Rich Roll on The Plantpower Way

welcome everyone to the school greatest podcast i got my man rich roll in the studio what's up brother what's up dude good to see you pleasure to uh hang with my brother yeah i'm excited and you've got a new book called the plant power way i'm going to show the camera really quick because this is a video podcast as well plant power away with yourself and your wife that's right what was it like writing a book with your wife co-author with my wife uh julie's amazing julie pie is her name yeah she uh she brought the magic for this one yeah i mean this is this book my first book was a memoir so it was just me writing it finding ultra but this one is really a lifestyle guide kind of a lifestyle primer as well as a cookbook and julie uh is a magician in the kitchen she's an artist and she really uh brought the heat to create something special so yeah it was interesting you know i'm like as a writer i like to hide out you know like do my thing in isolation and this was very much a collaborative effort not just with her but with the whole thing you had to work with her as opposed to be an introvert exactly yeah which is my default right um but it was great you know it was uh you know we were sort of a yin and a yang and kind of what we brought to the equation and i really think that that's what is going to make it really special i like it man and it's all uh whole food plant-based recipes but also lifestyle stuff as well right yeah i mean it's uh you know i'm a plant-based guy i've been plant-based for eight years and our family we've got four kids and our nephew lives with us we've got a lot of people in our house right and uh and you know we're a plant-based family but this really isn't uh it's not it's not a book for vegans it's really oriented around just the modern family you know it's sort of like people that are just trying to eat a little bit better live live a little bit better make better choices people who don't have the time to go online and research nutrition you know they know like yeah i should probably buy organic but like does it matter and you know i've heard of gmos but like what's the deal like we tried to make everything really elementary and simple and and also create just super delicious food you know whether you're a vegan whether you're a meat eater or vegan or whatever to be able to put really great dishes on the table that are going to please everybody including your kids you know it's sort of like the question that we get all the time is how do i get my kids to eat healthier you know they're they're eating macaroni and cheese and all that kind of stuff so there's a lot of information and kind of tips and tools and resources to help create healthier sustainable trajectories because sustainability everybody can go on a diet but like how do you actually shift your lifestyle and make it stick yeah i like it man and you know for those that don't know your story you've been on the podcast before so we'll have that episode linked up but for those that don't know your story if you want to give a quick recap to how you got into the whole plant-based living in the first place yeah sure uh i'm 48 years old right now um but about eight years ago when i was 39 uh i was tipping the scales a little bit heavy i was about 50 pounds overweight uh working as a corporate lawyer kind of toiling away the 80 hour work week riding the elevator up and down and kind of living that lifestyle and i was having a little bit of an existential crisis about my place in the world like i you know i was married and i was building family and of course i i love them but at the same time i just felt like i was on the wrong path professionally and it was confusing it was almost like vertigo because my whole life had been premised on this idea of you know get good grades get get into the best college like then go to law school and get the best law firm job and like when you kind of you know are on the precipice of being a partner in a big law firm you think well i did everything right uh this is this is what i was promised my whole life was going to make me happy and i wasn't i was not fulfilled and i looked around me at the people i was working with and i just didn't aspire to have any of their lives and so i was having this kind of you know kind of internal crisis about what i was doing with myself and meanwhile i wasn't taking care of myself i was eating uh what i like to call the window diet right right you can pull your car up to a fine dining establishment roll the window down and they hand you food that's what you eat so i was subsisting on you know cheeseburgers and french fries and nachos and pizza and taco bell and all that kind of stuff for years and years and years and it was starting to catch up to me you know 50 pounds overweight and then one night uh shortly before my 40th birthday walking up a simple flight of stairs i had to pause i was winded out of breath shortness of breath tightness in my chest one of my brow and i honestly thought i was having a heart attack and i realized in that moment that i needed to change how i was living and that really began the journey of exploring healthy foods and healthy lifestyle habits um i ended up adopting a plant-based diet which you know look you know i'm the last person in the world that ever thought i would go vegan like for me like vegans are like guys that kick the hacky sack and yeah smoke a lot of dope and like have dreadlocks you know which is fine that's cool that that was that's not my trip you know so i never identified with that but when i started eating whole foods plant-based foods i really started to feel so much better like incredibly better i had a lot of energy too resurgence of vitality i could have never predicted and it really kind of solved that equation of food as medicine you know hippocrates said it in 340 bc and right of course i'd