Rich Roll

and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Speaking of which, Audible is the perfect place to download the book by today's guest, Rich Role. Rich is a forty seven year old accomplished ultra endurance athlete and former entertainment attorney turned full time

wellness and plant based nutrition advocate. He's a motivational speaker, a husband, father of four, and inspiration to people worldwide as a transformative example of courageous and Healthy Living in two thousand twelve, which became a number one best selling author with the publication of his inspirational memoir Finding Ultra, Rejecting middle Age, Becoming one of the World's Fittest Men,

and Discovering Myself. In two thousand thirteen, picking up with the book leaves off, Rich launched the Rich Role Podcast. Be sure to stick around for the end of the interview where Eric promises Rich to try his plant powered diet for the next thirty days and good luck with that. Zimmer. Hey, Rich, welcome to the show. Great to be here, Thanks for having me. Yeah, our pleasure. We're really excited to have

you on today. Our podcast is based on the parable of the Two Wolves, where there is a grandfather and he's talking with his grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle with each other. One is a good wolf and represents things like kindness and love and bravery, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?

And the grandfather says, the one you feed so I'd like to start the podcast off by just asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Well. I think that's a great question to orient a podcast around. Uh. And I will tell you that I feel very qualified to speak on this subject because I know what it's like to feed feed both at different times. Uh. You know, I think that that that in a general sense, that's extremely true. And I'm a guy who at many years

feeding the feeding the bad wolf, if you will. And uh, it wasn't until um I was instant for me in my experience, if left to my own devices, I'm probably gonna feed the bad wolf. And it's not until and sufficient amount amount of pain that I am catalyzed to look in the mirror and kind of perceive myself the way that I really am and and get into a place where I'm actually going to implement any kind of changes, i e. Start feeding the good wolf or I suppose

trying to starve the bad wolf. Right, And maybe for our listeners, you could just spend a minute or two and could you give us the condensed version of of your of your journey. I know you do it a lot, but I think it'd be helpful for anybody who's not familiar with you. Um, I'm forty seven years old. I grew up in a in a middle class household, and all my needs were met. I had parents that loved me and took care of me and looked after me, and sent me to good schools. And you know, I

was a good boy as a youngster. And but I was one of those kids who always kind of felt different than everyone else, like everyone else had the rule book to life that that I lacked. I was very awkward. I was very insecure and self conscious, and it probably wasn't helped by kind of wearing a head gear, you know, or the doncha and a patch over my eye because I'm congenerous. I was born cross side and uh, and

so I was always sort of a loner. Um. And and that changed when I around the age of ten or twelve, when I discovered the sport of swimming, which was like the first thing that I was ever good at in my life, over to that sport throughout high school. And as a result of that, UM that gave structure and purpose to my life and and allowed me to kind of learn about goals and achievement and the importance of hard work. And so by the time I was a senior in high school, I was I was a

pretty successful swimmer. I was one of the fastest high school swimmers in the country, and I got recruited at colleges all over the place, and that introduced me to, uh, the miracle wonders of alcohol. And uh, you know, I'm one of those guys who was an alcoholic from the very first drink. You know, I remember exactly the first time I got drunk, and and you know how it made me feel. And for many years, it was the sort of solution to every problem I didn't know that

I had in my life. You know, it made me comfortable in my own skin. It allowed me to go to a party and talk to girls. Um. You know. But like every alcoholic will tell you, uh, it it works until it doesn't work. And it wasn't long before it stopped working for me, and it started to erode my life. And it started with killing my swimming career. Um. And then I didn't really care about what I was

doing with my life. You know, everything aspirational in my life kind of became eroded and replaced by this idea of just trying to find a way to numb out

from the world. And it got darker and darker. And for a while I was a very functional alcoholic, but I was living a secret, you know, double life, I suppose, And and you know, as the disease progressed that that secret life was no longer so secret, and I got in all kinds of trouble and and you know, jails and institutions, and at the end about sixteen over sixteen years ago, I was sleeping on a bare mattress on the floor and otherwise unfurnished apartment. I was unemployable, I

was untrustworthy. I had alienated all my friends. My family didn't want anything to do with me. And that was really kind of my first, uh moment of truly wrestling with the with the bad world. I suppose. I ended up going to rehab, and I stayed in rehab for a hundred days, like I literally was in a mental institution for a hundred days to kind of sort myself out.

