[Rhonda]: I kinda wanted to start off by asking you how long you've been a vegan and why did
you decide to become a vegan?
That's a pretty strict diet.
[Rich]: Yeah.
It was...First of all, thanks for having me.
And thanks for coming all the way out to my house to do this.
I've been looking forward to this for a long time.
To answer your question, I just turned 49.
So I transitioned to a vegan diet shortly after my 40th birthday.
So it took me about six or eight months before I got fully 100% plant-based, but I began
this journey because when I was 39 and kind of approaching my 40th birthday, I was living
the typical life of kind of an overworked, overstressed corporate attorney, sedentary,
classic couch potato.
I was about 50 pounds overweight.
You know, I was never like morbidly obese.
I was never somebody that like Jillian Michaels would yell at on a TV show or anything like
that, but just heavy and like dense.
And at the same time, I was kinda depressed and unenthusiastic about my life.
So I guess I was having a little bit of a spiritual crisis at the same time that my
health was starting to kind of ail.
And I basically was subsisting on the standard American diet, a lot of fast food, late nights
at the law firm, Chinese takeout and just basically whatever was in front of me to eat
and whatever was most convenient.
And it all kinda came to a head shortly before my 40th birthday when I had come home late
one night, working late.
My family was asleep.
And I was making my way up the staircase right here to go to my bedroom.
And I had to pause like half way up the flight of stairs.
I was winded, out of breath, tightness in my chest.
You know, I was like buckled over and kind of sweat on my brow and really the fear of
God.
Like I thought I was on the precipice of having a heart attack, you know.
And I was 39 years old.
And I just thought in that moment...It was just one of those moments that everything
kinda crystallized for me.
And I was like, "I can't keep living this way.
This is ridiculous."
And it was similar...You know, a big part of my story is I'm also a recovering alcoholic.
And when I was 31, I had that kind of moment of clarity that you hear about with people
that are in recovery where I decided to finally get sober.
And I went to rehab.
And that's a whole other story, but there was that moment in time where I decided like,
"This is the day that I'm gonna get sober."
And it changed my life so dramatically in every conceivable way.
And the moment on the staircase was kind of a similar moment.
Like I felt that sense of urgency and more importantly perhaps like the willingness to
do something about it.
And I was able to kinda recognize that that's a special thing, like that's a precious thing,
and that I needed to act on that and I needed to act on it kinda decisively and swiftly
and specifically, or it would just pass.
And the idea of saying, "Well maybe I should eat better or go to the gym," like just weren't
specific enough.
Those things didn't really mean anything to me.
And maybe I'm a drama queen, but I felt like I had to do something dramatic to kinda really
shift the energy and kind of wipe the slate clean and start fresh.
And that was really the beginning of what I didn't realize at the time would ultimately
lead to eating a plant-based diet.
For the next six months, I did a juice cleanse.
And that was like an amazing experience.
It was terrible at first, but after a week of doing nothing but drinking vegetable juice,
I'd never gone a day, like 24 hours, in my whole life without eating solid food.
So I felt like that was like a really severe thing to do to kind of like shift my perspective
and my energy.
And the last two days of that experience, I felt like this crazy resurgence in vitality.
And it really was a moment in which I realized that what you put into your body really does
impact how you feel.
Like I never really thought about that before.
And that kind of encouraged me to look more deeply into a way of eating that could allow
me to feel that good all the time because, of course, you can't just drink vegetable
juice for the rest of your life.
And then it was a process of self-experimentation really for the next six months.
I kind of played around with a vegetarian diet, but I was eating pretty much a junk
food vegetarian diet and kind of took that all the way to the wall and wasn't losing
any weight, wasn't feeling any better.
I just thought, "What would happen if I got rid of all the animal products and all this
processed junk that I'm eating?
You know, I wonder if that would make a difference."
And I kind of took a leap of faith and tried that.
And literally within 7 to 10 days of making that switch, I felt like an entirely different
person.
And I was doing it...
I didn't go to a library and get a bunch of books.
I didn't watch a bunch of documentaries.
Like I would have saved a lot of time, I'm sure, and done things more intelligently,
had I done that.
It was really just feeling it out for myself experientially.
And, ultimately, that's kind of what led me to eating plant-based and realizing that it
agreed with me.
It kinda set the stage for everything that came after.