Pod Insights The Rich Roll Podcast Ethan Suplee On Shedding 300 Pounds, Ditching Drugs & What It Really Takes To Transform Your Life About this episode Ethan Suplee is a renowned actor known for My Name is Earl, American History X, and The Wolf of Wall Street.
This conversation explores the intersection of trauma, food addiction, and the false narratives of transformation. We discuss Ethan's journey through multiple relapses, the psychology behind sustainable change, and why "diet and exercise" is both completely true and profoundly dishonest.
Along the way, Ethan dismantles the mythology of quick fixes and linear progress.
Ethan is called to serve. This exchange is incredibly nourishing. Enjoy!
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Transcript 22,341 words · 2 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 Speaker 00 My bottom was being diagnosed with congestive heart failure. I'm going to bed every night, damn near 500 pounds. Pretty sure I'm gonna die. I'm doing an obscene amount of drugs and drugs are not getting me really high. And what would happen is I'd get sick for a couple of days and the swelling would go down. And then I'd use and the drugs would have their potency back, but a couple of days in, the swelling would return. The swelling's moving up my legs, then it gets to my groin and it's really uncomfortable. So then I'm just using and miserable and swollen and in pain. And the doctor says, "You have congestive heart failure. You are going to die."
0:45 Speaker 00 And she's crying and this is like my family doctor from when I'm a little kid.
0:49 Rich Roll? How old are you now?
0:50 Speaker 00 20.
0:51 Rich Roll? 20.
0:52 Speaker 00 Yeah. And she's like, "No, I'm so sorry. You're gonna die. Like if you get clean or not, this is gonna kill you." And I thought like, "It'd be nice to leave my parents a clean corpse." That was my bottom.
1:13 Rich Roll? Hey everybody, welcome to the podcast. So today, we are gonna go old school with another round of what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. And this is going to be set in the context of a deeply honest and soulful conversation with a man named Ethan Suplee, who I think is about to rock you with his incredible story of personal transformation, which is truly one of the most extraordinary I've ever heard. You probably know Ethan as an actor. He's a guy who achieved fame at a pretty young age and has gone on to work with some of the greatest to ever do it.
1:56 Rich Roll? Directors like Scorsese, Aronofsky, Anthony Mingella, and Tony Scott. And actors like Denzel Washington, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Edward Norton. Or you might know Ethan from television, from shows like Boy Meets World or My Name Is Earl. Now, this is all interesting enough, but it's not really the story here. The real story is the story behind the story. The story about a guy who once tipped the scales at 550 pounds, was hopelessly addicted to pills, heroin, you name it, and on a very fast track to a very tragic end to his very young life. But Ethan pulled himself out of the spiral.
2:41 Rich Roll? He took responsibility for his life. He got sober. He lost hundreds of pounds. He got extremely fit and essentially rebuilt himself wholesale from the ground up into the man he is today. A healthy, thoughtful, and sober dad of four. And an inspiration to so many people all around the world. Inspiration that he shares on his podcast, American Glutton, and in the incredibly honest and quite poetic words that he shares on his Substack and on Instagram. And I can't wait for you to hear it. But first, we've got to take care of a little business.
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4:29 Rich Roll? So what happened? And how did Ethan do it? Well, I think the answers might surprise you, but it's all in this one conversation I've been wanting to make happen for a very long time. And Ethan really sensed it. So let's get into it, people. This is me and Ethan Suppley. All of the work that you've done in film and television is worthy of, you know, like hours and hours of conversation, because I know you're like loaded to bear with like all kinds of amazing stories. Hopefully, you know, you'll tell a few. But the story behind the story is this remarkable journey that you've been on to, you know, really just reclaim yourself, honestly.
5:12 Rich Roll? Like, there's an extraordinary weight loss story in there. There is a sobriety story in there. And these things are all kind of intertwined. So, you know, I don't even know where to jump in, other than to kind of start at the beginning and to do a little bit of what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. I mean, you grew up in Hollywood, basically, right?
5:32 Speaker 00 Yeah. Yeah. I was born in New York, but my parents, and my parents were theater actors. When my mom got pregnant with me, she decided, or they decided together, that it was not a great lifestyle for kids, which I didn't take that lesson from them. And also, I think I'd gotten my act together by the time I had kids, so that it was a good lifestyle for my kids. But they moved out here, oddly for my dad to become a contractor. And my mom became like a stay-at-home mom who ran the accounting for his business.
6:13 Rich Roll? And so what kind of kid were you? Like, just riding your bikes around the streets of LA?
6:19 Speaker 00 Yeah.
6:20 Rich Roll? Like a mob?
6:21 Speaker 00 Yeah.
6:22 Rich Roll? Getting into trouble?
6:23 Speaker 00 Yeah.
6:24 Rich Roll? From day one?
6:25 Speaker 00 From day one. Yeah, no, yeah, it was...
6:27 Rich Roll? What high schools did you go to?
6:29 Speaker 00 I went to a high school, a high school called the Delphian Academy in La Cañada. But I stopped going to school at 14 and started to like really pursue trouble at that point.
6:42 Rich Roll? Uh huh.
6:42 Speaker 00 Yeah.
6:43 Rich Roll? With a little side hustle called acting?
6:46 Speaker 00 No, I didn't. I didn't start acting until I was 17.
6:50 Rich Roll? Hmm.
6:51 Speaker 00 So I, there was an arrest in there in the late eighties. Which still frequently comes up when I, you know, go to renew my global entry or my TSA pre-check. They are very, they very much want me to announce that yes, I have a felony weapons possession arrest on my record from I think 1988.
7:15 Rich Roll? And you were how old then?
7:17 Speaker 00 Uh, 12 maybe.
7:19 Rich Roll? Whoa.
7:19 Speaker 00 And I, and, and, and it sounds really scary, but I was a kid playing with nunchucks in a park.
7:24 Rich Roll? Oh, so you didn't, you didn't have a handgun or something like that?
7:27 Speaker 00 No, strangely, I was told at the time, had I had a handgun, it would have been a misdemeanor.
7:33 Rich Roll? How does that work out?
7:34 Speaker 00 Handguns are misdemeanors. Nunchucks were felony at the time.
7:37 Rich Roll? So what was the animated energy at that point? I mean, you were, were you just rebellious or what were you rebelling against? Or was it chaos in the home or, you know, what was happening?
7:47 Speaker 00 The chaos, I think, look, I don't know. It's, this is like a chicken and the egg kind of a question for me. And I've tried to do some real soul searching. I was put on my first diet at five years old. And when I look at pictures of me at five, I do not see a kid that needs to be put on a diet. There's plenty of kids today that I look at and, and I go in the most nonjudgmental way possible. Like that kid's eating is out of control. That was not like when I look, but for whatever reason, my parents saw something in me and thought like, we gotta nip this in the bud before it gets out of control.
8:31 Speaker 00 And that, so I don't know if I was experiencing this turmoil prior to that or that was the catalyst, but kind of from that moment on, I learned to do.
8:47 Speaker 00 The things that I wanted to do in secret. And I started to cheat and lie to eat in the way I wanted to eat because I was not interested in a diet at five years old. There were, there were times in my adolescence where I was interested in a diet and losing weight, but I, I didn't stick to them for a long time.
9:09 Rich Roll? So the message coming down on you, although well intentioned, you know, was basically there's something broken in you and you need to follow our direction because you're, maybe you're not bad or a bad person, but you're flawed in some way and you need to be fixed. And in order to be fixed, you, you need to follow our direction. And you were having none of that.
9:32 Speaker 00 I was having none of that, but, but it got way more complicated too, because I think initially it was just restrictive of like, here's the portion of food you're going to eat. Nothing was really changed with the food.
9:46 Rich Roll? Mm hmm.
9:46 Speaker 00 And then when that didn't work, we lived in California, in Los Angeles. And so every fad diet that hit Los Angeles, I was then put on. So there was, um, you know, early Atkins diet, early blood type diet, early candida diet, seeing nutritionists, all of these things. There was one really crazy incident where my mom took me to somebody's guest house in Glendale and this woman, you know, took a Polaroid of me, smeared some water on it and based on the rainbow coloring on the back of the Polaroid, charged some water and told us if I just drink a cap full of this water before every meal, I swear
10:29 Speaker 00 to God, I would lose weight. And, and it was like, you don't have to restrict his food if he drinks this water. And then there were all kinds of stipulations about like, nothing can touch the water. The water goes into a cap and then into your mouth, but like, you can't put your lips on the water. It was, it was like
10:45 Rich Roll? Oh my God.
10:45 Speaker 00 Real insanity, you know, to the point where like even today, when I hear about some of the diets, I get like, PTSD, shell shock, kind of like memories of my childhood of like, yeah, these crazy diets have been around forever. And I was put on them and I rebelled and part of that rebellion. And then there was, you know, my discovery of alcohol and drugs. My parents were, for all intents and purposes, sober. There was never alcohol in our house, but they weren't sober in the way that I'm sober. It just wasn't the thing. And so when I started to have trouble, I had nobody to communicate with that about.
11:26 Speaker 00 I had so much shame about that and so many years of shame about my body and food. That it just got very out of hand.
11:35 Rich Roll? How old were you when drugs and alcohol entered the picture?
11:38 Speaker 00 14.
11:38 Rich Roll? 14. Was it drinking first?
11:41 Speaker 00 Drinking, yeah.
11:42 Rich Roll? Yeah. And that was just another thing that you, from the get go, would just hide?
11:47 Speaker 00 Yeah.
11:48 Rich Roll? Yeah.
11:48 Speaker 00 Yeah.
11:49 Rich Roll? Did you have a sense early on that it was problematic for you compared to like your friends?
11:55 Speaker 00 Yes, I, there were, I, I went through bouts of telling my friends I was going straight edge. Just so that I could drink in secret because every time I drank openly, I got blackout drunk and caused some kind of scene. So, yeah, I, not in a way where I, I knew like, oh, I have a real problem with this. But it was the concern angle, like I didn't like the attention from others about concern on me, which I experienced with my weight many times. And then with drugs and alcohol too.
12:32 Rich Roll? And what was the experience of being drunk for the first time or those early years? Like, did it feel like it alleviated a lot of that pain and angst of, you know, that was making you rebellious? Or, you know, what was the safe that got unlocked with that key?
12:49 Speaker 00 Yeah, it separated me from my shame, totally. There was a, a feeling of dread that just went away when I drank. And then, you know, the problem with drinking for me was that the, the end result of drinking on any given night was blackout drunk and waking up with even more severe shame when I found opiates.
13:14 Speaker 00 That kind of handled that. I could get that separation and then just keep it going and ride that forever, basically.
13:22 Rich Roll? How did you get your hands on opioids for the first time? Like when you're in like high school or whatever?
13:27 Speaker 00 No, it was like, I mean, that I think the first opioids I had was 96. I had my gallbladder removed and I was in the hospital with a morphine drip and a pump that you hit every seven minutes. And I just was like playing a video game, just constantly pushing that button. You know, it didn't help. I remember having this thought in the hospital, like this isn't taking the pain away, but I don't care about the pain when I hit that button. And it wasn't just physical pain from the operation. It was just the burden of being alive was gone every time I hit it.
14:10 Rich Roll? How big were you in high school?
14:14 Speaker 00 Well, I left high school at 14. So I was probably 350. Yeah, I was big.
14:22 Rich Roll? Yeah. So pretty big. And then how does the acting enter the picture?
14:27 Speaker 00 Acting was this amazing thing. Two, two things occurred in, in my school were a couple of actors, Soleil Moon Frye and Giovanni Ribisi. And I noticed with them that the other kids weren't looking at Soleil Moon Frye and Giovanni Ribisi necessarily. They were looking at the characters these people played on TV. And that kind of looked to me like a magical shield. It looked like a force field from like peering at the person to peering at some facade that's built up in some other area of their life. So that was interesting.
15:11 Rich Roll? And you had conscious awareness of that? Or is that something you pieced together looking back on it?
15:15 Speaker 00 That's something I pieced together looking back on it. But I definitely saw that there was a distraction with these kids that I wanted because of, because it was a distraction. And then another thing that happened was I did a play in school at 13 or 14, and I played Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist.
15:41 Speaker 00 And there was a moment where being fat was not shameful because the character was meant to be fat. And so there was this kind of amazing thing of like, if I'm playing somebody who's supposed to be this way, then I'm not wrong for being this way. So there were kind of two things that were occurring that got me really interested in acting.
16:05 Rich Roll? Right, it's like a solution to that sense of feeling like there's something wrong with you.
16:09 Speaker 00 Yeah.
16:10 Rich Roll? Yeah. I heard you talk about, you know, hiding and how, once you were sort of noticed for your screen appearances, when people would look at you, you could say, they're looking at me because they recognize me from something they saw me in, they're not looking at me because I'm fat.
16:26 Speaker 00 Yeah.
16:26 Rich Roll? And it didn't matter what was true or wasn't, you could like make that argument to yourself.
16:30 Speaker 00 Yeah.
16:31 Rich Roll? But there's also that thing that's very common with actors, which is perhaps some discomfort with who they are and acting allows you to hide, you know, in all of these characters.
16:44 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's fucking great, dude.
16:46 Rich Roll? You can just put the mask on and you don't really have to confront yourself.
16:49 Speaker 00 Yeah, you get to be somebody else.
16:51 Rich Roll? Yeah.
16:51 Speaker 00 Yeah. It's like an out of body experience while it's happening.
16:55 Rich Roll? It's almost like a, like a defense mechanism or like a coping strategy.
16:59 Speaker 00 Yeah.
17:00 Rich Roll? But in your case, like you found success pretty quickly, you know?
17:04 Speaker 00 Yeah, immediately.
17:04 Rich Roll? You were like a kid.
17:05 Speaker 00 My first audition was Boy Meets World.
17:06 Rich Roll? First audition?
17:07 Speaker 00 Yeah.
17:08 Rich Roll? Wow. And then that's like network television, right? So this is like real money, all of a sudden, like your life changes like pretty fast, I would imagine.
17:17 Speaker 00 Yeah, I had a strained relationship with my father. You know, we, we tried to dance around all these diets with my mom, doing a version of like, let's figure out how it's the food's fault. You know, like there was a time period where I couldn't eat anything red, it was red food's fault. And then there was another time where it was anything white, I couldn't eat anything white, and then it was Candida's fault. Just these diets that were very much like, the problem is exterior to us entirely.
