From Eating Disorder To Olympic Glory: Dotsie Bausch On Defying Age & Championing Compassion

We tend to think Olympic athletes live perfect, charmed lives. Genetically gifted, they inhabit a world beyond mortal challenges — physical specimens oozing talent so rare, it effortlessly skyrockets them onto the global stage. I would stridently challenge such a notion. I don't think that is the experience of any Olympian. And it’s definitely not the experience of this week’s guest – an Olympic silver medalist with an almost unbelievably improbable story. A very human story of struggle and pain that underpins her athletic accomplishments, fueling them with a fundamental sense of purpose and meaning. A 7-time U. S. National Champion, former world record holder and two-time Pan American gold medal winner in track cycling, Dotsie Bausch earned silver in team pursuit at the 2012 London Olympics. Not only was she a long-time vegetarian at that time (she’s now vegan), she was almost 40 years old when she won that medal – the oldest ever in her discipline and one of the oldest athletes to ever compete in an Olympic Games. Dotsie's accomplishments are extraordinary. But more remarkable is the hard-fought road this exceptional athlete trudged to achieve such heights. Because Dotsie's greatest achievement isn't athletic. Her biggest victory is the battle won to resurrect her life from the depths of an eating disorder so severe, it very nearly claimed her life. Now retired, Dotsie is a public speaker (check out her TEDx Talk, Olympic Level Compassion), a mentor to aspiring female professional cyclists, and a color commentator for NBC Sports. But most importantly, she is a role model for women and men around the world in their battle to return to healthy eating and living habits as an ambassador for The National Eating Disorders Association. I know Dotsie through the vegan athlete world as a staunch advocate for animal rights and the health benefits of plant-based eating for health and performance. She is also the force behind a recent anti-dairy commercial that aired during the closing ceremonies of the recent PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games. Entitled Switch 4 Good, think of it as an anti- “Got Milk” campaign featuring an array of former Olympic athletes. Disordered eating is a subject I have been wanting to explore on this podcast for quite some time. I just needed the right guest. Dotsie delivers. Her experience as both a sufferer and survivor of this surprisingly common malady is as powerful as it is instructive. This is a conversation about facing and overcoming a disease that affects up to 30 million Americans and 70 million individuals worldwide. A disease so formidable, it drove Dotsie to a suicide attempt. It’s an exchange about the bewildering nature of that disorder and the process she undertook to rebuild her life – from fashion model to athlete. It’s a conversation about her most unlikely route to Olympic glory. It’s about eating plant-based for performance. And it’s about advocacy – what it means to live in service to your ideals. If you suffer from an eating disorder or know someone who does, this is appointment listening. Towards that end, Dotsie conducts a free mentorship program for those in need. Her door is open to any and all reaching out for help. To contact her, click here. Delightful, engaging and strong, I adore Dotsie. I love this conversation. I hope you do too. Watch & Subscribe on YouTube: http://bit.ly/dotsierrp Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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

• 0:44Rich Roll?

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

• 1:05Speaker 01

  There truly is a way out. Once an anorexic, not always an anorexic. There is freedom on the other side. There really is a pathway, whichever pathway you choose, to have freedom from it. So many eating disorder sufferers that I met, that's the one thing that they just don't really believe is true. And it is, there really is freedom. And if you let this disease run its course and you die from it, you're not gonna be able to do anything. You're not gonna be able to have an impact on the world, and you're not gonna be able to do anything for the greater good. And you're definitely not gonna be able to do anything healthfully for the greater good while you're sick.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  So allow that to be your bright, guiding and shining light out of this. Let that come to the top of your heart and let that guide you.

• 2:01Rich Roll?

  That's Dotsie Bausch, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:16Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. We tend to think Olympic athletes, Olympic medalists, live these perfect, charmed lives, genetically gifted, superior physical specimens, oozing talent that simply skyrockets them effortlessly onto the global stage. Well, I'm here to tell you that that is not the typical experience. In fact, I don't think that is any Olympian's experience, and it's definitely not the experience of this week's guest. An Olympic silver medalist with a most unlikely story, an almost unbelievably improbable story, and also a very human story, a story of struggle and pain, a pain that predicates her athletic accomplishments,

• 2:59Rich Roll?

  provides a foundation for them, provides those accomplishments with a fundamental sense of purpose and meaning. My name is Rich Roll. It's raining out pretty heavily. Can you hear it on my rooftop here? Sorry about that if it's distracting, but that's neither here nor there, because today, I'm pleased to bring you a conversation with my friend Dotzy Bausch. A seven-time US national champion, former world record holder, and two-time Pan-American gold medal winner in track cycling, Dotzy earned silver at the 2012 London Olympics in an event called Team Pursuit. But here's the amazing thing. Not only was she a longtime vegetarian at that time, she's now vegan, she was almost

• 3:41Rich Roll?

  40 when she won that medal, the oldest ever in her discipline, and one of the oldest athletes to ever compete in the Olympic Games. And all of that is extraordinary. It's awesome. It's amazing. But honestly, what intrigues me the most about Dotzy is that hard-fought road she trudged to achieve such athletic heights, because Dotzy's greatest achievements are not athletic. Her biggest victory came from resurrecting her own life from the depths of severe eating disorders, which threatened to take her life 20 years ago after a promising modeling career in New York City. That's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this week's guest. There's a ton more I want to say about Dotzy

• 4:25Rich Roll?

  before we dive in. But first, I hope I can indulge you a bit, because I have an announcement that I really want to make. As many of you guys know, about seven years ago, I released Finding Ultra, my first book. For those unfamiliar, it's a memoir. It's sort of a redemption story about addiction, sobriety, middle-aged malaise, and ultimately, plant-fueled feats of athletic prowess. Well, that book not only changed my life, it went on to have a really huge impact on a lot of people, more impact than I could have possibly imagined. And in fact, every year, that book sells more copies than the year before, and I'm super proud of all of that. But over the

• 5:06Rich Roll?

  last couple of years, I just, I couldn't shake this feeling that the book is incomplete, because it failed to tell the whole story. Because in truth, what has transpired in my life since 2012, when that book came out, is equally, if not more dramatic, and perhaps more relatable. So, I decided to rewrite it, because I had so much more that I wanted to say. I've changed, I've evolved, and somehow, the book felt lacking without bringing it up to date in that regard. So, over the course of the past year, I completely overhauled it from page one. It's now 100 pages longer, and the new edition features about 30 to 40%

• 5:47Rich Roll?

  brand-new material. It's got a new foreword, it's got a new 50-page prescriptive chapter that chronicles my journey to present, and also lays out all of the specific tools, practices, and strategies that I employed to transform my life, not just physically, but in mind, body, and spirit. It also has a robust recipe section, a seven-day eating plan, it has my cleanse protocol, and also, a robust and updated series of resource appendices to take your discovery further. And finally, it's frankly, just better writing throughout. I mean, you know what it's like to go back and read something you wrote six or seven years ago, so it's sort of like that. And I'll close by saying that ultimately, this

• 6:30Rich Roll?

  is not a book about running, it's not about how to become a better triathlete. It's really a book for anyone, specifically those who feel stuck, because it's about...

• 6:40Rich Roll?

  Refusing to settle for less. It's about the path towards a life fueled by meaning and purpose. It's about accessing untapped reservoirs of potential. It's about self-actualization. And really, all told, it's about how to become our best, most authentic selves. And finally, I would say that it is now, after all of this, the book I always wanted it to be. So even if you read it and enjoyed the original version, I think you're going to find the revised and updated edition more than worthy of your attention. And for those that enjoy audiobooks, I also rerecorded the entire thing with downloadable PDF files of all the new appendix materials, which is something the first edition unfortunately lacked. So if you have benefited

• 7:22Rich Roll?

  from my free content over the years, it would mean the world to me if you trusted me with a purchase. It's now available from your favorite booksellers on Amazon. I just checked earlier today. It's selling for only $7.67. So perhaps that's the best place to get it. And also, signed copies are going to be available through my website. That's coming in the next couple of days. Perhaps by the time you're listening to that, that will be live. We're just configuring it all right now. In any event, thanks for indulging me. I am really proud of this and so excited that it's now out in the world.

• 8:02Rich Roll?

  Okay, Dotzy. Dotzy's so inspiring. Now retired, she's a public speaker. You should check out her TEDx talk. It's called Olympic Level Compassion. It's great. I'll link it up in the show notes. She mentors young women cyclists. She serves up color commentary duties for NBC Sports Network. And more importantly, she is a role model for women and men around the world in their battle to return to healthy eating and living habits as an ambassador for NEDA, the National Eating Disorders Association. But I know Dotzy through the vegan world, through the vegan athlete mafia, as a very staunch advocate for animal rights and the health benefits of plant-based eating for athletes and anyone, really.

• 8:45Rich Roll?

  She's also the force behind a recent anti-dairy campaign, a commercial campaign called "Switch for Good," which features former Olympic athletes that ran, well, it sort of ran, but I'll let her tell that part of the story, ran during the closing ceremonies of the recent Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games. So, this is a conversation about many things. It's about facing and overcoming an eating disorder so severe that it led her to a suicide attempt. It's about the nature of that disorder and the process that she undertook to rebuild her life from fashion model to athlete. And it's also about her most unlikely route to Olympic glory. It's about eating plant-based for performance,

• 9:27Rich Roll?

  and it's about advocacy, what it means to live in service to your ideals. Dotzy was delightful, super engaging. I adore her. I love this conversation, and I hope you do too. So, let's talk to her.

• 9:42Rich Roll?

  All right. Dotzy, so nice to see you. Thanks for coming up all the way from Irvine to do the podcast. This is a long time in the making, so I'm delighted to talk to you today.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  Thank you very much for having me. It was an easy drive. We'll see how the way home goes.

• 9:56Rich Roll?

  I know. It might be a little bit different going back, but you're here now, and I'm going to hold you prisoner for a little while. So, cool. So many things to talk about, but I think the most kind of top-of-mind thing is this anti-dairy ad that you worked on with a bunch of other Olympic athletes that was intended to air during the closing ceremonies of Pyeongchang. So, tell me a little bit about that.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, well, the campaign itself is called "Switch for Good," and the, you know, kind of the inspiration for me was I was just sitting on the couch, watching Olympic Trials, like, probably, you know, two and a half months ago now, and the Milk Life ad came on. The Dairy Board is a sponsor of the U.S. Olympic Committee, and it says nine out of 10 Olympians grew up drinking milk, which is probably true, because our grandparents-

• 10:54Rich Roll?

  Because probably nine out of 10 people grew up-

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Right, and people are all saying all sorts of things like, so did nine out of 10 serial killers. I mean, you know, clearly, that's just wildly misleading in terms of what you drink when you're growing up has anything to do with whether you're going to become an Olympian or not. And then it says that milk has natural proteins, as if there's any other kinds, and balanced nutrition in the ad. And my blood just started boiling. I mean, I just thought, just for truth's sake alone, we have to answer this. This isn't truthful advertising. Well, right, welcome to advertising 101. But it just, it just, yeah, it made my heart

• 11:39Speaker 01

  hurt and it made me mad. And I, I just, I started thinking, okay, what, how do we answer this in a really intelligent, backed up by science way with a group of Olympians? Because that's the best way to answer it. Who are, who are telling the truth and have really interesting stories to tell about their dairy-free lifestyles. So we just, we went to work and we whipped this puppy together in a really short period of time.

• 12:04Rich Roll?

  And Louis, you got Louis involved, right? So he directed it?

• 12:08Speaker 01

  He did, yes. Yes, Louis Pacios, the director of The Cove. So, yeah, that was just, I had worked with him on The Game Changers, so I, I knew him and was used to his style and his directing style. But he's, yeah, he's mesmerizing to be in action with, yeah.

• 12:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's cool. So I saw it, it's on YouTube. Adweek picked it up, there was a lot of press around it. And I know you did like a Twitter chat the other night that I chimed in on for a moment. And I shared that on my social media. And it's cool, because when you think about the power of the dairy lobby on the consciousness of the average consumer, it's, it's kind of astonishing. I mean, it's sort of diabolically genius, the way they've been able to infiltrate their message across the board in public institutions. I mean, there's posters in public high schools that say, "Milk does a body good," with guys bench pressing and milk mustaches.

• 13:06Rich Roll?

  And then they get involved in the sports community by sponsoring at a very high level, things like the Olympics. I know they're a title sponsor of, I believe, Ironman, I think, or triathlon.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  They are built with chocolate milk.

• 13:20Rich Roll?

  They're very integrated into the endurance community. And they've done an amazing job of sponsoring athletes to get behind this. And so if you follow Many an Athlete on Instagram, you'll see them doing ads for chocolate milk, which has been, they sort of figured out a way to position as some kind of athletic recovery boosting elixir, which is kind of insane. And I don't begrudge these athletes who are trying to make a living, you know, just trying to pay their bills, who get involved with this. But when you kind of stand back and look at it from 10,000 feet, you're like, what's going on here?

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I mean, other Olympic sponsors are McDonald's and Coca-Cola.

• 14:00Rich Roll?

  Exactly.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  So, you know, follow the dollar bills. That's all you ever have to do.

• 14:03Rich Roll?

  Have you been to the, you've probably been to Colorado Springs, right? To the training center?

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Oh, sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 14:08Rich Roll?

  I was there. I couldn't believe what, I think they've improved it this past year. I saw a news piece about they've gotten much better with the food that they're serving.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  It's a bit better.

• 14:18Rich Roll?

  It was kind of insane.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Been back since I was training.

• 14:19Rich Roll?

  I was there like a year and a, two years ago, maybe.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a bit better. But there's an actual entire McDonald's restaurant inside of the eating facility in the athletes' village.

• 14:29Rich Roll?

  And it's free, right? It's free for athletes.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah. And I mean, sadly, the entire eastern block is in line because it's free McDonald's. We're like, oh, gross, or, you know, we have McDonald's, but, and it's cheap here. But it's, it's this, it's the saddest thing you've ever seen. Just that, that, just that total mind bender on, you know, you're at the Olympics. I mean, you're, you're, you're pretty sure that people are feeling.

• 14:57Rich Roll?

  All these Ferraris lined up to put sludge into their engines.

• 15:00Speaker 01

  Just the nastiest. Yeah, yeah.

• 15:02Rich Roll?

  It's so crazy. All right, so this PSA, so tell me about the impact of this. Like, what happened here?

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so well, we're

• 15:12Rich Roll?

  A little bit of a

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:14Rich Roll?

  Stuff, right?

• 15:14Speaker 01

  We'll hiccup, to say the least. So we're just 48 hours in as of today. Media wise so far, we have, we're at like 25 million impressions and in 48 hours, 35,000 views on YouTube. So we're going well off broadcast

• 15:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Broad, perhaps television, but we had a bit of the snafu the night that it was supposed to air on closing ceremonies at 7:15. The USOC was able to get it pulled from NBC because they're a client of NBC's and follow the dollar bills again, because they said it was a direct attack on one of their sponsors. And there was an Olympic IP issue that they saw in the final card of the of the commercial. So that's, that is what it is.

• 16:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's not surprising, right? I mean, I'm sure you could have foreseen this, right? Once they get wise to what's going on, like their, their bottom line is being threatened by this, it's in, it's in conflict with their leading sponsor or a leading sponsor. But the good news is there's something called the internet, you know, and there's a, there's a, there's a way to still get the message out. And I think it is getting out. So I think it's cool. It's a first stab at counter programming. And there's a story in and of itself. The fact that it got pulled can create a news story that can create additional interest in what you're trying to accomplish.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, because just like, you know, the, the early years of tobacco, as they went along, you know, people started realizing something was being hidden from them. And people get pissed when they realize like there, something's being hidden and someone's lying to them.

