Whole30: Melissa Urban

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And that's it. Hope to hear from you soon and we are so excited to have you come on the show. And now, onto the show. We did this big road trip that lasted about six weeks through the entire US. And when we were in San Diego for the seminar, because my sister lived there, my mom and her husband flew out for it. And during a break, my mom came up and she was like, people paid you to be here. And I said yes, mom. This is what we've been doing. People are paying us. To talk about this, and that was the moment where she said.

I I think this is like a thing that you have and I'm like, well I sure hope so. 'Cause I just quit my job. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. They built. I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today.

How Melissa Urban turned a dietary experiment into a wellness and nutrition powerhouse. Whole dirty. Inflamm has been a buzzword in the health and fitness space for at least two decades. If you listen to popular health podcasts or read books by people like Peter Tia or Mark Hyman or Andrew Huberman, you will hear the word inflammation. There is a lot of evidence that illnesses, including Alzheimer's, heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, may be linked to chronic inflammation in the body. And one of the theories around this is that food may be one of the culprits, that the kinds of food you put into your body can have an impact on how much inflammation you develop.

Now, full disclosure here, I personally buy into a lot of this. It's why I try to avoid foods that spike my glucose, things like sugar and refined grains, because healthy glucose levels are usually connected to lower levels of inflammation. Now why is this relevant to today's episode? Well because if you have even the slightest interest in anti-inflammatory diets, you will have heard of whole thirty. It's basically an elimination diet. You cut out things like sugar, alcohol, grains, dairy, and even legumes and soy for thirty days. And you see how your body responds. It's not a weight loss diet, but it's designed to help people feel better.

And hole thirty doesn't make any claims on what the diet will do for you, but Let's just say cutting down on sugar and simple carbohydrates? For most adults? Isn't a bad idea. The diet was created by Melissa Urban and Dallas Hartwig back in 2009.

At the time, Melissa and Dallas were CrossFit fanatics who were just experimenting with different diets. Their intention was never to create a template for other people, and it certainly wasn't to create a brand. But as these things go. That's exactly what happened. The more Melissa blogged about how the diet was helping her, the more people asked if she could share more about it. And eventually Melissa quit her job in the insurance industry to turn whole thirty

into a business. Today the company publishes books, offers coaching, and most importantly, makes deals with other brands to license the whole thirty logo to use on their products. If, of course, Those products meet whole thirty's strict guidelines. A whole 30 approved logo on a product? Can really help you.

Boost sales. It's like the good housekeeping seal of approval, but For health food. It's on everything from LaCroix Water to epic meat sticks to several brands we've had on this show, including Ciet Foods. As for Melissa She grew up in New Hampshire, part of a tight knit Portuguese American family, and as a kid,

She was expected to attend Catholic Church. Every Sunday. I mean it was never a question and I never really questioned it either. Uh you know, by the time I was 16 and had a part-time job and was able to drive, my sister and I would call it going to the church of the golden arches because we would tell my mom we were going to church and we would go sit in McDonald's and have some fries. And we would slide into the back row of church right before communion. So we could go, we could take communion, we'd have a bulletin to kind of prove that we were there, but I'm pretty sure my mom suspected what we were up to at that point. But uh from what I gather from what I've read about you, you were a g a good kid. You f t did what your parents told you to do. You studied, you went to school, you didn't get in trouble.

Yes. I mean still to this day I would describe myself as a rule follower. I was the oldest of two. I was the smart one. My sister was the fun Cute one that everybody liked. I was far more introverted. I preferred books to people. I was kind of socially awkward. But I was a good kid. I rarely got in trouble. I got straight A's in school. I Um, I had one best friend in the neighborhood that I spent a lot of time with, but if I didn't see my friends for a week at a time, I was perfectly happy just to sit at home alone with my book in my room.

So you, your sister, mom and dad and and a and a an extended family of cousins and aunts and uncles in this sort of Portuguese world that that was that you were surrounded by. Yes, exactly. And I was very close. I was close with my aunts, I was close with my cousins and uncles and You know, my aunt Die would pick me up for a special McDonald's run after school one day and we'd blast the radio and go get happy meals and yeah, I have a lot of really fond memories of that. Um I should

normally in this show unless it's something that the person is comfortable talking about or if it's relevant to their lives. I try not to Talk about trauma because I don't want to trigger

Certain feelings. I I mean I don't think it's Necessary. But I know that you've talked about something that happened in your life when you were sixteen, which was a kind of a shock and a break in your life that would

where we are today in some ways. Um And that is you were sexually assaulted when you were sixteen years old. Um I understand that it did It changed everything for you.

It did. And I'm very comfortable talking about it at this point. I've shared this story Publicly a number of times, but It was the first really important pivotal moment in my life and I describe it like a record scratch. Pre-16 years old, everything that we've just talked about, I was a good kid, I got straight A's, I followed the rules, I had a good relationship with my family.

And then at 16, I was sexually abused by someone in my family, someone I really loved and someone I trusted. And from that point on. Everything was different. I was different, my relationship with my family was different. What I thought about myself was different, my behavior, my grades. I mean, it was night and day. I became a different person.

After this experience, I began acting out. My parents would go away for a night and I would throw a party and the police would come. This was never something that happened before. I started drinking. And Nobody really asked me if I was okay or what was wrong and and that was very indicative of the culture of my family.

That the way they responded when something was wrong was that they just didn't look at it or talk about it. That was their coping strategy. So when somebody got cancer, they just didn't talk about it. When somebody was sick, when somebody got divorced, that was just the way my family handled things. So it was just a really difficult time, I think, for all of us. not knowing what to do and what was wrong. And me not knowing how to even share it. You you eventually did talk to your parents about it, I think, right? Yeah, about a year after

I I couldn't hold it in anymore and I I absolutely broke and I shared what happened with my parents and They didn't know how to handle it. You know, I don't know. Any parent That

would feel comfortable handling something like this, but It was kind of decided That we would just not talk about it. Because

Bringing this up would destroy the family. So as a family, we decided that we just would not talk about it. And that was kind of another record scratch, I think, and how the rest of my life would go. Um

You Did manage to make it through high school and graduate and you you became a student at the University of New Hampshire Um but you Continued.

to drink and And really started to to use drugs more and more and more. Yes, I was looking for a way out of my

body. I wanted to just not be here. I wasn't suicidal. I just didn't want to exist with the thoughts and the feelings that were inside my body. So I tried A lot of different things. I tried drinking. I didn't really love it. It didn't work the way I needed it to. I d dabbled with controlling my eating. That definitely did not stick. It was like never anything I was interested in. And then I found drugs. I smoked my first joint. the summer between my senior and freshman year of college, and I thought this is it.

