In this episode, Adam Sud opens up about his inspiring recovery journey from addiction, obesity, and illness through the transformative power of a plant-based diet. He dives into the emotional drivers of addiction—pain, loneliness, and disconnection—and how a life-changing Whole Foods retreat with Rip Esselstyn sparked his lifestyle shift. Adam shares how understanding the “pleasure trap” concept, reversing type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and shedding 150 pounds in just 10 months helped him create a healthier, more fulfilling life. His story highlights the importance of simplifying eating, building supportive environments, and fostering community connections in the recovery process. Tune in for an uplifting conversation on the power of resilience, gratitude, and the daily commitment to better health.
Highlights:
- Adam Sud shares his recovery journey from addiction, obesity, and illness using a plant-based diet.
- Pain, loneliness, and disconnection are key drivers of addiction.
- A Whole Foods retreat with Rip Esselstyn inspired Adam's lifestyle change.
- The “pleasure trap” concept helped him understand addiction and recovery.
- Reversed type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and lost 150 pounds in 10 months.
- Simplified eating and supportive environments were crucial to success.
- Recovery is creating a safe, hopeful life that makes substance use unattractive.
- Community and meaningful connections are vital for resilience.
- Two-week dietary experiments build motivation and habits.
- Gratitude for the family's unconditional support shaped his recovery.
- Treat everyone as if it's their last day to inspire kindness and connection.
Intro:
Hello true health seeker, and welcome to another exciting episode of the Learn True Health podcast.
Today is going to blow your mind. We have Adam Sud sharing his story. It’s something that so many people need to hear. I needed to hear it. It’s really wonderful getting his perspective if you have anyone in your life that is sick, that is suffering, that is struggling, please share this episode with them. I want to help end the needless suffering of millions of people and this is another episode that will help us accomplish that.
If you are a new listener, welcome. I recently published a book called, Addicted to Wellness. This is a fun, inspiring, motivating, workbook that will help you to take your health wherever your health is. It will help you take your health to a new level. Check it out. Go to Amazon and type in Addicted to Wellness by Ashley James or you can go to learntruehealth.com/addictedtowellness.
I encourage you to buy it and go through the weekly challenges at your own pace. You will find that these simple and doable challenges bring you more energy, more mental clarity, better sleep, deeper sleep, and throughout the day you will feel more fulfillment, enjoy better digestion, the list of benefits goes on and on.
This book is an accumulation of everything I’ve learned working with so many clients for over 12 years as well interviewing over 500 health experts. So it really does have the key fundamentals that make the biggest difference. The smallest effort on your part to make the biggest difference to your overall health and well-being. And no matter how busy you are, it’s easy to implement into your life, 5, 10 minutes a day in the morning, 5, 10 minutes in the evening, and just watch as you get the results. So this is my labor of love to you, to the wonderful listeners, I love you guys so much.
I was sick and suffering for many years. I transformed my health and I turned around and said, I got to help others. This is why I do what I do. Together we can help as many people as possible to learn true health. Through sharing this podcast, sharing my book, together we can help those to stop the needless suffering.
MDs have brainwashed us and the mainstream media has brainwashed us to believe that we cannot heal. That our bodies are stuck this way because of genetics or stuck this way, you will always have to be on these drugs. And they sell us this bill of goods that robs us of our vitality and joy and our true purpose in life. It’s actually quite maniacal. And I’m here to tell you that you have an amazing God-given ability to heal–that your body can heal. That you can get so healthy that you get taken off of all those drugs.
Listen to today’s interview with an open mind and know that your body can heal itself. Check out my book, Addicted to Wellness. If you have questions, I’d love to see you in the Facebook group, the Learn True Health Facebook Group. Of course, go to my website, learntruehealth.com. You can use the search function there and search other topics you are interested in. We’ve covered so many topics about how to restore health and well-being to our physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and energetic body.
Check out my book. Share this episode please with as many people as you can so we can help them. And those you share it with can then share with their friends and so on and so on and we can really make a big difference.
One-third of the population is diabetic or pre-diabetic that means one-third of the people you know need this information. Just share it with as many people as you can so we can make a huge difference. I’ve helped so many people to reverse type 2 diabetes within months! And they were told they’d be on drugs their whole life and that they’d be sick and suffering their whole life, and it’s such a lie. Together, we’re going to help people to restore them to the health that they deserve. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for sharing. Enjoy today’s episode.
Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I’m your host, Ashley James. This is episode 527.
Ashley James (0:05:21.588)
I am so excited for today's guest. We have on the show a very special guest on the show, Adam Sud from AdamSud.com. It's spelled S-U-D—super easy. Adam Sud, I met you through a mutual friend, Robin Openshaw, who is amazing. I also know the guys who wrote Mastering Diabetes. I've had them both on my show, love them, and refer back to their program when coaching my clients.
I’m so impressed with their work. If anyone is struggling with any kind of blood sugar-related issue, you’re going to love today’s episode. But also weight loss, hormone balance, getting your energy back, reversing and preventing heart disease. We’re going to cover some amazing topics, and also addiction, something near and dear to my heart. I’ve been very openly vulnerable on this show that I’ve struggled with food addiction for many years.
I’m grateful that I don’t struggle with drug or alcohol addiction, but I can definitely sympathize with those who do because I’ve worked really hard to overcome food addiction. I adopted a whole-food, plant-based diet and, over the course of several years, I lost 80 pounds. I’m still on my journey, but I’ve reversed type 2 diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue, chronic infections, and polycystic ovarian syndrome.
I was told I’d never have children after a battery of tests with an endocrinologist. That should be illegal. It should be illegal for an endocrinologist to tell a 19-year-old woman she’ll never have children based on labs at nineteen, when there’s so much evidence that a diet-adapted lifestyle can completely change your life. And because of supplementing with certain nutrients that I was depleted of, especially minerals and adopting a healthy, whole-food lifestyle, I was able to reverse that. We conceived our son naturally, and now we have an amazing nine-year-old son, super healthy. I’m so grateful for that and for this health journey. That’s why I do this podcast. Today, we have Adam Sud on the show, who’s going to share his story of how he overcame some major challenges like many, many listeners are struggling with. I want you to listen not only for yourself but also for those you love in your life. You may not know that there is someone you care about who goes to sleep crying every night like I did. Crying because they feel like they're trapped a prisoner in their body. They wish for a better way, for answers, but the doctor only gives them drug after drug and the media is saying diets just eat the carnivore diet, go Atkins, or whatever the media is pushing and they feel sicker and sicker instead of reversing their diseases and getting back to a point where they feel healthy and some people never felt healthy, like I said go back to where you feel healthy. Some people have never experienced that. Five-year-olds that are now morbidly obese. It’s so sad that so many of us suffer needlessly.
Adam, today you're going to share your story and you're going to share some answers, what people can do today to change their lives, to take back control and to reverse these major diseases just like you did, just like I did. So we can learn true health. So thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Adam Sud (0:08:54.440)
It's my absolute pleasure. I'm so excited to be here.
Ashley James (0:08:57.316)
Awesome. Well, let's start off. Let's go all the way back to the beginning. Tell your story.
Adam Sud (0:09:01.852)
Yes. Okay, well, let’s go back to the beginning then. I was born in Houston, Texas, in 1982. I am a seventh-generation Texan. I grew up eating burgers and barbecue every single day—it was the diet of my culture, my parents, their parents, my friends, and their parents. It was everywhere that I was.
To be fair, I had a pretty awesome childhood. I was born with an identical twin brother, so I was born with a best friend. I got another best friend a couple of years later—my younger sister, Jewel. We lived in an amazing middle-class neighborhood with all our friends. We rode our bikes to and from school every single day.
My mom was a person who really compelled me to lean into my creativity and to inspire my imagination. My dad taught me how to play every sport under the sun, and it was great. But around the time I was 11 years old. I’m not really sure what was going on, but things started to change. I can remember the summer, it was 1993 or 1994—I was 11 or 12 years old. Let me tell you what you did in Houston, Texas, in the summer of ’93, when you were 11 or 12 years old. You got up in the morning, put on a bathing suit, go outside, run through the sprinklers in your house, go to your friend’s front yard and run across their slip-and-slide, then went to another friend’s house to jump in their pool. You’d go outside, find another sprinkler, ride your bikes, do that until noon. You go and have lunch, you’d go and do it all over again until you can’t walk anymore because you’d had the best day of your life. That’s how I spent my summers.
I remember one day I came running into the house, and my dad stopped me and asked me how and why I already had love handles. Now, I'm 11 years old. I don't know what love handles are. I don't know how you get them. I don't know how you get rid of them. But what I'm very aware of is that my dad is not approving of this about me.
I can remember before that moment, I was very accepting of myself, both physically and emotionally. I had a very good relationship with who I was, how I felt, and how I thought I looked. In that moment, everything kind of changed because what I began to believe was that there were now conditions upon which I was allowed to accept and love myself completely. If there's one condition, are there others? Why do I not know what they are? My gosh, am I not meeting them? I remember that was the first day I felt anxiety, and it was overwhelming. I felt unsafe in the presence of my father.
My dad, I will say, is my superhero. My dad is the most incredible human on earth. To me, when I was growing up, he was Captain America. Coming in running eight miles, shirt off, six-pack abs, and he would walk right past us at the breakfast table. He would go stand in front of the refrigerator, and I would listen to him criticize his own body in front of me.
I'm going to tell you, equally as damaging as hearing him criticize my body, hearing my father tell himself that he didn't love himself—that weren't those words, but that's what he was saying. When he looked the way that he looked—when I'm looking at him, the person who I thought was the greatest human alive—and he doesn't even think he's deserving of loving himself, that really, I believe, planted a seed in me. My gosh, if that is not worthy of acceptance, I'm never going to get there.
How shameful must I be to myself, to my parents, to my friends? So I began to hide who I actually was. That's where I really started to notice these feelings of inadequacy, these feelings of depression and anxiety. I became a class clown. I didn't want people to look at me anymore.
I started high school, and I started to be very, very self-critical, very socially anxious, even though I had a lot of friends. So my parents took me to go see a doctor. I was acting up in school, and the school had suggested that I go meet with someone. This doctor diagnosed me with ADHD.
Now I have a person of authority, a person in a white coat who my parents have taken me to for the sole purpose of finding out, is there something else about our son that's unlovable? Not what they were actually doing, but that's the perception that I had. It turns out they found something.
These aren't the exact words that the doctor used, but the doctor essentially said, “Adam, we found something else about you that's broken. Something else about you that's unacceptable to the world. Something about you that no one wants to see. In fact, it's a burden to have this be a part of you and have you be around people like you.”
