bullshit, or?

• 46:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  I said, "That's bullshit, Doug." I said, "That's not gonna work, you know? Nuts are healthy, you gotta have them, all the doctors are saying, you gotta have at least this much." He said, "Just do it for a month." I said, "You know what? You're so stupid." I don't know if I said stupid. I said, "You're wrong. I'm gonna do this for three months. I'm not gonna start until January 2, 2012, because that's when I get back from True North. I work there every Christmas as a guest chef. And I'm gonna do it for three months, 'cause I'm gonna do it till my birthday, and show you that I'm not gonna lose any weight, and then on my birthday, I'm gonna have a rich date nut dessert, and go, 'Nah.'" Well, guess what? Dr. Lyle's always right, and he was right, and I was losing a pound a week doing that. I couldn't believe how easy it was, because now I was eating more food, but calorically dilute food, and in my opinion, better food, because I was eating

• 47:20Speaker 01

  like lots of potatoes, and sweet potatoes, and rice and beans. So I was filling up, I was less hungry, and eating bigger volumes of food that had less calories. And it's like, like you said, it's so, it's so obvious, but it does elude people.

• 47:34Rich Roll?

  Right. So you mentioned the McDougal-type diet. So for somebody who's listening who doesn't know who John McDougal is, and kind of what he stands for, maybe it's worth fleshing that out a little bit.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I'll sing a little ditty, because last time I was on, I sang the Gold Hammer song, so.

• 47:48Rich Roll?

  Oh, you did?

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, I did. I remember that. You let me sing the Gold Hammer song.

• 47:52Rich Roll?

  All right, you can sing it again.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  John McDougal has a plan based on carbohydrates. If you eat them, you'll be trim and not have ass or thigh weight. John McDougal, he's the man. He's as smart as Plato. Eating starch will make you thin. Just eat a damn potato.

• 48:10Rich Roll?

  Oh, my God. Did you write that?

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. I mean, I didn't write the melody, obviously. It's Yankee Doodle.

• 48:16Rich Roll?

  So, so here's where things get, get sticky for a lot of people, you know, and this comes up all the time in the podcast. Like, right now, you know, there's, there's a lot of talk and energy behind this idea that carbohydrates are terrible. You should be eating a low carb, no carb, potentially even ketosis, high-fat type diet, which is in total, you know, juxtaposition to where John McDougal is coming from, who, you know, who's basically, his basic principle is, we're starchivores, and we should be eating these complex carbohydrates in natural food form.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree with him. You know, I run a program in LA, and actually online too, called The Ultimate Weight Loss Program, and I have people now that have lost 100 to 300 pounds and kept it off for like five years, eating nothing but carbohydrates. So to me, and a diet not high in carbohydrates would be Not fun. It would be sad. It would be deprivation. And, you know, potatoes make you thin. I mean, didn't you interview or?

• 49:19Rich Roll?

  I had Andrew.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  That's what I was gonna say.

• 49:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so how the heck did he lose 120 pounds just eating potatoes?

• 49:25Speaker 01

  I mean, they really are the perfect food for health and weight loss. You know, according to something called the satiety index, they are the most satisfying food in the world, potatoes.

• 49:33Rich Roll?

  Because they're filling.

• 49:34Speaker 01

  They're so filling.

• 49:35Rich Roll?

  They're also nutrient dense.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 49:37Rich Roll?

  They have a lot more nutrients in them than people realize. We sort of think of them as a junk food, like, oh, it's a white food, like, it's just calories without any vitamins and minerals, but it's actually has a lot of good stuff in it. But to be clear, you know, we need to kind of define our terms. And when you say carbohydrate, that doesn't mean, yeah, that doesn't mean, you know.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Flour, sugar, alcohol.

• 49:58Rich Roll?

  Like wheat, pasta, and Coca-Cola.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  I mean, whole, unrefined, complex carbohydrates, whole grains in their whole form, not processed into a flour, legumes, beans, split peas, lentils, in their whole form, cooked with water, and potatoes, sweet potatoes and winter squashes. These are the foods that our ancestors ate throughout most of human history, that are still eaten parts of the world today, that are free of the diseases like obesity and heart disease that plague us. I mean, the Okinawans, according to the Blue Zones, are the longest-lived people in the world. Don't they eat something like over 70% of their calories from sweet potatoes? So these are foods that make you thin. The problem is, is people are adding things like oil to them for french fries and chips, and that's the problem. It's not the carbohydrate, it's the fat, the cheese, the butter, the oil that people add to it that make them fat and sick.

• 50:51Rich Roll?

  So, let's get back to this idea of caloric density. You know, when you give your talk, you always have these.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  The jars. I almost brought them.

• 50:58Rich Roll?

  The jars, and you also have these charts where you show what a stomach looks like.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:02Rich Roll?

  Here's a stomach with, you know, tons of vegetables, and it's completely full. You know, more vegetables than you could possibly sit down and eat until you're completely stuffed. And then the caloric equivalent of that is, you know, I don't know, like, you know, an ounce of oil in your stomach.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 51:20Rich Roll?

  It's like a little, like, it just looks like a tiny little bit of your stomach.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Maybe two and a half tablespoons. Yeah. It's like, it doesn't even show up.

• 51:26Rich Roll?

  It puts it into perspective in terms of calories. So on the one hand, you have these foods that are super high in fiber, minerals, vitamins, phytonutrients, micronutrients, all those things that you need and want and that we're always trying to get. And then on the other hand, you have, well, it's, there's a little, what's wrong with a little bit of olive oil, right? But you, when you see that, you realize like, oh, wow, it's so, you know, a food like olive oil is so calorically dense and so nutrient poor that it seems harmless, but when you kind of look at it through that lens, you can kind of, you have this sort of awakening moment where you're like, oh, now I get it.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Well, also, it has no fiber. That's the most important thing, probably. You know, Dr. Goldhammer always says that foods like sugar, oil, and salt, they're not really food, they're not found in nature in any concentrated form, and they fool our brain's satiety mechanisms and cause us to overeat exponentially. The thing is, is you don't sense any fullness from olive oil. So if I were to make you a meal of like, a gluten-free pasta, brown rice pasta with steamed vegetables and an oil-free marinara, you could have a very nice big serving of food for about 500 calories. If you eat that same meal at a restaurant where there'll be about 500 calories from oil, from the sauce, from the pasta, from the vegetables, you don't experience any more fullness. They've done studies that show that the extra calories from oil are insidious.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  They slip under the radar, undetected by the mechanisms of stretch nutrient and calorie receptors. And so, you know, I remember when I stopped using oil in 2008. I didn't tell my husband because he didn't need to know. I make his breakfast lunch, send his lunch to work, I make his dinner. So I stopped using it, not because of caloric density, because Dr. Esselstyn said it creates heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. Everybody in my family was dying or dead from heart disease. I figure, well, why would I do this? And you don't miss it because you can make food delicious without it. Well, you can use the nuts and seeds if you want. So about seven months after stopping oil, my husband had to go to a formal event. And he's thin, six feet, 160 pounds. And he doesn't normally wear a belt. But seven months after stopping oil, we had to go to this

• 53:24Speaker 01

  event. And he went to put his belt on. And now he can't attach it. There's no more holes. He goes, Oh, I must have cancer. I'm losing all this weight. And he got on the scale. He had lost like eight pounds.

• 53:34Rich Roll?

  Without trying.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  Without trying, without even knowing. So he was being experimented on against his will. So if somebody that doesn't want to lose weight, that doesn't need to lose weight, will lose weight that effortlessly, just by stopping oil, imagine what could happen if people actually did it on purpose.

• 53:49Rich Roll?

  To be fair, there is a little bit of an adjustment. If you're used to eating foods with tons of oil and, you know, and like lots of sugar or, you know, salt and the like, like, you do, I don't know if I would call it a detox, but you have to like go through a period where you adjust, just like you would when you're switching from milk to almond milk or something like that. Like, what I found, though, and I'm not completely oil free.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  But you're athletic. You're not.

• 54:13Rich Roll?

