Build Better Habits & Break the Food-Addiction Cycle | Melissa Urban, Whole 30 Founder

Melissa Urban — founder of Whole 30 and author of The Whole30 (updated 2024) and The Book of Boundaries — sits down with Michael Easter for one of the most honest conversations on this feed yet. Two sober people (Michael 10+ years, Melissa 24+ years) unpack the parallels between drug addiction and food behavior, why the first time Melissa went to rehab didn't stick, and the single question that rewired every habit in her life: "What would a healthy person with healthy habits do?"

They dig into the science of elimination diets, the 17 years of data behind Whole 30, why Melissa publicly reversed her position on seed oils in 2024, how food becomes the fastest socially acceptable distraction from our feelings, and why you can white-knuckle any elimination program and end up exactly where you started. Plus: integrity over followers, mountains as church, and why "does this feel gross?" is the best business rubric Melissa's ever used.

Two Percent is hosted by Michael Easter. Today’s episode was produced by Joey Fischground, Robbie Hiser, Dana Brawer and Julia Nutter. From Kaleidoscope, our executive producers are Mangesh Hattikudur and Kate Osborn and Julia Nutter. From iHeart, our executive producers are Katrina Norvell and Nikki Ettore. Our Head of Video is Maria Paz Mendez Hodes. Our editor is Ryan Mulhern. Our theme music is by the Heater Manager.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
That's a touchy subject, right now, make it touch the red.
I know people make it their whole personality. Okay, that's
not my business. You can white knuckle your way through
any elimination diet. You can put your blinders on and
just go on willpower alone and get through it and
have nothing change.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
At the end of it.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
It's a great answer.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
The only thing I did the first time I got
out of rehab was I stopped using drugs. This second time,
I recognized that I was going to have to change
every single thing about my life if I wanted to
maintain my recovery. So yes, there are best best practices,
and also I recognize that there are so many barriers
to entry for people to be healthy.

Speaker 4 (00:53):
Welcome to two percent. I'm your host, Michael Easter. If
you are joining us for the first time. As a reminder,
this is a twice weekly podcast asked where we get
into how doing hard things can improve your life. My
background is that I am a journalist. I've been a
journalist for about twenty years covering health wellness, and I
travel into some of the most remote, extreme places on

(01:13):
Earth in order to get you information that can help
you live better. In this podcast. It grew out of
my popular two percent substack, where we've built an amazing
community and we're hoping to bring all the lessons we've
learned in that through all of my research over to
your video feeds and your audio feeds. And today we
have a really good episode. We're talking to Melissa Urban.

(01:37):
She is a founder of Whole thirty. Now, if you
have ever been in a grocery store in the last
say ten years, you have probably encountered Whole thirty. Third
logo is on all sorts of different health foods. She's
built a massive community of people around this Whole thirty movement,
and the reason why I wanted to talk to her

(01:59):
is that she really fundamentally understands behavior change. In building
the Whole thirty community, she has literally millions of data
points that shows what actually helps people change their habits. Yes,
she typically looks at it through the lens of food,
but she's really expanded her lens and thought about all
different ways to change your life in ways that work

(02:22):
and that you can use.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
Now.

Speaker 4 (02:25):
Not to mention, Melissa is amazing because she's really gone
through some challenging things in life and she's used them
as leverage to build something truly amazing. So with all
that said, here's my conversation with Melissa. Well, I'm here
with Melissa Urban, one of my favorite people in the universe.

Speaker 3 (02:45):
So we met.

Speaker 4 (02:46):
What was it like five years ago. I was a
first time author and I had this book. I didn't
know if anyone would like it, and I sent it
to you and I said, would you read this and
would you maybe blurb it?

Speaker 3 (02:56):
I'm you know, begging you. You did, and I was shock.

Speaker 4 (03:00):
I was like this, I love this person already, and
you shared it with your community and it absolutely helped
launch that book, which was just so amazing. And you've
built this unbelievable Whole thirty community which millions have people.
Millions of people have gone through the Whole Thirty. It's
changed a lot of lives, and you've learned a ton
along the way. And so I am here to try

(03:22):
and steal some of that wisdom from you for this show.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
I feel like that's the same reason I'm here to
steal your wisdom. We did meet.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
I was one of the earliest readers of The Comfort Crisis.
I have never said yes to a blurb so quickly,
and I am very conscientious about what I choose to blurb,
and that book literally changed my life. It's probably the
book I recommend the most. Two people so amazed. I
feel the same, amazing.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
Well, this is gonna be awesome.

Speaker 4 (03:45):
So you've had some traumatic experiences in your past. How
did those affect you moving forward, both in a bad
way and also in a good way, and what did
you learn from those experiences?

Speaker 2 (03:59):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, when I was sixteen, I was sexually abused by
someone in my family, and I didn't tell anyone for
a while, and then when I did, as happened so often,
I was maybe not believed or maybe me to feel
like it was my fault. I didn't know how to
handle it. I used drugs for five years as kind
of an escape, and then, thankfully, you know, through rehab

(04:21):
and a lot of therapy, was able to process that.
It obviously changed my life, and I think a lot
of people will sometimes say, well, are you grateful for
your trauma because it built you into the person that
you are today. And it's not the trauma, It is
the resilience that I credit. It's the fact that, first
of all, I had tons of privilege and tons of

(04:43):
support going through it.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Right.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
I had a family who was supporting me, I had
resources and health insurance and a good therapist. But I
think it was the process of accepting what happened and
turning it into, I think, a piece of me. It's
not the piece of me, it's not the biggest thing
in my life, but it's always something that It's always

(05:05):
something that is there. And when I think back to
that younger Melissa who was doing the best that she could,
constantly reminding myself that, I'm so proud of myself for
getting us through that really difficult situation and having so
much grace for myself for not knowing how to handle
it and just doing my absolute best. Those are the

(05:25):
things I think of the most when I think back
on it.

Speaker 4 (05:28):
Now, when did you realize you had a problem with heroin?
Was there an aha moment that it developed slowly over time?
And then how did you start to pull yourself out
of that?

Speaker 1 (05:39):
Yeah, you know, I used drugs in the beginning as
an escape. I had been looking for ways to take
me out of this experience and my life, and drugs
were the thing. I tried other things, they didn't work,
Drugs was it. But then over time I started to
realize that the drugs were now the thing. I had
to use them every single day to modulate my own

(06:00):
motion and my energy. I knew I couldn't stop even
if I wanted to. Other people in my life started
noticing that they had become a problem. I was very
functional for a very long time, and I had like
a moment. I was sitting on my couch, I had
just been paid my boyfriend live and boyfriend at the
time said you need to get help because I can't

(06:20):
enable this any longer.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
I can't support this.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
And I had a moment where my vavou, my grandfather
who was long dead, he just came to me and
he said to me, like, you can do this, and
I said okay, And my boyfriend called a rehab clinic
and they happened to have a bed that night. So
I really feel like it was some kind of divine
intervention that gave me, I think the confidence in that
moment to say yes, and my boyfriend at the time,

(06:47):
who wouldn't let me change my mind, even though I
tried really hard to on the way to the facility.
So it was a slow slide, But I think I
knew all along that I had a problem and I
couldn't get my way out of it, and I wasn't
really sure how I was going to Yeah.