17:52 Speaker 00 But when I was 10, my dad said, like, if you get to be 200 pounds, I am going to control what you eat. And at that point, our relationship became very strained because I did hit 200 pounds at 10. And it didn't last very long where he was trying to actively control what I ate because I would just go when he wasn't around and eat stuff. You know, there were no like padlocks on our refrigerator. But I, when I started doing Boy Meets World, I took my dad on a trip. The first money I ever spent was taking my dad on a trip to an island. And I was still terrifically uncomfortable being in public. So we would go and find like secluded beaches to hang out. We were staying at a big resort,
18:34 Speaker 00 but I didn't want to be around people. So we would drive and find like some empty desolate beach and go snorkeling there. And on the last day, he wanted to stay by the pool. And so I said, okay. And we're sitting there and I saw some, this is very early on in my career, I saw some kids looking at me. And, and of course, in that moment, we're in a foreign country and I'm feeling very much like these kids are looking at me because I'm fat. And I was horrified that they were gonna make a scene in front of my dad. And over the course of about a half an hour, they started playing closer and closer to where we were sitting. And at a certain point, one of them got up the nerve to like walk
19:19 Speaker 00 up to us. And I'm, my heart rate is probably at 200 at this point because I'm like terrified that the whole trip is going to be tainted with this thing that my dad, like I feel shame about, but I'm also aware that my father feels shame about whatever's happened to his son. I was at least 400 pounds at this point. And the kid says to me, are you Frankie from Boy Meets World? And it, it was the Maybe the first time I felt pride in front of my father, you know, because they were in fact, looking at me because I was on TV.
19:55 Rich Roll? Right. And you're not broken. Like you're actually.
19:58 Speaker 00 They're looking at me because they're, they like me.
20:01 Rich Roll? Like this switch gets flipped and you're like, it's all good.
20:05 Speaker 00 Yeah.
20:06 Rich Roll? Right? Like, maybe I don't have to worry about this. I can just inhabit this character and bank the checks. And set aside all this weight stuff, all the baggage of that. And then, you know, booze it up. Like whatever confused emotions come up, you know, those are easily compartmentalized.
20:26 Speaker 00 That's right. Shove them off.
20:27 Rich Roll? And so off you go.
20:28 Speaker 00 Yeah.
20:29 Rich Roll? And then you end up in mall rats when you're still really young as well, right? But, but now you have to be on a movie set. You gotta control things a little bit, don't you? Like, does it start to spill into the work?
20:40 Speaker 00 You know, I, I had this rationalization for many years that I never missed a day of work. And that was kind of something that kept me going, you know, this, this idea like.
20:52 Rich Roll? As long as you make it to the gym, as long as you show up on time for work, all of these things.
20:56 Speaker 00 You don't have to think about them.
20:57 Rich Roll? It's two things. Tell me if this resonates with you. Like, one, it's a great crutch to, you know, convince you that there's nothing wrong and you can keep going and everything's fine. And it also fuels a bit of narcissism that you can do both, right? Like, oh, I can, I can do all this partying and I can do like, all these normal people go to bed early. But, you know, I'm possessed with great powers where I can do it all. You know what I mean?
21:23 Speaker 00 I was thinking about this recently because, because like, there were sleepless nights. There was in the late nineties, like a bizarre moment where there was a heroin drought in Los Angeles. And so I'm like, making it to work, but dope sick. And 500 pounds and just a mess, but still going like, well, this drought's not going to last forever. I gotta get through the day. And, and I'm, I'm, I wasn't late. I didn't miss a day of work, you know, like that rationalization is still going. And recently, you know, I've been dieting for basically the last 23 years and.
22:01 Speaker 00 To some degree or another, different diets and different schemes and all of that and different workouts. But like, I don't really eat ice cream and I miss ice cream. And then they come out with this stuff Halo Top, which is like diet ice cream.
22:13 Rich Roll? Yeah.
22:14 Speaker 00 And I eat some of it and it's magical, but the stuff gives me a hangover. And I'm like waking up going like, I used to not sleep and show up to work dope sick. And it feels like maybe that was less horrible than this Halo Top hangover.
22:32 Rich Roll? You become like a, yeah, you've become a little snowflake.
22:34 Speaker 00 Yeah.
22:35 Rich Roll? You know?
22:35 Speaker 00 Yeah. What's happened to me?
22:36 Rich Roll? Sensitive system.
22:37 Speaker 00 Weakened myself. Yeah.
22:39 Rich Roll? Remember when I could do that? Yeah.
22:43 Rich Roll? It should be said, I haven't said it yet out loud, but like your story is remarkable. Like this arc of transformation is, is, is really an astonishing thing. And it's a credit to you for everything that you put into, you know, making you into the man that you are today. It's incredibly inspiring. I know it's inspiring to, you know, millions of people across the world. But I think, you know, within that, one of the things I like about it is that, or what I think is so powerful about your story is that it's not as if you drew a line in the sand and like walked over it and then just, you know, you were a different person
23:25 Rich Roll? and you never went back. Like it's littered with like relapses and failed diets. And for every step forward, there's two steps back. Like it's a very human story in that it's littered with like all this toil and experimentation. Like it's not just a upward trajectory.
23:45 Speaker 00 Not even close.
23:46 Rich Roll? Like you, you suffered and, you know, experimented and done everything, you know, to finally figure out like what works for you.
23:54 Speaker 00 Yeah. There's such a.
23:57 Speaker 00 A draw to the sales pitch of just step over that line in the sand. I stepped over that line in the sand 50 times. That just got fucking knocked back on the other side of it pretty rapidly each time. You know, that just do X is great marketing for somebody who's desperate, you know?
24:20 Rich Roll? Yeah. And in the narrative that ends up in the press around you, like I did, you know, like just in my normal prep for pie, I was like, oh, what's, what's, what are some of the recent news stories? And it's like yesterday or today, there's like a whatever Daily Mail, like one of those things like incredible before and after and, you know, and it's true, but what's lost in that is like.
24:43 Speaker 00 20 years of work in there.
24:44 Rich Roll? You know what I mean?
24:45 Speaker 00 Yeah.
24:47 Rich Roll? But I think it's important to highlight that because for somebody who's watching this or listening to this, who's, you know, looking for some guidance here, it's, it's a hopeful message. Like you don't have to do it perfectly. It doesn't happen overnight. It took you 20 years. It's still like an ongoing battle.
25:05 Rich Roll? And this shit is hard and it doesn't, you know, it's not a math equation.
25:10 Speaker 00 It's not. And, and it's, you know, like, first of all, I share all this very selfishly because part of, part of what I came to find was like, I would lose weight and get to a point where I would go like, oh, this, I think this is a healthy weight. I haven't experienced the Nirvana or the enlightenment that I was thinking I would experience, but I think I'm at a healthy weight. Now I'm going to just forget that and pretend that I wasn't 500 pounds. I'm not going to talk about it. I don't want to think about it because that's still shameful and painful. And that was not successful either. That that always collapsed too.
25:54 Speaker 00 And so I found that like, the more I talk about it, the more I keep it in the forefront of my mind, the more I'm able to win every day. So it is slightly selfish that I am communicating about it because, you know, sometimes my wife is like, the drug piece is from further in the past than weight, where I don't know that today, I mean, I'm gonna touch wood, but like, today is not gonna be super hard for me to get through the day without like, needing to use. But I'll eat today, and every time I eat, there's gonna be a little bit of a, like a conversation in my head around the food.
26:36 Speaker 00 And my wife is sometimes like, why do you even bring up the drug stuff anymore? But there's such corollaries to them that for me, I can't take them apart. They are very, very similar in what it was for me to get through that.
26:52 Rich Roll? Yeah, I mean, there's so much in what you just said. I mean, obviously, the food thing and the drugs and alcohol, of course, they're intertwined. Like, they're both ways to numb your feelings and escape and, you know, run away from whatever emotional pain you're feeling. And they work in, they're very effective at that, right? I suspect you would say food is your drug of choice.
27:16 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, well, I think if, if like, if I'd seen you 20 years ago, or it might even be more than that, 25 years ago at this point, I don't know that I would have said that when I had opiates. But I, I would always end the night with food, you know, even if that screwed up the high from the opiates. So, so maybe today, food is my drug of choice because I still have to eat. I can't be abstinent from food.
27:44 Rich Roll? Yeah, which makes it really tricky. I mean, sobriety, abstinence, it's very binary, you know? And your relationship with food can't be binary. And as much as it's important to create guardrails and rules around it, you have to have some level of flexibility if you're gonna sustain any kind of healthy habit.
28:03 Speaker 00 Yeah.
28:04 Rich Roll? Which gets into all this weird gray zone.
28:06 Speaker 00 Yeah, I, I found that when I was trying to be the most pious version of myself with food. That was not sustainable. And when I was just, you know, letting my hair down and doing whatever I wanted, that was very clearly not sustainable. So like, the search for radical moderation is very
28:26 Rich Roll? Both of which trigger shame, right? If you have this deeply held shame about like how you appear or how you feel, and you set yourself up for failure with an overly restrictive diet, you're going to be ashamed of yourself when you fall short.
28:40 Speaker 00 Yeah.
28:40 Rich Roll? But if you let yourself loose, you're going to feel like shit too. And then you have to find a way to be somewhere in the middle and, and, you know, eat things, maybe, you know, that other diet wouldn't allow you to without feeling that, without that like shame impulse coming up.
28:56 Speaker 00 Yeah. It's a very, it's a very tricky thing to navigate, especially when, you know, what's the big one today? People are trying to sell you on, if you just eat meat and that's it, then you don't have to think about anything else, you know? It's hard to get the message across that like, it might be, and, and again, I'm not speaking for anybody else, but for me, I found, because I tried those structures, that that wasn't it. That it was more, it was internal, it was behavioral, it was seeking emotional comfort through the thing. It wasn't just the fact that, you know, I was eating lectins or carbohydrates or seed oils or whatever is taboo
29:39 Speaker 00 and whatever will be taboo next week, red dye number 40. It wasn't that, that was causing me to overeat. I can overeat steak. I can overeat, you know, vegetables if that was, you know, I'll go find Veggie Grill if I'm being vegan. Like, this is not, it is not the food that is causing this condition in me.
30:00 Rich Roll? And what's causing it is in part physiological, like these, like, you know, biological cravings, but there's also, you know, the childhood trauma piece, like everything that like led you to that point. Like, if you don't untie that knot, like, it's going to continue to activate and agitate you. So,
30:17 Speaker 00 Yeah.
30:17 Rich Roll? in the drugs and alcohol context, that's the difference between abstinence and sobriety, right? So if you're not willing to like, look Into that and start to heal those parts of yourself. You're just, you're, you're like a dry drunk. You're just like clenching on for dear life. And at some point it's all gonna shatter and fall on top of you.
30:35 Speaker 00 And life is fun. You get no joy out of it. Like, you know, there should be joy.
30:40 Rich Roll? But on the selfish piece of like sharing your story and talking about it a lot.
30:48 Rich Roll? I mean, there's a service aspect to that. Like in sharing it, you're helping other people. And you know, the analog in AA is like, you know, people are always like, why do you go to these meetings and like talk about stuff you did 30 years ago or whatever? Cause you, it helps you stay vigilant. And it's also helpful for other people to hear that. Like they need to be able to find a way to connect with your story. Find a piece of themselves in it. Um, so that they can connect with what you did to kind of claw out of it and build this new life.
31:16 Speaker 00 Yeah. I, I think being of service is really important, but it does always come back to like, if I wasn't getting my sobriety or keeping diet in the forefront of my mind, would I still do it?
31:31 Rich Roll? I don't know. But that is the vigilance piece.
31:41 Rich Roll? I watched Unstoppable the other night.
31:43 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah?
31:43 Rich Roll? That movie is badass.
31:45 Speaker 00 Yeah, that was an awesome movie.
31:46 Rich Roll? And I revisited it, A, because I knew you were coming on, but also because, uh, I know that Quentin Tarantino had listed it among like his top movies of 2000, of the 2010s. Did you know this?
31:58 Speaker 00 I didn't know that.
31:59 Rich Roll? He's like, this movie rules.
32:03 Rich Roll? And it does, it just like propels itself forward. It's not any longer than it needs to be. And it's like, it hits all the beats and it's just an example of why Tony Scott is an absolute master.
32:13 Speaker 00 Yeah.
32:14 Rich Roll? Of the form.
32:15 Speaker 00 Incredible. Yeah. With the first, um, scene in that movie that we did, me and TJ Miller.
32:23 Speaker 00 You know, got golf carted out to meet Tony and we're standing next to a train and it's just us and Tony and he's talking to us about the scene and we run it with him a couple of times and then he kind of goes away and we're standing there like, well, should we go to our chairs? What should we do? And, and, and there's nobody in sight. And we just hear from a really far distance action and we're like looking at each other like, are they talking to us? Like, I, we don't know what's going on here. And then we hear just this insane screaming and profanity and like, what the fuck? Come on, I said action. Can you not hear me? And he can hear us talking and we're like, is he talking
33:06 Speaker 00 to us? Yes, I'm fucking talking to you. And he had like cameras with NASA lenses on them in every like window of faraway buildings and the entire thing was being shot from a distance that we just couldn't see anybody. It was, it was, I mean, one of the wildest experiences of my acting career.
33:27 Rich Roll? You guys are just out there freewheeling. Yeah. Like so he could shoot the entire scene without coverage, right? And you two were just absolute knuckleheads, you know?
33:35 Speaker 00 Totally. Yeah.
33:36 Rich Roll? And then you're cheering at the end and I'm like, yeah, but these guys fucked up the whole thing, you know?
33:40 Speaker 00 The whole thing. Yeah. People got mad at me and I like took a little flak. They were like, you, why'd you let that train get away? And I was like, there's no movie. If the train doesn't get away, then nothing happens. We had to do it.
33:52 Rich Roll? You're the inciting incident of the entire prospect, you know, the entire enterprise of the movie. You've worked with like a lot of the greats, man, you know, Scorsese, Wolf of Wall Street, Darren Aronofsky, The Fountain. I think that movie is a masterpiece.