heard that quote uh you know growing up but i never really thought about it and i was starting to realize like wow we really can impact how we feel and how our bodies function and how our minds operate and how we interact with other people based upon the things that we're putting in our body right it's so elementary right but i don't know that we really take that um to heart enough and so that's that's what happened to me and i you know it's a long story and we talked about it in the last podcast but ultimately i ended up becoming an ultra endurance athlete and uh i started killing it in these crazy super multi-day you know double ironman distance triathlons and in 2010 i did something that no one else had ever done which was do five ironman distance triathlons on five hawaiian islands in under a week wow so and that kind of they take like 24 hours don't they uh no i mean an iron man or triathlon yeah so so a single iron man for your listeners who might not know is a very long triathlon which in a period of one day you do a 2.4 mile swim 112 mile bike and then run a marathon so i did five of those in a row on five different islands like traveling you did five iron man's five iron man's on five hawaiian islands in a week the goal was to do it in five days we ran into a bunch of problems and logistical challenges and sleep deprivation and all kinds of craziness uh wow but we got it done and no one it was i did it with my buddy jason lester no one had ever tried it before so it was it was sort of a cool kind of thing and to do that at age i was 44 at the time when i did that um was a really cool thing and that's kind of like what my first book was about kind of going from couch potato schlubby lawyer guy to you know middle-aged uh ultra endurance right why do you think uh eating a plant-based diet is so intimidating for a lot of people because there's this new trend and people are going vegan and people are starting to just live off of you know plants but why is it so intimidating well i think it's intimidating for a number of reasons i mean the first thing is is it sounds like a huge deprivation diet like oh my god you know how can i go a day without eating cheese or you know how can i you know go a day without eating a cheeseburger and and these kinds of foods animal products find their way into most of the things that people are eating on a typical western diet um and so i think that right off the bat people are like whoa not so fast right now that's kind of that's kind of scary and by the way we've been told our whole lives that if you want strong muscles you need to eat you know beef is what's for dinner and milk does a body good and you know i certainly believed all those things my whole life so it was really kind of um anathema that that you could not only like breathe air in and out of your lungs but actually be an athlete without eating those things uh was something i would have never predicted and so you know part of my message is that uh you know plant-based foods are incredibly healthy and and they contain everything that you need to live and also you know and this is what the plant power away is really about is it doesn't have to be a deprivation thing like we look at we try to we always say focus on all the new exciting foods um that you're bringing into your diet like nutrient-dense uh foods that are super healthy for you uh as opposed to focusing on the couple things that you're giving out that you're giving out right gotcha and what would you say are the highest performance foods out there um interesting uh well i think performance from the perspective of being an athlete i mean just running optimally in your life but also giving you the most energy the most recovery benefits that you know whatever it may be i think that uh making sure that you're getting lots of dark leafy greens into your diet you know we're all talking about kale these days at least in los angeles yeah it's all about kale so uh i always start my day with uh with a smoothie um a blended smoothie and like our high-powered vitamix blender that usually contains spinach and kale and things like that and they're so rich in phytonutrients and micronutrients and they just energize you they just like instead of eating like a really heavy like breakfast of like waffles or something like that chicken and waffles man it's so cute i know it is i know look i know man um but to start your day by like drinking a salad and just you can almost feel your body coming alive you know it's it's a it's it's a miraculous thing so i always say to people like if you're gonna just don't worry about vegan or plant like you're 100 whatever just like start drinking blended dark leafy green smoothies in the morning and like watch your watch your life body change your body change well i mean i think it's it's your body yes it's your energy levels but as you know uh you know when you have good energy that affects everything it affects how you perceive the world it affects how you interact with people your mood yeah your mood stress levels ripple effect of that applies to everything in your life yeah that's true what um tell me what are a couple other foods besides the dark greens i like i like to eat a lot of lentils and and beans they're very high in protein so as an athlete that's important of course sure um i also uh i'm a big fan of veggie burritos that's like my go-to lunch veggie burrito and a pinch yeah in a pinch when you're driving around town i can always especially in los angeles i can always find uh you know rice and beans and guacamole right right what else i mean i'm i love super foods there's a lot of talk about superfoods i don't think there's any superfood that's a panacea and i think a lot of people want to jump on the superfood bandwagon before they've cleaned up their diet i look at that as like the cherry on top of the sundae like when you're eating super