  But like, when I'm not working out a lot, like, if I'm not careful, I'll put on weight. And then I have to go, and then I have to be more conscious and consciously aware of those kinds of things than I than I am when I'm out there crushing it all the time. So, you know, I'm very intimately familiar with this. And I've seen how it works in my own life. But I think it's, you know, it's important to just acknowledge, like, okay, yeah, it's gonna taste a little bit, it's gonna be a little bit different. But like, honestly, if you just go two weeks, or, you know, I don't know, a week, whatever, everybody's probably a little bit different. When you complete that cycle, you know, it's not really a detox, but it's an adjustment. Then you land in a place where like, oh, I don't, I don't know the difference. I can't tell. I don't, I don't miss it anymore. But you have, you have to go through that period. And most people just, they just don't want to do it.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  Well, they don't.

• 54:58Rich Roll?

  They don't want to do it.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  You're so right. Most people will not go through the pain of detoxification at all.

• 55:03Rich Roll?

  It's not even that painful. It's like, okay, it tastes a little bit different. Maybe it doesn't taste quite as amazing as I'm used to. But like, you know, is it really that big of a deal?

• 55:10Speaker 01

  You're talking about a concept that Dr. Goldhammer, in his book, The Pleasure Trap, calls neurological adaptation, neuro adaptation. And it's, and that will happen. The other thing people don't understand is the role of a neurotransmitter called dopamine in this equation. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that's released when we have a pleasurable experience, such as eating or having sex. And all eating stimulates the production of dopamine in our brain. Even kale, steamed kale at 100 calories a pound stimulate the production of dopamine. But the more calorically concentrated the calories, the more dopamine is released. Well, oil is the most calorically concentrated food on the planet. It's 4,000 calories per pound, 40 times as calorically dense as kale.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  And since most people aren't doing much in life to feel good, like you and me, like exercising regularly or doing volunteer work, they're relying on these high-fat, high-calorie foods to medicate, to feel good. So if you take away the most calorically dense food, they're gonna feel bad because they're not having their drug.

• 56:07Rich Roll?

  Maybe that's why when you challenge the high-fat camp, they get so testy.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wanted to show you, I didn't bring my jars.

• 56:16Rich Roll?

  You're basically, you're threatening to take away that dopamine jar.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Absolutely, absolutely. You know, I get people that come to me and they go, "Oh, I'm Greek, I'm Italian, olive oil's in my blood." And so I'll pour them a cup and I'll go, "Here, drink it." They won't. You'll vomit if you drink it. It's because people are looking to food to medicate, to celebrate, and they're not, like you say, they're not dealing with what's really going on. And that's really what it is, is it's because I would challenge you that I could make the food taste delicious without oil, because I was a restaurant chef that didn't use oil. I think some of my recipes are that good. But what they're missing is the high hit of dopamine. Oh, sorry.

• 56:52Rich Roll?

  No, what do you got there?

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Well, it's just funny, because I didn't bring my jars. But yeah, I brought you, I brought all these snacks. So again, I recently spoke at a veg fest and I had to take two planes on Southwest because there wasn't a direct flight. So on the first leg of the flight, they gave me this, and on the second leg, they gave me this.

• 57:10Rich Roll?

  Right, so you got ritz crackers, you got cookies.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  And peanuts. Now, this food that I can fit in the palm of my, basically in the palm of my hands, this is over 1,000 calories. What I eat for lunch, which is usually like two pounds of potatoes, or sweet potatoes, baked into fries or roasted, and a pound of broccoli has...

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Less calories than this.

• 57:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Like this huge plate of food. And this is, and people think nothing of eating this on their flight.

• 57:37Rich Roll?

  It's just a little snack.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's probably thirty, I don't, a lot, it's a lot of fat. This is nothing.

• 57:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  And you could have so many fruits and vegetables and whole grains and legumes and rice and beans for the same amount in processed food.

• 57:51Rich Roll?

  Right, you know, people say to me all the time, like, aren't you just starving all the time?

• 57:55Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 57:56Rich Roll?

  But I eat massive amounts of food.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  Me, too.

• 57:58Rich Roll?

  You know, like gigantic, you know, I'll eat like five potatoes and I'll eat, you know, just unbelievable amounts of beans.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  Isn't it fun?

• 58:04Rich Roll?

  And like, I'm, I'm full all the time.

• 58:05Speaker 01

  I know. It's so fun and people, if they, until they really understand caloric density and actually implement it, they don't realize that as slender people, we can eat so much more food. We can take in twice as much food, but yet still consume half as many calories. And again, Dr. Rolls is the one that discovered this at Penn State. She wrote a series of books on it. I, I didn't, I didn't discover calorie, I mean, I discovered it. I didn't invent it. I think I just honed it for people that especially want to be plant-based.

• 58:30Rich Roll?

  To help them to understand. What I, what I like about your story is, is that there's this evolution. Like, you're, you're like a chef in the, in the plant-based world, in the vegan world. Like, you're, you're doing cooking demonstrations at True North.

• 58:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:44Rich Roll?

  Before you're actually fully understanding kind of what you talk about now.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:48Rich Roll?

  Like, so this didn't happen overnight. You were immersed in this subculture and yet still you weren't fully clicking with what needed to be done to get your own health under control.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  I think Dr. Goldhammer, again, him and Dr. Lyles, almost like a conspiracy, a friendly one, he tricked me. Because, you know, when I arrived at True North, you know, fifty pounds heavier, he didn't say, you know, you're fat, don't be, you know, don't be doing cooking demos. But he said something like, and I can't remember exactly, but he said something like, you know, you're already very talented, you're a very talented chef. He goes, and we judge a chef's talent by how they can concentrate things like sugar, fat and salt. And he goes, you know, but if you got skinny, you would rule the world. He goes, you're already a bitch. But if you were a skinny bitch. And so he did sort of like, like the whitewashing of the fence with the Tom Sawyer, you know, remember like where they made it seem like a chore was fun. And he made it seem like it was going to be so

• 59:40Speaker 01

  great to be thinner for, for, for just in general and, and that he could actually help me do it. Like, he really gave me hope, like that he could actually explain to me how to do it. And

• 59:50Rich Roll?

  Empowering you rather than shaming you.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Exactly. And, and, and, and I started, those two guys are like my brothers, man. I mean, like, if I hadn't met them, I don't know where my life would be today.

• 59:58Rich Roll?

  How long were you at True North?

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  I was only there eight days the first time, but I've since been back every year, several times a year, not as a patient, but as a visiting chef.

• 1:00:06Rich Roll?

  Right. All right. So a couple of questions about this. First of all, for people that are listening, True, True North is the same facility that you saw in What the Health? If you watched that movie?

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  I'm getting ready for another song. Sorry.

• 1:00:19Rich Roll?

  Are you going to sing a song again?

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  No, I don't.

• 1:00:21Rich Roll?

  Hold on a second. I'll let you sing a song in a minute.

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  I'm teasing.

• 1:00:23Rich Roll?

  And if you saw that movie, you recall, there's a couple of case studies in the documentary where there's people that are on all kinds of crazy meds and they're overweight. There was that person who could barely walk. And then you see kind of what happens after however long their tenure was there, where they seem to be doing much better. But that's the same place. And it's also the home of Michael Clapper, right?

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  He recently left.

• 1:00:45Rich Roll?

  Oh, he did.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  He was there for seven years and now he's, he has, he just retired from True North in December. But there's other wonderful

• 1:00:52Rich Roll?

  He's a wonderful man.

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. They have Dr. Lim now, who is the medical director of the McDougal program there. They have Dr. Peter Sultana, they have Dr. Solera. So they have other wonderful medical doctors and naturopaths.

• 1:01:03Rich Roll?

  All right. One thing I'm interested in, in what goes on there has to do with the fasting aspect of it. I mean, we're seeing emerging science that is speaking to the health benefits of intermittent fasting and, and what can be achieved. But there's also, you know, look, this can go wrong. Also, there's people that, that don't do this properly and they get sick or, you know, potentially suffer some nasty consequences. So what is the, what is the relationship of the fasting aspect to the rest of what goes on?