• 16:52Rich Roll?

  Did you get, were you on the receiving end of a little backlash online?

• 16:55Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, not yet. No, ours has been really positive. But what I'm saying is, is now that we're bringing forward how dangerous dairy is and that it's not a health food, it is not a health food, like they are saying it is. And we have many of these really inspires, inspiring anecdotal stories and a lot of science backing it up. People, the general public, as they look deeper, because they have something like the internet, like you said, they're gonna start looking deeper and they're gonna start realizing that they've been lied to, that dairy's a health food, and it makes for strong bones, and that it's good for you, and that, and people aren't gonna like that. So that's good.

• 17:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that is good, that is good. So the athletes, you got Rebecca Sony, who's a friend.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:36Rich Roll?

  Kendrick Ferris?

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:37Rich Roll?

  Who else is in the spot?

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, those two are both just amazing. I love their individual stories. Seba Johnson, who is the first African-American ski racer in history, also the youngest ski racer ever. She is vegan since birth, so she's never had a glass of milk, and in her ski racing career, she never broke a bone. And I don't even know a ski racer that hasn't broken a bone.

• 18:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I would imagine most of them have broken a bone at some point.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  She did after her ski racing career in a very bad accident, but in her ski racing career, she's never, never broke a bone. Cara Lang, who's a Canadian soccer player and a mom, she's got a great story. Malakai Davis, who's a sprinter, was a sprinter for Great Britain 2004.

• 18:22Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. And Kendrick is a weightlifter.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:25Rich Roll?

  Olympic weightlifter. Did he, I can't remember, did he medal?

• 18:29Speaker 01

  No, but he was seventh.

• 18:31Rich Roll?

  He was seventh.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  He did quite well. He was the only US male weightlifter to qualify for Rio. So he was the only one that went. People don't really realize, I don't think, that you, countries have to qualify their spot for Olympic Games, and then the country themselves, the coaches pick who will fill that spot, which is not always the person that qualifies the spot. It is in weightlifting for him, but in other sports, which is lots of layers of politics that people don't necessarily realize goes on. But you have to qualify the spot. It's not like just because, you know, you're a country, a big country, that you just automatically go to the Olympics. It's not the way it works.

• 19:06Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. Got it. All right, cool. Well, let's, let's take it back. I mean, there's so many layers to your story. It's an amazing story. I mean, you're, you're quite an unlikely Olympian in some regards, you know? I mean, you were, that was not the trajectory that you were headed on as a young person. Most people who end up at the Olympics are people who've been harboring that dream, you know, since they were an infant, just dreaming of being on that podium. But you were living a very different life as a young person.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Just a wee bit.

• 19:36Rich Roll?

  A little bit, yeah.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't.

• 19:39Rich Roll?

  I mean, you did sports, right? You did, you rode crew in college.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  I did for like a year until it was like messing up my, my party scene because you have to get up at 4:30 in the morning. But, um, and I did, I grew up in Kentucky, so I grew up riding horses, but you know, the horse is the athlete, not you. But I did grow up in like a competitive, I had a competitive nature about me and I, you know, competed in saddlebred horse riding from a young age. So I think I had that part of me and my emotions in my mind that, you know, really, um, loved the competition aspect. But then I, uh, through high school and college, it just kind of got, uh, got away from it and definitely went wayward. I mean, it was, it was a, it was a, it was a deep dive into, um, the underbelly of New York City and the modern world and drugs.

• 20:24Rich Roll?

  I'm familiar with that underbelly.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:26Rich Roll?

  So let's, let's explore that a little bit. I mean, you know, something that I can relate to in your story is, you know, you're in college, you're an athlete, and at some point the veneer fades with the early morning workouts and all of that. And there's this social partying life that kind of enters and starts to take center stage. So I, I'm projecting on you, but I'm presuming that at some point in college, this is what was, this is what was happening.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I, it was, it was, it was, I was kind of living two lives because I, I, uh, I got okay grades in high school, but I really, really loved college because you're finally, you know, learning and doing what. You're free. You're free, but in, in school, in the actual classes, like you're doing what you're interested in.

• 21:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  Right? So you're not, so I, I, I was getting really great, great, great grades and studying really hard and loving my classes. And then at the same time, um, just that part of me that I think felt like I, you know, hadn't been able to be let out of my shell before, um, was. Had the ability to do that in a way like never before, which, you know, almost every single person that's gone to college has experienced that. It's not like that's a rare finding.

• 21:34Rich Roll?

  I mean, growing up, were you like, what kind of an environment was your family situation?

• 21:39Speaker 01

  I grew up in a pretty traditional, like Midwest, solid family, like great, just, yeah.

• 21:48Rich Roll?

  So it wasn't like you're rebelling against your parents or anything like that?

• 21:50Speaker 01

  No, no, that we're, we were close, we're still close that, yeah, that time was friggin rough for them. Especially as I got more and more towards my deathbed, when I got really, really sick with anorexia. Cause by that point I was, you know, 20, 21, I'm not, they don't have any control, right? I'm not 10. There was really nothing they could do. They tried some interventions that were very unsuccessful. So, yeah, it was, it was, it was really tough for them.

• 22:21Rich Roll?

  Well, addiction, alcoholism, you know, these, sobriety, recovery, these are, you know, constant themes of my podcast and I've had plenty of people come in and share their experience, strength and hope in this regard, but I've never had anybody on to share about eating disorders. And there's been a lot of people who've been wanting me to explore this topic, this subject matter on the show. So I'm really glad to have you here because I think your story is very powerful. And, and what you, what you had to face and kind of how dark it got and how you overcame it is pretty empowering. So where does it, where does that begin? Where does the dysfunctional relationship with food start to enter your life?

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Well, it starts with a dysfunctional relationship with yourself. You said you've had a lot of people on that have had drug addiction, suffered from alcohol, alcoholism and alcohol abuse. And it's, it's really not too dissimilar. It is a clinically recognized disease. It is an illness and it's really whatever, most of those people probably told you about some kind of issue that they were grappling with and then they tried a drug or they drank too much and they realized that they could, you know, escape or fall into an, you know, ulterior universe and, and leave that pain that they were in. Eating disorders really exactly the same root.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  I was in a significant amount of pain in my life, in confusion and fear. Part of it was stemming from, I felt like a real lack of control as I was graduating college. I had majored in journalism and thought I wanted to go into hard news and realized at the very end of college, in my internship, that I hated it. And that was one of the first times I recognized how much control big business has over everything that we do. It had a lot of control over news. This is Philadelphia, KYW. And it was like, wow, I don't want to do this. You know, it's going to, it's controlled the whole time. And so I was freaking out that I, what I had just studied and majored in in college, like, what was I going to do with my life?

• 24:31Speaker 01

  So I, I started to, it just very much started kind of slowly in the beginning where I just started to assert some control over my food restriction. Because it's really, really hard to starve yourself. I mean, you know, and that made me feel powerful.

• 24:48Rich Roll?

  Empowered.

• 24:48Speaker 01

  And empowered.

• 24:49Rich Roll?

  One thing that you can control.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And you can, right? You, you, you do. You have the ultimate control over what, what goes in and, and, and you're eating it. It sounds like kind of, you know, almost meaningless or trivial, but it, it, it really started to make me feel like I had everything under control.

• 25:07Rich Roll?

  And so how old were you at this time?

• 25:10Speaker 01

  Um, 19.

• 25:11Rich Roll?

  19, yeah. And is there kind of a euphoria that's associated with that? Like in the same way that you get a hit from cocaine or something like that?

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah, it's better because I did a lot of cocaine. It's, it, it, there, yeah. And there's, there's some, there's some aspects of this that in my life I've been a little careful with talking about because anybody that is in the midst of an, of an eating disorder, in the throes of the suffering, just as I did, will tend to use some of these ideas that I'm presenting to, to, to fuel. So I like to be kind of careful with the, the, um, celebrating it if you. You will in a way where yeah, it was a high. Yes, it's when you're starving yourself, you hit a point where you feel like you're on a substance.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  And you're kind of floaty and very, very, I mean, your brain isn't working. I mean, you know, every aspect, every organ is being starved. So things start to shut down at the, towards the end, and that was what was happening to me. Your body starts to eat its own organs. I mean, it will do anything to stay alive. So your brain is an organ.

• 26:23Rich Roll?

  But I think it's important to acknowledge the fact that, you know, if it didn't work for a while, you wouldn't keep doing it. Like it works until it stops working, right? So one of the first sort of things to confront is just acceptance or acknowledgement of the fact that it was doing something for you, right? And that's what fueled you to continue or to dive deeper into it. I mean, I don't want to trigger anyone either, but I think like developing an understanding of how powerful it is and how it really did give you a sense of control in the midst of this, you know, feeling of powerlessness that you were experiencing is,

• 27:07Rich Roll?

  I think is important to recognize.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, you're right. And then conversely, you know, discussing the true power that comes with freedom and being well is, you know, that there is no comparison from now to then as far as the actual power that I feel in my life now. But that is, you know, it's a, it's a dark, scary place that you keep chasing, just like you do a drug because you want that feeling again. So it's, that's again-

• 27:41Rich Roll?

  But it becomes more and more difficult to access that feeling, right? In the same way that you become tolerant to a drug?

• 27:47Speaker 01

  Well, you just start eating less and less, right? So you're chasing it and then you get to the point where- Obviously, if you're not eating anything, then you're hospitalized. And then, you know, the whole, yeah. But yeah, you do chase all the way until where you're at zero calories. Yeah.

• 28:07Rich Roll?

  So this begins in the early stages of you sort of attempting to pursue a career in journalism. But at some point, modeling enters. And it's almost like a perfect storm, this confluence of the New York modeling world, you know, converging with eating disorders and this fast-paced lifestyle that's a perfect recipe to really dismantle you.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, no doubt. I mean, there wasn't any aspect of the modeling world that was necessarily fueling it. You know, I really had my own deep-seated reasons and was really pretty far into my eating disorder by the time that I was modeling in New York. But I had just started modeling in the late part of college in Philadelphia and then moved to New York with an agency. It was just like, okay, well, you know, for me, it was like, well, this is interesting for a while, like we'll travel some. And it was like, it just was, you know, happening. But it wasn't anything that was, you know, single-handedly fueling me to get skinnier. And I didn't really have any kind of, you know, kind of outwardly connections with what

• 29:16Speaker 01

  I looked like, or if there was fat here or there, or if my butt was big or not. It wasn't, so many people think that it's really just an exterior view of yourself. And, you know, you have body dysmorphic disorder. You know, most people do. I probably did. But it wasn't outward-facing at all for me. It was just the continuing to assert this control.

• 29:41Rich Roll?

  That's interesting, because I would imagine that you were surrounded by plenty of enablers who are saying, look, you got to get skinnier if you want to book this job or what have you, and surrounded by a community of people, you know, other models who are trying to be as skinny as possible, right?

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. One thing about that I found in the modeling industry, I mostly did, I'm not that photogenic, I mostly did runway, is that, and so especially the runway models, they're complete freaks of nature. Yes, there's those that have eating disorders and are starving themselves and, you know, clearly, we've heard those stories. But by and large, these people are, they come out of the womb that way. Their whole makeup, it doesn't make any sense. They eat whatever they want to eat, whenever they want to eat it. They eat at McDonald's all the time, and they just look like that.

• 30:30Rich Roll?

  These bizarre creatures.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Yes. It's wildly frustrating, but it's true. You know, they're not all just not eating. There are many, many, many of them that I would travel with, is like, they had very normal eating, and they ate crap, which wasn't great, but, and it just, it wouldn't show up anywhere. But nothing shows up anywhere on you when you're 16, or 17, or 18, 19, anyway.

• 30:50Rich Roll?

  Right. And are you keeping this a secret, like, living this private, you know, double life where you're hiding all of this kind of behavior? And was it bulimia also?

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Towards the end, it was bulimia, yeah. Where you kind of, your body just, well, really, I guess, it's more your mind sort of snaps into this realization that you're starving, and, but then you eat, and then you can't deal with that, what that feels like and looks like and is. So, yeah.

• 31:20Rich Roll?

  And maybe, I think it would be instructive for somebody who's unfamiliar with this, or maybe somebody who's listening, who has somebody in their life who suffers, or is, you know, has suffered from this, to maybe bust a few myths. Like, what do people misunderstand or not get about what this disorder is all about?

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a great point. Like, for parents, and friends, and family, that question, I get, ask that question a lot. And I think the most, the biggest myth is that it is, you know, exterior facing, and that if you talk about to the person, "You're too skinny," or "You're looking skinny," or "You're too fat."

• 32:02Rich Roll?

  Explain the intellectual.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or just even using those terms as if you're looking At the person as just the only thing that's important about them as if is if they're skinny or fat. So completely removing that rhetoric and talking to them from a place of love and concern about their their health, right? And their and just their ability to be in society and in the world and what their talents are. So remove that language. And also, so many people, every person really, that doesn't understand an eating disorder is just like, Lucy, can you just eat a cheeseburger? Yeah, like, just eat a cheeseburger. It'll be better. It'll be so much better if you just do that. Because we have to eat food every day, all day long. So unlike

• 32:47Speaker 01

  drugs or alcohol, where you do have to just completely remove that, right? You know, in three hours, you have to eat again.

• 32:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's harder, because you have to completely, you know, reframe your relationship with this thing that you need to survive.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  Yes. So if if family members, you know, you have that said to you, you know, if you just, can you just eat a little something? So that is another thing that people need to dive in and learn a bit more about what eating disorders actually are, and and come to the person with a place of love and not mention how they look and not mention what they're eating. That's not what's going on. Really, think of it maybe as a disease like an alcoholism. And that helps people to reframe the reference, because then they understand, they understand alcoholism. Most people are like, Okay, I get that. That's but in they go, Oh, that's the same type of psychology. Then it helps them to frame speaking to a friend or family about their eating disorder.

• 33:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's a very interesting and bizarre psychological framework, because, you know, just from my own experience as a recovering alcoholic, for many years, I knew I was an alcoholic. And I knew what I was doing was destroying my life. I was powerless to change it. But I had the self-awareness. And I would imagine yourself or somebody who's struggling with an eating disorder has some version of that self-awareness along the way. But there's this weird twist, which is the body dysmorphia and the bizarre, very strange psychological.

• 34:25Rich Roll?

  You know, twist that comes with that, which is you're looking in the mirror and you're, you're, what's being reflected back to you is not reality. Like, your perception of what you look like is so twisted and divorced from what is actually true. That is, that is like, very hard for somebody to relate to or understand.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. I think, you know, in, in your subconscious, I think that you are a bit aware of, you know, it's like, I would have like, moments of clarity where it was like, oh yeah, I'm really sick. This is really bad. This is not like, why, you know, now these pants aren't even fitting. You know, is it like, oh, oh, what happened? That was just like, a week ago. But then you, you sort of snap out of that and you're, and you're back into your then reality that you're, that everything's fine and you don't, you don't really think that you're sick from anything. I mean, most of the time, it's like, you know, no, th- this is normal. This is fueling me. This is, this is what I want it to be. And, and for me, again, it wasn't like, wasn't connected to the mirror. For

• 35:26Speaker 01

  me, it went from a feeling of wanting to be in control to a feeling of, I wanted to disappear from the planet. I didn't want anyone looking at me. I didn't want any attention. I didn't want people talking about me or how I looked, because being in the modeling industry, that would be, you know, a common conversation, right? I got to where I wanted to get so small that I would disappear off the, the planet.