Speaker 4 (07:00):
I can definitely identify with that. So I'm sober. And
I knew I had a drinking problem for a long time,
at least five years, and I kind of always said
to myself, all right, we can quit when it gets
bad enough, but slowly, over time it just keeps getting worse,
and you have all these moments where you go, well,
I never said i'd do that, but I did that,
and then it's the next thing, and sort of like

(07:22):
you where there's almost this divine moment. It's like one
morning I just woke up and it just became very
clear to me that if I kept at that, it
was not going to end well. And it's almost like
I saw this kind of door opening, but it was
like on a hinge where it was going to slowly close,
and it's like, if you don't walk through that right now,
this is your chance.

Speaker 3 (07:40):
And so I took it, and here we are. More
than I remember.

Speaker 1 (07:45):
I remember looking at my pay stub thinking you're either
going to blow all of this on Harryin and probably
kill yourself, or you're going to say yes to this thing,
and so I think of those as glimmers. You woke
up with this glimmer, and if you if you don't
seize it right away, it disappeared so fast. And I
just feel like we are both very lucky to have
recognized it and seized it when we did.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
When you get out of rehab, what are the first
things you did? Though?

Speaker 1 (08:09):
Well, the first time I went to rehab wasn't particularly successful,
and I think that's really common. The only thing I
did the first time I got out of rehab was
I stopped using drugs, and I didn't really change anything
else about my life, and I was really white knuckling
my way through it. And so after a year I relapsed.
There wasn't anything in particular that happened.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
I was just.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
Somewhere I shouldn't have been, and somebody offered, and before
I knew it, there I was. This second time, I
recognized that I was going to have to change every
single thing about my life if I wanted to maintain
my recovery, and I didn't think I would make it
back a third time. And that was the moment where
I thought to myself, what would a healthy person with
healthy habits do. What would that person do? Because I
didn't know that person. I had never set foot in

(08:52):
a gym. I never cared about what I ate. I
was still smoking cigarettes, and I thought, well, the healthy
person would get up in the morning and go to
the gym before work.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
And I started doing that.

Speaker 1 (09:01):
I started getting up at five am and going to
the gym and meeting people at the gym who didn't
know my history. They didn't know that two weeks ago
I was snorting heroin. They just knew that I was
this new person that was new to the gym, and
I was showing up consistently and being able to see
myself through their eyes. I think was an enormous blessing.
I had a glimpse of this person that I could be,

(09:22):
or that I already was, but I couldn't see myself
as that person yet. And that was the cascade that
sort of led me to all of the other healthy
habits I adopted. That setting boundaries and dropping friends and
really sticking up for myself and eating well and going
to bed earlier and quitting smoking.

Speaker 2 (09:39):
And that was the catalyst.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
Was just this one thought, what would a healthy person
with healthy habits do?

Speaker 2 (09:44):
Today.

Speaker 4 (09:45):
Yeah, wasn't there a group that you met at the gym.
I think it was a group of I've heard you
say this. It was a group of women who ran together.
Did you get linked up with them?

Speaker 2 (09:54):
I did?

Speaker 3 (09:55):
How did that help you?

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Yeah? I ended up meeting these women at the gym.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
I met one and we became friendly, and then she said, Hey,
I've got this other group of women that I run with.
We're all different paces, we're all different ages. The age
span I think was probably something like thirty years.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
But if you ever want to come run with us.
I had never run a day in my life.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
I had never exercised a day in my life, and
so I started running with them, and one person would
always go slow to keep up with me, and we
became fast friends.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
We did races together, we hung out together.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
We celebrated when someone got married or when someone had
a baby. And I think that group of friends also
really anchored. I didn't tell them about my addiction for many,
many months until we had gotten closer. But I don't
think I ever properly said thank you for bringing me
into your group, and thank you for having allowing me

(10:45):
this self image that I felt.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
I didn't deserve at the time.

Speaker 4 (10:48):
Yeah, I feel like that goes back to the first
time you get out of Heroin, nothing really changed, and
then the second time you start going to the you
meet all these new people, you make all these new connections,
and that like total environmental change shifts everything. I mean,
for me, the first thing I needed, I knew I

(11:09):
needed to do was reach out for help and ask
someone for help. And I met a good group of people.
There was this one guy in particular. I came up
to him and I just said, I need help, can
you help me out? And he was probably fifty five,
super smart guy, well read, spoke Russian, and he just
started working with me and things started moving. And I

(11:31):
later learned three months into being great friends with this guy,
he had stage four cancer. Oh wow. And it was
like you were taking time out of this clock that
is clearly ticking, and you know it's ticking to help
me and I'm a moron, right, And it was like

(11:53):
once I heard that was almost like there's no going
back now, like this guy is. And he ended up
passing away personally, probably a year and a half later.
But I just think back to that, I'm just like,
that is like what a human should be.

Speaker 3 (12:08):
It's unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
Yeah, wow, what a what a gift.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
Absolutely, what a gift.

Speaker 4 (12:15):
So you get into health and fitness having having a
when did you quit smoking?

Speaker 2 (12:21):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (12:22):
Pretty quickly. I mean you can't go to the gym
and also be a smoker. I found out very very quickly.
And I was never really addicted to cigarettes. I was
like a casual smoker. So I quit very quickly.

Speaker 4 (12:30):
Yeah, so you kick cigarettes, you're in the running club,
you start going down the rabbit hole of health and fitness.

Speaker 3 (12:37):
How did this eventually lead to the whole thirty?

Speaker 2 (12:43):
Oh boy hoole.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
Thirty was two thousand and nine, so it was quite
a few years later. I would I credit my recovery
to the year two thousand. So through healthy eating and
through running, I discovered CrossFit. I became very enamored with CrossFit.
I started writing a little CrossFit training blog because at
the time, forums were the big thing. It was pre

(13:05):
social media days. And I developed quite a following through
that forum, and so I started my own blog. And
we had gone to a seminar about paleo eating. That
was all the rage in early two thousand, Crussfit and
that seminar matched some of the information that my original

(13:25):
co founder was doing. Some of the research he was
doing into dietary factors that may be influencing his sister's
rheumatoid arthritis, and he realized through this research that it's
possible that legomes or gluten could be promoting these ra symptoms.
So those two kind of merged, and after a really
challenging Olympic lifting session one Saturday, he said to me,

(13:49):
we should do this kind of squeaky clean thirty day
dietary experiment. We just kind of eat this paleo way.
And I think I was eating thin men's at the time,
straight out of the sleeve. It was Girls Scout cookie
season and I was like, yeah, when do you want
to start? And he said, how about we start right now?
And again I'm an addict. I have that like all
or nothing offer on, like let's do it. And I

(14:10):
put the fin mints away and I said, let's do it.
And that was the start of what was to become
the very first whole thirty just this two person self experiment.