clean then superfoods can give you that added that added edge so like cordyceps i love athletic performance spirulina which is the highest protein content by weight of any food on the planet including really including beef spirulina is good yeah we could have a whole podcast about super foods but wow next time the next book um okay so juice versus um non-juice is it better to juice your salad or blend yourself i like juices versus blending yeah we get that question a lot too and i think uh they both have their place you know i think that if you're what if you're blending your drink like you're putting you're putting all that you're packing all these foods you know beets spinach kale hemp seeds flax seed you know all these kinds of things into a blender and you're you're blending it down into a drinkable form so you're getting all the fiber you're getting like all the nutrients they can be very calorie dense because you're getting the entire food in there right they're almost like an incredibly super packed nutrient-dense meal sure a juice extracts the fiber from the food from the fruit or the vegetable so it's a very highly concentrated dose of phytonutrients and i look at juicing more as medicinal you know i think you got to be careful with juices especially when juices are very high in fruit because the sugar content can be super high so they both have their place they just have different purposes gotcha but you shouldn't you're saying you shouldn't have like a bunch of juices every day or you shouldn't just live off of a juice down well i think it depends on what kind of like if it's just pure if it's pure klg you know as opposed to orange juice you know and i think there's also a difference between you know the kind of juices that you'll see in los angeles that like creation juice or you know blueprint juices these very high kind of like you know artisanal you know organic juices that can be very expensive you can make them at home for super cheap with your own with your own juicer um so i think it depends on what kind but i think you do have to be a little bit more cautious about just you know pounding juices all day long gotcha okay cool um so let's say you know i'm surrounded by a lot of healthy athletes all over the place i work out with healthy guys who are shredded six packs you know ripped super high energy throughout the day who aren't vegan who aren't plant-based right so why should someone who is already super healthy consider a plant-based diet yeah that's a great question and the first thing i would say is like if it's not broke why fix it yeah i mean the first thing i would say is i'm not here to tell anybody what they should or they shouldn't eat that's everybody's own personal choice i'm here to share my experience and how you know my life had changed by adopting a plant-based diet so that's the first thing so yeah i'm not here to proselytize any one perspective on the other end i think everybody's different and the first person to recognize that the second thing i would say is that just because you're shredded doesn't mean that you're healthy you can look super fit you know like it's it's surprising actually if you look at professional athletes and start to talk to them about what they're actually eating like there's still a long way to go in terms of yeah so i look at it in terms of long-term lifestyle and health and longevity especially as i start to get older if somebody's feeling super great you know i'm not going to tell them they need to change what they're doing and i would say that it's not that eating a plant-based diet will inherently make you a better athlete but i will say this and this has been my experience that the typical western diet or a diet i should say that is sort of high in animal products dairy and processed foods which is becoming a bigger and bigger problem obviously tends to be very acid forming on the body and we have to work very hard to maintain an essentially neutral ph in our body like our all of our systems try to regulate you know our ph to keep it in neutral and the air that we breathe the amount of sleep that we get the amount of stress in our lives and particularly the foods that we eat can influence that ph and so when you're eating a diet that has a lot of processed foods and a lot of animal products in dairy that's very acid forming and then the body has to work go into hyperdrive to bring the ph back to neutral and to do that it has to leach minerals out of the bones and it produces a lot of inflammation and as you know as an athlete inflammation impedes recovery so uh the quicker you can recover in between workouts the harder you can go you can go the longer you can go the less likely you are to get injured the less likely you are to over train to you know miss workouts so it's not that overnight you're a better athlete but when you protract that out over a course of a number of seasons or years you're going to realize tremendous performance gains by eating a very uh like anti-inflammatory diet or a more alkaline forming diet and plant-based foods on the on the whole on the average i mean there's certainly there are plant-based foods that are acid forming but on the whole it's very alkaline forming and very anti-inflammatory sure so that's allowed me to go i mean when i trained for my first ultraman which is a double ironman race that it's like a 320 mile triathlon that circumnavigates the big island of hawaii the first time that i attempted it was in 2008 and i really only had seven months to prepare for it and i really think that i was able to drop all the weight and go from essentially a couch potato guy to ultraman in such a short period of time is because i was eating in this particular fashion completely cut everything out all dairy i mean all meat products all meat products all dairy uh and essentially all processed foods i mean i would eat you know coconut oil