• 35:50Rich Roll?

  Well, a couple of observations about that. First of all, you're in a profession that is the antithesis of that. And ironically, the, the more you shrink, the more attention you're drawing to yourself out of concern from others, right? Like-

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, but not on the street, right? Because you're not, you're, you know, you, you get wildly unattractive. You, I mean, my hair was turning gray. It was falling out. My teeth were turning black. Like, you get pretty gnarly there towards, you know, it, well, whatever.

• 36:18Rich Roll?

  Well, you're gonna get a different kind of attention. Like, people are gonna look at you strange on the street.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, they just don't notice. I mean, I had a lot of, like, people just started, stopped noticing. I, I didn't like being gawked at by whatever, the construction worker in New York City, or whatever they were doing in there, you know, and I, I started feeling like I wanted to disappear. And it was a way to disappear. People stopped noticing me. And it worked.

• 36:41Rich Roll?

  Did you do that thing where you look in the mirror and you pinch your skin and think that that's fat that has to be lost when you didn't do that? That's a common thing though, right?

• 36:49Speaker 01

  I think it's less common than we than we think it is. I mean, I, you know, yes, some people, it's just a direct relation to, you know, what they're looking at in the mirror. But if the people that are pinching their skin and going, I have to get rid of that, they're dealing with a lot of inner pain, a lot of self hatred, right? And beating themselves up for so many more reasons than just that fold of skin that they're pinching.

• 37:15Rich Roll?

  Right. It's gotta be a very painful, lonely place to be in, I would imagine.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, just like you. I mean, you know, that you know, that space. Yeah, it's, um, it is, and you thrive off of it for a while until you don't.

• 37:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it has its own energy to it, I think. So what's the, where do you hit bottom with this? I mean, you get down to like 90 pounds, 100 pounds or something like that?

• 37:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got, I got below that. Um, I tried to kill myself, so that was a, that was a, ran out in traffic on the 76th freeway in the middle of the night.

• 37:49Rich Roll?

  How old were you when that happened?

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Twenty, 22, I guess.

• 37:54Rich Roll?

  22, was that in New York?

• 37:55Speaker 01

  21, 22.

• 37:56Rich Roll?

  Not in New York?

• 37:57Speaker 01

  Um, no, no, no, I was back in Philly. I went back and forth for a while. And, you know, obviously it didn't work. So, but that was rock bottom for me.

• 38:16Rich Roll?

  So how do you then begin to pick up the pieces? I mean, what is the, what is the process of addressing this look like for you?

• 38:24Speaker 01

  Um, you know, I had this, this, uh, this moment where I, I really clearly remember seeing a fork in the road. I knew that if I kept going, that I was going to die from this and I was going to get so deep down that road that I wasn't able to pull back out and it was going to take my life. And that was a sobering moment of what?

• 38:48Speaker 01

  Who would would do that to the few people I had in my life that really loved and cared for me at that period of time? And I always say to people, you know, yes, eventual recovery have to has to come from within, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that first catalyst. And for me, it was it was my family. I thought, I can't die. Like, that's so that's so lame on my part for them. It's so wildly selfish. So I know I'm not going to get get better, but I'm going to I'm going to try a little bit because I have to at least show them that I tried. And then if I die, hopefully, they won't be as sad. I mean, you know, you think of the craziest shit,

• 39:32Speaker 01

  right? When you but that's what I was thinking. I mean, just going to show them some effort.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  So I I started trying to get better.

• 39:41Rich Roll?

  And that sense of self hatred, that that feeling, that that desire to disappear, like, where do you think that comes from? I mean, growing up with parents that love you, it's not like, oh, I was abused, you know, I think that's another thing people struggle with struggle with really understanding, like, oh, well, there must have been some incidents in your childhood or something like that. It doesn't necessarily have to be connected to something like

• 40:06Speaker 01

  No, thirty thirty to thirty five percent of eating disorder sufferers had severe abuse in their early childhood years. So it's that's extremely common.

• 40:15Rich Roll?

  That's a real thing, but it's not necessarily determinative.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, right, right. But I mean, that's it is common is what you know. So there and there was there was none of that in in in my life at all. And I don't, you know, I think some of it has to do with just the, you know, the makeup of who we are. I'm an extreme introvert, which no one believes, but I am. And I, to this day.

• 40:38Rich Roll?

  That is hard to believe.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  I know. But if you really understand, you know, introversion extroversion, I know, it's not just like, oh, I don't like to talk or something.

• 40:46Rich Roll?

  I have so many charismatic people that come on this podcast and and explain to me how they're so introverted. And I always have the same reaction.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Right. But it's not anything to do with charisma, right? It's how we we kind of recharge. But I I I think that I just, to this day, I really, I would like to just live out in the middle of nowhere on a farm with like, 200 animals and never speak or see anyone ever again. Like I have a deep desire for that, but I know that that's not how I'm gonna save any animals. So I think that's

• 41:22Rich Roll?

  Consistent theme with alcoholics too, that desire to isolate, you know, to cut yourself off.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I think that's, it was my personality that was just coming through back then as it does now. But I'm able to say, okay, well, no, you're gonna, you're making a conscious decision to not go, you know, isolate, uh, cause I don't think I can do much good if I isolate. Uh, but, but, but back then that was, you know, I think that's really more what it, what it was.

• 41:49Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. And so did your parents, I mean, your parents must've been terrified.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Terrified. I mean, just

• 41:55Rich Roll?

  They're trying to help you.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Beyond, yeah. And they're doing interventions. My mom flew to Philadelphia to do one intervention that I distinctly remember and I ended up, um, I don't have very many regrets in my life. This is one of them. I took her to the Philadelphia airport. I don't even think she had a ticket. Like, I just didn't want any of this to be happening. And I literally physically threw my mother out on the street corner at the airport. Like what, who does that?

• 42:23Rich Roll?

  That's the power of, that's, that's addiction in a nutshell. It's like, it's not you.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  It's not you.

• 42:28Rich Roll?

  You know, it's a, it's a behavior, it's a demonic behavior that's being driven by this disease that's compelling you in a way that transcends, you know, who you fundamentally are as a human being.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. You're a complete outer body. I was so sick by then. Um, it is demonic and it is completely outer body. Like I, now it feels like that was another human being that I, I can't relate to. And, and it's, you know, and she still loves me, my mom, you know, that, that's also, that took a long time to, um, process through of, of why she would, would still, she just kept coming back. She just kept loving hard.

• 43:06Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. So you get to this point after this, you know, sort of failed suicide attempt where you have the willingness to, you know, finally accept help. So what does that help look like?

• 43:19Speaker 01

  Well, it wasn't great in the beginning because I was, you know, I had been like in and out of, of, you know, like rehab facilities and group facilities and things like that early on that I didn't, you know, was not successful because I didn't want to be there. But I went through a few therapists that I didn't connect with, I guess you should just say, you know, it wasn't the right, wasn't, wasn't the right, weren't going to be the right people. So I had moved out to LA. By this point, I was doing production for commercials and music videos back when those were a thing.

• 43:56Rich Roll?

  People actually did that.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  No. And so we came up from the East Coast to do a three-week job here in LA and it was like the middle of January. And I was like, is this 78 Sunny thing? Like, is this, is this normal? Everybody's like, oh, yeah, it's always like this. And I was like, okay. So I just moved. I was like, this is insane. And I, I hate cold weather and really just living in New York City anyway. So I moved out and I just came upon like a little teeny tiny ad in a newspaper in a coffee shop that there was going to be a speaker on fear in the basement of a Borders bookstore.

• 44:39Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  I mean, random.

• 44:41Rich Roll?

  That is, yeah.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  And went down to listen to her speak. And I just went up to her afterwards and I said, I, you know, can, can you help me? She was phenomenal.

• 44:52Rich Roll?

  She was a shrink?

• 44:53Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yeah. Yeah. She did. She does a lot of fear-based work. Was very busy after nine 11 when nobody would get on a plane because they're, but a lot of what was inside of me was, was fear really, right? You realize it and you, and you learn that at the, at the end of it all. So we got to work and she was, yeah, she blew my mind.

• 45:18Rich Roll?

  What's interesting about that is that you're, you're the one who made the decision, right? It was, it was your own willingness and impetus to like seek this person out and, and pursue her as opposed to somebody trying to compel you to do that.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  Yep. Yep. Yeah.

• 45:32Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:34Rich Roll?

  And you can't, man, you were ready when you were ready.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's the hardest part for, for families of someone who's suffering from an eating disorder. I do a free mentorship program. So I just, you know, I've walked down the road with a lot of eating disorder sufferers, just as somebody who's been in their shoes and encouraged. And I get a lot of outreach from friends and family that are just, they're just so desperate. And, and, and it's so hard for them to just really let it sink in that they can't do anything until the person's ready. That's with everything. That's with every, it's alcohol and all, and it's just.

• 46:11Rich Roll?

  But it's so in your face with addiction.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:14Rich Roll?

  It's so, because you can just see it. It's like,

• 46:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:17Rich Roll?

  you cannot compel somebody to be willing. They have to be willing themselves. They've got to walk this path until they're ready. And until they're ready, it's not going to stick. And that's a sense of powerlessness that the loved one of the addict has to embrace. And that's a very difficult thing.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 46:37Rich Roll?

  You know, my parents went through it. Your parents had to go through that, you know. It's, it's an awful place to be because you can see the, the healthy path forward so clearly. And it's so confounding and confusing and painful to watch as somebody self-destructs right in front of you.

• 46:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:53Rich Roll?

  When you know what the answer is.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  I know. I know. Yeah.

• 46:57Rich Roll?

  So you find this person. And what was it about her that worked for you? Like, what, what was her process of trying to unpack this?

• 47:06Speaker 01

  She put me to work. The, every other therapist and psychologist that I had seen before, you know, would sit in the chair opposite me with their yellow legal pad and their, you know, cool pen and would just be writing a lot and go, mm-kay, uh-huh, well, let's dive deeper into that. Mm-hmm. Okay, well. And they're writing. I'm like, what the fuck are you writing? You know? And, and this therapist, her name's Chris.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  From almost this third time I saw her, I mean, she spent a couple of sessions like trying to, you know, hear my story, right? She put me to work and I, I, I'm, I'm very coachable. I, I like to work and I like, I like tools and I like steps and I like ways of doing things and she was very action oriented. Nobody that early, especially in my therapy, had said, okay, this is, this is your work. She was, her, her basis was, was, was meditation therapy. So putting me to work would look things like, okay, when you are, at this point, I'm, I'm deep into the bulimia because we're, we're, you know, we're towards the end.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  And so, so she said, okay, when you are having the urge, you're going to go, first of all, you're going to go to the store and you're going to buy little blue dots on sticky papers that you can, you know, little sticky blue dots from the drugstore and you're going to place them on your trigger areas. And so, uh, let's say the refrigerator is, you know, okay, a trigger, you're going to, if you're going to binge and purge, you see the blue dot, you have to, and I won't go into details, but you have, you have to stop, you have to do this very specific 30 second meditation, uh, and it would walk through a series of questions that I had to ask myself and answer. And if you still wanted to, to binge, and this would be the same thing with the blue dot on the toilet, if I was going to purge, you can go ahead and do it. It's complete freedom. Go ahead and binge.

• 49:04Rich Roll?

  But first you've got to do this thing.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  But first you have to do this work. Well, you can imagine how it, that progressed, you know? I, I was, you know, sitting in front of the refrigerator, meditating for an hour before then I would decide. Uh, and then eventually you decide, I think I can, I think I cannot do that today. Well, I don't know how tomorrow's going to go, but for today, so that's just, you know, it just one example of all the different types of, of work and tools.

• 49:30Rich Roll?

  Like a visualization or like a, like a mantra based, not mantra, but like some sort of thing that you would tell yourself, like a story or whatever as part of that?

• 49:39Speaker 01

  No, it was more, it was more accessing what I was feeling, which I never accessed before because that's what you do as an addict, right? Whether it's, it's, it's drugs or an eating disorder, which were, you know, both poisons for me. You're doing that to get a high to not feel what you're actually feeling.

• 49:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  So it was accessing, first it was just accessing, where am I feeling anything? Is it in my right fingertip of my pointer finger? Is it in my foot? Is it in my gut? Is it in my chest? Where do you feel it? What does it look like? What does it feel like? How big is it? Is it, does it feel sore? Does it feel sharp? Does it feel, you know, painful? What is it? What does it look like? What does it feel like? So that was like, at the beginning, I, you know, when I did that meditation with her, before I would have to do it on my own, I'm thinking, this woman is cray cray. Like what? You know, because you're so violently disconnected from yourself when you start getting better, when you start this work.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  And to start to connect with that was like, it just felt nutty in the beginning.

• 50:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but that's the process of integrating because, yes, the fridge is the trigger and you have the blue dot on the fridge, but the trigger isn't really the fridge. It's the emotions that the fridge catalyzed within yourself.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 50:58Rich Roll?

  And learning what those are, where they come from and what they're about and what's behind them is the process of rebuilding yourself and recovering.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 51:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's powerful.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, she's remarkable. Was the first one that ever even went in that, in that direction. And a lot of times I would access painful, different types of anger. And she had this anger stick that she had me made. And it was just a bath towel that we'd rolled up to like a snake and put rubber bands about two inches apart, all the way down the bath towel. And I had this literal, like, I would get on my knees and slap the anger towel on the ground over and over and over again. I mean, I'm glad I don't have any video of this.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  To release that anger that I couldn't figure out what to do with. I mean, it was just brilliant stuff, in my opinion. I was a completely different person after releasing that anger. Okay, we gotta put it somewhere. Otherwise, I'm gonna binge and purge.

• 52:07Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  Or go out for the night and, you know, do whatever. Yeah, it was amazing. I still have the anger towel.

• 52:17Rich Roll?

  Fun, oh, you do? Really? Yeah, how often do you use it?

• 52:20Speaker 01

  I don't anymore.

• 52:23Rich Roll?

  But what's cool about that is the fundamental difference between, you know, sort of traditional therapy of like, well, let's just talk forever versus very proactive, behavior-based, action-based, you know, tactile, things that you can actually do that will begin to shift your awareness and create new neural pathways and connect you with yourself and develop that self-awareness, but in a way that is actually propelling you in a different direction because it's behavior-based.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  I know. It really is. I mean, we've all known people that have been in therapy for like, forever. And I'm just one person, and this was just my one experience, and sometimes other types of therapy work for people, but sometimes I'm like, oh, man, you know, it's like, you gotta get down, you gotta get dirty and gritty and dive into, you know, really, I would just go insane if it was, if I was like, still in therapy. You know, you can always access some of it. You know, I've done some, you know, emergency phone calls to her throughout my life. But because we did all of that super solid work, I never have one inkling of a fear that I could ever go back into my eating disorder again. I always have like, no, I did, I did way too much work.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  It's not even possible. And the emergency calls to her that I've had in my life that were, you know, other stressful situations, we were like, done and dusted in one session or two. You know, it was like, oh, yeah, right, okay, that, okay, you know, because your, your memory comes back and you, you, you have the tools that are embedded in you now. You don't lose them. And it would just be her, her, you know, kind of redirecting, okay, go back to this, remember, oh, yeah, yeah, okay, I've got this, which is just so cool. It wasn't like, oh, I gotta go to 50 more sessions now, I got this screwed up in my life, and, yeah.

• 54:15Rich Roll?