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  Right. So it is a medically supervised therapeutic water only fasting center. It's been there for over 32 years, founded by Dr. Alan Goldhammer and his wife, Dr. Jennifer Morano. However, not everybody that goes there fasts. There are people like me that medically cannot fast. There are people there that don't want to fast, maybe because it's too scary or too hard. So they have two other levels of care. One is that you can do a juice fast, which I think could be safe for people sometimes to do at home. I would never recommend people do a water fast without medical supervision because they check on you all the time. They're checking your blood pressure, they're checking your temperature, they're checking your blood and your urine. So I personally would not recommend people water fasting at home. And they fast people up to 40 days, believe it or not. That's wild.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  Even slender people for certain medical conditions. Water only? Water only. Many people in the plant-based movement, like Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. Campbell, have actually gone there and fasted. I remember Dr. Campbell had that Agent Orange or something, and True North actually helped his recovery. So we get a lot of famous people there, not just in plant-based, but like in the real celebrity world too, because they help people with certain conditions like type 2 diabetes, autoimmune disease, heart disease, almost every condition, get better and get better faster. And doing this by the complete abstinence of food, except for pure distilled water and complete rest. And so that's their highest level of care, and that's why most people seek them out.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  But then again, not everybody can or will fast, but even if you do fast, you can't, you have to eat at some point, you have to go home eating. So if you fast, you have to have at least half that much time to re-feed. You can also go there as an unrestricted feeder, which is the funnest, and that's what I go, which means all you do is eat the food. Three times a day, buffets, set up in caloric density, all you can eat delicious food by Chef Bravo and Chef Mauricio, and people still get well. People still get well, just eating this SOS-free, low-fat, whole-food, plant-based diet. And they have lectures twice a day, 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock, and when I'm there during Christmas, three times a day, sometimes they'll have a- You go every year? I've been going every year for eight years. And it's, and I'm like the- And what do you still get out of it? Oh, community.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  You know, having the childhood that I had, holidays are very painful for me. Most of my family is dead, and so it's like, it's a place to go. So I've been going there every year for Christmas, anywhere from 10 days to five weeks. And we do the holidays there, and we have camaraderie and game. I'm like the social director, so we have the best time. And it's, some people do fast at the holidays, but most of the people don't, and we have special demos and Iron Chef competitions. I get out of going just, it's like going home. It's like, it's the home I ever had, and it's, it's a- A privilege and an honor to be able to do that. So, so a lot of people just do unrestricted theater. You know, it's so funny because I remember, even though it's been years since I've been on your podcast, people found out about True North because I sang that song and people

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  were at True North from hearing me on your podcast.

• 1:04:30Rich Roll?

  Oh, really?

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  So, the ripple effect is incredible there. So, you, you have these levels of care and you know what's interesting is Dr. Gold, I don't probably get mad at me for saying this because he's always full, but I had to attend a wedding in the Napa Valley and Dr. Goldhammer charges less a day than any hotel. So, I just stayed there for three days with my husband and, and used it as a hotel and got all my meals and it's pet friendly under certain circumstances.

• 1:04:55Rich Roll?

  That's hilarious.

• 1:04:56Speaker 01

  So, so people, Dr. Pam Popper says she does the same thing. So, because where else are you going to get food like that and people, you get the education, you get the camaraderie. It's about a half a mile away from where Dr. McDougal runs his program. His program doesn't run all year round like True North. It's, it's, it's an incredible experience and if, if I could have one wish for anyone that was struggling with any kind of lifestyle disease or, or weight issue, if they could just experience the level of healing that goes on there, it, it would make all the difference in the world to them.

• 1:05:26Rich Roll?

  But for somebody who, who can't find their way there, I mean, you've worked with, I don't know, 2,000 people at this point, helping them

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:05:34Rich Roll?

  Learn how to lose weight and, and, and keep it off. And I kind of want to get into, you know, some of the strategies that you've employed, like what works, what doesn't. And you explain all of this in the book, The Secret. What is it?

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  The Secrets to Ultimate Weight Loss. I don't have the book, but I have the cover.

• 1:05:50Rich Roll?

  Printout, yeah, it's not, it's not printout.

• 1:05:52Speaker 01

  I've got the cover.

• 1:05:52Rich Roll?

  But it's going to be out, by the time this goes up, it will be out.

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  It should be out. There's nothing inside. No, we're, we're not doing a book, we're just doing a cover.

• 1:05:57Rich Roll?

  Right. So, so, I mean, that's a, that's a, that's a huge, you know, test group of people that you've worked with, right? So, before we dig into the specifics, because I want to talk about travel and expense

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, sure.

• 1:06:10Rich Roll?

  And time and all that kind of stuff, but what have you learned that might be non-obvious to somebody listening about like what doesn't work and what works that, that like you just wish people really got?

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  I wish people would know if they're struggling, and I think you probably know this, is that if you're an addict of any kind, moderation never works.

• 1:06:29Rich Roll?

  What does that even mean?

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. I think it was in the 17th century, the 18th century, there was a saint named Saint Augustine who said that

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation. And if people could understand that moderation really rarely works for anyone, but it's never worked for an addict. And that is the hardest concept, Rich, for people to grasp is the concept of abstinence. Because people don't like that concept. It's scary. It's gonna be difficult. If they only knew that that's where the healing lies. That's where, that's where everything you ever wanted for your health, your weight and your life, lies in this concept. But, because there is so much confusion around certain foods. Because, and again, I love all the plant-based doctors, but they're not food addicts. They've never been overweight. So when they say, "Yeah, a little salt's okay, a little sugar's okay, a little flour's okay," it's okay for them.

• 1:07:22Speaker 01

  But if you're the person that's overweight and struggling and having cravings, it's not you. So you have to know who you are.

• 1:07:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I think that, that you're absolutely correct about that. And I think what happens when you put that word "abstinence" in front of somebody, their whole life forecasts in front of them. And they're, they're seeing themselves at a wedding, you know, somebody's getting married that they haven't even met yet. You know, like, they're just future-tripping on some situation that may not even occur. And imagining, "Well, how am I ever gonna get through that? I can't do it. It's impossible. They won't even try."

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  Right, right. That's why "one day at a time" came along.

• 1:07:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. Like, the core principle, as cheesy and as trite as it sounds of "one, one day at a time," is so powerful. Because when you think about it, it's, it's, it's very Buddhist in its nature. It's like, "What are you doing right now?" Like, you know, "Okay, eat the cupcake tomorrow." Total freedom, permission to eat that cupcake tomorrow. But you know what? When your head hits the pillow tonight, you will have followed, you know, AJ's protocol or whatever. Like, just get through today, make the best choices that you can, and don't worry about what's gonna happen tomorrow.

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  It's so funny. I remember one of my first clients, and their, their struggle was cheese, actually, which is also another addictive substance. It's an animal product, a processed food, the caseomorphines, opiate in the brain kind of thing. And they said, "Well, I can't do this." And I'm like, "Well, why?" They go, "Well, I can't be expected to go to France and not eat the cheese."

• 1:08:41Rich Roll?

  Right. It's just a story.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  No, but then I said, "Well, when are you going to France?" And they go, "Well, I'm not." I go, "Well, when have you ever been to France?" They go, "I have it." I go, "Well, do you have any plans, like, in the next year to go?" "Well, no, I can't even afford to go to France." But the point was, is addicts, you know, addicts are really-

• 1:08:55Rich Roll?

  Well, you're gonna throw up that barret, you're gonna throw up, you're gonna think of every reason possible to protect that- That, you know, to covet that behavior pattern.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:04Rich Roll?

  And that's addiction in a nutshell. Like, that's like, okay, well, yeah, only an addict would say that, right?

• 1:09:09Speaker 01

  If I ever have time to write another book, it'll be about some of the excuses that I hear why people can't do this, because that's what addicts do. They make excuses and, you know, you can't have both excuses and results at the same time.

• 1:09:21Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, it's just, or even, you know, take France out of it altogether. And it's just, yeah, but cheese, I can't, I could never give up cheese. And it's like, okay, well, let's, let's dissect that statement a little bit. Like, what are you really saying? Like, you're just, you're holding on to an idea that doesn't serve you and you're scared. You're scared of the alternative and what that might mean for you, but you've actually never trodden that path yet. So you actually really don't know. And you're, you're, you've created this story and you've given it so much power, but you've never actually tested the veracity of it, you know? And so it's about encouraging people. And I think a big piece of that is, is the empowerment thing, you know? Like, had he said something different to you about your weight, it might've been, you

• 1:10:05Rich Roll?

  know, a very different story for you, right? So the psychology of this is super important and how you communicate to people.

