Ethan Suplee On Shedding 300 Pounds, Ditching Drugs & What It Really Takes To Transform Your Life

Summary

Podcast Summary: Ethan Suplee On Shedding 300 Pounds, Ditching Drugs & What It Really Takes To Transform Your Life

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Rich Roll Podcast
• Host: Rich Roll
• Episode: Ethan Suplee On Shedding 300 Pounds, Ditching Drugs & What It Really Takes To Transform Your Life
• Release Date: June 23, 2025
• Description: In this compelling episode, Rich Roll engages in an honest and soulful conversation with actor Ethan Suplee. Ethan shares his extraordinary journey of personal transformation, battling addiction, and shedding over 300 pounds to become a healthy, sober father of four. This episode delves deep into the challenges, setbacks, and triumphs that define Ethan's path to reclaiming his life.

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1. Introduction to Ethan Suplee

Rich Roll opens the episode by introducing Ethan Suplee, renowned actor known for roles in "Boy Meets World," "My Name Is Earl," and collaborations with esteemed directors such as Martin Scorsese and Darren Aronofsky. However, the focus of the conversation is Ethan's profound personal journey rather than his acting career.

Notable Quote:

"The real story is the story behind the story. The story about a guy who once tipped the scales at 550 pounds, was hopelessly addicted to pills, heroin, you name it." [01:12]

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2. Ethan's Background and Early Life

Ethan discusses his upbringing in a family of theater actors, moving from New York to Los Angeles. Despite his parents' efforts to provide a stable environment, Ethan rebelled early on, leaving school at 14 to pursue a tumultuous path.

Notable Quote:

"From day one, I was... getting into trouble." [09:12]

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3. Struggles with Weight and Addiction

Ethan recounts the onset of his weight issues, starting with a diet at age five, which planted the seeds of shame and rebellion against food regulations. This internal conflict led him to seek solace in alcohol and later opioids.

Notable Quote:

"When I look at pictures of me at five, I do not see a kid that needs to be put on a diet." [11:59]

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4. Turning Point and Sobriety

A critical moment occurs when Ethan is diagnosed with congestive heart failure at age 20. Faced with the imminent threat of death, he realizes the necessity of getting sober. Despite previous attempts and relapses, this diagnosis serves as the catalyst for his commitment to change.

Notable Quote:

"I thought, it'd be nice to leave my parents a clean corpse." [00:52]

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5. Journey to Weight Loss and Fitness

Ethan details his extensive and often brutal journey to losing over 300 pounds. From extreme diets like a liquid diet resulting in significant weight loss to intense physical activities such as cycling with professional teams, Ethan experimented with various methods to reclaim his health.

Notable Quote:

"It was a liquid diet for two months, and I lost like 80 pounds doing that liquid diet." [87:59]

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6. Managing Life After Transformation

Ethan emphasizes that his transformation was not a linear path but marked by relapses and plateaus. He discusses the ongoing battle with anxiety and the cognitive dissonance stemming from his past struggles, highlighting the importance of mental resilience alongside physical health.

Notable Quote:

"The more I talk about it, the more I keep it in the forefront of my mind, the more I'm able to win every day." [28:00]

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7. Parenting and Relationships

Transitioning to his role as a father, Ethan shares the challenges of parenting while dealing with his own insecurities. The diagnosis of his daughter with type 1 diabetes further tested his ability to navigate control and support without replicating the restrictive behaviors he experienced.

Notable Quote:

"I recruited her to help me. I said, hey, I have this problem. I'm obese, and I want to change that." [78:46]

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8. Insights and Lessons Learned

Throughout the conversation, Ethan imparts valuable lessons on personal transformation. He underscores the significance of accepting life's inherent uncertainties, the necessity of ongoing self-improvement, and the balance between discipline and compassion.

Notable Quote:

"There has to be some grace given to yourself and doing it out of compassion and kindness, or I don't think it works." [100:48]

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9. Advice to Others

Ethan advises those contemplating change to start small, build momentum, and maintain resilience in the face of setbacks. He highlights the importance of support systems, authentic self-reflection, and understanding that transformation is an ongoing process without a definitive endpoint.

Notable Quote:

"Having a plan for the day and then preparing for the plan to go out the window once you meet reality, and having another plan..." [91:19]

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Conclusion

Rich Roll and Ethan Suplee conclude with reflections on the continuous nature of personal growth and the importance of remaining present and adaptable. Ethan's story serves as a beacon of hope and a testament to the human spirit's capacity for profound change.

Final Notable Quote:

"This is the hardest thing I've ever had to do because I felt like my kid's life was on the line." [117:08]

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Key Takeaways:

• Transformation is Non-Linear: Ethan's journey was marked by multiple attempts, relapses, and plateaus, emphasizing that change is often a winding path.
• Mental Resilience is Crucial: Overcoming addiction and weight issues requires not just physical effort but significant mental and emotional work.
• Support Systems Matter: The role of supportive friends, family, and communities like AA were pivotal in Ethan's recovery.
• Ongoing Self-Improvement: Personal growth doesn't have a finish line; it's a continuous process of learning and adapting.
• Balance Discipline with Compassion: Sustainable change involves strict routines tempered with self-kindness and the ability to forgive setbacks.

Ethan Suplee's candid narrative offers profound insights into the complexities of personal transformation, making this episode a must-listen for anyone seeking inspiration and guidance on their own journey to a healthier, more authentic self.

Transcript

[Ethan Suplee]

My bottom was being diagnosed with congestive heart failure. I'm going to bed every night, damn near £500. Pretty sure I'm gonna die. I'm doing an obscene amount of drugs, and drugs are not getting me really high. And what would happen is I'd get sick for a couple of days and the swelling would go down. And then I'd use and the drugs would have their potency back. But a couple days in, the swelling would return. The swelling's moving up my legs. Then it gets to my groin and it's really uncomfortable. So then I'm just using and miserable and swollen and in pain. And the doctor says, you have congestive heart failure, you are going to die. And she's crying, and this is like my family doctor from when I'm a little kid.

[Rich Roll]

How old are you now?

[Ethan Suplee]

20.

[Rich Roll]

20?

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. And she's like, no, I'm so sorry you're going to die. Like, if you get clean or not, this is going to kill you. And I thought, like, it'd be nice to leave my parents a clean corpse. That was my bottom.

[Rich Roll]

Hey, everybody, welcome to the podcast. So today we are going to go old school with another round of what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. And this is going to be set in the context of a deeply honest and soulful conversation with a man named Ethan Suplee, who I think is about to rock you with his incredible story of personal transformation, which is truly one of the most extraordinary I've ever heard. You probably know Ethan as an actor. He's a guy who achieved fame at a pretty young age and has gone on to work with some of the greatest to ever do it. Directors like Scorsese, Aronofsky, Anthony Minguela and Tony Scott, and actors like denzel Washington, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Edward Norton. Or you might know Ethan from television, from shows like Boy Meets World or My Name Is Earl. Now, this is all interesting enough, but it's not really the story here. The real story is the story behind the story. The story about a guy who once tipped the scales at £550, was hopelessly addicted to pills, heroin, you name it. And on a very fast track to a very tragic end to his very young life. But Ethan pulled himself out of the spiral. He took responsibility for his life. He got sober. He lost hundreds of pounds. He got extremely fit and essentially rebuilt himself wholesale from the ground up into the man he is today. A healthy, thoughtful and sober dad of four and an inspiration to so many people all around the world. Inspiration that he shares on his podcast American Glutton and in the incredibly honest and quite poetic words that he shares on his substack and on Instagram. And I can't wait for you to hear it. But first we got to take care of a little business. If there's one thing, one thing that I've learned over the years, it's that sleep is the bedrock of everything. Recovery performance, mental clarity, longevity, emotional regulation. All things that are amazingly enhanced by sleep in ways that nothing else can. It follows therefore that when it comes to enhancing sleep, we should all do everything we can. Which is why I'm such a super fan of eight Sleep, which is a game changing product that really has done more to improve my sleep quality than pretty much anything else I can think of. Eight Sleep's latest innovation is the Pod 5 Ultra, which is a smart mattress cover that turns your existing bed into a personalized recovery machine. You get dynamic temperature control from 55 all the way to 110 degrees Fahrenheit on each side of the bed. And now they've added a blanket that extends that comfort across your entire body in ways bespoke to your needs. And the more you use it, the better it gets. Automatically adjusting temperature throughout the night to optimize your sleep cycles and even reduce snoring up to 45% based upon feedback from its built in sleep sensors that track everything from sleep stages to heart rate variability, all without any wearables. It's next level and rigorously evidence based. In fact, clinical studies show the Pod users gain up to an extra hour of sleep per night. Think about that. That is real recovery time. More deep sleep, better HRV, better everything. So head on over to 8sleep.com richroll and use the code rich roll for $350 off your Pod 5 Ultra and you can try it risk free with their 30 day at home trial. Your body. Well, thank you. We are gonna talk about gut health for a second. Now you guys know at this point that I am passionate about longevity, performance and taking care of my body from the inside out. But if we're gonna be real about it, none of that really matters if your gut isn't functioning properly. Because as the emergent science is making abundantly clear, the quality of your gut health is crucial to almost every single other aspect. So we got to do everything we can to ensure that our microbiome is thriving. And part of that everything is supplementing it with the best prebiotic and probiotic we can find. All of which is why I turn to seed and their DSO1 daily symbiotic. As an essential aspect of basically every day, my daily routine, Seed really is different. Their science team is top notch. The testing is rigorous and evidence based on and their formula really isn't like others, which is usually in most cases just random bacteria thrown together. The DS01, however, is a two in one symbiotic that combines both probiotics and prebiotics with 24 specific strains that actually survive the journey through your gut, thanks to their clever capsule in capsule design. Since starting with Seed, I have noticed some pretty real changes in my digestion, More regularity and a little bit lighter after meals. So whether you're pushing your body in training or grinding through work projects or just trying to make it through a challenging day, I would tell you based on personal experience that you really can feel the difference when your foundation is solid. Plus there's the added bonus of being able to just throw them in my bag when I'm traveling. There's no refrigeration needed and it's good to know that seed is all meticulously tested for over 500 contaminants. It's simple, effective gut support. So here's what you're going to do. You're going to go to seed.com richroll and then you're going to use the code richroll25 for 25% off your first month of DSO1. So what happened and how did Ethan do it? Well, I think the answers might surprise you, but it's all in this one conversation I've been wanting to make happen for a very long time and Ethan really sends it. So let's get into it, people. This is me and Ethan Suplee. All of the work that you've done in film and television is worthy of, you know, like hours and hours of conversation because I know you're like loaded to bear with like all kinds of amazing stories. Hopefully you'll tell a few. But the story behind the story is this remarkable journey that you've been on to really just reclaim yourself. Honestly. There's an extraordinary weight loss story in there. There is a sobriety story in there. And these things are all kind of intertwined. So I don't even know where to jump in other than to kind of start at the beginning and to do a little bit of what it was like, what happened and what it's like now. I mean, you grew up in Hollywood basically, right?

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, yeah, I, I was, I was born in New York, but my parents and my Parents were theater actors. When my mom got pregnant with me, she decided, or they decided together, that it was not a great lifestyle for kids, which I didn't take that lesson from them. And also I think I'd gotten my act together by the time I had kids, so that it was a good lifestyle for my kids. But they moved out here, oddly for my dad to become a contractor and my mom became like a stay at home mom who ran the accounting for his business.

[Rich Roll]

And so what kind of kid were you? Like just riding your bikes around the streets of la? Yeah, like a, like a mob getting into trouble?

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

From day one.

[Ethan Suplee]

From day one, yeah. No, Yeah, I was.

[Rich Roll]

What high school did you go to?

[Ethan Suplee]

I went to a high school, a high school called the Delphian Academy in La Canada. But I stopped going to school at 14 and started to like really pursue trouble at that point.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, with a little side hustle called acting.

[Ethan Suplee]

No, I didn't, I didn't start acting until I was 17. So I, I, there was an arrest in there in the late 80s, which still frequently comes up when I, you know, go to renew my global Entry or my TSA PreCheck. They are very, they very much want me to announce that, yes, I have a felony weapons possession arrest on my record from, I think 1988.

[Rich Roll]

And you were how old then?

[Ethan Suplee]

12 maybe. And I, and, and, and it sounds really scary, but I was a kid playing with nunchucks in a park.

[Rich Roll]

Oh, so you didn't, you didn't have a handgun or something?

[Ethan Suplee]

No, but strangely I was told at the time had I had a handgun, it would have been a misdemeanor.

[Rich Roll]

How does that work out?

[Ethan Suplee]

Handguns are misdemeanors. Nunchucks were felony at the time.

[Rich Roll]

So what was the animated energy at that point? I mean, you were, you were just rebellious or what were you rebelling against? Or was it chaos in the home or, you know, what was happening?

[Ethan Suplee]

The chaos, I think, look, I don't know, this is like a chicken and the egg kind of a question for me. And I've tried to do some real soul searching. I was put on my first diet at 5 years old and when I look at pictures of me at 5, I do not see a kid that needs to be put on a diet. There's plenty of kids today that I look at and I go in the most nonjudgmental way possible, like that kid's eating is out of control. That was not like when I look. But for whatever reason, my parents saw something in me and Thought like, we gotta nip this in the bud before it gets out of control and that. So I don't know if I was experiencing this turmoil prior to that or that was the catalyst, but kind of from that moment on, I learned to do the things that I wanted to do in secret. And I started to cheat and lie, to eat in the way I wanted to eat, because I was not interested in a diet at five years old. There were times in my adolescence where I was interested in a diet and losing weight, but I didn't stick to them for a long time.

