#4: J.D. and CHRISSY ROTH - WHOEVER LOSES THE MOST WINS
with JD & Chrissy Roth
In this week's episode, I interviewed the iconic T.V. producer, J.D. Roth - the man responsible for redefining reality T.V. entertainment with his record-breaking series, "The Biggest Loser". Now fully whole food plant-based, J.D. and his wife, Chrissy, are like a kale-force wind spreading the news about plants far and wide. Hear J.D.'s no-nonsense advice for Joe, our Bronx firefighter—and learn the first thing you should do when making a lifestyle change. It might surprise you! Plus - be sure you check out this recipe for Celery Salad. Chrissy served it to us during our visit and it knocked our socks off!
Award-winning producer JD Roth has built a television empire, creating some of the industry’s most successful and compelling entertainment programming. A reality-TV pioneer, Roth co-founded production company 3 Ball Productions in 2001, virtually inventing and championing “transformation television” – programming that celebrates the ability of people to make real changes and improve their lives.
Nowhere has this been more crystallized than in the arena of “weight loss” on TV, a genre JD first introduced to TV audiences more than a decade ago with the creation of “The Biggest Loser” on NBC – now a worldwide, half-billion dollar brand. That show became what JD affectionately refers to as a “category killer” in the TV business – a program so impactful and identifiable, it defines and ultimately owns the genre.
In practical terms, “The Biggest Loser” empowered contestants to face the truth, and then gave them the tools to dig deep and make long-lasting change. The show also inspired millions of viewers and fans around the world.
JD’s passion for transformation became the foundation of his company’s brand, reflected not just in other successful weight-loss shows including ABC’s long-running “Extreme Weight Loss” (the show airs as “Obese” in over 130 international territories) but also in series like “Bar Rescue” and “Hungry Investors” for Spike TV, “My Cat from Hell” for Animal Planet, and “LA Hair” for WE tv, – all programming that, season after season, empowers people to want more from their lives, ultimately improving their health, businesses and relationships (JD even made geeks cool with the worldwide hit, “Beauty and the Geek,” nearly a decade ago).
JD continues producing inspiring shows that transform. Previous hits include the ground-breaking “For Love or Money” (four seasons on NBC); as well as NBC’s “Age of Love”; JD also launched “MasterChef” for FOX, producing that series’ first season.“I Used to be Fat” for MTV; “Flying Wild Alaska” for Discovery; “Breaking Bonaduce,” “The Pick-Up Artist” and “Scott Baio is 45 and Single” for VH1; “Unan1mous” for FOX; “Hammer Time” for A&E; “Fourth and Long” for Spike; “Groomer Has It” for Animal Planet; and the series that launched 3 Ball, “Endurance,” which ran for seven seasons on Discovery.
Transcript of Episode 4: Whoever Loses the Most Wins
Rip: The difference between a winner and a loser is winners lose more and that's the only difference. A loser does something, fails, and never does it again. A winner does something and loses and keeps going if it takes 100 times, 1000 times. There's no stopping them. In the end, if you look at life like this, every time you lose, you get a point. Every time you win, you get zero. Whoever gets the most points first wins.
Rip: Every time you lose it's an opportunity to do some self analysis and then troubleshoot where you can make improvements next time. I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I have fallen flat on my face only to come back with that much more of a vengeance and determination to do better, whether it was the relentless pursuit of becoming a world class tri-athlete, just cooking in the kitchen again and again and again trying to get a recipe right, learning how to ride a unicycle, and falling and falling and falling and getting back up until I knew how to ride forwards, backwards, down stairs, in circles, and juggle at the same time. Writing again and again and again until I got it just right. The labor of love with the Engine 2 food products and all of the blood, sweat, and tears that went in to creating this food line over seven years, or doing something as simple as playing ping pong, which I challenge anybody to try and beat me at now.
Rip: Look at some of the biggest winners in our society, Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, LeBron James, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, they all learned to overcome defeat and come back and be winners. One of my all time favorite quotes that I apply every day in my life is by Winston Churchill. Never, never, never, never, never give up. There's five nevers in there. Look at Joe. He tried seven years in a row and now he's back for more and if my hunch is correct here, he's gonna nail it this time. I mean absolutely nail it.