This is the thing that is going to take me so far outside of myself, the way I've been looking for. And I dove in so hard and so fast from that point on. So what did that mean? I mean a you're a student And also As you say, Dovin

so hard so fast, how are you managing your life? I was highly functional, as you might imagine, from someone who was, you know, a straight A student and very type A and very dedicated and very committed. For the first two years of school, I went to all my classes And also drank and used as many drugs as I possibly could. at the same time, and I managed to keep the wheels on that bus for about two years, which is is pretty remarkable. But

Of course, it devolved, and when it devolved, it devolved very quickly. So what what happened? I mean did you Did you make it through college or I mean did you have to drop out? Yeah, I did drop out. By my junior year in college, I was dating a drug dealer who gave me access to anything I could possibly want. And I dove into harder and harder drugs.

And so halfway through my junior year, I realized I was failing all my classes. I still have nightmares to this day, guy, of like not showing up for my botany class and feeling like what am I gonna do about this? So I went to the registrar's office and I made up some story about my parents getting divorced, which they were, actually. Uh, and I mentioned that I was just really struggling with my schoolwork and I would like to withdraw from my classes. And so I was able to withdraw. I think I got one F, but the rest of them were withdraws and um You know, people in New Hampshire were really starting to catch on that I was not okay. My sister, for one, she was at school with me my junior year, and she knew that my drug use had spiraled into uncontrollable territory, so I left. I bounced, and I went down to Virginia to live with my dad. He moved down there.

After his divorce? He had remarried at this point, and I went down there to live with them, and I met another drug dealer very quickly, and I started dating him very quickly, and he had more access to heroin than the last drug dealer, so I got into that very quickly, and I found a job, and I was able to maintain that job. Mostly, again I was mostly functional. for the next six to nine months, but my parents started wondering what was wrong, they could see the signs, I was flaky at work, they were wondering what was going on. And so, you know, eventually when they caught on that things maybe weren't okay, I moved back to New Hampshire. I just bounced around from location to location for a few years, the second anyone started to wonder what was maybe wrong with me.

So you're you're kind of floating right? I mean this is you you hadn't graduated, you dropped out and and I mean, what did you think about your life? I mean here you are, you're You're you know, twenty five, twenty six. um managing to you know, to keep a job and and you know, earn enough to probably to pay rent, but still

You know, addicted. I tried very hard not to think about my life. If I were to think about my life. It quickly became overwhelming. I knew. That I was in so much trouble. I knew that my drug use had become uncontrollable. I tried to stop once or twice and absolutely could not.

And I knew that underneath all of this was this trauma that I had refused to address, and if I stopped using drugs, I would have to look at that. So I tried really hard. Not to think. So how did it end? I mean how what happened to knock you out of it? I was living with a boyfriend at the time who In the beginning knew that I used drugs, but did not

realized the extent because again I hid that from him and I was highly functional. But the last six months of our relationship, it was pretty obvious that I was seriously addicted and unable to control my use and my behavior at home started to become very erratic. And There was just one night where he said to me, I can't do this anymore. I can't watch you do this to yourself anymore. So if you want to go to rehab, I will call right now. I will find you a bed. I will drive you. And I'll be there for you. And if you can't do that tonight, I'm I'm leaving. I can't do this.

And I just I had a moment Of Clarity. And I said to him in that moment before I could lose my nerve, I will go.

When he called and he found me a bed in the first rehab facility he called, which is incredible. And an hour later I was tucked into rehab. And what of I mean, did you Did you keep this from you had such a tight knit family. You know, did you keep this from them? D were they aware of it?

I had to call my mom. From rehab. To say, Hey mom, I'm in rehab. For a drug addiction. And again, my mom had no experience with drugs or alcohol. Nobody used drugs in my family. Nobody drank to excess. This was just not something she had experience with. So I had to call her from rehab and she was

Supportive in the best way that she could, you know, not not really knowing how to navigate this either. So you You had a relapse about a year later. Um and You went back to

Therapy. And I guess Around that time. You Somehow

started to exercise as a as a I guess is a way to try to keep yourself busy and to actively kind of tackle this and and and avoid relapse. Yes, I got out of rehab.

And I knew that something had to be different. And so I Thought to myself, well What would a healthy person with healthy habits do? If I were healthy, if I didn't just come out of rehab, if I wasn't, you know, still craving heroin, like what would I be doing? And the first thing that came to mind was you would go to the gym before work. Because

Only healthy people are at the gym at five AM. And so having never set foot in a gym before in my life at this point, I found a gold's gym that was pretty close to my office. And I started going Five mornings a week. And then I met a group of women at the gym.

Yeah. And they would run every morning. And one of them said one day, Do you want to come running for us? I had never run. in my life a month ago I was snorting heroin and I said yes I would love to And so I started running. And I think those women probably did more for my recovery.

than just about anything. And that kind of became my routine for the next two years. So started with running. And running is it's an amazing exercise to do because it it really especially you can go slowly and it can really clear the mind. Yeah, and that was the fun thing about this group is that one of the women ran really fast. So she would run ahead and then run back and catch up with us and then run ahead again. Some people ran really slow. I was a very slow runner, so sometimes one of the women would hang back and we'd just chat the whole time, but

I loved it and it turns out I was pretty good at it, despite never having run before and and then, you know, it on the off days when I wasn't running, I would do some machines and and hit some weights, and that led me to doing a few triathlons. I did a few sprint level triathlons where I swam and biked and ran and And that all felt pretty good. Hm. And and I guess uh d during this time you also went back to school and and and did eventually get your degree. Um and and you were also working for an insurance company I think around this time that uh and w you eventually became a manager there, right? Yeah.