[Rich Roll]

So the message coming down on you, although well intentioned, you know, was basically there's something broken in you and you need to follow our direction because you're maybe you're not bad or a bad person, but you're flawed in some way and you need to be fixed. And in order to be fixed, you need to follow our direction.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

And you were having none of that.

[Ethan Suplee]

I was having none of that. But. But it got way more complicated too, because I think initially it was just restrictive of like, here's the portion of food you're going to eat. Nothing was really changed with the food. And then when that didn't work, we lived in California, in Los Angeles. And so every fad diet that hit Los Angeles, I was then put on. So there was, you know, early Atkins diet, early blood type diet, early Candida diet, seeing nutritionists, all of these things. There was one really crazy incident where my mom took me to somebody's guest house in Glendale, and this woman took a Polaroid of me, smeared some water on it, and based on the rainbow coloring on the back of the Polaroid, charged some water and told us, if I just drink a capful of this water before every meal, I swear to God, I would lose weight. And it was like, you don't have to restrict his food if he drinks this water. And then there were all kinds of stipulations about, like, nothing can touch the water. The water goes into it, into a cap, and then into your mouth. But like, you can't put your lips on the water. It was like real insanity, you know, to the point where, like, even today, when I hear about some of the diets, I get like ptsd, shell shock, kind of like memories of my childhood of like, yeah, these crazy diets have been around forever. And I was put on them and I rebelled. And part of that rebellion. And then there was, you know, my discovery of alcohol and drugs. My parents were, for all intents and purposes, sober. There was never alcohol in our house, but they weren't sober in the way that I'm sober. It just wasn't a thing. And so when I started to have trouble, I had nobody to communicate with that about. I had so much shame about that and so much, so many years of shame about my body and food that it just got very out of hand.

[Rich Roll]

How old were you when drugs and alcohol entered the picture?

[Ethan Suplee]

14.

[Rich Roll]

14. Was it, was it, Was it drinking first?

[Ethan Suplee]

Drinking? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Rich Roll]

And that was just another thing that you, from the get go, would just hide.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Did you have a sense early on that it was problematic for you compared to, like, your friends?

[Ethan Suplee]

Yes, I. There were there. I. I went through bouts of telling my friends I was going straight edge just so that I could drink in secret, because every time I drank openly, I got blackout drunk and caused some kind of scene. So, yeah, not in a way where I knew, like, oh, I have a real problem with this, but it was the concern angle. Like, I didn't like the attention from others about concern on me, which I experienced with my weight many times and then with drugs and alcohol, too.

[Rich Roll]

And what was the experience of being drunk for the first time or those early years? Like, did it feel like it alleviated a lot of that pain and angst of, you know, that was making you rebellious, or, you know, what was the safe that got unlocked with that key?

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, it separated me from my shame totally. There was a feeling of dread that just went away when I drank. And then, you know, the problem with drinking for me was that the. The end result of drinking on any given night was blackout drunk and waking up with even more severe shame When I found opiates that kind of handled that, I could get that separation and then just keep it going and ride that forever, basically.

[Rich Roll]

How did you get your hands on opioids for the first time, like, when you're in, like, high school or whatever?

[Ethan Suplee]

No, it was like. I mean, that. I think the first opioids I had was 96. I had my gallbladder removed, and I was in the hospital with a morphine drip and a pump that you hit every seven minutes. And I just was, like, playing a video game, just constantly pushing that button. You know, it didn't help. I remember having this thought in the hospital, like, this isn't taking the pain away, but I don't care about the pain when I hit that button. And it wasn't just physical pain from the operation. It was just the burden of being alive was gone every time I hit it.

[Rich Roll]

How big Were you in high school?

[Ethan Suplee]

Well, I left high school at 14, so, um, I was probably 350. Yeah, I was big.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, so pretty big. And then how does the acting enter the picture?

[Ethan Suplee]

Acting was this amazing thing. Two. Two things occurred in. In my school were a couple of actors, Soleil Moonfrey and Giovanni Ribisi. And I noticed with them that the other kids weren't looking at Soleil Moonfrey and Giovanni Ribisi necessarily. They were looking at the characters these people played on tv. And that kind of looked to me like a magical shield. It looked like a force field. From like peering at the person to peering at some facade that's built up in some other area of their life. So that was interesting.

[Rich Roll]

And you had conscious awareness of that or is that something you pieced together looking back on it?

[Ethan Suplee]

That's something I pieced together looking back on it. But I definitely saw that there was a distraction with these kids that I wanted because it was a distraction. And then another thing that happened was I did a play in School at 13 or 14 and I played Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist. And there was a moment where being fat was not shameful because the character was meant to be fat. And so there was this kind of amazing thing of like, if I'm playing somebody who's supposed to be this way, then I'm not wrong for being this way. So there were kind of two things that were occurring that got me really.

[Rich Roll]

Interested in that solution to that sense of feeling like there's something wrong with you.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rich Roll]

I've heard you talk about, you know, hiding and how once you were sort of noticed for your screen appearances, when people would look at you, you could say, they're looking at me because they recognize me from something they saw me in. They're not looking at me because I'm fat. And it didn't matter what was true or wasn't. You could make that argument to yourself. But there's also that thing that's very common with actors, which is perhaps some discomfort with who they are. And acting allows you to hide in all of these characters and it's fucking just put the mask on and you don't really have to confront yourself.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. You get to be somebody else. Yeah, yeah.

[Rich Roll]

It's.

[Ethan Suplee]

It's like an out of body experience, like while it's happening.

[Rich Roll]

It's almost like a. Like a defense mechanism or like a coping strategy.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

But in your case, like, you found success pretty quickly, you know?

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. Immediately. My first audition was Boy Meets World.

[Rich Roll]

First audition.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Wow. And then that's like, network television, right? So this is, like, real money all of a sudden. Like, your life changes, like, pretty fast, I would imagine.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. I had a strained relationship with my father. You know, we tried to dance around all these diets with my mom doing a version of, like, let's figure out how it's the food's fault. You know, like, there was a time period where I couldn't eat anything red. It was red food's fault. And then there was another time where it was anything white. I couldn't eat anything white. And then it was Candida's fault. Just these diets that were very much like, the problem is exterior to us entirely. But when I was 10, my dad said, if you get to be 200 pounds, I am going to control what you eat. And at that point, our relationship became very strained because I did hit 200 pounds at 10, and it didn't last very long where he was trying to actively control what I ate, because I would just go when he wasn't around and eat stuff. There were no padlocks on our refrigerator. But I. When I started doing Boy Meets World, I took my dad on a trip. The first money I ever spent was taking my dad on a trip to an island. And I was still terrifically uncomfortable being in public. So we would go and find, like, secluded beaches to hang out. We were staying at a big resort, but I didn't want to be around people. So we would drive and find, like, some empty, desolate beach and go snorkeling there. And on the last day, he wanted to stay by the pool. And so I said, okay. And we're sitting there, and I saw some. This is very early on in my career, I saw some kids looking at me. And of course, in that moment, we're in a foreign country, and I'm feeling very much like these kids are looking at me because I'm fat. And I was horrified that they were gonna make a scene in front of my dad. And over the course of about a half an hour, they started playing closer and closer to where we were sitting. And at a certain point, one of them got up the nerve to, like, walk up to us. And my heart rate is probably at 200 at this point. Cause I'm, like, terrified that the whole trip is gonna be tainted with this thing that my dad, like, I feel shame about. But I'm also aware that my father feels shame about whatever's happened to his son. I was at least £400 at this point. And the kid says to me, are You, Frankie from Boy Meets World. And it was the. Maybe the first time I felt pride in front of my father, you know, because they were, in fact, looking at me because I was on tv.

[Rich Roll]

Right. And you're not broken. Like, you're actually.

[Ethan Suplee]

They're looking at me because they're. They like me.

[Rich Roll]

Like, this switch gets flipped and you're like, it's all good. Yeah, right. Like, maybe I don't have to worry about this. I can just inhabit this character and bank the checks and set aside all this weight stuff, all the baggage of that, and then, you know, booze it up. Like, whatever confused emotions come up, you know, those are easily compartmentalized.

[Ethan Suplee]

That's right. Shove them off.

[Rich Roll]

So off you go.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

And then you end up in Mall Rats when you're still really young as well. Right. But now you have to be on a movie set. You got to control things a little bit, don't you? Like, does it start to spill into the work?

[Ethan Suplee]

You know, I. I had this rationalization for many years that I never missed a day of work. And that was kind of something that kept me going, you know, this idea.

[Rich Roll]

Like, as long as you make it to the gym, as long as you show up on time for work, all of these things, you don't have to think about them. It's two things. Tell me if this resonates with you. Like, one, it's a great crutch to, you know, convince you that there's nothing wrong and you can keep going and everything's fine. And it also fuels a bit of narcissism that you can do both, right? Like, oh, I can do all this partying, and I can do, like, all these normal people go to bed early. But, you know, I'm possessed with great powers where I can do it all. You know what I mean?

[Ethan Suplee]

I was thinking about this recently. Cause, like, there were sleepless nights. There was, in the late 90s, like, a bizarre moment where there was a heroin drought in Los Angeles. And so I'm, like, making it to work, but dope, sick and 500 pounds and just a mess, but still going, like, well, this drought's not going to last forever. Got to get through the day, and I wasn't late. I didn't miss a day of work. That rationalization is still going. And recently I've been dieting for basically the last 23 years. And to some degree or another, different diets and different schemes and all of that and different workouts, but, like, I don't really eat ice cream, and I miss Ice cream. And then they come out with this stuff, Halo top, which is like diet ice cream. And I eat some of it, and it's magical, but the stuff gives me a hangover. And I'm, like, waking up going, like, I used to not sleep and show up to work dope sick. And it feels like maybe that was less horrible than this halo top hangover.

[Rich Roll]

You become like a. Yeah. You've become a little snowflake.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

You know what's happening? Sensitive system.

[Ethan Suplee]

Weakened myself.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. Remember when I could do that? Yeah. It should be said. I haven't said it yet out loud, but, like, your story is remarkable. Like, this arc of transformation is really an astonishing thing, and it's a credit to you for everything that you put into, you know, making you into the man that you are today. It's incredibly inspiring. I know it's inspiring to, you know, millions of people across the world. But I think, you know, within that. One of the things I like about it is that. Or what I think is so powerful about your story is that it's not as if you drew a line in the sand and, like, walked over it and then just, you know, you were a different person and you never went back. Like, it's littered with, like, relapses and failed diets, and for every step forward, there's two steps back. Like, it's a very human story in that it's littered with, like, all this toil and experimentation. Like, it's not just a upward trajectory.

[Ethan Suplee]

You know what I mean?

[Rich Roll]

Like, you suffered and, you know, experimented and done everything to finally figure out, like, what works for you.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. There's such a.

[Rich Roll]

A.

[Ethan Suplee]

A draw to the sales pitch of just step over that line in the sand. I stepped over that line in the sand 50 times. That just got knocked back on the other side of it pretty rapidly each time. You know, that just do X is great marketing for somebody who's desperate, you know.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. And in the narrative that ends up in the press around you, like I did, you know, like, just in my normal prep for PI, I was like, oh, what's. What's. What are some of the recent news stories? And it's like, yesterday or today, there's like a. Whatever, Daily Mail, like, one of those things, like, incredible before and after and, you know, and it's true. But what's lost in that is, like.

[Ethan Suplee]

20 years of work in there. Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

You know what I mean?

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

But I think it's important to highlight that because for somebody who's watching this or listening to this, who's, you know, looking for some guidance here. It's, it's a hopeful message. Like, you don't have to do it perfectly. It doesn't happen overnight. It took you 20 years. It's still like an ongoing battle. And this is hard. And it doesn't, you know, it's not a math equation.

[Ethan Suplee]

It's not. And, and it's, you know, like, first of all, I share all this very selfishly because part of what I came to find was like, I would lose weight and get to a point where I would go like, oh, this. I think this is a healthy weight. I haven't experienced the nirvana or the enlightenment that I was thinking I would experience, but I think I'm at a healthy weight now. I'm gonna just forget that and pretend that I wasn't £500. I'm not gonna talk about it. I don't wanna think about it. Cause that's still shameful. And, and that was not successful either. That always collapsed too. And so I found that the more I talk about it, the more I keep it in the forefront of my mind, the more I'm able to win every day. So it is slightly selfish that I am communicating about it because sometimes my wife is like, the drug piece is from further in the past than. Wait, where. I don't know that today, I mean, I'm going to touch wood. But like, today is not going to be super hard for me to get through the day without, like, needing to use. But I'll eat today. And every time I eat, there's going to be a little bit of a, like a conversation in my head around the food. And my wife is sometimes like, why do you even bring up the drug stuff anymore? But there's such corollaries to them that for me, I can't take them apart. They are very, very similar in what it was for me to get through that.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. I mean, there's so much in what you just said. I mean, obviously the food thing and the drugs and alcohol, of course they're intertwined. Like, they're both ways to numb your feelings and escape and, you know, run away from whatever emotional pain you're feeling. And they work in. They're very effective at that. Right. I suspect you would say food is your drug of choice.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, I mean, well, I think if, if, like, if I'd seen you 20 years ago, or it might even be more than that 25 years ago at this point, I don't know that I would have said that when I had opiates. But I. I would always end the night with food, you know, even if that screwed up the high from the opiates. So maybe today food is my drug of choice because I still have to eat. I can't be abstinent from food.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. Which makes it really tricky. I mean, sobriety, abstinence, it's very binary, you know, and your relationship with food can't be binary. And as much as it's important to create guardrails and rules around it, you have to have some level of flexibility if you're going to sustain any kind of healthy habit.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Which gets into all this weird gray zone.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. I found that when I was trying to be the most pious version of myself with food, that was not sustainable and when I was just, you know, letting my hair down and doing whatever I wanted, that was very clearly not sustainable. So, like, the search for radical moderation is very.