But don't you worry about it because we're going to medicate you for it. We're going to put you on this pill. It's called Ritalin. What this is going to do is it's going to insult that part of you so greatly that no one will notice it. Let's hope that that makes everything okay. Again, that's not the words that the doctor used. However, that is how I felt.
Now, we moved from Houston, Texas, to Austin, Texas, before I started high school. I had gained weight in middle school. I was shy, insecure. I was really looking forward to going to high school with my friends in Houston. But I got taken away from that, and I got put into this big Texas football high school where I didn't know anybody.
I'm going to tell you, I was very worried. Number one, am I going to be able to make friends? Number two, is it going to be difficult for me to feel safe in this school?
I experienced relentless bullying my freshman year. The bullying was so bad, in fact, that halfway through my freshman year, when my parents would drop me off at school, the assistant principals would have to get their eyes on me to make sure that I made it into the school safely.
I'm going to explain to you what my life felt like at that time. I would get up every single day living inside of a body that I had been conditioned to believe wasn't a safe, secure, or hopeful place to be. I would find myself in front of parents who are, without question, the most supportive and loving parents on earth but I didn't always feel a safe, secure, and hopeful place to be. I would go to school where physically, verbally, and emotionally, it certainly did not feel like a safe, secure, or hopeful place to be. I always had the sense that tomorrow was going to be equally unsafe. Now, that experience is a breeding ground for depression and anxiety. That is the appropriate psychological response to that situation, but no one had told me that that's how I was supposed to feel.
People made me feel, not intentionally, but it just happened—that there was something wrong with me for not being happy and excited about going to school. Something gone wrong with me that I was always nervous, anxious, and hypervigilant. But I really appreciate the perspective of a British journalist named Johann Hari. Johann Hari says that depression is a form of grief for your life not being as it should.
I like the perspective of anxiety being a signal. It's an alarm bell letting you know that there's something in the not-too-distant future, likely some point today, certainly tomorrow, that doesn't feel physically safe. Doesn't feel like a safe place to be. In fact, you should be worried about it. In fact, you should be so aware of this that you should be trying to fix it to make sure that tomorrow finally feels safe. These are all psychologically reasonable responses, but to me, they were overwhelming. They were debilitating.
About this time, my prescription for Ritalin got changed to a new medication called Adderall. I'm sure everybody who's listening to this has heard of the medication called Adderall. But if you haven't, it's simply a stimulant-based form of medication used to treat ADHD and other psychological conditions. I can remember I would take one dose in the morning before I went to school, and I would take another dose halfway through school. So, I'd have my pill bottle with me. I remember I would take it in the middle of class.
As I walked out of that classroom, I would normally turn right because if I went to the left, I would go past some lockers that belonged to kids I didn't want to go past. As I walked out of the class, I'm trying to turn right and somebody grabs me and pulls me to the left. It's one of the students that would routinely bully me. Here I am. I'm waiting for them. I'm preparing for the worst. But this was slightly different when his arm went around my neck. It wasn't in a harmful manner. It was more of a “buddy, come on over here. I want to talk to you.” He says, “Hey, listen, I want you to know that all that bullying, the hazing that we've been doing to you, it's all over. I mean, listen, you're new. You understand this, right? Nothing personal here. In fact, why don't you come to this party this weekend? Just bring that Adderall with you.”
Now look, I may have been an awkward freshman, which I was. I may have been shy and quote-unquote unpopular, which I was, but I was not stupid. I knew exactly what was taking place. Do you want to know what I felt? I felt relief because I thought perhaps maybe I had found a way to feel a little bit safer in a world that didn't feel safe. So, I went to that party.
I brought my Adderall with me, and I gave it to the guys at the party. In fact, I remember that's the first night I ever used Adderall as a recreational drug. I'm going to tell you that the moment that that high dose took effect, it was, boom. I cannot explain to you the feeling that took over me in that moment. Adderall is amphetamine.
As a shy, insecure, scared kid, being flooded with amphetamine makes you feel like you're in charge. It makes you feel like you have superpowers, unbelievable confidence, and it does this with ease and repeatability. That's attractive. I noticed that as the weeks went by, I was able to lose weight with ease and repeatability. That's attractive. I was noticing I was able to make friends.
I was able to go up to people and talk to them. I was able to study in a way that I'd never studied before, with ease and repeatability. That's incredibly attractive. I also noticed that my dad was engaging with me differently. It's likely because, with ease and repeatability, I found a way for school to not feel unsafe. So, I wasn't complaining about going to school anymore. I wasn't trying to skip school anymore. I was studying like someone who actually cared about school.
So, my dad was engaging with me as if I had figured it out. Believe me, I thought I had. So, what I want you all to understand is that more so than a chemical hook in the substance if your life looked and felt like mine, if you were me and your life looked and felt like mine and you were to use, what you would notice is that that use looked and felt exactly like self-care. That's what I believe addiction actually is. It is misguided self-care. It's extremely misguided, but it is.
It's misguided survival instincts, misguided emotional signals, misguided psychological signals— all that stimulate a sense that somehow you figured it out. Somehow, right now, you feel safe and tomorrow feels like a safe, exciting place to be. When you can flip a switch from your life feeling unsafe, insecure, and hopeless to safe, secure, and exciting, you will bond with whatever it is that does that for you. That is exactly what I did.
And it worked for me. I lost the weight, I had friends, I had girlfriends, I got a scholarship to the college that I wanted to go to. Everything was finally feeling the way I thought life was supposed to feel like. The more Adderall I took, the more life became what I was hoping it would always become. Until eventually, more just became never enough.
This is the problem that most people who struggle with substance abuse find themselves in. Because not everyone who uses is a substance abuser. Some people are just substance users. So we're not in the same category, and that's okay. But as a substance abuser, I got to a point where more became not enough and not enough became an ever-constant overwhelming problem. How much do I have left? How long will it last? Where will I get more? How much is it going to cost? Where am I going to get the money to pay for it?
These five things overwhelmed every single moment of my life. They displaced my ability to care for the meaningful bonds in life that give you the experience of feeling alive. This is where substance abuse became substance use disorder. As it completely disordered my ability to care for myself, I decided what I was going to do was drop out of school.
Now, I told my parents that the reason I was doing that was, “Hey, listen, I want to take a year off. I'd like to come back to Austin, and I'd like to work for a year. The school thing I'm having trouble with, maybe I just need to get a little experience in the real world and see what's going on.” What I really wanted to do was move back to Austin and connect with all the dealers that I knew and start scamming doctors, and that is exactly what I started doing. I became a criminal drug addict. I was doctor shopping.
I was forging prescriptions, both of which are felonies. I was buying and selling drugs on the street. I was stealing from people. I started to treat my family like absolute garbage. The only time I would really start to interact with them at this point was to get money or things from them or to blame them and shame them for everything that was going wrong in my life because it couldn't be the drugs. Because you don't know what it felt like when it worked. You don't know the relief that I got. You don't know what it felt like when I first used, and I can figure this thing out. If I could just get a little bit more, if I could just have a little bit more for a little bit longer, I can get it back the way it was. You just don't understand. That was the feeling, and I was insulted and offended if you ever suggested my drugs were a problem because you don't know how well they worked when they worked. My life fell apart.
I was using so much that I would run out of drugs within two weeks. I needed some kind of substance that could disconnect me from the experience of being present because I couldn't bear to be present in my life. I found fast food to be a phenomenal substitute. Easy, accessible, repeatable. My goodness, what an attractive thing that was for my psychology. I bonded with that. I would get up every single day and I’d consumed somewhere between five and 10 thousand calories of fast food a day. I would do that for about seven to 10 days straight. Everything from McDonald's, Whataburger, Torchy's Tacos. I would probably drink 15 sodas a day. Then I would get a hold of my drug of choice, which was Adderall, cocaine, and opiates. The average prescription for Adderall is about 10 milligrams for every 24 hours. The last five years or so of my substance use problem, I was doing a minimum of 450 milligrams every 24 hours, upwards of a thousand milligrams a day, and I would do that for seven to eight days straight. Five or so of those days, I wouldn't even sleep or eat, and by the end of that, I would end up in the beginning stages of drug-induced psychosis. I'd be hallucinating, I'd be very paranoid, and I'd develop obsessive-compulsive tics that were very debilitating.
The only way I could get myself out of this was to convince myself to take massive amounts of opiates so that I could finally fall asleep, wake up, and start that whole process all over again. My life was completely falling apart. I was over 300 pounds. I was nearly broke. I wasn't talking to my family. My family had every reason to give up on me. This is when my dad came to me with an opportunity. My dad is the founding investor of Whole Foods Market.
At the time, Whole Foods Market had partnered with a man named Rip Esselstyn. Rip Esselstyn is the author at the time of the Engine 2 diet, now called Plant Strong. Whole Foods had decided that they were going to work with this man, Rip, to create a six-day retreat that they could send 100 of their team members to in order to learn how to adopt a plant-based Whole Foods diet in order to take charge of their health.
So instead of just offering health insurance, offer their team members, their employees, the opportunity to learn how to never be dependent upon it. There were a few spots open. This was the first or second time they had ever done this with the company. My dad says, “Adam, I'm begging you to go. I'm begging you, please do this.” Now, I didn't know who Rip was. I didn't want to know who Rip Esselstyn was. I didn't know what a plant-based diet was, and I didn't want to know. What I was certain of was that if I could convince my dad that I actually cared about this stupid retreat he was talking about, and I could go to it, I could get him to keep giving me money. So I said, “Yes, absolutely. Sounds like a really nice thing to do, and probably right, probably could be very helpful.” He said, “Well, here's the thing, Adam, you’ve got to come to the headquarters of Whole Foods. You’ve got to meet with Rip because you're not a team member of Whole Foods, and this is technically his deal. So you have to tell him that this is for real, and he’s got to believe you, and then he’ll give you a spot.”
So I go down to Whole Foods headquarters and go up to Rip's office, and there’s Captain America number two, my dad, standing next to Rip Esselstyn, who was a former triathlete, former firefighter, and a legend of the plant-based movement. I do what I did best. I do what every drug addict does really well: I lied. Listen, one thing I know about myself is that every single day that I went out in public, I was putting on a show. It’s very exhausting. It’s very effortful to be dealing with substance use disorder. Everything that you do and every time you interact with someone, you have to be completely fake. You have to fake it. So I knew how to put on a show, and I knew exactly what to say. “Yes, Rip, I actually read some of your book, and it’s really exciting stuff. I'm not sure if I understand all of it, but man, this really seems like it will be the thing for me. Gosh, I'd really appreciate it if I could have a spot in your retreat. If you give me this, man, I'm going to do this better than anybody.”
