#185: Adam Sud - Can a Plantstrong Diet Aid in Addiction Recovery? The Results Are In!
For almost 15 years now, we’ve been beating the drum about the positive health impacts of a whole-food plant-based diet.
We know that it can improve your physical health in remarkable ways but, surprisingly, no research study has ever been done on the impact of a plant-based diet on addiction and recovery— until now.
Enter our friend, Adam Sud and the Infinite Study. Inspired by his own addiction and mental health recovery, Adam sought to prove that his own recovery wasn’t a fluke so he piloted the first controlled trial to investigate the impact of nutrition and nutrition education on early addiction recovery outcomes.
The long-awaited results of his groundbreaking research study are out and let’s just say we think they’re pretty plantstrong.
About Adam Sud
Adam Sud is a behavioral wellness & nutrition expert, international speaker, and the founder and CEO of Plant Based for Positive Change, a nonprofit dedicated to advancing research and understanding of how nutrition impacts mental health and addiction. He has studied the use of nutrition in disease reversal under the mentorships of leading plant-based physicians and has worked in mental health and behavioral health treatment centers using plant-based nutrition as a tool for strengthening recovery and relapse prevention.
In 2012 Sud was personally struggling with multiple addictions, serious chronic diseases, and mental health disorders. His life nearly came to an end when he attempted suicide by drug overdose. With the help of treatment and the implementation of a plant-based diet, he began a journey that led to the reversal of his chronic disease conditions, the cancellation of all medications, and the lowering of his weight from Class III Obesity levels. He is currently 10 years sober.
Episode Resources
The Infinite Study from the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine
Forbes Magazine Article on The Infinite Study results
Psychology Today - Can Plant-Based Diets Help Us Overcome Addiction?
Follow Adam on Instagram @plantbasedaddict
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Full YouTube Transcript
Rip Esselstyn:
And you're going to be joining me and the whole Plan Strong crew in Black Mountain.
Adam Sud:
Black Mountain in the spring.
Rip Esselstyn:
For our next six-day retreat.
Adam Sud:
Yeah, and I promise not to get into my bike accident this time.
Rip Esselstyn:
And will you just give it a quick sell, because we got about 20 spots left.
Adam Sud:
Yeah. It is an opportunity for you to step outside of the life that you live right now. Come and be with us because we've intentionally designed and created an environment and an experience that is for the entire purpose of you discovering what's possible. And if you come here and you spend five days with us, you are going to discover what's possible. You will see it because we give you no other option. At the end of the five days, you are going to notice what is possible for you and your body after five days of completely living-
Rip Esselstyn:
Six.
Adam Sud:
Six days. Six days living a plant strong lifestyle with movement, with proper sleep, with everything, with social activity, social engagement, fun, learning to have fun again, learning to play-
Rip Esselstyn:
laugh.
Adam Sud:
Learning to laugh, all the things.
Rip Esselstyn:
And eat copious amounts of food.
Adam Sud:
Exactly. At the end of those five days, you're going to notice the effect that has on you.
Rip Esselstyn:
Six days.
Adam Sud:
Six, sorry, I keep saying five.
Rip Esselstyn:
I know.
Adam Sud:
End of those six days, you're going to be confronted with the reality that this lifestyle could mean for you.
Rip Esselstyn:
Just got to show up.
Adam Sud:
And you're likely going to be inspired by that and motivated to repeat it. If you come I guarantee you, I guarantee you, you lose nothing by coming. But you might miss out on the most important thing in your life if you don't come. And instead of telling someone, all they have to do is stop using. What we should be doing is replacing the use with appropriate and valuable behavior patterns that are likely to create a better life for that person, a better sense of the world for them, and a safer experience for them inside of their bodies and outside of their bodies moving forward. That starts with plant-based nutrition.
It starts with movement. Of course, it includes therapy. But the fact that nutrition has never been measured until now was very upsetting to me because I probably attribute one or two other things to being as equally powerful as what nutrition offered me in recovery. And we can give it to people right now. There's nothing stopping any treatment center right now saying, hey, we already spend money on food, so let's just buy different food. Like we can do it right now. And that's my mission.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm Rip Esselstyn and welcome to the Plant Strong Podcast. The mission at Plant Strong is to further the advancement of all things within the plant-based movement. We advocate for the scientifically proven benefits of plant-based living and envision a world that universally understands, promotes and prescribes plants as a solution to empowering your health, enhancing your performance, restoring the environment, and becoming better guardians to the animals we share this planet with. We welcome you wherever you are on your Plan Strong journey. And I hope that you enjoy the show.
My people, we are coming off of a fantastic President's Day whirlwind weekend here in Austin, Texas, because it was the inaugural Team Plan Strong event at the Austin Marathon. And I could not be more jazzed about how it all turned out. Over 90 of you traveled to Austin from all around the country to complete either the 5K half-marathon or full marathon in your Team Plan Strong regalia. And let me tell you, we made quite the splash here in Austin, Texas, the capital of Texas. Thank you to all of you who joined in, including several plant-based Brock stars like Dr. Michael Clapper, Robby Barbero with Mastering Diabetes, Dom Thompson with Eat What Elephants Eat, and Adam Sud with the Plant Based Addict.
Now, speaking of Adam Sud, he swung by the Plant Strong Headquarters last week to talk about the long awaited published results of his groundbreaking research study on the effects of plant-based nutrition in treatment for substance use and addiction. We know the profound impact that a whole food plant-based diet can have on your physical health. But surprisingly, no research study has ever been done on the impact of plant-based nutrition on addiction and recovery until now. And the results, well, let's just say the results of that study are plant strong. Now here to tell us all about his findings, the project leader of this study, Adam Sud. Adam Sud?
Adam Sud:
Yes, sir.
Rip Esselstyn:
You ready to do this?
Adam Sud:
I'm so ready to do this. This is going to be fun.
Rip Esselstyn:
All right, so you are now officially in hallowed rarefied air because this now means that this is your third time on the Plan Strong podcast.
Adam Sud:
Yeah. Got that on the drive over here.
Rip Esselstyn:
Third time. And if my memory serves me correctly, there's only three other people that have been on three times. One is Essie. Two is Dr. Clapper.
Adam Sud:
Oh, nice.
Rip Esselstyn:
And three is the combo of Jane and Ann.
Adam Sud:
Oh, that's great. So, I'm excited to be in that group. That's a good group.
Rip Esselstyn:
And if anybody wants to go back and listen to Adam's number one and number two, episodes number one was episode number 15, which was You Are The Solution.
Adam Sud:
That's right.
Rip Esselstyn:
The next time you were on was with Tara Kemp. That's right. Episode number 48. And it was The Power of Plants in Addiction Recovery.
Adam Sud:
Yes.
Rip Esselstyn:
Which kind of flows into what I want to talk about with you today, but I'm not going to let you talk yet.
Adam Sud:
Okay.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay.
Adam Sud:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
But before we dive into the meat and the guts, or I should say the kale-
Adam Sud:
Absolutely.
Rip Esselstyn:
And the guts of what we want to talk about today. What have you been up to lately? You've had some monumental things that have happened in your life.