[Rich Roll]

Both of which trigger shame. Right. You have this deeply held shame about, like, how you appear or how you feel, and you set yourself up for failure with a overly restrictive diet. You're going to be ashamed of yourself when you fall short.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

But if you let yourself loose, you're going to feel like too. And then you have to find a way to be somewhere in the middle and. And, you know, eat things maybe, you know, that other diet wouldn't allow you to. Without feeling that. Without that, like, shame impulse coming up.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. It's a very. It's a very tricky thing to navigate, especially when, you know, what's the big one today People are trying to sell you on. If you just eat meat and that's it, then you don't have to think about anything else. You know, it's hard to get the message across that, like, it might be. And again, I'm not speaking for anybody else, but for me, I found. Cause I tried those structures that that wasn't it, that it was more. It was internal, it was behavioral. It was seeking emotional comfort through the thing. It wasn't just the fact that, you know, I was eating lectins or carbohydrates or seed oils or whatever is taboo and whatever will be taboo next week. Red dye number 40. It wasn't that that was causing me to overeat. I can overeat steak, I can overeat, you know, vegetables. If that was, you know, I'll go find veggie grill if I'm being vegan. Like, this is not. It is not the food that is causing this condition in me.

[Rich Roll]

And what's causing it is in part physiological like these, like, you know, biological cravings. But there's also, you know, the childhood trauma piece, like, everything that, like, led you to that point. Like, if you don't untie that knot, like, it's going to continue to activate and agitate you. So, yeah, in the drugs and alcohol context, that's the difference between abstinence and sobriety. Right. So if you're not willing to, like, look into that and start to heal those parts of yourself, you're just, you're. You're like a dry drunk. You're just like, clenching on for dear life, and at some point it's all gonna shatter and fall into place.

[Ethan Suplee]

And fun. You get joy out of it. Like, you know, there should be joy.

[Rich Roll]

But on the selfish piece of, like, sharing your story and talking about it a lot, I mean, there's a service aspect to that. Like, in sharing it, you're helping other people. And, you know, the analog in AA is like, you know, people are always like, why do you go to these meetings and like, talk about stuff you did 30 years ago? Or whatever? Because you. It helps you stay vigilant. And it's also helpful for other people to hear that, like, they need to be able to find a way to connect with your story, find a piece of themselves in it so that they can connect with what you did to kind of claw out of it and build this new life.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, I think being of service is really important, but it's does always come back to, like, if I wasn't getting my sobriety or keeping diet in the forefront of my mind, would I still do it? I don't know.

[Rich Roll]

But that is the vigilance piece. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. All of you longtime listeners know how much I believe in the transformative power of therapy. It's why I'm still in it 30 years after my first introduction to it, because it continues to reveal my blind spots and helps me face the ongoing challenges of life with just more conviction and more resilience. My point is that therapy isn't just for big crisis moments, it's mental health maintenance that, for me personally, has been essential in informing how I show up in life day after day. And while it's just fantastic that this conversation around therapy is really open up in recent years in ways that are sort of unimaginable when I think back to myself many years ago. But despite this growing awareness, 26% of Americans unfortunately still avoid seeking mental health support due to this fear of judgment, perhaps some underlying shame. And none of this is awesome when you understand that when we hesitate to reach out for the help we need. The downstream impact of this extreme extends well beyond ourselves, negatively affecting our families, our work, and our communities. BetterHelp is powerful because it makes access to mental health professionals easier than ever, leveraging a decade of experience to connect people with the right therapist from their network of over 30,000 licensed professionals. The platform is fully online, making quality therapy both accessible and convenient for the more than 5 million people they serve worldwide. And if your therapist isn't the right fit, switch anytime at no additional cost. We're all better with help. Visit betterhelp.com richroll to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp h e l p.com richroll so I'm about 900 plus episodes into this thing now and one thing I can confidently say as somebody who spent quality time with so many world leading performance performers is this. Our greatest limitation is often our own scattered mind. Meditation. Personally used to feel like an esoteric practice, disconnected from my type A personality, reserved for, you know, the ashram set. But I've discovered that it is actually essential to leading a self examined life. My practice having improved every facet of my life and well being. Honestly I just just want everyone to experience what I have. And Calm is a great way to help get you there. With guided meditations that can help manage anxiety, sleep stories that can quiet internal noise, and expert LED talks that provide insights into mental well being in a world that constantly demands more and more and more. Calm helps me keep centered and centered in the idea that inner clarity is the portal not just to true productivity, but to experiencing the full richness of living an intentional life. Calm is the number one app for sleep and meditation, giving you the power to calm your mind and change your life. And right now, Calm has an exclusive offer just for you guys. The listeners of the show get 40 off a Calm premium subscription at calm.com richroll it's an amazing value. Go to California lm.com richroll for 40% off unlimited access to Calm's entire library. Calm.com richroll and you know what? Tell Calm you heard about them from me. We're brought to you today by Birch Life as an athlete, a lifelong learner, a creator, an entrepreneur, a husband and a dad of four kids has taught me many lessons. One of which is that you cannot make gains in life, whatever your ambition may be, unless you allow yourself to recover in between the exertion required to achieve them. That means sleep, good sleep, deep sleep. Because sleep is the foundation upon which everything you aspire to do, be or become is built upon. To ensure it, to improve it, we need to approach it more consciously, which includes doing it on a mattress made consciously. And that mattress is Birch. A company that isn't just selling a product or even an excellent product as much as it's offering a holistic approach to rest organic materials sourced directly from nature, a manufacturing process that Prioritizes sustainability, a 100 night risk free trial. These are not just things that set them apart. This is their commitment to creating a sleeping environment that supports your body's natural healing processes as a fundamental philosophy of well being. Which is a philosophy I believe in and well worth living by. I want all my listeners to enjoy a deep, restful night's sleep with a new mattress from Birch. Go to birchliving.com richroll for 27% off sitewide. That's birchliving.com richroll and get 20, 27% off sitewide birchliving.com richroll I watched Unstoppable the other night. Oh yeah, that movie is badass.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, that was an awesome movie.

[Rich Roll]

And I revisited it a because I knew you were coming on, but also because I know that Quentin Tarantino had listed it among like his top movies of 2000, of the 2010s. Did you know this?

[Ethan Suplee]

I didn't know.

[Rich Roll]

He's like, this movie rules.

[Ethan Suplee]

That's awesome.

[Rich Roll]

And it does. It just like propels itself forward. It's not any longer than it needs to be. And it's like, it hits all the beats. And it's just an example of why Tony Scott is an absolute master of the form.

[Ethan Suplee]

Incredible. Yeah. With the first scene in that movie that we did, me and TJ Miller, you know, got golf carted out to meet Tony. And we're standing next to a train and it's just us and Tony. And he's talking to us about the scene and we run it with him a couple of times and then he kind of goes away. And we're standing there like, well, should we go to our chairs? What should we do? And there's nobody in sight. And we just hear from a really far distance, action. And we're like looking at each other like, are they talking to us? Like, we don't know what's going on here. And then we hear just this insane screaming and profanity and like, what the fuck? Come on. I said action. Can you not hear me? And he can hear us talking and we're like, is he talking to us? Yes, I'm Fucking talking to you. And he had, like, cameras with NASA lenses on them in every, like, window of faraway buildings. And the entire thing was being shot from a distance that we just couldn't see anybody. It was, it was, I mean, one of the wildest experiences of my acting.

[Rich Roll]

You guys are just out there freewheeling. Yeah. Like, so you could shoot the entire scene without coverage. Right. And you two were just absolute knuckleheads.

[Ethan Suplee]

Totally.

[Rich Roll]

You know.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

And then you're cheering at the end and I'm like, yeah, but these guys fucked up the whole thing, you know?

[Ethan Suplee]

The whole thing. Yeah. People got mad at me and I, like, took a little flack. They were like, why'd you let that train get away? And I was like, there's no movie if the train doesn't get away. Then nothing happens. We had to do it.

[Rich Roll]

You're the inciting incident of the entire prospect, you know, the entire enterprise prize of the movie. You've worked with, like, a lot of the greats, man. You know, Scorsese, Wolf of Wall Street, Darren Aronofsky, the Fountain. I think that movie is a masterpiece.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Tony K, American History X. Like, you know, you have, you know, sidled up with, you know, some of the best to ever do it.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, I have. I have a career that I have no. I mean, I have one regret, but I have no. Like, I look back on it and I feel so, like, honored to have been in some of those movies.

[Rich Roll]

Do most people know you name is Earl?

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, that's.

[Rich Roll]

That's what you get stopped for the most.

[Ethan Suplee]

That and oddly, Boy Meets World, which was my first job, 1993 or 1994, but the show never went off the air. It was on in syndication on the Disney Channel for the last 30 years.

[Rich Roll]

How old were you when you first got on that show?

[Ethan Suplee]

17.

[Rich Roll]

Wow.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

My Name is Earl is having a bit of a resurgence, though.

[Ethan Suplee]

I've heard that on TikTok.

[Rich Roll]

My kids, when I told my kids you were coming in, they're like, oh, we love my name's earl. And my 30 year old was saying, oh, yeah, like Gen Z's all over this. It's like the new suits, you know, it's crazy. It's weird how, like, these old shows just percolate up and like, find a new audience. I mean, that is. I guess that's a gift of like everything being digital and available, but. But that's gotta be a cool feeling. Like a whole new generation of people finding your stuff.

[Ethan Suplee]

It's always odd when it comes back like my little kids who are now 18 and 20. When we shot My Name Is Earl, they were. One was not born, and the other was, like, two. And so they never experienced it while it was happening. But when I came home one day when they were teenagers, very young teenagers, and they were just watching the show, like, dad, why didn't you tell us about. This show's great. And that was weird. And it's very weird now when somebody who's very clearly too young to have watched boy meets world 30 years ago, you know, somebody who's, like, in their teens says what a fan of Boy Meets World they are, or even, my name is Earl. You know, a teenager today wasn't alive when it was being shot. It is a bizarre thing because that's 20 years in the past for me.

[Rich Roll]

So let's go back to the timeline.

[Ethan Suplee]

So you.

[Rich Roll]

Do you get through Mallrats? I don't know what comes after that. I mean, you're on a bunch of stuff.

[Ethan Suplee]

Well, Mallrats, I mean, when does it.

[Rich Roll]

Start, like, really getting out of control?

[Ethan Suplee]

Mallrats is a funny one, because we go to do Mallrats. And Kevin Smith had had huge success. You know, he made this movie, Clerks, Clerks for no money that then made, you know, millions and millions of dollars. And then he had millions of dollars to make Mall Rats.

[Rich Roll]

This is his first opportunity to make, like, kind of a. I don't know if it. Was it a studio movie? It was a studio movie.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. And we were like, oh, well, if he made millions with. We're gonna make billions more. It's gonna be the biggest movie ever. And it was a total failure. And so then it was like Mallrats came out. Nothing happened. Back to the grindstone. Like, drugs didn't pick up with me for probably a year from Mall Rats, like, real daily drug use. I was a dabbler before that. Yeah. And then I had this operation. I left knowing that whatever I had in the hospital was what I needed at all times.

[Rich Roll]

The opioids, like, lit you up. Like, that was the thing, right?

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. They pressed a button in me that, you know, I was. The last surgery I had, I had to have an argument with the anesthesiologist saying, like, you cannot give me opioids when I'm unconscious. And he was like, it won't matter when you're unconscious. And I said, yes, it will.

[Rich Roll]

It's activated.

[Ethan Suplee]

The lizard thing happens.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah.

[Ethan Suplee]

I will wake up. And I'll probably wake up no matter what, saying, give me drugs. You can't give them to me then either. Which doctors don't really love to hear. You know, they want to keep you calm and sedate. And I understand that, but, like, for me, I can't have them.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. Was it oxycodone, Vicodin, or what? You know, what was it? Percocet?

[Ethan Suplee]

No, it was. It was Vicodin at first, and then there was a Mexican bakery on Kenmore third, which I. I don't know if I'm outing people right now, but I doubt it's there. This was the 90s, and you could go in and buy Vicodin for a dollar a pill. Mexican Vico. And then when that went dry, it was, you know, hitting up doctors for prescriptions and then finding a doctor who was knowingly giving you stuff that you weren't faking or you weren't talking about your sciatic nerve and stuff. You were just going in and, like, getting prescriptions.

[Rich Roll]

There's no. No pro. No pretense.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. That's got to be. Not easy to do these days, I would imagine.

[Ethan Suplee]

I wouldn't know, but. But it wasn't. It wasn't super hard back then. There were, like, pain clinics, you know, where you could just go and get a ton of pills. I haven't seen an actual pain clinic in a while.

[Rich Roll]

I think when the shit came down on the Sackler family and all of that, a lot of those pain clinics went away.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

But I don't know. I'm sure there's plenty of. Of, like, underground.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

And then, of course, like, when you run out of, you know, scripts or you can't. You can't find the, you know, the Mexican bakeries closed or whatever. I mean, that's. That's sort of like the portal to heroin, because that's what leads so many people to heroin.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Is that what happened?

[Ethan Suplee]

That's what led me to heroin.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. And how. How far did that go for you?

[Ethan Suplee]

That was a couple years of heroin use.

[Rich Roll]

When did the movie below fall into this?

[Ethan Suplee]

Blow was in the late 90s. Blow was like 98 or 99, maybe. 98, I think. And that was still pills?