• 1:10:11Speaker 01

  That's the hard piece. That's why I refer everyone to Dr. Lyle, because I'm, I'm more like Dr. Goldhammer, like, this is the way it is, just do it and you'll be fine. And I, and Dr.

• 1:10:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's not an intellectual exercise, but you know that as an addict. Like, it's not, it's not the information. That's not what catalyzes change, you know? It's so much more complicated and nuanced than that.

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I think at the end of the day, most addicts don't want to give up their drug.

• 1:10:35Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course. And then it. Who would?

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:10:37Rich Roll?

  It's like your best friend.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And I think often you have to hit rock bottom. You know, in my case, and I forgot to mention this, this was also a subset of the meeting Dr. Goldhammer. When I broke my knee when I was 50, almost 50 years old in February of 2010, you know, I was 165 pounds and I was too fat for crutches, or at least I couldn't use crutches. I didn't have the upper body strength. And I was in a wheelchair for three months and I couldn't take care of my daily needs. I mean, I couldn't go to the bathroom myself and it's very embarrassing. And, and I said to my, and that was, that was almost more of my rock bottom than even attempting suicide, because to me, having somebody help you go to the bathroom. Especially if that's your husband is the most humiliating thing in the world. And I said that I am going to do something about this. I do not want to be that person that has to have somebody wipe their ass. That was just so degrading to me.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  And luckily that I soon thereafter met Dr. Goldhammer. And oh, the other thing is is they wanted to do surgery and I'm afraid I'm deathly afraid of anesthesia. I had almost died when I was 19 as an allergic reaction. And so that was the other reason because pain is a huge motivator. And here I am working as a pastry chef, you know, you know, eight hours a day and my knee would just swell up. So there was a lot of forces that came together to get me where I am.

• 1:11:47Rich Roll?

  Yeah, two observations about that. I mean, the first thing is, yes, pain is a phenomenal motivator. It's the only thing that's ever gotten me to change anything, you know? And and and the tragedy in that, of course, is that you don't need to be in pain to make a change. But it goes back to that intellectualization of everything. Like, pain can be your best friend because it can be the spark that can ignite you to blaze a new path. And so when I see somebody who's in pain or who's in suffering, who's suffering, your instinct as a human being, as a compassionate person, is to try to alleviate their pain, right? How can I make them feel better and more comfortable?

• 1:12:24Rich Roll?

  But, you know, I think that that often the more compassionate response to that is to say, is to not, is to is to refrain from that instinct and allow them to have that pain moment because that can be their divine moment. Let them know that you're there for them, that you believe in them, that that you see them. But don't try to ease it for them because that is the crucible that can forge a brand new life.

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:54Rich Roll?

  And it's hard to do that, right?

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  I I have, you know, Dr. Goldhammer's voice in my head. It's too, it's he's very compelling, like he says things with such force and assuredness. And one of the things he says a lot, you know, people will ask him questions. Well, you know, how much, how much meat can I have? You know, like they're they're morbidly obese on 20 medications. You know, how much meat can I have? How much cheese? How much wine? And he goes, how fat and sick do you want to be? And so whenever I'm faced with like a choice that could lead me there, I literally hear him saying that. You know, how fat and sick do I want to be? Well, I don't want to be fat or sick anymore. I've been both and I much prefer being slender and well. It's so awesome. I mean, that's the other thing, you know, like a lot of people say, well, absence isn't sustainable. Right? Have you ever heard that? Like, well, it's just not sustainable. You can't, you know, like, how can you be expected to go to a wedding and not drink alcohol?

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  Or go, you know, here and not have that? And maybe it isn't sustainable for some people, but what I want people to know is the joy of living is sustainable. And when you reverse a lifestyle disease, no matter how difficult it was, and when you are in recovery from an addictive substance, the self-esteem you feel, the joy you feel, that's sustainable.

• 1:13:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And it builds, you know, and it gets better and better, but it's experiential. Like, you can't, you know, somebody has to have that experience for themselves.

• 1:14:08Speaker 01

  There's no pill, there's no surgery for

• 1:14:11Rich Roll?

  Right, but we live in a culture that's all about that.

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, pill for every ill.

• 1:14:14Rich Roll?

  And, you know, God bless Dr. Goldhammer for saying that. We need a little truth talk here. And it's not about like, oh, take this, or it's gonna be fine. Like, no, it's not gonna be fine, actually. You know, you're gonna have to like, get uncomfortable. And you know what? Good things come from discomfort. They're not just hand-delivered to you the way that you want them to. And the more people can just acclimate to that reality, I think we'd be better off as a culture. You know what I mean? All right, so let's get into some of the things you get into in the book, like, you know, common subjects that come up, excuses, concerns, the FAQ of being plant-based, like, what do I do when I travel? Or I have a dinner party, and like, it's too expensive, and I'm gonna have to live my life in a kitchen.

• 1:14:57Rich Roll?

  It's way too complicated. I don't understand all of this. So like, can we demystify some of these?

• 1:15:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I recommend the Instant Pot electric pressure cooker, or any pressure cooker. Instant Pot's my favorite, because the truth is, is you always, whenever I hear you speak, you talked about how you used to have the window diet, you know, the drive-thru. It's true that it's never gonna be as cheap or easy as going through a drive-thru. I agree, yes. The thing is, is it doesn't have to be as complicated as people are making it. And the truth is, is if they, if they realize what they're eating now, let's say they're eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a month. They're eating 30 breakfasts, 30 lunches, and 30 dinners. And I would wager that no one listening is eating 30 different breakfasts every day, even if they're eating a horrible diet, and 30 different lunches and 30 different dinners. People find their favorites, and their family's favorites, and

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  they repeat them. Well, why can't you do that with some plant-based, healthy options that you'll like just as much? You like a hamburger? Try my Chipotle Bean Burger. Delicious. All my recipes are tested on regular people. You can find a few recipes that will become your favorites and repeat them. The other thing is, is if people would understand that the simpler you eat, the easier this is. And so whereas many people are looking, "Well, I need a recipe, I need a recipe," you need to learn to eat food. And just having rice and beans over greens and salsa, it's delicious. I know you love that meal.

• 1:16:18Rich Roll?

  I eat that like four times a week.

• 1:16:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. Dr. Esselstyn loves that meal. It's a deli-- I mean, I teach in Mexico. Everybody that lives in Mexico loves that meal. It's food. Think about food instead of recipes. Getting a pressure cooker can take away the argument of time and money, because when you cook things like beans and grains from scratch, they're practically free. They're 49 cents a pound, but it also takes less time. You can cook beans on the stove, it'll take two and a half hours. Pressure cooker, 10 to 20 minutes. So it's true, it's like learning a new language. You have to learn a new set of skills, but these are not that difficult to learn for most people. And the other thing is, is you can always get somebody to do it for you. That's what Dr. Lyle does. He has a college or a high school student come and do all his prep, and then he just takes it out of the fridge, you know? So it's harder than people make it, you know what I'm saying?

• 1:17:04Speaker 01

  Now, of course, I think the social aspect is always going to be the hardest, especially if you're an extrovert, if you're an outgoing person, because if you're doing something different than everybody else, that could cause you discomfort, you know? If you're the only non-drinker in a room full of drinkers, you know, people look at you like, "Well, what's the matter with you? Why don't you drink?" You know, that kind of thing. And so that's, I think, the hardest thing for sometimes people to navigate, is the social aspect.

• 1:17:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, for sure. And that's the thing that leads people out the door.

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. I think that's the deal. You know, the traveling, you know, you travel full-time, I travel full-time. The traveling isn't that hard, because we're eating food. And guess what? They have food in other countries. They actually have food in airports. I mean, yeah, so maybe I have to get white rice instead of brown rice, but I've been on the road for seven years now to Mexico and Canada and the Caribbean, and I've always been able to find food. And when I can't find food, I just take a...

• 1:17:56Rich Roll?

  What do you got there?

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  I just take this with me.