Speaker 4 (14:18):
Yeah, and so you eat that way for a month
and what ends up happening?

Speaker 1 (14:23):
So I had incredibly dramatic results from this Whole thirty
experiment my energy, my sleep, my performance, my recovery in
the gym. That was the main motivator for me was
I wanted to know if I could perform in the
gym better, and all of that changed. But what it
highlighted for me, and I know that you're going to

(14:43):
understand this immediately, it highlighted for me the ways that
I was using food like I used to use drugs.
And if you had asked me what why my relationship
with food was, I would have said, like, oh, it's great.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
I was the healthy girl at my office. I ate
really well.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
But I had come to realize yet my automatic reach
when I was lonely or anxious or trying to avoid
my feelings was to reach for food. And the Whole
thirty highlighted that, and it sort of taught me other
ways to navigate stress and difficult emotions, and it helped
me to sit with my feelings. It was the first

(15:19):
time in my life that I had gotten off the
scale and out of the mirror. I was, like most
young women, pretty body conscious. So it was just this
dramatic transformation that I felt like really stuck with me.
And my co founder had an equally dramatic transformation just
in other areas of his life. And so I thought,
I want to write about this on my blog. And

(15:40):
so I wrote about it on my little CrossFit training
blog in July two thousand and nine, and I said,
does anyone want to do it?

Speaker 2 (15:46):
And a bunch of people said, yeah, we would try that.

Speaker 1 (15:48):
So I'll just say, when two people have incredible results
from a dietary experiment, you think, yeah, that's really interesting.
When a hundred people come back with equally stunning, pretty
similar results, that was the.

Speaker 2 (16:00):
Moment where I thought, oh I have something here, this
is something.

Speaker 4 (16:03):
Yeah, how did so how did the with kind of
reframing your relationship with food?

Speaker 3 (16:08):
How did that unfold?

Speaker 4 (16:11):
Was it just that you would have an emotion and
you would be like, I want peanut emin ms whatever,
and I'll use the one that I would use peanut
M and ms, but you can't immediately you can't eat them,
and so then you're going, well, why do I want
them in the first placer?

Speaker 3 (16:26):
Yeah, unpack that.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
For me, it was in the moment, it was just
I am uncomfortable and then I would reach for I
just go into the pantry. It wasn't necessarily anything specific,
and it wasn't even that I was eating nothing but
peanut eminems and doritos. It was the fact that with
any discomfort, my immediate reaction was to distract myself, and

(16:47):
food is the fastest, easiest, most societally acceptable distraction, and
so not being able to reach for that thing and
thinking to myself, well, like a carrot's not gonna cut this.

Speaker 2 (17:00):
Why isn't a cat going to cut this?

Speaker 1 (17:02):
Why wouldn't a care it with guacamallee cut this made
me realize, Okay, what am I experiencing? And I'm still
in therapy at the time. I've been in therapy all along,
and so, you know, talking to my therapist about this
discomfort and having how do I sit with my feelings?
And I would always try to analyze them in my head.
I want to name it, I want to identify it,
and instead we were focusing on just sitting with it

(17:24):
and allowing it to exist and maybe where do you
feel it in your body? All of these things were
happening at the same time, and it was almost as
if I couldn't really understand the concepts my therapist was
providing and tell the thing that I had been leaning
on so hard was gone.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
And then I didn't have a choice.

Speaker 4 (17:41):
That forced you to experience it beyond just the intellectual Yeah,
it's like you got thrust in it, and oh now
I feel it, not just this big concept I'm trying
to understand.

Speaker 3 (17:52):
It's like, oh, this is it.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
Yes, I mean I'm I always wanted to it and
intellectualize it. I always wanted to explain it. I lived
very much in my head and I was very disconnected
from my body for a number of reasons, the trauma
and the drugs and all of the influences that tell women,
especially that we can't trust our own bodies. And so
one of the things with the whole thirty is it

(18:14):
actually helped me reconnect with my body. I was learning
to trust my hunger signals and my fullness signals, and
so all of this was happening out of this thirty
day experiment where I thought, oh, maybe I'll just like
recover faster from the gym. It was so unexpected and
so powerful, and that's why I wanted to share it.

Speaker 4 (18:32):
Yeah, so a lot of people try it along with you.
They have equally dramatic results and then how did it
unfold from there? As I understand it, a CrossFit Jim,
didn't they ask you to come down and be like,
would you teach us how to do this?

Speaker 3 (18:46):
And then what happened? Then?

Speaker 1 (18:47):
Yeah, So I was again super involved with CrossFit at
the time. There's a CrossFit gym down in Virginia. The
owner reached out and said, hey, can we have you
come down? Could you come down and do a seminar
on the whole thirty And we were like, oh, okay,
I guess weekend.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
We drove down.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
We had people sit in these cold metal folding chairs
for about six hours, and I don't think we charged anything,
and we just went down and talked about the whole thirty.
And you know, we were so lucky at the time
because CrossFit was so incredibly well connected, and so that
gym talked to the other gym, and then that gym
sort of was talking about Whole thirty with their other gym,
and all of this is happening mostly through the CrossFit forum,

(19:24):
and the requests really started pouring in CrossFit gyms. We
traveled to a CrossFit gym's almost every single weekend for
a whole maybe year, if not two talking to people
about the Whole thirty and CrossFit was I think pretty
pretty on brand with the way I was talking about
the Whole thirty, which was very like this is it's

(19:45):
gonna be hard, but you can do hard things, and
you've done harder things than this. And so that mentality
with the way that I was talking about the program
at the time, I think was a really great fit.
And then of course people who are super into health
and fitness got amazing results, so they wanted to to
tell their friends, and it grew largely via word of mouth.

Speaker 4 (20:03):
Yeah, and then that leads to the book, which blows
it up, and eventually it just expanded way beyond the
scope of CrossFit.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
And it wasn't mostly by word of mouth.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
Do you think it was via word of mouth?

Speaker 1 (20:17):
I remember I was pregnant, so it would have been
twenty late twenty twelve, and we went to a CrossFit
gym in Philadelphia to give this presentation and there were
one hundred and fifty people in the room. And during
a break, I looked around and I thought, there are
people my parents' age in this gym. And you know,
mostly at these seminars they were young, and they were fit,

(20:38):
and they were athletic, and I'm seeing a lot of
people who maybe don't look like they do CrossFit, like
they weren't in the CrossFit gear, and they were just
people like my parents. And so I started walking around like, Oh,
how are you here? How did you hear about it?
And it was Oh, my son told me I had
to come, or my daughter called me from Connecticut and said,
you should come listen to this. I think you would
really benefit from this. And so that was where I

(21:01):
realized we were starting to expand beyond CrossFit, and over
the course of the next few years, we just continued
to grow via the books and media coverage.