Rip: Tell me again. You would do it after your physical, your annual physical, you would kind of be like oh man, I've got to get my act together, because you'd seen Forks Over Knives, maybe read Engine 2, right?
Joe: Yes I have actually.
Rip: You're like, okay, I know the path I want to go down and you do it for almost three months and then for whatever reason you'd start to slip up and then you'd kind of go back down the rabbit hole. Is that right?
Joe: Yeah. A lot of it is just the general difficulties of trying to sustain yourself this way in a world where it's not meant ... it's very difficult for anybody to eat this way. So the preparation gets difficult, the on the go lifestyle gets difficult, and life gets difficult and a lot of times I do it, I clean my blood work and I'm like, all right, I'm good, and then go back to my normal ways and then the next year I get flagged again.
Rip: So the question isn't really how do you stop yourself from failing, but rather how can you learn to embrace failing, don't be scared of it, and understand that it's all part of the process in becoming a winner? Think of it as every time you lose in essence, you're that much closer to winning. You've just got to have the resiliency and the mental stamina to jump back into the game and keep swinging because sooner or later you will connect for that single, that double, that triple, or that home run.
Rip: My uncle, George Crile, who wrote "Charlie Wilson's War" was a producer for CBS News and a total adventure taker in life. He told us as young kids, he said, "Rip, Ted, James, Eb, learn to embrace the no in life because when you do, it means you're one step closer to yes."
Rip: I'm Rip Esselstyn. I am the founder of Engine 2 and I am gonna be working with Joe Inga, he's an amazing firefighter, father, he's just a really amazing human being and we're gonna go on an amazing journey and witness Joe transform before our very eyes from somebody whose health has spiraled out of control to somebody that is gonna take back his health. What I've done, in order to take Joe on this journey, is I've marshaled together some of the most amazing doctors, inspirational leaders to help work with Joe and possibly yourself. Listen in as Joe is absolutely transformed from a couch potato to a veritable sweet potato triathlete in less than six months.
Rip: Episode after episode, Joe gains momentum and confidence and all the tools and tricks to what it means to become a plant-strong man. I can't wait to have you listen in on this journey. Welcome to Plant-Strong.
Rip: I can't think of a better person on the planet to talk to about losing than Mr. J.D. Roth, creator and producer of NBC's The Biggest Loser.
J.D. Roth: Hi. I'm J.D. Roth. Hi. I'm J.D. Roth. I'm a television producer and a plant-strong man.
Speaker 4: Sure. I'll take it.
Chrissy Roth: Oh my gosh.
Rip: Are you a plant-strong woman?
Chrissy Roth: I am a plant-strong woman, of course I am. Chrissy Roth, I'm a holistic nutritionist, physical therapist, and I am plant-strong as well.
J.D. Roth: I've had plenty of losses over the years, personally and in business. Some of them have beat me. Some of them literally ... I can remember when I stopped being an actor. I was in an acting class, Bruce Lee's son, Brandon Lee, was also in the class and he did something so dramatic and so intense in a class, I walked out at the halfway point and I never came back.
Rip: Because you could never ...
J.D. Roth: I'm like if he can put all the chips in like that, I don't have that, and what I didn't understand was life has a continuum. There are people that are so extreme and so over the edge and so far one way and they're successful and there are people who are at the opposite end who are also successful. There's plenty of people who are great at playing themselves and they do really well. You don't have to be the chameleon of all chameleons, the person willing to strip down and become someone else. You don't have to. I think it took me a while to learn the lesson, but that moment beat me.
J.D. Roth: Look, we keep all of our successes and failures based on ratings in television and I had to make that adjustment years later that it isn't about the ratings, it's about the work that you did and how did you feel that work ... the best show I ever made was canceled after three episodes, and it's still to this day the only poster that hangs.
Rip: What's that?
J.D. Roth: It's called Opportunity Knocks and it was a game that we played at the dinner table, which would be like what's mommy's favorite ice cream flavor? You know what I mean, and if the kids ... it was how well you know your family, only we blew it up on steroids so we showed up with 15, 18-wheeler trucks in a neighborhood and put a game show in their front lawn. It was in prime time on ABC.