• 1:17:58Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, these are.

• 1:18:00Rich Roll?

  That involves a little bit of prep. I mean, what happens with me is people are like, you know, like I'll be on, I'll fly to San Francisco or I'll fly to Phoenix or, you know, some flight that's like an hour or two, maybe even three hours. And they're like, what did you, what did you eat in the airport? What did you eat in the plane? I was like, dude, it's only like a couple of hours. Like, what are you gonna starve? Like, I had a banana.

• 1:18:19Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, I know.

• 1:18:20Rich Roll?

  It's like, people freak out. They're like, what am I gonna do? Like, I'm in this tube. I'm like, you're only in the tube for an hour and a half. Like, you know, it's gonna be okay.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  They're scared they'll get hungry. That's the other great thing that you learn at True North is that hunger's not an emergency. And when you, even if you go there as a non-faster, because you have roommates, unless you wanna do a buyout, you always have at least one roommate, in a different room, though, but you share a suite. When you see people there that are slender, that are older than you, that are fasting for 40 days, you realize, you know what, if I, I can fly to New York to LA without eating the peanuts, I'm not gonna die. But for most people, hunger is an emergency. And I think part of it is because they're on such a toxic diet that it almost feels like an emergency because they need to get that next fix of sugar, fat, and salt.

• 1:19:00Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm, yeah. And those microbes in the gut are signaling the brain and further enhancing that craving. Yeah, I think, you know, beyond the, the kind of scientific benefits of fasting, I think what's important about that is it really rearranges your relationship with food in the sense that you begin to understand that this three meals a day thing, like, doesn't necessarily need to apply. Like, we're, you'll be fine, you know? Whatever is going on in your thinking brain or whatever impulses are getting fired, those signals don't necessarily need to be heated. You're not gonna pass out. I mean, maybe some people do, low blood sugar. I don't mean to, you know, minimize those sorts of things.

• 1:19:44Rich Roll?

  But I think in general, it's important for people to recognize that, that the way that we've been doing it for a long time may not be the best way.

• 1:19:56Speaker 01

  I think for some people, it really is like, like a detoxification reaction, Rich, because if you think about that, Americans eat over 92% of their calories from animal products and processed food. They're eating a fiberless diet with no micronutrients. And they're always going to be driven to overeat because they're really looking for food with nutrients. And so I think part of it really is physiological, that hunger.

• 1:20:18Rich Roll?

  They're getting fat, but they're starving.

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. And so that's what part of, I think, the discomfort is. It's not emotional, it's physiological. Because they may have eaten 2,000 calories from a fast food restaurant, but their body is starving for nutrients, for fiber. And so they're always going to be looking for more food. But then they keep making that same choice.

• 1:20:35Rich Roll?

  Right, all right. So I got a business lunch. I gotta go meet with these guys. There's a big deal on the line. They want to meet at Ruth Chris's Steakhouse. I have no say in this. I'm trying really hard to be good, but I need to make a good impression with these guys. I need them to like me. Like, I'm just gonna have to eat steak, AJ.

• 1:20:56Speaker 01

  No, steakhouses are the most vegan-friendly places to eat, believe it or not. I've often gotten healthier. No, really, maybe I haven't been to Ruth Chris.

• 1:21:04Rich Roll?

  I couldn't tell you the last time I was in a steakhouse.

• 1:21:06Speaker 01

  Well, I've been to Morton's, because, which I don't know Ruth Chris, but I'm assuming, I haven't seen the menu. But in general, steakhouses can be the most vegan-friendly places, more so than vegan restaurants.

• 1:21:16Rich Roll?

  Finally.

• 1:21:17Speaker 01

  Well, because here's the thing. If you look at the, think sides. So first of all, when you're invited anywhere that you have no control over, look up the menu. I mean, because if it's a place that has more than, I think, two or three locations, the menu will be online. So first thing, look at the menu, navigate the menu. In general, steakhouses have lots of sides of vegetables. And most of the time, the chef will either steam or roast the vegetables for you without oil. You do need to sometimes call up. I had to be sure. The best time to call a restaurant is during that window where after the lunch rush, before the dinner rush. And, you know, call them up and say, look, you know, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be difficult. I've heard very good things about your restaurant. I'm gonna be there on such and such a date. But I'm on a very special diet, doctor's orders. You know, blame it on Dr. Esselstyn, can't have a drop of oil.

• 1:22:01Speaker 01

  And say, is there anything you can do to accommodate me? And instead of saying, well, you know, don't say like, well, I'm a whole food plant-based vegan. I can't eat sugar, oil, salt, flour. Just say what you can eat. You know, and so a steakhouse generally can make you a baked potato. Now, sometimes they put oil on it, but you can ask them not to. They can steam you some vegetables. Often, they have salsa as a condiment. So that's one trick you can do. Navigate the menu. Like, I've had clients go to restaurants and they go, "There's nothing I can eat." But then they realize, "Hey, you know what? They had a spinach omelet." So then they say, "Hey, I noticed you have a spinach omelet. Can you hold the eggs?" Kind of like that.

• 1:22:33Rich Roll?

  Right. All right. So that's the logistical tactics. But then we have to deal with the social aspect of this.

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  Okay. So this is where everybody's going to be different. And Dr. Lyle has a beautiful lecture on his website, esteem dynamics.com, called "The Perfect Personality." And it's going to depend on how agreeable or disagreeable the person is. Now, I don't have a problem with that because I'm not going to eat if somebody doesn't want me to eat. Now, that doesn't mean I'm going to be rude or socially unacceptable. But what I might do, for example, one of the strategies I might use if I'm in a corner, I might say, when I get there, I might say, "Oh, this looks delicious. I'm so sorry, I had a late lunch. And can I just get a cup of tea?" Or I might say something, I've used this a lot. I say, "Oh, guys, I'm so sorry, I'm having a colonoscopy tomorrow, so I can't..." I mean, I do that a lot. Or I might say, "You know what? Oh, my God, I just came from the dentist with a root canal. My mouth is..."

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  I mean, there's ways you can do it without offending people for their choices, right? You know, you can order it and then excuse yourself to go to the bathroom and come back and say, "Oh, my God, I'm so sorry. I just had the worst bout of diarrhea and vomiting." I mean, it depends how far you want to go.

• 1:23:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So you could tell a white lie. But if you don't want to lie, Dr. Lyle has some interesting strategy around this as well, which is to just present it in a very casual, you know, way to just say, "I don't know. You know, I'm trying this thing. I'm trying to do this thing. I know it's crazy. Probably is not going to work."

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:55Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  It seems to be working.

• 1:23:56Rich Roll?

  And whatever. You know, it's doing okay, but like, just deflate it. Don't be like, "Oh, well, I'm doing this and this is the way you..." Whatever. Like, just try to be as casual and low-key and perhaps self-deprecating in that regard. And that really just diffuses everything. I've never had a problem. I have battles in my mind about this. Like, I trump it up to be this big thing. But I've always been able, I mean, now it's, you know, it's like, look, everybody knows. You don't have to tell white lies anymore. Everybody knows, "This is where it's going to go," right? I mean, same thing with me. So like, I don't really confront it anymore. But I did have to, you know, for a long time. So my personal way of doing it is just to be super casual about it. And if you are...

• 1:24:40Rich Roll?

  Uncomfortable with that, like you can say, you can excuse yourself and say, I'll be right back and go into the bathroom and find a waiter and go, hey, this is what I want to do. Can you do it? Like that way, you're having that, you're not drawing, I think people, they don't want to draw that attention to themselves. They don't want to be like that person who's like difficult, you know, that everyone's going to talk about after the lunch or the dinner and just, you know, kind of take care of it in a, in a quiet way. And then just be, you know, you don't have to say anything. You don't owe anybody anything.

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  Do you want to know a strategy that worked for a couple of my clients for whom a restaurant meal off plan could have been life or death? We're not talking about somebody that's trying to lose 10 vanity pounds, but somebody that's really in the throes of trying to reverse diabetes or lose a leg or go on dialysis.

• 1:25:21Rich Roll?

  Life is literally on the line.

