they actually gave me a brand new life.

Throughout my 30s, I was climbing the corporate ladder,

very intent on achieving

the traditional idea of the American dream.

But deep down inside, I started to question

this path that I was on.

For well over a decade,

I really hadn't been taking care of myself.

I had become a junk food addict,

I was 50 pounds overweight, kind of semi-depressed,

and shortly before I turned 40,

I was climbing up a simple flight of stairs

to go to bed one evening, and I had to pause halfway.

I was winded, I was out of breath,

I had tightness in my chest,

and it was a very specific moment in time

in which I realized that not only that

I needed to change my lifestyle habits

but that I had the willingness that I truly wanted to.

I realized that vague ideas of eating better

or working out a little bit or going to the gym

weren't really going to work for me.

I needed something specific, something definitive.

I'd played around with a bunch of different diets,

to no avail,

and I sort of attempted this

experiment in plant-based eating as kind of the last

thing that I hadn't explored.

And I didn't have a big expectation

that it would make a big difference,

but within about seven to 10 days

of eating nothing but plants,

nothing with a mother, nothing with a face,

I experienced this extraordinary thing,

like I had this resurgence in vitality,

my mental acuity improved, my sleep improved,

I had this sense of well-being and energy

that I hadn't really felt since I was a teenager.

And I didn't really know what I was doing,

but I knew in that moment that I was onto something.

And it started getting me thinking

about human potential and my own potential,

because if I could make such a simple, basic shift

and experience such a dramatic result,

where were there other untapped reservoirs

of potential that I could explore?

And that's what got me interested, ultimately,

in the world of ultra-endurance sports.

At the peak of training, I would say

I was training about 25 hours a week,

so it was really almost a second job,

and at the time, I was still a practicing attorney,

I have four kids, I'm busy doing a lot of things,

and in order to make the time that was required

to appropriately prepare for this race,

I had to make some significant cuts

and really look hard and fast

at how I was spending my time on a day-to-day basis.

I had to get rid of late-night television

and sort of business meetings that could be

pushed to a conference call or an email chain

to free up the time that was required

so I could show up at the starting line and know

in my heart of hearts that I could complete this race.

I started training, which really connected me

with myself in a very profound way,

and to the surprise of myself and many other people,

I ended up showing some prowess in this field

and ended up competing at a very high level,

specifically a race called Ultraman,

which is a double Ironman distance triathlon.

Over the course of three days,

it completely circumnavigates

the entire big island of Hawaii.

(playful orchestral music)