Hello and welcome to Zoe Recap, where each week we find the best bits from one of our podcast episodes to help you improve your health.

Change is difficult. Our routines can feel locked in, our habits on autopilot, and the idea of a major lifestyle overhaul can seem impossible.

However, Rich Roll is living proof that this isn't the case.

Once struggling with addiction and poor health, he transformed his diet,

rebuilt his body and completely rewrote his future.

In today's conversation, Tim Specter and Rich Roll discuss why midlife is a crucial turning point for health. What happens to your microbiome when you change your diet and why it's never too late to make a dramatic shift?

But I'd like to start right at the beginning, Rich. So today you're an ultra-endurance athlete on a fully plant-based diet,

but you made this big pivot, I think, around the time you were 40.

Could you tell us what your life was like before that?

To answer that question, I think we have to cast the gaze backwards a little bit.

So leading up to that, throughout my 20s, I had a struggle with drugs and alcohol that

really took me to some pretty dark places.

And I was able to get sober at 31. I went to treatment for 100 days, which is a long time to be

in sort of voluntarily incarcerated in what's kind of a mental institution for the temporarily insane.

But that really changed my life and provided me with a new set of tools around how to, like,

organize my decision making and my actions. And when I emerged from that experience,

building a foundation of sobriety was like my number one

priority. And I went all in on my recovery. And over the next nine or so years, was very focused on that.

But at the same time, I was also very intent upon reestablishing myself as a sort of respectable human being who

could show up on time and be relied upon and the like and rebuild my career as a result.

And during that period of time, I really overlooked my health and well-being because I was so

focused on that one thing. And it's only in

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