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  Right. So this, this brilliant lady, what she did when she was in my program, in the in-person program, she had to entertain clients for lunch and she worked near La Cienega Restaurant Row. So they always were places like Lowry's and whatever. But she really took her recovery from food addiction and diabetes very seriously. So what she did is she called up the restaurant ahead of time because you, you know where you're going. Usually they don't, you don't just get some mysterious text, right?

• 1:25:45Rich Roll?

  Like at the last minute.

• 1:25:46Speaker 01

  So they knew where she was meeting the client. She called up the restaurant the night before and said, listen, I'm on a very special diet doctor's orders. Would you mind if I brought my food into you? I'd come early, you heat it up and plate it and then charge me. And the guy says, lady, we do that all the time. And then she got what she could eat. Nobody knew, nobody batted an eye. She just said, oh, you know, hey, Frank, I'll have the usual.

• 1:26:08Rich Roll?

  Oh, so she brought it ahead of time and then they put it, and they put it on the plate?

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  And they charged her for the least expensive entree.

• 1:26:15Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Yeah, that's interesting. I haven't heard that one before.

• 1:26:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a good one.

• 1:26:19Rich Roll?

  I mean, that's, there's some machinations and some time invested in that. Not everyone's going to want to do that. But I guess, look, if you're, if you're on your program and this is everything to you and your life is on the line, like that's a solution.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  So let me ask you this, as a recovering alcoholic. Would you then drink alcohol just to not make other people feel uncomfortable?

• 1:26:37Rich Roll?

  Of course not. But when you're newly sober, I can tell you, you know, within the first two weeks of trying to get sober, I was already imagining, you know, this bachelor party that I had committed to going to. And there was no way I was going to be able to go to Las Vegas for a weekend with my buddies and not drink. And that terrified me. So that's very real.

• 1:26:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I agree. No, and I'm not trying to be dismissive.

• 1:26:58Rich Roll?

  And now I can go anywhere. And, you know, I have to maintain my program. It's not like I, I work at it.

• 1:27:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:27:04Rich Roll?

  But, you know, I can go to those places as need be. I don't seek them out. But, you know, occasions arise where I'm in situations I'm not normally in.

• 1:27:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:27:13Rich Roll?

  And I'm comfortable in my own skin. But that is because I've put a huge amount of work into that, right? To be able to have that gas in the tank and get through those opportunity situations where, you know, normally that would imperil me or somebody who's, who has a very shaky foundation for their recovery.

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  I'm not trying to be dismissive. What I'm trying to say, and this is where the crux of this disease lies, because most people don't take food addiction as seriously as alcohol or drug addiction. No one would, if people knew you were a recovering alcoholic, it's different if they'd never met you. But nobody knowing what they know would say to you at a family event or a bachelor party, say, hey, Rich, you got to taste this margarita. I made it just for you, just a sip. People wouldn't do that to you. But with food addicts, they feel like, what's the harm? One meal off plan. And just like-

• 1:27:59Rich Roll?

  It's harder. Makes it harder.

• 1:28:00Speaker 01

  Right. One drink, one drunk. You can live your life without alcohol or cocaine or cigarettes. You can't live your life without food. And so, knowing what I know now, if I knew then, I would have just been honest with the person and say, listen, this looks delicious. And I'm so sorry, I don't mean to be difficult, but I am a food addict. And, and there's nothing I can have here. So I'm going to enjoy the company and have a cup of tea. That's what I would do.

• 1:28:21Rich Roll?

  All right. So your, your kind of road to recovery, you've got this, you've, you've premised this, or you've kind of distilled this down to this idea of the seven Cs.

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  Okay, gosh, I hope I remember now. Well, I-

• 1:28:33Rich Roll?

  I wrote them down in case.

• 1:28:34Speaker 01

  No, it's been a while since I gave-

• 1:28:36Rich Roll?

  I'm going to test you. Come on.

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  Well, the first C is commitment. Absolutely. Because you have to have that commitment. I mean, there's been research with Harvard Business School that the people that made commitments did better many, many years later than those that didn't make commitments. Or, or, you know, sort of like commitment is sort of like having a goal. But having a commitment, writing it down.

• 1:28:53Rich Roll?

  Being specific about it.

• 1:28:54Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 1:28:55Rich Roll?

  You're like, "I'm gonna eat better."

• 1:28:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, not just saying, "I'm gonna eat better, I'm gonna exercise, I'm never gonna eat cheese again." No, you know, make it, make it, and actually having it a time commitment. See, that's why we always do like 21 days first in my program. We don't tell you that you can't have XYZ the rest of your life. We're just, like Dr. Lyle says, doing an experiment for 21 days. We're gonna do this, and on day 22, if you want that triple cheeseburger, write it on your calendar, you're gonna get it. But you're just gonna make a commitment. And when you make that commitment public, like we do in the Ultimate Weight Loss Program, or if you have a buddy, it seems to be more powerful because then you have accountability.

• 1:29:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course. So that goes to the community prong of the seven Cs.

• 1:29:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, I think, number four. And you know, I think community is the one where most people fail and most people relapse. Because you brought that up, that's the hardest for people because of the social pressure. And then the second-

• 1:29:40Rich Roll?

  And a lot of people, sorry, don't want to interrupt, but I think this is an important point. Like, a lot of people, like, we live in Los Angeles, there's, you know, whatever. There's a million people here to, to kind of pat us on the back or whatever. But a lot of people live in places where they don't have that community in their local town or wherever they live.

• 1:29:57Speaker 01

  Right, that's why an online community, that's why we created Ultimate Weight Loss, to also be online, to help people all over the world with a virtual community, which actually can be just as powerful, although it is always nice to have somebody in person.

• 1:30:07Rich Roll?

  All right, compliance.

• 1:30:08Speaker 01

  Compliance is my favorite word. Some people say they don't like it, they like adherence better, but adherence doesn't start with C. But Dr. Goldhammer says the word "compliance," that's where I learned it. And it literally means just following a prescribed course of action. And what I love about it is there's no emotion, to me at least, there's no emotion in the word "compliance." People, you know, all the time make posts on our private group or call me up and say, "I, I was bad, I ate a cookie." "Oh, I was good today, I ate kale." I don't look at it as like you're bad, or you're, you might be bad or good in life, but you're not bad or good based on your food choices. You're either compliant or non-compliant.

• 1:30:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you made a choice.

• 1:30:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, choose to be compliant. You, you, you had a mishap, you had a slip or a misstep or a relapse, then you can go back to choosing to be compliant in the next meal, whatever that program is.

• 1:30:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I like that because, because it takes this idea of failure and the shame that, that kind of goes hand in hand with it, out of it. Because what happens is people slip- Or make that choice and then they beat themselves up. So they've made a second mistake. And then they're like, fuck it.

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  Then they go.

• 1:31:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So then they're out.

• 1:31:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:31:12Rich Roll?

  And if you reframe that and call it by a different name, say, I made this choice. It's neutral. You're not bad or good. This is the choice that I made. Okay. That allows you to be dispassionate about it and go, how can I recalibrate? Or what led me to make that choice? Like, let's look at that. Let's unpack that. And what do I need to do so that I don't make that choice again?

• 1:31:34Speaker 01

  And it's how they talk to themselves, because if they ate a cookie and then relapse and they say to themselves, well, now I failed. Now I've blown it. What's the use? They feel a certain way.

• 1:31:42Rich Roll?

  And there's a lifetime of energy behind that.

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  Or if they say to themselves, oh, I ate a cookie. I was non-compliant. It doesn't have the same charge. It was like, I wasn't compliant. Oh, well, then you'll be compliant with the next meal.

• 1:31:53Rich Roll?

  All right.

• 1:31:53Speaker 01

  The next is consistency. As an athlete, you know how important consistency is.

• 1:31:57Rich Roll?

  I talk about it all the time.

• 1:31:58Speaker 01

  Because I mean, you know, I remember, I don't, I think it might've been Doug Lyle, but that was, was it Kobe Bryant? Who, there are some athletes that they don't just go to practice, like they stay two hours later or come two hours before. You know, things like that. When you do things in the same manner over time without, with little variation and you do them consistently. First of all, you build a habit and then it becomes an automatic habit. But too many people go to True North once a year and fast and they lose some weight and they get off some medications. But then they go right back to the same environment and the same way of eating because they're not doing it consistently. So what you do most of the time is more important than what you do some of the time. So being consistent with your food choices and your exercise too.