Adam Sud:
So, I got married in December, which is just the greatest thing ever. And she's the greatest thing ever. I was living in Portland with Laura, and then we got engaged in 2021, and then we moved to Austin in February of last year, and we got married in December, and then we went on her honeymoon. And it's been fantastic. And we published the study last year, which was fantastic. It's a big deal. It was like four or five years in the making. And we've gotten some really cool press as result of it was just featured in Forbes and Psychology Today. So, yeah, a lot of big things going on.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, I want talk all about that study. But there's other things that I want to talk about before we talk about the study. And one is, so you've gotten kind of massive in the last, I'd say, was it two years?
Adam Sud:
Yeah, two years.
Rip Esselstyn:
Two.
Adam Sud:
About the start of 2020, or sorry, the tail end of 2020 is when I really started to focus on strength training.
Rip Esselstyn:
And what was the impetus for that?
Adam Sud:
Number one, I had moved to Portland, and so it was a really rainy city, cold and rainy city, nine months out of the year. And I had been doing a lot of running for exercise, which was great, and I really loved it. But there was this moment where I thought I was getting bored. I was getting kind of run down with running. And one thing I didn't want was to have exercise be something that I felt like I didn't want to be a part of. And I've always used exercise as a way to explore the boundaries of what I thought was physically or even emotionally and psychologically possible for me.
And I just thought, when I think about my life, what type of physical exercise athlete type of thing really inspired me. I was like, I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, and I have always idolized the action stars of the 1980s and the 1990s, Arnold and Sly and Van Dam and Jackie Chan, all these people. And I was always so impressed with them physically, and I always used to tell myself, oh, well, that's not real. I could never be that. And I thought, well, of course I believe that. I never ever tried to see what I could do if I explored strength training and hypertrophy training, which is just muscle building. And I've had a great time in the last year. I put on about 40 pounds in the last two years.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, in the show notes, we'll have to put a photo of your before and after, because it's pretty profound. Because I remember, maybe this wasn't the main impetus, but I can remember somebody making a comment about your pencil arms. Was that Jane?
Adam Sud:
It was Jane.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, my sister Jane said something-
Adam Sud:
She would call me stick arms. And I was like, that's about it. That's about it.
Rip Esselstyn:
And so how much did that weigh into it?
Adam Sud:
A lot. A lot. In a good way though, because it kind of nudged me in a way that was really exciting where I was like, oh, okay. Well, I'd like to see if I could be the exact opposite of that, where I could really kind of develop a masculine physique.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, let me ask you this. What is a greater love for you right now, lifting weights or pickleball?
Adam Sud:
Lifting weights.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow.
Adam Sud:
A hundred percent. And I love pickleball.
Rip Esselstyn:
And you love pickleball.
Adam Sud:
I love lifting weights.
Rip Esselstyn:
You even got me into a pickleball league.
Adam Sud:
I did, yeah. And I play three to four days a week, and I love it. But the thing is, with pickleball, it's a sport that is about being there for other people and being a part of a team. And so being good at pickleball is great, but it's also, you want to be good because other people are going to notice and they're going to care. They're going to need you to do that. Whereas with weight training, you don't do it for anybody. You don't do it for anybody but yourself. And so if you want to get good at it, you have to solely want to explore things that are difficult, that are uncomfortable, that are confusing, and that a lot of times can actually physically hurt. And in order to do that, you have to really love it. You have to really love it.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, how much of weight lifting would you say is embracing the pain?
Adam Sud:
I would say it's embracing discomfort a lot because of, it's not just what's required of you in the gym, what's required of you outside of the gym in terms of the regimen of nutrition and how you're going to plan out your day and being really ... So you know me, if I get into something, I really, really get into it. And my day is designed around optimizing the outcomes that I can experience over the course of say, three to six weeks of training. And so what I drink, what I eat, how I sleep, it's all really focused towards that goal of exploring what's possible inside of the gym. So, there's a lot of things that go into it where it just requires your entire attention. It's not just in the gym. It requires you to be appropriate with what you choose to do and how you choose to do it in terms of in every way that you live your life. And I'm really attracted to that. I'm really attracted to that mindset where it says, if you want this thing, your entire life has to be about it.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, Laura, your wife has seen both the stickish Adam and now the big guns Adam, right?
Adam Sud:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, does she have a preference or does she just love Adam for Adam?
Adam Sud:
She loves me for me, but she appreciates where I am today. But the thing is, I think it's more about how I carry myself that's different. With this lifestyle there's a different energy that I think I've come into as a result of weight training and resistance training and strength training that I didn't have before, just in the way that I carry myself. I think I'm a little more confident. I'm a little more sure of myself. I'm a little more, I would say I'm a little more mature in terms of masculinity. And I mean that in a very positive way that I didn't embody before I started weight training. And I think that's really what, she likes it. She doesn't need it, but I think she appreciates it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, just to give everybody a little story here. So, we have a standing Sunday pickleball game, Adam, myself, John Mackie, Robby Barbaro with Mastering Diabetes, and then my son Cole. And we had a bit of a bully that was kind of harassing a woman pickleballer, he wanted to have the court. And so I basically stood up to him, but one of the reasons I was so able to stand up to him is because I had my muscle right next to me, which was Adam, which was right there. So, yeah, that felt good.
Adam Sud:
Yeah, it did. That guy was a bully.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, he was. Okay. So, what I would love before you jump into this fabulous, incredible research study that you've done, if you could give people that haven't heard you on episode 15 or 48, give them kind of like a reader's digest version of you and why this research study that nobody knows what it's about yet, why it's so kind of revolutionary and never been done before.
Adam Sud:
Yeah. The story goes in 2012. I was at the end of about a 10-year battle with substance use disorder or addiction. And I was 350 pounds at the time. I had a whole host of undiagnosed conditions, and I tried to suicide on August 21st, 2012. I failed.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes, good.
Adam Sud:
And it was great, best failure in my life. I checked into treatment where I was diagnosed with diabetes and heart disease and erectile dysfunction, and a whole host of psychological and emotional conditions and put on a very significant number of medications. And I remember thinking that my focus at the time, my idea of what recovery was, was just find a way to divorce yourself from substances. Remove it from your life, and abstain from it. And if you were to do that, and if I was able to do that long enough, then there's a possibility that my life might be a better place.
I was confronted with the reality that that's not how I should approach it by being diagnosed with all these conditions, that really what I need to do and what I wanted to do was to, what I like to say is reverse engineer the experience of feeling fully alive in a meaningful way. I needed to create the potential to wake up and have my body and my life feel like a safe and secure place to be. And also have a sense that my future, not just tomorrow, but also there's a sense that even a little bit further down the road was equally safe, equally secure, and also seemingly exciting. It was an exciting place to be. And if I could do that, then use might likely be less necessary. And it had to start by first and foremost, confronting and recognizing that I have some serious medical conditions that I need to take care of, and I needed to take care of it immediately.