34:07 Speaker 00 Yeah.
34:08 Rich Roll? Tony K, American History X. Like, you know, you have, you know, sidled up with, you know, some of the best to ever do it.
34:14 Speaker 00 Yeah. I have, I have a career that I have no, I mean, I have one regret, but I have no, like, I look back on it and I feel so like honored to have been in some of those movies.
34:26 Rich Roll? Do most people know you from My Name Is Earl?
34:29 Speaker 00 Yeah.
34:29 Rich Roll? That's, that's what you get stopped for the most.
34:31 Speaker 00 That and oddly Boy Meets World, which was my first job, 1993 or 1994, but the show never went off the air. It was on, in syndication on the Disney Channel.
34:47 Speaker 00 For the last 30 years.
34:49 Rich Roll? How old were you when you first got on that show?
34:51 Speaker 00 Seventeen.
34:52 Rich Roll? Wow.
34:53 Speaker 00 Yeah.
34:54 Rich Roll? My Name is Earl is having a bit of a resurgence, though.
34:58 Speaker 00 I've heard that on TikTok.
34:59 Rich Roll? My kids, when I told my kids you were coming in, they're like, oh, we love My Name is Earl. And my 30 year old was saying, oh, yeah, like Gen Z is all over this. It's like the new suits. You know?
35:11 Speaker 00 It's crazy.
35:11 Rich Roll? It's weird how like these old shows just percolate up and like find a new audience. I mean, that is, I guess that's a gift of like everything being digital.
35:19 Speaker 00 Yeah.
35:19 Rich Roll? And available, but that's gotta be a cool feeling, like a whole new generation of people finding your stuff.
35:25 Speaker 00 It's, it's always odd when it comes back, like my little kids who are now 18 and 20. When we shot My Name is Earl, they were, one was not born and the other was like two. And so they never experienced it while it was happening. But when I came home one day, when they were teenagers, very young teenagers, and they were just watching the show like, Dad, why didn't you tell us about this show's great? And that was weird. And it's very weird now when somebody who's very clearly too young to have watched Boy Meets World 30 years ago, you know, somebody who's like in their teens says what a fan of Boy Meets World they are. Or even My Name is Earl, you know, a teenager today.
36:08 Rich Roll? Yeah.
36:08 Speaker 00 Wasn't alive when it was being shot. It is, it is a bizarre thing because that's 20 years in the past for me.
36:17 Rich Roll? So let's go back to the timeline.
36:19 Speaker 00 Okay.
36:20 Rich Roll? Yeah. You do, you get through Mallrats.
36:22 Speaker 00 Yeah, Mallrats.
36:23 Rich Roll? I don't know what comes after that. I mean, you're in a bunch of stuff.
36:26 Speaker 00 Well, Mallrats.
36:27 Rich Roll? I mean, when does it start like really getting out of control?
36:29 Speaker 00 Mallrats is a funny one because we go to do Mallrats and Kevin Smith had had huge success. You know, he made this movie Clerks.
36:40 Rich Roll? Clerks.
36:41 Speaker 00 For no money that then made, you know, millions and millions of dollars. And then he had millions of dollars to make Mallrats.
36:47 Rich Roll? This is his first opportunity to make like kind of a, I don't know, was it a studio movie? It was a studio movie? Yeah.
36:54 Speaker 00 And we were like, oh, well, if he made millions, we're going to make billions. Mallrats is going to be the biggest movie ever. And it was a total failure. And so then it was like Mallrats came out, nothing happened, back to the grindstone like.
37:09 Speaker 00 Drugs didn't pick up with me for probably a year from more, that's like real daily drug use. I was a dabbler before that.
37:20 Rich Roll? Uh huh.
37:21 Speaker 00 Yeah. And then I had this operation. I left knowing that whatever I had in the hospital was what I needed at all times.
37:32 Rich Roll? The opioids like lit you up, like that was the thing, right?
37:35 Speaker 00 Yeah. They pressed a button in me that, you know, I was, the last surgery I had, I had to have an argument with the anesthesiologist saying like, you cannot give me opioids when I'm unconscious. And he was like, it won't matter when you're unconscious. And I said, yes, it will.
37:55 Rich Roll? It's activated.
37:56 Speaker 00 Something happens. Yeah, I will wake up and I'll probably wake up no matter what saying, give me drugs. You can't give them to me then either. Which doctors don't really love to hear, you know, they want to keep you calm and sedate. And I understand that. But like for me, I can't have them.
38:15 Rich Roll? Yeah. Was it oxycodone, Vicodin, or what, you know, what was it? Percocet?
38:22 Speaker 00 No, it was, it was Vicodin at first. And then there was a Mexican bakery on Kenmore and Third, which I don't know if I'm outing people right now, but I doubt it's still there. This was the nineties and you could go in and buy Vicodin for a dollar a pill, Mexican Vicodin. And then when that went dry, it was, you know, hitting up doctors for prescriptions and then finding a doctor who was knowingly giving you stuff that you weren't faking or you weren't talking about your sciatic nerve and stuff. You were just going in and like getting prescriptions.
38:58 Rich Roll? Yeah, there's no, no, no pretense.
39:00 Speaker 00 Yeah.
39:00 Rich Roll? Yeah. That's gotta be not easy to do these days, I would imagine.
39:05 Speaker 00 I, I wouldn't know, but, but it wasn't, it wasn't super hard back then.
39:11 Speaker 00 There were like pain clinics, you know, where you could just go and get a ton of pills. I haven't seen an actual pain clinic in a while.
39:20 Rich Roll? I think when the shit came down on the Sackler family and all of that, a lot of those pain clinics went away.
39:26 Speaker 00 Yeah.
39:26 Rich Roll? But I, I don't know, I'm sure there's plenty of like underground shit.
39:30 Speaker 00 Yeah.
39:30 Rich Roll? And then of course, like when you run out of, you know, scripts or you can't, you can't find the, you know, the Mexican bakeries closed or whatever. I mean, that's, that's sort of like the portal, the heroin. Because that's what leads so many people to heroin.
39:43 Speaker 00 Yeah.
39:44 Rich Roll? Is that what happened?
39:45 Speaker 00 That's what led me to heroin.
39:45 Rich Roll? Yeah. And how, how far did that go for you?
39:51 Speaker 00 That was a couple of years of heroin use.
39:53 Rich Roll? When did the movie Blow fall into this?
39:59 Speaker 00 Blow was in the late nineties. Blow was like 98 or 99, maybe 98, I think. And that was still pills.
40:08 Rich Roll? Still pills?
40:09 Speaker 00 Yeah.
40:09 Rich Roll? But there's some weird irony that you're doing that movie while you're just, you know?
40:14 Speaker 00 Yeah.
40:14 Rich Roll? Blowing it out.
40:15 Speaker 00 Yeah. I, I think it was still pills. I, I mean, I have a vague memory of, of, I don't know what the statute of limitations on this stuff is, but like of, of traveling through customs with stuff taped to my ankle. But I think I flew back from Mexico, shooting that movie with a lot of pills.
40:39 Rich Roll? Were they aware of what was going on with you at the time? Like the crew and the director and?
40:44 Speaker 00 Not to the extent that it was going on.
40:47 Rich Roll? You were hiding it?
40:48 Speaker 00 Yeah.
40:48 Rich Roll? Pretty well.
40:49 Speaker 00 Yeah.
40:50 Rich Roll? And what's the weight like at this point?
40:53 Speaker 00 Damn near 500 pounds.
40:56 Speaker 00 On Blow, yeah. By the time I did, uh, like a movie called The First 20 Million Is Always The Hardest and The Butterfly Effect, I was over 500 pounds.
41:09 Rich Roll? Wow. What is the, just the daily experience of, of being that big like?
41:16 Speaker 00 I, I would go to sleep at night thinking I would most likely die because it was hard to breathe laying down.
41:25 Speaker 00 So I would, I would have like a lot of pillows set up so that I was propped up in bed because laying flat on my back, I actually couldn't breathe. There was just too much weight on my chest.
41:38 Speaker 00 And then every morning that I woke up, I would just get high to not think about the fact that I was pretty happy that I survived the night.
41:47 Rich Roll? Hmm. And then just moving around, like just simple stuff, right?
41:52 Speaker 00 Yeah, it was, I mean, you know, if I throw a thirty five pound kettlebell in a backpack right now and go for a walk, it's, it's a nightmare. And I was three hundred pounds heavier than, than I am now, which is, um, it's hard to recall. A, a lot of the things,
42:14 Speaker 00 a lot of the things that affected me in my day to day then, I still have creep up in my life today. Like I have just extreme anxiety about going to the airport because the airport is walking around and the airport is, there's a time deadline. And, and this was, this all was prior to TSA pre-check. So the airport is taking your shoes off. And all of that is a real, real chore for somebody who's five hundred pounds.
42:47 Rich Roll? And drug sniffing dogs.
42:48 Speaker 00 Drug sniffing dogs, all of it, you know, um, yeah, it was, but so like, I still have that anxiety about like, oh my God, am I gonna have to rush at the airport? Is that gonna ruin my day? And when I'm forced to, it doesn't. I've had to run to the gate and then I get to the gate and I sit down in my chair and I'm not, I haven't even really broken a sweat. And I can just recall that my clothes would be soaked through sometimes by the time I got to the gate, if it was a far enough gate, you know? Um, and I, I can remember seeing people in, you know, the little, the little golf carts that we're
43:31 Speaker 00 getting driven to. I wouldn't even take that because I was scared I would break it. And there would be a scene about me breaking a golf cart. You know what I mean? Like
43:39 Rich Roll? Being a, being a public person, it would end up in.
43:42 Speaker 00 Or just, just even the attraction of eyes in that instance. I, I wanted as, as few eyes on me as possible. And so, you know,
43:53 Speaker 00 But none of that, none of that is true today. And yet the anxieties from it linger.
43:59 Rich Roll? Yeah, the, the story is so deeply grooved.
44:03 Speaker 00 Yeah.
44:03 Rich Roll? That it's, yeah, it's, it makes me sad that you still feel that, like, looking at you. It's like, hard to believe that you would, that that would occur to you.
44:12 Speaker 00 It's cognitive dissonance because I can talk myself through it. You know, it's like doing maintenance on a diet. I'm, I'm an advocate for, for maintenance, like actively working to maintain your weight. You get to some place, you lose some weight and then work to maintain it because it is real work. But for me, there was so much effort for so long put into losing weight. That when I'm putting effort into anything with food, I want the, the reward to be the scale moving down. And when the scale doesn't move down, it's this tremendous feeling of defeat. Even though what I'm actively working to do is
44:51 Rich Roll? You've succeeded.
44:51 Speaker 00 Yes, I have won.
44:53 Rich Roll? But you're not getting that dopamine hit.
44:55 Speaker 00 You can't take it, you can't separate them. So I've got to talk myself through it, just like the airport. I've got to go like, if I'm late, I can sprint to the, to the gate. I know this, this is true. It will not ruin my day. I will not break my leg running to the gate because of my weight. I, I will not be sweating so profusely that I'm leaking onto my neighbor in the neighboring chair. I will not have a heart attack because of that. I can take my shoes off while I'm still standing up. This is not the end of the world, you know? But the, the tension in me from having to do those things or, or the apprehension of having to do those things is just as live as it was back then.
45:41 Rich Roll? So there's this fear still inside of you that if you don't, if you're not absolutely vigilant and your foot isn't on the pedal at all times, that you're just going to wake up and you're going to be that 500 pound guy again. Like, is that?
45:55 Speaker 00 No, I wouldn't, I don't think that's true. I, I think that there is the knowledge that it could all unravel. But I also have to give myself some grace.
46:07 Rich Roll? Yeah, that's, I mean, that brought that up because it's like, it's okay, dude.
46:11 Speaker 00 Yeah. No, I'm, I'm trying to paint more of a picture of Things that occur to me that I'm able to like rationalize and go like, I'm feeling this way, but that feeling is not.
46:24 Rich Roll? To be an observer of those feelings rather than to indulge them.
46:27 Speaker 00 Yeah.
46:28 Rich Roll? Yeah. 500 pounds, sweating profusely.
46:32 Speaker 00 It was, it was rough.
46:33 Rich Roll? High from the moment you wake up.
46:35 Speaker 00 Yeah.
46:36 Rich Roll? I mean, this is not a sustainable lifestyle. Like, I'm curious around your relationship with hope and your future at that time.
46:45 Speaker 00 There was no consideration of the future. There was only right now and today. I, in a, in a strange way, that's how I live again.
47:01 Speaker 00 But I'm living in today with a lot of hope for the future. Whereas when I was living in today, back then, I, the, the future was walled off. It was not a distant thought at all.
47:16 Rich Roll? Were you keeping, were you actively keeping people at arm's length? Cause I'm imagining you working on sets and like, you're a sociable guy. Like, I imagine you had friends.
47:25 Speaker 00 Yeah.
47:25 Rich Roll? Right? You had people around you. Was anybody trying to help you? I mean, it had to be obvious.
47:31 Speaker 00 Yeah.
47:31 Rich Roll? You were spiraling out of control.
47:33 Speaker 00 Yes, I had, uh, there were a couple of interventions which were jarring to me because I thought I'd been doing such a good job, you know?
47:44 Rich Roll? Like every good addict believes.
47:45 Speaker 00 Yeah, there was one point where my friends, you know, they did like a very gentle intervention. I got high in the bathroom, you know, while they were all sitting there waiting for me to continue participating in this intervention. Then there was another one where it was a little bit more severe where a mutual friend of ours, Scott G.
48:07 Rich Roll? Oh, yeah.
48:07 Speaker 00 Was sent with me to a, a location and he, he got me through.
48:15 Speaker 00 Basically being dope sick at work.
48:20 Speaker 00 And, and then, you know, I PR'd my way into him into, you know, like two weeks. I was like, I'm good now. I'm a sober person now. Bye, bye Scott. Thank you for everything, you know? And kind of sent him on his way and like, maybe the next day was on the phone to a doctor saying, I need, I've hurt myself, you know?
48:44 Speaker 00 And we were shooting a movie set in a hospital and there were all kinds of rigs and things lying around that I was going home with every night.
