Ronnie Landis | Rethinking Veganism: The 10 Year Journey Back Home | Wellness Force #Podcast

It is just a choice that we make in the moment as to who we're going to be. And you can play the mediocrity game and the blame point fingers and wear your mask everywhere you go and deoxygenate yourself if you like, and that's cool. Or you can play the human potential game and the immortal soul game and access your intrinsic genius and bestow that genius upon yourself. And it's literally just a choice. Sam.

Wow. Wow. What an incredible day. We're here in the midst of utter chaos. We're talking about the truth about nutrients and about carnivore and vegan, and Ronnie Landis is on the show for the second time. Welcome back to the show, man.

Man, my pleasure. So stoked to be here. Thanks for having me.

This is really cool because a lot of people don't know this. You and I have been friends for a long time. When I first started my podcasting journey, were a roommate at that time, so the struggle was real. My friends, like, I started from the bottom, and now we're here. And what's really cool is that, you know, you have gone through your own journey. And when we did our podcast last time, I think it was episode 122, it was the truth about nutrients. We talked about raw foods and superfoods and organic foods. And since that time, you have, as we all have, you have exploded on the scene for not just the. Your awareness and nutrition, but your awareness of human being and human potential. You know, the actual container that we live in. And so for people that don't know you, man, we're about to talk about why you left the veganism movement, how you're eating meat now, which is the ultimate shocker. It's probably going to alienate a lot of people. And I'm super honored that you're choosing to have this conversation with me. But, yeah, we're digging into it today, right? Veganism. We're going to rethink veganism today from a place of science and from a place of heart, space. So thank you for being here, man. Tell people who you are in a nutshell right now. Like, what's the current version of Ronnie right now?

Wow. Okay. Yeah. Well, just to preface this whole thing, this is a huge moment for me to be able to break the ice with the holistic health community. I've done a number of interviews before, just kind of. Kind of dabbling into this topic. I've done a few YouTube videos, just kind of bringing this awareness out. And Ronnie Landis right now is really Just a human being on the journey of human potential and evolution. And part of that journey is the reintroduction of animal products, particularly animal or particularly meat based products in particular, which I have not incorporated into my dietary strategy in over 10 years. Over a decade. If somebody goes back to that original interview that we did on your podcast, there was a heavy focus on raw plant based nutrition and really talking about this intersection between plant based diets and animal based diets and kind of what's the middle path here? Because for me I was incredibly passionate, incredibly enthusiastic, and by the way, I still am. I just have a different tint on the whole thing. I have a different perspective, a different experiential wisdom, if you will, based on my own direct experience and the experience of many, many, many people that would be considered ex vegans. There is a mass exodus that is happening in the vegan movement which we can touch on later.

We'll put that on that.

Yeah, yeah, I think it's very important. We'll put that to the side for now. But just really in a nutshell, for me this is the integration of over a decade of being a professional nutritionist and really being somebody that's been more focused on health than ideology. Even when I was technically vegan, I guess this is the best place. Let me just back up for everybody. So a little bit about my journey. When I got into what we call veganism, I don't really like that term. I never resonated with it because there's so much baggage and there's layers and levels of ideology that are associated with veganism. There's politics, there's perception of ethics and morality which we can also talk about. But it's not necessarily about health or it's not just about health, let's say. There's a lot of other components that get kind of thrown together when you think of veganism. And for me it was really always about health. And at the time I felt that a high raw food being fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, fermented foods, sprouted grasses and grass powders and green powdered superfoods and superfoods in general were like the basis. And I still believe that for most people, I feel like in the middlethe kind of middle directive of what an ideal diet is, that's probably going to be true for most people. Right. The extremes are like extreme veganism, which then end up becoming like fruitarianism or something. That's like the extremism.

There's extremes on all dietary camps.