And at the time, it was two years after going to your retreat, that was the only other way, that was the only thing I knew. I was like, oh, well, I don't know anything about nutrition, but I had attended this seven day retreat with Rip. What if I just do that thing? Because clearly I don't know what I'm doing. Clearly I don't know any other way to do it. So, I have no reason not to do this thing. As a result of adopting a plant-based diet in recovery, I was able to reverse my chronic diseases within six months of the diagnosis. I was able to lose 150 pounds in the first year and get off of all of my psych meds. And I've remained a person in recovery for 10 years. I've lost 175 pounds. I'm off of every medication. I was off of every medication within one year. And I've maintained that. And in fact, not only have I maintained it, I've continued to move forward into a life that is equally and increasingly more exciting and more enjoyable. And I think that that's the factor that I got interested about.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, why don't you tell me, so you put together this research study. What exactly is it and what was involved with putting it together?
Adam Sud:
Yeah, so like I mentioned, I spent about a year in recovery. So, I was in a rehab hospital for 37 days, and then I was in a sober living facility for 10 months. And so I spent almost about 11 and a half months in a recovery facility. And it was in that recovery facilities or in those recovery facilities that I utilized nutrition as a specific inappropriate part of recovery.
Rip Esselstyn:
But did you know at the time that this was part of your recovery? Or were you just trying to do something to lose weight feel better?
Adam Sud:
Oh, yeah. It was absolutely that. I was just trying to-
Rip Esselstyn:
So, back then you weren't thinking.
Adam Sud:
I was not thinking this whatsoever. But what I noticed at the end of my stay was that, oh my gosh, I checked into treatment, the sickest and most disconnected I'd ever been in my life. And within one year, which, let's be honest, one year is a very short amount of time. I left the healthiest and most excited about life and being alive that I'd ever been in my entire life, certainly as an adult. And I had spent those 11 months with other individuals who were equally seeking the journey of recovery. And the majority of these individuals were either going on higher dosages of the medications they were on, or they were going on more medications, or they were gaining weight. And it was really interesting because we lived in the same house. A lot of us were there for three, six months together.
Rip Esselstyn:
How many of you roughly were in house?
Adam Sud:
There's 12. People come and go. But I think the house was full at 12, and we were going in the same intensive outpatient therapy programs. We were going in the same meetings. We were doing all these other variables were very similar, except I took my nutrition very, very seriously.
Rip Esselstyn:
Just like you do your weight training now.
Adam Sud:
Just like I do my weight training, in fact, I took it so seriously that it became a part of how I organized my life and is there any data to support that this is actually a thing that we should be doing in recovery? I got really curious about this question, and that's when I looked into it and I realized that there had never been a controlled trial investigating the effects of nutrition of any kind on early addiction recovery outcomes. And so I spent the better part of two years just being aggravated that there was nothing to confirm my experience. And then I thought to myself, why don't I do it? Why don't I do this study?
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, what's really interesting is I can remember when you were starting to smell around about doing this, and I think it was when you were at Whole Foods doing some nutritional coaching. And I can remember thinking to myself, yeah, right. You're going to put together this study, get the doctors involved, go through all the hoops and everything that you have to do, raise the money, form a 501 C3. I was like, good luck. But on the outward, I'm like, that's awesome. Make it happen.
Adam Sud:
Oh, I know. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
But you did it.
Adam Sud:
I did it. Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Now I'm very proud of it. Now, I had no idea how much effort it was going to take-
Rip Esselstyn:
Which is a good thing.
Adam Sud:
Which is great, because if I had, it probably would've been a too scary a thing to do. But what I wanted to do was I wanted to, when you look at recovery, when you look at any rehab facility right now, if you were to go, you'd notice that food is one of the most controlled variables of the entire experience. Everybody eats at the same time. Everyone eats the same meals, no food is allowed in, and no food is allowed out other than what they serve.
So, here's a variable that could be easily measured and easily weighed against outcomes. And yet no one ever cared to study it. No one ever cared to study it and why I think is because they're using food right now in a very similar way that the rest of the world uses it, or western culture uses it is it's a moment of escape. It's a time for people to forget that they're in recovery and to just have a exciting calorie dense, if necessary meal where the stress is gone for an hour. And I think that that's the reason why food has always been seen is, oh, just enjoy it.
Rip Esselstyn:
And on the flip side, what's the other way of looking at it?
Adam Sud:
The other way of looking at it is, and this is really important. First and foremost, we have to understand why addiction makes so much sense. Because when people look at, or they're the outside observer of an individual who's struggling with substance use disorder, what they're likely doing is they're going, I don't understand this. I don't get it. They clearly must know that what they're doing is not only making their day right now very difficult and separating them from what feels great and what feels meaningful in life, but they're insulting their future. They're going to, they must know that their future is now going to be much, much harder, much more dangerous place, much more painful place to be because they're using. And so they're going to ask a very seemingly valuable question, which is, how do we get you to stop? Why won't you stop?
And I can understand why that's an appropriate question, but a much more valuable question to ask is why does their use make so much sense? If we were to answer that question, we're likely going to come to a very similar set of variables for every single person who struggles with substance use disorder, number one for one or more reasons, their life as it is right now has become an unsafe, insecure, and painful place to be. Whether it's their bodies, whether it's their social circle, whether it's their lack of purpose, whether it's trauma, however it is. They don't want to be present in their life because their life, for one or more reasons, is a painful, unsafe, and insecure place to be. Also, their future looks like an even more unsafe, more insecure, and more painful place to be. So, when you look at that and you recognize those variables, you can understand that the reason why they use is because it allows them to easily and repeatedly escape the experience of being alive.
And they don't mind compromising their future because their future doesn't look like a place they want to be anyways. So, what you have to do is you have to help this person reorganize their priorities and their values and how they move through their day so that over the course of time, their life and their self and their body and their social circle becomes a more safe, secure, and exciting place to be. Food should be used as a way to organize how their day goes. When someone is at end stage substance use disorder, everything about their day is organized around their use. What do they use? How much do they use? When do they use it? All the other meaningful acts of self-care and behaviors of self-care, food, sleep, water, social interaction. Those are pushed to the side to make room for as much organization around use as possible.
So, if we can swap use for food, they have a self-care act that they organize, how they plan their day around, where now their day is fixed around in the morning I get up so that I can eat breakfast as an act of self-care, as act of self-love, as an act of caretaking for a body that you want to have become an increasingly safe and secure place to be. And then you go about your day, and then you come back to food and you go back to your day and you come back. You have to replace the use as the priority. You don't want to remove use. You have to intentionally replace it. Actively replace it with a meaningful act of self-care. And so food is the one thing that everyone has to do. So, I think it should really start there.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, you think that's the first step?
Adam Sud:
I think that's the first step. Well, first step is obviously recognizing that you're struggling and you don't know how to do it. And it's okay. You're not supposed to know. It's a very difficult thing to figure out on your own.
Rip Esselstyn:
But let's say that I'm an addict. I come to recovery. Do you think for my whole day and the organization and me substituting my drug use for, let's just say food. Do I have to be somehow educated in the fact that this food that you're going to be doing for breakfast, lunch, and dinner is the absolute cat's meow when it comes to something that's going to take care of you, love back?
Adam Sud:
A hundred percent.