  What's also different or distinct from substance abuse, I mean, you get sober. Okay, this is my sobriety date. I've crossed this line. I don't go back. I kind of, you know, etch in stone, like, this is the date that I got sober. But like with eating disorders, it's, it's, it can't be like that, like, because you're, you're recalibrating your relationship with food and you have to be eating along the way. So I would imagine it was a more graduated process of trying to, um, you know, get on top of this thing, right? Like, so how long did it take before you felt like, okay, I'm getting a handle on it?

• 54:48Speaker 01

  Um, a little over two years. I mean, that's not, by the first section, first session, I thought, oh, my gosh, I think I'm going to get a handle on this. But it took a little over two years before I was 100% and I knew I would never go back. And I knew I was, I was really, really well and healed. And this is, it wasn't even, I got asked all the time in my cycling career, you know, do you think you're just replacing this, replacing the eating disorder with this, you know, with your athleticism? And it was like, no way. It's not, there's no possibility that that, I don't know if something else will be a problem later, but it's not going to be an eating disorder.

• 55:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I get, I get that a lot. Like, oh, well, you do these ultra, it's like, well, you're just, you're just, you just shifted your addiction. And I think for me, it's a little bit different. I got, I have to like, like, I want to dismiss it, but then I have to go, well, am I, you know, I guess probably on some level I am, you know, but I'm doing it in a healthier, different way.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  We are who we are. So that's parts of your personality.

• 55:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's taking some aspect of who I am and trying to channel it for self betterment and the like. There is, I'm sure there's an addictive aspect to it. But it's different because it's not destroying my life, it's improving my life. It could, it could destroy my life if I had a different kind of relationship with that, as it could for you with cycling. It could have.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  No doubt.

• 56:10Rich Roll?

  But once you have, you've done that work, you have a different, you have a different framework for it, I think.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:17Rich Roll?

  But it isn't, you know, like, you know, perhaps this is a good, now we can segue into the, into the cycling. I would imagine initially, like, the prospect, because over exercising is symptomatic of an eating disorder.

• 56:36Rich Roll?

  Did you have an impulse early on like to take that sort of manic addict energy and channel it into something else that wasn't necessarily food?

• 56:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I had severe over exercise disorder with the anorexia, like nine hours in the gym on the Stairmaster, you know, just like so.

• 56:56Rich Roll?

  That was your early cycling career, right?

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:59Rich Roll?

  Stationary bike for hours and hours? Yeah, you didn't know it at the time.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  I know, although it wasn't a bike. I never, for whatever reason, I think I didn't think it was going to burn enough, you know, it's like we've got to have the whole body move in here.

• 57:10Rich Roll?

  So Stairmaster, that was your jam?

• 57:12Speaker 01

  Running or the elliptical, I don't know. Yeah. But when, when we finally got towards the end of my therapy, my therapist, I think she knew, she knew me very well by that point, and she recognized that there was a, you know, there was a competitor in there somewhere and that ideally if I was able to act out on that competitive nature, that would be the most healthy. And she also knew that, that I would not consider myself healed, I told her this in the beginning, until I could move my body in a healthy way again, because I knew I liked to move my body and knew that about myself, but I was doing it very unhealthfully for so long in my eating disorder. So she knew that I had that goal.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  And so she said, you know, I, I feel like we're, we're at the point where we're really ready to, to kind of pick something for you to be able to move your body in a healthy way again, but I, I want to just completely detach from any sort of negative connections you had with any type of exercises. So what's something that you just really have never done before? And I said, what about riding a bike? Because that was not anything that I had done in the eating disorder and I had not ridden a bike since I was, you know, you know, 10 years old on the banana seat bike in the, with the flag in the neighborhood. So she said, perfect. Great.

• 58:32Rich Roll?

  It's super interesting because it could have gone the other way where, look, you know, Exercise is a trigger for me, so I'm just gonna not, I'm gonna avoid that for the rest of my life because that could pull me back into this downward spiral. But I think it takes courage to say, no, I need to go back into exercise, but I need to figure out how to have a healthy relationship with it.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz you just, I just knew it wasn't, that wasn't gonna be authentic me, you know, and then, and then again, that's just, that's not total healing if I'm just deleting parts of myself.

• 59:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's still living in fear and it's still being a prisoner to this disease.

• 59:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:10Rich Roll?

  Right, so, so you enter into, so crazy, like, this is just basically an experiment to become a whole human being, not to like, I'm gonna be a competitive athlete, like, it's, I mean, first of all, how old were you at this point?

• 59:24Speaker 01

  I like that, experiment to be a whole human being, that is, 26.

• 59:27Rich Roll?

  26, okay, so you get a bike, and what, you start pedaling around the neighborhood?

• 59:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty much, like Griffith Park Observatory, I was like, that's where I was, and I got a bike that was like a mountain bike, but I got slick tires put on it so I could ride on the street, so I was, you know, bouncing around with the shocks. But I started riding around Griffith Park Observatory, and then all of a sudden, you know, I noticed there's like these groups of really fast people that would come by me, and I'm like, oh, I think I can stay with them, and then I kind of could, and then they were like, what are you doing, like, what, you know, cuz I just looked all sorts of wrong, right, the clothes, everything. And so I met someone on, on those group rides that was gonna do the California AIDS ride, and I thought, well, that's cool, cuz I can like, do something good, you know, you have to raise, back then you had to raise, it's probably a lot more now, but you had to raise

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  $3,000, and I was like, well, this is 96, 98 is when I did it, so this was 97, and I thought, oh my God, that's so much money, how am I, I write letters to everybody I've ever met and raise the money, it's like, I'm gonna do something good, and it went from San Francisco to LA, but it's like almost, you know, 700 miles cuz they don't go direct, and that was, that was, I was like at the front with the head guys, and I'm, I'm still on my mountain bike with the slick tires, and like the fourth day, and they were like, what? Who are you? What are you doing?

• 1:00:49Rich Roll?

  And how long had you been riding a bike at this point?

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  Like, just a matter of months.

• 1:00:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  I mean, just not any period of time at all. And I was

• 1:00:56Rich Roll?

  And that competitiveness, like, I gotta be up front?

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  I guess so. I don't, you know, I think too, like, I, I mean, I like, I used to like to suffer. I don't like to suffer as much as I used to, but I've always, I've always liked to suffer. And, and the suffering that I went through in my eating disorder was just so much more massive than any suffering I was gonna ever experience on a bicycle. So it just didn't feel like much, you know? I mean, I knew I was suffering and it was, you know, definitely an aspect to that, but it just, it wasn't that bad. And the best part of the cycling was, I knew the suffering would end. I mean, I knew there was a finish line. I knew there was gonna be tents and warm showers and yummy food and, you know, it was gonna end. So I, it was like, this is gonna last an hour or five, I'm not sure, but, but that, that ability to, to, to dig that deep and suffer that hard was, you know,

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  definitely was trained quite well in my eating disorder years. And I think I, for sure, used that.

• 1:01:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. High pain threshold.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:53Rich Roll?

  From psychic pain to physical pain.

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. And physical pain in your eating disorder though, too. I mean, yeah, pretty extreme.

• 1:01:59Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Alright, so you do the AIDS ride. I mean, are the lights going on? Like, how is this, are you thinking, hmm, like?

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  No, I'm thinking nothing. And then the guy, I mean, I just, I'm like, I don't know that it's weird that I'm at the front with these guys. I don't know anything. You know what I mean? I just, I know nothing at this point. They're just nice guys that, I'm like, I felt like I was

• 1:02:17Rich Roll?

  Do you have clip-on pedals at least?

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yes. Yeah. But mountain bike shoes, you know, so they're not even hard sole, so I'm losing some watts through those puppies. So we finished the AIDS ride and a couple of them were like, have you ever raced? I'm like, no. Have you ever thought of racing? I'm like, no. What rate, rate, what race? Where do you, we just did a race. They're like, no, this isn't a real race. This is like a, they had to explain that to me. I'm like, oh, I thought it was a race.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Could've told me that day one, I could've taken it easy. So they said, I think you should try like a race race, you know, you've gotta get like a license with like USA Cycling. And, and I'm like, you know, where do I do that? And they're like, well, here, let's go on the internet. They literally bought my license for me and I tried my first race. And, uh, yeah, that's, the rest is history.

• 1:03:00Rich Roll?

  Right. And, and this starts to happen pretty quickly, right?

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. It was like two weeks, you know, like the next week or something. I, yeah, it was like, okay, I'm gonna get a license and then,

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  Uh, my first race was up in Monterey, California.

• 1:03:14Rich Roll?

  Criterion or like a road race?

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  Uh, a road race in the pouring rain. And as the most scared I've ever been on a bicycle, it's still to this day. It was absolutely treacherous and I, cause I have no skills. That's the thing, you know, and now I'm like 20, you know, whatever, 27 and a half or something. You know what I mean? And I have zero skills and you're with people who have been riding, you know, in the women's peloton, they don't start quite as early as, as the men do, but you know, they've been riding at least since high school, you know, for sure. And, um, you know, I didn't grow up with any of that, those, that eye hand coordination, those motor skills, the technical abilities, you know, a lot of that is really, you know,

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  the, at the high level, it's, it's, it's intense, the technicalities. I mean, it's just like you're, you know, centimeters from each other's handlebars in packs of 150, climbing up the Alps, descending. I mean, you know, we've all watched the Tour de France, like those are the descents you're doing. I had, I had zero skills, zero ability to control my bike or be safe or, I mean, it was, it was a disaster.

• 1:04:22Rich Roll?

  Not just safe for yourself, but safe for everyone else too.

• 1:04:24Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:25Rich Roll?

  You're like a liability.

• 1:04:26Speaker 01

  A complete liability and I was treated as such for quite a while in the women's peloton.

• 1:04:30Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. So it wasn't like you enter your first race and you win?

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  No, I got like 12th or something in that. Yeah.

• 1:04:37Rich Roll?

  It was like a cap four or was it like?

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:04:40Rich Roll?

  All right, but did it, did it get its claws in you? Like, were you like, oh man, this is, this is going to be my thing?

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, right when I finished, I, I remember going to the van and trying to warm up. It was freezing and changing my clothes and calling my mom and going, that's the most horrible experience I have ever had in my life. I want to die. That was so dumb. We're going, and it, and within hours I was like, where's the next race?

• 1:05:06Rich Roll?

  Right. It could have been like, I'm hanging it up, like that's not for me.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  It was, yeah, yeah. But then you just realized that's bike racing. It's awful.

• 1:05:15Rich Roll?

  But you move up pretty quickly, right? From cat four to cat two? And how long is this?

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I moved up from cat four to cat one in, in, in less than a year. So it was, again, that's cool, but I was a liability still at this point because I'm now a cat one and just scary to be around in a criterion for sure. And by this point, I've bought a bike that some people will know is a soft ride. So it was those old triathlon bikes where you're like boing, boing, boing, boing. And I'm in a crit doing that. And people are like, you have to get a bike that doesn't bounce around as we like go through the corners at warp speed though.

• 1:05:54Rich Roll?

  But where does the, I think I read somewhere like that you sort of said to somebody that you were a professional cyclist before you were even a professional cyclist?

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  I did. So I decided that if I was going to do this, I, I, I think I, I came back from the AIDS run, I was like, I gotta get more miles on my legs. Like the, the, these people I'm going to be competing against, you know, they, they have, they've been doing this a long time, getting more miles on my, my legs. So I lived in Venice. So I decided if I got a bike messenger job in downtown LA, then that would give me almost 60 miles a day because it was 25 miles to ride there, 25 back, right? Then you have messenger. So I go downtown LA, I get a bike messenger job. I'm the only girl. I'm the only one that doesn't smoke a tremendous amount of pot all day long. Wow. And so I did, I did that and I, I started to, to, to get those miles in my legs. And that was, that, that was the-

• 1:06:48Rich Roll?

  And skill, probably like technical skills too.

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  I started to a little bit, like the, yeah, the guys were starting to teach me stuff. I said, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm racing, so I, you know, I, I need some help with this. And I learned, I, yeah, I learned some things. I mean, it, it's, you, you can learn it, but then to do it is kind of a whole nother. You know, they always say in cycling, like, just follow my line. If I can do it, you can do it. That's not true. Don't believe that. Even to this day, mountain biking, my husband's like, if I can go down these rocks, no, I can't because you have just a better balance and awareness of your body weight. And it's like, you know, you have to be a, yeah.

• 1:07:21Rich Roll?

  And that's just time. I mean, that's just time in the saddle, right?

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  Exactly. Right? Yeah. So it's a- Yeah, which I didn't have time, you know, that was, that was kind of one of the issues. So, um, but I got, I got a lot of, uh, I did, I, I did get a lot of miles in with that, with that messenger job and then, you know, rode in every Saturday and Sunday just with the group rides in Santa Monica and got lost. I took cabs back from the semi ride like multiple times because I didn't know where I was and what was, where.

• 1:07:52Rich Roll?

  You probably rode by this house. I think the semi ride comes by here all the time.

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  Oh, for sure. No, when I was driving here, I was like, this is, this is my training ground for a year. Yeah, every road up here.

• 1:08:07Rich Roll?

  So was there one race that like kind of clinched it for you where somebody noticed you and said, hey, we can develop you or like, how did it, how did it transpire to you then becoming professional?

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, uh, so I was on a, a small team for, um, a couple of years and that team, we went to US Nationals in, uh, I don't remember what year, but, um, probably 90, probably 2000. Yeah. Yeah. I think 2000 and, um, I got fourth at US Nationals and that, that.

• 1:08:42Rich Roll?

  Your first US Nationals?

• 1:08:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:44Rich Roll?

  After riding how many years at that point?

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:08:47Rich Roll?

  Three years?

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:48Rich Roll?

  Three years?

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  And so then that, then.

• 1:08:51Rich Roll?

  In the road race?

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. I've been, uh, I was in Reading, um, California. So then, then that's the national team called and said, you know, come to the training center and have some testing and, um, you're kind of old, but you know, come anyway. It's like, thanks a lot. Um, and then I did testing and they were like, oh yeah, you're old and you're not that talented. They were like, the testing was just super marked. I was just, I'm like, I don't have a lot of deep well of talent. Like I recognize them more talented than the next person on a bike, but no, I don't have like really great lung capacity or, you know, high.

• 1:09:29Rich Roll?

  So it wasn't like you were someone who's just walking around on planet earth with no idea that you had this unbelievable amount of talent that just needed to find its.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no, it's a lot of, it's just, just a lot, like a large capacity to suffer a lot, I think is really all that's in there. And because, yeah, so they were like, ah, you know, okay, we'll take you to a few races. Like, you know, clearly. Visually disappointed on their face, I could see after the testing was over. And I was like, oh, no, this is a one time ticket to, we were in Chula Vista at the training center down there. But then I started traveling with the US team and, you know, was a darn good domestique for a long time there. And, you know, I had so much to learn. I mean, I was on the team with like, you know, real, serious badasses.

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  I mean, these women were fighting it out for, you know, World Cups and World Championships and Olympics. And that's who I was on the team with. So.

• 1:10:31Rich Roll?

  It's interesting that mainstream audiences have no, myself included, have very little understanding or awareness of women's cycling. Like, we watched the Giro, which I want to talk to you about, you know, Tour de France, all that kind of stuff. And we have some sense of what it's like in the men's world, but this world of women's cycling just goes completely unnoticed.

• 1:10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:54Rich Roll?

  For the most part.

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  Well, kind of welcome to the world in general, Rich.