[Rich Roll]

Still pills, yeah. But there's some weird irony that you're doing that movie while you're just, you know.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Blowing it out.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. I think it was still pills. I mean, I have a vague memory of. I don't know what the statute of limitations on this stuff is, but, like. Of traveling through customs with stuff taped to my ankle, but I think I flew back from Mexico shooting that movie with a Lot of pills.

[Rich Roll]

Were they aware of what was going on with you at the time? Like the crew and the director and.

[Ethan Suplee]

Not to the extent that it was going on.

[Rich Roll]

You were hiding it pretty well.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

And what's the weight like at this point?

[Ethan Suplee]

Damn near £500 on blow. Yeah. By the time I did like a movie called the first 20 million is always the Hardest and the Butterfly Effect, I was over £500.

[Rich Roll]

Wow. What is the. Just the daily experience of, of being that big?

[Ethan Suplee]

Like I. I would go to sleep at night thinking I would most likely die because it was hard to breathe laying down. So I would have a lot of pillows set up so that I was propped up in bed. Because laying flat on my back, I actually couldn't breathe. There was just too much weight on my chest. And then every morning that I woke up, I would just get high to not think about the fact that I. I was pretty happy that I survived the night.

[Rich Roll]

And then just moving around, like just simple stuff, right?

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, it was. I mean, you know, if I throw a 35 pound kettlebell in a backpack right now and go for a walk, it's a nightmare. And I was 300 pounds heavier then than I am now, which is. It's hard to recall. A lot of the things, a lot of the things that affected me in my day to day then I still have creep up in my life today. Like I have just extreme anxiety about going to the airport because the airport is walking around and the airport is. There's a time deadline. And this all was prior to TSA PreCheck. So the airport is taking your shoes off. And all of that is a real, real chore for somebody who's £500 and drug sniffing dogs. Drug sniffing dogs, all of it, you know. Yeah, it was. But so like I still have that anxiety about, like, oh my God, am I gonna have to rush at the airport? Is that gonna ruin my day? And when I'm forced to, it doesn't. I've had to run to the gate and then I get to the gate and I sit down in my chair and I'm not. I haven't even really broken a sweat.

[Rich Roll]

And.

[Ethan Suplee]

And I can just recall that my clothes would be soaked through sometimes by the time I got to the gate, if it was a far enough gate, you know. And I can remember seeing people in, you know, the little golf carts that were getting driven to. I wouldn't even take that. Cause I was scared I would break it and there would be a scene about me breaking a golf cart. You Know what I mean?

[Rich Roll]

Being a, being a public person, it would end up in, or just, just.

[Ethan Suplee]

Even the attraction of eyes in that instance. I, I wanted as. As few eyes on me as possible. And so you know it. But none of that, none of that is true today. And yet the anxieties from it linger.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, the, the story is so deeply grooved.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

That it's. Yeah, it's, it makes me sad that you still feel that. Like looking at you, it's like hard to believe that you would, that that would.

[Ethan Suplee]

It's cognitive dissonance because I can talk myself through it. It's like doing maintenance on a diet. I'm an advocate for maintenance. Like actively working to maintain your weight. You get to some place, you lose some weight and then work to maintain it, because it is real work. But for me, there was so much effort for so long put into losing weight that when I'm putting effort into anything with food, I want the reward to be the scale moving down. And when the scale doesn't move down, it's this tremendous feeling of defeat. Even though what I'm actively working to do is succeeded. Yes, I have won. And you're not getting that dopamine, you can't separate them. So I've got to talk myself through it. Just like the airport, I've got to go. Like, if I'm late, I can sprint to the gate. I know this, this is true. It will not ruin my day. I will not break my leg running to the gate because of my weight. I be sweating so profusely that I'm leaking onto my neighbor in the neighboring chair. I will not have a heart attack because of that. I can take my shoes off while I'm still standing up. This is not the end of the world, you know. But the tension in me from having to do those things or the apprehension of having to do those things is just as live as it was back then.

[Rich Roll]

So there's this fear still inside of you that if you don't, if you're not absolutely vigilant and your foot isn't on the pedal at all times, that you're just going to wake up and you're going to be that 500 pound guy again. Like, is that.

[Ethan Suplee]

No, I wouldn't. I don't think that's true. I think that there is the knowledge that it could all unravel. But I also have to give myself some grace.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, I mean, that brought that up. Cause it's like, it's okay, dude.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yes. No, I'm trying to paint More of a picture of things that occur to me that I'm able to rationalize and go, like, I'm feeling this way, but that feeling is not.

[Rich Roll]

To be an observer of those feelings rather than to indulge them. Yeah, £500, sweating profusely. It was rough high from the moment you wake up.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

I mean, this is not a sustainable lifestyle. Like, I'm curious around your relationship with hope and your future.

[Ethan Suplee]

At that time, there was no consideration of the future. There was only right now and today. In a strange way, that's how I live again. But I'm living in today with a lot of hope for the future. Whereas when I was living in today, back then, the future was walled off. It was not a distant thought at all.

[Rich Roll]

Were you actively keeping people at arm's length? Cause I'm imagining you working on sets, and you're a sociable guy. I imagine you had friends, you had people around you. Was anybody trying to help you? I mean, it had to be obvious, you know, you were spiraling out of control.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yes, I had. There were a couple of interventions which were jarring to me because I thought I'd been doing such a good job.

[Rich Roll]

You know, like every good addict believes.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. There was one point where my friends, you know, they did, like, a very gentle intervention. I got high in the bathroom, you know, while they were all sitting there waiting for me to continue participating in this intervention. Then there was another one where it was a little bit more severe, where a mutual friend of ours, Scott G. Oh, yeah. Was sent with me to a location, and he. He got me through basically being dope sick at work. And then, you know, I PR'd my way into him into, you know, like, two weeks. I was like, I'm good now. I'm a sober person now. Bye, bye, Scott. Thank you for everything, you know, and kind of sent him on his way. And like, maybe the next day was on the phone to a doctor saying, I need. I've hurt myself, you know, and we were shooting a movie set in a hospital, and there were all kinds of rigs and things lying around that I was going home with every night, but that there were people who cared very much. And then towards the end, I think that, you know, it's very tricky. I've been asked a number of times, like, my son has a drug problem, please talk to them. And I'm more than willing to have any conversation with anybody. But my experience has been largely like, I didn't change until I wanted to change. I didn't change my Eating. I didn't get off drugs. Like, none of that happened because somebody said, I'm concerned about you. So even when my friends said, we're gonna tell the producers of this movie that you're going to do that, you have like a really severe drug problem unless you take this guy with you and get cleaned up. Scotty G. Scotty G. Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

I didn't know you knew him. He's the best.

[Ethan Suplee]

He's the best. I love. I talked to Scott.

[Rich Roll]

Oh, you do?

[Ethan Suplee]

All the time. Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

I spent some time with him this past summer.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

In Michigan.

[Ethan Suplee]

I love Scott. Yeah, he's a great guy.

[Rich Roll]

Shout out Scott. I know he's listening. Ye.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, for sure.

[Rich Roll]

Right? You can't instill willingness in another person.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

And you also can't self generate it, really. Like, it's like the thing I always say is it's like asking somebody to want something they don't actually want, or wishing that you wanted something that you don't actually want. Like, you can kind of talk yourself into it, but if you don't really want it, you're not gonna take the action or you're not gonna be able to sustain that action.

[Ethan Suplee]

Right. Like, when I met Scott, I wanted to not be fired from the movie. I wanted to not be embarrassed. I wanted my friends to not spread the word that I had this problem. And in that moment, the path to that was sobriety. So I was like, great, if that's what I gotta do. Come on, Scott, let's go to Canada.

[Rich Roll]

Just to get people off your back, basically.

[Ethan Suplee]

And within that, I think there were moments of, like, sobriety might be better.

[Rich Roll]

The little seedlings are being planted. Maybe someday.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. Yeah, maybe. You know, this is rough. This sucks. But this would probably be better for me in the long run. But again, I didn't really want it. So it was like trying to talk myself into buying a car I didn't really want at the time.

[Rich Roll]

So was there like a single bottom or a series of bottoms? Like it, you know, it took you a bunch of tries and a bunch of stabs before this thing stuck.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. My bottom was being diagnosed with congestive heart failure. And the doctor. And this was one of those things like, I'm going to bed every night, pretty sure I'm gonna die. But then I start swelling and the swelling's in my feet and drugs are not getting me really high. And I'm doing an obscene amount of drugs and it's not. And something's wrong. So I'm like, okay, what do I Have to do. I have to get sick for a couple of days, and then the drugs will be more poor potent. And what would happen is I'd get sick for a couple of days, and the swelling would go down. And then I'd use. And the drugs would have their potency back. But a couple days in, the swelling would return. The swelling's moving up my legs, and then it gets to my groin, and it's really uncomfortable. And I went to see a doctor when I had done a couple of days being sick and clean, and the swelling was not going away. So then I'm just using and miserable and swollen and in pain. And the doctor says, you have congestive heart failure. You are going to die. And I'm like, okay, so now. Now it's time to get sober. And. And the doctor says, yeah, you're gonna die. I'm gonna give you this diuretic. But. And she's crying. And this is like my family doctor from when I'm a little kid.

[Rich Roll]

And how old are you now?

[Ethan Suplee]

20.

[Rich Roll]

20.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. And she. And she's like, no, I'm so sorry. This. You are. You're gonna die. Like, if you get clean or not, this is gonna kill you. And I. I thought, like, it'd be nice to leave my parents a clean corpse. Like, that was my bottom.

[Rich Roll]

Oh, man.

[Ethan Suplee]

And then. And then I even had relapses from that. That. But they were briefer.

[Rich Roll]

And did you end up going to a treatment center or. How did you. What? You know, how did you take steps?

[Ethan Suplee]

That was my third time.

[Rich Roll]

Third time in a. In a treatment center where you're the guy who goes and, you know, leaves early or whatever and holes up in some crack house somewhere.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yes, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I walked out of a couple of them. Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

What stuck?

[Ethan Suplee]

You know, a Was really, really a big part of it. I had sober friends. I had people I could rely on, people I could talk to every day. When I came back from treatment the last time, I had a group of friends who. I don't think any of them had a drink in front of me for two years. And they would come and get me and take me to a movie or out to dinner. I had a really solid group of guys that took care of me.

[Rich Roll]

It's a weird experience when you have that deep shame and that sense of worthlessness and you enter that community and all these people embrace you and genuinely are wanting to help you and make themselves available to you, but you don't trust it. You're like, this is some bullshit. You know what I mean? Like, what's the angle? And for me, like, you know, I kept it at arm's length to my peril for a long time until I realized, like, oh, this is how it works, you know?

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, I think I did, too, but I had a couple of sober friends who. I didn't keep them at arm's length, but I know what you're talking about, the broader picture. I was like, you, I can trust you. I can trust this guy I just met. I want to hear him talk, but I don't trust him.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. It is a miracle, though, that this thing exists where you can come in totally broken and hopeless and hanging on by a thread and be taken in by these people who don't want anything from you.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Like, it. It really is a remarkable thing.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

I mean, it saved my life. Clearly, it saved yours. Are you. Do you still have a relationship with. With aa?

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

You do?

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Cool.

[Ethan Suplee]

I went to a meeting this morning.

[Rich Roll]

You did?

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

A lot of people come to me who are suffering from health issues, but they also have a drug and alcohol problem. And they generally. They're looking for advice, but they're generally focused on, like, the fitness or the weight. I'm sure you get this a lot, too. And my whole thing is like, none of that matters until you get sober. Like, you can't do all of it at once. And unless you get sober, like, it's all irrelevant. Like, take care of that first and create a foundation. Don't worry about that other stuff. And then, you know, when you have that foundation, you can begin to address those other things. Is that how you think about that?

[Ethan Suplee]

Do. I kind of accidentally did it that way, but I was gonna die so quickly from drugs that the rest of it wasn't even. It was just like. But I remember there would be days in rehab going like, well, I want this. You wake up one day and you want it more than you did yesterday, or you're gonna want it the day, day the next day. And I would be like, yeah, I'm going to quit smoking. I'm going to quit drinking coffee, and maybe I'm going to make better decisions in the food hall. And I'm, you know, £550 and maybe three weeks clean at this point, or four weeks clean. And I just wake up going, like, I could turn everything around and that would last until lunchtime. And then I'm drinking, you know, caffeinated soda and having a cigarette and like, fuck it, that's too much. So I Didn't really start thinking about my weight for another year or two. I continued to kind of wall it off and have it be like, well, this thing that I'm working on is so tenuous and so important. And so I'm walking on a cliff's edge. I was gonna die. It's a miracle I didn't die. Okay, well, I'm not gonna think about the other stuff right now, but I think it was by accident.

[Rich Roll]

So at what point does that kind of enter the picture and you begin to put some pieces together on that? And how did you do that?

[Ethan Suplee]

Well, I did it all backwards again. Like, you know that the. I wish I had just gone, like, I'm gonna apply everything I'm doing in my day to day life with drugs, that I'm working on myself, with food. I'm gonna use the same kind of idea. But I didn't do that. I just went like, oh, I need to lose weight. I had a blinder on and I wasn't thinking about this. I need to think about this now. What do I do? But I thought about it, like, the weight was the problem, that once the weight is gone, the problem is gone, that it's an acute condition that I just need to excise and then I won't have that condition anymore. And that took many years to parse out.

[Rich Roll]

In other words, just like sobriety, it's a process. There's no destination here. Like, you don't arrive at a certain weight and then you can wash your hands of it and you've achieved it and it's done.