Rip Esselstyn:
And so how difficult is that to get that education imparted into these addicts?
Adam Sud:
It has to be part of the programming. And so when we designed the study, we designed the study to be not only a nutrition intervention, but a nutrition education intervention. So, everybody who was in the study was given not only the diet to match which group they chose, because this was a controlled trial. So, we're trying a plant-based intervention against another dietary pattern. And the other dietary pattern was actually very, it's actually a pretty quality dietary pattern if you were to look at it objectively. It wasn't plant exclusive by any sense. I wouldn't even call it plant predominant. It was more of a low-carb, paleo style diet. But they did remove a lot of the ultra processed foods and things like that. And so if you chose the plant-based group, you got curriculum to match that dietary lifestyle, to educate you on the value of it, what it's going to likely do for you over time, what it's going to likely do for you right now.
And the same with the other group. We worked with a dietician group out of Florida to design us a curriculum that met sort of like the ADA standards of nutrition. What we noticed is that, and I think this is really valuable, number one, when people enter substance use disorder treatment, they're always undernourished, period, end of story. And so likely, simply like I mentioned before, reorganizing your day around healthy eating, whatever your dietary pattern ends up being, you're likely going to improve the quality of your life. You're likely going to improve on almost every variable. And that's what we saw. Both groups across the board benefited. They did better in both physical, psychological, and emotional outcomes. Everybody did great.
Rip Esselstyn:
Over what period of time?
Adam Sud:
10 weeks.
Rip Esselstyn:
10 weeks.
Adam Sud:
What we noticed though, was in the plant-based group that there was statistically significant increases in two very important outcomes. And those are resilience and self-esteem. And resilience and self-esteem, in my opinion, and in the opinion of a lot of others are probably two of the biggest predictors for long-term recovery. And so what we know to be true is, so the study was designed into two parts. There's a three weeks that they spent in the rehab hospital, and then the next seven weeks in what is called a sober living facility.
Rip Esselstyn:
Can I stop you for a sec?
Adam Sud:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, who helped you design and put together this study? Because I can't imagine this was all just done by you.
Adam Sud:
No. So, I originally first had to find a treatment facility wanting to do it. And so I found one here, it's called Infinite Recovery. They're fantastic. And then I needed to find a lead investigator in a university to help me do this study. So, I reached out to a few places, one as a person, I believe Martin Tull from ACLM. And he was like, oh, this is exciting. Write me a one pager and then let me see if we can get some universities involved and excited about it. I said, okay, great. So, I wrote him the thing, and he got back to me. There were several universities that were pretty excited. But at the same time, I reached out to an individual who I knew not only would be excited about the study, but also shared my perspective on what addiction actually is.
And that's my dear friend, Dr. Tara Kemp. And she said, let me see. I'm going to take it to the head of the nutrition research department, a guy named Jay Sutliffe at Northern Arizona University and see if they're interested. They called me back less than 24 hours. We want to do this. We want to do it the way you want to do it. We're very excited about it. Come fly out to Flagstaff. Let's all talk about it. And so we started planning the study design. First we had to figure out what are we actually looking to measure? What are our primary outcomes? And our primary outcomes were resilience and self-esteem and self-compassion that's what we wanted to see if we could measure differences over the course of time. And we needed some MDs on this study. And I had just recently been at Plant Stock, or was it Plant Stock was 2018. And Dean and Ayesha Sherzai were presenting, and I think that was the first time I actually met them. And I walked up to them. They'd just given their talk on the Alzheimer's solution.
Rip Esselstyn:
This was in Black Mountain.
Adam Sud:
This was in Black Mountain. And I asked them flat out, do you know of any research suggesting that a plant-based diet can benefit addiction recovery? And they said to me, Adam, unfortunately, there's no evidence that a plant-based diet is any value whatsoever to addiction recovery. And for one very specific reason, no one has ever studied it.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, it's never been done.
Adam Sud:
Never been done. And I said, oh, I want to though, and if you have any information on nutrition and cognitive function, all this, which of course they do, can you help me? Because we're trying to build and design this study. And they legitimately said, we don't want to just send you that. We want to volunteer our time to be the MDs on your study. Meaning that they donated their time as MDs on the study, which was unbelievable. So, all of us, now, we have a full team, and we started to design the protocol, the diet, the outcomes, the measurement methods, everything from the blood lipid panels to the fecal samples for the microbiome screening, to which scales we're going to use to study the emotional and psychological changes.
What scales do they already use at the treatment center that we don't have to add? How are we going to do this thing? And that took about six months. Took about six months to get it right. And then on January 2020, we launched the study and ran right into COVID. So, it slowed it down a bit, but we were able to do the study in one year, which was fantastic.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. So, you said it's never been done before. So, to me, it seems so obvious that okay, you change what people are eating, you give them this high premium kind of fuel, and you're going to get better across a myriad of touchpoints. But obviously if it's never been done, you got to prove it.
Adam Sud:
You got to prove it. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
What is it that Michael Gregor always says?
Adam Sud:
I have no idea.
Rip Esselstyn:
He says, put it to the test.
Adam Sud:
Yeah, you got to put it to the test. You really do. Because we can make assumptions all we want, but that's not as convincing as actual hard data. And what I'm most proud about in terms of what we discovered in the study is, number one, this is the first time resilience has ever been linked to diet, which is a really salient finding. That's really valuable. Number two-
Rip Esselstyn:
And just for the audience, when you say resilience, explain to me in the way you think of it. What does that mean to you?
Adam Sud:
Yeah, so think of resilience as your ability to bounce back. Resilience would be, oh, I'm learning to do something different. Or I'm learning to go a different direction in life. And as I go down this new direction, I'm confronted with something really difficult. Some moment in time, something happens during your day that might cause you to want to go back the way you are going. Resilience is your ability to recognize that you still want to keep going that way. And you start to draw on tools or skills that you've learned in order to stay on that road and you get through it. And there's a scale called the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, that's a validated scale of measuring resilience, and it's universally recognizes the scale to use.
Rip Esselstyn:
And so with addicts, is there, okay, so I get a flat tire, I have a bad day, what I want to use because I am absolutely, I'm bummed and I'm having a really shitty day. So, it is kind of absolutely helping to breakthrough that.
Adam Sud:
That's exactly right. In those moments, when you start to question whether this is actually worth it to you. And being able to reassure yourself that, yes, this is absolutely the direction I want to go. I forgot that this was supposed to be hard and I want to keep going, and I have the resilience to do it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. The other thing you said was self-esteem.
Adam Sud:
Self-esteem.
Rip Esselstyn:
And so can you measure self-esteem?
Adam Sud:
You can. Yeah. There's a scale to measure, simply a questionnaire that you ask individuals to answer. And as a result of it, you get a quantifiable number that basically gives you a sense of whether their self-esteem is going up or is going down. And what is so important about self-esteem and recovery is, and I really do how Doug Lyle talks about self-esteem, because a lot of people think about self-esteem as how you think about yourself. But it's a little bit more complex than that in a very eloquent way. Self-esteem, according to Doug Lyle and evolutionary psychology is an internal audience that is responding to you as if it were the world watching you do what you do. And what's really important to think about is when someone checks into recovery, that individual has a very low self-esteem. For one very simple reason. But there's one very important reason.