48:55 Speaker 00 But there, there were people who cared very much. And then towards the end, I think that it, you know, it's very tricky. I've, I've been asked a number of times, like, my son has a drug problem. Please talk to them. And I'm more than willing to have any conversation with anybody, but my experience has been largely like, I didn't change until I wanted to change. I didn't change my, my eating. I didn't get off drugs. Like, none of that happened because somebody said, I'm concerned about you.
49:30 Speaker 00 So even when my friend said, we're gonna tell the producers of this movie that you're going to do, that you have like a really severe drug problem, unless you take this guy with you and get cleaned up.
49:43 Rich Roll? Scotty G.
49:44 Speaker 00 Scotty G.
49:44 Rich Roll? Yeah.
49:45 Speaker 00 Came.
49:45 Rich Roll? I didn't know you knew him. He's the best man.
49:47 Speaker 00 He's the best. I love, I, I talked to Scott.
49:49 Rich Roll? Oh, you do?
49:50 Speaker 00 All the time. Yeah.
49:50 Rich Roll? I spent some time with him this past summer.
49:52 Speaker 00 Yeah.
49:53 Rich Roll? In Michigan.
49:53 Speaker 00 I love Scott. Yeah. He's a great guy.
49:55 Rich Roll? Shout out Scott. I know he's listening.
49:58 Speaker 00 For sure.
50:00 Rich Roll? Right. You can't instill willingness in another person.
50:05 Speaker 00 Yeah.
50:05 Rich Roll? And you also can't self generate it really. Like, it's like, the thing I always say is, it's like asking somebody to want something they don't actually want, or wishing that you wanted something that you don't actually want. Like, you can kind of talk yourself into it, but if you don't really want it.
50:25 Speaker 00 Right.
50:26 Rich Roll? You're not gonna take the action, or you're not gonna be able to sustain that action.
50:31 Speaker 00 Right. Like, when, when I met Scott.
50:35 Speaker 00 I wanted to not be fired from the movie. I wanted to not be embarrassed. I wanted my friends to not spread the word that I had this problem. And in that moment, the path to that was sobriety. So I was like, great. If that's what I gotta do, come on, Scott, let's go to Canada.
50:56 Rich Roll? Just to get people off your back?
50:58 Speaker 00 Basically. And within that, I think there were moments of like, sobriety might be better.
51:05 Rich Roll? The little seedlings are being planted.
51:08 Speaker 00 Like, maybe.
51:09 Rich Roll? At some day.
51:10 Speaker 00 Yeah. Yeah, maybe, you know, this is rough, this sucks, but this would probably be better for me in the long run. But again, I didn't really want it. So it was like trying to talk myself into buying a car I didn't really want at the time.
51:26 Rich Roll? So was there like a single bottom or a series of bottoms? Like, you know, it took you a bunch of tries and a bunch of stabs before this thing stuck?
51:37 Speaker 00 Yeah. My bottom was being diagnosed with congestive heart failure. And, and the doctor, and you know, this was one of those things, like, I'm going to bed every night, pretty sure I'm gonna die, but then I start swelling. And the swelling's in my feet. And, and drugs are not getting me really high. And I'm doing an obscene amount of drugs. And it's not, and something's wrong. So I'm like, okay, what do I have to do? I have to get sick for a couple of days and then the drugs will be more potent. And what would happen is I'd get sick for a couple of days and the swelling would go down. And then I'd use, and the drugs
52:18 Speaker 00 would have their potency back. But a couple of days in, the swelling would return. The swelling's moving up my legs. And then it gets to my groin and it's really uncomfortable.
52:31 Speaker 00 And I went to see a doctor when I had done a couple of days being sick and clean and the swelling was not going away. So then I'm just using and miserable and swollen and in pain. And the doctor says, you have congestive heart failure. You are going to die. And I'm like, okay, so now, now it's time to get sober. And, and the doctor says, yeah, you're gonna die. I'm gonna give you this diuretic, but, and she's crying. And this is like my family doctor from when I'm a little kid.
53:04 Rich Roll? And how old are you now?
53:06 Speaker 00 Uh, 20.
53:08 Rich Roll? 20.
53:08 Speaker 00 Yeah. And she, and she's like, no, I'm so sorry. This, you are, you're gonna die. Like, if you get clean or not, this is gonna kill you. And I, I thought like, it'd be nice to leave my parents a clean corpse. Like, that was my bottom.
53:27 Rich Roll? Oh, man.
53:27 Speaker 00 And then, and then I even had relapses from that, but they were briefer.
53:34 Rich Roll? And did you end up going to a treatment center? Or how did you, what, you know, how did you take steps?
53:39 Speaker 00 That was my, uh, third time.
53:41 Rich Roll? Third time.
53:42 Speaker 00 In a, in a treatment center.
53:43 Rich Roll? Were you, you're the guy who goes and, you know, leaves early or whatever and holes up in some crack house somewhere?
53:50 Speaker 00 Yes, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I walked out of a couple of them. Yeah.
53:57 Rich Roll? What stuck?
53:58 Speaker 00 You know, um, A was really, really a big part of it. Um, I had sober friends. I had, uh, people I could rely on, people I could talk to every day. When I came back from treatment the last time, I had a, a group of friends who, I don't think any of them had a drink in front of me for two years. And, uh, they would come and get me and take me to a movie or out to dinner. I had a, a really solid group of guys that took care of me.
54:35 Rich Roll? It's a weird experience when you have that deep shame and that sense of worthlessness and you enter that community and all these people embrace you and genuinely are.
54:51 Rich Roll? Wanting to help you and make themselves available to you, but you don't trust it. You're like, this is, this is some bullshit. You know what I mean? Like, what's the angle? And for me, like, you know, I kept it at arm's length to my peril for a long time until I realized, like, oh, this is how it works, you know?
55:09 Speaker 00 Yeah, I think I did too.
55:12 Speaker 00 But I had a couple of sober friends who I didn't keep them at arm's length. But I know what you're talking about, the broader picture.
55:25 Speaker 00 I was like, you I can trust, you I can trust. This guy I just met, I want to hear him talk, but I don't trust him.
55:32 Rich Roll? Yeah. It is a, it is a miracle, though, that this thing exists where you can come in totally broken and hopeless and hanging on by a thread and be taken in by these people who don't want anything from you. Like, it really is a remarkable thing. I mean, it saved my life. Clearly, it saved yours. Are you, do you still have a relationship with, with AA?
55:57 Speaker 00 Yeah.
55:57 Rich Roll? You do?
55:58 Speaker 00 Yeah.
55:58 Rich Roll? Cool.
55:59 Speaker 00 I went to a meeting this morning.
56:00 Rich Roll? Oh, you did?
56:02 Rich Roll? A lot of people come to me who are suffering from health issues, but they also have a drug and alcohol problem. And they generally, they're looking for advice, but they, they're generally focused on like the fitness or the weight. I'm sure you get this a lot, too. And my whole thing is like, none of that matters until you get sober. Like, you can't do all of it at once. And unless you get sober, like, it's all irrelevant. Like, take care of that first and create a foundation. Don't worry about that other stuff. And then, you know, when you have that foundation, you can begin to address those other things. Is that how you think about that?
56:42 Speaker 00 I do. I kind of accidentally did it that way. But I, but I was, I was gonna die so quickly from drugs that... The rest of it wasn't even, it was just like, but, but I remember, you know, there would be days in rehab going like, well, I want this. Like, you know, you wake up one day and you want it more than you did yesterday, or you're gonna want it the day, the next day. And I would be like, yeah, I'm gonna quit smoking, I'm gonna quit drinking coffee. And maybe I'm gonna make better decisions in the food hall and I'm, you know, 550 pounds and maybe three weeks clean at this point or four weeks clean.
57:26 Speaker 00 And I just wake up going like, I could turn everything around and that would last until lunchtime. And then I'm drinking, you know, caffeinated soda and having a cigarette and like, fuck it, that's too much. So I didn't really start thinking about my weight for another year or two. I continued to kind of wall it off and, and have it be like, well, this thing that I'm working on is so tenuous and so important. And so, you know, I'm walking on a cliff's edge. I was, I was gonna die, it's a miracle I didn't die. Okay, well, I'm not gonna think about the other stuff right now, but I think it was by accident.
58:08 Rich Roll? So at what point does that kind of enter the picture and you begin to put some pieces together on that? And how did you do that?
58:15 Speaker 00 Well, I, I, I did it all backwards again, like I, you know, that the, I wish I had just gone like, I'm gonna apply everything I'm doing in my day to day life with drugs. Then I'm working on myself with food. I'm gonna use the same kind of idea, but I didn't do that. I just went like, oh, I need to lose weight. I'm, I had a blinder on and I wasn't thinking about this. I need to think about this now. What do I do? But I, I thought about it like the weight was the problem. That once the weight is gone, the problem is gone.
58:58 Speaker 00 That it's a, you know, an acute condition that I just need to exercise and then I won't have that condition anymore. And that took many years to parse out.
59:10 Rich Roll? In other words, just like sobriety, it's a process. There's no destination here. Like you don't arrive at a certain weight and then you can wash your hands of it and you've achieved it and it's done.
59:20 Speaker 00 Dude, I wanted that so badly. I was convinced that that was what was gonna happen. To the point that I went, when I was riding bikes a lot, I went to a doctor, literally for him to go to say like, when does that like, what is the weight I need to get to? Because I don't know. And, and I had in my head, I go to see this, the best sports nutrition doctor, famous guy, Dr. Heizenga, who I really like. And I walked in and I, I had in my head, I probably need to lose another 20 pounds. And I go in and I say, I just need you to
1:00:05 Speaker 00 tell me how much weight I need to lose. And I said to him, I said, I think it's probably 20 pounds. And he said, no, no, no, much more than that.
1:00:13 Rich Roll? How, how heavy were you then?
1:00:15 Speaker 00 240. He said, you gotta get to 185. So 20 went to like 65. And I was kind of devastated in that moment. And then he said, we'll get you an exact number. We're gonna have you do a DEXA scan. So I do the DEXA scan, come back, he looks at the scan, he says, this is not right. Go and do it again. I did a second DEXA scan. When we met again, he said, I'm wrong. You don't need to lose weight. You're 14% body fat. You're fine. You're done. No more weight.
1:00:46 Rich Roll? At 240, you're just a big dude.
1:00:48 Speaker 00 I'm a big dude. I was riding a bike 100 miles a day.
1:00:51 Rich Roll? I know. You, you, I want to get into the whole cycling phase because you went hog wild with this.
1:00:55 Speaker 00 I went hog wild.
1:00:56 Rich Roll? You ride like every stage of the Tour de France one year?
1:00:58 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:00:59 Rich Roll? Like you were.
1:01:00 Speaker 00 And then some. They didn't have Mount Vontoux on that, on that year. So we went and rode that.
1:01:05 Rich Roll? Was that like part of a tour or group?
1:01:07 Speaker 00 I went with Team Radio Shack with the executives from Team Radio Shack.
1:01:11 Rich Roll? That happened. Wow.
1:01:12 Speaker 00 It was awesome.
1:01:12 Rich Roll? So that was during the, was that during the Lance comeback? Or this was like Levi Leipheimer?
1:01:19 Speaker 00 Yeah. Levi was leading. Lance was out there. I got to ride with Lance, which was amazing.
1:01:27 Speaker 00 But he was not a participant.
1:01:29 Rich Roll? Yeah. And when you were deep into the cycling, you got down to like 200 or something like that?
1:01:34 Speaker 00 I got close to 200, but that happens after Dr. Heizengas says you're 14% body fat.
1:01:40 Rich Roll? Right, but you're convinced.
1:01:41 Speaker 00 And, and I-
1:01:42 Rich Roll? Cause it's the, it's like, how far can I take this?
1:01:44 Speaker 00 I'm not only convinced, I was angry with him. I was like, what do you know, dude? I shouldn't have even come here. Like, I came here for you to tell me a number. You told me a big number and I was like devastated, but I was gonna hit that number. I would have gotten, if you had just left it at that, I would have gotten to 185. And I was 240 and 14% body fat. And at the time, I'm like, 14% body, that sounds too high. Like, I don't know what body fat means at that point, but I'm like, that's terrible. Shouldn't I be 2%? And he's like, no, no, no, 14 is fine.
1:02:18 Speaker 00 But I walked out going like, what does he know? I gotta lose 20 pounds.
1:02:21 Rich Roll? And you found the perfect vehicle to strip you of like every ounce of fat on your body, right? There's nothing like riding a bike all day, every day.
1:02:30 Speaker 00 That's right. It was amazing. And in California, there's no better place. You can get long, flat stretches, rollers on PCH, and then the most gnarly climbs ever.
1:02:42 Rich Roll? And there's nothing like being able to attack those climbs and feeling strong doing it. Like, you have to put in so much work to get there, but when you're there, it's, it's a, it's a euphoric feeling.
1:02:53 Speaker 00 Dude, the first time I did Latigo, I thought like, this might be the last time I'm on a bike. And then not many months later, I invited a buddy who was a, an amateur cyclist in college, but like a cat two cyclist. And I dropped him and waited for 15 minutes at the top of Latigo form and was just like, oh my God, I can do anything on this bike. If I just keep doing it, I can do anything.
1:03:21 Rich Roll? And being able to do that at 200 pounds, like it's the, the ultimate weight weenie sport, right? It's just like, there is an obsession with weight in that sport that probably played into like all of your like, you know, neurosis around this.
1:03:34 Speaker 00 Well, look, in reality, I was not the fastest guy going up the hill ever. But like, get me on the velodrome and I was gnarly.
1:03:42 Rich Roll? Oh, yeah, cuz you I'm sure the watts you could throw down on a track.
1:03:45 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:03:46 Rich Roll? Would be insane.
1:03:47 Speaker 00 I had enormous legs.
1:03:49 Rich Roll? Yeah.
1:03:51 Speaker 00 I was like not.
1:03:51 Rich Roll? So when you're 500 pounds, you gotta be strong to carry all that weight around, right? So underneath all of that, you know, I'm sure is some pretty good muscle.
1:04:00 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:04:00 Rich Roll? That was there all along.
1:04:02 Speaker 00 Yeah. Just to stand up, you gotta have muscle.