and olive oil and things like that are are technically processed foods right you know trying to reduce as much as possible the extent to which any of the foods i was eating was processed okay if you could uh go back um and tell your pre-vegan self one thing about health that from all that you know now what would you tell that person um one thing about health or a couple things for all the information you know now and you can go and talk to that guy you know five years before he's he stopped eating all the bad foods what would you say that you know about health i think the biggest thing is is is a very general thing which is that we all have so much greater control over our health than we've than we're then we sort of walk around believing like we sort of um abdicate our health choices to our doctor and we think that our doctors know everything and you know the truth is is that you know really in medical school they don't really teach nutrition it's like an elective course most of them don't know any more about nutrition than the average person who spends a little bit of time researching it sure and my my my call to action really is to take control of that decision-making process for yourself and understand that uh that you can dictate um your longevity and your emotional state and your physical state by making better choices and not just by doing it in a short-term way but doing it in a way that works within the construct of your life so that it's sustainable and i think that um that uh that what was i gonna say i lost my train of thought um simply the idea that uh i know what i was gonna say that there's a lot of people that walk around they're in poor health and they go well it's genetics you know i'm genetically disposed to to have this or to be like this and so they take a medication and you know our doctor told me i need to take statins yeah and and what i think most people don't realize is that these medications are not curing their ailments they're just they're basically taking care of the symptoms so that people can walk around and not have to think about what actually led to this problem so it's about getting back to um really healing yourselves and being preventive in your approach to health so that you don't get into that situation to begin with and to understand that you can reverse so many conditions i mean right now louis we're in this crazy uh time uh where people like you and i are super into health and we like to talk about it we have audiences that that enjoy hearing about it but the truth is is that um we've never been more sick as a society one out of every three people will die of a heart attack wow 70 of americans are obese or overweight and by 2030 70 70 oh my gosh and by 2030 50 of americans will be diabetic or pre-diabetic like that's crazy that's crazy unless we do something about it and the greatest irony in all of this is that 80 to 90 of chronic illnesses like those and others are reversible or preventable reversible through simple diet and lifestyle alterations that we can control these things if these are reversible and preventable then why aren't doctors educated on food as medicine and why aren't they being you know why isn't this a mandatory lessons that they need to learn in school as like you know a serious thing that they need to be educated on you're appreciative of the choir i mean i don't get it part of this is part of why just drugs yes this is part of my advocacy and and part of my mission is to help uh you know make that that be the protocol you know and there are amazing doctors out there right now who are doing incredible work doctors like neil barnhart and dr esselstyn and dr dean ornish and and many many years of rankings she's amazing yeah there's there's there are there is a a trend and i think the the reason why it doesn't exist right now is purely uh economics you know right now and especially in terms of big medicine and big pharma and kind of how research gets funded like there if there's not some ip at the end of this road that we can patent and sell as a drug who's going to throw a ton of money at uh you know trying to figure out if broccoli is good for you like there's there's no money to be made by that so we need to rethink our whole process of medical education and it really does need to get prioritized to be on functional medicine and preventive medicine and you're starting to see it changes at the beginning of so it's an exciting time and i guess you know the pharmaceutical companies can't make money unless people are sick right everyone's healthy they're broke right and and if you talk to a doctor there's a lot of pressure for them to see as many patients a day and to just diagnose and prevent prescribe you know and that's that's it's not that they're they're not bad people they're they got into medicine because they want to help people but they have bills to pay and this is just kind of the way it's set up and i so so i think that you know unless you're an outlier unless you're someone like frank lippman who's trying to create you know these functional medicine clinics and do something a little bit different it's very difficult so it's a systemic problem that we need to look at what can the average person do about that to support they can start to uh tend to themselves in a mind-body spirit way you know they can start to explore things like meditation and yoga and healthy eating and functional movement and functional body strength like all of these things are important it's not just you know health begins and ends with what's on your plate you know there's nothing more powerful that you can do to change how you feel about yourself than what you're eating right but i think that's just the beginning you know there's a whole um pantheon of lifestyle practices that you know i'm continuing to learn about and explore that are improving my life what's the things you're