When they look at the world around them it doesn't seem like the people in their life struggle at all to not use. And to them, that's nearly impossible to do that, which is also kind of a hindrance to their self-esteem. The reason why is what that means is if they just stop using, maybe it's not worthy of applause. If you were to just do what everyone does baseline every single day, is that really that valuable? Am I really gaining anything valuable that I can share with people? And so you have to battle this thing that Doug calls an ego trap, where your belief about the world around you is giving you a sense that this incredible extraordinary sacrifice to you is not a sacrifice at all to the rest of the world. And they might not think that it's that great of a thing. They may not go way to go at a boy, good for you.
But what I like about pairing nutrition with another kind of valuable behavior, or sorry, pairing recovery with a valuable behavior, is that you're not doing something called passive recovery, which is, I'm just not going to use. You're doing something called active recovery where you're actively substituting use with something that the rest of the world might see as a sacrifice. If you look at the world around you right now, eating healthy doesn't seem like something people know how to do very well.
Rip Esselstyn:
Not very popular.
Adam Sud:
Not a very popular thing at all. And if you were to ask them, what do you think about eating healthy? They go, that's a sacrifice. I don't want to sacrifice what I really love. And so if you're willing to replace use with something that the rest of the world sees as a sacrifice, and over the course of three, four weeks, you notice that you have these extraordinary changes in your health and yourself and how you move. The rest of the world is going to look at you inside, in terms of your internal audience and go, I don't know how you did that.
I've tried to do that several times and I've never been able to do it. Way to go. And you did that while you were giving up drugs. Now giving up drugs is worthy of applause. So, this raises your self-esteem because it seems like you have now figured out something that the rest of the world struggles to figure out. You did it while giving up drugs, and you have a pretty good sense that you figured this thing out. You didn't just lose weight on a crash diet. You figured out a way to live your life so that now when you wake up in the morning, you have a sense that I've got value I could share with someone if they need it. My body feels like a safer place to be than it was when I got here. And it seems like it's going to be a safer place tomorrow.
I'm kind of excited to see what that looks like. I'm willing to struggle today, if necessary, to get to tomorrow, because I really want to find that out. Making tomorrow an exciting and safe place to be is one of the most important things you can do for someone in recovery. And I think nutrition plays such a huge part in that, because it's like a vehicle that could drive you there if you want to it. You say, as long as I stay in this car, tomorrow might be a place I want to go look at. It might be a place I want to go live in because today feels great. And I know what two weeks ago felt like, and I could never have imagined feeling this way. What in the world is two weeks going to look like? I'm so motivated to get there for the first time in my life, being alive, being present in your life is now something that you want to actively do?
Rip Esselstyn:
So, there's no doubt in my mind that this works. I guess my question is, so you just said that if you are able to eat this way while giving up using, yeah, that is worthy of some major applause. But how many people in your study did you find that we're following this plant-based diet actually, were able to stick with it for 10 weeks? And how many dropped off?
Adam Sud:
Yeah, so we had 42 people who joined the study, and we kept 33, but some of the dropping off was due to insurance and other things like that. So, it wasn't technically that they didn't want to do the diet anymore. So, I could probably say if we looked at half that number of drop off, that's about what happened. What I really found interesting was that we collected qualitative interviews of the individual's experiences in recovery while doing this study. And the qualitative stories that we capture are really compelling. We have people saying, oh, this is my first or my second, or even my third time in recovery. But this felt different. And they'll say, I didn't expect it to become a spiritual thing for me. I didn't expect it to be something that gave me a sense of being connected to something greater than myself.
But I found that happening as this study continued or as my journey continued, that for the first time, nutrition wasn't just a way for me to escape the day for an hour. It was about building a better place to live. And that statement alone really speaks to what I think is so important about plant-based nutrition, or at least plant predominant nutrition in recovery, it's feeding these people anyways. We're not adding an additional step to the whole dance of recovery. We're just replacing it with something that we know is valuable. And now we've measured it. Now we know. We now know that not only did the treatment group perform better in resilience and self-esteem, more people in the treatment group stayed on the diet than those in the control group. Meaning that for whatever reason, plant-based nutrition seemed to be incredible, much more attractive to people than the other diet.
In terms of sticking with it. We noticed that at the end of the study, the individuals who had the highest performance in self-esteem and resilience compared to those who had the lowest, the biggest differentiator was fiber. The biggest differentiator was fiber intake. And that's really great because you don't have to define diet to somebody if we just say, hey, look, we just want you to eat more fiber. You don't have to say vegan, you don't have to say pale. You don't have to say anything like that. You don't have to make it part of their identity yet. You could just say, are you getting 50 grams of fiber?
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, and is the connection there? I mean, we know there's a huge connection between the gut and the brain and your mood. So, you think that's part of it?
Adam Sud:
I think-
Rip Esselstyn:
That the type of bacteria you're creating?
Adam Sud:
Yeah. We're still in the process of analyzing all the microbiome data, but what we know is this, there's great statistics out there that people like to throw around because it's fun, is that 90% of your serotonin and 50% of your dopamine is produced in the gut. And that's true, but none of those neurotransmitters cross the blood-brain barrier. So, those aren't actively becoming part of your brain neurochemistry. However, a person with a healthy gut microbiome consuming a fiber-rich diet produces short-chain fatty acids that do cross the blood-brain barrier, that are responsible for the creation of your brain's neurotransmitters, serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, all these incredible things that give us a sense that our life is going in a direction that we want it to go. And that's valuable, that's useful that we can say, okay, if we know that everybody in treatment should be on a high fiber diet, if that's the case, we should be doing this.
Rip Esselstyn:
What's your definition of high fiber?
Adam Sud:
50 grams or more. In my opinion.
Rip Esselstyn:
And just a little FYI, most Americans are getting 16 and a half grams a day, if they're lucky.
Adam Sud:
Yeah. If they're lucky, it's between five and 15.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. Yeah.
Adam Sud:
It's pretty terrible. I mean, boy, what's your morning? Big bowl is 40, right?
Rip Esselstyn:
42. 42. Yeah. Some people say it's the big bowel, but it's the big bowel. It's the big bowel. Yeah, exactly. So, the third thing you said was self-compassion. And is there a way that you're also a able to measure that?
Adam Sud:
We did measure it. So, everything that we wanted to measure, we had validated scales of measuring it. And what was great was this. Number one, as I mentioned before, everyone who entered the study, whether you were in the control group or the treatment group, saw benefits on every outcome across the board, which means one thing. Number one, that treatment facility is doing a darn good job. Infinite recovery is doing a fantastic job at taking care of people's recovery. The amazing thing was the only group that saw outperforming increases, meaning a variable that did better than the other group. The only one was the plant-based group. Meaning that at worst, a plant-based group is neutral. At best, it's the right diet for addiction recovery. And so that is really exciting to me because for the longest time, an individual in addiction recovery, wanting to change their diet, certainly wanting to eat more plants than meat would find quite a difficult time doing that.