1:04:05 Rich Roll? Yeah. But at a certain point, like cycling, no bueno for you. Like, what what happened with that?
1:04:11 Speaker 00 It just was.
1:04:12 Rich Roll? Deplete your adrenals and just, you know, take it all the way to the wall until.
1:04:17 Speaker 00 Basically, I had a bad accident. I was right, I would ride with the Helen's guys and.
1:04:27 Rich Roll? You do the Mandeville, that Mandeville ride.
1:04:29 Speaker 00 Every Sunday.
1:04:30 Rich Roll? Yeah.
1:04:30 Speaker 00 Yeah, that was, that was my day off ride.
1:04:34 Speaker 00 No, no, not Mandeville. I would do the La Grange ride on Sunday.
1:04:37 Rich Roll? That's the one I was thinking of.
1:04:38 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:04:39 Rich Roll? Yeah.
1:04:39 Speaker 00 Yeah, Mandeville was the Wednesday ride and that was easy because it was the shortest ride just to the top of Mandeville. But but I would come from the valley from Studio City, go down, ride that ride. And that was the easiest. If we didn't go like deep up PCH, it was a very short ride for me, you know, 40, 50 miles, not bad. It was one of those things where I had a bad accident. I wound up in the hospital. I had 30 some stitches in my head, tore the skin off my hands, herniated my quad on my bar. And and then I went back and I was tentative going back, but I still did a bunch of rides. I did the, you know, the Helen's team does a yearly thing in Solvang. I went out and did that.
1:05:24 Speaker 00 But was the slowest guy cuz I was really out of shape at that point. And then I had to work and and my wife was like, you know, like, you can't retire.
1:05:34 Rich Roll? You're not a professional cyclist.
1:05:36 Speaker 00 Yeah, like, what are you doing?
1:05:37 Rich Roll? The amount of time it takes is just bananas.
1:05:39 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:05:40 Rich Roll? You know, makes golf look like.
1:05:42 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:05:42 Rich Roll? Trivial.
1:05:43 Speaker 00 Yeah, I, but I took a bike like in 2012. I went to New York to do Wolf of Wall Street and I was gonna be there for. Seven or eight months. So I took a bike with me and I would ride it up and down the West Side Highway and then cut over the George Washington Bridge.
1:06:00 Rich Roll? Yeah, a nine W Bear Mountain Ride.
1:06:02 Speaker 00 Yeah, I'd do that. And then I think I discovered CrossFit. I discovered the rowing machine and was like, oh, I can get on this rowing machine and really bang out a great workout in an hour and I don't have to be on a bike for five hours.
1:06:19 Rich Roll? And be exhausted for the whole day, for your workday, you know?
1:06:24 Speaker 00 So I would start doing like marathons on a rowing machine and lifting weights and kettlebells. And I had like very little upper body mass at that point was like, what if I, you know, did some pushups and some bench press? And, and then that was interesting for a while.
1:06:42 Rich Roll? And now you're just an animal in the gym. I mean, you're just a beast.
1:06:46 Speaker 00 I'm trying. I've gotten even that. I'm trying to exercise radical moderation, you know, like I, I used to go.
1:06:53 Rich Roll? Everything is an obsession in waiting, you know?
1:06:56 Speaker 00 Yeah, it can be. And now I'm like, can I get my workout in 45 minutes? That's like my mission nowadays.
1:07:03 Rich Roll? So it doesn't commandeer your entire life?
1:07:06 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:07:06 Rich Roll? And you have good energy throughout the day?
1:07:08 Speaker 00 Yeah. I mean, there was a bit where it was like, I gotta fill this loose skin with muscle. And then when I stopped living in Fantasyland and did a little rough math, the amount of muscle I'd have to build to actually stretch out my loose skin, I'd be, I'd weigh 800 pounds or something like that. And so I gave up on that pursuit. And so now it's just a matter of communicating with my muscles that I appreciate you, I admire you, stick around, don't go anywhere. I'm not trying to get bigger. And that's really, and then going to the gym provides me with some more mental clarity for the day.
1:07:49 Rich Roll? For sure.
1:07:56 Rich Roll? Back to those early days, though, when this was just beginning, like, how did you instigate the fitness and the diet? Like, what was the, like, when you finally locked onto this, what were the steps that you took that ended up being effective in retrospect amidst all of the kind of missteps?
1:08:18 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's really funny. The gal who's my wife, I like landed in Eastern Europe to do a movie and was devastated. Like, it was, it was as though I'd been completely blind to myself and then stood in front of a mirror for a while going like, "Oh, my God, you gotta take a long, hard look, and we're not gonna look away." And I thought the only thing, I'm suddenly thinking about the future, and the only thing that mattered to me in that moment was this relationship I was building with the girl who's now my wife. And if I don't tell her the secret that I'm morbidly obese, which I think she
1:09:03 Speaker 00 doesn't know, you know, if I don't tell her that, then I lose her because she's gonna figure it out, right? One of these days, you know, she's gonna peek behind the curtain and see me. And if I tell her and she sees it now, I'm gonna reveal this horror story to her and she's gonna, so, but I'm damned if I do, or I'm damned if I don't. I wanna have a life with her. My behavior's been like, not so honest and forthright. Like, she wants to go to the beach. "I can't do that today. I'll see you later tonight for dinner." She wants to go to a museum. "I can't do that because walking through museums
1:09:43 Speaker 00 tiring." All these active things that she's interested in, I'm kind of finding reasons not to do with her. I also felt embarrassed for her to like, hold my hand in public because my shame would bleed over into her. So I'd walk behind her or in front of her, and there was no public affection. And like, all of that felt unhealthy to me. And so I recruited her to help me. I said, like, "Hey, I have this problem. I'm obese and I wanna change that." And she, like, to this day, it was as though I was telling her, you know, I'd robbed a bank or killed somebody and she didn't know about it. Like, that's how I felt communicating
1:10:26 Speaker 00 this to her. And I, I thought like, and I listened so closely, like, am I gonna hear judgment? Am I gonna hear relief? And either of those things, I think, might have messed with me. But she was like, okay, yeah, great. So what do you want to do? Do you want me to help you? How do you want me to help you? And I was like, I don't know what to do. And the very thing, the very first thing she told me to do in Eastern Europe was, okay, for the rest of the time that you're there, just don't eat bread. Now, bread for me then became this poisonous thing for many years. But that wasn't the point. The point was
1:11:09 Speaker 00 exercise some responsibility. Take one small step towards exercising restraint and responsibility. And that I learned to do. I didn't separate the two and realize the actual moral of the story that she gave me on that day for many years, because I eat bread all the time now. Whereas when she said that, I just thought, okay, bread's the problem. If I get rid of bread, I'm now on the path to recovery. But I was able to make it through the rest of that trip without eating bread. And that was kind of my first step.
1:11:43 Rich Roll? Your wife sounds like a remarkable woman. Like, clearly, she loved you and loves you for you, right? Like-
1:11:51 Speaker 00 Which is bizarre. Which is fucking bizarre, to be honest with you.
1:11:55 Rich Roll? Well, you know, we're all, we're all broken toys. You know what I mean? How, how could we possibly be lovable? You know, I, I share that. But what she did deserves to kind of be explored a little bit more, because I think it's really powerful. You were able to change, not because she was vibing you to change, but because she allowed you to be you and gave you the space to arrive in a place of willingness on your own. And when you were ready, she was there to support you. But she wasn't nudging you or urging you towards that. And it gets back to this willingness idea, like- She wouldn't have been able to make you willing to make that change.
1:12:39 Rich Roll? You, she trusted that you would find your way, you know? And she, and I think that is an incredibly difficult gesture of love. Like, we can say, oh, it's loving to like, want your partner to, you know, improve or do something that's in their best interest. But like, true unconditional love is like, I believe in you.
1:13:02 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:13:03 Rich Roll? I believe in you to find your way and what's right for you. And I'm going to love you either way.
1:13:08 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:13:08 Rich Roll? Like, that is a remarkable thing. And you were, and you found your way to willingness. Finally, you had some willingness. And I think the advice around bread is actually really good. It, well, it gets to the complexity of all of this because like, I know as an AA person, like, I need those binary rules. I mean, I, I know that like, my entree into like, the eating plant-based is because it's like, it's easy. It's like, I don't eat meat or dairy.
1:13:34 Speaker 00 Just do this.
1:13:35 Rich Roll? You know, and I needed that. I needed that like, structure. It's like, I know I don't drink or use. Like, I can get my head around that. Like, and this is just simple enough. And so the bread thing is like, oh, I can understand that. You know, it gets messy later when you start to, when all the alcoholic obsession, you know, starts to metastasize around that.
1:13:54 Speaker 00 When you haven't lost all the weight you want to lose because you're not eating bread. You know, when you, when you still have the problem as you perceive it, despite doing the work to eliminate the problem. It becomes complicated.
1:14:10 Rich Roll? Yeah. But you took action.
1:14:14 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:14:15 Rich Roll? And I think behind that also, like, this idea that like, I have to tell her this secret. You know, whether or not, like, it's hard to believe that you would believe that she wouldn't know that. Like, let's take that for granted as true. But the important part of it is that you decided you weren't going to keep secrets from her anymore. Like, you're a guy who'd been keeping secrets your whole life. So it was, it was, it was this commitment to yourself to be transparent in a vulnerable way that opened up the space for you to be receptive and to grow and change.
1:14:47 Speaker 00 I think there's a point there that you made because I think it's not, um, that I, that I thought she was honestly unaware of it. Cause it's impossible not to be unaware of it. But it's that if I show her that it's
1:15:06 Speaker 00 It's not something I am comfortable with. Then it, then it allows her to be uncomfortable with. Do you know what I mean?
1:15:14 Rich Roll? Yeah.
1:15:14 Speaker 00 I have this false sense of, um, I don't know that if it's not a part of my attention. If I'm confident, um, if I reveal that I'm actually not confident, then it allows-
1:15:32 Rich Roll? That you have a weakness.
1:15:33 Speaker 00 That I have, yes, exactly. It's the strangest feeling I've ever had because it's like I'm describing a blue car to somebody who's sitting there looking at a blue car with me. You know what I mean? Like-
1:15:45 Rich Roll? The secret isn't that you were obese. The secret was that you, uh, that you felt shame, a shame about that.
1:15:51 Speaker 00 That's right.
1:15:52 Rich Roll? And like having the courage to like, share that is a vulnerable like gesture.
1:15:56 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:15:57 Rich Roll? That's scary. Like what, how is my partner going to receive this?
1:16:00 Speaker 00 Yeah. And, and, and later in life, like I, I have written a book and it's with my publisher. And so I had to go and like, really talk to my wife about this because I, I never really got into it with her. Like, why were you, why were you with me? Like, were you waiting for that? Um, did you have faith that I was going to change prior to that? And, and then I realized like, I don't even want to know because everything that happened feels like a miracle to me. Um, and so the nuts and bolts of it are irrelevant.
1:16:36 Rich Roll? Yeah. So you never asked her that?
1:16:38 Speaker 00 I mean, I, I touched on it with her and she's like, I don't know. I wasn't thinking about it. Like she really is just this miraculous angel of a person who loved me.
1:16:48 Rich Roll? Yeah. So the bread didn't work?
1:16:51 Speaker 00 Well, I was able to do it. I was able to not eat bread.
1:16:56 Rich Roll? Which is a win, right?
1:16:57 Speaker 00 It's a win.
1:16:57 Rich Roll? Like you were able to master one thing.
1:16:59 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:16:59 Rich Roll? Yeah.
1:17:00 Speaker 00 Um, the bread, not eating bread did not produce 300 pounds of weight loss. Unfortunately, you know?
1:17:07 Rich Roll? Uh huh.
1:17:08 Speaker 00 Um, and then, you know, I came back and she had, she was like, I've got, I'll have something ready for you in LA, but just do this while you're there. And when you get back, I'll have a whole thing set up for you to do here. And I did a liquid diet for two months. And I lost like 80 pounds doing that liquid diet.
1:17:30 Rich Roll? In two months.
1:17:31 Speaker 00 In two months.
1:17:32 Rich Roll? Wow.
1:17:32 Speaker 00 It was awesome. It was, uh, you know, there's nothing that motivates you quite like success. Every day I saw weight loss on that liquid diet.
1:17:43 Rich Roll? What was in the liquid?
1:17:46 Speaker 00 It was like probably 500 calories a day of protein and some, you know, powdered greens and then a bunch of fiber pills and some vitamins.
1:17:56 Rich Roll? There is a, a sort of euphoria that comes with that also, right? And the alcoholic mind will latch on to that and say, this is the solution to my problems. I'm never going to eat food again.
1:18:09 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:18:09 Rich Roll? Yeah, I found it.
1:18:11 Speaker 00 There was something.
1:18:12 Rich Roll? Did you, did you have that?
1:18:13 Speaker 00 A hundred percent.
1:18:14 Rich Roll? Yeah.
1:18:14 Speaker 00 I, I wanted, I wanted abstinence at that time. I thought that was the solution and, and the problem was that by the end of the second month, like every time I stood up, I would blackout, not to the point of collapse, but like my vision would go dark, my hearing would get thick and distant and I'd have to like steady myself and wait for my vision to come back. And that was like, okay, maybe I can't do this forever.
1:18:40 Rich Roll? 500 calories a day with, with that much body mass to feel, I mean, you're cannibalizing yourself.
1:18:46 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:18:47 Rich Roll? Every day.
1:18:48 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:18:50 Rich Roll? And then after that?
1:18:52 Speaker 00 Then it was the blood type diet and, um, that was also pretty easy, you know? Bread was off limits, but I could have like vegetables and meat and that was not difficult. And, and then the problem came about when I just stopped losing weight. I could, I could overeat through the intervention of the blood type diet.
1:19:17 Rich Roll? So at this point you'd lost how much from 500 down to?
1:19:21 Speaker 00 550 down to around 400.
1:19:24 Rich Roll? Wow.
1:19:24 Speaker 00 Maybe 375.
1:19:26 Rich Roll? Uh huh. And then you plateau.
1:19:29 Speaker 00 And then I plateaued.
1:19:30 Rich Roll? Rubber band back.
1:19:31 Speaker 00 No, I didn't rubber band back from that. I mean, I, I did gain some weight, but I never went back up to 500.