And that's exactly what I want to Articulate, that's the extreme, extreme of where veganism can take somebody down the endless rabbit hole. And then the other extreme on the animal product side is like carnivorism, right? Just excluding everything else that isn't really animal products and then really isn't meat. So there's these extremes and somewhere in the middle is what is going to actually work for the population. And I just felt like over my duration of being on a plant based lifestyle over a decade, even when I was vegan, I was never like a lot of vegans will be like, oh, he was never vegan. And you know what, from their definition, that's actually true. I was a nutritionist, I was a health practitioner. I wasn't. Although I believed in the plant based lifestyle and the benefits that can come from it, I knew that this wasn't going to work for everybody. I'd just seen it clinically, I've seen it in front of me. And I also knew that I had to go through a pretty extensive devotion to the subject of holistic health and physiology and understanding how different things interact with different things, supplements, foods, et cetera, to actually get to a point where I felt like I was thriving for a certain amount of time and I was thriving for a certain amount of time. But it's not as if I was thriving the whole way through. I had complications, I had challenges, I went through different parts in the journey where I had digestive issues and I had to actually solve those challenges in private. That's what allowed me to actually become like an expert on digestive conditions. Because I had digestive conditions about four or five years into my vegan vegetarian journey, which is going to bring up an interesting topic that I want to just point out for people. It's something called phytotoxins or phyto anti nutrients, Phytoalexins, which are plant pesticides, plant anti nutrients that are built into the plants, particularly like grains, pseudo grains, a lot of, you know, cruciferous vegetables, domesticated vegetables, and a lot of things that most of the vegan community is binging on as replacements to animal foods.

Let's, let's stop right there because most people don't know about this. The antinutrients that are in plants, nuts and seeds, legumes, the lectins. I mean, it's crazy to me that there's still this war of is my diet the right one or is your diet the right one? In my opinion, and I think why this is even coming up right now for you and your life, tell Me if I'm wrong, there is no one diet that you do your entire life. Like diets shift and bend just like the weather and the wind, because that's who we are as human beings. You know, you're not the Same man at 30 that you are at 20. Isn't that really the lens that we're looking through?

I've always said throughout my investigation of these things, because I've always been a psychologist by necessity part of what you learn in the health field, and I'm sure you know this true 90% of diet or any health practice is psychological. It's based on compliance, it's based on belief system adaptation. Does your belief support the practice? And if not, then you're going to self sabotage some way somehow you, you're going to find a way not to incorporate whatever it is, even though consciously you say, oh, this is the healthiest thing, this is the best thing for me. But we have this survival software and scarcity software which oftentimes pulls us down from our highest potential, what's best for us. So there's all these underlining things and I saw that happening quite a bit in the nutrition world and I saw it more pronounced in the plant based world than anything else. So anyways, to your point, one of the things that I realized midpoint in my journey was that if somebody's dietary approach, in their lifestyle approach, it doesn't mean if somebody doesn't eat meat, it means even if you are vegan or plant based, something's going to change in your macronutrient ratios, something's going to change in what you're doing, you're going to incorporate different things, you're going to experiment, you're going to have an open mind, something's going to change. And if something doesn't change, then that person may not be changing that person's identity. Their, their belief systems aren't changing because oftentimes the lifestyle itself is a reflection of that person's own evolution.

Oh, let's pause right there to let that land. Because evolution is exactly where we are right now on planet Earth. We're in the middle of this Covid veil of deception. We're in the middle of people wondering if this is the right partner because I'm stuck at home with them. We're in the middle of does this economic system work properly or are we just raping and pillaging Mother Earth. We're in the middle of should I eat conscious animal products that are derived from a healthy source where the animals are treated well and Am I contributing to the closed organic cycle? There's a lot of questions up right now, man, and it's cool to have this conversation with you because we've had talks like this all the time. And essentially what all of these come down to is is this the truth and is it sustainable? So is this veganism solution, like is this a solution to the environmental crisis? You know, people are like, oh, the methane from cows, it's killing the world. Is this even good for our future? We've been told a lot of things about veganism and the way that it can heal the world. But you know, from a 10 year vegan, what's the truth about that from your research and your own experience?