• 1:32:38Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's self-evident. I mean, it's pretty elementary, but I think that's, that's the most difficult thing. I mean, I think, I think it's important to respect momentum. Like if you had that experience of being a True North or you've done 30 days or 21 days of whatever you're doing. We have this weird human impulse, especially addicts of trying to celebrate those benchmarks by doing the thing that is at odds with what got you there. Like, like, oh, I got a year of sobriety.

• 1:33:04Speaker 01

  Here's a birthday cake. Here's a cake. Yeah. Or here's a cake.

• 1:33:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Like, yeah, I had a kid. Exactly. You know, and, and, and trying to maintain, it's those micro little decisions that you're making every day that are truly at the crux of whether you're going to succeed or not. And that's the unsexy part, you know, it's like, oh, you can create all this. Romanticization out of like getting on a plane and going to True North and like you're housed and you're taken care of but like, you know, what are you doing at home when no one's looking moment to moment, hour to hour?

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  It's funny that you mentioned the word sexy. I had this very affluent client that came to me and I planned the program and he goes, you know, this abstinence, it's just not sexy. And I said, well, either is your impotence. So, you know, cause-

• 1:33:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Well, also like nothing, you know, nothing truly, no great accomplishment is like what it takes to build a company or, you know, achieve any athletic heights or any of these things. Like it's, it's the unsexy part that gets you there. It's the thing that you're doing, you're the grind when no one's looking that you're doing anonymously. Like all of that is what contributes to that success.

• 1:34:09Speaker 01

  But you're building so much self-esteem with doing that. That's the thing that's so cool.

• 1:34:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course. And when you look back, it's those difficult moments that you recall. You know, it's not like that, you know, you could celebrate these victories, but honestly, like the value for me, when I look at anything that I've created or succeeded at, like I remember like the hard times.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  The effort. It's the, you know, Dr. Lyle talks about that. It's that you're rewarded for the effort for a job well done. Even though I do a lot of these iron chefs and I don't always win, but I don't feel bad when I lose. I, if I, if I know I did my best, you know, that's all that matters.

• 1:34:42Rich Roll?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:34:43Speaker 01

  So, the next one is change, is change.

• 1:34:45Rich Roll?

  No, it's cooking.

• 1:34:46Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Sorry. I don't remember the order. Well, cooking, you know, it used to be continuing education and then I changed it to cooking because we realized that at some point you have to get the food right. And either that means learning a few simple basic recipes yourself, as we talked about, or having somebody cook it for you because the food seems to be a part that eludes a lot of people. You know, I had a client, 44 years old, who came to me. She goes, how do you bake a potato? And I'm like, oh my God. You know, people have no skills anymore. Like when I grew up, home economics was mandatory in junior high, sewing and cooking. We learned basic, you know, skills of the, of the homemaker, which I think men and women should, should learn. So it's just some basic cooking skills.

• 1:35:25Rich Roll?

  Right. All right. Cooking, change.

• 1:35:27Speaker 01

  Change. Yeah. You know, you know, that saying, nobody likes change but a wet baby. But many people don't change until the pain associated with change is less than the pain of staying the same. People have to at least be willing to change because you're going on- A journey here that's completely different than anything you've ever done, right? Because most of the world is going to continue to eat crap and continue to eat animal products. And so at least you have to be willing to make these changes. You may have to change who you hang out with, like if you were, when you were an alcoholic, if you had other buddies that were alcoholics, you probably couldn't at least hang-

• 1:36:00Rich Roll?

  I had to completely change my social circle.

• 1:36:02Speaker 01

  Right, or at least not hang out with them at the bar anymore. So you have to be willing to change who you hang out with. If you still go to restaurants, you might have to change which restaurants you go to, how you order. So that's a big thing for people. A lot of people don't like having to change, you know?

• 1:36:16Rich Roll?

  No, they really don't.

• 1:36:17Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:36:17Rich Roll?

  You know, they want, they want, they want all the good stuff.

• 1:36:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:36:20Rich Roll?

  But they don't want to do those uncomfortable things.

• 1:36:22Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:36:23Rich Roll?

  So AJ's got news for you.

• 1:36:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta learn to get comfortable being uncomfortable.

• 1:36:27Rich Roll?

  Right, well, we talked about community. Do you have anything more to say about that before we go on to the last one?

• 1:36:31Speaker 01

  I think with community is that if you don't have one, find one. And whether it's my group or a virtual group, or even just one person that could be a buddy to you online or in person. I think that that is really going to be the most important thing. It would be, you know, if my husband didn't support me in this, I don't think I could do it. You know, if he was just, you know, drinking beer and eating pizza every night. So even having that one special person to support you.

• 1:36:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, so what do you say to that person who is really trying hard, but their spouse, their partner is not into it?

• 1:37:03Speaker 01

  I say get divorced, get divorced. No, so what I, I don't, I sometimes I do say that if they're not, if they're sabotaging them. So what I say is then, you know, at least don't have these things in the house. So in other words, if you're an alcoholic and your spouse isn't and they can still drink, out of respect to you, they will then drink outside of the home. And it has to be the same thing with the foods, or we recommend even getting what's called a locked food safe. If your spouse won't support you, it's going to be rough. Now, all the doctors I've interviewed says, say that a loving partner will support someone in recovery, or at least should, that doesn't always happen. So if your spouse won't support you, then you have to get it somewhere else. It's very hard to do this alone. No man is an island. In recovery, I know one person that was a cocaine addict,

• 1:37:48Speaker 01

  that was extremely introverted, highly intelligent, that was able to get off the drug themselves without rehab, without, you know, going to a doctor. That's really rare. Recovery is generally done in programs because it really helps you to see that if you climb this mountain, there is a top. When you see people like Heather Goodwin, who have lost 300 pounds and kept it off, you see what's possible. And that's why I think if you don't have the support at home, you've got to find, as we say, your tribe somewhere.

• 1:38:17Rich Roll?

  Yes, a support system is absolutely crucial, not just to see the example, the successes, but also just to catch you when you fall and who are you going to call at midnight? And all that kind of stuff is like, I couldn't have gotten sober by myself. There's no way. There's no way. So I think it's super duper important. All right, compassion.

• 1:38:38Speaker 01

  Oh, that's my big problem. That's why I wore this shirt today.

• 1:38:40Rich Roll?

  You're not compassionate?

• 1:38:42Speaker 01

  I'm not discompassionate, but most of my life as an ethical vegan, my compassion was more for those with fur and fins and feathers and not those so much with skin.

• 1:38:51Rich Roll?

  Don't like people.

• 1:38:51Speaker 01

  Well, it's not that I don't like them, but I always seem to do better with the animals. And so I realized that if I'm going to be successful helping people, and if people are going to be successful helping themselves, you have to have compassion for other people at every step of their journey and for yourself, especially when you relapse. If they understood what an insidious, chronic, progressive, life-threatening disease addiction was, whether it's food addiction or alcohol addiction, they might be kinder to themselves when they relapse. So you need to practice self-compassion. And like your wife teaches yoga and meditation, those are two of the most beautiful modalities that help you garner self-compassion, when

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  you can get quiet and do those more mindful things. A lot of people have compassion for the animals, but not so much for other people. And that's what I'm talking about with compassion. However, there are people that come to this program just to lose weight and really don't have compassion for the animals. And then it's a plant-based program, and then they maybe need to learn to have some compassion for those. So compassion is huge.

• 1:39:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the piece about self-compassion is super important. As somebody who's been in the rooms of recovery for a long time, you see people that relapse, there's chronic relappers, and a lot of those people are under the misapprehension that they can go out and they can always come back, which they can. But just because you go out doesn't mean you're going to come back. And more often than not, Uh, you know, I've been witness to those people that go out thinking they're gonna come back after a binge weekend and they never come back.

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  They never come back.

• 1:40:25Rich Roll?

  And that's because of shame and because, you know, sometimes they die and I've been to a lot of funerals, but, you know, a lot of times it's just they're so mortified they can't face the prospect of returning to the rooms to admit on a public level, like, this is what happened to me. And so they would rather imprison themselves and perpetuate the addictive cycle than have to actually confront that. And, you know, it's, that destroys lives.