And as a result of really devoting myself to the process of getting sober and creating a foundation of sobriety, when I re entered the world, you know, I really, uh, I really had a new perspective on life and what was important and what wasn't. But at the same time, I was intent upon getting back all those things that I had lost, you know, preparing all the wreckage of my past, and I sort of doubled down professionally to try to get back where I was, you know, I was.

I was on the partnership track at a very prestigious law firm. I had met my wife. We were building the house of our dreams in Malibu Canyon. I had a portion the driveway, and everything looked pretty darn good from the outside, like it really looked like, you know, I'd finally made it. I'd overcome this this disease, and and life was grand. But on the inside, I have to say that I was dying. You know. I was depressed. I was uninterested in my life and really just didn't

have any motivation for anything. I was burned out at work. I didn't aspire to be any of the people that that, uh, you know, that were the higher ups, the partners in the law firm. I didn't want their lives and I felt trapped in this life that I wasn't sure that I ever chose because I had never once asked myself, what what is it that you want out of life? Like what is it that brings you joy? Or what

do you have to offer? You know, those questions were really never part of my life equation, and so I guess you could say on some level, I was kind of having this this midlife existential crisis. And at the same time, I was medicating all of these confusing emotions with terrible foods. You know, I had sort of transferred all of these addictive tendencies onto what a front calls

the window diet. You know, if you can roll down your window and they hand you food through the window, you eat it, you know, And that's that's how I was living, you know, Burger King, McDonald's, Jack in the Box, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, nachos, cheeseburgers, um. And when you're young, you can get away with that, but you know, it

was it was catching out to me. So so nine years old, I'm really confused about my life and and I'm I'm I'm fat, you know, I'm fifty pounds overweight and have no energy or enthusiasm about what I'm doing, and it all kind of came into a crystal focus one evening shortly before I turned forty, when I was up late, having worked late that night, and as I made my way up the staircase to go to bed,

my family was asleep. I had to pause halfway up a staircase like I was winded, you know, out of breath, buckled over, sweat on my brow, tightness in my chest, and you know, it was sort of like this feeling like I was. If I wasn't having a heart attack, I was headed for one soon. And I knew that I needed to make a change and how I was living on every level from diet and exercise to career and everything, because what I was doing, which I thought was what I was supposed to be doing, was simply

not working for me. And my body was rebelling against it, and and it was powerful. Um, it was a powerful moment. And the reason I bring up kind of that that morning that I woke up and decided to get sober is because this, this this moment of being on the staircase was a similar moment, and I realized how powerful

these little events can be. That that when these things occur, and I think we all experience them, in our lives that we have, we have that moment where we can where we're this sort of door opens right for a temporary period of time, and you can either act swiftly and decisively and that will change the trajectory of your life forever, or you can kind of not give it the respect that it deserves in and the moment will pass and you'll be back to doing whatever you were doing.

And I knew that, you know, making that decision that morning when when I realized I needed to go to rehab change my life forever. And this seemed to be very It felt very similar, like I knew that I

needed to do something pretty drastic. And so the idea of just you know, I could have woken up and said, you know what, I really need to eat better, I need to go to the gym or often, but you know, I'm kind of an extreme guy, and I knew that wasn't gonna work for me because it's vague and it's unspecific,

and it didn't hold me accountable to anything. So, uh, Instead, you know, I set about changing my diet almost overnight, you know, wholesale, starting out with a seven day fruit and vegetable juice cleans and playing around with a vegetarian diet and ultimately um after about six months of experimentation, falling into a plant based diet and and that discovery, that single discovery really changed everything for me. I lost the weight, but more importantly, my energy levels went through

the roof. They were so it was so uh, it was so extraordinary and so dramatic, um that it really led me to this question of of how resilient the human body is, because you know, I abused myself horribly for many, many years with poor lifestyle and diet um and lack of exercise and drugs and alcohol, and that in such a short period of time it could rebound and I could feel so good despite the fact that