And and of course you were getting more and more into fitness and and this is sort of around like two thousand five, two thousand six. And I I remember that around that time you would start to see CrossFit gyms pop up here and there. It starts to become a thing, right? And and you stumbled on it, I guess. I did. I was really into kettlebells. This was before kettlebells were a big thing, and nobody taught kettlebells in New Hampshire. Nobody even knew what they were, but I was managing an office in San Diego at this time, and my sister lived in San Diego, and she was training kettlebells with a woman in San Diego, so I would go learn kettlebells with her.

But nobody back home knew what I was talking about. And I found an RKC certified kettlebell instructor in Maine. And I used to drive two hours on Saturdays for private lessons with him, because I was really into it. And kettlebells, we sh I I think it's important to put they're really good for your core, it's really good for cardio exercises, it's good for stability. Like it's a really a Amazing. It's just a weight, but it's just the way it's shaped. Yes, it's a fantastic tool for all kinds of things. They're one of the things where people ask me if I'm building out a home gym, what are just a few pieces of equipment I should have. A kettlebell is definitely on that list. Yeah. So I got into kettlebells and then CrossFit was now becoming this really big thing. And of course we didn't have a CrossFit gym in New Hampshire back then, but I became aware of CrossFit exercises. CrossFit used kettlebells quite a bit. And this was right around the time that I met my whole thirty co founder. This is this is uh Dallas Hartwig. Dallas, yes, Dallas. Who would eventually b become your husband in addition to to

being your co founder. Yes. So he was interested in kettlebells. He was interested in CrossFit. He was a physical therapist and also an athletic trainer. He taught me how to deadlift. He taught me how to do a lot of the CrossFit moves. And when a CrossFit gym did open in New Hampshire I started going there to train too. So I became very invested in CrossFit and the CrossFit community. And and what was it about? Crossfit that I mean it's I've done it before, it's awesome, but

You know, not everybody kind of people try it and then move on. Wha what was it That you really loved about it. I you know, CrossFit in two thousand six was very hardcore. you had to be willing to punish yourself and really hurt. If you want to do some of these workouts that are so short but so brutal, you have to be comfortable with discomfort. And at that point in my own

Healing journey. I was really into self punishment. I was really into working my body really hard. And so that language Really spoke to me, but CrossFit is really where I discovered that I was atletic. And I was coordinated, and I could be fit, and I loved that about myself. So

While you were getting into CrossFit, this is also a time when another phenomenon is happening, which is blogs. Like blogs really start in the early two thousands. And they're exploding by two thousand six. And you You get in on this. You're like, I I I like to write about My CrossFit. Journey, I guess. Is that is that how it started?

Yes. I started my blog, my training blog, which was called Urban Gets Diesel. I make no apologies for that. Um, but I started my blog as a way of Just sharing more. About

the way I thought about workouts and the way I thought about training and The blog started amassing quite a few readers. It became pretty popular. I had a lot of comments, I had and it was fun, and it was just something I was doing for free on the side, nights and weekends. But the more I wrote, the more deeply invested I got in the CrossFit community, too. I started writing for the CrossFit Journal and I started traveling for CrossFit kettlebell certifications. So I became very closely entwined with the community. Through the blog. And then you decide in the midst of this to open up your own CrossFit gym.

Yeah, you know what? This is wild, but CrossFit called me and said You're doing so much for the community. Have you ever thought about opening your own CrossFit gym? And I was like, yeah, I would love to. Wow, and was that har I mean How did you was it complicated? Was it expensive? I mean, I guess Manchester and Hampshire may be to find and rent a place maybe not not the same as like doing it in Boston. Okay, well I did it in such a way that I didn't have to do any of that because I knew that that was outside of my capability. I had this full-time job that was really important. What I did was I approached my local powerlifting gym.

And I said to them, hey, I wanna open a CrossFit affiliate, but I'm only gonna train people on the weekends and maybe one night a week. Can I use your space for that? And just give you a small amount of money. And they literally said to me, Oh, you can do that for free. Don't worry about it. Just bring your clients in. You know, occasionally maybe mention us, give us like a shout out. So I opened a part-time CrossFit affiliate with maybe 10 or 12 clients. Inside an existing gym. Yes, I mean it was every night I would get home from work and I would write my blog post for the next day. And then on the weekends, occasionally I would travel for certifications or I would train my clients or I would be working on blog posts for the next week. So it w it really did turn into a part-time kind of hustle.

Alright, the story that I have h I have heard is is that There was a certain point, this around two thousand nine, where Dallas, who was your partner, you were not yet I don't think you were married yet. No. Um he started to get shoulder pain. Yeah. You would think that the first thing he might do is stop CrossFit, like maybe it's the physical exercises that were causing the shoulder pain, but w that wasn't the issue.

So he did. He had this chronic shoulder tendinitis. He and I both shared that actually. I also had this recurring shoulder pain that I would go see him for f actual physical therapy for. And of course, we modulated our workouts. But even with modulating his workouts and resting and doing all of the PT things that he knew. He needed to do, he still struggled to find relief with the shoulder tendonitis. So what did he

Dis what did he decide to try and do? So he had been doing some research into the impact of dietary choices on inflammation in the body. And at this time, paleo was all the rage. Dr. Lauren Cordain was kind of the godfather of Paleo, and he had written several papers on the impact of legumes and their potentially inflammatory impact. On folks who are sensitive.