So, being the amazing human that he is, he gives me the opportunity to come. What do I do? I show up high out of my mind. In fact, by this time, I was closing in on 320 pounds. I was very diaphoretic, which means I was flush red, I would sweat through about three shirts a day, and I was very toxic. I actually lived like a hoarder at this time. I wasn’t showering for months at a time. I barely brushed my teeth, so my appearance, my presence, was very disruptive. In fact, it was so disruptive that there were talks about whether or not I should be removed from the program within about 36 hours of being there. Now, I’m actually not privy to the conversations that took place, but I have a feeling that the reason why I didn’t leave and wasn’t asked to leave is because Rip is now a very good friend of mine. So I know who he is. I know his character. I can tell you Rip took one look at me and said, “That is the guy who needs to be here the most. He is not leaving. He can sit at the back, do whatever, but he’s not going anywhere.” I went to every single lecture.
I listened to everything that was being said. I heard from luminary thought leaders, luminary researchers, people like Ann and Essie, Dr. Esselstyn, Rip’s dad, Rip himself, Dr. Michael Clapper, Dr. Doug Lyle, Jeff Novick—people who are spreading this message that there is a real opportunity that exists within reorganizing your calories. If you were to reorganize your caloric environment to look like a plant-based environment, you have the capacity for remarkable change. It all made sense to me. It really did.
I wish I could tell you that after six days of this retreat, and even noticing some of the effects of living in this very specific caloric environment—like noticing the effect it had on me, feeling I’d lost a little weight, sleeping better, and obviously my digestion feeling a hundred times better—I was motivated enough to change. I wish I could tell you that that was day one of my journey of recapturing my health. But here’s the thing: I simply wasn’t willing to give up what was allowing me to escape a life that was too painful of a place to be, on the gamble that this diet might work for me in one year. I was lonely. I was scared, and I just didn’t have the courage to do it. So I left, and my life got worse. By 2012, it was the worst it had ever been. I was nearly 350 pounds. I was two weeks away from being homeless. My family had cut me off. I hadn’t talked to my sister in over a year. I had no friends, and living hurt in every single sense of the word—physically, spiritually, and emotionally.
Every single day that I was alive was the worst day of my life. I lived every day in full confidence that tomorrow was always going to be worse. When you live there long enough, eventually tomorrow just isn’t a place that you want to be a part of. I had been battling suicidal thoughts for six months, but I never really had a plan. On August 21st, 2012, I’m in my apartment, I’m high out of my mind, and I’ve been up for five days straight. Not thinking straight, I don’t really know where I am. I just kept taking more pills.
Now, I’ve been abusing substances for over 10 years, so I’d had overdoses before, but I can remember feeling something distinctly unique. I felt very unwell, and I tried to stand up off of the couch. As I did, it felt like I got stabbed in the right side with a hot knife. My entire side of my body cramped, and I started to fall forward. As I do, I can see my vision going black, and I can tell you in that moment, that the feeling that I had—I’m not talking about the physical description that I just described, I’m talking about the feeling of, I’ll say it like thisy: I don’t know what it feels like to die, but I do know what it feels like to believe that you’re dying with a life full of regret. That is the most painful place that I’ve ever been.
I can remember thinking to myself, as though my vision went black, “Just give me one more second.” I woke up on the floor of my apartment in a puddle of vomit and a pile of fast food garbage, surrounded by empty pill bottles. After a couple of moments realizing what had taken place, I was overwhelmed with immense relief. To be honest, I found it confusing because I really believed that I didn’t want to live anymore. I really believed that life was something I was no longer desiring to be a part of. However, that relief that was radiating from every single cell of my body that could only take place if there was something about myself and my life that I loved enough. Something about myself, my life, that was meaningful enough that I was relieved to still be a part of it.
I’m going to tell you that that was the moment that I realized I don’t need to know exactly why I want to be here. I don’t need to know exactly why I feel I should go another day. But I knew exactly in that moment that I didn’t want this to end. I was determined to reconnect to whatever it was that made me excited that I didn’t die that day. I picked up the phone, I called my parents, and I asked for help. Two weeks later, they helped me check into a rehab hospital.
Now, I’m going to tell you, checking into rehab is a very difficult experience. I remember walking through the front doors. As you look down the hallway, there are these two big double doors, and above them, there are the letters M-A-S. Medically Assisted, I can’t remember what the S stands for, but they just called it M-A-S, but it’s essentially the detox wing. The doors open, and this nurse comes out. She’s walking down the hallway, and she’s looking at me. I know she’s coming to take me. I’d never been to rehab before. To be honest, I didn’t have any friends that had ever been to rehab before, but I’d seen in the movies the dramatic experience of what a detox is, and I was very afraid. I was also afraid for other reasons. I was afraid: What if I fail at this? What if I actually do find a way to be sober, and I don’t like life without drugs? All of these worries, these fears, were just begging me to turn around and run out the door. My mom and my dad were at my side. The nurse comes, and she grabs my hand and starts leading me down the hallway.
I know that whatever I’m about to experience is going to be very, very difficult. I look back, and my mom has her arms around my dad, and I can see my dad crying. I had only ever seen my dad cry once in his life. That was when his mom died in an accident. Watching him be so affected by it, kind of forced me to reconsider who I thought my dad was for me, and maybe he wasn’t this horrible adversary that I made him out to be. Because I had made him out to be my enemy. I was entitled, arrogant, and mean. I was very cruel to him. This man loved me anyway. He never gave up on me.
I walked into the detox wing, and went through the whole experience. They searched for belongings. They searched you. It puts you through a whole host of psychological evaluations and medical testing. It's a very dehumanizing experience. I felt like a criminal. I felt like a science experiment. I felt embarrassed and ashamed. What I’m aware of now in what was taking place, is there was a group of people that was caring for me. They want to make sure that I don’t have anything on me that can harm me, or other people. Was I trying to bring drugs in with me? Because, listen, rehab is an extraordinary effort. Trying to go 28 days without using. I know how to not use it until noon. So of course, it would be very reasonable to assume these people might be trying to bring some drugs with them, not to be malicious or break the rules. Because that’s the thing that makes them feel safe in a life that doesn’t feel safe. So they’re just looking for that.
They want to find out if there is anything medically going on with you. Most people who engage in substance use disorder to the degree that I did are engaging in a lot of behaviors that put their health at risk. So they want to know what else is going on with you. They want to get a sense of where you are psychologically, emotionally. They want to know who and what they are dealing with so they can care for that person the best way that they can.
I got a note from the doctor about 72 hours later saying that I needed to come with him. I walked in, I’m the most arrogant human ever. I really believe I’m about to get a clean bill of health. I got diagnosed with advanced type 2 diabetes. My A1C is a 12. My cholesterol is over 300. My blood pressure was 210/120. My resting heart rate was 105 to 115, somewhere in there. I got diagnosed with erectile dysfunction which I knew that I had. Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, anxiety disorder, sleep disorder, attention deficit disorder, suicidal depression. I got put on a whole host of medication for life. I can remember sitting across the desk from this doctor. This doctor is listing off all the things that are going to happen to me. Adam, you know you have very advanced type 2 diabetes and we're going to put you on the highest dose of all medication. It’s very likely that before you leave here we have to put you on insulin. There’s nothing you’re going to do about this. It’s genetic. What you are at risk for is that you are at risk for losing your sight, hearing, and limbs. So, there is a very real risk for you in the future.
You have a cholesterol of over 300; this is likely due to both your genetics and your lifestyle. You have cardiovascular disease, and so we’re going to medicate you for it. It’s not a lot you’re going to do about this. You’re going to be on medication for the rest of your life. You are at risk for a cardiovascular event. We’re going to monitor you for that. You have class 3 obesity. The success rate around weight loss is miserable. What we're going to do is medicate these conditions and hope for the best here, and we're going to medicate you for all the psychological and emotional and behavioral issues that you have as well.
But Adam, listen, if you want your life to get better, you have to stop using drugs. I remember sitting there thinking, that's the worst advice I've ever heard in my life. I mean, I knew that my future wasn't pretty. But this doctor just painted a picture of a future that was far more terrifying than I had ever imagined, and he painted it with certainty. If that's the case, what urgency now do I have to care about changing anything about my life? If, regardless of what and how I do it, I am destined to that future, my gosh, I should double down on my use.
That future that he painted is far more terrifying, unsafe, and unsecure and hopeless than anything I had imagined. I thought to myself, my goodness, if I'm really going to do this thing, if I really want to do well, I need to reverse engineer aliveness. I need to become the architect of a life that, over the course of time, will feel like such a safe, secure, and hopeful place to be that use will no longer be necessary. I didn't have the authority to believe anything differently about what they were saying about depression and addiction and anxiety, that it's a genetic thing and that the chemical hooks. Your problem is your drugs and to stop using drugs. It just rubbed me the wrong way. It really rubbed me the wrong way. I thought I'm just going to get radical and fanatical about solving this problem.
I was immediately transported back to those six days that I spent with Rip Esselstyn and his team. I said, wow, sounds like a reasonable plan to start. Why don't I just start there? Why don't I start by changing what I put on my plate? I don't understand that much about addiction, depression, anxiety, but my goodness, one thing I'm really good at is putting food on my plate. Why don't I just put that food on my plate? They didn't allow me to change my diet in the rehab hospital, but I moved into a sober living facility in Santa Monica.
After 37 days in a rehab hospital. In this sober living facility, you actually have the authority to decide what you want to eat. It's a great place on the beach in Santa Monica called Transcend. I was living there with about 12 other guys who were all trying to move forward in their recovery. For some people, this is step one. For most people, it's the second step. You go into a sober living facility after rehab and you do this in combination with some kind of intensive outpatient therapy program. The way that it works is: you live there, you have people that oversee you, they make sure to give you your medications if you're on them, they take you to your meetings and to your therapy, and it's like your next step into living your life. It's really where you learn how to care for yourself again.
Rehab Hospital is an enclosed, locked-down hospital that safely divorces you from your substance. That's what it is. The real work starts afterwards. I remember that the way that they did the food in this place was you would go up to the house manager and you would write out a list of foods that you wanted for the week. You would hand him this list and he would send a driver to the grocery store and they would get everything you wanted and everyone else everything that they wanted, and they would stock the kitchen for you and everyone in the house. I said, okay, well, there's probably some healthy stuff in here, and I go to the kitchen, open up the cabinet, and sure enough, it looks like it's been stocked by nothing but teenagers who've been watching Nickelodeon commercials from the 90s. I mean, this place was an absolute joke.