Speaker 2 (21:10):
But in the beginning it was all word of mouth.

Speaker 3 (21:13):
When did you decide to quit your job to go
all in?

Speaker 1 (21:16):
It was two thousand and April twenty ten. So I
had done my first Whule thirty, that two person whole
thirty a year ago, and I was doing my nine
to five hustle. I had worked there for ten years,
work my way up. I managed twenty plus people in
three different offices. I was good at my job, but
I was doing Whole thirty stuff on the side. So
nights and weekends I'm writing blog posts, I'm traveling for seminars,
I'm building materials, and at some point I said, something's

(21:39):
got to give. I was doing both kind of poorly
at this point, and my heart was really in Whole thirty,
and so it was like, you're either going to jump
and do this and see what happens, or it's just
going to sort of limp along. And that didn't feel
That didn't feel right to me, So I waited. I
had a retention bonus, I remember, and I waited until

(21:59):
I met that bonus, and then I gave my notice
and I use that bonus as kind of the seed
money to get going with Whole thirty.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
Awesome.

Speaker 4 (22:05):
All right, let's get into the specifics of Whole thirty. Now,
big picture, what is whole thirty? Because I want to say,
I think people use the word diet. I don't know
if you would use diet, So how do we talk
about it?

Speaker 1 (22:17):
You know, it's funny I would historically I would say,
don't call us a diet. Don't call us a diet
because diet is such a dirty word. It's so associated
with dieting for weight loss and diet culture. But Whole
thirty is at its roots an elimination and reintroduction diet,
a reintroduction an elimination and reinstruction program, if you will.
And elimination diets have been around since the nineteen twenties.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
They're not new.

Speaker 1 (22:40):
They're often considered even today the gold standard for identifying
food sensitivities.

Speaker 4 (22:45):
Yeah, so they're used for if someone has a food sensitivity,
walk us through how it works. Yeah, we're probably just
about to do that until I interrupted you.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
No, that's okay.

Speaker 1 (22:55):
You know, people, food can have an impact on people
in ways that they may not associate with their diet.
It may be impacting in a negative way, things like
energy and focus and sleep, cravings, obviously digestive issues, bloating,
you know, any kind of digestive distress. But it can

(23:16):
also have an impact on things like we talked about,
rheumatoard arthritis, joint pain and swelling, chronic pain like tendinitis, acne, allergies, asthma, anxiety.
All of those things are impacted by the food we eat,
sometimes in ways that we don't associate with our diet.
So the whole thirty essentially rules out for thirty days
or eliminates these foods that according to the scientific literature

(23:38):
and our experience now of seventeen years are commonly problematic
for people. So these foods are not bad, these foods
are not unhealthy, but to some degree of deviation, some
people find that these foods are causing negative symptoms in
their body. So we leave them out for thirty days,
and you see what happens. What happens to your energy,

(23:58):
your sleep, your digest things, anxiety, all of these symptoms,
and then at the end of thirty days, you add
these food groups back in one at a time, very
carefully and systematically, and you compare your experience. So if
you take dairy out of your diet and all of
a sudden, your seasonal allergies feel better and you're breathing
and you're not quite as stuffy, and then you add
it in at the end and all of those symptoms

(24:19):
come back. That just gives you valuable information about how
certain forms of dairy work in your unique system, and
then you can take that and use it to craft
a personalized, sustainable diet that feels broad and joyful but
keeps you feeling as good as you want to feel.

Speaker 4 (24:34):
Do you have a sense of how what percent of
people are sensitive to at least one food I you.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
Know, I don't, and there's not great research because first
of all, food sensitivity testing is not particularly accurate, and
also people's experiences with food is so unique and diverse.
Some people are allergic to or sensitive to properties in broccoli,
which anyone would consider a ho food by nature. I

(25:01):
know that there are statistics on things like lactose intolerance,
but lactose is only one part of the dairy puzzle.
People can also be intolerant to the milk proteins like
whey or caseine. So I don't have statistics, but I
do encourage people to go into the whole thirty with
an open mind. Just because these food groups are problematic
for some doesn't mean they'll be problematic for you. And

(25:23):
if you discover a food group like gluten isn't giving
you serious negative symptoms and you enjoy eating it, I
want you to enjoy eating it and to include that
in your diet going forward. I don't want you to
eliminate foods for no good reason.

Speaker 4 (25:37):
Yeah, so big picture, it's you have I don't know
if you call a list of foods, but effectively, like here,
foods that people tend to be have some sort of
sensitivity too. These are the biggest defenders for a lot
of people. So we're gonna remove those. We're gonna have
you eat foods that most people do not have a
problem with for thirty days, then see what happens, and

(26:00):
if things improve, then you slowly add back in the
foods that tend to cause issues in people, one at
a time. That way you can go, oh, like you said,
my allergies flare up when I drink milk. And then
from there you don't seem to be making a judgment
of will never drink milk again. You're saying, well, at
least you know that, do what you want.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
With it exactly.

Speaker 1 (26:18):
Yes, you know, life after the whole thirty is all
about taking the information you've used and using it in
a way that feels joyful, broad and sustainable to you.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
So it's not, oh, dairy makes me bloated.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
It is is this particular ice cream in this particular context,
with what's happening in my life? Is it going to
be worth it? I know I'm going to be bloated,
I know I'm going to be gassy. Is it worth
it right now? And it might not be worth it
if you're having dessert at a large business dinner where
you have to present afterwards, but it might be worth
it if it's summertime and you're at the beach with
your family and you want an ice cream cone. So

(26:53):
it's not about me telling you what to do with
that information. It's just about you having that knowledge and fear,
feeling the freedom and the confidence to apply that as
you see fit in your own life.

Speaker 4 (27:04):
So full disclosure, I have done the whole thirty and
I'll give you an example. Beans. Those do not sit well.
If I get like bloated, I just don't. My stomach hurts,
I just don't feel good. But if I'm at Donia
Maria Tamali's in Las Vegas, I'm like, yeah, you know
what it's worth it. I'm going to have some beans.

(27:25):
I accept the hell that I'm going to go through
afterwards in my stomach, and I move on. But if
I'm at a place where I'm like, eh, this is
not great, I'll skip the beans.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
Yeah, that's exactly it.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
And sometimes what you can do through the whole thirty
and your self experimentation is you can discover, Okay, well,
is there a way I can include this that doesn't
mess me up so much.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
Could I take some beano, which is.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
A fantastic digestive ins specifically for legos.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
Could I take that with that help?

Speaker 1 (27:53):
Or is there a gluten free version of this that
I find just as delicious, but I know isn't going
to impact me in the same negative way that gluten does.

Speaker 4 (28:02):
You have so many people who have gone through this,
like millions of people, and you just have all this feedback.
What foods tend to be the biggest offenders for people?