[Ethan Suplee]

Dude, I wanted that so badly. I was convinced that that was what was going to happen to the point that I went. When I was riding bikes a lot, I went to a doctor. Literally, for him to go to say, like, when does that, like, what is the weight I need to get to? Because I don't know. And. And I had in my head, I go to see this, the best sports nutrition doctor, famous guy, Dr. Huizenga, who I really like. And I walked in and I. I had in my head, I probably need to lose another £20. And I go in and I say, I just need you to tell me how much weight I need to lose. And I said to him, I said, I think it's probably £20. And he said, no, no, no, much more than that.

[Rich Roll]

How. How heavy were you then?

[Ethan Suplee]

240. He said, you got to get to 185. So 20 went to like 65. And I was kind of devastated in that moment. And then he Said, we'll get you an exact number. We're gonna have you do a DEXA scan. So I do the DEXA scan, come back, he looks at the scan, he says, this is not right. Go and do it again. I did a second DEXA scan when we met again. He said, I'm wrong. You don't need to lose weight. You're 14 body fat. You're fine, you're done.

[Rich Roll]

No more weight loss at 240. You're just a big dude.

[Ethan Suplee]

I'm a big dude.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah.

[Ethan Suplee]

I was riding a bike 100 miles a day.

[Rich Roll]

I want to get into the whole cycling phase. Because you went hog wild with this.

[Ethan Suplee]

Hog wild.

[Rich Roll]

You ride, like, every stage of the Tour de France one year.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Like, you were.

[Ethan Suplee]

And then some. They didn't have Mount Ventu on that on that year, so we went and rode that.

[Rich Roll]

Was that like, part of a tour or group?

[Ethan Suplee]

I went with Team Radio Shack, with the executives from Team Radio Shack.

[Rich Roll]

Happened.

[Ethan Suplee]

Wow. It was awesome.

[Rich Roll]

So that was during the la. The. Was that during the Lance comeback or. This was like, Levi Leipheimer.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. Levi was leading. Lance was out there. I got to ride with Lance, which was amazing. But he was not a participant.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. And when you were deep into the cycling, how you got down to, like, 200 or something like that?

[Ethan Suplee]

I got close to 200. But that happens after Dr. Huizenga says you're 14 body.

[Rich Roll]

Right. But you're convinced and.

[Ethan Suplee]

And I.

[Rich Roll]

Because it's that. It's like, how far can I take this?

[Ethan Suplee]

I'm not only convinced. I was angry with him. I was like, what do you know, dude? I shouldn't have even come here. Like, I came here for you to tell me a number. You told me a big number, and I was, like, devastated. But I was gonna hit that number. I would have gotten. If you had just left it at that. I would have gotten to 185, and I was 240 and 14 body fat. Fat. And at the time, I'm like, 14 body. That sounds too high. Like, I don't know what body fat means at that point, but I'm like, that's terrible. Shouldn't I be 2%? And he's like, no, no, no. 14 is fine. But I walked out going, like, what does he know? I got to lose £20.

[Rich Roll]

And you found the perfect vehicle to strip you of, like, every ounce of fat on your body. Right. There's nothing like riding a bike all day, every day.

[Ethan Suplee]

That's right. It was amazing. And in California. California there's no better place. You can get long flat stretches, rollers on pch, and then the most gnarly climbs ever.

[Rich Roll]

And there's nothing like being able to attack those climbs and feeling strong doing it. Like, you have to put in so much work to get there, but when you're there, it's. It's a. It's a euphoric feeling, dude.

[Ethan Suplee]

The first time I did Latigo, I thought, like, this might be the last time I'm on a bike. And then not many months later, I invited a buddy who was a. An amateur cyclist in college, but, like, a Cat 2 cyclist, and I dropped him and waited for 15 minutes at the top of Ladder go for him and was just like, oh, my God, I can do anything on this bike if I just keep doing it. I can do anything.

[Rich Roll]

And being able to do that at 200 pounds, like, it's the ultimate weight weenie sport. Right? It's just like, there is an obsession with weight in that sport that probably played into, like, all of your, like, you know, neurosis around this.

[Ethan Suplee]

Well, look, in reality, I was not the fastest guy going up the hill ever, but, like, get me on the velodrome. And I was gnarly.

[Rich Roll]

Oh, yeah, because you. I'm sure the watts you could throw down on a track would be insane.

[Ethan Suplee]

I had enormous legs.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah.

[Ethan Suplee]

I was like, not.

[Rich Roll]

Because when you're £500, you gotta be strong to carry all that weight around. Right. So underneath all of that, you know, I'm sure is some pretty good muscle. Yeah, that was there all along.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. Just to stand up, you gotta have. Yeah, yeah.

[Rich Roll]

But at a certain point, like, cycling, no bueno for you. Like, what. What happened with that? It just deplete your adrenals and just, you know, take it all the way to the wall.

[Ethan Suplee]

Until basically I had a bad accident. I was right. I would ride with the Helen's guys.

[Rich Roll]

And you do the Mandeville. That Mandeville ride?

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, yeah, that was. That was my day off ride that. No, no, not Mandeville. I would do the lagrange ride on.

[Rich Roll]

That's the one I was thinking.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mandeville was the Wednesday ride. And that was easy because it was the shortest ride just to the top of Mandeville, but. But I would come from the Valley, from Studio City, go down, ride that ride, and that was the easiest. If we didn't go like, like deep up pch, it was a very short ride for me, you know, 40, 50 miles. Not bad. It was one of Those things where I had a bad accident. I wound up in the hospital. I had 30 some stitches in my head, tore the skin off my hands, herniated my quad on my bar and. And then I went back and I was tentative going back, but I still did a bunch of rides. I did the, you know, the Helens team does a yearly thing in Solvang. I went out and did that, but was the slowest guy because I was really out of shape at that point. And then I had to work and. And my wife was like, you know, like, you can't retire, you're not a professional cyclist. Yeah. Like, what are you doing?

[Rich Roll]

The amount of time it takes is just bananas.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

You know, to be really good.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Trivial.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, I. But I took a bike, like in 2012, I went to New York to do Wolf of Wall street and I was going to be there for seven or eight months. So I took a bike with me and I would ride it up and down the west side highway and then cut over the George Washington Bridge and.

[Rich Roll]

There were a couple of 9W.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Bear Mountain ride.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, yeah, I do that. And then I think I discovered CrossFit. I discovered the rowing machine and was like, oh, I can get on this rowing machine and really bang out a great workout in an hour and I don't have to be on a bike.

[Rich Roll]

For five hours and be exhausted for the whole day. Yeah, for your work day, you know.

[Ethan Suplee]

So I would start doing like marathons on a rowing machine and lifting weights and kettlebells and I had like very little upper body mass at that point. Was like, what if I, you know, did some push ups and some bench press and. And then that was interesting for a while.

[Rich Roll]

And now you're just an animal in the gym. I mean, you're just a beast.

[Ethan Suplee]

I'm trying, I've gotten even that. I'm trying to exercise radical moderation, you know, Like I, I used to go.

[Rich Roll]

Everything is an obsession in waiting.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

You know?

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, it can be. And now I'm like, can I get my workout in 45 minutes? That's like my mission nowadays.

[Rich Roll]

So it doesn't commandeer your entire life.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

And you have good energy throughout the day.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. I mean, there was a bit where it was like, I gotta fill this loose skin with muscle. And then when I stopped living in fantasy land and did a little rough math, the amount of muscle I'd have to build to actually stretch out my loose skin, I'd be, I'd weigh 800 pounds or something like that. And so I gave up on that pursuit and so now it's just a matter of communicating with my muscles that I appreciate you, I admire you. Stick around, don't go anywhere. I'm not trying to get bigger and that's really and then going to the gym provides me with some more mental clarity for the day for sure.

[Rich Roll]

We're brought to you today by AG1. I know that I've been a loyal consumer and partner with AG1 for many years this point, but I couldn't actually remember how long it's been specifically, so I decided to do some research. I mined my inbox to try to figure out when it all began and I discovered it's actually been 10 years. A decade in which I've seen this brand iterate its formula many times but nothing like what just happened, which is a just launched massive next generation formula Upgrade upgrade in which AG1 has enhanced its profile for broad spectrum nutritional coverage, five new vitamins and minerals, four upgraded ingredient forms that work better with your body, and upgraded probiotics for enhanced digestive support and immune health. Along the way, AG1 went beyond industry standards to rigorously test the upgrade with four human clinical trials to back up its efficacy efficacy and make a great product even better. Now clinically backed with an advanced formula, this is the perfect time to try AG1. If you haven't yet. I've been drinking AG1 for many years now, as I mentioned a decade and I'm so happy to be partnering with them. So subscribe today to try the next gen of AG1. If you use my link, you'll also get a free bottle of AG D3K2, an AG1 welcome kit and five of the upgraded AG1 travel packs with your first order. So make sure to check out drinkag1.com richroll and get started with AG1's next gen and notice the benefits for yourself. That's drinkag1.com richroll movement is so much more than just exercise or training or motion. Even movement is a language. It's a way of connecting body, mind and environment. Movement as a way of being. A way of being that brings me close to myself, closer to other people, and to what matters most in life. And for me, what we wear in that pursuit plays a crucial role. And that's what I appreciate about on they engineer apparel that supports and elevates the practice of movement itself. From running shorts with built in Support to technical TE's that cool you down right where it matters. This is apparel born from precision and tested by elite athletes, but made for Anyone committed to the path. I've been with on since 2023, and I'm still just so impressed by how they continue to elevate and innovate in the name of purpose, not Flash. Head to on.comrichroll to explore gear that supports you every step of the way. Back to those early days, though, when this was just beginning. Like, how did you instigate the fitness and the diet? Like, what was the. Like when you finally locked onto this, what were the steps that you took that ended up being effective? In retrospect, amidst all of the kind of missteps.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, it's really funny. The gal who's my wife, I landed in Eastern Europe to do a movie and was devastated. It was as though I had been completely blind to myself and then stood in front of a mirror for a while going like, oh, my God, you got to take a long, hard look and we're not going to look away. And I thought, the only thing I'm suddenly thinking about the future. And the only thing that mattered to me in that moment was this relationship I was building with the girl who's now my wife. And if I don't tell her the secret that I'm morbidly obese, which I think she doesn't know, if I don't tell her that, then I lose her. Because she's gonna figure it out, right? One of these days she's gonna peek behind the curtain and see me. And if I tell her and she sees it now, I'm gonna reveal this horror story to her and she's gonna. So. But I. But I'm damned if I do or I'm damned if I don't. I wanna have a life with her. My behavior's been, like, not so honest and forthright. Like, she wants to go to the beach. I can't do that today. I'll see you later tonight for dinner. She wants to go to a museum. I can't do that because walking through a museum's time, all these active things that she's interested in, I'm kind of finding reasons not to do with her. I also felt embarrassed for her to, like, hold my hand in public because my shame would bleed over into her. So I'd walk behind her or in front of her and there was no public affection. And, like, all of that felt unhealthy to me. And so I recruited her to help me. I said, like, hey, I have this problem. I'm obese, and I want to change that. And she, like, to this day, it was as Though I was telling her, you know, I'd robbed a bank or killed somebody and she didn't know about it. Like, that's how I felt communicating this to her. And I. I thought, like. And I listened so closely. Like, am I going to hear judgment? Am I going to hear relief? And either of those things, I think might have messed with me. But she was like, okay, yeah, great. So what do you want to do? Do you want me to help you? How do you want me to help you? And I was like, I don't know what to do. And the very thing, the very first thing she told me to do in Eastern Europe was, okay, for the rest of the time that you're there, just don't eat bread. Now, bread for me then became this poisonous thing for many years. But that wasn't the point. The point was exercise some responsibility. Take one small step towards exercising restraint and responsibility. And that I learned to do. I didn't separate the two and realize the actual moral of the story that she gave me on that day for many years, because I eat bread all the time now. Whereas when she said that, I just thought, okay, bread's the problem. If I get rid of bread, I'm now on the path to recovery. But I was able to make it through the rest of that trip without eating bread. And that was kind of my first step.

[Rich Roll]

Your wife sounds like a remarkable woman. Like, clearly, she loved you and loves you for you. Right?

[Ethan Suplee]

Which is bizarre. Which is fucking bizarre, to be honest with you.

[Rich Roll]

Well, we're all broken toys. You know what I mean? How could we possibly be lovable? I share that. But what she did deserves to kind of be explored a little bit more, because I think it's really powerful. You were able to change, not because she was vibing you to change, but because she allowed you to be you and gave you the space to arrive in a place of willingness on your own. And when you were ready, she was there to support you. But she wasn't nudging you or urging you towards that. And it gets back to this willingness idea. Like, she wouldn't have been able to make you willing to make that change. She trusted that you would find your way. And I think that is an incredibly difficult gesture of love. Like, we can say, oh, it's loving to want your partner to improve or do something that's in their best interest. But, like, true, unconditional love is like, I believe in you. Yeah, I believe in you to find your way and what's right for you. And I'm gonna Love you either way. Like, that is a remarkable thing. And you found your way to willingness. Finally, you had some willingness. And I think the advice around bread is actually really good. Well, it gets to the complexity of all of this because, like, I know as an AA person, like, I need those binary rules. I mean, I know that, like, my entree into, like, the eating plant based is because it's like, it's easy. It's like, I don't eat meat or dairy. And I needed that. I needed that, like, structure. It's like, I know I don't drink or use. Like, I can get my head around that. Like, and this is just simple enough. And so the bread thing is like, oh, I can understand that. You know, it gets messy later when you start to. When all the alcoholic obsession, you know, starts to.