J.D. Roth: I partnered with Ashton Kutcher on the show and the idea was a father would come on stage in front of his whole neighborhood and I would say you have a quarter collection with your son. Yeah, I collect all the state quarters. He's missing one quarter in the collection. I have it. If you can tell me what state it is, this is yours, and it's the car of his dreams, a 1968 fastback Mustang. The car pulls up on stage, they hand me the keys. These keys are yours if you can tell me what state it is. I hold it, I'm like, can you see the reflection in my eyes? It was those moments of how well do you know your kid, how well do you know your wife.
Chrissy Roth: Your community too. The mailmen, they had like four mailmen.
J.D. Roth: Four mailmen, which one's yours?
Chrissy Roth: They're like ooh.
J.D. Roth: In the end, that's all that matters, your family, your friends, your neighbors. Those are the only people that are gonna be there for you and the reason the show didn't work is the stock market crashed two weeks before the show premiered and people lost 50% of their 401(k) and a third of America or whatever lost their home and I don't think they really cared what Johnny's favorite quarter was in the collection of state quarters or what mommy's favorite ice cream flavor was. I think it hit a cord at the wrong time. At the right time, like right now, that show would be hugely valuable to get you off of all the chaos that's going on socially and politically. It'd be amazing timing. I think I was too far ahead of the game, but it is the show that I'm most proud of.
Rip: So as far as losses are concerned, I want to bring up Joe. He saw Forks Over Knives, he read Engine 2 seven years ago and for seven years after every time he has his annual physical, he is like, oh my god, I gotta get my act together.
Joe: The report came back with mild abnormalities, this is from last March, so my total cholesterol was 219, my triglyceride was 261, my HDL was 26, my cholesterol HDL ratio was 8.4, which is high, my LDL was 150, and my non-HDL was 193. Those were my main cholesterol numbers. Those are very good compared to what I've had in the past. I've had my LDL as high as 200. I've had my triglycerides as high as 300 and I've had that number come back at around the 5 number, which is not good for a firefighter.
Rip: Yeah. What's the highest you've ever seen your total cholesterol, do you know?
Joe: It's gotta be ... I remember most of these numbers being around 300.
Rip: Well, those numbers, although not horrendous, they're certainly not enviable by any stretch of the imagination. The 219, that's right in the line with most Americans, but anything really over 150 we're not thrilled about. We want to take a closer look at what's going on with your ratios, your LDL's 150 and we want that ideally down closer to 80 or below so that's almost twice what we want it. Your triglycerides you said were like 260-something. That's a measure of how much fat you have in your blood. Anything over 150 is considered elevated, so you're well over the water mark there.
Joe: Right.
Rip: There's lots of room for improvement there and the fact that those numbers are some of the best that you've had in a couple years.
Joe: It's not good. The other thing is this report also it doesn't state on this, because it was like this is just the blood work numbers, but the previous four, five years, the doctor had stated during this appointment that I gained 13 pounds a year over the last four to five years prior to this.
Rip: You gained 13 pounds a year over the last four to five years.
Joe: Yeah, for four to five years straight. I was really letting myself go.
Rip: So we're talking, that's almost like 50-something pounds in four or five years.
Rip: What I want you to do right now, J.D. Roth. Jillian Michael referred to you in the big fat truth, in the endorsement, she says, there's only one guy that can pull out the beast monster mode like no other and that's J.D. So, I want you to pretend that I am Joe. I'm Joeing. I'm every Joe and every Jane that's out there that wants to embrace this lifestyle but is having a hard time. What do you say to me?
J.D. Roth: Well I say that nobody eats because they're hungry. You can't eat yourself to 250 pounds or whatever the number is. What you perceive as hunger pain is actually emotional pain. It's never about food. So what is the real reason, and getting to the core of what that reason is, is everything. That's what makes it ... you say, what sticks, it never sticks. Well, because diet is a bad word we all know. Diets have a start and a stop. Lifestyle doesn't. You have to make a choice for life and I think that in the end, the first piece of advice I would give to him is to figure out what the real reason is that he's in the spot that he's in.