Speaker 1 (28:11):
Gluten tends to be the most commonly problematic to some degree.
And we're not talking about people with a gluten allergy,
although the whole thirty has helped people identify that they
have celiac, which is hugely life changing. But gluten sensitivity
can impact people in any number of ways. And so
gluten and then dairy, I would say those two categories

(28:32):
tend to be the most problematic. But maybe it's not
all forms of gluten. Maybe it's not all forms of dairy.
For me, I can have sour dough bread, no problem,
But if I combine gluten with sugar, that tends to
have more of a negative impact. So there are so
many different factors that we encourage you to play around
with during reintroduction and then also in life after. But

(28:53):
when we reintroduce food groups on the whole thirty, they
are reintroduced in general order of least likely to be
problem to most and actually left off alcohol because alcohol
is at the very very end.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
But I'm almost like it goes without saying that.

Speaker 1 (29:07):
Alcohol is the most problematic, but not everyone chooses to
reintroduce that.

Speaker 4 (29:11):
Yeah, that makes sense. We're just tend to be the friendlist.
Just any food on the list.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
Legomes tend to be the least commonly problematic, or if
they are problematic, it's to the least degree in that
most people do experience some gas or bloating, but perhaps
that could be mitigated by the type of beans. So
I can't do kidney beans at all, but black beans
are okay. They could be mitigated perhaps by a digestive enzyme.
Maybe it is slowly adding small quantities so that your

(29:40):
body becomes more accustomed to that food and perhaps starts
to produce more of the enzyme that helps you digest it.
So legoms tend to come towards the beginning of their
reintro schedule. But it is so highly variable, so people really,
you know, have the freedom to be able to introduce
in whatever order they want, and of course the results
are going to very tremendously So I.

Speaker 4 (30:00):
Weigh myself all the time I go on Whole thirty.
Don't wait, don't weigh yourself was one of the main tips. Okay,
I'm going to do it. And you write about non
scale victories, which I think most diets do not talk
about that as much as very much. You know, lose weight.
Just did the number on the scale go down? Great,

(30:21):
you're successful, but you don't factor in weight, and you
talk about non scale victory, So what are those?

Speaker 3 (30:26):
How do they manifest?

Speaker 1 (30:28):
The no scale no weighing yourself during the thirty day
period came from my first experience with the Whole thirty,
where I mentioned I got off the scale for that,
I didn't weigh myself for months after my Whole thirty.
It didn't matter because of how good I felt. And so,
because the Whole thirty is not a weight loss program,
we do not restrict calories or macros or meals or

(30:50):
meal timing. You eat whenever you're hungry, you eat to satiety.
Because we're not designed as a weight loss program. We
want to encourage people to embrace all of the other
incredible benefits that you can have when you change the
food you put on your plate and when you are
on a weight loss diet. Because of diet culture, but
also because of what the diet is literally designed to do,

(31:11):
you tend to be blinded.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
To all of that. You will feel worse.

Speaker 1 (31:15):
If it means the number on the scale goes down,
and we're sort of the antithesis. So non scale victories
are any of these benefits that can't be measured by
the number on the scale. Improved energy, no more two
pm head on desk slump, reduced cravings.

Speaker 2 (31:29):
That's a huge benefit.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
For most people where they no longer feel like they're
pulled to the pantry every night at nine pm or
have to have their pick me up at two pm.
Better sleep, I think is a hugely underrated benefit of
the whole thirty that will not show up on the scale,
but that has a positive impact on everything in your life.
And then you've got the improvement of symptoms that people

(31:50):
have reported, less anxiety, fewer aches and pains, better mobility,
fewer hot flashes. All of those things are huge benefits
that really translate but couldn't be measured by a number
on the scale even if you wanted to.

Speaker 4 (32:05):
So US News and World Reports ranked Whole thirty as
the worst weight loss diet.

Speaker 3 (32:12):
I know which what was your reaction to that?

Speaker 4 (32:15):
And I'll give you mine is that I laughed because
I go, I don't they don't even have your weigh yourself.

Speaker 3 (32:20):
So is this a weight loss diet? I don't know
what was your reaction to that.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
US News and World Report has been ranking best weight
loss diets for many, many years, and for many years
Whull thirty was at the very bottom of the list,
And so they would email me in December and they
would say, hey, this list is under embargo.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
Do you want to see it? Do?

Speaker 1 (32:37):
And I finally just stopped, you know, I started replying like,
absolutely not. This list is trash. We're not even a
weight loss diet. Hahaha right.

Speaker 2 (32:45):
And so a couple of years ago I said this
and the person in the seat who was doing their
PR media actually wrote me back and said, well, if
you're not a weight loss diet, what are you? And
say more and can we get a little info. So
I actually worked with them very very close and I
don't think we show up.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
On their list anymore. If we do, it's sort of
as a mention or an aside. But it always made
me laugh because I was like, well, should I be
proud that we're dead last because we're not a weight
lass diet, or should should I be annoyed that they
continue to classify us like this?

Speaker 3 (33:14):
And which?

Speaker 4 (33:14):
Were you?

Speaker 2 (33:16):
Both? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (33:18):
Competing feelings? Good both.

Speaker 4 (33:21):
One thing that I love is that you bring in
all these outside experts to develop the diet, and you
bring in a lot of psychologists and habit change experts.
So why, as we were talking about this a little
bit before we hit record, why is that so important
to actually making this stick?

Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, it's funny.

Speaker 1 (33:41):
I don't know if you recognized it, but I bet
you might have. There's a lot of recovery language and
sort of recovery coded wording, vibes, sentiment in the whole
thirty in part because when I was writing it, I
was writing it from a place of supporting my own recovery.
But I think it's so important to also talk about

(34:02):
people's emotional relationship with food and people's habits, because you
can white knuckle your way through any elimination diet, you
can put your blinders on and just go on willpower
alone and get through it and have nothing change at
the end of it. So what I want people to do,
and why I've built so much habit research and behavior
change research into the program, is because when you have

(34:24):
that first moment where you think, I am I'm just anxious,
I'm afraid, I'm lonely, and I'm reaching for this thing
and it's not available, I want to have resources for you.
I want to have guidance for you in that moment
to say, Okay, now what do I do? There's so
many different resources we've created to talk about the whole
thirty mindset, to talk about stress management, to talk about

(34:46):
habit loops, to talk about how to break those loops
or replace them with something else. There are entire videos
I've created that are designed to say what else could
I do besides reach for this thing? In a very
detailed and practical way, Because unless you talk about that,
it's going to be very difficult to make any of
these observations or changes you've made in that thirty to

(35:08):
forty day period sustainable.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
And I want them to be sustainable. That's the whole point.