And if you are sensitive, it could be provoking an immune response, an inflammator response that can manifest in a number of different ways throughout the body. And I sh should mention Lauren Cordane. He's the guy who came up with what and and I think called it the paleo diet back in in the early two thousands or may maybe even the late nineties. Um And really, you know, around this time much more attention was was being paid to

the efficacy of this diet. It's very controversial, I should say. I mean and and you know, like all nutrition But His basic point is is that if you eat more like Humans ate. before they adopted a you know an agrarian

It may actually be better for us. That was his basic argument. Yes. And yes, it was h highly controversial. I'm not sure was particularly Science backed in terms of You know the health

benefits of eating more like our Paleolithic ancestors, but Some of the information he presented in his findings were Like the idea that there may be compound in certain foods to which you are sensitive, but not aware that you're sensitive. We're very interesting. Alright, so you guys decide to try this, basically, for a month to see if there's any impact. And what did you get rid of? What did you stop eating?

You know, I was already eating a pretty whole foods based diet, in that I was doing, you know, a lot of turkey and a lot of chicken and a lot of vegetables and salads. But what it entailed me getting rid of were the breads and Maybe some rice, definitely oatmeal. I was eating a lot of oatmeal, so I ditched all of those grains and started eating more veggies and fruit. I got rid of most added sugar in this first go around, so I wasn't particularly pedantic about it. I switched to my iced Coffee's black, which I did not enjoy, but I suffered through. So dairy, got rid of dairy. Yes, all dairy. Um, and then legume, so beans.

peas, soy, peanuts, which I wasn't really eating a lot of anyway. Yeah. And then no alcohol for thirty days, of course. Okay. So you do all this. And

w what happened to you guys when you started to I mean presumably it took a couple days or weeks for you to start to feel Any difference. So we started this experiment. I thought I was really interested, particularly in performance results. Could I get improved performance in the gym and maybe improved recovery? That was kind of all I was thinking about, or all I was focused on. I would say by two weeks in. I was in energizer bunny mode. I woke up at 5 a.m. without my alarm with so much energy. I no longer had the 2 p.m. head-on-desk slump. My sleep was so much better. Even my mood was happier. People at work

were saying, what have you been doing? Because I was so much more talkative and so much more just happier. It was like someone flipped a switch. When we come back in just a moment. Melissa discovers that she has a knack for teaching others about the 30 day diet. And not only that, People will pay her to do it.

Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2009 and Melissa is in the midst of a 30-day experiment where she cuts out grains, legumes, dairy, and most sugar. And she's seeing huge benefits, and when her partner Dallas tries it as well, His shoulder pain disappeared, which was really again unexpected, but confirmed for him. Та тер сам протіс. In and I I don't remember when he reintroduced if he discovered that it was

beans or gluten grains that were sort of the primary culprit. Um and I know that he can eat those foods now without shoulder, so what the experiment helped him do was just eliminate some inflammatory factors to give him the opportunity for his shoulder to heal. And yeah, he was equally, I think, surprised. And just to play like kinda just to push back here for a moment, because I ha I have to do that because I'm with you. Like I do eat this diet and so I I'm a believer, but I'm also like

a believer in science and I still trust like public health guidance. And so I would say that maybe some of that was psych psychological. Like because of the choices you made with the food, you start to believe that it was actually having that impact. Yes, you know, when you're when you're talking about an elimination diet, the research definitely does show a placebo effect. Yes. In that when participants eliminate food, they expect to feel better. And that is a very real phenomenon, and that's why many healthcare professionals recommend that you repeat an elimination diet at least one additional time to kind of confirm findings.

What I will say though is like, does it matter? Does it matter if it's placebo, if I feel better and I have more energy. And you know, all of these things cascade into one another. I'm sleeping better. So of course I have more energy. And of course my mood is happier and I'm feeling more well rested and I'm feeling more patient. And that gives me a little bit more energy for the gym. This is this is two thousand nine. Now we're talking in two thousand twenty four when inflammation is like really front and center in in the in the you know conversation around nutrition. Um I mean you can listen to you know Peter Artiz podcasts or you know Mar Mark Hyman's written a bunch of books. So there's a lot of these You know, well respected.

people of science um Uh Shown and pointed out that Inflammation the body is connected to Diabetes, heart disease.

cancer, Alzheimer's, et cetera. And If you can reduce inflammation of the body. You're you're gonna have overall health benefits, basically. That's the argument.

Yes, and we're specifically talking about chronic systemic inflammation, because some inflammation, of course, is incredibly helpful. If you sprain your ankle and you've got this acute inflammation that's localized, it's immune cells that are rushing to the source of the injury to help you heal. Working out lifting weights. Correct, yeah. Is it a form of inflammation. You need that to build muscle. Exactly. But what we're talking about here is this low grade chronic systemic inflammation where your immune system is just generally fired up. all throughout the body where it doesn't need to be. Alright, so you do this, you and Dallas do this, and I have to assume on your blog

You're writing about this. Yeah, I decided to write about it in July of two thousand nine on Urban Gets Diesel, and I called the article Change Your Life in Thirty Days, and I shared a very rudimentary set of rules that we had followed. And I said You know, if anyone wants to give it a go, I'd be happy to lead people through it. And at the end of the thirty days, I gathered Testimonials from people. What happened? How how did it work for you?

And and what did people say? You know, when two people do an experiment and get really remarkable results, you're like, that's interesting. When a hundred people do an experiment and get remarkably consistent, equally stunning results, that was the point where I said, Oh, this is something. We have something here. People reported the same energy boosts, sleep improvements, mood improvements, focus improvements, digestive improvements, reduction in cravings. And then people started talking about how they haven't had a migraine in 30 days, or they haven't had an asthma attack, or their seasonal allergies are gone. And That was really exciting, I think, for me. And you weren't calling it whole thirty at the time. No. You have a name for it. No name. It was change your life in thirty days, that was what we were calling it. It was a mouthful. But that was the point where I thought, I maybe this could be something. And that was the first moment that I thought, like am I gonna jump and leave my job and see if I can focus on this full time? I wasn't ready yet, by any means, but that was the first inkling that maybe I could.

And How did you start to Imagine what that could be. I don't know that I had a vision for it or a plan, but I do know that after I shared that blog result in July 2009.

CrossFit Jims started emailing us saying would you come to Arlington, Virginia. Would you come to New York City? Would you come to, you know, Hartford, Connecticut to talk to our CrossFit gym? Wow. To do like a seminar. Yep, to do a seminar. And we so the first group to reach out was an Arlington, Virginia based gym. It was a guy in CrossFit who we had known. And he was like, Will you come down and talk to our members? And we were like, Sure.