Yeah, well, I mean in a nutshell the answer is no. And that, and that is, that is there's a lot involved in that answer and there's people far more qualified on the regenerative agriculture, biodynamic agriculture, organic farming perspective. Joel Saletan is one of those people with regenerative agriculture which has been preaching that message for quite a long time. I've known about Joel Salatin for a long time. But when you, when you're, when you have a certain identity that's associated with a certain lifestyle, there's a way of blocking out information and not going deep into it. Now luckily for me, I did allow myself to entertain a vast amount of things like Dr. Weston A. Price. I've known about him for a long time. I never was like, oh no, that's a myth. Oh that. No, no, no. I was educated properly as a nutritionist. I just had my beliefs in a particular direction. That was good for me. But I also was aware of a particular quandary which was like, okay, there is a clear distinction in bifurcation between the different forms of animal. Call it animal harvesting or animal farming. There is the industrialized corporatized, really demonic form of factory farming. Yeah, it's hard. That's Holocaust. And for me, when I was growing up in this field, I labeled that as the Holocaustic nutrition kind of menu board that most people are on a Holocaust kind of diet. And I was relating that to the factory farming model. Right. And I think I mentioned that briefly in our last interview and trying to make people aware of that. However, I was also aware of that there was something called regenerative agriculture, that there was something called agriculture that there had been farming on this planet for at least 10,000 years. You know, post hunter gatherer and all that in our evolutionary track or what we believe that is anyways, we know that we've been doing that for a while. And that's a significantly different paradigm and it's a different reality. And when you're in these certain circles, it's almost like an echo chamber. And so there's this constant theme of like, okay, if you eat animal products, you're unethical. If you, if you all animal. Here's one I got on YouTube recently. I thought this was special. All animal products involve violence and cruelty. Therefore, if you have any animal products, you're contributing to violence and cruelty. I could not even respond to that because I actually felt so sad for that person that I just, I just was like, this is where people are at because we're so disconnected from nature. Most people haven't been to a farm. They don't have a concept of nature. By the way, the veganism and the word veganism and the cult, which is short for culture of veganism, started in 1944 by a guy named Don Watson, who in my perception it was nothing short of a cult leader. And it had nothing to do with human health. It was all about animal rights and ultimately has this weird connotation of anti humanism. And I just want to put that out there. And I'm not saying vegans are anti human. I'm just saying a lot of people don't know their history. Just like what you brought up, what we're witnessing with everything that's rising to the surface in our world. A lot of people have cognitive dissonance. They're putting their head in the sand and they essentially have not been taught the proper history of how things have led to where they are and all the kind of so called conspiracies and all this stuff. Anyone that studied their history properly would not be surprised by any means at what's coming up. And so for me, when I got into this, I actually wanted to know where did this whole thing come from? Where did the idea of raw foodism come from? Who were the pioneers? I didn't want to just go on YouTube and see these, you know, millennial pundits promoting like a domesticated, hyper sugarized, mineral deficient fruit.

20 bananas a day.

Yeah, because I didn't. Because the psychology and the personality of people I saw do that long term was not something I wanted to emulate. And I actually. Just A quick aside, just a quick aside. I want to really focus on your question here. But it's funny nonetheless and it's very revealing to my own psychology. When I got into this, you know, David Wolff is a Very good friend of mine. He was one of my original mentors. And for those who don't know who David Wolff is, he's really like the pioneer of the modern day raw food movement. He drove that message into the modern day lexicon and really the superfood movement. And I just have a ton of respect for him. So I met him for the first time in 2016, nine or ten. I'm seeing all this craziness on YouTube, right? This vegan popularity contest and people making videos about people and attacking people. And I was just like, I got into this for health. I thought it was like love and light. I thought this was like the peace based diet, right? I'm seeing all these vegans attacking each other. And so I met David and I pulled him to the side. I was like, hey dude, can I ask you a question? I was like, there's all these guys, you know, attacking people. If I eat raw food long enough, am I going to become like that? And what did he say? His answer was so good, he said, no. But what you need to understand is that this movement attracts a certain type of psychology. And although most people have the best intentions and they have beautiful hearts, there is a fragment of psychopathy. Otherwise there are psychopathic tendencies. Certain people will join a certain movement that has the guise of peace, love, animal sanctity, you know, all the environmentalism, virtue signaling, if you will, but secretly they're actually very disturbed. And they will even use that as a way to weaponize their own vitriol and attack other human beings, which, which is. So I actually had to decode the psychology of what I was witnessing. And it did affect me very deeply. And it was very challenging for me, even in the vegan arena to actually promote veganism. Because I had a very deep conflict, which is I believe in this lifestyle, I believe in the basic ethics, but I don't see a lot of people actually modeling it. You know, like Paul Check says, if you can't take your shirt off and give a lecture, then hey, maybe you need to make some adjustments to your practice.