Speaker 4 (35:13):
Yeah, And this is where I think research can often
fail people. It's like, just because a study says that
this diet is best, but it was conducted in a
lab where they lock people in a metabololic ward for
two weeks and tell them here's exactly what you need
to eat. Like that is not real life. You said,

(35:34):
that person out into the wild. Then it's like, okay, well,
the real world is full of all these different foods,
and so we need to figure out how do I
figure this thing out in the context of my daily life.

Speaker 1 (35:45):
Yes, I think that's one of the things that I
most appreciated when I first read your work, too, is
that you are very good at taking this best case
you know, most well researched like scenario, and meeting people
where they are with it. Because if you can't do that,
then what good is having the knowledge of all of
this research. So, yes, there are best best practices. And

(36:09):
also I recognize that there are so many barriers to
entry for people to be healthy. I'm talking about social
determinants the determinants of health. I'm talking about you know,
food deserts and income and poverty and access to healthy
foods and food noise, and all of these different factors

(36:30):
that make it so difficult for people who want to
make these changes make them. So if I'm talking about
best practices you should only eat organic and grass fed
and buy from the farmer's market, I'm immediately leaving out
ninety nine percent of the population. So what i want
to do is Makekule thirty and this research as accessible
as possible while making it as successful as possible.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
And that's the line I'm always trying to walk.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
It seems like.

Speaker 4 (36:55):
You've learned so much from your community about that. So
you did an updated version of the Whole thirty book
released and was it twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four,
twenty twenty four. Yeah, And in that you talked about
how your own sort of mindset has changed in the
sense that when you started talking about the Whole thirty
year in CrossFit gyms, as you mentioned before, it's like, yeah,

(37:17):
these people, if you tell them jumped, they.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
Say how high?

Speaker 4 (37:20):
And they're hard charging. And then as it expanded into
this broader population, you started bringing in people who were
never going to do CrossFit, and we're all so different.
And so how is your thinking about sort of what
you mentioned with accessibility and making sure you're giving people
options that are culturally sensitive. How has that evolved over
time and where have you changed your mind on certain topics.

Speaker 1 (37:42):
Oh, I've changed my mind on so many things, and
it would be weird if I hadn't, considering it's been
seventeen years. But the way I talked to people and
the way I talked about the Whole Thirty in the
earliest days reflected the way I talked to myself, which
was very black or white, very punishing, their do your
best or don't bother doing it at all. I didn't

(38:03):
have a lot of empathy for myself, so I didn't
have a lot of empathy for others. I didn't understand
the concept of privilege and all of the ways that
I walk through the world easier than other people just
because of the way I was born. And so as
that evolved, as I learned more about privilege and the concepts,
and as I learned to talk to myself with more
grace and show myself more grace and empathy, of course

(38:25):
that expanded and evolved the Whole thirty program and language,
and so that is reflected everywhere. It's reflected in the
word choices. We used to say Whole thirty compliant because
compliance was the name of the game. You're doing it
or you're not. It's very patriarchal, and we changed that
to compatible. Now it's these two things coexists, they're compatible.

(38:46):
It's just small details like that. The most I think
famous line of the Whole Thirty back in the day
was this is not hard. Quitting heroin is hard, Fighting
cancer is hard, Birthing a baby is hard. Drinking your
coffee black isn't hard. And you can hear why that
would appeal to crossfitter, But someone like my mom hears
that and immediately thinks, well, this isn't for me because

(39:06):
I do think it's going to be hard, And so
all of that had to change. That science had changed
and updated our understanding of the science, the food landscape
had dramatically changed. So all of that is why I
wanted to rewrite that book start to finish, head to tail,
because so much had evolved that I couldn't.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
Just update it. It was like a whole whole new program.

Speaker 4 (39:29):
Almost I'm going to quote you is from your book.
The updated version. Science is going to science. Great line.
Science is always evolving, leading us to new understandings of
the way various foods and ingredients interact with our bodies.
I believe it's a good thing when the people you
trust to bring you science back to information say we
got it wrong, and here's how we're going to fix it,

(39:50):
ideally with references.

Speaker 3 (39:53):
Great paragraph.

Speaker 4 (39:55):
What things did you change based on updated science that
had evolved over for more than a decade.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
The biggest change, and the one that we got the
most heat for were was our rule around and perspective
on seed oils. That's a touchy subject, right now, make it,
I know people make it their whole personality.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
Okay, that's not my business. But in the.

Speaker 1 (40:19):
Earlier days, based on the research I saw, but mostly
based on the interpretation of that research from the people
we had surrounding us, the advisor kind of committee we
had at that point, we really believed that seed oils
were inherently inflammatory and omega six to them I get three.
Ratio was often cited, and oxidation was often cited. But

(40:40):
we truly believed that seed oils like canola and soybean
oil promoted inflammation in the body inherently, and so our
point on them was just you shouldn't eat them, and
then we I really think that I had started to
evolve and change my mind on this based on what
I'd been hearing and reading. So starting in twenty twenty two,

(41:01):
I hired two different unrelated independent researchers to dig into
the science and provide me with references, summaries, big picture
observations that I then took in and absorbed. I asked
a different unrelated medical doctor to review that and give
me his take because he.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
Works with patients.

Speaker 1 (41:19):
And we released this change where no cooking oil is
part of the whole thirty elimination phase. Now you can
cook with any oil, and it certainly happens to fall
in line with our accessibility mission because that does make
the whole thirty more accessible. These canola oil is certainly
less expensive than avocado oil and easier to source. But

(41:39):
it was based on the scientific literature, and we wrote
a very very clear, very long paper summarizing the observations,
tons of references. We came with receipts, and there was
a subset of people who were really appreciative that we
outlined it and were appreciative that we were so willing
to say we got it wrong.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
And here's what we're doing now.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
But I would say the majority of people who were
not even always related to Whole thirty, they just wanted
to dive into it. We're really mad that we decided
to change our perspective on this, and everybody knows that
they're so toxic and inflammatory, and so there was a
big hullabaloo about it in twenty twenty four, and then
again I kind of brought it up again myself in

(42:23):
twenty twenty five because I like to poke the bear
like that and just remind people of where we stand.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
But I firmly stand by that.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
But Michael, if three years from now, new literature understanding
comes out that says, oh, maybe you should limit for
whatever reason, I would publish that too. I'm not attached
to these ideas, They're not mine. I just want to
reflect the best recommendations I can for my community.

Speaker 4 (42:48):
This leads me to a good segue. I heard you
say on a podcast that you're a rule follower, But
so that surprised me because when I, like you said,
I like to poke the bear, yeah, and on social
media you are. You're not afraid to voice your opinions,
and not just about nutrition and wellness talk topics, but

(43:11):
about political topics as well, And so how do you
square that by saying you were a role follower? But
I guess me saying I don't think this person.

Speaker 3 (43:20):
Is a rule follower.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
Oh, I think to me it's one and the same.
I am a rule follower. I'm an eldest daughter. I
was the pleasure to have in class. I always wanted
the straight a's I'm a Gretchen Rubin obliger. If you're
I mean upholder, if you're familiar with that framework, I'm
an Enneagram eight. Like everything in my being says, I
am very direct and very straightforward and very challenging.