learning lately well meditation for me has been the biggest like watershed past year and you know i've been meditating on and off for the better part of 17 years but i've always struggled with trying to find a way to make it stick and be consistent about it and the busier i get the more difficult it is to kind of the more conversations and excuses you come up with of course you know and like look you know i got a bunch of kids i got i got a lot of stuff you got four or five kids four kids and my nephew lives without yeah like we got there's a lot of energy in my house yeah yeah so it's very easy for me to say i don't have time but what i found i've really made it a priority this year to do it every morning and so what's your daily ritual looks like so 20 minutes in the morning without fail uh and it's it's a it's a simple breath practice and i've been playing around with the headspace app which has really helped me a lot i have that but i haven't used it yet yeah it's great because it just kind of it's a i have it right on my iphone you know what i did i put it down on the the dock at the bottom is one of the four main apps so i always see it and uh and it's just it's it you know i like i like the the practices that they offer on the app they're very um accessible and and there's not a lot of woo in it andy put a comb who who is the guy behind headspace records all of the um all of the meditation programs on there and they're they're very easy to follow it just makes it easy and like it holds me accountable so i think accountability is a huge thing with with changing lifestyle practices and so yeah there you go that's basically yeah but you haven't logged in yet you guys got it you gotta like create your account you got the app that you haven't used i never used anything yet uh yeah it's like anything like i have it so i think that i'm doing it but i'm actually not doing it well i actually do a pretty good you know meditation for i think it's about 12 minutes in the morning and then at night but so you do 20 minutes using headspace yeah it's just a guided meditation basically it's a guided meditation yeah it's breathing it's breath there's some visualization and they have all different kinds of programs depending upon you know what you like if you want to if you're having problems with stress or sleep or whatever you can pick choose but the point really is just that you're doing it not that you're adhering to so i think a lot of people are like well i need to i need to this the perfect practice i need this to be right it's the same thing with exercise well i can't go out and run until i have the perfect pair of running shoes these are all like barriers and excuses to actually just doing it and i've just noticed that um it really has uh improved my life in every single way by just making it cons consistency is king in the last year you started this right 20 minutes in the morning what's the biggest benefits you've seen since doing this um being able to navigate through a lot of uh stimuli coming at me you know like yourself like i'm sure you get a million emails and you're like you're doing all these podcasts and you're you're juggling a lot of different things you're writing a book like these are all things that i'm doing as well and it's very very easy for me to get overwhelmed and stressed and stressed and then and then i'm not productive because when i'm doing one thing i'm thinking about the other thing that i'm not doing and it's allowed me to just ground myself and just um focus better and be able to navigate relationships phone calls emails and all that that kind of thing with um a little bit more grace and ease right and and just my interactions with people are better i'm more present i'm more focused and as a result like that 20 minutes that i spend in the morning turns into you know maybe two hours of save time because i'm more productive throughout the day let's talk about presence how many uh how does food affect our presence during the day and how present we are in moments a lot you know i think that uh and is there research backing this well i mean look let's let's just talk about anecdotal research like if you go out and eat like a heavy lunch like what how's the house you know from food coma yeah you're like you're down and out for a good 90 minutes yeah so what if you could eat something for lunch that would actually make you feel better after you ate it than before you ate it it's important to come back and and and really and just hammer for the next two hours and get a bunch of stuff done rather than then like kind of be like sleepwalking for a little bit so you know there you go you don't need any more than that for me but i think also um you know having maintaining a high level of energy throughout the day so you don't have these peaks and valleys like look man you throw down a monster drink or a red bull and smoke a cigarette and then you know like you're up and down you're bouncing off the walls you're crashing you're high you're all these different things but just to be able to acclimate to just a you know uh just a really solid good level of energy that's consistent from the moment you wake up in the morning to the moment get out of bed i like it man what other rituals are you doing besides meditating in the morning meditating in the morning do you cook all your own foods or do you go out and eat uh you know plant-based foods orders a little bit of both i mean usually we cook at home and you know my wife is the artist because she's got kids yeah she's got a cookie she gets all the credit for the cooking she's unbelievable her food is so unknown i mean this is all her food on the couch yeah these are all that's the other thing with this book like we didn't go out and hire some chef to like create recipes for for uh you know to create a book these are all very authentic to the way we live to the food that