There's this mechanistic approach to addiction recovery, nutrition, where it's like you have to have omega-3 fatty acids, so fish have to be part of your diet and you can't eliminate fish. And it's like when you look at that kind of mechanistic approach of, because this has this and it's related to that, therefore eating this must be the right thing to do. You're going to have a very hard time convincing people that when you look at outcomes over time rather than mechanisms, we can actually start to make some changes. But you need data to back that up. And so I'm really glad that we just shown that there isn't a single variable that we measured where the plant-based group didn't do as good or better than the traditional group.
Rip Esselstyn:
I would imagine there are all kinds of hoops that she had to jump through to create the menu, and then somebody had to approve it to make sure that you're getting all the protein you need and all that stuff. Macro micronutrients nutrients.
Adam Sud:
Oh my gosh.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, who developed the menu for you?
Adam Sud:
Yeah, so Brenda Reed.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, nice.
Adam Sud:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Awesome.
Adam Sud:
So, the person who designs you the menu for your retreats. I was like, look, if we're going to do it, we're got to do the best we can. And that's the best diet I know of. So, Brenda helped us design the diet, and then she came and trained the treatment facility staff on how to properly prepare and serve those meals because we wanted them to be attractive. It needs to be attractive, it has to be enjoyable. It has to be something that people want to get up, and they don't want to look at food and go, oh, fine. No, they got to go, oh, did you guys have that meal yesterday? I never had anything like that. That was pretty good.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, can you give me an example of some of the breakfast, lunch and dinners that were served?
Adam Sud:
Well, yeah. So, the breakfast, very similar to what we would do at a retreat.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, steel cut oatmeal.
Adam Sud:
Steel cut oatmeal.
Rip Esselstyn:
Fruit.
Adam Sud:
The big bowl cereals and stuff like that. Or we had whole wheat, whole grain cereals, fruit, obviously. And then of course, we included amazing meals. One of mine that I insisted was cheesy chickpeas. But yeah, lentil loaf. But really keeping it simple. Every now and then they did something special, like a lentil loaf or whatever, but it was mostly rice, beans, greens, other grains, other legumes, fruit, nuts, seeds.
Rip Esselstyn:
Probably soups.
Adam Sud:
Yeah. But keeping everything to appropriate amounts. People go, oh, nuts and seeds are great because they have healthy fats. And so people go, so you just got to eat as much as you can. It's like, well, no, listen, nuts and seeds are healthy, but there's an amount that's appropriate. There's an amount that's not enough. There's an amount that's too much when it comes to high fat foods. And so we kept ours to less than 20% of our calories coming from fat from all foods combined. And then about a 70 split on the rest of it. So, 70% carbohydrate and the rest coming from protein.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, when did this study get published?
Adam Sud:
The study got published I think August of last year. But I've been keeping it kind of under wraps because I really wanted to find the right vehicle to announce it to the world. And I think that the Forbes in Psychology Today, articles was a great way to do it.
Rip Esselstyn:
And when did that happen?
Adam Sud:
So, that happened a couple of weeks ago. And like I said, I'm so excited and proud that outlets like Forbes and Psychology Today were excited to publish an article literally with a giant plate of plant-based food saying plant-based diets might be the solution to substance abuse, which is a little bit of a sensationalist post, but that's okay.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, yeah. But I mean, to me, in your mind, what does this mean as far as the potential future of addiction recovery with using food as part of that recovery?
Adam Sud:
Well, I think that for the first time ever, we now have data that shows that nutrition needs to be properly planned into recovery. It shouldn't be used as an escape moment. It shouldn't be used as something that kind of harkens someone back to their life before they got there. I think that what's really important about recovery is that ... Actually, I think recovery is a poor choice of words.
Rip Esselstyn:
What's better?
Adam Sud:
I don't really know. But what I think is recovery means getting back what you lost. And I think that what you're seeking is the discovery of how to move forward as the person you've always meant to be, but have not yet become. Sort of crafting that new way of living your life so that the world becomes a safer place, your life becomes a safer place, the people become a safer place. And so I think recovery is an obvious because you're trying to recover, not recover yourself from not using. But it kind of believes that there's parts of your life that you know should just continue to keep in your life, whether it's in your food, whatever. And just find a way to stop using, finding a way to stop using is not the answer. What we want to do is we want to help people intentionally design a way of living where use is less necessary. That's recovery, that's addiction treatment. The abstinence model just doesn't work. And I say that because the data says it doesn't work.
Rip Esselstyn:
It doesn't work with drugs because doesn't that work in alcohol? And isn't that what AA is all about?
Adam Sud:
Well, so first of all, I think AA is phenomenal because it's a nationwide free service that anybody can get to if they need it. You can look online and find an AA meeting right now. It's free. It costs you nothing. You can go and you can start your recovery method. But what we have to recognize is the recidivism rate. So, an individual who checks into treatment or starts their recovery journey will be back into treatment. 70% of them will be back into treatment within one year, and that statistic is lowered because it doesn't account for the number of people who die before that one year mark. And so I think that the way that we've approached it was seemingly a good idea to look at drugs as the problem and say, the reason why you have a problem is because you used drugs.
But a much better way forward is to look at the person and help them understand why it made so much sense that to them, drug use or substance use became such a valuable part of their life. And what we want to do is we don't want to remove that use. We want to focus all of your attention and energy in organizing and designing a life where that behavior is not necessary for you to have a life you want to be a part of. That's what we have to do. And you know this, because you've watched, I don't know how many tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people you've helped, you've literally watched them when they walked through the door, you saw me when I came through the door, you're a treat. And you see these people, and I see them when I'm with you. These people, they come in and they're, it's like they've tried everything and they're about to give up.
They're about to give up because they've tried so hard. Believe me, if you're out there and you're struggling with substance use or a person's struggling with obesity, I know how hard you're trying. And it's like, oh, just fine. I'll do one more thing. I'll do one more thing because I don't want to be here. And when I say that, they mean their life. I just don't want to be here. It's hard. I hate it. It hurts. And you see what happens when you give someone a vehicle like plant-based nutrition, when you can help this person figure out how to do it, where it's not complicated, where it's attractive enough but not too attractive. But attractive enough. And that after seven days when we were five days where your retreats and that light kind of comes on, you see this glimmer of hope in their eye where they go, not only did I do this thing and I've seen results, but I think I can continue to do this thing. And that is a moment that, I'm starting to get choked up here.
That is a moment that when you witness that, that's the hope that everybody wants in recovery. And the reason why they're experiencing that is because you didn't ever say, why didn't you just put down the cheeseburger? You said, why don't you do this instead? Instead of eat less, you said, no, your problem isn't that you're eating too much? The problem is that no one told you that the environment that you're living in is supposed to take you to right where you are. It's not your fault. Why don't you make your environment look like this? Come live with us for five days. Look at how we did this thing. Notice how you feel, and if you think you like it and you want to do more, keep going. And they do. When we circle up and everyone shares how they feel, I want that feeling to exist in treatment facility where they don't look at the next year of their life and go, how the heck am I going to do this thing?
