From Couch Potato to Ultra Runner | Rich Roll EP 584

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:11Food is medicine. Hippocrates said it in 340 BC, and 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. It's so elementary, right? But I don't know that we really take that to heart enough. And so that's what happened to me. But ultimately, I ended up becoming an ultra-endurance athlete. And 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.

0:57Wow. And that kind of put me... They take like 24 hours, don't they? No, I mean an Ironman. Or a triathlon. Yeah. So a single Ironman, 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, flying. You did five Ironmans? Five Ironmans 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. But we got it done and no one it was I did it with my buddy Jason Lester and no one had ever tried it before.

1:35So 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 was a really cool thing. And that's kind of like what my first book is about. Kind of going from couch potato, schlubby lawyer guy to, you know, middle aged ultra endurance. Right. Why do you think eating a plant based diet is so intimidating for a lot of people? Well, I think it's intimidating for a number of reasons. I mean, the first thing is it sounds like a huge deprivation diet. Like, oh, my God, how can I go a day without eating cheese? Or how can I go a day without eating a cheeseburger?

2:13And these kinds of foods, animal products, find their way into most of the things that people are eating on a typical Western diet. And so I think that right off the bat, people are like, whoa, not so fast. 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 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 was something I would have never predicted.

2:49And so part of my message is that plant-based foods are incredibly healthy and they contain everything that you need to live. And also, and this is what the Plant Power Way is really about, is it doesn't have to be a deprivation thing. We always say focus on all the new exciting foods that you're bringing into your diet, like nutrient-dense foods that are super healthy for you, as opposed to focusing on a couple things that you're giving up. Gotcha. And what would you say are the highest performance foods out there? 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, whatever it may be.

3:34I think that making sure that you're getting lots of dark leafy greens into your diet. 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 a 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 waffles man yeah i know it i know look i know man but to start your day by like drinking a salad and just you can almost feel your body coming alive it's a it's it's a miraculous thing so i would say to people like 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 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.

4:40It affects how you interact with people. Your mood. Yeah, your mood. Stress levels. And the ripple effect of that applies to everything in your life. Yeah. What are a couple other foods besides the dark leafy greens? I like to eat a lot of lentils and beans. They're very high in protein. So as an athlete, that's important, of course. Sure, sure. I also, I'm a big fan of veggie burritos. That's like my go-to lunch. Veggie burritos. In a pinch. Yeah, in a pinch when you're driving around town. I can always, especially in Los Angeles, I can always find, you know, rice and beans and guacamole. Right, right, right.

5:12I love superfoods. 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 edge. So like cordyceps, I love for athletic performance. spirulina, which is the highest protein content by weight of any food on the planet, including beef. Is it better to juice your salad or blend your salad? Juice versus blending. Yeah, we get that question a lot too.

5:47And I think they both have their place. I think that if you're blending your drink, you're packing all these foods, beets, spinach, kale, hemp seeds, flaxseed, all these kinds of things into a blender, and 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.

6:27Right. 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 and 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 the juice diet? Well, I think it depends on what kind of like if it's just pure, if it's pure kale juice, 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 these very high kind of like, you know, artisanal, you know, organic juices that can be very expensive.

7:01You can make them at home for super cheap with your own juicer. So I think it depends on what kind. But I think you do have to be a little bit more cautious about just pounding juices all day long. Gotcha.

7:21Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation. And I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on the School of Greatness. And if you are loving the daily motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcasts right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world-class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

8:11Again, have an amazing day, and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.