[Ethan Suplee]

Well, and metastasize, when you haven't lost all the weight you want to lose because you're not eating bread. You know, when you. When you still have the problem as you perceive it, despite doing the work to eliminate the problem, it becomes complicated.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, but you took action.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

And I think behind that also, like, this idea that, like, I have to tell her this secret. It, you know, whether or not, like, it's hard to believe that you would believe that she wouldn't know that. Like, let's take that for granted as true. But the important part of it is that you decided you weren't going to keep secrets from her anymore. Like, you're a guy who'd been keeping secrets your whole life. So it was. It was. It was this commitment to yourself, to be transparent in a vulnerable way that opened up the space for you to be receptive and to grow and change.

[Ethan Suplee]

I think there's a point there that you made, because I think it's not that I thought she was honestly unaware of it, because it's impossible not to be unaware of it, but it's that if I show her that it's not something I am comfortable with, then it allows her to be uncomfortable with it. Do you know what I mean? If I have this false sense of. I don't know that if it's not a part of my attention, if I'm confident, if I reveal that I'm actually not confident, then it allows that you.

[Rich Roll]

Have a weakness that I have.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yes, exactly. It's the strangest feeling I've ever had because it's like I'm describing a blue car to somebody who's sitting there looking at a blue car with me. You know what I mean?

[Rich Roll]

Like, the secret Isn't that you were obese. The secret was that you. That you felt ashamed about that. Right. And, like, having the courage to, like, share that is a vulnerable, like, gesture.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

That's scary. Like, how is my partner going to receive this?

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. And later in life, like, I've written a book and it's with my publisher, and so I had to go and, like, really talk to my wife about this because I never really got into it with her. Like, like, why were you. Why were you with me? Like, were you waiting for that? Did you have faith that I was going to change prior to that? And. And then I realized, like, I don't even want to know because everything that happened feels like a miracle to me. And so the nuts and bolts of it are irrelevant.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. So you never asked her that.

[Ethan Suplee]

I mean, I. I touched on it with her and she's like, I don't know. I wasn't thinking about it. Like, she really is just. Just this miraculous angel of a person who loved me.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. So the bread didn't work?

[Ethan Suplee]

Well, I was able to do it. I was able to not eat bread.

[Rich Roll]

Which is a win. Right? You were able to master one thing. Yeah, yeah.

[Ethan Suplee]

The bread. Not eating bread did not produce 300 pounds of weight loss, unfortunately. You know, and. And then, you know, I came back and she had. She was like, I've got. I'll have something ready for you in la, but just do this while you're there, and when you get back, I'll have a whole thing set up for you to do here. And I did a liquid diet for two months, and I lost, like, 80 pounds doing that liquid diet.

[Rich Roll]

In two months.

[Ethan Suplee]

In two months.

[Rich Roll]

Wow.

[Ethan Suplee]

It was awesome. It was. You know, there's nothing that. That motivates you quite like success every day. I saw weight loss on that liquid diet.

[Rich Roll]

What was in the liquid?

[Ethan Suplee]

It was, like, probably 500 calories a day of protein and some powdered greens and then a bunch of fiber pills and some vitamins.

[Rich Roll]

There is a sort of euphoria that comes with that also. Right. And the alcoholic mind will latch onto that and say, this is the solution to my problems. I'm never going to eat food again. Yeah, yeah, I found it.

[Ethan Suplee]

There was.

[Rich Roll]

Did you have that?

[Ethan Suplee]

A hundred percent?

[Rich Roll]

Yeah.

[Ethan Suplee]

I wanted. I wanted abstinence at that time. I thought that was the solution. And. And the problem was that by the end of the second month, like, every time I stood up, I would black out. Not to the point of collapse, but, like, my vision would go dark, my hearing would get thick and distant, and I'd have to, like, steady myself and wait for my vision to come back. And that was like, okay, maybe I can't do this forever.

[Rich Roll]

500 calories a day with, with that much body mass to fuel. I mean, you're cannibalizing yourself.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Every day.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

And then after that, then it was.

[Ethan Suplee]

The blood type diet. And that was also pretty easy. You know, bread was off limits, but I could have, like, vegetables and meat, and that was not difficult. And, and then the problem came about when I just stopped losing weight. I could, I could overeat through the intervention of the blood type diet.

[Rich Roll]

So at this point, you'd lost how much?

[Ethan Suplee]

From 500 down to 550, down to around 550, 400, maybe 375.

[Rich Roll]

And then you plateau and then I plateau.

[Ethan Suplee]

No, I didn't rubber band back from that. I mean, I, I did gain some weight, but I never went back up to 500 because there, from that point on, there were. I, I, I would get down to. Over the past 20 years, I got down to 200, I went back up to 400, I got down to 300, I went up to 375. Like, there were bands like that, but I never got back anywhere near 500.

[Rich Roll]

With all the rubber banding. And then now in this, you know, stable situation that you're in right now, I mean, we could talk all day about, like, what worked and what didn't. I'm less interested in the details of that. It's all very personal, personalized and individualized. But from those experiences of succeeding and failing and rubber banding and relapsing and back and forth, and now it's cycling, now it's the gym. I mean, you have compiled an encyclopedia of principles around transformation and change. So if you had to write a book, and it had 10 chapters, each one being one of these principles, what rises to the top in your mind as the most important factors for somebody who is contemplating making a change?

[Ethan Suplee]

Having a plan for the day and then preparing for the plan to go out the window once you meet reality, and having another plan and having as many plans as you can consider, and then having a plan for when all of the plans fail and kind of, you know, getting through the day is the most important thing. Realizing that, that the weight isn't the issue at all. That the weight is a byproduct or a symptom of the issue. That it will look, if you need to lose 10 pounds that you put on during COVID or you know you twisted your ankle and were laid up for a few months or something like that, then none of this applies to you. But if you've been overweight your whole life, there's likely not going to be an intervention that you apply that. Then when you're done, you don't have to keep applying to some degree. My big fear now, like, I'm a fan of the GLP1s for the morbidly obese. I'm also glad that I achieved this prior to their advent. But my fear with them is that people are gonna use them like fad diets. And that what we'll see long term is a version of what I did in those years, which was find something that takes weight off really quick. You're losing muscle mass and fat. And by the way, any diet, any extreme diet, you're losing muscle mass and fat. Doesn't matter if it's keto and you're eating a bunch of meat. If you're losing a pound a day, some portion of that is lean tissue. But you get on them for three months, you lose 30 pounds, you get off them, you gain the 30 pounds back, you. 40% of what you lost is muscle, and a hundred percent of what you gain back is fat. And so we could see, over a long period of time, people's weight stay static, if not rise a little bit, but their body fat percentage skyrocket. And that worries me because there is no consideration to anything but that the weight is the problem, not a byproduct or a symptom of the problem.

[Rich Roll]

Also, you're missing the whole piece around developing discipline and a connection with your body and your mind. Like, you have extraordinary discipline and you've done the inside work to untangle those knots and understand why you tick the way that you tick. And if you just inject yourself with something, they're appropriate for people who are. I mean, it's like obesity is driving all these chronic lifestyle ailments. Like you have to. If the house is on fire, you got to deal with that first. So I'm not against this in any way, but in terms of, of what you had to learn about yourself and the way your mind and your body works by going through this process has placed you in this sort of sensei position. You know what I mean? You've done the work, and so what you have to say about this matters versus somebody who took a different route to it.

[Ethan Suplee]

It's such a tricky thing because I'm trying to be as open and honest as possible, but there is A team out there that is, these are life saving drugs and if you say anything bad about them, you're killing people. And then there's another team that is, these are gonna result in killing people. You can't say anything good about them. There's such a lack of nuance, you know, I don't know if it's as big today, but there was a whole, whole thing about like keto and sugar is killing it and carbohydrates are killing everything.

[Rich Roll]

Well, we just cycle through this, you know, by the season.

[Ethan Suplee]

Right. Nuance is lost.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. And it, it deserves nuance. I think like I said, there are, these drugs are appropriate, but are you, we know when you're on them. Are you using that period of time to learn about nutrition and develop, you know, better eating habits and breaking old habits or are you just, just coasting by eating less of the shitty foods that you're eating? And when you go off it, you haven't really prepared yourself for how to live without it. And these people rubber band back and then go back on it and yeah, like, so then do we end up with a, with a worse obesity problem or other downstream like side effects from this drug that we don't even know about yet?

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. I have a daughter with type 1 diabetes. And that point of view that I'm seeing so many people take would be like the point of view of me realizing that my daughter's body is not producing insulin and so she has to get insulin through a bolus of an injection and then looking at her blood sugar when it's normal and going, well, she doesn't need insulin anymore. She's done, she's solved. It's not going to be a problem anymore. These, these medications and who knows if they're going to have new medications down the line. But these medications are designed to be lifetime medications. They're not designed for short term use. They're not designed so that when you lose your 30 or 50 or 100 pounds that you come off of them because the doctors who are prescribing them know that 99.9% of the people are going to gain that weight back. Now that's not an absolute, but there are no absolutes in science. This is the, this is the realm of like wanting to win the lottery. I'll be the one guy that doesn't win the gain the weight back. But what about all the diets that you tried where you, you know, ate 500 calories a day, lost weight really fast, and then gained the weight back once you jumped off the diet. It's no different. It just makes it less hard.

[Rich Roll]

What do you think is the primary differentiator between somebody who can make this type of change and sustain it versus the person who struggles and gives up?

[Ethan Suplee]

I think that really looking at the fact that it is going to be a lifetime commitment, that there's no finish line, that the weight is a sign of something else happening, that, that, that somebody who's looking at it in that way will have a better shot at success. Because if you just go into a diet going, I need to lose 30 pounds, and once I lose 30 pounds or whatever, pick any number, 300 pounds, that I'm done, I think you're in for a rude awakening. Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

There's so much gray in all of this. It's so easy to be reductive about it. Like, here's what you do and like, we want. You're talking about you need a plan and you need a plan for the plan. And there's lots of plans out there. Oh, I'll take this plan. This plan's gonna solve my problem. But it's so much more than that. You need the discipline and the hard work and the ability to suffer periods of discomfort and all these types of things. But you also have to be kind to yourself and you have to allow yourself to mess up, you know, and not throw the baby out with the bath water when you have those missteps. And you have to be flexible enough to know like, okay, well, this program that I thought was going to solve everything isn't working and I need to do something different now. The truth doesn't lend itself to any kind of like 10 step program that is going to work. And I think the real solution is in like the healing the inner right so that you can have the soft when you need it and the hard when you need it. But it's not all about self will and discipline and hard work and pain and suffering. It's also, as you know, as a sober person, it's surrender and it's letting go and it's compassion. Right. And how do you marry these two kind of opposing forces in a way that's driving your life forward?

[Ethan Suplee]

I do some coaching. It's not like come contact me type of thing. But I do work with some people and this is the biggest point of trying to get somebody to understand. And I think unfortunately, it's a little bit like the willingness piece where you can't tell them the secret. They have to come to it on their own a little bit through Trial and error. Error, unfortunately. But it's like the Serenity prayer sums it up so perfectly. There is something that you have to accept because it's not changeable and you have to figure out what you can change and then just work on changing that. And if you're coming at it because I did this, tried to harm myself thin, tried to punish myself into a better body, that's not sustainable either. You know, there has to be some grace given to yourself and doing it out of compassion and kindness, or I don't think it works.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, it's. It's for whom and when. Right. Like certain people, they need the Goggins message, you know what I mean? Because they can't get off the couch. They could use a little discipline and a little slap on the ass to get up and get out the door.

[Ethan Suplee]

And sometimes I like that, too.

[Rich Roll]

Me too. Yeah, of course, you know, I think we all need that.

[Ethan Suplee]

Right.

[Rich Roll]

And God bless David Goggins for making himself available to all of us for that.

[Ethan Suplee]

But it can't be the only people.

[Rich Roll]

Who are so down that rabbit hole and they need to be pulled out and given a hug, you know what I mean? And told that they're worthwhile and lovable, even if they can't lose the weight or achieve the fitness goal.

[Ethan Suplee]

That's right.

[Rich Roll]

And without those two things, you're missing an appendage, I think. And so it's hard to. I mean, I'm like, hats off to you to try to counsel people through this sort of thing.

[Ethan Suplee]

It's tough, you know, because. And I. I relate to it so much. But I think some of the most meaningful conversations I have are talking to somebody and understanding or trying to understand their experience as thoroughly as possible and sharing my experience and going like, here's why what you're trying to do didn't work for me. Now, that doesn't mean it's not going to work for you, but here are all the traps I encountered in that. It's some of the most meaningful stuff I've ever done.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, I mean, that's a version of what we learn in aa, which is we don't tell people what to do or give advice. We share our experience. And if you can glean insights from my personal experience, then then it's on you to figure out how to integrate that into your life.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, this has slightly more. Like a little bit.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, don't do that.

[Ethan Suplee]

Listen, if you're. If you're eating 5, 000 calories a day, you're going in my Experience, Right. Yeah, exactly. It's. It's. It's. But it's a marriage of these two things, you know?

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. You have to do and you have to undo.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, Right.

[Rich Roll]

So it's like a Zen Cohen.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

You know.

[Ethan Suplee]

Know.

[Rich Roll]

What are some common, like, tropes out there around weight loss and fitness that you think are wrong, that are mis. Misleading people?