J.D. Roth: So I say to people, you look out the view of a window and you can close this eyes and do this exercise and you think where am I five or 10 years from now? Who am I with? What room am I in? What job do I have? Whose sitting next to me, who do I love? That's the view. That's what you want. The only way to get that view is to look in the mirror, because the mirror is where all the hard work is done. It's where all the pain is caused. You look in the mirror and you face the truth. If you want the view to be closer from your window so it's right up in your face, you have to do the work in the mirror. If you don't do the work in the mirror and answer the tough questions, all that is going to be is a view that you end up seeing far off in the distance.
J.D. Roth: I would say that and as an active step, I always say the same thing to every single contestant that I've ever worked with, which is if you want to lose weight clean your bedroom and they always look at me like you, a little confused and they say, "Does that burn a lot of calories?" The answer is no it doesn't burn any calories. In the morning, when you open up your eyes if the first thing you see is chaos, the rest of your day is done.
J.D. Roth: We all know that in the end making one good food decision in the morning that's plant based, pretty typically almost always guarantees the next one will be good. Start the day off with a croissant, it's over. It's downhill from there. I say clean everything out of your bedroom, empty the entire room and just put three things in it. Put a bed, put a place to sit, and put a place for clothes, and that's it. Because it takes a while, the subconscious connection between I feel bad, oh when I eat this I feel good. Oh crap, I feel bad again, and then you keep going and that triangle just keeps going and going. The only way to break that cycle in your subconscious is to start with the first thing you see when you open your eyes, and I've been in some bedrooms you would not believe.
Rip: Yeah.
J.D. Roth: Tragedy. For every 50 pounds overweight you are, your bedroom is worse. So anyone listening to this, if you're 50 pounds overweight, 100, 150, really look at yourself. Go into your bedroom. Do you see the Big Gulp with the stain next to your bed? Do you see all the unopened mail? Do you see all the laundry piled up? Can you even find the treadmill that was supposed to be in your room that's now used as a hanger for all your clothes? It's all those things that you have to get past and start over. You need a clean slate.
Rip: I hear you loud and clear there. As a firefighter, we would go in on these lifting assistance calls for people that are morbidly obese right and we'd go into their bedroom and I'd see exactly what you're talking about in spades. You see the Domino's Pizza boxes, you see the KFC wrappers, you see the Big Gulps and it's like they're drowning in all this standard American pleasure trap food.
J.D. Roth: I had one guy over 400 pounds tell me the moment he knew he needed to change was that bedroom that you described and then his nose was running, and he just leaned down, picked up his shirt and blew his nose in his shirt. He's like that's when I realized I gotta do something. You slowly are in a dark room so you turn off little light at a time and then the room gets so dark you can't find a switch to turn on so all I really do, I know Jillian says beast mode, but all I really do is just help people unstick themselves and once you get unstuck and there's one little light in the room and you can slowly make where the next light is, you can connect the dots yourself after that. You just need help getting started.
Rip: Are you exercising at all?
Joe: I haven't really been. I've been a little bit doing more stretches. I'm still nursing a back and hamstring injury so I'm just trying to stretch it. My knees have been difficult because I was so overweight, so since I've been losing the weight, it's been feeling better. I'm just trying to take one step at a time because a couple times in the past when I've tried this and I've failed it was because I tried to take on too much at once. I tried doing the working out and changing the diet and just all these other things and it just became too much, so I'm definitely looking to hit the gym.
Joe: I've never really taken on running before because the only time I ran was in the academy but I have no idea how to get started. For example, is there something like all right, for the first week only run a mile, then the second week you increase it to this, how many days a week, stuff like that.
Rip: Totally, totally.
Joe: If you were to train for a marathon in six months or whatever, what's the abridged version?
Rip: So Joe Inga, he wants to do some sort of physical event in six months or so. Can you speak to some of the successes that you had with couch to people running a marathon I think, right?