1:19:39 Speaker 00 Because there, from that point on, there were, I would get down to, over the past 20 years, I got down to 200, I went back up to 400, I got down to 300, I went up to 375. Like, there were bands like that, but I never got back anywhere near 500.
1:20:01 Rich Roll? With all the rubber banding, and then now in this, you know, stable situation that you're in right now, I mean, we could talk all day about like, what worked and what didn't. I'm less interested in the details of that. It's all very personal, personalized, individualized. But from those experiences of succeeding and failing and rubber banding and relapsing and back and forth, and, you know, now it's cycling, now it's the gym. I mean, you have compiled like, an encyclopedia of principles around transformation and change.
1:20:35 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:20:36 Rich Roll? So if you had to write a book and it had like, you know, 10 chapters, like, you know, each one being one of these principles, like, what rises to the top in your mind as the most important factors for somebody who is contemplating making a change?
1:20:51 Speaker 00 Having a plan for the day, and then preparing for the plan to go out the window once you meet reality, and having another plan, and having as many plans as you can consider, and then having a plan for when all of the plans fail, and kind of, you know, getting through the day is the most important thing. Realizing that the weight isn't the issue at all, that the weight is a byproduct or a symptom of the issue, that it will, look, if you need to lose 10 pounds that you put on during COVID, or, you know, you twisted your ankle and were laid up for a few months or something like that, then none of this
1:21:31 Speaker 00 applies to you. But if you've been overweight your whole life, there's likely not going to be an intervention that you apply, that then, when you're done, you don't have to keep applying to some degree.
1:21:48 Speaker 00 My big fear now, like I'm a fan of the GLP-1s for the morbidly obese. I'm also glad that I achieved this prior to their advent. But my fear with them is that people are going to use them like fad diets. And that what we'll see long term is a version of what I did in those years, which was find something that takes weight off really quick. You're losing muscle mass and fat. And by the way, any diet, any extreme diet, you're losing muscle mass and fat. Doesn't matter if it's keto and you're eating a bunch of meat.
1:22:29 Speaker 00 If you're losing a pound a day, some portion of that is lean tissue. But you get on them for three months, you lose 30 pounds, you get off them, you gain the 30 pounds back, you've 40% of what you lost is muscle and 100% of what you gain back is fat. And so we could see over a long period of time, people's weight stay static, if not rise a little bit, but their body fat percentage skyrocket. And that worries me because there is no consideration to anything but that the weight is the problem, not a byproduct or a symptom of the problem.
1:23:14 Rich Roll? Also, you're missing the whole piece around developing discipline and a connection with your body and your mind. Like you have extraordinary discipline and you've done the inside work to untangle those knots and understand, you know, why you tick the way that you tick. And if you just inject yourself with something like I, they're appropriate for people who are, I mean, it's like obesity is driving all these chronic lifestyle ailments. Like you have to, if the house is on fire, you gotta deal with that first. So I'm not against this in any way. But in terms of, of, of like what you had to learn.
1:23:55 Rich Roll? About yourself and the way your mind and your body works by going through this process has placed you in this sort of sensei position. You know what I mean? Like, you've done the work. And so what you have to say about this like matters versus somebody who, you know, took a different route to it.
1:24:15 Speaker 00 It's such a tricky thing because I've, I'm trying to be as open and honest as possible, but there is a team out there that is, these are life-saving drugs. And if you say anything bad about them, you're killing people. And then there's another team that is, these are gonna, these are gonna result in killing people. You can't say anything good about them. There's such a lack of nuance, you know, there, I don't know if it's as big today, but there was a whole thing about like keto and sugar is killing it and carbohydrates are killing everyone.
1:24:52 Rich Roll? We just cycle through this, you know, by the season.
1:24:54 Speaker 00 Right. Nuance is lost.
1:24:56 Rich Roll? Yeah. And it deserves nuance. I think, like I said, there are, these drugs are appropriate. But are you, you know, when you're on them, are you using that period of time to learn about nutrition and develop, you know, better eating habits and breaking old habits? Or are you just coasting by eating less of the shitty foods that you're eating? And when you go off it, you haven't really prepared yourself for how to live without it. And these people rubber band back and then go back on it. And yeah, like, so then do we end up with a, with a worse obesity problem or other downstream, like side effects from this drug that we don't even know about yet?
1:25:36 Speaker 00 Yeah, I have a daughter with type one diabetes. And that point of view that I'm seeing so many people take would be like the point of view of Me realizing that my daughter's body is not producing insulin. And so she has to get insulin through a bolus of an injection. And then looking at her blood sugar when it's normal and going, well, she doesn't need insulin anymore. She's done. She's solved. It's not going to be a problem anymore. These medications, and who knows if they're going to have new medications down the line. But these medications are designed to be lifetime medications. They're not designed for short term use. They're not designed so that when you lose your 30 or 50 or 100 pounds that you come off of them.
1:26:22 Speaker 00 Because the doctors who are prescribing them know that 99.9% of the people are going to gain that weight back. Now, it's not an absolute, but there are no absolutes in science. This is the, this is the realm of like wanting to win the lottery. I'll be the one guy that doesn't win the, gain the weight back. But what about all the diets that you tried? Where you, you know, ate 500 calories a day, lost weight really fast. And then gained the weight back once you jumped off the diet. It's no different. It just makes it less hard.
1:26:52 Rich Roll? What do you think is the primary differentiator between somebody who can make this type of change and sustain it? Versus the person who struggles and gives up?
1:27:07 Speaker 00 I think that really looking at the fact that it is going to be a lifetime commitment. That there's no finish line, that the weight is a, a sign of something else happening. That, that, that somebody who's looking at it in that way will have a better shot at success. Because if you just go into a diet going, I need to lose 30 pounds. And once I lose 30 pounds, or whatever, pick any number, 300 pounds, that I'm done.
1:27:43 Speaker 00 I think you're in for a rude awakening.
1:27:46 Rich Roll? Yeah, there's so much gray in all of this. It's so easy to be reductive about it. Like, here's what you do. And like, we want, you know, you're talking about like, you need a plan, you know, and you need a plan for the plan. And there's lots of plans out there. Like, oh, I'll take this plan. This plan's going to solve my problem. But it's so much more than that. Like, you need the discipline and the hard work and the ability to suffer periods of discomfort and, you know, all these types of things. But you also have to be kind to yourself. And, you know, you have to allow yourself to mess up, you know, and not throw the baby out with the bathwater when you have those missteps.
1:28:30 Rich Roll? And you have to be flexible enough to know, like, okay, well, this program that I thought was going to solve everything isn't working, and I need to do something different now.
1:28:41 Rich Roll? The truth doesn't lend itself to any kind of like 10-step program that is going to work. And I think the real solution is in like the healing the inner, right? So that you can have the soft when you need it and the hard when you need it. But it's not all about self-will and discipline and hard work and pain and suffering. It's also, as you know, as a sober person, it's surrender and it's letting go and it's compassion, right? And how do you, how do you marry these two kind of opposing forces in a way that's driving your life forward?
1:29:19 Speaker 00 I do some coaching. It's not like, come contact me type of a thing, but I do work with some people. And this is the biggest point of trying to get somebody to understand. And I think unfortunately, it's a little bit like the willingness piece, where you can't tell them the secret. They have to come to it on their own a little bit through trial and error, unfortunately. But it's like the Serenity Prayer sums it up so perfectly. There is something that you have to accept because it's not changeable. And you have to figure out what you can change and then just work on changing that. And if you're coming at it...
1:30:01 Speaker 00 Because I did this, tried to harm myself thin, tried to punish myself into a better body. That's not sustainable either. You know, there has to be some grace given to yourself and doing it out of compassion and kindness, or I don't think it works.
1:30:19 Rich Roll? Yeah, it's it's for whom and when, right? Like, certain people, they need the Goggins message, you know what I mean? Because they can't get off the couch. They could use a little discipline and a little slap on the ass to get up and get out the door.
1:30:36 Speaker 00 And sometimes I like that, too.
1:30:38 Rich Roll? Me, too.
1:30:38 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:30:39 Rich Roll? Of course.
1:30:39 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:30:40 Rich Roll? You know, I think we all need that.
1:30:41 Speaker 00 Right.
1:30:41 Rich Roll? And, you know, God bless David Goggins for making himself available, you know, to all of us for that.
1:30:47 Speaker 00 But it can't be the only thing.
1:30:49 Rich Roll? There are other people who are who are who are so down that rabbit hole, and they need to be pulled out and given a hug.
1:30:55 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:30:55 Rich Roll? You know what I mean?
1:30:56 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:30:57 Rich Roll? And told and told that they're worthwhile and lovable, you know, even if, you know, they can't lose the weight or achieve the fitness goal.
1:31:05 Speaker 00 That's right.
1:31:06 Rich Roll? Yeah. And without those two two things, like, you're just you're like missing an appendage, I think.
1:31:11 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:31:11 Rich Roll? And so it's it's hard to, I mean, I'm I'm like, hats off to you to try to counsel people through this sort of thing.
1:31:19 Speaker 00 It's tough, you know, because and I relate to it so much. But I think some of the most meaningful conversations I have are talking to somebody and understanding or trying to understand their experience as thoroughly as possible, and sharing my experience and going like, here's why what you're trying to do didn't work for me. Now, that doesn't mean it's not going to work for you, but here are all the traps I encountered in that. It's some of the most meaningful stuff I've ever done.
1:31:51 Rich Roll? Yeah, I mean, that's a version of. What we learn in AA, which is we don't tell people what to do or give advice. We share our experience.
1:31:59 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:32:00 Rich Roll? You know, and if you can glean insights from my personal experience, then it's on you to figure out how to integrate that into your life.
1:32:09 Speaker 00 Yeah, this has slightly more like.
1:32:12 Rich Roll? A little bit. You got, yeah, don't do.
1:32:13 Speaker 00 Listen, if you're, if you're eating 5,000 calories a day, you're going.
1:32:17 Rich Roll? In my experience, this doesn't work.
1:32:20 Speaker 00 Right, yeah, exactly. It's, it's, it's, but it's a marriage of these two things, you know?
1:32:24 Rich Roll? Yeah, you have to do and you have to undo.
1:32:28 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:32:28 Rich Roll? Right? So it's like a Zen koan.
1:32:30 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:32:31 Rich Roll? You know?
1:32:33 Rich Roll? What are some common like tropes out there around weight loss and fitness that you think are wrong, that are misleading people?
1:32:44 Speaker 00 You know, fat people are lazy. This is, this is, I think, very misleading because first of all, just in an almost comedic sense, do you know how hard it is to be obese? Like, it's very difficult. You have to, and, and not that food is super expensive or, or, you know, the amount of junk food is just omnipresent. Every point of commerce, you can get 2,000 calories for a couple bucks.
1:33:14 Speaker 00 But just moving through space and time is difficult.
1:33:19 Speaker 00 That's one of them. I don't know. There are so many, um, you know, I think the insulin model for obesity is just completely ridiculous and sent a bunch of people down a path that, um, it's not that it's not sustainable. I just think for the people who are like me at all, it's not going to get them anywhere near where they want to be. You'll lose weight.
1:33:44 Speaker 00 The majority of weight that you lose that first couple of weeks is water and there's no acknowledgement of that. When you stop eating carbohydrates, your body just purges itself of glycogen and hydration.
1:33:58 Speaker 00 And like that will keep you coming back like you, you gain your weight back and you go, but I want that incentive that I got the first week of doing keto. I lost 10 pounds. I want that win again, but it's not getting you where you want to go because you're not addressing the fact that you're taking in more energy than your body needs.
1:34:19 Rich Roll? How important is momentum?
1:34:22 Speaker 00 Very important. I find it.
1:34:24 Rich Roll? Talk a little bit about this because I have some thoughts on this.
1:34:28 Speaker 00 Okay. So like for me, I was on a plane yesterday, got up at the crack of dawn, didn't sleep much, arrived here in California, um, had a couple of things to do, never got to the gym this morning, didn't get a great night's sleep, didn't go to the gym.
1:34:48 Rich Roll? Yeah.
1:34:49 Speaker 00 Now that's two days in a row. I don't go seven days to the gym, but I've now missed two days tomorrow. There are going to be 300 reasons sitting in the forefront of my mind, why going to the gym isn't necessary, that I'm going to have to fight through slightly harder than I otherwise would. When I get to the gym on Monday and I don't miss a day, going on Friday is a piece of cake, going on Saturday is a piece of cake, but when I miss one day, getting back to it has lost some of that momentum and it's just harder.
1:35:24 Rich Roll? I think, I mean, obviously consistency is the, is the most important thing, but what happens when you're consistent is you create momentum.
1:35:33 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:35:34 Rich Roll? And I like to think of momentum as like a spiritual force, like it has its own field of energy, you know, we all know how easy it is to go to the gym when we've gone, you know, 28 days in a row before that.
1:35:46 Speaker 00 That's right.
1:35:47 Rich Roll? It's an autopilot thing. It's an afterthought, right? And then you have that interrupting.
1:35:53 Rich Roll? Situation, you go to a wedding, you travel, whatever, you get thrown off. And suddenly it's hard. Like, why is that? It doesn't make any sense.
1:36:00 Speaker 00 No.
1:36:01 Rich Roll? And so I just think when you've, when you've cultivated and developed, you have some momentum going. Like, you gotta fucking protect that against, you know, like, that is, that is, that is like to be dealt with reverence, you know, knowing that it will get interrupted at some point. But when you have it, like, really seeing it for what it is and respecting it.
1:36:23 Speaker 00 It's magical.
1:36:23 Rich Roll? It becomes like a, it's a very powerful thing, I think. And then having the, and then having the ability to have grace with yourself when life happens and you do get interrupted. And doing that thing that we also learn in A, which is like, if you relapse and then you beat yourself up, you've made the second mistake, right? So just get, how quickly can you get back to, you know, square one and start to rebuild again? And not, you know, be in that shame spiral that, you know, we've all experienced when we allow ourselves to, you know, fall a little bit.
1:36:59 Speaker 00 Yeah. Yeah. I think that that, and even being aware of it too. Because when you get the momentum and then it is hard, you can remind yourself, but it's not going to be hard forever. I'm going to get that momentum back. I'm going to get that wind beneath me. That's going to help push me. I just have to get back to it.