[Ethan Suplee]

You know, fat people are lazy. This is. This is, I think, very misleading because first of all, just in an almost comedic sense. Do you know how hard it is to be obese? Like, it's very difficult. You have to. And not that food is super expensive or, you know, the amount of junk food is just omnipresent every point of commerce. You can get 2,000 calories for a couple bucks. But just moving through space and time is difficult. That's one of them. I don't know. There's so many. You know, I think the insulin model for obesity is just completely ridiculous and sent a bunch of people down a path that it's not. That it's not sustainable. I just think for the people who are like me at all, it's not going to get them anywhere near where they want to be. You'll lose weight. The majority of weight that you lose that first couple of weeks is water. And there's no acknowledgment of that. When you stop eating carbohydrates, your body just purges itself of glycogen and. And hydrates, hydration. And, like, that will keep you coming back. Like, you gain your weight back and you go, but, like, I want that incentive that I got the first week of doing keto. I lost ten pounds. I want that win again. But it's not getting you where you want to go because you're not addressing the fact that you're taking in more energy than your body needs.

[Rich Roll]

How important is momentum?

[Ethan Suplee]

It's very important.

[Rich Roll]

Talk.

[Ethan Suplee]

I find it to talk a little.

[Rich Roll]

Bit about this because I have some thoughts on this.

[Ethan Suplee]

Okay. So, like, for me, I was on a plane yesterday, got up at the crack of dawn, didn't sleep much, arrived here in California, had a couple things to do. Never got to the gym this morning. Didn't get a great night's sleep, didn't go to the gym. Now that's two days in a row. I don't go seven days to the gym, but I've now missed two days. Tomorrow, there are gonna be 300 reasons sitting in the forefront of my mind why going to the gym isn't necessary, that I'm Gonna have to fight through slightly harder than I otherwise would when I get to the gym on Monday and I don't miss a day. Going on Friday is a piece of cake. Going on Saturday is a piece of cake. But when I miss one day, getting back to it has lost some of that momentum, and it's just harder, I think.

[Rich Roll]

I mean, obviously, consistency is the. Is the most important thing, but what happens when you're consistent is you create momentum.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

And I like to think of momentum as like a spiritual force. Like it has its own field of energy. You know, we all know how easy it is to go to the gym when we've gone, you know, 28 days in a row before that.

[Ethan Suplee]

That's right.

[Rich Roll]

It's an autopilot thing. It's an afterthought. Right. And then you have that interrupting situation. You go to a wedding, you travel, whatever, you get thrown off, and suddenly it's hard. Like, why is that? It doesn't make any sense.

[Ethan Suplee]

No.

[Rich Roll]

And so I just think when you've. When you've cultivated and developed, you have some momentum going, like, you gotta fucking protect that against, you know, like, that is. That is to. That is like to be. Be dealt with reverence, you know, knowing that it will get interrupted at some point. But when you have it, like, really seeing it for what it is and respecting it, it's magical. It becomes like a. It's a very powerful thing, I think. And then having the. And then having the ability to have grace with yourself when life happens and you do get interrupted and doing that thing that we also learn in a. Which is like. Like if you relapse and then you beat yourself up, you've made the second mistake. Right. So just get. How quickly can you get back to, you know, square one and start to rebuild again and not, you know, be in that shame spiral that, you know, we've all experienced when we allow ourselves to, you know, fall a little bit.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, yeah. I think that. That. And even being aware of it, too, because when you get the momentum and then it is hard, you can remind yourself, but it's not going to be hard forever. I'm going to get that momentum back. I'm going to get that wind beneath me. That's going to help push me. I just have to get back to it.

[Rich Roll]

It's tough, though, man. Like, you fall off and then you're like, it's too hard. Forget it. And then you just give up. And then, like, your habits across the board in every aspect of your life just, you know, go to pot.

[Ethan Suplee]

As a result, you're waiting for the gift of desperation to get you back into it and it doesn't happen. Have to be that way.

[Rich Roll]

Pain is such an amazing motivator for this. Like I, I know, you know, I don't, I don't go out of my way to, you know, make changes in my life unless I'm backed into a corner. And it's always confounding that that choice is available to us. Like we don't have to be in pain, we don't have to be in crisis, we don't have to have congested heart failure. All these things like that you had to go through to become the person you are. How do you counsel people around trying to make that choice? Short of, you know, the elevator going all the way down to the ground.

[Ethan Suplee]

Floor, this is where that piece of willingness comes in. Where I'm not, I'm not out there trying to convert people. I'm only really talking to people who are there and just going like, tell me what to do. I don't know what to do. And I'm, you know, one of the things that I'm not super interested in doing is spreading some message of the right way. Because I don't really believe that I could broadcast the right way to everyone. But if I have somebody who I can really talk to and get a really as clear a picture of their circumstances as possible possible, then I can make implementations that I think will be beneficial to them. But that's, you know, if you come up to me on the street and say, how'd you do it? I'm going to give you a very truthful but dishonest answer, which is diet and exercise. That's the truth. But it's so dishonest it's lacking a two hour conversation, you know?

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. How has your sense of potential and possibility shifted as a result of this? Like as a, as an artist and as a dad and you know, a grandfather? Right. You have a grand granddaughter and a grandson. Oh, you have two grandkids.

[Ethan Suplee]

Grandkids, yeah.

[Rich Roll]

That's insane. How old are you?

[Ethan Suplee]

49.

[Rich Roll]

You must have been young when you had kids.

[Ethan Suplee]

Kids. My wife was 20 when she had her first. The two older kids are my step kids, but I've been raising them since they were three and five.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, similar. I have two, two step kids and two, two kids, similar situation. No grandkids yet though.

[Ethan Suplee]

They're coming.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, I don't know. We'll see. You know, having accomplished these things, obviously, you know, self esteem is A product of performing esteemable acts for. For yourself. Right. And so. So that's very empowering and I would imagine shifts your worldview on what you're capable of and the kind of person that you could become as somebody who's continually trying to grow and evolve.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. There's an idea. For me, the thing that I like to do is to imagine in a way that you're talking about who I would like to be, who I would like to evolve into. And then even if it's just so absurdly far fetched, I'm aiming in that direction, I'm casting my line towards that so that every day I'm transforming. Even if it's imperceptible, I want to be transforming a little bit or growing more towards that person. And the idea of impossible, dude, my life is a fairy tale. Like, and I'm still have this kind of like, corrupt narcissism where like, I think people are looking at me and talking about me and don't like me and. And I'm still embarrassed about myself and. And I often have to tell that voice to shut the up and to get out of the way because I'm awesome and I'm doing great and I have people, people in my life who love me very much. And. And if that voice is right and there is somebody out there saying bad things, then that person is irrelevant to my life and the person I want to become.

[Rich Roll]

How does this translate into your parenting?

[Ethan Suplee]

Parenting has been interesting. I. I was raised in a. A very, you know, food was regulated and so I wanted very much to be not. Like, I thought that that was one of the main drivers to me going the route. I did. And when my daughter, who's now 20, was 4, she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. And suddenly I found myself having to restrict her food. Not saying no necessarily to stuff, but juice for her was literally medicinal or poison. In very stark terms. If she had juice without really, she should never have juice unless she has crashing low blood sugar and then it's to save her life. And that was a real mind fuck, dude. It was really mindful.

[Rich Roll]

I mean, it's like the universe designed this. Like the one thing that, you know is your biggest, like trigger and pain point.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

It was like, hey, now you're in a position where you have to do this for your kids.

[Ethan Suplee]

You have to. And it actually, in a strange way, allowed me to forgive my parents because my parents were doing exactly the same thing. Now I look at a picture of myself at 5 and don't see a little kid who's obese and needs to be on a diet, doesn't matter. They did, they saw a situation and they thought, we have to do something about this. In the exact same way that I see the situation with my daughter when she's four and go like, we can't keep juice in the house. And if we do, it's medicinal, you.

[Rich Roll]

Know, while also not trying to repeat, you know, like instill that same trauma in her and that fear. Right.

[Ethan Suplee]

Which is, I think, impossible not to. When you have a four year old.

[Rich Roll]

She has a disease. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, you have to police what she's eating.

[Ethan Suplee]

And I'm now, I'm now the cop saying, no, you can't eat that. Or if you eat that and I give you insulin for it, you have to eat that now. It was so up and I didn't navigate it perfectly and I battled with it a lot and it was very, very hard. And like, woe is me. It was hard on her and she's like, very toughened because of it and she's doing great. But we struggled for a long time. She wound up going to a boarding school. And I had, when she was 12, 13, 14, her continuous glucose monitor would. I had the app so I could look at it, so I knew what her blood sugar was 24 hours a day. And I, I would call her panicked, five, six times a day, going like, why haven't you taken insulin? What are you doing? Or calling a teacher to go, her blood sugar's too low, go make her drink juice, you know, which is just.

[Rich Roll]

A different version of what your dad did to you.

[Ethan Suplee]

That's right.

[Rich Roll]

That caused that rift.

[Ethan Suplee]

That's right. And it was completely insane. And I'll tell you this in all honesty, her A1C was elevated until I said, listen, I can't do this anymore. I am going to turn this over to you and whatever happens to you, it's on you. And I think I tried that once, but not honestly, I was still sneaking peeks of her blood sugar and there was no change. And I'm panicking and freaking out and thinking, my kid's gonna die and it's. And how come? Could I let her die? But when I finally really did it, deleted the app from my phone and really said, I'm not going to even talk to you about this anymore. I think three months later, she had a normal A1C, or maybe it was six months later, but give her the.

[Rich Roll]

Space to take ownership of it and figure it out. I mean, you basically had to do what your wife did for you.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. And it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do because I felt like my kid's life was on the line. And it was, to a degree, but it wasn't. It wasn't my place to be responsible for her life anymore.

[Rich Roll]

Scary, though. That's hard as a parent.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

That's an extreme example. You know, like, I was like, believe.

[Ethan Suplee]

That'S what the universe gave.

[Rich Roll]

I know. It's like. It's perfect.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

You know, it was, like, perfectly conf. It's like, how can you not have some connection with spirituality? It's like, so. So clear as day that there's this lesson for you to learn here. But on top of that, just being this disciplined person around food and exercise, but also having had such bad experiences with all of that as a kid and having all kinds of complicated emotions around it, there's no clear line as to how you guide. Guide the young people in your house. You know, you don't want to push them in the way that you were pushed. You know, type one diabetic aside.

[Ethan Suplee]

I didn't want to push them at all. I wanted to just, like, I'm going to be a good example, and I'm going to allow you guys. You know, we're very much the house where, with substances. My wife drinks. There's alcohol in our house. She does not have a problem with it. I did not want to create a problem for my kids. And so we were the house that was like, listen, if you guys want to do something, fine. You just communicate with us, and you can do it here. And we're not gonna yell and scream and tell you you're bad. If you're ever at a party and you don't have a ride home or you're drunk, call us. We'll come and get you at any time of the night. There will be no judgment. We don't even have to talk about it if you really don't want to, but please recognize that you're not gonna. We're not gonna judge you for this. And that seems to have worked pretty well. That has been successful.

[Rich Roll]

That's the most important thing in my experience of parenting. You want to be the person that they instantly call when they're in a problem and they're not hung up about it, because you've built that foundation of trust and open communication where they feel safe and they feel like, you know, the way I was. Like, the last person I would call is my parent. You know, I call anybody but them. Right. Terrified, ashamed, all of that. And in order. In my experience, in order to achieve that kind of open communication where they feel like. Like they're trusted and accepted and all of that, you have to let go of. Of being too much of a taskmaster. You know what I mean? You gotta, like, you lead by example. These are the habits and, you know. You know, this is how we eat here. This is kind of. This is. These are the things I do without that, like, unhealthy expectation or attachment that they have to follow you and hope that they learn over time through osmosis, that, you know what you're doing is healthy, or they get to make their own judgments around that while also recognizing, like, they have to find themselves. And in order to do that, they have to push against you and go out and do other things, and you have to have space for that.

[Ethan Suplee]

It's the realization that you're dealing with another human being.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. You know, sentient and. Yeah, right.

[Ethan Suplee]

Like, there's this sovereign. There's this thing of going, like, this is my kid, as though, like, I have ownership over this, and I'm shaping it in my image to some degree. And the morals must be the same, and the ideas and the points of view about the world must be the ones I instill in this person. And the realization that, like, oh, no, that's just a human being that I've spent a lot of time with, and all I want to do, like, my job is to not infect that person with my garbage. That's the biggest gift I can give to my kids.

[Rich Roll]

So the communication's good.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

These days.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

That's the good thing. You know, the older you get, too, it's just like, you just want them to call. That's it.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, I check in, chat with them.

[Rich Roll]

What are the things that. That are still a big struggle for you that throw you off your game?

[Ethan Suplee]

Travel. Travel is tough. I find myself traveling a lot. That throws me off my game a little bit. But it's not, you know, Know, like, there is still, you know, there is still this sneaking desire that comes up every now and again that I want to graduate from the program. You know what I mean? That I want the degree, and then I want to not have to think about it anymore. And that's really dangerous. And that's something I have to keep in check. Every now and again, I have to, like, really bring myself back down and go, like, oh, you better check in with somebody, dude. You know, do you.

[Rich Roll]

You know this psychiatrist, Phil Stutts? I've had him on the show a couple times.

[Ethan Suplee]

Oh, did somebody made a movie about him? Yeah, he lives.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, Jonah Hill made a documentary about him. He's a beautiful, remarkable guy, but he has these three, three truths about life. And, you know, he sees all these, like, ballers and like, high rolling, you know, dudes who are, who have everything and are unhappy. Right, right. And he's like, like most of them are unhappy or dissatisfied with their life because they fail to recognize these, these three fundamental truths of life, which are pain, uncertainty, and the need for constant work. And like, I have it on. I have like a bracelet with these things on it. It's like there's no destination here. You will never conquer uncertainty.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

You'll never, like, work so hard and amass so much or get to a place where you're not going to have to deal with. With shit that just goes haywire. There's always going to be pain and you're always going to have to do work. And if you can accept that, then maybe you can meet these obstacles and these challenges with a little more grace because you're not expecting it to be otherwise.