Everything you can imagine: hot pockets, pizza rolls, Doritos, you name it. You know what it is. Everything was in there. I said that look I might leave here in 30, 60, 90 days, however long I stay sober. But if I allow this to be my environment, I will not leave here feeling any better about life, and I can't let that happen. So I started to think to myself, all right, what did they serve at that retreat? I couldn't remember any of the recipes. I just remember there always being these main foods. There's always oats in the morning. Rice and beans were talked about all the time. Potatoes were talked about all the time. Fruit was completely fine. So I said, all right, great. I wrote out a list: oatmeal, rice, beans, potatoes, fruit. That was the entire list. I walked up to the house manager, whose last name is actually Hamburger.
And I said, here's my list of foods. He said, Adam, there's like five things on here. I said, I'm aware. Can you just get me enough of those to last a week? He said, yes, are you sure you don't want anything else? I said, here's the thing. I'm trying to do something called a plant-based diet. To be honest, the only greens I ever really eat are the occasional piece of lettuce they forgot to take off my burger at McDonald's. This is all that I can remember from this thing I went to a couple of years ago. So I want to try this. He looked at me and said, Adam, if this is what you want to try, then this is what we're going to get for you. I wake up the next day. I am the most determined human you have ever seen in your life. I walk into that kitchen. I am so ready for this oatmeal, and I open up the cabinet, and there it is. There's the container of oats that I asked for. They put it right next to a box of fruity pebbles, which is the greatest cereal of all time. I do not really remember what happened next. I know what they told me.
Apparently I went berserk. I started throwing a fit. I threw a towel at someone and I ran out of the house and I just started running down the Santa Monica boardwalk until the assistant house manager, an amazing guy named Luke Chittick, who is equally responsible for me being alive today, ran after me and he grabs me and he says, Adam, what just happened? Because let me tell you what we all saw. We were sitting at the kitchen table. Everyone was having coffee or eating their breakfast. You walked out of the bedroom, walked into the kitchen, opened the cabinet and lost your mind. Like you just started yelling. You're cussing at people. You ran out of the house. What just happened? I probably said something really mean back to him. I can't really remember. I'm sure if I did, I apologize. I was just so upset, but he calmed me down and he walked me back to the house. I go into my bedroom and I'm sitting there thinking to myself. I was thinking about that question. He asked me what just happened. I got very curious about that because here's what was making me upset. Why couldn't this whole thing be a matter of intellect and will? Why can't I just know what to do, want to do it, end of story. What was going on in between those things that made it impossible for me at that moment? That's when I remembered a lecture by an evolutionary psychologist named Dr. Doug Lyle. This lecture is called the pleasure trap and the pleasure trap explains the biological mechanisms that compel behavior, right? Essentially, he asks a question: why, if we know what to do to be happy and healthy, why is it impossible to do it? Why does it feel so difficult to do it?
Inside all of us, we have a psychological and motivational architecture that compels behavior. This architecture is designed really well to work within a very specific environment. That is an environment that looks like the environment that we have spent 99% of our evolutionary story surviving. That environment is one of scarcity and competition. Where what we need to survive and survive well are scarce. We are not the only ones looking for those things. Some of those things that are looking for it as well can be dangerous. Scarce, competitive and dangerous environment. In order to survive well in that environment, we have to be very efficient.
We have to have some way of figuring out what's the right move to make with unbelievable efficiency and accuracy. In order to do that, we have a guidance system inside of us. That guidance system is our dopamine neuro pathway. Dopamine is a phenomenal neurotransmitter because it's not just a neurotransmitter that gives us an excited euphoria of pleasure, but it is an excited euphoria of pleasure that signals to our psychology that whatever we've just done is good for our survival. It's rewarding our survival. It's letting us know that if we do that more often, tomorrow is a safe place to get to, that we're going to survive, we're going to make it to tomorrow. Does that make sense?
So, I want everyone to think about pleasure as a signal. It's a signal to your psychology that something is either good for your genes and good for survival or bad for your genes and bad for survival. There's a range of experiencing pleasure that is appropriate for our psychology. Meaning that when we do it, whatever it is, if it's good for us, it will give us just enough pleasure to be compelled and attracted to do it again when we need it, but not so great that we would risk our lives consistently to do it. So if we were in the natural environment, right? The natural world, Ashley, you and I were in a village. The village leader said, hey, Adam, Ashley, here's the job for you both today. I need you to go into that unexplored area of woods over there. I want you to find the best food in that area. Go. Now, here's what we're doing. We're walking out into a very unsafe environment. We don't know what's there. This is a dangerous thing that we're doing. It's also very expensive. It costs us a lot of time and energy to do it, right?
So we've got to have some kind of way of figuring out what's the best food choice to pick up and bring home. We don't have a phone. We don't have Google. Can't look it up. This is 100,000 years ago. We go out into these woods and in a clearing, just for the sake of this argument, we're going to see two options. One is a blueberry bush and the other is a plantain tree. Now, we look at the blueberry bush. It's very low to the ground. That's already attractive to us. We walk up to the blueberries, we bite into them. We notice that there's a small lift in the dopamine circuitry. There's a signal that says, hey, these are calories that are good for our survival. It seems like a good idea. The plantain tree, we know there's food, but it's up in the tree. So it's going to cost us a lot of time and energy to get it. We don't pay attention to it. But then Ashley looks over to the right and she notices that some of those plantains have fallen on the floor. She picks one up and she bites into it and there's nearly 10 times as many calories per bite in that plantain than in the blueberry. The lift in her dopamine circuitry is 10 times higher. She gets a signal immediately that says, do not waste a second on those blueberries. This is clearly the better choice. You need to pick up as many of these as you can and take them back to the village. That's exactly what we do. The more calorie density option, the greater the pleasure response. But the calorie density is never too great that it's harmful for our survival over the course of time.
So now let's fast forward to modern day, we find ourselves in Times Square. We are surrounded by an environment that has shifted so far away from what is indicative and what is representative of our natural history and our natural behavior. There are now foods that are far more calories per bite than have ever existed in human history, that exist with greater ease and repeatability than have ever existed in human history, and our internal guidance system, our psychology has no understanding that this shift has occurred.
Our guidance system is still operating as if it is in that scarce and competitive environment and every instinct in you is looking for the greatest pleasure for the least amount of pain and the least amount of energy. When we do that in Times Square, we end up making really poor decisions, but we're thinking and feeling like they're very, very good. I'll explain really quickly with this analogy. I love the way that Doug Lyle explains this. Imagine if you were to go out at night and you were to leave your porch light on. What you would notice is that there are moths and they're attracted to the light. The reason why they are attracted to the light is because they are actually designed by nature to use the brightest lights in the sky, in fact, celestial objects for navigation. It's how they figure out how to survive, how to move through the night and make the right choice. But when the brightest light in the sky is no longer the stars and the moon, when the brightest light in the sky is now your artificial porch light, it confuses their guidance system. It confuses their survival instincts.
They're attracted to it. They hit that light. They flutter down. They hit it again. They hit it again. They hit it again. Eventually they die. You would look at that moth and you go, my goodness, there must be something wrong with that moth. Something must be wrong with the psychology. Why in the world would I do that? Not only why in the world would that moth do it, why would all these other moths that just witnessed this thing take place do the exact same thing? This doesn't make any sense. But what you want to do is pause and consider from a subjective point of view, what's actually taking place inside that animal's mind.
By introducing a supernormal stimulus, a stimulus that isn't supposed to be there, that was never supposed to exist, that animal will now always run the threat of making poor decisions, potentially even fatal ones, all the while thinking and feeling like it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do. That is exactly what is happening with the modern food environment. That is exactly what is happening with the modern drug environment.
They are all supernormal stimuli. They elicit a dopamine response that goes way outside the bounds of what is appropriate for our psychology. They look like bright shining lights of salvation. Every instinct in you is designed to be attracted to that thing. Unfortunately, that thing was never supposed to be here. Once I understood this, I felt all of the shame lifted from my shoulders because I really thought that the reason why the minute I saw that fruity pebbles and thought all I want to do is eat those fruity pebbles knowing I was already sick it was gonna make me sicker, I thought that was because I was weak, I had no willpower, I had no character, I had no discipline. But the reality is the reason why I responded the way that I did is because that is the exact appropriate response my psychology should be having to a stimulus that is not supposed to be there, especially when my life is painful and nothing about my life feels successful. I'm going to look for any stimulus that can give me a sense of feeling biologically and psychologically successful. I also learned from Doug Lyle that if I want to reset my dopamine neurotransmitters, if I want to recalibrate my guidance system, I had to be willing to do one simple thing, be comfortable being uncomfortable.
If I could simply decide to make the right choice long enough, I would give my dopamine neurotransmitters the opportunity to regain their sensitivity, recalibrate themselves to what is appropriate to my psychology. In fact, what we know is that the journey of regaining your dopamine sensitivity is about a four-month journey. However, 80% of that journey occurs within the first two weeks. So if I was willing to spend the next 14 days making the right choice, I would wake up and it wouldn't feel like a chore anymore. If I could go just a little bit longer, I might actually look forward to it. So why would I be willing to do this? A lot of people would say, well, that's pretty obvious. You were 350 pounds, you nearly died from substance abuse, had diabetes, heart disease, and erectile dysfunction. What else could it be? It's true. Every single one of those things was occurring. But none of them were my motivation and that is because human beings are not motivated by negative consequences.
Negative consequences do one phenomenal thing for people. They let you know that there are loving and meaningful bonds in your life that are being threatened. Those loving and irreplaceable parts of your life that give you the sense that life is something you want to be a part of. Those things that when threatened enough, you would fight like hell to protect. Whatever those things are, that's why you do anything that you do in life. It's why you do what you already do. It's why you're compelled to learn to do new things. It's why you're compelled to learn the things you do better. They are an act of service to whatever it is in your life that gives you the sense that life is meaningful. I told myself I was going to spend zero time focusing on what was the matter with me and spend every single moment of my day focusing on what matters to me. Let that be what guides me to choose one thing over another. I didn't want to spend a second avoiding meat, eggs, dairy, and drugs. I wanted to spend every moment of my day actively choosing a whole food plant-based diet, movement, and recovery.