So we jumped in the car on a Friday. Drove down to Virginia. sat people in a cold CrossFit gym on metal folding chair for eight hours. and talked about the whole thirty. And

They loved it. I don't even think we charged for this first one. We just drove down, talked about the whole thirty and Came back home and more and more gyms started reaching out. I was working my full time job, and three weekends out of every month we were driving somewhere in New England. to go talk to CrossFit Jims about the whole thirty. And did you call it whole thirty at that point?

Yeah, we named it might have been August or September. I kinda crowdsourced with my community. And someone mentioned, Well, this kind of changed my whole life and I thought, Okay, we'll call it whole thirty. So you're you're going to these gyms talking about this This thing that you did in it this elimination diet.

and still blogging about it and continuing to do it, right? I mean continuing to eat this way. So it was m mainly At that point, uh would you say like a more of a paleo diet? After my first full thirty, I discovered some foods that I thought worked well for me did not. And You know, I I really need to emphasize here that we don't eliminate foods. On the whole thirty because they're bad. There are no good or bad foods universally.

What we're doing here is just providing you with a template. To experiment with these foods, pull them out of your diet, reintroduce them, and decide for yourself. how they work for you. Right. Dairy at that point in my life was not my friend. It left me super bloated. I felt like I had an alien in my belly, so I gave up my beloved cottage cheese. I didn't go back to eating a lot of gluten containing grains either. because they also left me bloated and they made me break out. So I was really used to at that point eating a lot of veggies. But there were other foods like corn and popcorn and you know some added sugar and

Uh hummus that I found worked great for me, so I kept on eating those. You know, the goal is not to eat whole thirty forever, it's about to figure out what works for you and then incorporate that in whatever way you like into your long term diet, and that's what I did. Yeah. Um okay. In the meantime, right, the the whole thirty

more and more of your time and and I think around twenty ten You start thinking about about quitting your day job. Right, the the uh the one that you had at the insurance company, right? Yes. At this point in the company, they had done a round of layoffs, but offered several employees retention bonuses if they agreed to stay for the next three years. And so I signed on for that retention bonus, which was great. My job was secure and I knew that at the end of three years I'd have this like little lump sum of cash coming in.

And my retention bonus was coming up in April 2010. That was the three year period. where whether I stayed or left I would get that$50,000 bonus in my bank account And there really wasn't a hard decision to make. I knew I wanted to pursue this. So they gave you a fifty thousand dollar retention bonus because you stayed when they had layoffs three years earlier. So you knew that money was coming in, but you still had debt, right? You still had some significant debt. Student loans, I think, credit card debt. Yeah, I had like 30k in student loans. I had$10,000 in credit card debt. I had a terrible credit score because of my drug days, but I don't know, I just

I had faith. that we were gonna be able to make this work. And also, if we couldn't, I could just get another job. Yeah, so let's talk about how you were gonna turn this into a business because It was You blogging about your experience, you going to CrossFit Gyms, initially speaking for free, and I guess at a certain point in 2010,

You came up with a Like a A fee structure for your lectures? Yeah, we started charging for them actually pretty early. Like the first one we did for free, but I think the next one we might have charged people thirty-five dollars or fifty dollars, and eventually the ticket price was a hundred dollars. And we were in CrossFit Philly talking to a crowd of a hundred and fifty. people who paid a hundred dollars apiece. It felt like pretty good money at that point.

We were also doing some one on one consulting. So we were charging, you know, a hundred bucks an hour or a hundred and fifty dollars an hour to work one on one with people. I wasn't sure how we were gonna make it a business, but I knew that the seminar requests were so voluminous we could not keep up with them. And we could travel for a weekend and do one or two seminars in a location and make a pretty good chunk of change. And this is really what what you start to do. I think like in in the summer of tw twenty ten you were in San Diego. doing a seminar and I guess your parents or your m m one of your parents was in town, maybe your mom was there

And she's kinda shocked to see all these people turn out. Yeah. We had in twenty ten, after I quit my job. Dallas and I at this point were together, we were dating. Not yet married though, and we did this big road trip that lasted about six weeks through the entire US. And we probably did, I don't know, twenty or thirty seminars that summer driving from place to place. When we were in San Diego for the seminar, because my sister lived there, my mom and her husband flew out for it.

And during a break, my mom came up and she was like, People paid you to be here. And I said, Yes, mom, this is what we've been doing. People are paying us to talk about this. And you know, she was so worried about the fact that I didn't have health insurance and that I'd given up the best paying job I'd ever had, but That was the moment where she said, I I think this is like a thing that you have. And I'm like, Well, I sure hope so, because I just quit my job. When we come back in just a moment, whole 30 grows into a business, a book, and a brand. Melissa has to rethink all of that when she and Dallas Split up.

Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2010 and Melissa and Dallas have moved to Salt Lake City to be more centrally located. They're building a business around the whole thirty diet and holding seminars across the country. And those seminars.

are starting to take off. There was a seminar we did at a CrossFit gym in Philadelphia one year. And I said to Dallas There are a lot of people our parents age here, and that was unusual, almost always. CrossFit gyms were populated by young fit. People.

And so we started at a break walking around talking to people and oh so happy to have you here. What brings you here? And people would say My daughter told me about you. She lives in Albuquerque and she said I should come. Or my niece did a whole thirty and she loved it so much she shared it with Me and now I'm here to learn more about it. So People have such An incredible experience with the program, and then they tell everyone they know.

And so largely in the early days, we grew via word of mouth. It was your sister, your friend, your hairdresser who told you about the program. So as you were Talking about whole thirty. and it was gaining more traction. It was changing, right? It wasn't like this fixed thing. I mean, over the life of whole thirty, What was sort of restricted and what's not has changed.