• 1:10:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah, no, I know. Yeah, right. It's a bigger, it's symptomatic of something larger, of course. But, you know, how many women are in this sport? And where do they typically, you know, learn how to do this?

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, so, you know, as you know, and everyone, cycling is wildly popular in Europe and not here in the States. So when we were over traveling in Europe and racing, you know, there is an awareness and there is an excitement about it. And there are fans and it is something that people recognize and understand the women's side of the sport. You know, why it's not as recognized here as it is with the men is symptomatic of something else, like you said. But, you know, over in Europe, I think they do, they definitely a much better job of the awareness of who the women are. But nonetheless, it's still a very small peloton compared to the men.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  I think, you know, women in general, the men tend to start much younger. They put. They're the little boys on bikes seems to be much, much younger and whether they want to or not. And they, you know, the talent ID camps over in Europe will select these young boys from 10, 11, 12. Women tend to, you know, find it as an outlet in high school or college or something, or maybe they're on the kind of a club team in college. And, and so they have had, you know, an entire, they've gone to college, had entire education before they even really start racing professionally. It's just a completely different entry and it's a completely different exit then. And the women definitely end up on the top in

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  the exit because you come out and you, you have a college degree and this was a really fun and interesting part of your life, but you're ready for the next adventures and you have the education and the ability. The men come out and they are completely lost.

• 1:12:47Rich Roll?

  Right. Cause they've been living in Belgium in a dormitory since age 16.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  Right. And when if they made it all the way through, then maybe they've made it on to some really big professional teams and they've done the tour, you know, multiple times. I mean, there's a handful of US riders that are making it, you know, a good living now, you know, you know, Hencapi and, and, you know, that, that crew. But, but many, many, many hundreds more that their careers over either because they have a horrific crash, right? And it just ends right then and there, or just because, you know, they get a bit older, what like 31, 32. And then what, what are they going to do? So it, it ends up being a very male centric sport in general because what do they do? They go right back into cycling. Their managers, their swan yours, their mechanics.

• 1:13:32Rich Roll?

  That's what they know.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  Because that's what they know and they don't know where else to go. So that, you know, you just, you just see it kind of like, you know, cycle itself.

• 1:13:39Rich Roll?

  Right, right. Yeah, that's interesting. I wouldn't have thought that. So you end up on like T-Mobile, right?

• 1:13:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:46Rich Roll?

  Right. And you ride the Giro.

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:13:49Rich Roll?

  What year was that?

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  Oh, God, let's probably, oh, 2003 or 2004, I would say, yeah.

• 1:13:57Rich Roll?

  That had to be amazing.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. Definitely. Yeah. I mean, they still have rules in women's cycling to this day that are, we're trying to change, that you can only ride a certain amount of kilometers. So I don't know what they think's gonna happen to us.

• 1:14:17Rich Roll?

  Well, it's the same in swimming, like, they don't have, they have, they have shorter events for women. It's crazy.

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  It's, it's really getting silly at this point. So I'm just saying that because the Giro that we're thinking of that the men do, we could clearly do, but that wasn't, you know, it was like-

• 1:14:32Rich Roll?

  It's a different course.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a different course and just different lengths, right? We're only allowed to do so many kilometers. So, and it's 15, it was 15 days. I think it's shorter now. But, right, the men's is obviously three weeks, 21 days. So, yeah.

• 1:14:44Rich Roll?

  You frail women, we don't, we-

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know, yeah.

• 1:14:47Rich Roll?

  You little flowers.

• 1:14:50Rich Roll?

  That's amazing.

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:52Rich Roll?

  Okay, so, so you kind of take this road cycling career essentially as far as you feel like you can. Like, you're, at your peak, where are you at, like, in the peloton? You're kind of like in the, the middle of the Packer there?

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  No, I got a bit better than that. Like, I won some domestic stage races and won some big, and, and some big, single day stage races, and won some stages at some big European races.

• 1:15:20Rich Roll?

  You prove those, those people wrong who are like, eh, you're a little old and you're not-

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  I might have.

• 1:15:27Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, we haven't even gotten to the coup de grace with that. But, but, all right, so you have this road cycling career and, and then, you know, basically, what, you're, you're thinking about retiring and-

• 1:15:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was. I was about 35 at the time and I, I was, I mean, quite frankly, I was just getting kind of bored. I get bored fairly easily still. And I just thought, you know, gosh, I mean, that was just obviously way more than I had ever imagined it ever could be. I mean, wow, what a, what a ride that was, what a great adventure. And, you know, it's been nine years since I had first gotten on a bike. And I thought, well, that's enough. You know, I, I, I think I'll, I'll, I'll see what else is out there. And I, I had just won a prologue at a, a, a major international event in Australia. And my coach at the time said- You know, you have a really unique ability at this, you know, 10 minute or so effort output.

• 1:16:25Speaker 01

  I was never really great in like 20K, 40K time trials. I was like, always like, okay, you know, ninth or something like that. But it was never, I would always get, well, quite frankly bored in them. Like, oh my God, we're still going. I could never do what you did. Oh, my God. So I had this, and do this, this, you know, there is where that natural talent lies in that, that middle distance sort of aerobic and anaerobic combined effort. And so he said, I think you should try, I think you should try the track. I think you should try the pursuit. Like, just give it a go. It's that you've got like a really intense talent in this, this distance. And so I did. And I thought, well, this is, this is kind of, this is kind of cool because it's something different. I went to the

• 1:17:07Speaker 01

  track for the first time and was scared out of my mind. Never been on a track before. No, they had tried to put me on a track many years before. And I was so scared that I literally got off the bike. They continued their training and I went and did running wind sprints out in the parking lot because I thought, well, at least I'm like training. But I couldn't wrap my head around going up on the 45 degree banking and my tire sticking. Like, it just, it made no sense to me. Still doesn't really. And so it was like, this is so amazing because I am so scared doing it. I mean, it just felt like I was coming alive

• 1:17:46Speaker 01

  again on the bike. All the way through to the Olympic Games, I was petrified of riding at the top of the track. Even during, even the Olympics. I remember the very last time. So in my event, you only are at the top of the track in training. So our event is, is done from a standing start on the black line and, you know, and you do 12 laps and you do exchanges. So you fly up there and down. And that wasn't scary in the event. But just riding as you're, as you're kind of working into an effort, we call it, you'll do two or three laps at the very top of the track, right? So it right next to the rail and you're going. Going kind of slow because you're preparing for a huge burst, right?

• 1:18:29Speaker 01

  So, but you can't go too slow on the track because you'll slide off. And, and you know, get pretty horrible wood burn and splinters. I have splinters in my hips from crashing and they're still, they're still there. And so it doesn't feel good. So some of my teammates were, you know, track, trackies and, and, and track sprinters even used to, they used to be, and they were a bit larger and you stick better on the track. If you're larger than if you're a bit lighter. And I was coming from road racing, so I just, you know, I wasn't skinny, but I just wasn't a, you know, a sprinter. And so it would scare the living daylights out of me because they were going creeping around the top

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  of the track and I'm going, maybe you're not going to slide, but I am getting ready to slide. And I could feel like my back will just sideways, just, just. So the very last effort we did before Olympic games, like the day before, we did a 1500 meter effort and we finished and I come down and my teammate says to me, she's like, you never have to do that again. Cause she knew how bad it scared me. And then, and when you're at competition tracks, there's all these other teams whirling around. So you've got traffic on the 45 degree banking, which just is like, yeah, it's, I can't even describe how scary it is.

• 1:19:41Rich Roll?

  Right. So, all right.

• 1:19:44Rich Roll?

  But it's mesmerizing to watch. It's, it's like this crazy ballet and, and very beautiful, like, but for somebody who, who has no familiarity with this at all, like you do team pursuit, you're in a velodrome, they have these crazy banked turns that look 45 degrees, right? How high up is the highest bank?

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  It's like four stories, I guess.

• 1:20:08Rich Roll?

  Four stories. Wow. And how fast do you have to be going to kind of, you know, not fall? And when you're going, the faster you're going, the more, the more perpendicular you are to the ground, right? I would imagine.

• 1:20:20Speaker 01

  Yes. Like, mm.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  I've never had a speedometer on the bars of my track bike, believe it or not. That's kind of like something you like, we always kept our SR MMR watt meter was connected to our seat because you can't read anything when you're in any kind of effort on the track. But it felt like, you know, I mean, sprinters are gonna laugh at this because they would probably say like five miles an hour, but for me, it's a little closer to 15 to feel safe because I never slid off the track because I was going too slow because that just, I mean, you know, so yeah, it's, it's a bit more of a clip than you would like to just be doing recovery for sure.

• 1:20:57Rich Roll?

  And although it's, you know, both road racing and, and track cycling are on a bike, they're incredibly different. Like your road cycling is all about, um, you know, efficiency and how you're meeting out your energy over an extended period of time. And there's, there's, you know, there's surges, et cetera, and things like that within the context of that. But in track cycling, it's about massive bursts of power.

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:24Rich Roll?

  Being able to maintain gigantic watts on a gigantic gear.

• 1:21:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:31Rich Roll?

  Also, all the crazy strategy and tactics that go into when you make those surges and when you make those moves.

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you do have a, like, you do have efficiency and economy of efficiency happening in team pursuit based on the team and, and what the riders' strengths and weaknesses are and how you're going to use them to the team's best ability. Like you can change how many half laps, laps, lap and a half, two laps people do. You can feel that off of the rider in front of you and recognize that they're actually going to take a short turn or that they might go a bit longer, which usually never happens, but that they're going to have to peel off in a short turn. Like in the, in the Olympic Games, and there's some, I mean, that, you know, I will say there's a little bit of ego connected to

• 1:22:17Speaker 01

  that. Like you want to be able to do your full turn. But my fourth pole, I was supposed to do one lap and I knew that, that my teammate Sarah Hammer was, was, had an extra gear. I could feel it from the, the two laps before that. And I just instinctually knew.

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  I gotta get out of the way. We gotta get her to the front for these last couple laps. I knew we were behind with Australia. This is to go into the gold medal. I didn't realize we were 1.7 seconds behind and that is a deficit in Team Pursuit that has nobody's ever come back from. Yeah, nobody ever has. And so it was, that was an instinctual and my teammate behind me, Jenny Reed, says, "I had no idea that you were gonna pull off." Like, you weren't slowing. And I knew I wasn't slowing and I could hang, but I knew I was just gonna keep the same speed and I knew Sarah had another gear. So I came off, got back on, and we ended up beating Australia by eight one-hundredths of a second. So it

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  was definitely releasing that ego for the team. Not at that, you know, that you had that at that level in the Olympic Games, like, "I have to do my full pull or whatever." But you kind of do in training. And, you know, it was, you normally would swing off if you're starting to die. And I knew I wasn't. I just knew that we had another gear with another rider. So anyway, incredible amount of tactics and savviness and thinking and then just subconscious thinking. You get to know each other so, so, so well.

• 1:23:56Rich Roll?

  Right. You have to be so in sync with your teammates that that subtle, like, that subtle, intangible thing that you're aware of that allowed you to make that decision in that moment that made the difference. Yeah, that's crazy. I mean, how long do you have to ride with your teammates before you can kind of develop that awareness?

• 1:24:16Speaker 01

  Well, we'd been on that journey together, I guess, for four years. I mean, I had ridden with her before that. Like, she was the person that I met her and her husband, Andy Sparks, at the LA track for the very first time when I tried it, when that coach had said, "Try it." So I had ridden with her for even more years than that. But the real push to 2012 Olympics was, you know, we'd been at it for years.

• 1:24:43Rich Roll?

  And just to be clear, like, Team Pursuit is basically you and your team, there's four of you, right?

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so my, in 2012, they did the women, three women, three kilometers, you couldn't lose anyone. Now they do it just like the men. It's four women, four kilometers, but you can drop someone. So totally different tactic, like completely different.

• 1:25:06Rich Roll?

  You're rotating who's pulling.

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah. So the tracks are, they're 250 meters. So in three kilometers, you're doing 12 laps. You know, four kilometers, you're doing 16. And you start from a dead start. So track bikes are fixed gears, no brakes. So you start, the starter that's taking the most load from the start is in a gate. And then the other people are up track being held by a person that is acting as a starting gate. And so you're in a gear that is big enough that when you get up to speed, you can go fast enough. So it's, it's, it's really, it's about 800 watts of power out of, out of the starting gate, which is a gnarly way to start a race. Because if you think about it, when you start a time trial, you know, you, you start in a spinny gear a little bit till you get up to speed

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  so you don't load your legs. So it's this really gnarly load, the first five seconds of the race.

• 1:25:58Rich Roll?

  Just a lactate cascade from moment one.

• 1:26:01Speaker 01

  Like just blast.

• 1:26:02Rich Roll?

  And then you're up to...

• 1:26:02Speaker 01

  Welcome to team pursuit.

• 1:26:04Rich Roll?

  Like your cadence is up to 100, like 122, right?

• 1:26:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. That's what we averaged. We, yeah, exactly. Yeah, in the race.

• 1:26:12Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's unbelievable.

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  In that, in that monster, monster gear. So for, for, for trackies, we, we rode 102s at the Olympic Games, which is, which is pretty big.

• 1:26:23Rich Roll?

  And what is the training like, on a daily basis? What does it look like?

• 1:26:27Speaker 01

  The training is a, is a real combination of aerobic efficiency and anaerobic power. So it is very much like that. You know, I compare it to the 800 meters or 1500 meters, right, track runners. So we're doing five and six hour road rides, we're doing gnarly gym work, and we're doing really explosive track work. I mean, you, you know, people don't... Realize in three and a half minutes, I mean, that's, that's not anaerobic. You know, you need oxygen if you're going for, for three minutes, you know, 16 seconds. So it's a combo. And if you don't have that efficiency and if you don't have that base and you don't have that economy, you can't ever go as fast as you go at that level. If you, if you don't have that set in your system.

• 1:27:11Rich Roll?

  It's like the hardest equation to solve because you have to be incredibly proficient as an anaerobic athlete and as an aerobic athlete. I think the 800 meters, it's because you can't, like if you're running the 800 meters, you can't go all out the entire time, right? There is some pacing and some strategy involved with that, but you have to be a sprinter and you have to be an endurance athlete.

• 1:27:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, but at that level, at the Olympic level, you, you are. I mean, I would say from our race, like you, you always, you always die. Like you never, you, you, we, we've never did a race that we increased, or I should say decreased our lap times. You all, so, so you literally are building a system that can go all out for three minutes and 16 seconds.

• 1:27:56Rich Roll?

  And that training involves longer endurance training on the road and then also super high output on the track, right?

• 1:28:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:28:06Rich Roll?

  Is just busting it as hard as you possibly can.

• 1:28:09Speaker 01

  And, and, and another thing that people don't realize is how much raw strength is involved because with the one gear and with that big of a gear, you have to have the strength to keep that gear turning over at 122, right? So the cadence, so the, the fastest anyone is going to go on a bike is the highest cadence in the biggest gear. So a lot of people look at track cycling, they're like, oh, wow, they're spinning so high, you know, they're at 122, but you're in a monster gear doing that. And to keep on top of the gear as well, as we say it, you have to have an incredible amount of strength because you can't fall off the gear. Because once you fall off the gear, it's over, you're, you're, you're dropped.

• 1:28:51Speaker 01

  Because in road cycling, you can, you can shift if you're kind of fall, you know, that feeling, you're kind of falling off the gear and it's like, whoa, I gotta spin this out, move through some lactate.

• 1:28:59Rich Roll?

  Right, you can recover and then regroup, right? So you can't do it on the track.