I wanted those choices to be acts of service to me and my life because I had spent my entire life believing that my body was my adversary. Starting when I was a kid, unknowingly my parents conditioned me to believe that my body was an adversary. It was a shameful thing that I would have to restrict and over exert every single day in the hopes that I could finally make it something lovable. The bullies in my high school confirmed it again and then I confirmed it to myself later in life. But the best thing about surviving a near-death experience is the knowledge that the reason why you didn't die is because your body didn't let you.
To realize that every single day you've been alive is because your body is your greatest ally. Your body has been fighting for you since the day you were born. Whatever it is you've gone through, whatever it is you're going through right now, the reason why you're going through it and are going another day is because your body is fighting for you. It's the greatest ally you'll ever have in your entire life.
Once I came to realize that, all of a sudden, I decided it's my turn to take care of my body. My body wants me to thrive. My body wants me to be healthy. I didn't know how to take care of it. I didn't know how to be a loving caretaker of a body whose entire purpose for existing is to keep me alive one more day. I got up every single day, I prepared a meal on a plate. That was about health and wellness. It's an affirmation of recovery. It was an act of service to myself and my life. Within four months, I completely reversed my type 2 diabetes, my heart disease, and my erectile dysfunction. Within 10 months, I lost 150 pounds, and within one year, I was off of every single medication I was put on in rehab, including the antidepressants, the mood stabilizers, the sleeping medications, the anxiety medications, and the ADHD medications. I've been in active recovery. Continuous active recovery for 12 years I've experienced a lot of amazing things. I've realized that food is a vehicle. It's a vehicle that has allowed me to rediscover how unbroken I actually am. I've become very passionate about figuring out how I can design my environment to meet my needs. In the beginning, I really thought that this whole thing was a matter of willpower and determination.
How do I out-compete the bad choices? That was kind of exhausting. Within the first three, four months, that's kind how I did it. What I realized after studying more of Doug Lyle's work is that, I came up with this quote, it's so funny, I gave this quote at a presentation and he was in the audience and he came up to me he said, I've been studying evolutionary psychology for like 20 years and I've been looking for a way to give people an answer in one sentence and you finally said it.
I said, if you want to be successful, don't try to out-compete the wrong environment. Make your environment look like your goals. Make your environment look like the life you want to live by simply being in that environment. It will encourage the behaviors that will give you the life that you want. I became meticulous about that lifestyle. I became meticulous about that perspective. I crafted and cultivated a physical environment, the clothes that I wore, the place that I lived. A caloric environment, the foods that I've kept in my house, and the social environment.
This is really important for those of you who are starting your journey. You don't have to get rid of your friends that don't live the life that you live, but you might have to spend a little less time with them. It's very important that your social circle looks enough like the life that you want. They don't have to look exactly like it, but they need to look enough like it. The reason for this is what you want is to be in a situation where by being in their presence, they offer you the opportunity to engage in the habits you're looking for. Rather than having to explain your habits to people who don't agree with you. You should also be a person who offers your circle the opportunity to engage in the habits that they want. It's important that you all be a meaningful part of the goings on of what is important to each other. This creates a sense of being valuable, of having a sense of esteem within a community of shared respect.
That is a very large part of what it means to be part of recovery. It's to see yourself as something important to the goings on in the world around you. I know that when I tell this story, it seems like I did this whole thing very easily and with no help. That couldn't be further from the truth. I'm very privileged to have a family that I have. There were a lot of days when I didn't want to go when I didn't want go another day in recovery. There were days where I thought about quitting. I would call my parents, I would call my dad, and I would say, I don't think I can do this anymore, this is too hard. He'd say, that's okay. If you knew how to do this, you would have done it already. It's not about getting it right. My dad said, if there's something about your life that you don't like, and you can't do anything about it, then it's not a problem. It's just the way things are. If there's something in your life that you don't like and you can do something about it, it's also not a problem. You just need to think about it differently. My dad really helped me reorganize how I thought about approaching recovery. I thought I had to get it right every single day. My dad gave me permission to learn every single day and he picked me up when I fell down. My brother would be there for me. My mom, my sister. I treated my parents terribly in recovery and now they are my best friends. My dad is a mentor to me and I'll tell you that how they treated me when I was at my worst is the model for how I want to treat myself. I can't imagine what it must be like to love someone so much that even though this person says the most horrible things to you, does the most horrible things to you, treats you the way that he does. You love him unconditionally anyways. My gosh, what it must be, what it must feel like to love someone like that. What if I could learn to love myself that way?
I also know that I'm here because of Rip Esselstyn. When I met Rip, I was in survival mode. I would get up every single day, I put any toxic substance I could into my body, food or drugs, because all I wanted to do was numb myself up and escape life. That's an exhausting way to live. But from what RIP offered me in terms of nutrition, I've been able to stop surviving my day and start living my day. When I get to live my day, my life is something that I want to be a part of. Now, people see before and after photos of me and they think, wow, that's really some remarkable change there.
I'm very proud of what I've been able to achieve physically. My physique and my health, I haven't reversed all the conditions, no medications, really excited about fitness. I work out five days a week, I play a lot of pickleball, that's great. But that's just before and after photos, that's not a profound change. Profound change is waking up every single day and knowing that I have the best friends in the world. If I was to pick up the phone right now and call any one of my friends, they would answer the phone. They would answer and they'd be excited to hear what I have to say. That's because they wanted me to be a part of the goings on of their life. I want them to be a part of the goings on of my life. I want us to share in a meaningful experience of being alive.
In 2020, I had the opportunity to talk to this incredible naturopathic doctor named Dr. Laura Gouge. She is probably the smartest human I've ever met. She has an incredible understanding of neuro-atypical brains and things like mast cell activation syndrome, histamine intolerance. Absolutely brilliant. I also saw a photo of her. I was like, wow, that not only a brilliant woman, she's the most beautiful woman in the world. Like I could look at that photo all day long, but I don't have to because I married her in December of 2022. If you want to know what profound change really feels like, profound change is waking up one day, having spent half of your life being convinced that you're unlovable and that you could never imagine anyone truly loving you to knowing that in about one hour you're going to be standing in front of the love of your life and hearing her say I do, I love you so much, I want to partner my life with you. That's a profound change. And I can remember thinking to myself that day. Wow, I can't believe I almost ended my life before the best part ever began.
To those people who are on that edge, I just want you to know I know how you feel. I want you to know I've been where you are. I'm going to tell you that there are far more solutions in making it just one more day than there are in ending it right now.
I may not know what you're going through. But I see you and I'm rooting for you. I've lost six friends to suicide and overdose since getting into recovery. It's unfortunate. Recovery is a world that you get into and you make friends and they don't all make it out with you.
One of the things I like to do is really honor my friends who wanted to be alive as much as I did. They just didn't make it. One of them had probably the best quote I've ever heard, and I try to live this way every single day. He said, well, you've all heard the quote: if you want to be happy, you should just live like it's the last day of your life.
Ashley, you probably heard that quote. He said, that's really terrible advice because if you were to actually live like it's the last day of your life, you wouldn't really do anything important to care for your future. You probably wouldn't go to work. Probably wouldn't go to the grocery store. You wouldn't clean your house. You might not brush your teeth. You might not eat well. These are things that are important to your life, and you probably wouldn't care so much about them. He said, if you'd really like to be happy, just treat everyone you meet as if they're living the last day of their life.
I try to carry that message with me everywhere that I go. I always end the story part of my podcast recordings with that quote so that he stays around a little bit longer.
Ashley James (1:11:48.114)
When my mom passed away, my dad and I, we had a regular type of relationship, grew closer. I grew up afraid of him, sort of similar to you. I knew he loved me conceptually, but I was afraid of him. He was a really big guy, very loud, could get explosive and angry at times.
After my mom died, it was just the two of us, and we spent six years becoming best friends. We both agreed that we would say everything that needed to be said and that we wouldn't have any regrets. When I got the phone call from the sheriff saying they found him not alive, it was devastating.
I also lost my dad with no regrets and with everything said, and that was such a beautiful gift. My dad wasn't a healthy person. My mom was the healthy person, which was so odd that she died so young at 55, and he died of a broken heart six years later. We always expected him to go first because he never took care of himself, and she always took care of herself.
But the gift that it gave us was that he and I said everything and became so close to each other. That concept of living like every single person in your life is living their last day means you will say the unsaid things and make sure they know you love them. You're not going to get petty. You're not going to be stupid and egotistical. That is such great relationship advice for friends, even for business colleagues. Don't take people for granted. Don't be petty. Don't be egotistical. Make sure that if you get a phone call tomorrow that they're no longer here on this plane of existence, yes, of course, you'll be sad, but you won't live with the regret of not saying what needed to be said and not caring the way you wanted to care for them.
I just love that you said that. That is such beautiful advice to live like it's their last day, not yours.
Adam Sud (1:14:28.368)
Yes, treat everyone you meet like it's the last day of their life.
Ashley James (1:14:31.374)
Right. It really puts things in perspective and lets you treat them without regrets, as opposed to just being so freaking petty. We can get so wrapped up in our own stuff. We can be so me, me, me first. If that person's not going to be here tomorrow, then that really just snaps us back into our senses.
Thank you so much for elaborating your story in a beautiful way and taking us on your journey. I want to go back to the first few months. When you were in rehab, the doctor placed you on all kinds of medication. I'm guessing it was blood pressure, cholesterol, metformin, insulin, you said maybe antidepressants, maybe some sleep pills.
So you've got maybe some proton pump inhibitors or something for digestion. He probably went down the list and prescribed you the 10 most common drugs. In the first few months, you're still learning how to eat this way. You're still very much learning, but the fact that you didn't reach for those fruity pebbles. I'm so proud of you because that's the one thing with addiction that people don't realize that when you're in recovery, alcohol, example, if everyone's ever gone to an AA meeting or if you've just watched Fight Club or some Hollywood bastardized version of what an AA meeting looks like, there's donuts. There's always donuts. There's never not donuts. In any kind of typical recovery program, you're going to see sugar. That's because they're just trading one addiction for another. You're not really sober if you're eating processed food.
Adam Sud (1:16:34.288)
So I'll say that the typical model for recovery is really a flawed one in my opinion. The typical model for recovery suggests that the solution to addiction is to not use. Well, yes, of course.
I understand that the substance is a threat to this individual's life and is a behavior that is destroying their ability to care for themselves and their future. But let's just look at it from the perspective of what's actually taking place. Let's say someone was to walk into recovery, a rehab hospital, and say, I have a problem. I'm an addict. I'm suffering from addiction and I need help, and they say okay. Well, what are you addicted to? They say, Well, I use heroin every single day. This person who's in charge says, Well, okay. Your problem is heroin. So we need you to just not use heroin. What we need you to do is we need you to own the identity that you are an addict. That's who and what you are. You can't do anything about that. So what you're going to do is you're going to will yourself through your life. You're going to avoid and abstain from use for the rest of your life. We'll call that recovery. What we're going to hope for is that over the course of time, your life gets better as a result of just being abstinent.