This was the hardest 28 days of my life, and I was in a treatment facility where I wasn't allowed to use. It wasn't possible. How the heck am I going to do this? This sucked. I want them to spend 28 days and after be so inspired by the experience that they had that they're excited about the next year of their life. They don't have be worry about the rest of their life, but the next year of their life is like, I think I can do this thing this. This is going to be fun. I'm going to figure this out.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. When you look back on your life up to this point in time, what do you think was your bravest moment?
Adam Sud:
I would say there have been a few moments in my life that distinctly come to mind. Number one was going to your retreat. I didn't want to be there. I was embarrassed to be around people, and I was confronted with someone who looked like a superhero, who my dad looked up to, and I was like, he's just going to think I'm a piece of shit. Because that's how I felt about myself. And then checking into treatment was probably the second bravest thing that I've ever done. But I would say probably the hardest and most brave moment of my life was likely every single morning of the first year of recovery.
And the reason for that is even though after two, three weeks when my blood pressure was plummeting, my blood sugar was plummeting, my weight was coming down, and I was excited. Even though it was exciting, I didn't know. I didn't know what was going to happen. I had never been in recovery before. I didn't know if it just gets harder at six months, if the first three weeks were supposed to feel great, and then it gets harder at six months. But I did it anyways. I just said to myself, and I remember telling myself this, you don't have to worry about what the next six months looks like, but you've got to look at these next seven days and know you can do it.
And I kind of modeled that off because your retreats were seven days at the time. I just have to build these seven day experiments where I figure out how I'm going to, I say it this way, organize my life and my environment so that I can do this thing with as much ease as possible. Not with as much pleasure and excitement as possible. I need it to be easy. If it can be easy, then hopefully over time it will become exciting and fun. And that's what happened.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. When I think about, because I've heard your talk probably 30 times. But when you talk about how much, when you were kind of at the height of your weight and just the amount of hatred and self-loathing that you had, and I look at where you are today, you are an absolute beautiful human being. Handsome as can be, fit. You married the love of your life. You're talking about having a family. To me, I mean you, you've done a 180 from that person that probably didn't even ever think he was deserving of all the things that you have today.
Adam Sud:
Absolutely.
Rip Esselstyn:
So, anyway, I just see you sitting here and how you've embraced this whole new life, this kind of new you. And just how it's one of the most remarkable transformations that I've ever had the opportunity to witness. And I tell people when I introduce you, this to me, it gives all of us collectively hope that no one is ever too far gone. Because you were far gone.
Adam Sud:
I was far gone. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
You were in a bad place.
Adam Sud:
And that's the thing, if you were to look at my life then, how did my drug use not make sense? Now using led me down that road, but when it got to a point to where I couldn't stop using, the reasons I couldn't stop using were very obvious. I mean, my body hurt, my relationships hurt. The world was, I felt the world felt like a scary place. I needed to not be present as much as possible because that felt like relief. That felt like self-care. And so drug use and that's scenario is very obvious and very reasonable. And it's not pathology, it's not crazy. It's not brokenness. It is the appropriate response your physiology and psychology should be having to a life that's that painful and that scary. And so if you were to take me today, and I would say I've pretty darn well reconnected myself to the loving and meaningful bonds in life that give me the experience of wanting to be alive and wanting to be present in my life.
And even if you were to give me a drink of water and go here, I got you some water. And after I drink, you go, oh, just so you know, I put some heroin in there. I would have the same euphoric experience that I used to have when I would abuse opiates. The same euphoric experience. And afterwards, if you were to say, do you want more? Is say, nah. And the reason isn't because I'm a different person. The reason is because I live in a different world. I live in a world where I want to show up. I want to be present. I want to feel this body. I want to feel the people in my life, and I want to experience what tomorrow is going to bring. And so that's why I say no.
Rip Esselstyn:
And that's more powerful than the ...
Adam Sud:
That's more powerful than telling someone, the reason why you're saying you can't stop using is because there's these chemical hooks that create this compulsion that make you want to use over and over again. So, your pain means nothing. Your story means nothing. And instead of telling someone, all they have to do is stop using. What we should be doing is replacing the use with appropriate and valuable behavior patterns that are likely to create a better life for that person, a better sense of the world for them, and a safer experience for them inside of their bodies and outside of their bodies moving forward.
That starts with plant-based nutrition. It starts with movement. Of course, it includes therapy. But the fact that nutrition has never been measured until now was very upsetting to me because I probably attribute one or two other things to being as equally powerful as what nutrition offered me in recovery. And we can give it to people right now. There's nothing stopping any treatment center right now saying, hey, we already spend money on food, so let's just buy different food. We can do it right now. And that's my mission.
Rip Esselstyn:
If anything is probably less expensive.
Adam Sud:
It actually is less expensive. Our menu is cheaper than the other one.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. What would you love to happen because of what you did with this study?
Adam Sud:
Yeah. So, my dream is to open a completely reimagined recovery facility where everything about the way that you move through your day is intentionally designed to reconnect you to what it is to want to be a present in your life. Rather than getting you to just accept and own the identity of an addict who can't stop using because you're an addict. And that's why you can't stop using. And so listen, you better be darn sure you're afraid of drugs. You better be really afraid of being in that bar. You better be really afraid of holidays and stuff like that because those are going to be tough for you because the only reason you want to use is because you're an addict. And so we're going to give you some tools. We're going to give you these meetings to go to. You're going to need to go to them for the rest of your life, and hopefully you can grit your way through life and make it through sober.
And I get this kind of irritation in my voice, not because I disdain recovery, but because I think that it is so obvious in the way that they're approaching it that it's not the right way to approach it. What we want to do is we want to help these people who are not addicts because there's something wrong with them. They're addicts because their life is not the place that they need to be.
And if we can help create an environment and they can cultivate a way of living within that environment that encourages the experience of wanting to be present in their life, they might use, there might be a moment when they say, oh, my son just had a baby. I'm going to toast him with champagne. But it'll likely be convivial, it will be seldom, and it will not be in the attempt of escape. I'm saying this for the majority of people, not for every single person. But I think that that's what we need to do. We need to help people figure out why it makes so much sense that they used. And if we can do that, well, let's just reorganize your life so that use becomes less necessary.
Rip Esselstyn:
You have a way of expressing all that. It is just absolutely incredible.
Adam Sud:
Thank you.
Rip Esselstyn:
I love the word convivial. I haven't heard that in a long time. So, we're going to wind this down, but I want to finish on kind of a lighter note. And that is, so, are there any shows you're watching right now that you'd recommend anybody out there?
Adam Sud:
Yeah, I'm watching The Last of Us, and it's fantastic. It's fantastic. But I'll say this, the show I've probably enjoyed watching the most in the last couple of years was there was a show that I avoided for years because I didn't like the character that she played on The Office, and it's Mindy Kaling. She played in a very annoying character on the office. And so when this show called The Mindy Project came out, I was like, I don't want to watch that. I couldn't stand her in the office. And my wife, when we first started dating, it's one of her favorite shows, and she's like, I want to start watching the Mindy Project from the beginning.