• 1:29:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:29:04Rich Roll?

  The track, the, the track athletes, track cycling athletes look totally different from the road cyclists. They almost look like. They're very like, very thick and squat and incredibly strong. They almost look like wrestlers, you know.

• 1:29:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially the sprinters, right? Like the sprinters totally look like that. I mean, they look like, I mean, it tracks like they, it is so similar to track and field. You've got the sprinters and you've got the middle distance and you've got the endurance and they, you know, they tend to look the part to each one of them. Yeah.

• 1:29:32Rich Roll?

  What's that crazy event? Like the, I don't know what it's called, the Dolly Madison or something like that?

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  Oh, the Madison.

• 1:29:38Rich Roll?

  The Madison, right. Like I still don't even understand what that is.

• 1:29:43Speaker 01

  It's insane. Yeah. So they sling each other. I mean, you're, you're in a team of two and, and they, and you, you basically rotate laps and they use each other as a propeller to, to, to go fast into the, into the next lap. So, so the person that is coming out of the race onto the relief line, you know, is, swings the, the next person down in and then they race and race and then it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's really fun to watch, but it's really confusing. It's really hard to figure out.

• 1:30:13Rich Roll?

  I'm like, I don't know what's happening.

• 1:30:14Speaker 01

  Who's winning? Who's it? Yeah. Yeah. But it's pretty.

• 1:30:17Rich Roll?

  It's like watching cricket.

• 1:30:18Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, exactly. Like watching cricket. That's just what I was thinking.

• 1:30:22Rich Roll?

  How come you didn't do, did you try to pursue individual pursuit?

• 1:30:27Speaker 01

  I did. I started, that was like 2007 that I did my first individual pursuit. But in 2008 Beijing Olympics was the last time that they had individual pursuit in the Olympic Games. So then they changed the, they, they do this a lot in a lot of sports where they, you know, they change the program trying to, you know, get the audience excited. I mean, individual pursuit is an amazing event, but watching it, if you don't know what's going on, can put you to sleep because it's just like a rider riding around in circles. So they took the individual pursuit out of the program and added in the, for the women, women's team pursuit. It was already in for the men and they added more parity to track

• 1:31:09Speaker 01

  cycling. So it was equal events, men and women.

• 1:31:13Rich Roll?

  I see.

• 1:31:13Speaker 01

  So for endurance track, all they had was team pursuit and the omnium, which is, yeah, a whole nother event.

• 1:31:23Rich Roll?

  All right. So what year was it that you start? 2007 was your first time on the track?

• 1:31:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:31:29Rich Roll?

  Okay. And then? You ascend pretty rapidly here, right? Like you end up winning like seven US titles? Something like that?

• 1:31:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:37Rich Roll?

  Right, over the course of the next couple of years. So, first race on the track? What was, did you win that race? Like, what did that, what did that look like?

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  I did.

• 1:31:47Rich Roll?

  You did?

• 1:31:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was an individual pursuit. And it was, it was Nationals, actually, because I went-

• 1:31:52Rich Roll?

  First race, first race on the track was Nationals and you win?

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  Yes, but our, our, our most decorated female individual pursuer of all times in the United States was injured, so I will say that.

• 1:32:03Rich Roll?

  Don't diminish her. Come on!

• 1:32:06Speaker 01

  She was helping me. But, so I got a little, I got a little, I got a little lucky that year. But, in the final of that race, like you do qualifying rounds and then you go into the gold medal final, and in the gold medal final, at that, that track is the Home Depot Center, right now StubHub Center, and they'd had X Games in there the week before, which had created this like incredible amount of, of dust, and this, they had, it was like, there was like this layer of dust on the track that was making it really slick. They were crashing a lot in the, in the days before.

• 1:32:40Rich Roll?

  Like Monster Energy Drinks spilled all over the place.

• 1:32:42Speaker 01

  Exactly, right, yeah, but I would have taken some sticky, but it was, so I'm in the gate, and we take off, you know, the gun goes off for the, the gold medal ride, and I crash immediately. Like, I literally take one, tried to take one pedal stroke out of the gate, which is a really powerful pedal stroke, right? And just slide out and fall. I mean, just zoom, just right underneath myself. And I didn't know enough to know, because this is literally six weeks after the first time I'd gotten on the track, and I was on it for like a week, and then the, the person that, that was helping me, you know, Andy and Sarah, like, you know, Nationals is in like five weeks, let's just, let's just go for it. I'm like, okay, you know? So here we are. So I slide out, and this very decorated person I'm talking about that's won world championships

• 1:33:25Speaker 01

  and everything at this point, and had already been to an Olympic game, she's, she comes up to me, runs up, and she's like, "Don't worry about it, it happens all the time." And I'm like, oh my God, wow, I'm not retarded. Like, oh, this happens. They come out of the gate, people slide, you know, I take off. Again, you get a second, you get a restart and I won. And right after the race is over, I come up to her and I was like, that was the best news ever. Like, it completely relaxed me. Like, okay, this is normal. Because I don't know anything about track cycling. I've never even been to an international track race. And she's like, I've never seen that happen before in the history of track cycling. And I was like, wow, you're like a psychologist, aren't you? She knew I needed to hear, like, oh, no, okay, well, leave it to me.

• 1:34:09Rich Roll?

  Oh, my God. I can't. And then you win. That's so insane.

• 1:34:13Speaker 01

  It felt insane, for sure.

• 1:34:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's crazy. All right. So, fast forward to 2012 Olympic Games, London, you're 39 at this point?

• 1:34:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, 39.

• 1:34:24Rich Roll?

  Are you the oldest person on the, on the cycling team? I'd be one of the older athletes in the USA Olympic team in general, I would imagine.

• 1:34:34Speaker 01

  Right, probably so. Yeah.

• 1:34:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's amazing.

• 1:34:36Speaker 01

  And the cycling team, yeah, yeah, I was.

• 1:34:40Rich Roll?

  Wow. And so, going into that, what were the prospects of meddling? Like, where did you guys fall in the pecking order?

• 1:34:47Speaker 01

  We were total underdogs. I mean, total. I mean, so, track cycling, again, right, is not wildly popular here in the United States. We don't know a lot about it. But it is the thing in Great Britain, in Australia, in New Zealand. I mean, these are deep, rich, track cycling countries that have respected it for, you know, 100 years. I mean, literally. So, we were up against giants in this sport. I mean, you know, it would be like, I mean, it literally is like, you know, Jamaican bobsleders beating the Germans or something. It was like, we were major underdogs. The bookies had us at, at the

• 1:35:25Speaker 01

  very best at fifth. And we just thought, maybe if it's our best day ever, there would be a scratch of a possibility we could get a bronze. Like, you know, there was, we were, we was, we'd never beaten the, the British or the Aussies before. They're, they're A teams. We'd beaten like their B teams, whatever, but, ever.

• 1:35:48Rich Roll?

  So, how did this happen?

• 1:35:49Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. I'm still not entirely sure. It was, you know, it's, that's the thing about sport at that level is you, you know, you do it your whole life or whatever, and you, you, you train and train and train, but it's all about delivering in that one moment, on that one day, in that one month, in that one, you know, it's, it's, it's not, uh, it's not something that is, you could ever probably repeat again, or that would have ever happened again. A lot of the really amazing Olympic moments, right, that we watched, that we just watched in Pyeongchang, like, um, the, the skier, the girl that had never won a World Cup or anything, but, you know, it's just like, we, we had one of those moments.

• 1:36:34Speaker 01

  We just rode completely outside of our skin. Uh, two of us on the team, Jenny, Rita, myself, have never, ever performed or been able to put that output out on the track, ever, in, in our history, and we probably couldn't have done it the next day. Um, it was, it was a moment in time that the three of us put together. We had a lot of love and a lot of respect for each other. And there's something about Team Pursuit, or any really ton of team sport, where, you know, you're not lining up for yourself. You know, there's, there's this, this whole other layer, this whole other beautiful layer that I loved about Team Pursuit more than I ever loved anything about Road, where it was, it wasn't

• 1:37:14Speaker 01

  about self. Um, it was about, it was about others, and it was about, um, you better make sure that you're showing up 100% because you know that they are.

• 1:37:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's like relay swimming. It's like relays in swimming, or in track and field. I mean, there's something really beautiful and powerful about that. And that's what's magical about the Olympics, when moments like that occur. I mean, it's so cool that you got to. What is, what is being an Olympian, what does that experience mean to you? I mean, now it's been a couple of years, as you reflect back on that.

• 1:37:46Speaker 01

  Well, you know, there's something, there's something great about being thirty nine and a half at the Olympics and that.

• 1:37:51Rich Roll?

  It's awesome.

• 1:37:52Speaker 01

  Well, it just besides that it's rare or whatever, but I was a grown woman and I was really, really hyper aware that I was at the Olympic Games, that this was not going to be an experience I would be repeating, that I was representing my country and I specifically got selected to go deliver for my country and my team and USA Cycling and I was able to just be there and be super present and soak up every single moment where I think if I'd gone to the Olympics at twenty, you know, you're like, oh, this is cool, awesome clothes, I'm gonna be here ten more times, you know, which you're not necessarily, first

• 1:38:35Speaker 01

  of all, twenty year olds, right? You don't know that that's the case, but it was, it was just a magical experience for me in every way because I allowed it to be and I went after it being that experience and just, I had done a ton of sports psychology because I struggled with really big time nerves in track cycling, but I felt like I got there just really fully, completely mentally and emotionally present and was able to have that full experience and so it's almost, it's almost like fairyland when I look back on it. It really is. I'm very grateful.

• 1:39:15Rich Roll?

  It wouldn't mean as much to you if you were younger and weren't able to like have that presence of mind and connect with that gratitude.

• 1:39:22Speaker 01

  And no perspective when you're young, right? Either. Like there was just no, and I had a ton of perspective and had almost died and, you know, this was really just felt like a complete gift that this was even in the realm of possibilities that I was now experiencing this in my life.

• 1:39:37Rich Roll?

  It's crazy. When you think about it.

• 1:39:39Speaker 01

  It's a little nutty.

• 1:39:40Rich Roll?

  From like wandering out into the middle of an interstate to being on the podium in London, I mean, it's extraordinary.

• 1:39:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's.

• 1:39:48Rich Roll?

  Quite something.

• 1:39:49Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:39:50Rich Roll?

  Did you see Icarus, that documentary, Icarus?

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:39:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, what do you, what do you think? Like as an Olympian, you know, now we're in the midst of, you know, this conversation about state sponsored doping and kind of this cloud that is hovering over the Olympics itself and as somebody who's, who is an Olympian, like.

• 1:40:14Speaker 01

  And the Russians have had some doping violations in this Olympus. It sounds like they're not going to be invited this summer. Well, I know, and you had him on the podcast, I think.

• 1:40:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I had Brian on.

• 1:40:23Speaker 01

  So I have, I think, a little bit of a different view of that movie than some other people that I've spoken to about the movie. You know, if he hadn't have been very specifically seeking out his own systematic doping, he would have never have run into that doctor and that whole, that whole part of the story would have never unfolded. The second half of the movie and that, the systematic doping and how it is, is, is interesting. It uncovers a lot of truths that were not uncovered. But as a Olympian and as a clean athlete and as someone who, you know, was very conscious

• 1:41:06Speaker 01

  about being clean, the movie really kind of angers me because he was setting out to cheat. Very complete, full consciousness of cheating. I don't care if it's just a grand fondo or whatever, you're going to go to the line. There's a lot of people there that lined up in all honesty and clean. And the fact that it didn't work gave me some pleasure. But I, yeah, I'm not a big fan of the movie because of that. Like, I don't, I don't, I don't love

• 1:41:45Speaker 01

  watching stories of people vindictively, dishonestly going to the start line. I don't have any respect for that.

• 1:41:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I get that. I get that. You know, as somebody who, who is in a sport that has, you know, a cloud over it as well, right?

• 1:42:01Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:42:02Rich Roll?

  And somebody who's, who is clean and fighting clean and all of that, I can understand, you know, that emotional response to that for sure. It is, it is fascinating to see what's happened though, on the, on the geopolitical stage as a result of that second and third act of that movie though. And I think more

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:42:21Rich Roll?

  will be revealed and

• 1:42:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:42:23Rich Roll?

  and hopefully this will lead us to, you know, some higher ground here.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think that's, I mean, that was why it was, that, that part of it was like, you know, people, you really got a good, full view of the underbelly. Again, how, you know, how it all, all of the hidden secrets and how it's all, how it all unfolded. And that's how, you know, unfolded in many countries that way. Um, East Germany. I mean, that, that's, that's, that's a whole nother level what's going on from Russia right now. I mean, that.

• 1:42:49Rich Roll?

  Well, I remember the East German swimmers from back in the eighties.

• 1:42:52Speaker 01

  Exactly. I mean.

• 1:42:54Rich Roll?

  It was something else at the time. All right. Well, let's talk about, let's talk about the diet.

• 1:42:59Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:43:01Rich Roll?

  How long have we been talking? We're like hour and a half into this. The word vegan has not been uttered one time.

• 1:43:06Speaker 01

  I know. It's horrible.

• 1:43:08Rich Roll?

  When are they going to talk about the fact that she's vegan? All right. So, um, vegan athlete.

• 1:43:15Speaker 01

  Hopefully they haven't tuned out yet.

• 1:43:16Rich Roll?

  No, no, it's been riveting.

• 1:43:21Rich Roll?

  So when did you turn vegan? Why did you turn vegan? You were vegetarian prior to that?

• 1:43:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:28Rich Roll?

  Give me the history here.

• 1:43:29Speaker 01

  So I just, uh, was just, um, hanging out in, in, I was at a race in Minnesota, uh, road race. And it was a stage race. And I, uh, stumbled upon, uh, a program that, uh, showed what goes on behind closed doors of our slaughterhouses every single day. And, um, I felt very confused and, and, and of course horrified and, and, uh, all of those feelings. But I, I felt really confused because I thought, well, I think this is probably from

• 1:44:09Speaker 01

  another country because, you know, our government protects its people and that of course has to include all of our food sources. And so I thought, well, I'm going to stop eating animals tomorrow, just in case this has any validity. But I think I'm going to go home from this race and start doing research and find out that this is like, obviously just an isolated incident. So I, I stopped eating meat the next day, you know, the next morning. And then of course go home to find out, holy mother of God, this is, this is systematic across all big agriculture, every animal, every species of animal, every, so I was,

• 1:44:51Speaker 01

  that was the beginning of my vegetarian journey. And then as I dug deeper and found out more and looked under more hoods, uh, there was the, um, exposure of the egg industry and the dairy industry and which are. Really, in my opinion, wildly more horrifying than the meat industry could ever be.

• 1:45:13Rich Roll?

  So this was, this began, what year was that?

• 1:45:18Speaker 01

  Two thousand, like mid 2009. Yeah.

• 1:45:24Rich Roll?

  So you're full on cycling pro at the time. Did you have some trepidation about how this was going to impact your training and your performance?

• 1:45:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, I kind of did. I, I had, I had a coach who was a vegan, which is interesting. And I, I had read the China study. So I kind of heard about this and was like, oh, that's interesting. So I, I had had a sense that I might not completely, I wasn't going to perish from being a vegan. Like I wasn't going to die, right? But I kind of thought this might end my career. Like I didn't know that it was, I was necessarily going to be able to have this strength and the stamina. Cause where might I get my protein?