J.D. Roth: Right. I actually had NBC legal send me, because I told them what I was doing, and they sent me a letter saying that it was not approved by the network, it would not be okay, and all responsibility would be on me. I had standards and practices from the network tell me under no certain terms is this allowed or approved by NBC. I had the creative executive at NBC tell me absolutely not, you can't do it. I came home and talked to my wife and I'm like, you know I'm doing it. There's no stopping me now that everybody's said no. I had my legal send a letter back saying I will take, I will fully indemnify them. If someone dies it is on me, on me and my company and me personally. I ran that marathon with them three feet off camera, the whole thing.
J.D. Roth: What it showed me and what it proved, which is it was impossible. How could you take someone who sleeps in a barcalounger, who hasn't been in their own bedroom in years because the flight of stairs is too intimidating at the end of the night, how could you tell them in six months from now they're gonna run 26.2 miles? How is that possible? But yet they all did it. They did it every season on the show and it became this rite of passage. We did the marathon every single season after that until the end and all the doctors on the show, you can't do this, this is horrible, what is this teaching people? It's teaching people that you can do anything and what's wrong with that? That's the best example that we could teach them, the power of not thinking you can accomplish something and then actually doing it. That's a muscle that we all need to develop and most people have never developed it. They accept less in their life in every area until it becomes normal. Then they die early.
J.D. Roth: Joe, my advice to him would be plant the flag and tell the world that you're doing a triathlon before the end of 2019. Wear a t-shirt that says I will finish a triathlon in 2019. Get talking about it. Have people go, oh, I like your shirt. What does that mean? It means I'm doing. Because once you put it in the universe, you can manifest stuff.
Rip: Maybe you've heard us mention the Engine 2 Rescue 10X program with Joe. As part of our support system for Joe we've enrolled him in our online coaching program. What is it exactly? The Rescue 10X is a 10-week behavioral change intensive program geared toward helping people find their why and develop the daily habits needed to sustain long term success with the plant strong lifestyle. We know how important it is to have a tribe to support you and celebrate your progress. A tribe can also help pull you over the hard patches and hold you accountable with educational videos, life group calls with Engine 2 coaches, weekly workbooks, at home exercises, and daily support in our online platform, we invite you to join the next Rescue 10X program and dedicate 10 weeks to changing your game. Visit engine2.com for details and use the code plant strong for a $50 discount.
Rip: We start slow and then we'll build appropriately and yeah, we won't get started until you're down to the weight we want you to be.
Joe: That sounds great.
Rip: Yeah, yeah.
Joe: Then we can start talking triathlons.
Rip: Oh. So what's the farthest you've ever swum in a pool or in open water or something?
Joe: Oh I have no idea.
Rip: [crosstalk 00:21:10].
Joe: Yeah. I think in a pool I'll usually, like at the gym, I'll swim like regular across the pool and then I'll kind of like, I don't even know the swimming ways, the swimming styles but I guess kind of swim on my back back the other way and I would do maybe 20 laps that way. I would go down one way regular and then the other way.
Rip: Another thing I'm thinking is we could do our own triathlon up at the farm. We have a five acre pond there so we could swim like a quarter mile in the pond, we get on the bikes, we could bike through the Catskill Mountains, maybe do a 25, 30-mile bike, get back and then we could do a three to five mile run. We're figure out exactly, but we'll have the Joe Inga superhero triathlon.
Joe: Can we do it in superhero costumes?
Rip: Yes. Yes. We'll be Aquaman in the swim, during the bike ... who can we be? Help me out, guys.
Joe: Ghost Rider, he's got the motorcycle.
Rip: Ghost Rider. Ghost Rider. Then how about the run? Who do you want to be in the run?
Joe: The Flash. You gotta be The Flash.
Rip: The Flash, baby. There you go. Love it.
Rip: How do you guys make this happen on a daily basis? What is a typical day in the Roth household look like as far as food is concerned?
Chrissy Roth: I think it's important with kids first to get the junk food out. Go through your cabinets, go through your refrigerator and get rid of all the processed food, all the food with chemicals in it and start only bringing into the house things that aren't processed. So what's not processed? Fruit, vegetables, things like hummus, beans, garbanzos.
J.D. Roth: And make that a destination. So if we're gonna go get something that's probably not get for us, it's a trip. We gotta all get in the car, we gotta get our shoes on, we gotta go drive somewhere, we make a decision to have a time what we're doing, it's not just you can be lazy in front of the TV, go to the refrigerator and empty out an entire sleeve of Thin Mint cookies because they're not here.