Very much so, you know, in the earliest iteration of We essentially took a paleo framework. and put it into an elimination diet format. But very quickly In 2010, in 2011 We started recruiting the help of

scientists and medical doctors and psychiatrists and PhDs to really help us dive into the research behind it so that we weren't being dogmatic. You know, the earliest iteration of the whole thirty said no white potatoes, because Lauren Cordane said no white potatoes. And then we do some research and we do some digging and we're like, Well, that's dumb. Potatoes are whole real nutrient dense food. Like of course you can have potatoes on the whole thirty. So that was the first rule change we made. But high in carbs. Yeah, they're high in carbs, but for some people that might be really appropriate for their context. And for others, you know, we're not saying you have to eat potatoes, but We began having a lot more conversation about the nuance and the context that is always necessary when you're talking about diet.

But the basic principles are At this point. You know, it's still no sugar, right? For during the thirty day elimination, yes. No added sugar, no alcohol, no grains, no legumes, no dairy. Those are sort of the basics of the rules. Right. And then you reintroduce things that your body, you know, is okay with, but is the idea

you know, initially it was about reducing inflammation in Dallas's shoulder and you and yours too. Is it Today about reducing inflammation or is it is it about just feeling better? Or both.

Historically we talk about kind of looking at the whole thirty impacting the body in four areas. Your cravings and your emotional relationship with food. There's a lot of habit research and behavior change science woven into the whole thirty. So that's one area. We look at blood sugar regulation and metabolic health. We look at digestion and gut health and then inflammation or uh the status of your immune system. And dietary changes can have an impact on all four of those areas. We're not here to tell you what to eat or how to eat when your whole thirty is over. We're here to give you the tools to help you evaluate that for yourself. So How did you

I mean w when you in Dallas were kind of coming up with what this would be Was it going to be? business around seminars and content or did you think Well we've got to figure out Bigger ways of of

You know, building us out. In two thousand ten We were doing these seminars all across the country, making good money every weekend. And then when we got to British Columbia as part of our road trip to visit Dallas's family. We took two weeks off. And we realized that we did not make any money.

when we took time off and we realized that that was deeply problematic. And that was the moment where the term passive income was introduced to my lexicon. I was like we need a way to make money even when we are not working. We can only take on so many consulting clients a day. There are only so many weekends in the year to do a seminar. And We can't survive on that. We have to take time off. We have to take weekend off. And that was the first moment where we thought we have to create something that we can just create once. And then sell. and then that's gonna earn us revenue in between.

And w and what did you start to Think about. We put together a 40 page PDF on how to do the whole three. It was essentially our seminar packaged down into PDF format. All of the stuff that we talked about, the science behind it, the big picture recommendations, the rules of the program, how to do it, tips for grocery shopping and meal planning, and We put that all into a PDF. And we sold it through our website for$39.99.

So it was a digital book. Mm-hmm. It was a digital book, but it wasn't even an ebook. It was literally just a PDF that you downloaded. And We sold thousands. Thousands of this PDF people were so hungry for how to do the whole thirty. And this was an accessible, easy way to lead. hundreds of thousands of people through the program.

So you knew that basically you had to write a book. Yeah. That was the point when we started thinking about, okay, well maybe we could turn this into a book. Yeah. And one Small independent publisher Victory Belt, which was operating out of Las Vegas at the time. Reached out and said Maybe we could do a book about the whole thirty together. And they had just published a book, another paleo book, in the kind of in our community that had done pretty well. And I think they decided that they were gonna be like the paleo book publisher. So they reached out to us. I didn't know anything about publishing. I didn't know to ask about in advance. I didn't know anything about agents, I didn't know anything, but we wanted to write a book. And so we were like, yes, great, sounds good.

Signed a contract and started writing. So this was gonna be The first book. It starts with food. Um and that was gonna kinda lay out The science behind the whole thirty

And this came out I think. in twenty twelve, right? Yeah. And It it was did pretty well. I mean it got got quite a bit of traction.

It did. It it didn't hit the New York Times bestseller list right away. It was published in June. But I got the call from my publisher in September. that it had gained enough traction and it it made the list, which was huge. I never expected that. So yeah, it did really well. Okay, so at this point you have the seminars and and the one on one coaching and the book

Um, and then another big part of your business would become uh like a kind of partnership program, right? Like where food brands could pay to become whole thirty approved and then put that logo on their packaging, right? Yes. In two thousand eleven, we came across this company called Primal PAX. They were making this jerky Not dried fruit kind of snack mix. And the cool thing is that their jerky didn't include any added sugar.

And so they reached out to us and they were like, hey, we make we're a really small company like making these, you know, things out of my garage. But like we don't have any added sugar. And I thought that is so Cool. What if we Said you were poll thirty approved.

And we introduced you to our community and we could make an affiliate commission if people bought it through our link. And he was all on board because we were now introducing his product to a whole new community. And there was no agreement, there was no contract, there was no payment. other than you know our affiliate link. But that was the first Time that we thought Maybe we could connect

partner products with our community and have it be a three way win for everybody. Okay, so you you had you were experimenting with like whole thirty approved, but it was still kind of early days. And and meantime Did you have brands or small companies who who made, you know

certain products up start to approach you and say, Hey, can we do this too? We did, yeah. You know, Epic Bar was another very early adopter now owned by General Mills and absolutely huge company. Yeah. But at the time, they were just like two, you know, two young young adults who were making these meat sticks that happened to again meet whole thirty compatibility, you know, guidelines and and so we did a deal with them. I think there was a contract for Epic Bar, like a really simple one pager, and they may have paid us like five hundred dollars to use the logo and They put it on their products. Sea snacks was another really early adopter, those seaweed snacks that are still so popular now, but they were an early believer in the brand. But it was it's like an if you build it, they will come phenomenon where we needed brands in the approval program to lend legitimacy to the program. Like this is the thing that you want for your brand.