• 1:46:10Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:46:12Speaker 01

  But I didn't care. I, I thought, you know, this, I just knew almost instantly that this was something that was significantly more important than anything I was going to ever be individually on a bicycle. That it was so much bigger than any Olympic Games could ever be for me in my life or just in general. And I was fully willing to take the risk.

• 1:46:35Rich Roll?

  And, and how did that play out in terms of shifting your diet and then monitoring how you're progressing as an athlete?

• 1:46:44Speaker 01

  Well, I, I started, I mean, you know, when people ask today, oh gosh, you know, how do you do it? It's so hard. And it's like, I didn't think it was that hard. I still am just so confused by that question. Cause first of all, there's Google. You know, I mean, I could get like whatever 50 years ago with something. It's like, okay, but it's just, it just, I mean, it just explodes in your face. Recipes and foods and all this, and, and all these interesting ways to put the foods together and the flavors and the tastes and the spices. And, and you know, still we have to remember that our.

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  Food, our plant food, our spices, our herbs, our what flavor meat food. Nobody's ever just, you know, most of the time slapped just a piece of meat on the grill. They have marinated it and tenderized it and spiced it. And that's plant food that does that. So when people say, oh, well, it's not going to taste very good. It's like, we are the food that is making your food taste good. So it's, I thought it was, I thought it was interesting. I thought it was fun. Like, I really was like interested in the journey of it. And I loved cooking all of the sudden, which I hadn't for all of those 37 years. I just, I mean, my husband and I went out to eat six nights a week. It was like boring kitchen I don't want to do.

• 1:48:03Speaker 01

  Now I'm like interested in cooking and preparing food. And then I start to become really interested in, you know, types of nutrients that I'm putting in, how I'm feeling, and then what's coming out on the bike. So I'm doing like all these little mini experiments with myself. And then I'm going back to the drawing board and going, okay, a little more of that, a little more of this. You know, it was, it was just, yeah, it was, it was fun.

• 1:48:26Rich Roll?

  And cycling is a super interesting template to explore this because it's like this perfectly conceived contraption to quantify human output and performance. You've got the power meter, you've got the heart rate monitor. I mean, especially on the track.

• 1:48:44Speaker 01

  Get more data than you could ever.

• 1:48:45Rich Roll?

  It's like a data mining machine, right? So there's, there is no other sport where you could just lose yourself in graphs and data to really map out like, okay, what is, what's the impact of this on this, right? So were you, were you like sort of paying attention to that?

• 1:49:01Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, yeah, yeah. And I had a, I am unfortunately too tall for really awesome aerodynamics. I've got really long legs and a short torso, so I sit up quite high. And so in track cycling and team pursuit, you have, you know, exactly how many watts that you have to put out on the front to sustain the speed that you want to go. For me, it was 474.

• 1:49:29Speaker 01

  And I know exactly.

• 1:49:30Rich Roll?

  The people that don't know, that's a really high number.

• 1:49:33Speaker 01

  I know exactly how many watts that I have to put out when I am in, you know, relief quote, right? Which was closer to 340. So that's my rest. Whereas my teammates, when you're shorter and more aerodynamic, you have to put out less watts. So I had to put out the most watts on the whole team every time I took a pull and every time I was in, you know, in line. So I knew exactly how much I had to produce and exactly what types of foods were fueling that and keeping that at a consistent level, if you will, like consistently being able to put out those watts on the front and days that I could

• 1:50:14Speaker 01

  or couldn't and what, you know, what was happening. It was connecting almost everything to my input, my nutrition, which before I had just been like a zombie, like I just ate whatever was in line at the training center, like you said before, which was pretty nasty stuff. And now, you know, it was, it was, it was like, it was just so interesting to see all the different plant foods and what would happen. And then, you know, everybody talks about this, but I mean, for me, it was really important to be recovering because I am 39 and a half and I'm in a, I'm, you know, everybody's in a race to recover, right? Because we're, we're only damaging during training, we're, and we're only repairing

• 1:50:56Speaker 01

  then during rest. And that's when you get stronger. You don't get stronger in training. So for me, that, that was my race. The recovery was my race. It's every athlete's race, but especially as you're getting older. And I had started noticing that my recovery was changing, you know, before I had gone plant-based. I mean, it was, it was, it was deteriorating. And I was like, oh, wow, this is, I am not feeling like I used to after the six-hour rides. You know, I'm eating the same thing. I'm sleeping the same way, you know? So that, that was a.

• 1:51:24Rich Roll?

  And doing the Normatec boots and all that kind of other stuff, right?

• 1:51:27Speaker 01

  Exactly. And getting massage and chiropractic. Yeah. It's, yeah. I mean, it 24, it's 24/7, right? You're doing something. I don't miss that part. Like, just thinking about all of that stuff every day, all day long. You're thinking about yourself all day long, every day. Yeah, it's, it's boring.

• 1:51:42Rich Roll?

  Well, to be an athlete at that level is a very self-involved thing.

• 1:51:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, completely.

• 1:51:46Rich Roll?

  It has to be. All right. So then going plant-based, you're noticing an improvement in your ability to recover? That's what you're gathering from this?

• 1:51:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and that, that was like. In like a couple of weeks. I mean, that was just so fast. I was like, what? And I didn't, to be quite honest, it's not something that I connected at first. I mean, I don't know. It's stupid. I mean, that's the only thing that I had really changed.

• 1:52:10Rich Roll?

  Right. But you came in from an ethical point. You weren't doing this like, oh, I'm going to reduce my performance. You were doing this from an ethical perspective of this is an intolerable system and I'm opting out.

• 1:52:21Speaker 01

  I'm opting out.

• 1:52:21Rich Roll?

  And whatever happens athletically is going to happen.

• 1:52:24Speaker 01

  Yep. Yep. And I, and I, and I hope that something good will happen because I feel like by opting out, I'm doing good. I mean, I, you know, then so, so maybe, maybe, maybe something will come from this. And, and it definitely did, but it was, um, it was, it was, I don't know. The other thing that's so joyful about it is, you know, so, so many people say when they say, oh, you know, it's hard. It's hard to stick to or something like that. To me, it's like, it's such a joy to sit down at every meal. And, and you're aware that you are choosing conscience over ease. Like whatever is just there. And it is so uplifting and so fulfilling.

• 1:53:09Speaker 01

  And such an empowering feeling. Like I feel so strong every time I'm slightly challenged. Let's say at like a business dinner and we're like at Ruth Chris, you know, like whatever that happens once a freaking year. Who cares? But

• 1:53:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, everyone's worried about that steakhouse adventure.

• 1:53:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, that one experience where, you know, uh, but you know, people are just, people are really nice. And the last experience I had at Ruth Chris, which wasn't that long ago. They brought in a vegan meal from a restaurant down the street. Because they knew, uh, so it's because right now you and I aren't that quiet about it. So, and the whole table was like, what are you eating? That looks so delicious. And you're like, well, you just have your little dead animal over there. I mean, it's like, you know, it's just, because it's just, it's just so, it's so bountiful and so colorful. And so, you know, I thought that was just great. They all wanted some. I was like, no, I'm not sharing. Very hungry.

• 1:54:06Rich Roll?

  When you were, when you were in the lead up to London, you said you had a coach who was vegan. I don't know if that was your coach at that time as well.

• 1:54:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, not, he was my track coach, but he was my road coach at the time that, yeah.

• 1:54:16Rich Roll?

  I see.

• 1:54:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:54:17Rich Roll?

  And, and so, you know, it's not just you, you've got these three other women, right? And so are they going, well, like, you know, you're, like, you're going plant-based? Like, what, how is that going to impact us?

• 1:54:28Speaker 01

  I wasn't super vocal about it, really. Like, well, by the time I was with them, I was already plant-based. Like, I, I had, that had happened.

• 1:54:35Rich Roll?

  The vocal aspect of what you do is of recent development. Cause I don't remember hearing about this during London. Like, it wasn't like, oh, Dotsie, the, you know.

• 1:54:43Speaker 01

  No, I didn't do any social media back then anyway. It was like, I didn't even realize it was like, no, no, no. It was like, it was like, my husband's and I little, you know, he was, he had gone pescatarian by that point. You know, and he, and he, so he was like, right after London, which he did, and I did, and he didn't even tell me. And then like, I'm literally going to Whole Foods, going to see the fish guy. Like, I need the fish that you know was just clocked over the head once, and it wasn't the one. I mean, this is, I'm going to these links for, for my husband. Finally, he just stopped eating them.

• 1:55:21Rich Roll?

  How did this fish get here?

• 1:55:22Speaker 01

  I know, oh my God, the guy was like, and then.

• 1:55:25Rich Roll?

  Do you have a chain of custody?

• 1:55:26Speaker 01

  No, he, and he was probably BSing me, but he would do that. I mean, he would like, you know, okay, yes, we're going to go here to this week, the clocked over the head ones that didn't suffer at all are right here, and they're the sea bass. And so, I mean, he was, I still to this day, I'm like.

• 1:55:41Rich Roll?

  Oh, here she comes.

• 1:55:43Speaker 01

  Make your story. Like, you're, oh, that's so ridiculous, so ridiculous. But they didn't really, um, yeah, it was just kind of like, they just, I just ate what I ate. And, and you, who was freaking out was my track coach, who's, um, like, a larger, kind of, like chubby version of Crocodile Dundee, like, he's backcountry Australia. And he was like, what? What? This is what? Why, why would you do this? You know, like, why is this a thing what I have to deal with? Like, it was like, putting him out in a way of, so, but it did, yeah, it didn't take long for him to be like, oh, okay, this is working, I don't, eat whatever you want.

• 1:56:22Rich Roll?

  Wow, that's interesting. Yeah, I mean, I think that, that. You know, maybe what you do gets unfairly lumped in with like endurance athlete runner type people, but I think people don't appreciate or understand the amount of power and strength required to perform at that sport. I mean, it's like massive amounts of power, like crazy amounts of strength that you need.

• 1:56:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the, I mean, just to give a comparison, so on the, I did a lot of inverted leg sled work because I needed to lift, move an incredible amount of weight that I was not going to be able to move doing squats because I would have crushed my upper body. And I had, I had a lot of work to do in a short period of time to get up to that strength that we were talking about because I'm coming from road cycling. So I went from being able to do about, started at like 250 pounds on the inverted leg sled, to 585 pounds, times 60 reps, times five sets. Because my coach had gotten to me where we would almost be the length of the event. So the 60 reps with 585 pounds on it would, it would take.

• 1:57:28Rich Roll?

  Approximate the, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:57:30Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. And that's a pretty obscene amount of weight for 130 pound female.

• 1:57:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 1:57:38Speaker 01

  All on plants.

• 1:57:39Rich Roll?

  Right. Unbelievable. So when people come up to you and they're like, you know, well, do you think you would have done better on a paleo diet? Or do you, you know, like, what kind of crazy questions do you have to field, right, to defend your position?

• 1:57:55Speaker 01

  Probably the same ones you do. I mean, you know, it's like, I think, I mean, it changes the longer you're in it, right? There's, in this movement or speaking about this, you know, people, people ask, people are asking better questions than they were before. But I think it's also just people are becoming a little bit more educated and more aware and, and, you know, but, you know, it's, it's, it's kind of still all the same stuff, right? Where they just, people really don't understand, not only protein, but they, they don't understand iron, they don't understand B12, they don't even understand what B12 is, that it's a bacteria and, you know, where you can get it from. They think animals make B12. So there's, there's just a lot of misconceptions out there about the different nutrients that, that, that they think that you need from the myth that we've been told and lied to

• 1:58:38Speaker 01

  about our whole lives, that you can only get that from animal flesh.

• 1:58:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:58:44Speaker 01

  So it's just those, you know.

• 1:58:45Rich Roll?

  Do you have, were you taking supplements? Or do you have to be, eschew those because fear of like contamination?

• 1:58:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. That was always a scary thing because in my, in my road career, I, I was taking more supplements. And I probably, or definitely more than I needed to. Being completely plant-based, I was taking a liquid B12 that my doctor would prescribe. And I would pick up at the pharmacy just so that I knew it was not, didn't have a lot of fillers in it. Right. When you just get them at the store, they have a lot of fillers. So I was taking the B12 and I was taking a Whole Foods plant-based iron. Because I, I did my best when my iron levels were higher than they would naturally run. And when my ferritin levels were higher and my hemoglobin levels were higher.

• 1:59:33Speaker 01

  So I would cycle this whole food, plant-based iron, which I could easily get from food. But it would be like, you know, a large trough of spinach or something.

• 1:59:41Rich Roll?

  Easier to control it that way.

• 1:59:42Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. But it was still, you know, mega food. So it was still the plant. And that's it. Just those two things.

• 1:59:49Rich Roll?

  No protein powders, BCAAs.

• 1:59:52Speaker 01

  Well, no BCAAs, no, none of the amino acid, none of that stuff. I didn't buy, no way, no. I would do some plant protein every once in a while, just because you get, you know, tired of, you have to. I mean, I was taking in 5,000 calories a day and sometimes more. And so, you know, with ultra endurance, you just get tired of eating. I don't really do protein shakes anymore, but I did back then because it was just like, I just want to drink something. I think I'm going to die if I have to eat again because you just, yeah.

• 2:00:20Rich Roll?

  All right, so 2012, you win the silver medal. You're doing it plant-based, but you weren't a mouthpiece for this movement. So between then and now, you've made this decision to be a vocal advocate for these issues. Like what inspired that? And like, how do you think of yourself as a, as a mouthpiece for these issues that we care about?

• 2:00:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, you know, I, I didn't, when I came back from London, I didn't know anything. I didn't know there was, I didn't know there was a movement.

• 2:00:53Rich Roll?

  This is a theme with you. You're always like.

• 2:00:56Speaker 01

  What's going on? Where am I?

• 2:00:58Rich Roll?

  Where am I? I'm tipping over on the track. Like, I'm doing the AIDS ride on my, on my mountain bike.

• 2:01:03Speaker 01

  What's happening? I didn't, I had no idea there was a vegan movement. I had no idea there was an animal rights movement. I didn't know about you yet. I didn't know, I knew absolutely nothing. I'm still to the point where I, I'm not sharing anything because I don't think there's anyone that cares. And the, the moment happened when my husband came home one day from doing some shopping. He'd been to Native Foods and he saw a little cute group of people meeting. He, it happened to be Mercy for Animals. He got a flyer and brought it home. It was like, look, there's like people that talk about what you talk about. And I'm like, stop it! And I picked up the phone and called Mercy for Animals in Santa Monica and got ahold of Ari Solomon.

• 2:01:49Speaker 01

  I'm like, you guys like, you like, what, how do you, what do you do? And so he said, come up, come up and see us. Let's have lunch. And that was the beginning of recognizing that anybody talks about this and that, and that people listen to them and actually care and are creating a, a pretty large movement of people that give a crap.

• 2:02:11Rich Roll?

  Well, it's amazing as somebody who, who not so long ago didn't even know these worlds existed, that you're having PSAs airing during the Olympics and you've created this compassionate champs movement? Like, tell me what that's all about.

• 2:02:27Speaker 01

  So I'm learning more and more every day. But when I started Compassion Champs, it was, it was really, it was kind of more out of a desire to meld together compassion and strength. I felt like there was, you know, nobody really that, that was having a real conversation about being able to be caring and compassionate and loving and empathetic, but also strong and fierce and badass. And, you know, those, those two just weren't coming together as, as, as a group of people. So that, that's, that's where it was kind of born out of. I'm learning more and more as I am traversing this

• 2:03:10Speaker 01

  movement and reading more research and understanding more from being a part of the Game Changers film, which we can talk about.