• 1:40:47Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And that's why, that's why community is so important. Addiction is a disease that can only thrive in isolation. And that's just the way it is. And they, they, they shouldn't feel so much shame. I think that's why with, with shows like yours, to educate people that addiction actually it's a disease. Like you interviewed Dr. Mate. It's not, it's not like a choice. It's not like we said, oh, you know, this, this is a great thing to have. It's, it's, it's, our brains are wired differently than other people's. And even though it is, it's not a choice, but once we know that we are wired this way, it becomes our responsibility to behave differently if we wish to recover, which is why if I had one message for people that were suffering from any addictions, it would be that abstinence is bliss.

• 1:41:30Speaker 01

  It is so much easy to stay, easier to stay in recovery than it is to continually have to detoxify and withdraw and try to get sobriety again, whatever your addiction is. But, but like I said, I've never met anybody that's gone to the top of the mountain or got to the other side that didn't think abstinence was, it's so awesome. If they could just feel what it was like to be in our brains, to have a calm brain and not having cravings for any addictive substance, people would do it, but it is a tough sell.

• 1:41:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it is. So we gotta round this out, but if, if somebody's listening to this and they are caught in that cycle and they're having difficulty, you know, confronting their own personal truth or trying to see their way out of it, what is your lifeline?

• 1:42:14Speaker 01

  I think that they, the first thing I would probably recommend is maybe read a book like The Pleasure Trap, you know, that's a low buy-in, like, you know, what is it, like 15 bucks or 20 bucks on Audible, and see if that resonates with you, what these doctors are saying. And if it does, maybe considering going to True North, or at least having your free consult, you know, there's no, there's no cost in just talking to Dr. Goldhammer to see if it was right for you, or having a low-cost consult with Dr. Lyle for $75. If my program is right for you, consider joining that. You know, it's not right for everybody, because it is, it's an abstinence-based program, and that's the thing, people want the results of abstinence without doing the work of abstinence. So, and, and just, just get yourself educated more to see if, if you really are an addict. You know, there is no shame in this disease, unless you feel that way, you know, that's

• 1:42:58Speaker 01

  why we need to bring this out. I mean, I'm proud to say I'm an addict, because once I found out I was, I knew I could recover, because there was treatment. Before that, that's when I thought something was wrong with me, that I couldn't, I couldn't eat a cookie. I'm like, what's wrong with me? Who, who eats, you know, all these cookies? I don't get it. But once I knew that there was a reason, there was no more shame.

• 1:43:17Rich Roll?

  Right. So, often, the fear of the unknown exceeds the pain of the, the current situation, right? And, and, and I also, so I think it's, it's often revealing, if you get out a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle, and write on one side, like, all the pain that you're suffering from, and on the other side, what you're afraid of, and, and really get real with yourself. You know, willingness is something that you can't, you can't will somebody to be willing, they have to have their own, sort of, desire to, you know, do that kind of work, and they either have it, or they don't. And my hope, and my wish for everybody who's listening, who is suffering, is that you do

• 1:43:59Rich Roll?

  have that willingness, because it is that that will make the difference between you, you know, changing your life, and just maintaining stuck in whatever pattern.

• 1:44:08Speaker 01

  And, you know, you can always go back, you can try sobriety, if you don't like it, you know, you know, it's not, none, none of these programs are court-ordered, well, sometimes I guess they are for some people, but in general.

• 1:44:18Rich Roll?

  That would be me.

• 1:44:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. In general, you know, that's why I love the concept of, not even a day at a time, but a meal at a time, a bite at a time, you can always choose to go back. And I don't know if I heard this on one of the guests on your show, but, you know, they say that the opposite of addiction is connection, and that's why.

• 1:44:34Rich Roll?

  Absolutely.

• 1:44:35Speaker 01

  That's why it's so important to find a tribe, or at least one person, to support you.

• 1:44:40Rich Roll?

  AJ, you're an inspiration.

• 1:44:42Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you. I love you.

• 1:44:43Rich Roll?

  That was awesome. How do you feel?

• 1:44:44Speaker 01

  I feel great.

• 1:44:45Rich Roll?

  You feel good?

• 1:44:45Speaker 01

  My, my hairdresser says she's your biggest fan and she was so jealous that I was coming here.

• 1:44:51Rich Roll?

  I have a massive fan base amongst hairdressers.

• 1:44:53Speaker 01

  You do? She's a vegan hairdresser, too.

• 1:44:55Rich Roll?

  Oh, cool. That's cool. Really great. If you want to connect with AJ, there's a number of ways to do that. The most important thing, though, is check out her new book, Secrets to Ultimate Weight Loss. She also has a book called Eat Unprocessed.

• 1:45:07Speaker 01

  Unprocessed, yeah.

• 1:45:08Rich Roll?

  Unprocessed, yeah. Check that out and your website, your coaching, your online programs.

• 1:45:12Speaker 01

  Sure, it's all there on my website.

• 1:45:14Rich Roll?

  Chef AJ website.

• 1:45:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, or eatunprocessed.com.

• 1:45:17Rich Roll?

  Eatunprocessed.com, cool.

• 1:45:18Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 1:45:18Rich Roll?

  And you're on all the social networks and all that kind of stuff, right? Are you speaking anywhere soon or any of that kind of stuff?

• 1:45:24Speaker 01

  What's coming up? The cruise isn't till next year. You know, I've been taking a little time off to, to, to, to get this book done. Am I going anywhere special? Not that I... Oh, Rancho La Puerta, where you've been with Julie. Yeah, in Mexico, May 5th through 12.

• 1:45:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I had Debra on the podcast, early days as well.

• 1:45:40Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 1:45:40Rich Roll?

  She's amazing.

• 1:45:41Speaker 01

  She's awesome.

• 1:45:42Rich Roll?

  How old is she? Must be like...

• 1:45:43Speaker 01

  Like 95 or 96 now, yeah.

• 1:45:45Rich Roll?

  She's still, she's still showing up and doing her... God, she's, she's the goddess.

• 1:45:50Speaker 01

  I love her.

• 1:45:51Rich Roll?

  She's cool. All right, awesome. Come back and talk to me again sometime.

• 1:45:54Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, it'd be my honored pleasure. Thank you.

• 1:45:57Rich Roll?

  Peace, plants, eat unprocessed.

• 1:46:00Speaker 01

  And go abstinent.

• 1:46:05Rich Roll?

  I told you, right? She's amazing. Super great. Hope you guys enjoyed that conversation. Please let AJ know what you thought of the exchange. You can reach her at TheRealChefAJ on both Twitter and Instagram. And as always, check out the show notes for links and resources related to today's conversation on the episode page at ritual.com. Once again, The Plant Power Way Italia is now out. Pick up your copy today. I guarantee you, you will be delighted. 125 delicious plant-based recipes inspired by that region's rich culinary tradition. If you want even more amazing plant-based recipes, check out our meal planner, meals.richroll.com. We're offering thousands of recipes, literally thousands, all customized based on your personal preferences with unlimited grocery lists and...

• 1:46:50Rich Roll?

  Even grocery delivery in most US cities with international delivery in certain cities coming up soon, as well as extraordinary customer service. All of this is just $1.90 a week when you sign up for a year. For more on all this and to sign up, go to meals.richroll.com or click on Meal Planner on the top menu at richroll.com. And if you would like to support my work, please subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or on whatever platform you enjoy this show. It really does help with the show's visibility, extending reach and audience, which in turn will make it easier for me to book the very best people for future shows. You can also support the show on Patreon at richroll.com/donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today, Jason Camiolo for audio

• 1:47:32Rich Roll?

  engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music. He does all kinds of work on this show. Couldn't do it without him, so thank you for that. Michael Gibson and Blake Curtis for video and graphics. This episode is up on YouTube. You can find that at youtube.com/richroll. And theme music, as always, by Anna Lima. Thanks for the love, you guys. Really appreciate it. This podcast means everything to me, but it's nothing without you guys, the audience. So go forth, prosper, eat plants, be well, be healthy, spread love. Talk to you soon. Peace, plants. Amazay.