Okay. Here's what I don't appreciate about that perspective. I appreciate abstinence has its place in recovery and that there's an important part that requires abstinence. But recovery isn't found in the singular pursuit of abstinence. When you tell that person who comes in, I have a problem, I use heroin every single day. You tell them that their problem is heroin. That the reason why they use it is because when they first use heroin, the chemical hooks in that substance grab a hold of them, and that's why they can't stop using it. There's a genetic problem. They have addiction in their genes, it's part of their history, it's who they are. What you're telling them is that their pain means nothing. What you're telling them is that whatever hurts them, whatever it is that makes their life miserable, whatever it is that is causing them to not want to be a part of life, is not a variable in this equation. When you do that, you also say what you love is irrelevant. That is a very dangerous thing to do. I want people to think about addiction not as an indication of biology and psychology gone wrong, but rather the appropriate and expected biological and psychological response to environments, physically, socially, and emotionally gone terribly wrong. Addiction makes complete sense. It is the appropriate response to things gone terribly wrong in your life, and you are seeking some kind of way through ease and repeatability to feel like you figured it out. Substances—heroin, cocaine, fast food—give you an immediate rush of a dopamine cascade that gives you some sense, it's not a complete sense, but it's a pretty strong sense, that somehow, you don't really know how, life just got better. It doesn't hurt anymore, and that's what you're seeking.
I’d like to say it like this, when someone is in pain or when someone is suffering and they're suffering enough, they will do almost anything to be anything other than what they are, which is a human being in pain. Addicts are not criminals. They're human beings in pain. Depressed people are not sick. They're human beings in pain. Suicidal people are not crazy. They're human beings in pain. Maybe if we stopped so desperately trying to define everybody by what it is they struggle with, maybe we'll see that their pain makes sense.
I think that we need to approach recovery from the same perspective. If I were that person—that person who's out there now on the street trying to get a fix of heroin or whatever it is—if I was them and my life looked and felt exactly like theirs, would I be equally compelled to numb myself? Likely, yes. Which means their behavior isn't pathology. Their behavior is appropriate. Their life has gone terribly wrong. What we need to do is help them figure out how they can write themselves. They can correct the path of their life. They can get to a point where their life feels safe, secure, and hopeful enough that use is no longer attractive to them in the same way it is today.
Unfortunately, these substances are very, very powerful. The draw to use will likely always be there to some degree—not the way it is now, but to some degree. Some sense of being a part of a movement of people who are equally excited about this thing. There's a great quote, another quote by Johann Hari, that says, loneliness is not the physical absence of people. It's the sense that you have nothing of value to share with anyone. Therefore, the solution to loneliness isn't necessarily more people.
But it's being in it together, finding something that is important and meaningful to you and other people. Whatever it is, you can be a part of it together. I think that's one of the things that the recovery community does really well, is they create community. A sense that you're all in this thing together, you know exactly what it is, and it is important to all of you. That is how you have a sense of belonging, and that's something that recovery communities do really well.
The story about addiction is terribly wrong, but that part I really appreciate about the recovery community.
Ashley James (1:22:36.450)
So, Johan Hari, I had him on the show back all the way back in episode 240. It was amazing having him on the show. He talked about his first book and his second book. I was honored to have him on the show. So I recommend listeners go back and check out episode 240. I also had the honor of having Rip Esselstyn on the show episode 448 and his dad, which really was, these are the life-changing episodes. You've quoted some of my most favorite episodes, Cadwell Esselstyn, episode 232. I have yet to have Dr. Lyle on the show, although I really want to. I have had his business partner, Dr. Goldhamer, talking about pleasure trap and fasting. That one was super transformative for me. That was episode 230. You'll hear if you listen.
The only way I remember 230 is this: my husband's corny joke is, when's the best time to go to the dentist? Tooth hurting, tooth hurting. Like your tooth hurts, tooth hurting. Okay, okay. It's so bad. But that's how I remember that one episode. I can never forget 230 is the episode with Dr. Goldhamer. I've done over 500 episodes, and this was back several years ago. When I did my episode with Dr. Goldhamer, I was still very much in the keto diet is the healthiest diet out there. I had had several keto doctors on the show. Although when I did keto, it destroyed my liver and it almost destroyed my husband's kidneys. We had some major health problems arise from, we were doing doctor-led keto. We went to a naturopath every week. We were very strict, and my liver gotten so inflamed. You could see it. It was pushing my ribs, flailing my ribs out on my side. We were doing it, clean keto, quote unquote, clean keto. It made my husband's kidneys almost go into kidney failure. So this was doctor-led, and the whole kind of diet within a month. We were doing it less. It was about a month where we were maybe a little bit more than a month. It was around 30 days into that diet. If we'd kept going, we would probably have ended up in liver failure and kidney failure. That's not healthy at all.
I've done over 30 diets in my life. A lot of them have studies around them, seemingly super healthy. Constantly searching for what's the best healthy version of how you're supposed to eat. Having him on the show, it was just a really great slap in the face because he said the right things that made me go, wait, what? Start questioning my belief system, which I believe we should always question our belief systems. Have your head so open your brain will fall out. It's a dichotomy though. Use critical thinking, but come at it with a beginner mind. Some people are better than others.
Make sure you question your own belief system so you can learn. Because if your mind is closed, you've already made up your mind about something, you will not take in new knowledge. So that's in my seeking and my constant curiosity around health and wellness, I've discovered I don't have diet dogma. I just coached someone the other day who's been a raw vegan for many years, and now they can't feel their hands, they can't feel their feet. Hands are starting to tingle. I said to them, listen, as healthy as we perceive raw vegan to be, you should probably look into being fat deficient. It's unhealthy. Vegan isn't healthy. Oreos are vegan. Fried Oreos are vegan.
Adam Sud (1:26:44.155)
I tell people all the time, veganism doesn't tell you what you eat, it only tells people what you don't eat. The thing is, I went back to school, I studied nutritional biochemistry, I became an expert in insulin resistance reversal. I was the lead food addiction and insulin resistance coach for Mastering Diabetes from when they started the company, and I went on to lead the first controlled trial to investigate the effects of nutrition on addiction recovery outcomes. I published that in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine and then it was featured in Forbes and Psychology Today. I've coached probably a thousand people on how to take charge of their health and I have been plant exclusive for 12 years. Here's the thing, here's what I know to be true. First and foremost, I care very little about being right. I want to be helpful and accurate.
So in my pursuit to be helpful and accurate, when we look at the dietary patterns across the board and you look at human health outcome data, not mechanistic speculation, but looking at human health outcome data, what becomes very clear is that there really is no one best diet.
However, there are four very clear themes that we see in the dietary patterns that do the best for humans over the course of time. Simon Hill, who’s a very dear friend of mine, speaks about this a few times, and says these themes are very clear. First, high in fiber. The best dietary patterns across the board are all high in fiber. Number two, low in saturated fat. Now that doesn’t mean low in fat. Doesn’t have to be a low fat diet, but it certainly means replacing saturated fat-rich foods like cheese, butter, and animal products with either polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats, so nuts, seeds, avocados, olive oil, or carbohydrate-rich plant foods or protein-rich plant foods. The third theme is prioritizing plant protein over animal protein. Right now in Western cultures, 70% of the protein consumed by each person per day comes from animal products and only 30% comes from plants. You should start by at least flipping that. At least flipping it and then trying to move yourself forward a little bit more towards maybe 90 or 100% if it works for you. The last theme is the removal of ultra-processed foods. However you organize your diet, whether you want to be slightly higher fat, slightly lower fat, slightly higher carbs, slightly lower carbs, slightly higher protein, slightly lower protein, depending on your preferred lifestyle and activities, as long as you meet those four themes, that is the best place to start.
Get your energy balance appropriate and figure out what you’re fueling your life for. What makes you feel alive? What gives you the sense that tomorrow is somewhere you want to be a part of and you’re looking forward to it? When I did my research study and we noticed that the plant-based group, this is really interesting. This was the first time ever that a study was done on the effects of nutrition on addiction recovery outcomes in treatment centers.
So we had a completely plant-based diet compared to the diet being served in the treatment facility, which actually was a very high-quality diet. It just included meat, eggs, and dairy and some processed foods. What we discovered is that by week 10, there was a statistically significant increase in self-esteem, resilience, and self-compassion within the plant-based group. We did every other measurable outcome you could: all biometric outcomes, microbiome study, vitamin levels, anxiety, depression, mania, obsessive-compulsive drug use. Our primary outcomes we’re looking at were resilience and self-esteem. That is because when you look at the biggest predictors for long-term recovery, resilience and self-esteem tend to stand out the most. People are always asking, why do you think a plant-based diet increased resilience and self-esteem? In fact, this was the first time diet has ever been linked to resilience.
People always want to say, do you think it’s the microbiome? I said, well, I mean, of course, some of it, yes sure, why not? I mean, everyone wants to throw out the statistic that 90% of your serotonin and 50% of your dopamine is produced in the gut, but it’s important to remember that none of those transmitters cross the blood-brain barrier. They’re all involved in digestive processes. But your gut health does help in the manufacturing of short-chain fatty acids that do cross the blood-brain barrier that are important to your optimal brain health.
However, what I really think is taking place is you take someone like myself who checked into treatment day one, the sickest, most disconnected I’ve ever been in my entire life. I got diagnosed with metabolic conditions and chronic diseases while in rehab. If you were to ask me, how do you feel after getting diagnosed with all those conditions? I would have said to you, I don’t know what my future looks like. It doesn’t make sense to me anymore. I’m afraid to be there, and I’m not sure I want to be there at all.
All of a sudden, what I’m going to start experiencing after saying those things out loud is huge amounts of depression and anxiety. I don’t feel like there’s anything I want to wake up and be present for. Being present in my life is difficult. I have to take medications. Being alive hurts physically and emotionally. When I think about tomorrow, it’s not a pretty picture. I’m actually anxious. I’m worried about what it’s going to be like because I can’t make sense of it. You put that person, me, into a plant-based environment and you say, live there. Just stay there. Live and eat in that environment and also practice gratitude. We’ll come check on you in three months. Come back and check on them. How do you feel? Well, I noticed that my body feels, for the first time in a long time, a good place to be. I’m not sick anymore. My diseases have gone away. The trajectory of my future has shifted.