I was forty years old. Really kind of is the driver that led me on this path um towards some of these athletic feats and goals that that experienced over the last couple of years. But when it first started out, I started exercising again simply because I had so much energy. I couldn't sit still and I just needed to move my body. Uh. And my goals were really simple. They were just, you know, lose a little bit of weight and uh, feel good and be able to enjoy my

children at their energy level. So let me ask you a question about about that that period where you had the sort of the second awakening and you realized, you know, you weren't really happy in your life and you weren't eating well. How act of had you remained in your recovery from alcoholism at that point? Very active? And I remain active, and you know, I've always gone to meetings and you know, work with newcomers and do all the kind of stuff that you're supposed to do, so, you know,

and that goes in waves. Sometimes I'm more active than others, but I'm always very you know, cognizant that that I need to stay on top of my recovery and that has to be my first priority. Um. But I think I was unaware, uh you know, I was sort of unaware of the extent to which these kind of addictive tendencies can spill over and other behavior patterns or or at least I wasn't really willing to kind of deal with those, you know, and and in my case, it

was food, right. And I'm always I always think I'm I'm a recovering, uh recovering alcoholic and addict myself. And I'm always always curious about because there seems to be two sort of perspectives in recovery. One is like, everything you need is found right here in these rooms, and if you just do this, and you know, do it by the do it by the book, you'll have everything

you need. And then there's another school that sort of says, yes, all that stuff is important, but there's a lot of growth that happens outside of there, which is kind of what led me to that question, because it seems for you there was a whole another area of life that still needed explored. Well, sure, I mean certainly. Uh, you know, I think being in recovery was my first experience with the notion of premising your life on spiritual principles, because

before that that was just an athema to me. And I remember being a rehab and being asked the question, are you a spiritual being having a human experience or are you a human being having a spirit having a spiritual experience? And I didn't even know what that question meant when I learned how to answer it, and you know, it was so new to me, But recovery has introduced me to spiritual principles that have been UM in turn led me to explore all kinds of different kinds of ideas.

And I think for me UM in terms of staying sober, like I'm you know, I'm a believer that that that Alcoholics anonymous and the program of recovery works. It works for me UM. And the minute I start to try to replace that with other things, whether you know, for me, a lot of people say, well, you know, you just ultra running is just another addiction. And that's a whole other conversation I can have. But you know I have to.

I have to you know, going out and exercising and doing the training and all of that is certainly an active meditation, and that's an aspect of recovery, but it is not the cure to my disease. And and and my mind wants to tell me that if I just do that, that I'll be fine. In the minute I start thinking that, I get into trouble. So recovery. You know, I'd like to tell you that I always put it first. Um, I don't. But when I don't, that's when I start

to you know, regress emotionally, mentally and spiritually. Right and you you put it first enough so that you remain sober, which is a balancing act for for a lot of us, I think as we integrate a lot more things into our life. Yeah, and there's good days and bad days. As you know, sometimes you're the teacher and sometimes you're the student. More often than not, I'm the student. So

another question. I heard you on the James Altered to Show recently and you were you were talking about you were writing your first book or your only book right now, finding Ultra and you heard then that one of the most famous ultraman out there was writing his memoirs, and

that really sort of made you nervous. And I'm curious if you could tell us a little little bit about how you felt, and then more importantly, kind of what got you through that to go on and continue to do your own thing, because I think that comparison can be a real problem for a lot of people. Yeah, sure of course. Um yeah, I mean to kind of