1:37:19 Rich Roll? It's tough though, man. Like, you fall off and then you're like, it's too hard, forget it. And then you just give up and then like your habits across the board in every aspect of your life just, you know, you go to pot as a result.
1:37:31 Speaker 00 You're waiting for the gift of desperation to get you back into it. And it doesn't have to be that way.
1:37:37 Rich Roll? Pain is such an amazing motivator for this. Like, I, I know, you know, I don't, I don't go out of my way to, you know, make changes in my life unless I'm backed into a corner. And it's always confounding that that choice is available to us. Like, we don't have to be in pain. We don't have to be in crisis. We don't have to have congested heart failure, all these things like that you had to go through to become the person you are. How do you counsel people around trying to make that choice short of, you know, the elevator going all the way down to the ground floor?
1:38:12 Speaker 00 This is where that piece of willingness comes in, where I'm not, I'm not out there trying to convert people. I'm only really talking to people who, who are there and just going like, tell me what to do. I don't know what to do. And I'm, you know, one of the things that I'm not super interested in doing is spreading some message of the right way, because I don't really believe that, that, that I could broadcast the right way to everyone. But if I have somebody who I can really talk to and get a really as, as clear a picture
1:38:56 Speaker 00 of their circumstances as possible, then I can make implementations that I think will be beneficial to them. But that's, you know, if you come up to me on the street and say, how'd you do it? I'm going to give you a very truthful but dishonest answer, which is diet and exercise. That's the truth, but it's so dishonest. It's, it's, it's lacking a two hour conversation, you know?
1:39:26 Rich Roll? Yeah. How has your sense of potential and possibility shifted as a result of this? Like, as a, as an artist and as a dad and, you know, a grandfather, right? You have a grand, you have a granddaughter?
1:39:41 Speaker 00 And a grandson.
1:39:42 Rich Roll? Oh, you have two grandkids?
1:39:43 Speaker 00 Two grandkids, yeah.
1:39:44 Rich Roll? That's insane.
1:39:44 Speaker 00 It's incredible.
1:39:45 Rich Roll? How old are you?
1:39:45 Speaker 00 Forty-nine.
1:39:47 Rich Roll? You must have been young when you had kids.
1:39:49 Speaker 00 My wife was 20 when she had our first. The two older kids are my stepkids, but I've been raising them since they were three and five.
1:39:57 Rich Roll? Yeah, similar, I have two, two stepkids and two, two kids, similar situation. No grandkids yet, though.
1:40:03 Speaker 00 They're coming.
1:40:04 Rich Roll? Yeah. I don't know. We'll see. You know, having accomplished these things, obviously, you know, self-esteem is a product of performing esteemable acts for, for yourself, right? And so.
1:40:16 Rich Roll? That's very empowering and I would imagine shifts your worldview on like what you're capable of and, and you know, what you, you know, the kind of person that you could become as somebody who's continually trying to grow and evolve.
1:40:31 Speaker 00 Yeah, there's a, there's an idea for me, the thing that I like to do is to imagine in a, in a way that you're talking about, who I would like to be, who I would like to evolve into. And then even if it's just so absurdly far-fetched, I'm, I'm aiming in that direction. I'm, I'm casting my line towards that. So that every day I'm transforming, even if it's imperceptible, I want to be transforming a little bit or growing more towards that person. And the, the idea of impossible, dude, my life is a fairy tale.
1:41:12 Speaker 00 Like, and I'm still have this kind of like corrupt narcissism where like, I think people are looking at me and talking about me and don't like me and, and I'm still embarrassed about myself. And, and I often have to tell that voice to shut the fuck up and to get out of the way because I'm awesome and I'm doing great. And I have people in my life who love me very much. And, and if that voice is right, and there is somebody out there saying bad things, then that person is irrelevant to my life and the person I want to become.
1:41:48 Rich Roll? How does this translate into your parenting?
1:41:52 Speaker 00 Parenting has been interesting. I, I was raised in a very, you know, food was regulated. And so I wanted very much to be not, like, I thought that that was one of the main drivers to me going the route I did. And when my daughter, who's now 20, was four, she was diagnosed with type one diabetes and suddenly.
1:42:31 Speaker 00 I found myself having to restrict her food. Not saying no necessarily to stuff, but juice for her was literally medicinal or poison in very stark terms. If she had juice without, really, she should never have juice unless she has crashing low blood sugar and then it's to save her life. And that was a real mind fuck, dude. It was really hard.
1:43:03 Rich Roll? It's like the universe designed this, like the one thing that, you know, is your biggest like trigger and pain point.
1:43:10 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:43:11 Rich Roll? It was like, hey, now you're in a position where you have to do this for your kid.
1:43:16 Speaker 00 And, and, and it actually, um, in a strange way, allowed me to forgive my parents because my parents were doing exactly the same thing. Now, I look at a picture of myself at five and don't see a little kid who's obese and needs to be on a diet, doesn't matter. They did. They saw a situation and they thought, we have to do something about this in the exact same way that I see the situation with my daughter when she's four and go like, fuck, we can't keep juice in the house. And if we do, it's medicinal, you know?
1:43:57 Rich Roll? While also not trying to repeat, you know, like instill that same trauma in her and that fear, right?
1:44:07 Speaker 00 I think impossible not to when you have a four year old.
1:44:11 Rich Roll? She has a disease. Yeah. And yeah, you have to police what she's eating as a result of this.
1:44:16 Speaker 00 I'm now the cop saying, no, you can't eat that. Or if you eat that and I give you insulin for it, you have to eat that now. It was so fucked up.
1:44:27 Speaker 00 And I didn't navigate it perfectly and I battled with it a lot and it was very, very hard and like woe is me, it was hard on her. And she's like very toughened because of it. And she's doing great and but, but we struggled for a long time. I, she wound up going to a boarding school and I had, when she was 12, 13, 14, her continuous glucose monitor would, I had the app so I could look at it. So I knew what her blood sugar was 24 hours a
1:45:07 Speaker 00 day and I would call her panicked five, six times a day going like, why haven't you taken insulin? What are you doing? Or calling a teacher to go, her blood sugar is too low. Go make her drink juice, you know?
1:45:20 Rich Roll? Which is just a different version of what your dad did to you.
1:45:23 Speaker 00 That's right.
1:45:24 Rich Roll? That, that caused that rift.
1:45:25 Speaker 00 That's right. And it was completely insane. And I'll tell you this, in all honesty, her A1C was elevated until I said, listen, I can't do this anymore. I'm going to turn this over to you and whatever happens to you, it's on you. And I think I tried that once, but not honestly. I was still sneaking peeks of her blood sugar and there was no change and I'm panicking and freaking out and thinking my kid's gonna die and it's, and how could I let her die? But when I finally really did it, deleted the app from my phone
1:46:09 Speaker 00 and really said, I'm not gonna even talk to you about this anymore. I think three months later, she had a normal A1C, or maybe it was six months later, but-
1:46:19 Rich Roll? Give her the space to, to take ownership of it and figure it out. I mean, you basically had to do what your wife did for you.
1:46:25 Speaker 00 Yeah. And it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do because I felt like my kid's life was on the line. And it was to a degree, but it wasn't-
1:46:36 Speaker 00 It wasn't my place to be responsible for her life anymore.
1:46:40 Rich Roll? Scary though, that's hard as a parent.
1:46:42 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:46:43 Rich Roll? That's an extreme example.
1:46:45 Speaker 00 Dude, I can't believe that's what the universe gave me.
1:46:48 Rich Roll? I know, it's like, it's perfect.
1:46:50 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:46:50 Rich Roll? You know, it was like perfectly, it's like, how can you not?
1:46:54 Speaker 00 How?
1:46:55 Rich Roll? Have some connection with spirituality. It's like so, so, you know, clear as day.
1:47:00 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:47:00 Rich Roll? That there's like this lesson for you to learn here.
1:47:02 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:47:03 Rich Roll? Um, but on top of that, just being this disciplined person around food and exercise like, but also having had such bad experiences with all of that as a kid and, and, you know, having all kinds of complicated emotions around it. There's no clear line as to how you guide, guide the young people in your house. You know, you don't want to push them in the way that you were pushed, you know, diet, type one diabetic aside.
1:47:32 Speaker 00 I didn't want to push them at all. I wanted to just like, I'm going to be a good example and I'm going to allow you guys, you know, we're, we're, we're very much the house where with, substances, my wife drinks, there's alcohol in our house. She does not have a problem with it. I did not want to create a problem for my kids. And so we were the house that was like, listen, if you guys want to do something, fine, you just communicate with us and you can do it here and we're not gonna yell and scream and tell you you're bad. If you're ever at a party and you don't have a ride home or you're drunk,
1:48:15 Speaker 00 call us, we'll come and get you at any time of the night. There will be no judgment. We don't even have to talk about it if you really don't want to, but please recognize that you're not gonna, we're not gonna judge you for this. And that seems to have worked pretty well. That has been successful.
1:48:33 Rich Roll? That's the most important thing in my experience of parenting. You want to be the person that they instantly call when they're in a problem and they're not hung up about it because you've built that foundation of trust and open communication where they feel safe. Um, and they feel like, you know, the way I was, like the last person I would call as my parent, you know, I'd, I'd call anybody but them, right? Terrified, ashamed, all of that.
1:49:03 Rich Roll? And in order, in my experience, in order to achieve that kind of open communication, where they feel like they're trusted and accepted and all of that, you have to let go of being too much of a taskmaster. You know what I mean? You gotta like, you lead by example. These are the habits and you know, you know, this is how we eat here, or this is kind of, these are the things I do without that like unhealthy expectation or attachment that they have to follow you and hope that they learn over time through osmosis that you know, what you're doing is healthy, or they get to make their own judgments around that while also recognizing like they have to find themselves. And in order to do that, they have to push against you and go out and do other things
1:49:48 Rich Roll? and you have to have space for that.
1:49:50 Speaker 00 It's the realization that you're dealing with another human being.
1:49:54 Rich Roll? Yeah.
1:49:54 Speaker 00 You know?
1:49:55 Rich Roll? Who's sentient and yeah.
1:49:56 Speaker 00 Right. Like there's this.
1:49:57 Rich Roll? Sovereign.
1:49:58 Speaker 00 There's this thing of going like, this is my kid, as though like I have ownership over this and I'm shaping it in my image to some degree and the morals must be the same and the ideas and the points of view about the world must be the ones I instill in this person. And the realization that like, oh no, that's just a human being that I've spent a lot of time with and all I want to do, like my job is to not infect that person with my garbage. That's the biggest gift I can give to my kids.
1:50:32 Rich Roll? So the communication's good.
1:50:33 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:50:34 Rich Roll? These days.
1:50:34 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:50:35 Rich Roll? That's the good thing. You know, the older you get too, it's just like, you just want them to call.
1:50:39 Speaker 00 That's it. Yeah. I check in, chat with them.
1:50:44 Rich Roll? What are the things that, that are still a big struggle for you? That throw you off your game?
1:50:53 Speaker 00 Travel. Travel is tough. I find myself traveling a lot. That throws me off my game a little bit, but it's not, you know, like.
1:51:01 Speaker 00 There is still, you know, there is still this sneaking desire that comes up every now and again that I want to graduate from the program. You know what I mean? That I want the degree and then I want to not have to think about it anymore. And that's really dangerous. And that's something I have to keep in check every now and again. I have to like really bring myself back down and go like, oh, you better check in with somebody, dude, you know?
1:51:30 Rich Roll? Do you, you know, this psychiatrist, Phil Stutz?
1:51:33 Speaker 00 Uh uh.
1:51:34 Rich Roll? I've had him on the show a couple of times.
1:51:36 Speaker 00 Somebody made a movie about him. Yeah.
1:51:37 Rich Roll? Yeah. Jonah Hill made a documentary about him. He's a beautiful, remarkable guy, but he has these three, uh, three truths about life. And, you know, he sees all these like ballers and like high rolling, you know, dudes who are, who have everything and are unhappy, right?
1:51:55 Speaker 00 Right.
1:51:56 Rich Roll? And he's like, most of them are unhappy or dissatisfied with their life because they fail to recognize these, these three fundamental truths of life, which are pain, uncertainty, and the need for constant work. And like I have it on, I have like a bracelet with these things on it. It's like, there's no destination here. You will never conquer uncertainty.
1:52:19 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:52:19 Rich Roll? You'll never like work so hard and amass so much or get to a place where you're not going to have to deal with shit that just goes haywire. There's always going to be pain and you're always going to have to do work.
1:52:32 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:52:32 Rich Roll? And if you can accept that, then maybe you can like meet these obstacles and these challenges with a little more grace because you're not expecting it to be otherwise.
1:52:41 Speaker 00 Don't you think just that meeting them intentionally gets you almost all the way there? Just going like, this is, this is the obstacle. This is the task for today or for my life. But I think that we, or I,
1:52:59 Speaker 00 Was constantly trying to avoid those obstacles by just doing something else, or feeling bad for myself, or using substances, or eating my way through pain and uncertainty and the need to do work.
1:53:13 Rich Roll? Sure.
1:53:13 Speaker 00 Just being aware of it is the game.
1:53:16 Rich Roll? Being aware of it, and I think it does have a lot to do with, especially as like somebody in recovery, like I can get attached in an unhealthy way to almost anything.
1:53:26 Speaker 00 Sure.
1:53:27 Rich Roll? And part of that attachment, whether it's a particular diet or a training regimen, is this implicit promise in it that like if you do this thing, it's gonna, it's gonna fix you and solve your problems, and you won't have to deal with uncertainty. Like there's a, it's the control, right? It's like back to the serenity prayer. Like you're deluding yourself into thinking that you can exert control over your life if you just follow these certain protocols. And even if those protocols are moving your life forward in a positive way, that relationship is unhealthy if it's loaded, you know, with that like false promise.
1:54:08 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:54:09 Rich Roll? And the acceptance piece is like, this is good, I'll keep doing this. But, you know, fundamentally, I'm still in a human body, you know, and, and this is not gonna absolve me of all the pain and uncertainty and difficulty that I'll inevitably have to face in my life.