we give our kids and you know my wife really is quite the genius of that so right right so usually we're eating at home and what we do is we make we make uh we make a priority out of the family meal it's a ritual we involve all the kids in it and it's you know it's getting back to um you know the beauty and um just the value of sharing that time together the process of making the meal yeah making it into a thing and and when you look at the cultures that uh have the most longevity have you heard of the blue zones book yes okay so dan buettner who's the guy behind the blue zones he's a a national geographic fellow he's a friend you should have him on the podcast yeah it's like the happiest people in the world i'll hook you up he's gonna be great he's amazing um and he went around the world and studied where are the people the happiest and where do they live the longest yeah and from that he extracted um and he found these blue zones across the world like okinawa and ikaria which is an island in the aegean japan right yeah that's okinawa and you know a bunch of other like sort of remote places and he went to these cultures and he studied them and he said what are they doing that we're not doing isn't there one in like north carolina as well or something or there's one no there's one in loma linda in southern california yeah yeah that's a blue zone it's a blue zone because um because it's all vegan yeah they all they all eat that's a big part of it well it's very it's a it's a um it's a religious community and and they all eat plant-based they live based on the principles in the but there's some there's a passage in the bible that basically says you should eat plants from the i don't know exactly what it goes but yeah um and they and they're a very tight-knit community and they're very family oriented so he kind of divined these principles out of these cultures and and you know eating predominantly plant-based food was a big part of it but also like respecting your elders and keeping them around and creating community and and really keeping the family tight and the family meal is a big part of that so we try to practice that in what we're doing but we eat out my son my oldest son tyler it was his 20th birthday last night so we went to gracias madre which it's the best right it's so good it's like you know we're in this time right now where where people are are understanding you know the beauty and the power of eating plant-based or mostly plant-based and there are restaurants cropping up uh gracias madre is one of them it's a completely yeah crossroads is unbelievable so good they're they're plant-based restaurants but they don't advertise as being vegan they just have better foods so good you know crossroads is probably the best restaurant in l.a it's amazing you know i go there is a genius who's the chef there so good so that's the way that you are ultimately going to get people to shift their lifestyle habits to eating better is by making the food just taste better yeah not one there's not one thing place where it says this is a plant-based restaurant it's a vegan restaurant they just give you amazing food that's delicious so good and you're like oh that didn't have meat in it that didn't have dairy in it i would have never known i went to uh i mean i don't know if you know bill glaser but he's a friend of mine i think you've connected the email yeah yeah and he takes me to a crossroads that's like the only place he want to go out together and be with mary to eat and we went to have brunch one time for like sunday brunch and the chicken and waffles was unbelievable man i was like i could eat this you know every sunday it was so good not only that like if you're visiting la and you want to see movie stars oh they're everyone's constantly there yeah constantly that's crazy um you talk about cooking being an art form what's that all about i think that that cooking and this is this is a better question for julie a great guest you should have her on too um she you know she's an artist she's a painter she's a sculptor she's a musician and she approached food just as any other medium it's an immediate it's a medium to express yourself it looks like art you know yeah looks like and when you approach food from that perspective of what can i create what how can i combine these things to create something different and new new and how can i infuse this with my love like my positive energy to then you know deliver to somebody else in service to say please enjoy this that's a beautiful secret thing you know and i think that's something that we should honor and take seriously as opposed to just trying to whip something up quickly yeah instead make it like a hobby something fun this crazy convenience lifestyle where everything is about speed and how fast i can eat and we and we're just eating on the go you know and there's really something to be said uh to just stopping and saying let's really be grateful for what we have in front of us the blessings that we have i mean look at the world that we live in i mean we're so lucky man it's amazing we're so lucky human beings have never you know in the history of humankind like we've never had it so good it's amazing and yet we walk around resentful and we're pissed off because this guy didn't call us back or whatever it is you know just to like stop and say you know for right now this is what we're doing yeah and let's just be present with it i like it you talk about in the book the three lifestyle paths to living plant-powered and it's vitality performance and transformation can you talk about those yes so throughout the book i mean you know it is a cookbook there's 120 plus recipes in there whatever but but really the the the the um what distinguishes it i think is really all the lifestyle guidance and so throughout the book we've created three lifestyle paths for people that are kind of new to