[Ethan Suplee]

Don't you think just that meeting them intentionally gets you almost all the way there? Just going like, this is the obstacle. This is the task for today or for my life. Life. But I think that we. Or I was constantly trying to avoid those obstacles by just doing something else or feeling bad for myself or using substances or eating my way through pain and uncertainty and the need to do work.

[Rich Roll]

Sure.

[Ethan Suplee]

Just being aware of it is the game.

[Rich Roll]

Being aware of it. And I think it does have a lot to do with. With especially as like, somebody in recovery. Like, I can get attached in an unhealthy way to almost anything. Sure. And part of that attachment, whether it's a particular diet or a training regimen, is this implicit promise in it that, like, if you do this thing, it's gonna fix you and solve your problems and you won't have to deal with uncertainty. Like, there's a. It's the control. Right. It's like back to the Serenity prayer. Like you're deluding yourself into thinking that you can exert control over your life if you just follow these certain protocols. And even if those protocols are moving your life forward in a positive way, that relationship is unhealthy. If it's loaded with that false promise. And the acceptance piece is like, this is good, I'll keep doing this. But fundamentally, I'm still in a human body and this is not going to Absolve me of all the pain and uncertainty and difficulty that I'll inevitably have to face in my life.

[Ethan Suplee]

I. Yeah, I love that. I. You know, I. For the longest time, I was communicating about this only on, like, Instagram, and it's a picture, and then I would go to write about it, and then you're limited to something 2500 characters, which is. You can't. I found you can't communicate all that much now on substack, I can write an essay, and it can be as long as I want, want. And that's. The piece is being able to communicate to people that, like, I've lost 300 pounds, I'm sober, I'm happily married, I have four beautiful daughters, I have two grandchildren. I consider my life a fairy tale. I look at my life and think, it couldn't have gone any better. There is not one aspect of it. And still I struggle every day. And still there's pain, and still there's setbacks, and still there's difficulty and barriers that I have to overcome. And that's a hard message sometimes to communicate in five words, in a caption or with a picture.

[Rich Roll]

You know, your substack is fantastic. You're a really good writer. Like, it's very poetic the way that you share. And so much, much thought has gone into these pieces that you write. Like, this is the perfect platform for you.

[Ethan Suplee]

I love it. It's my favorite thing to do because I want to get into as much nuance as possible, because that's all I lacked for so long was don't eat carbohydrates. It was this binary, which works for me in sobriety. I love the binary. I love the binary. In life, it's very easy to be a yes or no. I'm on this team or I'm on that team. But that doesn't get you there with food because you don't stop eating.

[Rich Roll]

But you have to meet people where they're at. And some people need the binary. You know, they have to do that before they can. They have to do the doing part before you can get to the undoing part.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

And that's where. That's why it's like, it's so difficult. You said it earlier, like, I'm not here to. I can't tell you what to do or not to do. You know, those are decisions you have to make, which makes it such an intractable problem to solve, because we all just want, like, Ethan, you did it.

[Ethan Suplee]

Well, no, my wife, amazingly, is like, you tell me what to do all the time. You know, like, she'll come to me and I'll say to her, I've known you for 30 years. I know your habits, I know your preferences, I know what your willingness level is. I know that you know what? So, yeah, I'll tell you what to do because I've got all this data. If I'm sitting with somebody and I can take an inventory of their life, then I'm more than happy to say you should do this. But, you know, spreading that on the Internet, I think is actually dangerous. I think sending a message out there that everyone should do X devoid of nuance, I think is actually dangerous.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah, yeah. Which makes it. My next question is like, when are you writing a book?

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, I've written one. But again, it's non prescriptive. It's very much just here's what I went through, here's what I went through in this situation, and here's what I went through in this situation. But you know, the idea of saying like, you know, you should food journal. I will say I found food journaling to be super helpful, but I'm not going to say everybody should food journal.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. I think there's the, there's the here's what I did and why I did it book, but I think there's another book in you that is a more philosophical approach to all of this that isn't necessarily a how to book, but is like a perspective.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Because I think you have thought about this so deeply and you're so good at putting words to it without being preachy or, you know, overly directive to people. But that's a hard book to write.

[Ethan Suplee]

It's a hard book to write. I am actually toying with that with a philosophy professor with a version of that. But it's amazing that you said that because it is actually. That's the direction we're going in. But it's broader for me. When I read Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird or Rick Rubin's the Creative act, those books to me are diet books.

[Rich Roll]

Oh, yeah.

[Ethan Suplee]

You know, or if I'm struggling with. If I'm having a rough day, you know, if I suddenly the laws are more lenient and I see a guy shooting up on the corner and suddenly that idea's in my head and I open one of those books. Those books are about sobriety. Or if I'm struggling with work, those books are about work. So diet is found for me more in philosophical texts than that are talking about being more harmonious with the universe.

[Rich Roll]

Right. It's not about the food. It's about your relationship with yourself.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

You know, and in order to understand that, you got to go all the way back to the beginning and you got to cast yourself all the way forward, and you have to be a Calvinist and a Buddhist.

[Ethan Suplee]

Right.

[Rich Roll]

You know what I mean?

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. Yeah. And it's tough.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah.

[Ethan Suplee]

And it's. It's. It's doubly tougher when you have somebody telling you, just don't eat carbohydrates or lectins or seed oils that seed oils and red dye 40 are the problem. I made the terrible mistake of saying to my family over the holidays that I did not think RFK was going to, in fact, make America healthy again. And this is not a knock on him. I think he's pretty cool. But I don't think that banning red dye 40 solves the obesity crisis.

[Rich Roll]

It's a distraction.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Nor does beef tallow at whatever fast food. It's like, this is not really getting to the heart of what we really need to be talking about. It's trendy and fun and it gets headlines, but it's missing the bigger picture.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. I'm also substituting corn oil for regular sugar. That's not going to make, you know, that's not going to kill the Coca Cola industry, You know.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. It's almost like encouraging people to go and eat those French fries and drink the Coke. Right, Right.

[Ethan Suplee]

That's right. There you go.

[Rich Roll]

The other piece that I think is worthy of noting with you is that these changes that you've made in your life with food and with fitness, are much more than that in that. Like, when I read your substack posts or I just. Being in your presence, it's obvious like you're somebody who's just committed to change as a way of being. Like, growth is your mandate, and that has manifested in your relationship with food and your body and fitness and the like. But what you're not doing, that I see so many people do, is get caught up. Up in one lane. Like, whether it's a particular diet or a particular approach to fitness or being a certain kind of athlete and then suddenly becoming an evangelist of that. Because I think what happens is people make a change. Their life becomes so much better, and they're so enthusiastic about it. They want to shout from the mountaintops to everybody about how amazing it is because it was so positively transformative. But then what liberated them Keep. It becomes a prison and keeps them stuck, and they just. They stay in that place and they don't continue to grow and evolve and change in all these other ways. And like, for me, I always look at it like, for example, you know, triathlon or ultra endurance sports, like, this was an incredible teacher. I learned so much about myself. But if I stayed in it and just kept racing and racing and racing, like the dividend on that starts to get pretty slim. Right. Like, how many more lessons am I going to learn? Like, I can always try to go further or faster or farther or whatever. And there's always something to be learned by taking your body to that edge. But I have so many other blind spots in my life where I'm a screw up and I trip myself up and if I stay over here where I'm really just like in denial or avoidance of that and I'm trying to always, like, have the courage to like, walk into those areas that I really don't want to.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Because that's the impulse that got me on this journey to begin with. Right. And it feels like a betrayal to not keep doing. And I'm not saying I do it perfectly. I'm terrible at it. Like, I don't want to do any of this.

[Ethan Suplee]

Right.

[Rich Roll]

But I feel like you're kindred in that. Like you're. It's not a about the food and the weight and the fitness. It's about like trying to live an expansive life.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. It's the idea that, you know, I found with anything that I, I get a hankering of, like I want to do something and if I go into it feeling like I have nothing to learn, that I can just go do it, I fail. And so I want to approach everything as though there's still more many lessons to learn in the same way. It can't just be one thing because I will slip into that. I will slip into. I'm gonna just ride my bike, I'm gonna just row on the rowing machine. I'm just gonna do CrossFit. I'm just gonna be a bodybuilder. I'm just gonna do keto. I'm just gonna do, you know, bodybuilder type dieting of chicken, broccoli and rice. And none of those present the fullness of life that I actually want. None of those allow me to be the father and husband and friend and business associate that I want to be.

[Rich Roll]

And so, yeah, we do these things so that we can show up in our life in the areas of a life that are actually important.

[Ethan Suplee]

Whereas it's very easy to make that your life and lose the rest of It. And I've done all that, too. I neglected my wife and kids. I would ride my bike eight hours a day and then be basically too tired to do anything with them. There were many years where my little kids would bake cookies and I wouldn't take a bite of them because I was being so pious with my diet that that food was taboo for me. And I wouldn't share that moment with them. And I. I look back on that with great regret.

[Rich Roll]

Right. You're, like, missing the bigger miracle.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah. Which is just being present and being the best version of who I am today with the idea that I'm going to improve. And that improvement doesn't have to be radical every day. It can be slight. It can be through reading or exercise or conversing. Like, this, for me, is an improvement. This makes me better. Our conversation.

[Rich Roll]

There's a soulfulness in your writing as well. You know, like, there's a. There's a. Your hint without, like, being direct about it. Like, you're. You're always kind of like, tiptoeing around or hinting at, like, deeper meaning here.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

Because I'm sure, like, a big part of your audience are some gym bros or some overweight dudes who are looking to you as the lighthouse.

[Ethan Suplee]

Right. And the danger would be chicken, broccoli and rice. Progressive overload. That's it. Because that is the truth. But again, I think it's dishonest because I think there's more than that. I think there is soulfulness to be found in all of this.

[Rich Roll]

What's the one change you know, you need to make but you're afraid to make?

[Ethan Suplee]

Quitting nicotine, probably.

[Rich Roll]

That's a tough one.

[Ethan Suplee]

That's probably it. You know?

[Rich Roll]

Now it's a nootropic.

[Ethan Suplee]

Right, Exactly. There's more, and it's. It staves off Alzheimer's, apparently. There's so many great benefits to nicotine. I've not had a cigarette in 20 years, but I've been woefully addicted to nicotine this whole time.

[Rich Roll]

Yeah. Well, there you go.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah.

[Rich Roll]

You called yourself out. There's no secret around that.

[Ethan Suplee]

No, no, I know. I know what I mean. Look, that's. That's a very superficial answer. I'm sure we could get. Get really deep into the deep wounding. Yeah, exactly. And I would cry and it would be hard, and then I would confront it and have to do anything about it. But I'm so aware of nicotine that I've said it to you. I'm not going to quit. You know, What?

[Rich Roll]

I mean, I gotcha. We got to wind this up. But I want to leave people with just a little encouragement for the person who's tiptoeing around making a change, maybe is a little bit afraid. Not in the practical sense, but maybe in the orienting their mind around how to approach or encourage them to take that first step and follow it up until they can get a little momentum.

[Ethan Suplee]

So I think any point of responsibility that you can put in that's difficult without being truly burdensome as a first step can be magical. When I was £550, I remember some days just walking past my car door to the end of my car, and that was more than I had to do. And that was enough because that was something. And that you can always, always build on stuff.

[Rich Roll]

The idea that you could barely walk to your car and then went on to ride every stage of the Tour de France.

[Ethan Suplee]

Right. But this doesn't happen overnight.

[Rich Roll]

It's stunning. I know, but it begins with that walk to the car.

[Ethan Suplee]

That's right. You know, this is the other terrible burden of a life lived in sound bites and through Twitter, where you get however many characters. I don't know, maybe there's no limit now, but I remember when it started, it was 140 characters. And, and. And you had to, like, come up with your slogan that communicated everything in two sentences. And it's immediacy. And nothing's immediate. None of this is immediate. This conversation wasn't immediate. It took us two hours to get to this, you know, and.

[Rich Roll]

And how many years of going back. I don't know when I. When I first reached out to you or how this began, but it happened a long time ago.

[Ethan Suplee]

A long time ago. This was a long time in the making. But. And this is great, get rid of immediacy. Allow life to unfold in, like, this marvelous, mysterious way that it will. And take a step in a direction and then just take another step. But don't try to get to the finish line today because there's no finish line. The finish line is dead.

[Rich Roll]

Death. You said that you talk about all these things from a selfish perspective, but it really is an act of service. And I think service is your calling. And what you're doing right now is needed and incredibly nourishing to a lot of people. It's a beautiful thing that you're doing, and I appreciate you coming here and sharing so openly. Yeah, it's. It's super inspiring, man. And I can't wait to see what you do next. And this continual in evolution and unfolding of your life.

[Ethan Suplee]

Yeah, me too. I'm excited.

[Rich Roll]

It was. It was great to get to know you a little bit.

[Ethan Suplee]

Appreciate it.

[Rich Roll]

All right, Right on. Cheers, pe. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode [e-mail] where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra Voicing, Change and the Plant Power Way. If you like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify and on YouTube and leave a review and or comment. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors who keep this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com sponsors and finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any [e-mail] Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Cameolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis and Morgan McRae, with assistance from our Creative Director, Dan Drake, content management by Shayna Savoy, copywriting by Ben Prior, and of course, our theme music was created all the way back in 2012 by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace.

[Ethan Suplee]

Namaste. It.