1:54:23 Speaker 00 I, yeah, I love that. I, you know, I, for the longest time, I was communicating about this only on like Instagram, and it's a picture. And then I would go to write about it, and then you're limited to something. 2,500 characters, which is, you can't, I found, you can't communicate all that much. Now, on Substack, I can write an essay, and it can be as long as I want. And that's, that's the piece, is being able to communicate to people that like...
1:54:54 Speaker 00 I've lost 300 pounds. I'm sober. I'm happily married. I have four beautiful daughters. I have two grandchildren. I consider my life a fairy tale. I look at my life and think it couldn't have gone any better. There is not one aspect of it. And still I struggle every day. And still there's pain and still there's setbacks and still there's difficulty and barriers that I have to overcome. And that's a hard message sometimes to communicate in five, 10 words.
1:55:27 Rich Roll? In a caption.
1:55:28 Speaker 00 In a caption or with a picture.
1:55:29 Rich Roll? Yeah. Your, uh, your Substack is fantastic.
1:55:32 Speaker 00 Oh, thanks.
1:55:33 Rich Roll? And you're a really good writer. Like it's, it's, it's very poetic, the way that you share and so much thought has gone into these pieces that you write. Like this is the perfect platform for you.
1:55:45 Speaker 00 I love it. It's my favorite thing to do because I want to get into as much nuance as possible because that's all I lacked for so long was don't eat carbohydrates. It was this binary, which works for me in sobriety. I love the binary. I love the binary in life. It's very easy to be a yes or no. I'm on this team or I'm on that team. But that doesn't get you there with food because you don't stop eating.
1:56:14 Rich Roll? But you have to meet people where they're at.
1:56:17 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:56:17 Rich Roll? And some people need the binary, you know, they have to do that before they can, they have to do the doing part before you can get to the undoing part.
1:56:25 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:56:26 Rich Roll? And that's where, that's why it's like, it's so difficult. You said it earlier, like I, I'm not here to, I can't tell you what to do or not to do.
1:56:33 Speaker 00 No.
1:56:33 Rich Roll? You know, those are decisions you have to make, which makes it such an intractable problem to solve because we all just want like, Ethan, you did it.
1:56:42 Speaker 00 Well, no, my, my wife, my wife amazingly is like, you tell me what to do all the time, you know, like she'll come to me and I'll say to her, I've known you for 30 years. I know your habits. I know your preferences. I know what your willingness level is. I know that, you know, what, so yeah, I'll tell you what to do because I've got all this data. If I'm sitting with somebody and I can take an inventory of their life, then I'm more than happy to say, you should do this. But. You know, spreading that on the internet, I think, is actually dangerous. I think sending a message out there that everyone should do X devoid of nuance, I think,
1:57:27 Speaker 00 is actually dangerous.
1:57:28 Rich Roll? Yeah, yeah. Which makes it, my, my next question is like, when are you writing a book?
1:57:33 Speaker 00 Yeah, I've, I've written one. But it, but again, it's non-prescriptive. It's very much just, here's what I went through. Here's what I went through in this situation, and here's what I went through in this situation. But, you know, the idea of saying, like, you know, you should food journal. I will say, I found food journaling to be super helpful, but I'm not going to say everybody should food journal.
1:57:55 Rich Roll? Yeah. I think there's the, there's the, here's what I did and why I did it.
1:58:01 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:58:01 Rich Roll? Book, but I think there's another book in you that is a more philosophical approach to all of this, that isn't necessarily a how-to book, but is like a perspective.
1:58:11 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:58:12 Rich Roll? Because I think you have thought about this so deeply and you're so good at putting words to it without being preachy or, you know, overly directive.
1:58:21 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:58:22 Rich Roll? To people. But that's a hard book to write.
1:58:24 Speaker 00 It's a hard book to write. I, I am actually toying with that, with a philosophy professor, with a version of that. But it's, it's amazing that you said that because it is actually, that's the direction we're going in, you know? But it's broader, you know, like for me, when I read Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird or Rick Rubin's The Creative Act, those books to me are diet books.
1:58:53 Rich Roll? Oh, yeah.
1:58:54 Speaker 00 You know? Or, or if I'm struggling with, if I'm having a rough day, you know, if I, suddenly the laws are more lenient and I see a guy shooting up on the corner, and suddenly that idea's in my head, and I open one of those books, those books are about sobriety. Or if I'm struggling with work, those books are about work. So.
1:59:16 Speaker 00 Diet is found for me more in philosophical texts that are talking about being more harmonious with the universe.
1:59:26 Rich Roll? Right. It's not about the food. It's about your relationship with yourself.
1:59:30 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:59:31 Rich Roll? You know, and in order to understand that, you gotta go all the way back to the beginning. And you gotta cast yourself all the way forward and you have to be a Calvinist and a Buddhist.
1:59:39 Speaker 00 Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's tough.
1:59:43 Rich Roll? Yeah.
1:59:43 Speaker 00 And it's, it's, it's doubly tougher when you have somebody telling you just don't eat carbohydrates or lectins or seed oils, that seed oils and red dye 40 are the problem. I, I made the terrible mistake of saying to my family over the holidays that I did not think RFK was going to in fact make America healthy again. And this is not a knock on him. I think he's pretty cool, but I don't think that banning red dye 40 solves the obesity crisis.
2:00:23 Rich Roll? It's a distraction.
2:00:24 Speaker 00 Yeah.
2:00:25 Rich Roll? Nor does beef tallow at whatever fast food. It's like, this is not really getting to the heart of what we really need to be talking about. It's trendy and fun and it gets headlines, but it's missing the bigger picture.
2:00:38 Speaker 00 Yeah.
2:00:40 Rich Roll? You know, also.
2:00:40 Speaker 00 Substituting corn oil for regular sugar. That's not gonna make, you know, that's not gonna kill the Coca-Cola industry, you know?
2:00:50 Rich Roll? Yeah, it's almost like encouraging people to go and eat those french fries and drink the Coke, right?
2:00:55 Speaker 00 Right. That's right. There you go.
2:00:57 Rich Roll? The other piece that I think is worthy of noting with you is that these changes that you've made in your life with food and with fitness are much more than that in that, like when I read your Substack posts or I just being in your presence, it's obvious. Like you're somebody who's just committed to change as a way of being, like growth is your mandate.
2:01:22 Speaker 00 Yeah.
2:01:22 Rich Roll? And that has manifested in your relationship with food and your body and fitness and the like. But what you're, what you're not doing that I see so many people do is get caught up in one lane, like whether it's a particular diet or. A particular, you know, approach to fitness or being a certain kind of athlete. And, and then suddenly becoming an evangelist of that.
2:01:48 Speaker 00 Yeah.
2:01:48 Rich Roll? Cause I think what happens is people make a change. Their life becomes so much better and they're so enthusiastic about it. They wanna shout from the mountaintops to everybody about how amazing it is.
2:02:03 Rich Roll? Because it was so positively transformative. But then what liberated them keeps, it becomes a prison and keeps them stuck. And they just, they stay in that place and they don't continue to grow and evolve and change in all these other ways. And like, for me, I always look at it like, for example, you know, triathlon or ultra endurance sports. Like, this was an incredible teacher. I learned so much about myself, but if I stayed in it and just kept racing and racing and racing, like, the dividend on that starts to get pretty slim, right? Like, how many more lessons am I gonna learn? Like, I can always try to go further or faster or farther or whatever. And, and there's always something to be learned by taking your body to, you know, that, that edge.
2:02:45 Rich Roll? But I have so many other blind spots in my life where I'm a screw up and I trip myself up. And if I stay over here, I'm, I'm really just like in denial or avoidance of that. And I'm trying to always like have the courage to like walk into those areas that I really don't want to.
2:03:04 Speaker 00 Yeah.
2:03:04 Rich Roll? Because that's the impulse that got me on this journey to begin with, right? And it feels like a betrayal to not keep doing, and I'm not saying I do it perfectly. I'm terrible at it. Like, I, I don't wanna do any of this.
2:03:15 Speaker 00 Right.
2:03:15 Rich Roll? But I feel like you're kindred in that, like you're, it's not about the food and the weight and the fitness. It's about like trying to live an expansive life.
2:03:26 Speaker 00 Yeah, it's the idea that, you know, I found with anything that I, I get a, a hankering of like, I wanna do something and if I go into it feeling like I have nothing to learn, that I can just go do it. I, I fail. And so I wanna approach everything as though there's still many lessons to learn.
2:03:51 Speaker 00 In the same way, it can't just be one thing because I will slip into that. I will slip into, I'm gonna just ride my bike. I'm gonna just row on the rowing machine. I'm just gonna do CrossFit. I'm just gonna be a bodybuilder. I'm just gonna do keto. I'm just gonna do, you know, bodybuilder type dieting of chicken broccoli and rice. And none of those present the fullness of life that I actually want. None of those allow me to be the father and husband and friend and business associate that I want to be. And so.
2:04:21 Rich Roll? Yeah, we do these things so that we can show up in our life.
2:04:24 Speaker 00 Yeah.
2:04:24 Rich Roll? In the areas of a life that are, they're actually important.
2:04:27 Speaker 00 Whereas it's very easy to make that your life and lose the rest of it. And, and I've done all that too. I, I neglected my wife and kids. I would ride my bike eight hours a day and then be basically too tired to do anything with them. There were many years where my little kids would bake cookies and I wouldn't take a bite of them because I was being so pious with my diet that that food was taboo for me. And I wouldn't share that moment with them. And I, I look back on that with great regret.
2:05:02 Rich Roll? Right. You're like missing the bigger miracle.
2:05:04 Speaker 00 Yeah. Which is just being present and being the best version of I can, of, of who I am today. With the idea that I'm going to improve and that improvement doesn't have to be radical every day. It can be slight, it can be through reading or exercise or conversing like this for me is an improvement. This makes me better, our conversation.
2:05:30 Rich Roll? There's a soulfulness in your, in your, in your writing as well. You know, like there's a, there's a, your hint without like being direct about it. Like you're, you're always kind of like tiptoeing around or hinting at like deeper meaning here.
2:05:43 Speaker 00 Yeah.
2:05:43 Rich Roll? Cause I'm sure like a big part of your audience are, are some gym bros or some overweight dudes who are looking to you as the lighthouse.
2:05:52 Speaker 00 Right. And the danger would be chicken broccoli and rice, progressive overload. That's it.
2:06:00 Speaker 00 Because that is the truth. But again, I think it's dishonest because I think there's more than that. I think there is soulfulness to be found in all of this.
2:06:10 Rich Roll? What's the one change you know you need to make, but you're afraid to make?
2:06:16 Speaker 00 Quitting nicotine, probably.
2:06:19 Speaker 00 That's probably it, you know?
2:06:21 Rich Roll? Now it's a nootropic.
2:06:23 Speaker 00 Right, exactly. And it staves off Alzheimer's, apparently. There's so many great benefits to nicotine. I've not had a cigarette in 20 years. But I've been woefully addicted to nicotine this whole time.
2:06:38 Rich Roll? Yeah. Well, there you go.
2:06:41 Speaker 00 Yeah.
2:06:42 Rich Roll? You called yourself out. There's no secret around that.
2:06:44 Speaker 00 No, no. I know. I know. I mean, look, that's, that's a very superficial answer. I'm sure we could get really deep.
2:06:52 Rich Roll? Into the deep wounding.
2:06:53 Speaker 00 Yeah, exactly. And I would cry and it would be hard. And then I would confront it and have to do anything about it. But I'm so aware of nicotine that I've said it to you, I'm not going to quit. You know what I mean?
2:07:08 Rich Roll? I got you. We got to wind this up. But I want to leave people with just a little encouragement for the person who's tiptoeing around, making a change, maybe is a little bit afraid, not in the practical sense, but maybe in the orienting their mind around how to approach or encourage them to take that first step and follow it up until they can get a little momentum.
2:07:37 Speaker 00 So I think any point of responsibility that you can put in that's difficult without being truly burdensome as a first step can be magical. When I was 550 pounds, I remember some days just walking past my car door to the end of my car. And that was more than I had to do. And that was enough because that was something and that you can always build on stuff.
2:08:12 Rich Roll? The idea that you could barely walk to your car and then went on to ride every stage of the Tour de France.
2:08:21 Speaker 00 Right, but this doesn't happen overnight.
2:08:22 Rich Roll? Stunning, I know, but it begins with that walk to the car.
2:08:26 Speaker 00 That's right. You know, this is the other terrible burden of a life lived in soundbites and through Twitter where you get however many characters. I don't know, maybe there's no limit now, but I remember when it started, it was 140 characters and you had to like come up with your slogan that communicated everything in two sentences. And it's immediacy and nothing's immediate. None of this is immediate. This conversation wasn't immediate. It took us two hours to get to this, you know?
2:09:01 Rich Roll? And how many years of going back? I don't know when I first reached out to you or how this began, but it happened a long time ago.
2:09:08 Speaker 00 A long time ago. This was a long time in the making, but and this is great. Get rid of immediacy. Allow life to unfold in like this marvelous, mysterious way that it will and take a step in a direction and then just take another step, but don't try to get to the finish line today because there's no finish line. The finish line is death.
2:09:30 Rich Roll? Hmm. You said that you talk about all these things from a selfish perspective, but it really is an act of service. And I think service is your calling and what you're doing right now is needed and incredibly nourishing to a lot of people, you know? It's really, it's a beautiful thing that you're doing and I appreciate you coming here and sharing so openly with me. Yeah, it's, it's super inspiring, man. And I can't wait to see what you do next in this continual evolution and unfolding of your life.
2:10:06 Speaker 00 Yeah, me too. I'm excited.
2:10:08 Rich Roll? It was, it was great to get to know you a little bit. Appreciate it. All right.
2:10:12 Speaker 00 Right on.
2:10:13 Rich Roll? Cheers.
2:10:13 Speaker 00 Peace.
2:10:25 Rich Roll? That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and/or comment. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors who keep
2:11:09 Rich Roll? this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com/sponsors. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis and Morgan McRae with assistance from our creative director, Dan Drake. Content management by Shana Savoy, copywriting by Ben Pryor. And of course, our theme music was created, all the way back in 2012, by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt,
2:11:51 Rich Roll? and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.
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