set the stage for your listeners. And we only got into the first part of the story, so that so ultimately I ended up in going off and racing in these crazy ultra endurance races and doing really well, and that ultimately got me a bunch of media attention, etcetera. And that led to a book deal. So, um, I had a great opportunity to uh write a book for Crown, which is like a top notch publisher, which was this

amazing dream come true for me. Um. And very early on, shortly after I kind of inked this book deal, I found out that Scott Jurich, who's one of the most accomplished ultra runners on the planet, the guy's won you know, every imaginable prestigious ultra race out there, had also just

signed a book deal. And not only was he a much better culture endurance athlete than I am, because quite honestly, I've never even one in multure endurance race, which confused me about how I even got a book deal to begin with, because I'm it's not the story of some

kind of world champion, um. But but also he's a vegan, right, So here you have these two things that I'm going to be writing about that are going to be written about it, that are also going to be being written about by a guy who is better suited to do so than I am. It's sort of out in Hollywood when you you know, two volcano movies come out at the same time. It just seems like that's the way the universe works, right, something in the air or whatever.

And and uh it was interesting. I mean, I know Scott, I don't hold anything against him at all. I was like, I can you, I can't believe it. Really, He's going to write a book at the same time. So it forced me to to really think about why I was writing this book. You know, was I doing it just to pad my ego? Um? You know, what is the

purpose of all of this? But I knew that in order from my book to work, because here I am, you know, for the most part, just kind of an average guy who went out and tackled some adventures and did really well, but certainly can't be considered a world champion. Um. The only way that my book would work or make sense or be helpful or interesting to anybody was going to be the extent to which I was willing to be vulnerable enough to really talk about my struggles and

my failures in an honest and authentic way. And that's to say that, um that, you know, I needed to be able to tap into an emotional through line that people could connect with right and identify with and maybe

see some of that in their own lives. And and that was really the goal from the beginning of the book anyway, but it just made it um made it a lot more challenging personally because I really had to dig deep and and you know, probe my emotions and try to understand what led me to some of the decisions that I've made in my life that have led me astray and uh and be able to paint that

picture in total transparency, which is frightening. You know. Essentially, I had to write the book like I was writing a private in a private journal that nobody was ever going to see. And there would be moments when I when I was writing it where I would just think this is insane, like I can't first of all, who cares? And second of all, the moment I started to think about the book being on a shelf and a store,

I would absolutely panic. And you know that anybody else would would would you know, have the opportunity to read

about my interior life in in such details. So it made but but ultimately I think that's why my book works, and I think that's why my book continues to you know, strike a chord and sell and it's because people read it and they know that I'm not trying to b s them, that I'm just telling a human story and and this sort of you know, overall humanity of it is the thing that is something that we can all

connect with. I really like that that story because it does show that it's easy for us to compare ourselves to what somebody else is doing, but that the path forward is almost always just to be truly ourselves. That's the that's where the that's where something special happens. And

and in your case, it certainly did. Yeah, and I think that that, you know, on the surface level, you look at my book and it's like, oh, here's the story of a guy who was kind of overweight, realized he needed to change his life, adopted a vegan diet, and went off and ran you know, these crazy races.

But but really kind of without hammering people over the head with it, between the lines and what I was trying to express was really much more of a spiritual journey towards authenticity, you know, a process of trying to understand what it was that I wanted to do with my life and how I could express that and that and that journey really being one based on based on faith and and not knowing where this adventure would lead me,

but embracing what my heart was telling me to do. Yeah, I think that's a really interesting part of the story. And you wrote something online recently about it too. And the lines that strike me are you talking about your your out on a bicycle for hours and hours and you can't come up with a rational reason why you should be doing that versus spending more time at work or doing these other things, except that that's what your heart told you you should do, and ultimately it really

led to a new life for you. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean I couldn't have predicted at the time that it would. And you know, I had many moments of of great weakness and tremendous fear and and wondering whether you know, my instincts or my heart were leading me astray as opposed to, you know, towards a healthier kind of um

trajectory for myself. So there was a lot of doubt that went into that um and uh and yeah, I mean to be sitting here talking to you, you know, on the other side of that is amazing to me.