this idea like well i've never really thought about you know eating plants and you know i don't and we wanted to create three programs based upon um you know what your interest might be like if it's a guy like you lewis you're an athlete you don't really need to lose weight but performance is what's going to motivate you so this is a guide that will kind of key code throughout the book um the recipes that you're going to want to pay most attention to and we have kind of a day in the life here's a typical here's a typical way of eating and conducting yourself throughout the day that includes meditation in the morning that's going to help you unlock your inner potential that might still be a little bit dormant because you haven't quite explored foods to the extent that maybe you should and then the other ones transformation is for people that really need a complete whole reboot to their life like maybe they're super overweight or they've been sick years ago yeah exactly and they're like ready to just go full bore and do it hardcore because they want to they want the whole shebang and they need it because they're they're at a place in their life where they're ready they're willing to make that kind of a sacrifice and a change their life depends on it otherwise i'm gonna have a heart attack at some point right and then the other one is just for really living uh sustainably and more balanced yeah and so it's not you know it's not for anything super dramatic on either side of it it's just like i want to be more balanced than i am and you know i think a big part of the book and a focus of it too that we haven't really touched on is sustainability um sustainability in healthy lifestyle practices and eating practice practices but also kind of getting out of ourselves and our selfish concerns about how we feel and and and really contemplating uh what's most sustainable for the planet because and that's when you look at that well you know when we everybody wants to be a good environmentalist right like you know maybe i shouldn't use so much gas i should ride my bike and we recycle we're doing all these things now to kind of be better citizens than maybe we were 30 years ago right but there's a lot of stuff that i think people don't realize and when you kind of take a look at how we produce food to arrive on our plates it's it's quite eye-opening um you know uh when you look at animal agriculture just the business of raising animals for food it's incredibly wasteful and crazy it exerts an extraordinary toll on the planet so we all look at like fracking and um and you know the extent to which we're dependent upon fossil fuels but the truth is that animal agriculture is far more detrimental to the planet than i think it's like uh animal agriculture accounts for uh something like 13 or 18 of all greenhouse gas emissions which is more than all of transportation combined and then you look at it when you look at um the extent to which the rain forests are being destroyed the amount of water use it takes 660 gallons of water to produce one hamburger like if you're just an economic an economist and you look at this you're like this is crazy this doesn't make any sense like we're wasting so many resources to take this little animal and blow it up into a huge animal that we can eat for food um and you know the runoff the the methane everything you know it's it's it's basically creating species alcohol blooms in our oceans where no life can live and really it's it's really insane there's a movie that i'm involved with called cowspiracy it's documentary that takes a look at um what animal agriculture is really doing to our planet it's going to be coming out this spring on netflix and look for that which is really it's really quite amazing when you look into that and so what what what my message is and what the books messages is like let's be a little more conscious of our choices like it's not just about what i need or what i want or what tastes good like we have a greater responsibility to sure our planet and i think we all need to kind of really honor that a little bit more yeah so you're not telling people you have to eat vegan plant-based but if you're going to choose meat be conscious about it and eat in a sustainable way the best way possible yeah i mean i think we all have a responsibility to try to uh increase the extent to which we're living sustainably right i like that a couple questions left uh what are you most grateful for rich what am i most grateful for the moment right now i like it you know what about your life recently yes i am uh well i'm really grateful to be living my authentic truth and i'm very grateful that um as a result of some things i've been working on very hard that that i found an audience that cares about these things and i really do think it's making a difference so i'm grateful to have found a way to be of service you know and i find a lot of gratitude in service um and i was reflecting as i was driving over here about the first time that we sat down for our podcast yeah and it was almost two years ago and i remember coming into your apartment here and you had a you got a crappy little you had a crappy little mic you know and i started i had a little bit of table start on you yeah i was like come on man let's get you a good mic you know let's sort you out and then to see uh where you are now like i'm just i'm so proud of you and i just marvel at what you've been able to do uh with this show and all the things you're doing and i think that that you know when i look at you and i think about other people that are trying to make a difference i think about what they're doing but more importantly how they're doing it and why they're doing it you know because i think the how and the y is just as important if not more important than the what yeah and i really respect the how and the why of what you're doing and i couldn't be