Did you have I mean, you know, g any product I mean not any but but really you don't need permission to say paleo friendly or keto friendly on a brand. That's not a trademark, right? But were there um You know, did you start to see sometimes people describing their food as like whole thirty friendly without asking permission? So You can still describe your food as whole thirty friendly, but if you want to use the whole thirty logo and now whole thirty approved is also a legally registered trademark, yeah, you have to have a license for it. So

In the early days, we didn't see a lot of overstep, but when we did, I had a good trademark attorney who would go in and, you know, very politely request that they take it down. So we were pretty persistent in protecting the trademark early on, knowing how important that was going to be for future contracts. How did you decide? I mean, initially charging five hundred bucks for You know, the use of your logo is not um you're you're not gonna build a business around that. But how did you start to think about The value of that logo on on a brand.

You know I always had a hard time. I still to this day sometimes have a hard time thinking of whole thirty as anything other than this. Scrappy word of mouth little do-it-yourself brand. And so I really undercharged for so many years for some of these licenses. Um in twenty, I think twenty eighteen.

We hired an in house attorney, somebody to run our licensing program, and she was the one. To take a look at all of our contracts and all of our deals and say, y'all are undercharging like massively. And she was the one who created our new contracts and set our new pricing structure. And so from that point on, licensing became a much bigger part of our revenue stream and and we really did start charging what we were worth, but We spent a lot of years just getting brands on board. Because adoption was really important. So I guess a lot of people a after your first book came out wanted a more sort of step by step

guide on how to do this, right? And so that was gonna be your next book, which was the whole thirty. 'Cause people wanted to know, look, I I get it, I I've read it, but I just I just need like a paint by numbers thing here. Just make it really easy for me. Exactly. I still felt like I had so much to say about the whole 30 and and so many different pieces of advice and tips and resources I could offer down to just the most granular, Oh, I'm doing the whole thirty alone. My husband's not doing it with me. Like how how should I go about this? Or what tips do you have? I had so much to offer. That

The idea for the second book came up. Almost immediately after the first one. Was published. So That book

Was written, you guys wrote that book, but you also Your partnership your marriage was was

Coming apart. Again, you know, don't always talk about this on the show unless it's connected to the business, and this was inextricably linked'cause the two of you had A business together. But your personal life. was coming apart.

Yeah. You i in in this book the whole thirty came out While you were in the Process of divorcing.

Yeah. Yes. And you had to go on book tour and you had to show a happy face, and how did you mm Guys manage that. That was so Hard it was so challenging. We knew the marriage was over and we were in the process of quietly divorcing, but we had already signed this book contract. We had an obligation.

To our publisher to write and promote this book to the best of our abilities. And so we are on tour for this book in April 2015, and our publisher is booking our hotel rooms, and we are quietly booking a second hotel room. Paid for with our own money. So that we could maintain our own individual Spaces. And then during the media and during the tour events, we came together.

And we did a really good job. We were a good team. I'm really proud of how we behaved. We could have made it difficult. And we didn't. We promoted the book, we did a great job. And then when the tour was over. We made a a very simple announcement, told our publishers, told

our agent. and moved on with the divorce and the business split. Uh. Now here's Another

So challenge, which is your you had changed your name. you had taken on. Yeah. Dallas' last name, and that was your professional name because the book came out, you're Melissa Hartwig. You were blogging under that name. He had written two books with that m Melissa and Dallas Hartwig.

So I mean I'm assuming your publisher who's like looks kinda a bestseller Like that's your name. Yeah. Oh my goodness, I just

Never change your name. Just don't. Just keep the same name that you have. That's the my advice. I remember going to my publisher after the divorce saying, Okay, um, and as part of the divorce, I'm gonna change my name back to Urban and I'm gonna keep it that forever. And my publisher said, Well, you can't. You're already under contract for your next two books. Hartwig is the name that you wrote under that's the name the media knows, that's the name the public knows, that's the name the booksellers know. Like You can't change your name. And I

Went back and I thought about it. And I came back to my publisher and I said that is absolutely unacceptable. So let's talk about a way to change my name that suits your needs but also suits my timeline. So for a couple years we did a hybrid approach where I was Melissa Hartwig Urban on books. And we did that for I think two book cycles. And then I was finally able to drop the heartwig and go straight to Urban. So but it was a process.

Yeah. And presumably with the split, you also had to c figure out what to do about the business, about the whole thirty business. Yes, there was never any question whatsoever that I was going to buy him out. He agreed with that. I agreed with that. This was my passion. This was my baby. I had

a jillion ideas for it and he did not want it. Of course, the issue was What does it look like? How much money do I give him? What does he get to keep, right? There were seminal articles and pieces of content that he wanted to use going forward and You know, what does that look like and how do we share in those things? So it was complex.

Any breakup, whether it's a divorce or partnership breakup. in a business is just so complicated. It's so challenging. And there's no playbook for it. I mean, you just have to Hope that Everybody can work through the

The challenges. Yes. And I mean add to that we had a one year old. At the time. So it's Figuring out what to do about the business, figuring out how to be a solo parent, you know, I'm lucky in that he's a a great co parent, but

It it was the hardest year of my life, certainly, having especially having to do all of this in such a public fashion. But I also remember it being one of the happiest, so That I guess that's paradoxical, but that's how it was. How did you especially when when you know you guys split in in twenty uh fifteen, how did you um Like

start sort of staff the the company. I mean, did you I I'm assuming you didn't need too many people to run the business. No, I think we hired our first employee in 2012, and she stayed on for a couple of years, and then we hired another assistant in 2013, a social media manager. And in twenty sixteen, we hired a a whole thirty approved partner coordinator because the licensing program was blowing up at that point. Right. I mean on that point, I think

I think around this time you started to do promotions with some some pretty big retailers like Whole Foods, right? Yeah. We had whole you know, as you mentioned, whole foods. in the Rocky Mountain region did this big Whole Thirty approved promotion. So for a period of three months when you went into their store, you saw Whole Thirty approved logos on everything. These little shelf tags that would call out. Our Whole Thirty approved partners, I'll never forget the time that one of our brands was trying to get into Whole Foods and they had a meeting and said Whole Foods said to them,

We would love to have you in would you put the whole 30 approved logo on the front of your bottle? Move it from the back of the bottle to the front. And that was the point where I thought, okay. It felt like we were a pretty established brand by that point in twenty seventeen. With this platform, I mean I imagine la you had people coming to you

consultants, maybe entrepreneurs and other people saying, you know, Melissa, you really can do a million things with this. Like you should have You should be making food. I mean, you're you're basically saying, look, this is what you should eat. Why don't you make the food and then people could buy that food. Yes. I've had investors

approach since very early days, and I've had good conversations and gone even pretty far down the road with a few of them. But we're such a mission driven business. And I'm so focused on impact. I am not a profit driven CEO, I'm not a revenue driven CEO, or care if we turn into a billion dollar organization. And so many of the things that these consultants or investors wanted to do to turn us into a$100 million company would have felt gross.