Speaker 2 (43:43):
I am a rule follower.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
But for me to follow the rules means I have
to live in my integrity period. And so when I
stand up on social media, either as me or as
the brand, talking about our values and our commitments, that
is following the rule.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
It's following my rules.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
It's standing up for and voicing what I need to
say to stay aligned with my integrity.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
So for me, it's it's the same.

Speaker 3 (44:09):
Thing that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 4 (44:12):
How do you And this is me trying to figure
this out in my own life, and it's something I
haven't quite figured out. My general approach with politics is
that I don't talk about them, and I obviously have
my opinions loosely help but I sometimes think, if I

(44:32):
talk about politics, but I'm in the wellness realm, I'm
worried that someone will disregard what is decent and scientifically
backed wellness advice because I criticize a certain side or
whatever it might be.

Speaker 3 (44:52):
So how do you think about it?

Speaker 2 (44:56):
I'm going to choose my words carefully.

Speaker 4 (44:57):
Yeah, And that is the question, because, like I said, yeah,
I honestly don't know, because sometimes I go, I feel
like I should say something about this, and then I go,
should I I don't know. Yeah, first of all, and
I admire you for the fact that you do speak
your mind.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
I appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
We you and I, because we are of the most
privileged of the privileged, could stay out of politics if
we wanted to, because we are the people that politics,
at least in this moment, are affecting the least. And
so for that reason alone, I feel like it's my
obligation and I suppose duty to say something, to speak out,

(45:39):
because I can do so with far less repercussion than
some other members of my community who are already so
heavily discriminated against and marginalized.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
So that's a piece of it for me.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
When someone asks me for help about the whole thirty,
I don't ask who they voted for. I don't ask
what their values are. I just help them and that
will never change. But if you choose to discard the
incredibly valuable, helpful, life changing information that we are sharing
or offering because you don't like my politics, oh well,
I'm sad for you. I think that's a real bummer,
and I think it's very close minded of you, and

(46:13):
I hope that you find something that does work for you.
But I really don't care. I don't care if we
lose followers. I don't care if we sell less books.
I don't care if people no longer want to support
us because we're standing up for what we think is right.
I feel like that's those aren't my people anyway, And frankly,
having those people in my community makes it less.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
Safe for those who are here.

Speaker 1 (46:36):
So would it be a shame if people choose to
disregard the incredibly valuable information that you share, and would
it perhaps hurt their own health and fitness?

Speaker 2 (46:47):
Efforts to do so.

Speaker 1 (46:48):
Yes, And also that's out of your control and that's
not your business. So I think I have to do
what feels right for me. And yes, the stakes are
high that you are going to lose people, that it's
going to hurt your business, that it might hurt your brand,
But for me, the stakes of saying nothing are so
much higher.

Speaker 3 (47:05):
It goes back to that word integrity you said.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
It is it is integrity.

Speaker 1 (47:11):
It's also you know, sometimes I'll say to a white
woman who comes into my feed asking me to stick
to food and not to talk about politics. Whole thirty
has always represented you. You have always seen yourself in
the brand. I have always supported you, and other people have.
I need other people in my community to see themselves
in the brand. I want to support them exactly as

(47:34):
much into the same degree of helpfulness that I supported you.
And if you don't want that for them, then I
think that's pretty shitty of you, to be honest, and
I would like invite you to sit with that, but
maybe not on my feed. Maybe go go find something
else to sit with. But my community is very varied,
it's very diverse, it's varied, and I need people to

(47:55):
see that I'll ride as hard for them as I
do for Kathy from Oklahoma.

Speaker 4 (47:59):
If I start are posting about politics on social media
and get an influx of comments, I'm going to text
you and say, why did you get left to me?

Speaker 1 (48:11):
You should I'm very very good at figuring out where
and how to clap back and how to still be
like real nice about it. Listen, here's the thing, Michael.
You will never make everybody happy. Some people are going
to be really mad that you're not speaking up. People
are going to be mad when you do speak up.
When you do speak up, people are going to wonder
why you didn't speak up about X, Y and Z.
And when you speak up about those things, you didn't
do it in the way they wanted you to. This

(48:33):
is always going to be the case, in which case
you just need to do what you want.

Speaker 4 (48:38):
To do totally. If you're a role follower, maybe I'm
too much of a people pleaser.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
Oh, I can definitely help you with that.

Speaker 4 (48:48):
We'll do that offline so the world doesn't get into
my psyche. Yes, well, you talked about community, and so
much of the whole thirty happens in this like digital world,
and so how have you managed to build such a strong,
tight knit community with people talking to each other feeling
like they're part of something bigger than themselves online.

Speaker 1 (49:11):
Yeah, I'm super grateful that we have these spaces, that
we have forum, and that we have social media, because
Whole thirty has really grown and our community has stayed
incredibly well connected. I think part of that is that
I stay really closely connected to the community. If you
message me on Instagram, you are only getting me. I
don't have a team on my personal feed. It is

(49:31):
always just me, and I like to stay really close because,
first of all, I've never had a good idea in
my life when it comes to Whole thirty. Every single
good idea I've ever had has come from the community.
So when I listen, I hear pain points, I hear challenges,
I hear struggles, I hear between the lines and think
about could I create a resource for that. So they're
incredible idea generators. But I also like staying connected because

(49:57):
people want their brands to be human, right, want our
brands to show us their personality and to make us
feel like we're connecting with a friend, not some corporation.
And I think wholl thirty my entire team on the
Whole thirty side, does that really really well? We stay
really closely invested and we are very reactive to the community.

(50:18):
So when they ask for something and then we deliver
it a month later or sometimes a year later because
it's a book, they get really excited, like, Wow, that
was my DM and it made it into your book.
It's a really cool experience, and I think that makes
people want to stay connected.

Speaker 4 (50:33):
And to that point, you have gotten offers from rather
large corporations to do all sorts of Whole thirty related things,
and you've turned down a lot of them, And does
that all go back to the community, like what is
your larger goal with a Whole thirty.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
I always want to show up in a way for
the brand that feels in alignment with our values and
our message. And the rubric that I use, which is
not very professional but serve me very well, is does
this feel gross? That's the question I asked myself before
a new partnership or an opportunity, or even sometimes with
current partners. They want me to share in X Y

(51:13):
Z way or they want me to share on this date,
and sometimes I ask myself, does this feel gross? Does
it feel wrong. Does it feel wrong to talk about
this in this moment? Or does it feel wrong to
talk about this in this way? And if it does,
I just don't do it. And there was there's only
been one time, way back in the day where it
felt kind of gross and we did it anyway, and
I just felt so icky about it that I swear.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
I would never do it again.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
I just always want I don't ever want the community
to show up thinking this doesn't feel like Hole thirty,
This doesn't sound like her.