I’m actually kind of excited to see what the next six months are going to be. I’m actually excited to see what my life is going to be tomorrow. Tomorrow feels a safe, secure, and hopeful place to be. That’s the biggest role, I think, that nutrition plays for people in recovery. It gives them the opportunity to correct the trajectory of their physical and biological future. If you don’t think that plays a role in you psychologically, I don’t know how else to convince you. It plays a massive role. I know sitting here now at 42 years old, that when I’m 82 years old, I have a pretty confident stance that I’m going to be okay. That I’m going to be mobile, that I’ll play with my grandkids, that my wife will be healthy, that my friends who take their health seriously will be there. That’s a safe feeling. That’s a sense of relief.
Nutrition is an act of service in protecting that future. I think teaching nutrition in recovery appropriately and accurately can do nothing but be an act of service to every single person who’s there. I think it should be taken seriously and not used as a moment of escape from a day that’s always going to be difficult no matter what you feed the person. That’s my thought.
Ashley James (1:34:12.977)
I love that. Thank you so much for sharing about that study. Are there any other key takeaways from the study? It sounds like it was pretty comprehensive.
Adam Sud (1:34:24.091)
So what we noticed was when you look at the two groups, the highest performing group and the lowest performing group. First, let me just say, there wasn't a single outcome in either group that didn't increase. So that says two things. One. The diet that they serve at the treatment facility where we did it, Infinite Recovery, is pretty good. Number two, the program is really good. So that every single outcome, whether psychological or biological, everybody did well.
Ashley James (1:34:57.897)
You mean people who ate meat versus not meat. Everyone was doing well because their recovery program was good.
Adam Sud (1:35:03.833)
Yes, actually, the diet, while it did have meat, eggs, and dairy, was still a very high fiber diet. It was still really well done; it wasn't a traditional Western diet. So all their psychological outcomes got better while they were there, so everybody did well. However, the only group that showed outcomes that did better than the other was the plant-based group. The plant-based group, everyone else did really well, but the plant-based group was the one that did better.
This says two things. Number one, first and foremost, that at the very least, a plant-based diet is in no way a hindrance to anyone's recovery. Number two, it might be the best dietary pattern for people in recovery.
The second thing is that when we compared the lowest performing group to the highest performing group, what we noticed is that there was somewhere around a 5X difference in fiber intake between the lowest performing individual and the highest performing individual. That's useful.
What that means is instead of throwing down these diet dogma words—carnivore, keto, paleo, vegan—all these words that are just outfits that don't make any sense. Instead of doing that, just focus on how much fiber is this person getting per day? Are they getting any? If they are, is it coming from real food or is it coming from processed foods? How can we start to change that scenario? Because starting there isn't really that offensive to anyone.
If I was to say to somebody, hey, you want to eat meat, eggs, and dairy? Okay, fine, but here's what I want you to do. I want you to do that while getting 45 to 60 grams of fiber per day. What happens is, as this person starts to approach that task of getting 45 to 60 grams of fiber from real foods, they notice that in order to do that, they can't eat very much, if any, meat, eggs, and dairy. They're so focused on the goal of eating fiber and seeing the benefit of fiber consumption that they're not offended by the ideas thrown at them on social media about what's the best diet. So I think that's a really good way to approach it.
Ashley James (1:37:10.709)
I love it. The variety of fiber. When you say fiber, you're not talking about Metamucil or some kind of real food, real whole. So, black beans are high in fiber, and if you take chia seed, I want you to be cautious. I have a friend who perforated her colon because she just took scoops and scoops and scoops of chia seed, put it in a smoothie, and immediately drank it. She gunged up.
The thing is don't be extreme. I have that built into my personality. Like I moved to Vegas from Canada before settling just north of Seattle. That's where I met my husband in Vegas. I was never a gambler, but I think addiction, personality and gambling kind of go hand in hand. It was far too easy to lose a lot of money there. So I quickly learned not to go to the casinos. I don't know if you've ever been in front of a gambling machine, where it's all the bells and whistles and things are spinning. There's a button there called Max Bet. That Max Bet might be $5, it might be $20, it might be $100. It's betting everything.
So my husband and I have this joke in our relationship where we go max bet. You're going all in, but usually, it also could mean something unhealthy. You're overdoing something in an unhealthy way. We should really examine, hey, if you're max betting this, is that actually healthy? You can overeat something that is healthy. Two bananas are healthy, but 50 bananas could kill you in one sitting. Too much water and you die.
So when you look for how much fiber can I get, it's how much fiber can I get from a variety? I think eating that rainbow—I love that analogy of eating the rainbow—really trying to fill your plate every day with as many colors as you can. Berries are high in fiber, greens are high in fiber, and it's not all just salads. We can make great oil-free stir fries. There's so much fun we can have in the kitchen, and we can make it delicious.
My husband, he was a steak and potatoes person, only ate meat. I couldn't feed him vegetables. He would maybe have a beef burrito. He loved beef and cheese, and maybe there were some vegetables in his burrito. Or he loved carne asada nachos—that was a big thing for him. He would sit down and eat a quart of ice cream over the course of a weekend, or no, wait, a gallon? What are those giant tubs that are so big they need a handle? I'm sorry, I'm from Canada. I'm all liters over here, but it's a gallon, right? Four quarts. This was 16 years ago. My husband and I were dating, and he said, “Let me introduce you to this.” I was dairy-free at the time, and he brought dairy back into my life, which we have since, many years ago, stepped away from dairy it’s incredibly addictive.
I have a great interview actually with Dr. Neal Barnard, and if that's the one thing you can remove from your diet, start there. Cheese is addictive. Start with removing all dairy products and see the transformation. He went from that, to six years ago, my husband woke up one day and said, “I'm never eating an animal again.” He just snapped. Something in him snapped. He said he'd been struggling with it internally for a while. He's a pacifist. He doesn't kill spiders for me. I took that as, “He doesn't love me as a husband,” but he carries the spiders outside. He's the six-foot-seven guy who always breaks up fights because people think he just stands between guys. I've seen him do it. He'll stand between guys fighting and stop them. He's such a pacifist, actively pacifist.
He said, “I just can't, I couldn't come to terms with that. I'm part of murder. Who am I to take someone's life? Who am I to take an animal's life?” He loves animals. Animals love him. Something in him just snapped. So I had to learn very quickly how to cook plant-based. Because I was doing the podcast I was already learning and sort of implementing more and more fiber. I'd done interviews where they said, “Try to eat 100 grams of fiber a day. Try to eat 50 different types of food.” You're hard-pressed to even find a variety of fruits and vegetables. You have to go to the farms. There's a farm just north of us where you will find foods they don't have in the grocery store. You can pick and eat foods that are just amazing in variety.
So very quickly, I started cooking whole food plant-based, and we were already oil-free for several years. He turned to me on day three and said—now this is a guy I could not get to eat a vegetable—”. He turned to me and said, “If you had told me that the food would taste this good, I would have done this years ago. It tastes so good. It tastes so much better than meat.” I mean, yes, you have to learn a little bit of cooking. There are plenty of guides out there, plenty of videos if you're willing to give it a try.
I love your sole focus. You have to remember, though, when you increase fiber, you have to increase your water intake also because the fiber binds to water. You don't want to be dehydrated. People are chronically dehydrated. Just drink more water throughout the day, spread it throughout the day, and make your focus be how many grams of fiber you can get from a variety of sources. I tell people, you can give some advice around this, but don't go from five grams to 50 grams overnight because you're going to have a lot of bloating. Your microbiome isn't used to it.
As you eat a variety of cooked and raw foods, you will actually impregnate your gut microbiome with new healthy bacteria that helps you digest and assimilate your nutrients. So I tell people, increase by five grams a week. If you're starting out at five to 10 grams already—the average American eats 15—it's hard for the average American, if you're eating processed food, to even get 15 grams in. Then if you could just increase by five grams a week, you will prevent that digestive distress that people get at the beginning if their microbiome is really shot.
Adam Sud (01:38:42.952)
Yes, another thing I would say is don't try to tell yourself that this is how you're going to live for the rest of your life. The reason for that is, number one, the human psychology can't conceptualize beyond about three to four weeks. So let's take, for example, Ashley, let's just say for the sake of this conversation that you're a new coaching client of mine.
You come to me and say, I want to learn how to eat healthy, I eat a very Western diet, I eat a lot of processed foods, I don't know what I'm doing. I say to you, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to put you on a whole food, plant-based diet, and that's going to be what you're going to eat for the rest of your life. Here's all the recipes, go. What is actually taking place inside of your psychology is that your psychology is trying to figure the amount of time and energy required to complete this task. How are you going to eat this way for the rest of your life? It's trying to figure out how to make this for breakfast. How do I do this for lunch? I don't know. How much food do I get? I don't know. How much of this do I get? I don't know.
As you go about your day trying to do this, every time you step outside the guidelines of a plant-based diet, your psychology is going to go, see, you can't do this for the rest of your life. I just showed you that. You just showed me that you can't do this for the rest of your life. There's no way we can do this. This feels impossible. If I was to say to you, hey Ashley, here's what I'd like for you to do. Every morning for breakfast, I'd like you to make a bowl of oatmeal with a tablespoon of pumpkin seeds, your favorite food on top, and if you want to put a little maple syrup on there, that's fine.
What's happening now is your brain is going, okay, seven days, oatmeal every morning, probably need about two containers of oats, that's probably more than enough. Oatmeal takes about five minutes to make, unless I want to do it in the crock pot and I can do it at night. I could probably get all the other toppings at the store, and I know exactly how much to get. This will probably take me about 20 minutes to eat and maybe five minutes to clean. Your psychology has a very clear understanding of the time and energy required to complete this task, and now it feels safe. It says, I know what to do. This is very doable.
So if we were to look at it from the perspective of saying, you're not trying to do this for the rest of your life, but say, what I want to do is run a series of two-week experiments. What you're going to do is you're going to slowly implement this lifestyle into your life over the course of two-week experiments, where what you're trying to do is discover the value that this is going to offer you. If I was to say, what I want you to do is eat a plant-based diet for breakfast for seven days.
Just see how you feel. Then after those seven days, you're going to do breakfast and lunch, and it'll be whatever it is that we prescribe for lunch. Do that for another week. At the end of those 10 weeks, I just want you to take notice of what took place. Did you lose any weight? Did you sleep better? Did your energy change?
Did your joint pain go away? Did anything positive happen for you? Blood pressure comes down, blood glucose comes down, does anything happen? You're going to take note of it, you're going to go, wow, I lost three pounds, my blood pressure came down, my blood glucose came down. That's really attractive. Seems I might be onto something here. I'm now motivated.