Chrissy Roth: That's right and engage your kids too. I had the kids help come to the store. We go to Trader Joe's a lot because there's a lot of healthy choices there so they would pick out whatever they wanted from there because we weren't gonna find Doritos there. Then I think it's important too when they get home from school, they're hungry, so I would always have out a vegetable and fruit tray, apples, cucumbers, red peppers, tomatoes. I know a lot of people put it out with ranch, there's vegan ranch, listen if it's gonna get your kids to eat it, go for it. My kids don't like dipping, they don't care, so they'd be starving. They'd come home, they'd have a bunch of watermelon and a bunch of ... what else did they have?
J.D. Roth: They actually can't go to bed without having an apple.
Chrissy Roth: An apple, yeah. One of my sons has an apple every single night.
J.D. Roth: Eighteen and 15 years old, still before he goes to sleep, still before he goes to sleep, he cannot go to sleep unless he's had a cut up apple. People come over for dinner. They leave either one of two ways, super happy, inspired, and like on cloud nine or they head straight to In-N-Out.
Chrissy Roth: They do not.
J.D. Roth: They do.
Chrissy Roth: They do not. They told me-
J.D. Roth: They do.
Chrissy Roth: They do not.
J.D. Roth: They leave-
Rip: I've had the same thing happen. I get texts, we're in In-N-Out.
J.D. Roth: Right and by the way, I don't think we care.
Chrissy Roth: I don't care.
J.D. Roth: This is just, this is what we do here and we love the exchange with people and the ideas and we hope that they like it and get inspired by it and even if it takes them five or six meals, I remember ... what was ... we have a doctor in the neighborhood whose name will go unsaid who when we first started doing it was like that's so cute.
Chrissy Roth: That's so adorable, you guys. Just hopping on to these healthy trains. We're like, no. This is life.
J.D. Roth: You guys are always with the trends, remember that?
Chrissy Roth: Yeah.
Rip: You'll get on it too, soon.
J.D. Roth: Now he's asking us questions about how to do it, by the way.
Chrissy Roth: It is interesting though, because five years ago we made the joke a little more about we'd be hearing going to In-N-Out because people now, they expect it. They know that they're gonna come have really healthy food and it's gonna be fat free and they know it's gonna taste good and I think they look forward to it. Now they're always like what are you making? I always get what are you making? We invite people over and they get really excited to come to dinner now.
J.D. Roth: Don't you think the bad part is when we all go out to dinner and there's a bunch of couples, nobody will order before we do.
Chrissy Roth: Yes.
J.D. Roth: So they'll go to one, no, no, let J.D. and Chrissy, let them order first. They always want to see what we're gonna order first before they order. By the way, I don't judge. I go to steakhouses, plenty with my friends. I get the side vegetables. I ask for it without oil and butter. I go home and I sleep like a baby and they have the meat sweats and they talk about it the next day that they slept so poorly and their stomach hurts and the whole thing and I just laugh about it and I get up at 5:30 in the morning and go running with my friends. So to each his own. You can go anywhere today and still find a plant based meal if you want to. That's on you. If you focus on what you want, the goal, you'll never get there. It's the people who want to win an academy award that don't. It's the guy that wants to be a billionaire that is never going to be. It's the people who are in the garage messing around with something called a computer that turns into a billion dollar idea. They would have been in the garage anyway doing it.
J.D. Roth: Laird Hamilton is a friend of ours. He'd be in the water surfing if there was no commerce involved. It's just who he is. It's what he loves to do. I think when you find that inside yourself, then anything is possible.
Rip: I loved in your book where you talked about how for I think it's 10 years now, 11 years, you've had this running group and they meet at your house because then you're accountable.
J.D. Roth: Yeah, it's a dozen guys, it's been 15 years and we always meet ... and you know what, it holds them accountable too. Again, there are guys that I don't drink, I don't go to bars, I don't watch football, I don't hang out with the guys on the weekends, that is my social time with guys, and yeah, it's in the dark and it's in the rain sometimes, we go rain or shine. The things that we've talked about and the things that we've shared are things that I have never shared with any other guy on the face of the planet. It's super valuable. There is something meditative about even sometimes in motion, in conversation, can be meditative. I don't think it has to be the sit only, staring.