Speaker 4 (51:43):
A lot of your recent work focuses on boundaries. Did
that come out of the Whole thirty community?

Speaker 2 (51:51):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (51:52):
Very much so when you think about it, you've done
the Whole thirty. It's kind of like a boundary boot
camp in that you say no to a lot of
offers of food and drink during the elimination phase. It's
the you know, and in your sobriety you do that
as well. It's the breakroom pizza or the birthday cake,
or the glass of wine at happy hour. And I

(52:13):
quickly realized that people struggle to say no even to
something as simple as food or drink. So I started
helping people say no to those things and then they
realized I was very good at saying no, and then
they were like, well, how do I say no to
my mother in law who's always coming by without calling,
or the friend who's always emotionally dumping on me? And
I started answering those questions, and in twenty twenty, of course,

(52:35):
with the pandemic, those questions really picked up, and that
was where the idea for the Book of Boundaries came from.

Speaker 3 (52:41):
Tell me about why you love the outdoors.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
During a difficult point in my life, during my divorce
and business split, I remember going hiking in the mountains
in Utah and there was a moment where the vista
was just so staggering and my mind quieted, and I
thought to myself, this is where I worship, this is
where I talk to God, this is where listen. And
so from that moment, dawn really the mountains became church.

(53:05):
And I talked to God all the time. We chat
all the time. He and I are very close, but
the mountains is where I feel like I receive best
because it's just so quiet. It reminds me of how
powerful I am, but also how tiny I am at
the same time.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
It just feels like a very sacred experience.

Speaker 3 (53:25):
To me, I'm the exact same way.

Speaker 4 (53:27):
Yeah, Leah, my wife likes to give me shit because
I will see a tree and just start crying.

Speaker 2 (53:33):
Yeah, God, it's so beautiful.

Speaker 3 (53:36):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (53:36):
Yeah, Extended time outdoors for me is how I connect
with something bigger than myself. I think, to your point,
it reminds you that one I'm very small, and two
that I'm part of something much bigger and much more
ancient that's been happening many billions of years before I
was ever here. And it's just this like centering reminder

(54:00):
or it's like presence peace. But also, you're only here
for a brief moment at least for me, and so
let's make the most of it. And I tend to
make the most of it when I'm outdoors.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:14):
I don't know about you, but the chatter in my
head just goes goes, goes, goes, and there's some point
in my hike where it quiets, and I don't find
that experience anywhere else.

Speaker 3 (54:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (54:25):
And what's interesting is I used to after I got sober,
I started meditating, and I was like, that's pretty good,
in the sense that I would meditate at least twenty
minutes a day. And then I went up to Alaska
for a month and that was just like any possible
thing I was looking for in meditation. It happened there
for a month straight and it was like, Oh, this

(54:46):
is what I was after with that thing. And I
realized if people like meditation and it works for them, great,
But I realized my twenty minutes for me at least,
might be better spent out. Not to mention, I'm getting
some movement in, I'm getting sunlight on all these other lessons.

Speaker 3 (55:04):
I think nature is the greatest teacher for me.

Speaker 2 (55:08):
Agreed, Yeah, hands down. And I'm luck.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
We're both lucky to live in a place where we
have so much gorgeous opportunity to be outside.

Speaker 4 (55:16):
Okay, we're down to the final two questions. You're a
big reader. I'm envious of the amount of reading you do.
What is the best book that you read last year?

Speaker 1 (55:24):
Oh, I just did a write up of twenty twenty five.
I'm gonna I'm going to say in the last rolling
twelve month period because I just listened to a nonfiction
book that I am so enthralled with. It's called Sociopath
by Patrick Gagney.

Speaker 3 (55:40):
I got to read it.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
I know, Oh listen.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
She narrates it herself, which is often a real iffy
thing with audiobooks, But she's brilliant and the book was
just fascinating. I love nonfiction that reads like fiction, which
is how I categorize your books.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
It's just so all enveloping and enthralling and telling.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
But it was so fascinating to hear her own self
discovery and exploration of what it means to be a sociopath,
people's perception of it, psychology's perception of it, and what
it means for her and her life and her relationships.
It was fascinating.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
Yes, yeah, she yes, and so it was.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
And she knew as early as childhood that she was different,
but wasn't sure how, and quickly learned how to sort
of mask, but couldn't quite get it right. I won't
go into it too too much, but I'm telling you
the story is absolutely amazing, and I think there's a
lot we can learn from it in that there are
some characteristics of being a sociopath that I think we

(56:42):
would all be better off adopting, like caring less what
other people thought of us. And then, of course there
are a lot of negative aspects which I couldn't cultivate
if I wanted to because I'm not a sociopath. But
it was fascinating, so I'd say that was one of
my favorites.

Speaker 4 (56:55):
Okay, amazing. Final question, say, are on death row because
you've decided to adopt some of those sociopathic tendencies.

Speaker 3 (57:05):
What would your final meal be.

Speaker 1 (57:08):
Oh, sushi, sushi whole thirty approved? Or would you just
be like, oh no, no, no, I haven't done whole thirty in years.
I probably won't ever do it again. Sushi is one
of my hands down favorite foods. We just go all in.
Lots of a sabi, lots of ginger. You have to,
you have to, lots of rice.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
At some point, remind me to tell you how I
think I would thrive in a prison environment because of
the routine and how much time you would have to
exercise and read.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
I don't mean to make light of it, but my husband.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
Jokes that prison might be like an okay environment for
me because of how little I would have to talk
to people and how much time might have to read.

Speaker 3 (57:46):
You might have a business idea.

Speaker 4 (57:47):
It's a prison, but for people who don't want to
commit a crime.

Speaker 3 (57:49):
It's just like, yeah, we'll lock you up for a year.
How fun.

Speaker 1 (57:52):
Oh that would be the dream, are you kidding? I
would be so fit and so well read.

Speaker 4 (57:57):
Yeah, you could get a tattoo artist who's doing it
not with like a needle and a string and it's
all shitty, Like, get a good tattoo artist in there.
It's like a spa prison hybrid.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
Oh my gosh. We would have great food too, and
lots of outdoor time.

Speaker 4 (58:10):
Well, we have a long follow up conversation. We'll start
figuring out the business plan for our spa prison. But
in the meantime, Melissa, thank you so much for coming
on the show. I loved talking to you as I
always do.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
Same here, Michael, Same here.

Speaker 4 (58:26):
That is it for today, and thanks again to Melissa
for coming on the show to talk to us about
Whole thirty and the story of her amazing life. New episodes,
as a reminder, are going to be dropping twice a
week in your feed, so please subscribe, and if you
have any questions, if they ask Michael anything section, please
drop them in the comments or send us an email.

(58:46):
Even better, if you want to rack up some bonus points,
send us a voice memo or a video, and we
will try to answer as many questions as we can.

Speaker 3 (58:55):
As always have fun, don't die.