Do you want to watch it? And so I was like, sure. I've never watched that show. I've been wanting to watch it. That is the best show I've ever watched. It is so enjoyable. It is so watchable. It's literally on par with The Office, with Parks and Rec, with Seinfeld, with all these, if you're a person who just wants to have pure enjoyment, the characters get better over the seasons. When they add new characters, those characters are equally interesting. It's so funny. I love it. And I absolutely love The Mindy Project.
Rip Esselstyn:
The Mindy Project.
Adam Sud:
The Mindy Project.
Rip Esselstyn:
Interesting. And in my house right now, it's Jane the Virgin. I don't know if you've ever heard of it.
Adam Sud:
I have heard of it. I've never watched it.
Rip Esselstyn:
Crazy. Crazy. It's just so lighthearted and fun. And I think, what's it called it? The Mexican Novella? Something like that.
Adam Sud:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. What about book? Any particular book that we should read?
Adam Sud:
I just started reading David Goggin's new book, Never Finished. And I got the audio book that he actually reads, and I'm really into it. And I loved his first book, Can't Hurt Me. And I got it because, well, you guys know we're all going to be running together coming up in a week and a half. And so who better to motivate you than David Goggins. But other than that, there's some cool stuff that I've just been catching up on in terms of nutrition. I read through Simon Hill's book, the Proof is in the Plants. There was a book that my wife was really interested in reading is it was called The Leptin Solution, which is about how to rearrange your diet and how you eat to optimize leptin and ghrelin, which I found would be really fascinating. I don't know the validity of it, but I thought it would be interesting to read. But yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Those are kind of like hunger hormones, right?
Adam Sud:
That's exactly what they are. Yeah. It's not a pop group from the eighties left in and gro. But yeah, I think the Goggin's book is what I'm, I think I'm in chapter five, almost Chapter six. Robby told me Chapter six is the best chapter, so I'm excited. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Oh, nice. What about, last thing is a vacation spot for anybody that's looking for a good vacation spot.
Adam Sud:
I just went on a fantastic vacation. I went on my honeymoon to Costa Rica, and we spent the first six nights in Tamarindo at a place called Capitán Suizo. It was a small boutique hotel founded by a Swiss family. It's right on the beach. We had a private bungalow. It was incredible. The breakfast is all-inclusive. They have this dish there, traditional Costa Rican breakfast dish is something called Gallo pinto, and it's a rice and beans dish with these spices and has Worcester sauce in it and stuff. I ate so much of that. And then all the fruit was incredible. And then we spent the next four nights in the Arenal volcano region of Costa Rica at a place called Tabacon. This place is remarkable. It sits on top of these volcanic rivers, and I don't mean that they're lava rivers, they're rivers that are heated by the volcanic activity. And so the rivers are like a hundred degrees and they're thermal, and they have all these minerals in it. And so you just go and you lay in these rivers in this beautiful garden and everything. It's unbelievable.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. Yeah. I'm going.
Adam Sud:
Yeah, you should go. It's fantastic.
Rip Esselstyn:
Where can people find you?
Adam Sud:
Yeah, I launched my new website, adamsud.com. So, if you're interested in finding out more about the study, the study on the website, we got links to the articles. We got all older interviews and videos. Also, if you're interested in finding out about my services, you can book me as a speaker for an event. Through that website you can also book me as a, I do concierge style coaching services for people who want to use nutrition to improve the quality of their life, both physically and emotionally.
And so what I mean by concierge is it really high touch. I'm basically on call to you Monday through Friday. So, you have a video call once a week, and then if you text me and say, hey, I'm struggling with this. I need to talk. You're going to get 10 minutes of my time Monday through Friday every single day. So, I'm basically going to walk you through the whole thing. So, if you're interested in that, the opportunity to book a discovery call is on the website as well. And then I've got some really great affiliations. There's this one company Plant Strong. Yeah. There's a link to that on there. It's really good.
Rip Esselstyn:
Plant Strong Foods.
Adam Sud:
Yeah. Plant Strong Food. That's right. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
And you're going to be joining me and the whole Plan Strong crew in Black Mountain.
Adam Sud:
Black Mountain in the Spring.
Rip Esselstyn:
For our next six-day retreat.
Adam Sud:
And I promise not to get into my bike accident this time.
Rip Esselstyn:
And will you just give it a quick like sell, because we got about 20 spots left.
Adam Sud:
Yeah. Well, if you want a selling point, the reason why I have been able to do what I've been able to do with my life is because I attended one of these. So, I went from about as far gone as you can be in health and in life to having waking up at 5:00 AM just can't wait for my day to start married to the love of my life and feeling better than I've ever felt in my body in my entire life. I think what's so wonderful about the retreats is it is an opportunity for you to step outside of the life that you live right now.
Come and be with us because we've intentionally designed and created an environment and an experience that is for the entire purpose of you discovering what's possible. And if you come here and you spend five days with us, you are going to discover what's possible. You will see it because we give you no other option. At the end of the five days, you're going to notice what is possible for you and your body after five days of completely living.
Rip Esselstyn:
Six.
Adam Sud:
Six days. Six days living a plant, strong lifestyle with movement, with proper sleep, with everything, with social activity, social engagement, fun. Learning to have fun again, learning to play-
Rip Esselstyn:
Laugh.
Adam Sud:
Learning to laugh all the things.
Rip Esselstyn:
And eat copious amounts of food.
Adam Sud:
Exactly. At the end of those five days, you're going to notice the effect that has on you.
Rip Esselstyn:
Six days.
Adam Sud:
Six, sorry, I keep saying five.
Rip Esselstyn:
I know. I know.
Adam Sud:
End of those six days, you're going to be confronted with the reality that this lifestyle could mean for you.
Rip Esselstyn:
Just got to show up.
Adam Sud:
And you're likely going to be inspired by that and motivated to repeat it. If you come I guarantee you, I guarantee you, you lose nothing by coming, but you might miss out on the most important thing in your life if you don't come.
Rip Esselstyn:
Adam, this has been an absolute blast.
Adam Sud:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Third time.
Adam Sud:
Third time.
Rip Esselstyn:
On the Plan Strong podcast. You have just pulled a hat trick.
Adam Sud:
Appreciate it. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. I love you, Adam.
Adam Sud:
Love you too, man.
Rip Esselstyn:
Thanks, Adam, for all your incredible efforts to bring this study known as The Infinite Study to Fruition, we'll be sure to link to the study and the article from Forbes in the show notes so that you all can read more about it. Thanks so much for listening, and once again, we get to celebrate another big win for plants. We'll see you next week for a fabulous conversation with Toni Okamoto, Ms. Plant-based on a Budget. Until then, keep it plant strong.
Thank you for listening to the Plan Strong podcast. You can support the show by taking a quick minute to follow us. Wherever you listen to your favorite podcast, leaving us a positive review and sharing the show with your network is another great way to help us reach as many people as possible with the exciting news about plants. Thank you in advance for your support. It means everything. The Plan Strong podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, Ami Mackey, Patrick Gavin, and Wade Clark. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous, true seekers who weren't afraid to look through the lens with clear vision and hold firm to a higher truth. Most notably, my parents, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn Jr, and Anne Crile Esselstyn. Thanks for listening.