You know, the the idea that that that simply by kind of doing the interior work such that I could get to a place where I felt like I could trust my instincts, even if they were sending me these sort of crazy irrational signals about how I should be spending my time, and then to follow that thread, no matter what the relationship to rationality was, and come out

the other side. I feel very I mean vindicate, it's not the right word, but I feel very I feel very satisfied that I that I chose the right path, that I had the courage to, you know, take the risks that I took, because I took a lot. You know, I have four kids. I've got to have to be responsible to them, and you know, have big life with lots of other people involved that that are relying on me. So it's you know, it'd be different if I was living in a cabin in the woods by myself, but

that's not the reality of my life. So so it was scary time for sure. What I like about it, also, though, is that that you didn't up and just say well, I've decided I'm going to go do this thing and walk off and and leave everybody behind. You found a way to start where you were you you did have a law career, and you found a way to make those things coexist. And the balance is always hard to strike.

But you didn't let those things be excuses, and yet you didn't abdicate responsibility on the other hand, And that's always such a tricky balance. People tend to think they either need to just throw off their old life and start a brand new one completely or they don't do anything. And what I like about your story is you sort of started where you were and made your way through it, and then on the other side life looked very very different. Yeah,

for sure. You know, I'm in together this this sort of online course right now on on how to set and achieve a goal and and so I've been doing a lot of thinking about goal setting and life transformation and you know, not just sort of tools for how you can do that or do that better, but also

what holds people back. And it's it's an interesting thing, and it's it's kind of some contradictory, but because on the one hand, I think it's really important to have a big goal, like, for example, I set the goal I set a goal for myself of racing Ultraman, which was this huge athletic goal, right, and I had to create a lot of structure around that goal and how to work towards it in a responsible way where each day I had certain things that I had to do

that we're going to move me forward. And as long as I stuck to that program, I knew that come race day, I would be as ready as I could. Given me a lot of time, right. But at the same time, I think a lot of people sit around and they wait, they wait, They want to wait until they have it all figured out before they even start, you know. And although I set this goal of training for ultraman uh, you know, I didn't wait until I

had that goal before I ever started running. I started running because I found joy in that, Like, because I just wanted to be outside. I wanted to feel connected to my body the way that I did when I was a kid and I was swimming. It wasn't because I had an objective other than to um kind of tap into a more childlike experience that I had cast aside as an adult um. And so I think in terms of you know, kind of um motivating people or

or catalyzing change. Sometimes you just have to start, you don't You don't need to know where it's leading you. When I first started riding my biking, I didn't know where this was leading me. I was just doing it, you know, and and you and and it's getting comfortable in not knowing and getting comfortable with just being present in what you're doing for the sole purpose of doing it and not for any other kind of objective outside

of that. Yeah, and that leads really well into the next next piece I wanted to talk about, which was an article you recently wrote called why you should stop life hacking and invest the journey. Can you tell us a little bit about Uh? I love that article and I think there's a lot of good stuff and it. Can you tell us a little bit about what you

were getting at there? You know, right now, because of the Internet and Twitter and all these sorts of things, it's very easy for these you know, quote unquote beams to generate a lot of momentum, and those memes create trends. And right now, one of the most popular trends, particularly in sort of health and in business, is the idea of the life hack or the bio hack. And essentially what those are our tips and tools and shortcuts to

create efficiencies in your life. Um, you know, bio hack your body by taking this one supplement to improve you know, brain function, or or or kind of ways to create additional you know, cut things out of your professional life that aren't serving you. And I think all of those

things are great. You know, any any kind of tip or trick or tool that you can use that's going to streamline your life is something worthy of you know, looking into, of course, But that article really is about how there's a whole culture now that has grown out of and around this idea of life hacking, and and my objection to it really is that it seemed to it seems to have become the destination rather than the device.