happier for you for the growth um and so when in my practices whether it's through my podcast or the books that i'm writing and the public speaking and all of that i'm always thinking about the the how how am i doing this i know what i'm doing but how am i doing it and always bringing it back to the why and the why always comes back to service and the more grounded i am in service and genuinely honestly being in that place of just wanting to help and serve then my life flourishes around that and and that's been a very powerful lesson and experience for me so i'm grateful that i understand that and i have no complaints in my in in my life my health is good i have beautiful children i'm happily married like i'm living a miraculous life and there have been plenty of times in my life where you know i didn't think i was gonna make it you know i'm a recovering drug out drug addict an alcoholic had some very dark moments in my life and and the idea that that you know even several years ago that i would be sitting here talking to you about you know passion and living your best life and all of these things would have just sounded insane so i'm just grateful to be here i love that what in 50 years from now or maybe 100 years because you're going to be living that long with a plant-based diet what do you want people to say about you uh and what would better than that what would you like to have accomplished in the world i would like to look back in my old age and and see that i've made a difference a difference in the quality of people's lives not just in the foods that they're eating but in their perspective on their own lives with respect to health mental health emotional health spiritual health physical health and to help people understand that no matter what their circumstance irrespective of age or circumstance that there is always a better healthier more authentic version of themselves inside of them that can be unleashed you know and i know that's consistent with your message as well and i think that we you know we live in such a fast-paced world and we walk around with blinders on and we're just on autopilot and just to be able to inspire people to stop for a moment and reflect on their lives and do that inside work so that they can truly be living the life that they're meant to live because i think we all have something to offer and we all have something to that we can that we can use to be of service to other people and that doesn't mean you're going to be you know manny pacquiao or whatever but you have your own version of that you know and to the extent that i can help people cultivate and express that that would make me happy and i think 100 years from now unless we make some serious changes in the way this planet is operating louis we're all going to be plant-based right because we just can't continue to feed the people the number of people that we have on this planet the way that we've been doing it we just can't do it yeah and the population is get on board now yeah get used to it now yeah i like it well i want to acknowledge you for two things i didn't get to do this last podcast so the first thing is i acknowledge you for seeing where your health and your life was going downhill and having the courage to make the change because that's probably the hardest thing is to make that drastic change and you went cold turkey on everything because you knew that you needed to have a better life for yourself and your family and for the people that depended on you so i acknowledge you for first making that change years ago the second thing i acknowledge you for rich is your commitment to serving others and teaching them everything that you've learned you're like so dedicated to this and you travel all over the world and you teach people you write the content you do the research you're doing a lot of hard work to educate people like me and other people who need this information so i acknowledge you for being a symbol of inspiration for so many people who need this and uh it's an honor to be able to interview you and be your friends so thank you for what you're doing i appreciate that yeah thank you so much of course and like i said uh i'm so happy to see you thriving and and growing in the way that you are and and i think that your advocacy is something to marvel at and i can't wait to see where you're headed because i know the sky's the limit with you man i'm just latching my train on years it's gonna be fun we're both doing we're both doing great it's gonna be fun uh final question i've asked you before what's your definition of greatness my definition of greatness i can't i knew you know i was driving i was like i know he's gonna ask i should probably think about that and i can't even remember what i said last night but i will say this i think the definite my definition of greatness is um when your purpose and your actions and your values are in perfect alignment when you are truly blazing your authentic path in service to other people the legend of rich roll thanks for coming on man thanks for having me man hi i'm lewis howes i'm an author speaker and entrepreneur i used to be a professional athlete [Music] i broke my wrist one injury was all gone in a second it was extremely painful it was extremely depressing this is the biggest kind of game changer in my life getting injured losing my passion my ability to do what i wanted when i wanted and how i wanted to do it

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 60,929

Keywords: rich roll, vegan, plant based, diet, food, health, lewis howes, Triathlon (Sport), Veganism (Diet), Diet (Industry), lifestyle, louis howes, school of greatness, nutrition, ultra endurance, The Plantpower Way: Whole Food Plant-Based Recipes And Guidance For The Whole Family, Dieting (Symptom)

Id: hir3Q9gyrjM

Length: 45min 56sec (2756 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 27 2015