• 2:03:18Rich Roll?

  I want to talk about that.

• 2:03:20Speaker 01

  That, you know, people, and, and just from my own experience.

• 2:03:25Speaker 01

  Sadly, and really disappointing to me is by and large, people don't care about the animals. They just don't. They just, they don't care about the suffering. They don't want to know about it. They don't want to hear it. They don't want you to show them. They don't, definitely don't want you to talk about it. And they really don't want you to talk about it when you're all eating. But people do care about their health and they do care about their performance, not just athlete, you know, athletic performance. People just care about their general performance and being better in their life, right? A lot of the people that you've had on here. So the conversation that I'm having is changing a bit more. I think it's, I'm almost

• 2:04:10Speaker 01

  feeling more like an undercover animal activist because it's at the core of what I care about the most. It's the least effective way to change people's minds.

• 2:04:23Rich Roll?

  Right. The way to impact people is, is by appealing to what interests them, not what interests you. Right?

• 2:04:31Speaker 01

  Such a bummer.

• 2:04:32Rich Roll?

  And I think that, you know, the athlete plays a very interesting role in this movement because what they're able to do with their bodies speaks louder than the words that come out of many a doctor's mouth, or many an activist's mouth. Because when someone sees you with a silver medal on, sees you on a podium, or sees you on that velodrome kicking ass, it's like, wow, how does that, how does that person do that? I want to know more about who that person is and what, what inspires them and what fuels them. And telling that story is a way to impact hearts and minds that I think is different and important. You know, and that's why I think, you know, this Game Changers movie that you're a part of

• 2:05:16Rich Roll?

  is going to be a really big deal. Like, I haven't seen it yet. I've seen the trailer, but I know it's making a splash. You were at Sundance. You just got back from the Berlin Film Festival. Tell me what it was like to, you know, see that movie, be part of that movie, and to participate in, in, in screening it before audiences for the first time.

• 2:05:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was just a wild pleasure and honor, right? I just feel like, you know, we're kind of at a tipping point of this movement.

• 2:05:51Speaker 01

  You know, we're not anywhere near like the large percent of the population eating plant-based, but I feel like I'm definitely having outside of the movement, right? We have to take ourselves outside to really recognize, but those conversations are at a much higher level than they used to be. People are at least aware now that they've decided that that's for them or not, maybe not. But screening the film at Sundance and at the Berlinale in Berlin, which was the international premiere, it was so many different types of people asking all different types of questions. You know, it was, that's what I loved about it. It was like a wide variety of questions that not just your typical like, oh, where are you getting your protein?

• 2:06:36Speaker 01

  Well, they cover that in the film, so maybe that's why they weren't asking that. And people's reaction to it was, it's Sundance, it really, really caught me off guard and by surprise. Normally, we're used to people saying, oh, okay, this is interesting, plant-based. Okay, I think I might try a recipe, or I might try meatless Mondays, or I'm going to try this. On slots of people, we do the Q and A after the film, right? There's about 15 of us there, the doctors and the athletes. I'm the only female because the other two females, it's a male, very male-focused film.

• 2:07:13Rich Roll?

  There's a kind of a bro-heavy.

• 2:07:15Speaker 01

  Totally. It's very focused on young men because they are the ones that are resistant to change as far as eating meat and the meat myth. So there's three females in the film and the other two are still competing, so I was the only female there. So I just got this rush of women, you know, standing in line to talk about this and every single one says, I'm starting today.

• 2:07:42Speaker 01

  What do I do for dinner? Somebody else comes up and says, I'm going back to the condo and I'm supposed to cook for 10 people and I have chicken in the refrigerator and I can't serve them that. It's, you know, it's diseased or, you know, they would, they would, she would pick out different parts of the movie that she had learned about all of the gnarliness of chicken. And I, I can't in my right mind, serve them that. What, you know, I don't know what I'm going to do. And I'm, I'm thinking, oh my God, oh my God, no, cook the chicken. Let's start tomorrow. You know, it's like, oh my gosh. It was in a completely different type of, of panic almost of these people just, just so moved by what they learned and so moved by the health aspect that they were everyone starting tomorrow.

• 2:08:25Speaker 01

  And so I was like, wow, guys, we gotta really be ready for this because nobody knew that was going to be the reaction.

• 2:08:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you better have your answer like chambered.

• 2:08:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was really exciting, but.

• 2:08:37Rich Roll?

  Feed them when the inspiration is, is at its peak, right?

• 2:08:41Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah.

• 2:08:44Rich Roll?

  What was the, what was the response in Berlin? How was it different?

• 2:08:48Speaker 01

  Um, it was, it was, oh gosh, I, people are a little bit more subdued there. You know, I just said the Germans.

• 2:08:56Rich Roll?

  The Germans are also questioners. They're much more.

• 2:08:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we got, I mean, we, yeah, we got, um, there's a part in the film where it kind of goes into tobacco industry and kind of how they were eventually exposed even after there was, you know, 700 studies that says smoking kills you, but they had, you know, kind of kept them all quiet. And the PR firm Exponent that is known for hiding big tobacco, hiding a lot of chemicals that are in different things that we, lotions and things we put on our skin and are now spinning big agriculture. So that was.

• 2:09:35Speaker 01

  Very, that was an interesting topic in Berlin. Like, a lot of people brought that. What are we gonna do about exponent? That's not okay, you know, so that, that was a little bit more-

• 2:09:44Rich Roll?

  That's a little, a scant of the, the, what you were trying to go for.

• 2:09:49Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, but I mean, if, you'll, you'll see it. It kind of, it at least helps people to understand why all of this, um, how all of this marketing is working, this meat myth is working in the machine that's behind big agriculture. And the spin that every time something comes out, like what we're doing with Switch for Good, uh, if we get big enough, which we better, and I hope we will, there'll be some type of exponent, whether it's them or someone else, doing a quick spin for a big dairy. So that, that is, it's a, it's a pretty integral part of the film, uh, for people to, to, to understand why they're being told this myth, like where it's coming from and, and, and how much money's behind

• 2:10:29Speaker 01

  that myth. So, um, but, uh, but, but Germany as a whole, and especially Berlin, I mean, Berlin is known as the vegan capital of Europe. Uh, so, you know, it was really, uh, people with a very open minds, too, at the film, you know?

• 2:10:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we were talking before the podcast about how amazing Berlin is for vegan food. They have Vegans, a full vegan supermarket. And we're like, how come they have that? We don't have that here. Like, it would crush in Venice, can you imagine?

• 2:10:56Speaker 01

  I mean, I just couldn't get over myself.

• 2:10:59Rich Roll?

  Wow, wow. So what, is there a release plan for this movie? Like, would they have the distributor lined up? Can you talk about that?

• 2:11:06Speaker 01

  Well, the cool thing is, yeah, well, yeah, I mean, they don't know yet either. So, um, uh, the, the, the cool thing is that their, the distributors are fighting for it. So they're in a great place, a great space to be in. Um, I, I assume in, within the next month, they'll hopefully make that decision of who they're gonna go with. I mean, their, their goal is very much, um, eyeballs on the film and, and not, that they don't have a monetary goal. Uh, their goal is for, you know, uh, one billion people to see the film, which is lofty.

• 2:11:36Rich Roll?

  That's a big goal.

• 2:11:38Speaker 01

  But it's, it's, uh, you know, I, it's certainly possible. Um, if not, maybe probable. So they, uh, if you, if you keep, um-

• 2:11:49Speaker 01

  Up with the website, you know, that'll tell, gamechangersmovie.com will tell when it's going to be released. Because I mean, everybody is, seems, you know, good things seems to be dying to see it. But I think it'll do some more film festivals, too, before, yeah, so we'll, we'll see.

• 2:12:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, more will be revealed. All right, so we got to wrap this up, but I have one final question.

• 2:12:08Speaker 01

  Anybody still there?

• 2:12:09Rich Roll?

  We're at two hours, we're good. You have this competitive nature, you have retired from cycling, where are you going to channel this, this, this energy into this movement? Yes, or?

• 2:12:25Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, yeah.

• 2:12:26Rich Roll?

  You know, is that?

• 2:12:27Speaker 01

  There's, there's no question in, in, in my mind that I will do this till the day I die. It's, it, it fills every piece of my bursting heart with so much joy and, and, and need and fulfillment. And that this is, this is, revealing the secrets behind this is, is very similar to back in the day with tobacco. I feel such a, such an inherent deep need to share truth with people. Like if, if it's not, if they're not, if they're not being told the truth, somebody has to tell them the truth. Somebody has to, you

• 2:13:10Speaker 01

  know, uncover. And, and if I can use the Olympian thing, or the Olympics thing that I, you know, did and fought really hard for, because you're right, people, people are interested in what in, you know, Olympian eats, or what an Olympian does. I mean, it's, you know, that's part of this, you know, PSA with the, with the seven Olympians. It's like, nobody's going, oh, God, stupid Olympians, put them in the corner. You know, people just kind of are inherently like, go, team. And so that platform will, will, will hopefully, hopefully allow us to, to reveal and uncover these untruths that, that people have been, been

• 2:13:53Speaker 01

  told their whole lives, from animal agriculture, all the way to all the different diseases that, the seven top diseases that we're dying from in this country. People are just consuming incredible amounts of dairy while they're fighting prostate cancer. You know, incredible amounts of dairy while they're fighting ovarian cancer. It's insane. And so it's, it's, it's, it's the only thing. Besides my relationship with my husband that I care the most about.

• 2:14:24Speaker 01

  It's everything to me.

• 2:14:26Rich Roll?

  Well, it's beautiful and it's exciting times. You know, I think the awareness is getting out there and there is a, there is a, you know, a growing interest and receptivity.

• 2:14:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:14:36Rich Roll?

  To these ideas that I, that I think is only going to build. And, and your role in all of that is, is prominent and growing. So it's awesome to see. One final thing, if you'll indulge me.

• 2:14:50Rich Roll?

  Do you have to go?

• 2:14:53Speaker 01

  I gotta beat the traffic.

• 2:14:54Rich Roll?

  So I think it would be great to kind of end this with leaving a few thoughts for somebody who's listening to this, who perhaps is suffering from an eating disorder or is stuck in the cycle of, of, you know, a, a pattern that they can't see themselves through. So if there, is there a lifeline that you could throw to that person?

• 2:15:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:17Rich Roll?

  Or, or something they could think about or do? That could perhaps be helpful.

• 2:15:24Speaker 01

  Well, there's a couple of things. I think that when you're deep into the disorder, you definitely don't feel like there's ever any way out. And that's especially true with eating disorders because you have to continue to eat, right? You can't just be like, okay, no more, no more drugs, no more alcohol. I felt so isolated by that. And just letting them know that there truly is a way out, once an anorexic, not always an anorexic. It's, it's, it's not the same as it, as it, as it might be, or how many alcoholics look at it and, and for their own recovery.

• 2:16:05Speaker 01

  There, there is freedom on the other side. There really is a pathway, whichever pathway you choose to have freedom from it. So many eating disorder sufferers that I met, that's the one thing that they just don't really believe is true. And it is, there really is freedom. And I think the other thing is that.

• 2:16:31Speaker 01

  Most, most eating disorder sufferers are fairly type A and they, most that I've met, want to contribute to society. I mean, they, they have a kind of a yearning, kind of a desire. If you let this disease run its course and you die from it, you're not going to be able to do anything. You're not going to be able to have an impact on the world and you're not going to be able to do anything for the greater good. And you're definitely not going to be able to do anything healthfully for the greater good while you're sick. So allow that to be your bright guiding and shining light out of this. That was a big

• 2:17:14Speaker 01

  part of it for, for me is, is recognizing that I can't do anything if I'm dead, you know? So let that come to the top of your heart and let that guide you. There is, there is a way out and you, you can't do anything for the world if you're dead.

• 2:17:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, beautifully put. And, and raise your hand and make yourself known and find help. Find that person that you feel comfortable talking to, that you can confide in. And I think that's an important first step in breaking that cycle of denial and that, that prison that keeps you stuck.

• 2:17:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:17:50Rich Roll?

  So, thank you for that.

• 2:17:52Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:17:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, this was awesome. Dotzy, you're an inspiration. I really appreciate your time and your testimony.

• 2:18:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, you as well.

• 2:18:01Rich Roll?

  Today. It's powerful and I wish you well and keep doing what you're doing.

• 2:18:06Speaker 01

  I feel like we're saying goodbye forever or something.

• 2:18:08Rich Roll?

  Will you come back and talk to me some more tomorrow?

• 2:18:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:18:12Rich Roll?

  Cool. So if you want to connect with Dotzy, at Dotzy Bausch on Twitter and Instagram, compassionchamps.com.

• 2:18:21Speaker 01

  Vegan Olympian on Instagram.

• 2:18:22Rich Roll?

  Vegan Olympian. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Well, it was funny. I type your name in, but then it automatically pulls up Vegan Olympian. So.

• 2:18:28Speaker 01

  Cool. It's weird. No one had that, right?

• 2:18:30Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that is weird, right?

• 2:18:31Speaker 01

  I only got it like six months ago.

• 2:18:32Rich Roll?

  That's kind of awesome that you have that.

• 2:18:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:18:35Rich Roll?

  And it's compassionchamps.com?

• 2:18:37Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, compassion-champs.org.

• 2:18:40Rich Roll?

  Dot org. And you have your own personal website too, right?

• 2:18:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:44Rich Roll?

  Dotzybaush.com.

• 2:18:45Speaker 01

  USA.

• 2:18:46Rich Roll?

  Okay. Dotzybaushusa.com?

• 2:18:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:18:50Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 2:18:51Speaker 01

  You got it.

• 2:18:52Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, yeah, please do come back and talk to me again. This was great.

• 2:18:54Speaker 01

  Thanks. We appreciate it.

• 2:18:56Rich Roll?

  Peace. Plants.

• 2:19:01Rich Roll?

  All right, that's it. We did it, and it was good. I'm good. Are you good? I hope you're good. Let Dotzy know how this one landed by hitting her up on social, @dotzybaush on Twitter and @veganolympian on Instagram. And please check out the show notes for this episode on the episode page at richroll.com for tons of links and resources to take your edification beyond the earbuds. Once again, the brand new and revised edition of Finding Ultra is now available in the US and Canada. Check it out on Amazon. About 35% brand new material. Super proud of it. Very excited. Would mean so much to me if you would trust me and pick up a copy. And Plant Power Way Italia, our brand new cookbook, is now available for preorder. You can reserve your copy now. And if you're a female, if

• 2:19:46Rich Roll?

  you're a woman, make sure to check out the latest post on my blog for a chance to win a free spot on our upcoming retreat in Tuscany, May 19 through 26, 2018. It's a $5,000 value. The contest is only open through April 24th, so jump on it now. I'm very excited about that. And if you would like to support my work, please subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts or on whatever platform you enjoy this content. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, youtube.com/richroll. This episode is up on YouTube as well. All of that really helps with the show's visibility, extending reach and audience, all that good stuff, which makes it easier for me in the future to book the very best people for future shows. You

• 2:20:25Rich Roll?

  can also support the work that I do on Patreon at richroll.com/donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today, Jason Camiolo, as always, for his wizardry in audio engineering, production, the interstitial music, help with the show notes. You're stepping up, Jason. Good job. I appreciate you. Michael Gibson on videography and theme music, as always, by Analema. Thanks for the love, you guys. Talk to you soon. Be back here in a couple days. Until then, be well, reach high. And treat yourself well. Be nice to yourself. Be nice to other people. What can I tell you? All right. Peace, plants. Namaste.