Chrissy Roth: You say that, but when you started actually meditating, you found a big difference between saying, oh I meditate when I run, because he would always say that. I think when I run. I said the whole point is not thinking. That's the thing, and it's tough to quiet your mind down.
J.D. Roth: Yeah, but so are push-ups.
Chrissy Roth: Very hard.
J.D. Roth: So you say, I can't do any push-ups. Well if you did one today and tomorrow you do two and the next day you do three, pretty soon it's 20 so when you start meditating, it's a minute. Just commit a minute. Everybody I think in weight loss, in transformation, everybody tries to take on too much too fast and it's unsustainable, just like turning off I eat a whole pizza a night and now I'm never going to eat pizza again. You can't do that. I don't think that's sustainable and I think people need to make sustainable choices one at a time.
Rip: So what we're looking for here is we're looking for accountability, sustainability, finding your why, finding that rhythm that's gonna allow this to stick, and never giving up when something doesn't go as planned, especially when you absolutely know in your heart of hearts that this is the right thing for you. These are lessons everybody should apply to their life, whether you're plant-based or not, and in Joe's case he has come to the stark realization that after seven failures, he needs to be part of a team in order to make this lifestyle stick. I want to applaud him for having the gumption and the courage to reach out to me for support. I know it wasn't easy, but because he did reach out and ask for help, you can bet your bottom eggplant that he's gonna get it in spades. So I want to welcome Joe to Team Plant-Strong and now, Joe, grab an onion and start dicing.
Joe: I think things so far have been going pretty good with the help of the groups and Facebook and being able to look things up. Things have actually been pretty good with the dietary aspect. Since I started this, if you hadn't got me involved in the way that you have, it would have been so much more difficult because I don't know anybody outside of the circles that you're bringing me into. So it's everybody that you've introduced me to so far, it's everything that you interviewed on the podcast. So outside of that, I didn't have anyone to go to, anywhere to find information, anywhere to ask questions. I mean, I've been all over these Facebook groups. What do you think of this, what do you think about this? Is this good? Has anybody got recipes? I've just been expanding from there and now that I have the support everywhere I need it, if anything happens or I have any questions, to know that I have other people who are familiar with it to be able to reach out to, it's definitely made it that much easier.
Rip: I'm super grateful to be able to provide Joe with the support and the encouragement that he needs to stay plant-strong while doing something that's really gonna motivate him and that's to train him for his first triathlon. We're gonna dangle that carrot out in front of him to get in the pool, to get on that Schwinn, to put on his Nike running shoes because believe it or not, in less than six months, he is gonna be toned up to dive into a lake and start swimming.
Rip: There's no reason for you to do this alone either. I want to be your support too and with the sage advice of experts like my father and J.D. Roth and so many others, listen, we can do this together and we can have fun doing it. Let's master the art of losing, because you know what, that's how we're gonna become better winners.
Rip: I'm Rip Esselstyn and I want to thank you for listening. My hope is that this podcast has inspired you to take control of your health through a plant-strong lifestyle. I also want to thank my co-creator of the podcast, Scott Battishill with Ten Percent Media, Laurie Kortowich, my producer extraordinaire and Engine 2 director of events, Tina Knoll and Large Media for podcast production and creative direction, and Brandon Curtis for never minding living in the barrel and everything in between. Thanks for Whole Foods market for giving me a platform for the last decade. Special thanks to Joe Inga for your courage to take control and change your life and for allowing us to share your story along the way.
Rip: Lastly, I want to thank my father and mother, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn Jr. and Anne Crile Esselstyn and all the plant-strong pioneers who have been pushing this boulder uphill for more than three decades. As they say, we're standing on the shoulder of giants.
Rip: If you're digging the podcast, I want you to rate us. I want you to review the show, and I want you to spread this message with friends and family. We want to get this message out to as many people as possible. Join us on all of our social channels, either on Engine 2 or Rip Esselstyn, whether it's Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. Until next time, peace, Engine 2, and keep it plant-strong.