And I didn't want to do it. You did Do a line of salad dressings and dipping sauces. Tell me about that decision. Why did why did you feel I mean uh to me it makes perfect sense. Like it's the obvious next step.

But was that was that a struggle for you to to m to make that decision, to decide to do that? It was an obvious Next step, and also it took us until 2020 to actually do it. But over time It became obvious that we could fill a niche within our community and offer them something that would solve for pain points, that would add flavor, that would add deliciousness. So in twenty eighteen we started talking about what that product could be and a salad dressing and and sauce kind of line.

was the obvious choice, and then it took us about two years to figure out how to get it off the ground, and we launched in 2020. So this product comes out in the middle of Covid, actually. Um and and h how to do. Yeah. Well

It was obviously not ideal to launch mid-pandemic. So The salad dressings did very, very well. When we launched, but we quickly ran into issues: manufacturing issues, supply chain disruptions, you know, freight and distribution challenges. We just started getting our butts kicked, to be perfectly frank, and we weren't big enough and did not have economies of scale to be able to absorb it.

Yeah,'cause I imagine like somebody like you goes to Whole Foods or you know, sprouts and and you're like, Hey, I want to do a product, they're like Let's go. Immediately, yes. Right. They're like, Of course we want to work with you. You're you're Melissa Urban, like this is whole thirty, let's do it. At the same time Right? I mean

There were brands like Primal Kitchen that were whole thirty approved that You know depended on that label. to really boost their sales might have caused some tension, potential tension with those folks? That was a huge part of the thought process in launching, and I will tell you this, I personally called our three biggest toll thirty approved partners. Before we launched, and I had a call with Mark Sisson, head of Primal Kitchen, and I said, Hey

I want to let you know that we're thinking about doing this. Here's what we're thinking about launching. Like, what do you think? And he was so immediately supportive. I think this is great, Melissa. A rising tide raises all ships. The more the whole thirty logo gains prominence, the better it is for my brand because people are gonna see it on my bottles. And everyone was super supportive of. getting the whole thirty mark and the logo out there more. So we did it. And I'm certainly not saying we won't go there again, but That at that time.

The right move was to shut that down and reallocate those resources and that money to the core business. Okay, one of the things that you've done recently and and you launched this in twenty twenty three was A delivery service. Food delivery service made by whole thirty. So like meals ready to eat that you just heat up in the in the oven.

Yeah, exactly. So Made by Whole Thirty Meals launched in mid-December 2023. So just a few months ago. And again, a project that we've been working on for the better part of a year. So when you go to meals.holethirty.com, you'll enter your zip code, you'll see your local menu, because we've got local and regional chefs all throughout the country who are using locally sourced ingredients, seasonal ingredients that they're comfortable and familiar with. So everyone's menu looks a little different, but Most meal delivery services you have to subscribe and you're gonna get X number of meals. per week. We also have an option where you can just order one box of meals if you want. So if you want to supplement an especially busy week or you know you have guests in town and you just want a few easy meals, you can order just one meal at a time, or you can put meals on a subscription and get them every single week delivered.

So I mean When you think about Now I mean you've got this pretty recognized brand around nutrition, you know, that was really started out started out as a As an experiment.

Right. Um that came about because you got into fitness. It came about because you were trying to save yourself and and recover from substance abuse. Which was triggered by a traumatic experience. I mean, all those things like lead to this moment, right, this point where you are in your life. And I wonder how much of of all of the things that happened to you How much of of it do you think happened? because of the work he put in and how much just happened'cause of circumstances and and

Fate or luck. It's always both. It's always both. When I think about the earliest days of whole thirty and how fast we took off in the CrossFit community, it was because there was a hole. That we were prepared to step in and fill. Our timing was impeccable, and that was not by design, it was just how it happened. And also

We took advantage of those opportunities and we hustled and worked as hard as we could and made connections and networked and So It's always both. I love what I'm doing right now. I love the community that we have, the impact that we have.

If All of this blows up. For some reason. And I have to lay my whole team off and whole thirty is no longer a business and we no longer have whole thirty approved partners or licensing or and I never write another book. The whole thirty will live forever. People will still want to do the program.

I think the program itself has now Incredible longevity and staying power. And I'm still excited about that fifteen years later, which I feel very lucky to be able to say. But I would still like to see where it could go.

That's Melissa Urban, co founder and CEO of whole thirty. Melissa has a new book coming out soon, it's called The New Hole Thirty, and among other updates, it includes a plant-based option for vegans and vegetarians. And by the way, if you think doing the whole thirty means you can never eat something that you know is bad for you, Well

That's not entirely true. Like I love a good McDonald's hot fudge sundae. That is my th I'm not an ice cream person, but for some reason McDonald's hot fudge sundae is extra hot fudge. That's the one. But I love it. Wow, that's I mean, you know, it's a solid sundae. There's no question about it. So good, but I've figured out how much I can get away with and still feel amazing. And that's my sweet spot. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I kinda want a McDonald's Sunday. Extra hot fudge, that's the key. That's the key. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show, and as always, it's free.

This episode was produced by Chris Massini with music composed by Ronteen Erablui. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Catherine Cypher. Our audio engineers were Robert Rodriguez, Gilly Moon, and Patrick Murray. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Casey Herman, Carla Estevez, JC Howard, John Isabella, Carrie Thompson, Malia Agadello, and Sam Paulson.

I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to how I built this.

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