I'm now motivated to run this experiment again and add a slightly new addition to it. I'm going to change dinner. I want you to think of motivation not as something that you get on day one, but it's a return on an investment. You actually can't be motivated on day one. You can be inspired. But motivation requires your time and energy. You have to put your time and energy into something and get a sense of the value available to you.
Once you get a sense of what's possible, then you're motivated to find out if it's true. You're motivated to see how far does this go? How much more value is there? Taking it in these sort of two-week experiment modalities gives you a sense of, what? You're just trying to figure this thing out. You don't know what it's going to look like in four months, and that's okay. You only got to focus on the next two weeks. It's not that person's diet. It's not that person's life. This is your diet. This is your life. This is your race.
You don't need to finish first, you don't need to finish last, you're the only one doing it. Enjoy it. You get to do this maybe once in your life. Figure out how to completely reorganize how you live, that's exciting. That's really exciting stuff. If you approach it from a perspective of a researcher or an explorer where you're, I'm just so excited to figure anything out. I want to know what works, and I want to know what doesn't work. I want to know these things, I want to understand them.
If you can approach it from that perspective, it can be a really wonderful thing to do. Think about it as the 1969 Apollo mission to the moon. In 1969, we took humans and we trained them to be astronauts, and we put them on a rocket, we launched them into space, and they landed on the moon, and then they got out and walked on the moon. No one had ever done this before. That's one of the most extraordinary feats in human history. It's also a very dangerous thing to do. Very dangerous thing to do. They must have known how to do it. They must have known how to get there? Why would they go if they didn't? Ashley, do you know what percentage of the flight time they were actually on course to the moon?
It was 2%.
They were only on course 2% of the time. Now from a content standpoint alone, you go, well, my gosh, they spent 98% of the time going the wrong way. Another failure of a mission. Just must have been by sheer luck that they landed there safely. If you were to actually put it in the context of the subjective point of view of the person on the mission, what you would notice is they spent 98% of the time course-correcting. They spent 98% of the time figuring out how to get to the moon safely.
If you approach your journey in the same way, get up every single day, be excited to figure it out, hey, I need to make a little course correction here. We're going to course-correct today, we're going to course-correct tomorrow. In the beginning, the course corrections are bigger, but as we get towards the end, they're a little bit smaller. Once you get there, you've blazed a path and know how to get there a little bit better the next time. This is your extraordinary journey.
If you approach it with the excitement and the thrill, and sure, the concern and the fears that it warrants, you can probably have one of the most incredible experiences of your life doing this thing, but you have to be excited about it.
Ashley James (1:50:41.649)
I love it. I love it so much. I want to come back to wrap things up. I want to come back to my question. I know I'd asked a few questions in there, and there's one that I wanted to cover, and that is when you first started this journey, you definitely had a lot of course corrections going on. Like you said, you just told him, fruits, potatoes, vegetables, beans, rice. He's like, this isn't a grocery list. You're like, I know, just bring it, just bring those things. I think I remember that's what's on the list. You were placed on a ton of drugs, a ton of prescription medication. Talk to us about those first three months, going back to, tell us about your first experience going back to the doctor and getting off the medications.
Adam Sud (1:51:29.653)
Yes. So, when it comes to the diet, I remember when I got the food, I was going to write a meal plan for myself. I even think about it now, writing a meal plan out of five foods. I was like, oatmeal with fruit for breakfast, rice and bean bowl for lunch with some kind of sauce on top. There was like a barbecue sauce. It wasn't the healthiest barbecue sauce, but I just put it on there. Then dinner would be potatoes and beans for dinner. Then I would snack on fruit. That was my meal plan. Then I was like, great. Day one done. I looked at the rest of the week. I was like, shoot, I have no idea what else to do. So I drew an arrow through the rest of the week, and above that arrow, I wrote the word repeat. I just said, well, what I'm going to do for the next week is just eat those meals every single day for seven straight days.
At the end of those seven days, my blood glucose went from 390, that's where it was when it started, to 200 in one week. I was like, holy moly, this is amazing. This seems like I might have this thing figured out. Like I said before, I'm super motivated, super motivated to run that seven-day experiment again. So I just did that same meal again for two weeks. Now at two weeks, very similar results. My blood glucose went down to 150. I noticed I was losing some weight. My blood pressure was coming down. I was like, this is unbelievable. I think I've got this thing solved. I want to see how far this thing goes. So I literally ate those same meals every single day for 10 straight months, which people don't have to do. But what I realized was that I made it so simple and obvious to do the healing thing that it was nearly impossible not to do it.
I knew exactly what I was going to do when I was going to do it, that it was easy to do. That's unbelievably valuable in recovery. I think that variety is a trap. It's a very attractive idea. It'd be great if I could have every recipe in the world, but remember, my goal at the time was not to eat every recipe in the plant-based world. My goal was to live a plant-based diet long enough to find out what my body was capable of.
So in fact, simplicity was a superpower for me. By about month two and a half, I started to experience something called hypoglycemia, where your blood glucose goes below 70 milligrams per deciliter, and you don't feel well when this happens. You get very shaky, you sweat a lot, you feel faint. It's not a good experience. This is because the medication that I was on in combination with the diet was too powerful. So the medication was not safe for me anymore. So I took myself off of the medication and made an appointment with the doctor.
I go to see the doctor about a couple of weeks later, this was now about month four, and they do blood work. My A1C comes back 5.5. So my A1C went from 12 to 5.5 in four months, technically in five months, but four months on the diet. The doctor comes in and says, well, according to this, we're going to lower your medication. I said, well, hang on a second, doctor, I haven't taken my medication for about two and a half weeks. He says, well, then according to these charts, you're no longer diabetic. I remember looking at the doctor and saying, hey, doctor, I just want to thank you so much because as of today, I no longer need your services. I walked out of the office, and I felt this unbelievable amount of self-esteem rise in me.
It's because it seemed like I had figured out something incredibly valuable that I could offer myself and potentially anyone else that I loved that needed it. That sense of value that can be shared within a community of shared respect. So I ended up getting off the blood pressure medications and the cholesterol medications and the antidepressants and the mood stabilizers. Over the course of some, those had to be taken off slowly. So some of them took six months, seven months, eight months to get off of, but I was able to get off of all of them within one year.
I want to go back to one last thing about why it makes so much sense that at the end of this, drug use was not that attractive to me anymore. If you were to look at me 12 years ago, 12 years ago in October actually will be when I checked into treatment. So I'm not technically at 12 years yet, but I'm on my way. If you were to go back 12 years ago, you would find a person at the end stage of substance use disorder.
He is a person who has no loving and meaningful bond with himself physically or emotionally that he wants to show up and be present for. He has no loving and meaningful connection with people in his life that he wants to show up and be present for. He has no loving and meaningful bond with a purpose that he wants to show up and be present for. He has no loving and meaningful bond with the natural world. He has no loving and meaningful bond with a future that feels safe that he wants to show up and work for every single day.
This person is completely disconnected from the sense of feeling meaningfully alive. This person is very attracted to anything that can disconnect him from being present. Drug use is very attractive to this individual. You look at that person one year later. He has reestablished a loving and meaningful bond with himself physically and emotionally. He wants to show up and be present for himself every single day. He's reconnecting to people in his life in a way that he can actively want to show up and be present for every single day.
He's discovering a purpose that he wants to actively show up and be present for every single day. He's rediscovering the joy of moving his body in nature that he wants to show up and be present for every single day. He's getting a sense that his future is a safe place to be, that he wants to show up and work for every single day. This is a person who has every reason to want to be present, and being present requires sobriety.
When you look at it from that perspective, addiction makes sense, and you can see the role that nutrition can play in reconnecting someone to the experience of wanting to be present in their life. That's all I want to say.
Ashley James (1:57:58.803)
I love it. Adam Sud from adamsud.com. Anyone who's listening who wants to take that journey, you can reach out to him at adamsud.com. You do coaching and you help people. That's great. I'm also a coach and we have a lot of crossover, a lot of similarities. I feel we could do some kind of panel together.
Adam Sud (1:58:23.902)
I would love to do that. Just consider me a friend of yours. I'd love to do any and more things with you.
Ashley James (1:58:30.046)
Yes. That'd be awesome. Very cool. It was such a pleasure having you on the show. I do this podcast because I was sick and suffering for many years. You have a similar situation in which you know what it is to be sick and suffering. When you get on the other side of that and you build your health up and you look around, you go, my gosh, there's people who are needlessly suffering. That's why I started the podcast because I have to get this information out there. But this podcast has also been my journey as well.
When I started the podcast, I had reversed many health issues, and I was still working on myself. I am still working on myself now. I like to say there's no Mount Everest, the peak of Mount Everest of health where you're like, okay, done, stick your flag on the top of Mount Everest of health and then you walk away. That's not what health is. Health is constantly emotional, mental, spiritual, physical, energetic, and we're working on it every day. Course correction.
I love, love that metaphor that we are working on it every day and that if you're not working on it, you go unconscious. If you go unconscious, maybe you haven't had this experience, but some people have this experience where they go unconscious on their bank account and then they go check in on it, and they're really surprised. Either there's more money than they expected, or there's far less money than they expected. When we go unconscious with our health, it's the same as going unconscious with your finances.
Most often times, we're pretty surprised with the labs. When we do get lab work, we're like, just, you kind of expected a clean bill of health when you walked in at 300 and something pounds and having eaten fast food and been taking drugs, and you kind of trick yourself into thinking, I'm healthy. We feel very sick inside, and we don't realize. Just like the fish can't see the water, we don't realize that there's this whole next level of health.
No matter how healthy you are now or wherever your health is, there's always the next level of somewhere we can grow, expand, and learn. Once you've achieved this great homeostasis, it still is course correction because every day we're still working on it. You still got to eat. You still got to move. You still got to hydrate. You still got to love and communicate.
Life throws oopsies at us. Stress comes at us, and then we have to handle it and work with it. As life happens, we're course correcting. I love the work that you do because you teach people how to navigate to optimize emotional and mental health and well-being through optimizing what's on their plate.
Thank you so much for sharing your story and being vulnerable with us.
Adam Sud (2:01:14.349)
Yes. My pleasure. My pleasure. Anytime.
Ashley James (2:01:16.871)
This was such a pleasure. Well, please come back to the show. We'd love to have you back anytime you want to share more or teach more. We'd love to have you.
Adam Sud (2:01:23.138)
I would love that, that would be fantastic. My pleasure. This was great.
Outro:
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