Uh you know, I think it was popularized by Tim Ferris and all his amazing bestselling books For Our Work Week, for Our Body. He really kind of put it into mainstream consciousness. And and now there's this obsession with life hacks where it's all about the hack rather than why you're implementing the hack, or more importantly, what you're gonna do with the time that gets freed up as a result of using the hack. And I think in the article I use an example like I use an analogy.

I think it was something like, it's like being obsessed with a table saw rather than the process of building

a beautiful piece of furniture. And and it was really a call call to action to UM embrace the journey of life, which is kind of what we're talking about here today, and to understand that anything really valuable in your life or worthy of your time and energy UM is hard, and it's going to be a long road, and and that maybe we should reframe this whole inquiry and start to think of start to embrace the idea that that you know, we should invest all of who

we are and something that we're passionate about, and we should invest less time in how we can shortcut that because at the end of the day, and in my experience, everything uh in my life that has value that I've been successful at has been extremely difficult UM. And I wouldn't have, you know, I wouldn't. I wouldn't want to have earned it more cheaply than I did, you know.

And when I look back over those experiencess, the memories that come up have nothing to do with the finish lines or or that you know, how I felt when I finally succeeded, and they have everything to do with how I felt during the toil and during hard times and what I learned about myself when I had to overcome a challenge. So it's it's us about like you know, you know, it's not about being a hater of the life act as much as it is being a lover of the journey and and what I was trying to do.

And that pieces really encourage people to um to not try to shy away from that. You know, we're hardwired to kind of uh, you know, avoid hard things to be comfortable. And you know, in my life, the only time the times that I feel most alive are when I'm most uncomfortable or when I'm really putting myself out there in a frightening way. Yeah, I really liked the article. I we say on this show sometimes there's there's no

shortcuts to a to a life worth living. And what I liked about the article is you gave a little example of like, Okay, you implement this little hack and you get this little thing done, and then ask yourself, how do you feel? And that really that really hit home for me because it's so easy to make these goals and find a way to get to them, but a lot of times it feels empty on the other side. And what you're what you're talking about is really embracing the process and being all in, and that has a

really different feeling to it. We referenced a little bit they're talking about about being uncomfortable and pushing through discomfort. I was wondering if you could share with us a little bit, because you've clearly got a ton of experience in pushing through discomfort, uh, in your endurance training. Kind of what what has happen opening in your mind? What are the things that you're telling yourself that allow you to push through that, because I think it doesn't need

to be on nearly that grand scale. It can be on getting up and and doing the thing I need to do today, whatever small thing that is. People get stuck all along the line, and so I'm curious how you talk yourself through it. Um. Yeah, there's a couple of things. I mean. And the first thing I would say is that feelings are just feelings, man, you know

they're there. And we talked about this in recovery on all the time, right, you know, we were always trying to avoid uncomfortable feelings um and and that doesn't really work. You know. The only way to kind of navigate a challenging emotional situation that you're in is to allow yourself to feel those feelings and understand that they will pass. But you have to kind of accept them um and

understand that they're not going to kill you. So temporary discomfort, whether it's emotionally or whether it's physically when I'm out training, I know that it's I know that it's temporary, and I know that uh, and I know that it will pass, and I know that it's not going to kill me,

so that that's helpful to me. And the second thing that's maybe the bigger issue is is understanding the distinction between the thinking mind and and kind of your higher consciousness in the sense that you're thinking mind, is that is the idle chatter in your head that's always trying to talk you out of stuff that's always negative, you know, impulsing you with these negative thought patterns. Oh, you should stop, Oh you're not you know, you shouldn't be doing this,

this is not good for you. Or you know, maybe it's okay to go to Burger King and all these kinds of things that is not your higher self, that is not the good wolf talking to you. That's the

bad world for that's the that's the thinking mind. And to be able to draw that distinction between consciousness and thinking and to become an observer of your thoughts and to develop control over the thinking mind, to be able to observe those thoughts and go, well, that's interesting that you're telling me that I should stop running right now because I'm uncomfortable. But I don't have to listen to that message. You know, it doesn't have to control me.

I can control it. And that's hard work to develop mastery over that, certainly something I'm not, you know, the ultimate master. It's a process that that I think the more you can focus on and develop tools around, the better off you're going to be. Uh. You know, sometimes getting through difficult, you know, painful situations and training, it's about breaking it down into smaller chunks too. If I'm running and i'm I try not to think about the finish line or how much longer I have to go.

I just focus on what I'm doing in the moment. I bring my consciousness or my awareness back to the breath, or I just look at the lamppost ahead and say I'm just gonna get to there. I'm not gonna worry about anything else other than getting to there, and then I'll think about, you know, the next lamp post. And the more I can kind of consistently take myself out of the future in the path riot myself in the present, that's really helpful to me in in kind of acclimating

to the temporary pain and getting through those situations. Excellent. That was I like that breaking it down into into small time saving. It's sort of one day at a time, divided by as many divisions as you need to get it to a manageable, manageable size. So um, I think we are at the end of the questions I had. I did you and I talked briefly before this, and one of the things that I'm gonna do is, uh, I think I'm going to embark on I'm gonna take you up on the offer in your book of try

the entirely plant based diet for thirty days. So similar to you, I don't do very good with vague plans like I'm going to try and eat better. I need a very clear goal and objective. So that's what I'm setting for myself. So I'm any any tips to get out of the gate for me? Yeah? Absolutely. I mean, first of all, I'm thrilled that you're gonna try. I'm so excited for you, and uh, I can't wait to hear how it goes, and hopefully we will We'll have

some chatting back and forth because I want to help you. Uh, I want to help you through it. So I'm pretty excited about it. And I think one of the things that that helps me, I mean I think that I think it actually is going to be helpful, uh to you to rely on some of some of the principles of recovery with respect to your diet um and I use them quite a bit with respective food and and

plant based eating. You can kind of think of it, um. Well, the first thing I would say is focus on focus on it being a fun adventure and not some kind of deprivation. You know, focus on all the fun, new, exciting kind of things you're going to do with food and these new foods you're gonna explore and bring into your life, rather than what you're not eating. Oh, I can't eat this, I can't eat that. You know, what

am I gonna do? Without cheese and just pace your mind ahead of yourself and think about all these cool new things you're gonna do. Um. That's the first thing. The second thing is is, uh, you know, being being in recovery, you know how to set rules around habits, right, so you're either using or you're sober. There's no gray area, right. You can't like use once in a while and say that you're a sober person. It doesn't work that way.

And with eating a plant based diet, you can just say, all right, well, you know meat and dairy and you know processed foods, most processable, so those are like that that that's my drug of choice and I'm not going to do that. You know, I'm gonna eat all these other foods. I'm not going to starve. I'm actually gonna feel better. But those are just for boating, like those are just they're they're they're not even negotiable in the

same way that alcohol is not is not negotiable. And I think if you kind of rely on the tools that you've developed personally for yourself around drugs and alcohol and kind of apply them to those particular food groups that are not serving you, um, I think that's a great kind of way to look at it. All right, well, um, thanks so much rich for for joining. It's been a great talk um, and I look forward to keeping in

touch with you as I go through this next thirty days. Yeah, absolutely so keep me posted man, and I'm here for you, alank for having me on ye take care alright, bye bye bye. You can learn more about Rich Role and this podcast in our show notes at one you feed dot net slash rich Role. Oh and by the way, we've been getting a lot of great letters and comments and reviews and we'd love you to keep that up if you could. If you haven't reviewed us on iTunes,

please get out there and do that. And uh definitely email Eric RAI do you have anything to say? And thanks, see you next time.