I'm so fascinated with what you just said about the psychopathy, because I don't care what movement you're in. I mean, it could be like the carnivore side, the vegan side, the paleo world. I've seen this and then now there's like the keto explosion. I just find that what you said earlier is so true. If we look back at the annals of history and we connect the dots between thought and action, it seems to Me that there's one really big leader of each movement and then it kind of trickles down to almost like pockets of sub leaders. But I was so fascinated when you said, yeah, this movement kind of attracts people that can flex their power every time they eat a meal. You know, it's interesting. If you look at all the history from the ancient east and you talk about Lao Tzu or you look at any of the masters, they all say the same thing, Ronnie. And it's people are going to go to the right, to the left, but eventually everyone comes back to the Middle Way. The Middle Way is actually the way. And I'm fascinated with this concept because you've really returned like you've returned to the Middle Way. It's so exciting. You've returned home. What was it about your old version of psychology? In other words, you started to eat from a heart based place. It wasn't like you went to veganism because you were trying to, quote, rage against the system or maybe you were. I don't know what even made you get into that in the first place. Was it just health or was there any other energy behind it?

When I transitioned into a raw vegan diet, it snuck up on me. And as I think, you know, I think we talked about in our last interview, I've been a martial artist since I was 4 years old. I was a competitive martial artist and basketball player my entire life. An elite athlete. And that was all that was my life really. And I was exposed to eastern philosophy through, you know, Bruce Lee and things like that. But I was really just a hardcore athlete. And I had a series of knee injuries from the age of 18. Knee surgery, then rehabilitation, corrective exercise, processed food diet. So I had the ant. I had basically a pet food diet is what I'm starting to call it now, which by the way, powders and shakes and packages. Totally. Yeah. I mean it was a pretty, pretty horrendous situation, but that's really the credit to the body. And the mysteries of the body are pretty amazing. But anyway, so I had a series of knee injuries. I had two knee surgeries through my own journey of sports performance. I was led to this idea of organic food. And then YouTube University came on. I found people like Paul Check, Sean Croxton at one point I stumbled upon him. I stumbled upon David Wolf at some point and different people. I just got into that movement and eventually this idea of vegetarianism, because I didn't even know a vegetarian was a real thing. That's how disconnected I was from that. I thought it was a myth or something, you know, and so I just. It just snuck up on me. And it inspired me because there was a spiritual association to the experience of people. And this is when, like, the raw vegan YouTube phenomenon was kicking on, when people were starting YouTube channels and they were really sharing their experience. It really touched a chord in my heart to hear people's experiences of curing incurable diseases. And it just really, like, for me, it was so obvious because I had never done that. So the assumption was, this is the missing piece. I had never experienced that. So, long story short, I asked myself a question. What would happen if I adopted a 100% raw food diet? Fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, smoothies, green juices, and got barefoot connected to the earth? Because I had also read a book called Born to run by Christopher McDougall, which opened up my mind about how the shoe is actually a rubber sole cast and really holds our foot. Kind of like a cast.

Yeah.

And so that made sense to me. I was like, wow, okay. So all this whole association to getting back to nature through living foods all came together. And within 30 days of running this experiment, I had complete healing of my knees, dissipation of all my inflammation, and I had a consciousness kind of awakening. And the awakening was a. I'm completely out of pain. I had been associated to having some kind of pain. Had to ice my knees every day for years. I was out of pain completely. And then I realized that most people are enduring some form of psycho emotional and physical distress every day of their life, and they may or may not even recognize it's like their new normal.

Right.

They've adapted to it. I didn't have that awareness before. I didn't have that distinction until I realized how much I had habituated to. And the moment I realized I was out of pain and forgot about the pain itself, that's when my consciousness changed and something in my spirit changed and said, this is the direction you're going. And the raw food thing for me was just. It was an inspirational North Star. It gave me something to lend my voice to. And it also turned me into a professional nutritionist. Because the first year of getting into raw veganism, I mean, I could have killed myself if I didn't pull back quick enough. Because the first year I didn't know what I was doing. I just went in, I'm like, fruits and vegetables. So I just went to the market. You're super enthusiastic. I'm like a little kid again all of a sudden, right? Early 20s. I'm just buying up pounds and pounds of fruits and vegetables. And I felt really high. There's a certain, like, high that people feel with this. And I'm also getting a lot.

Is it just glucose or is it a different kind of a high? Because you're getting a lot of sugar.

There's a lot of sugar. But I'm also detoxing all of the processed foods, the impactions in the GI tract. Like, you know, when you get a colonic, you kind of get on this colonic trip. There is a high. There is some kind.

Because although coffee enemas too. Those things are amazing.

Oh, they're amazing, right? So that's kind of what it was. Right. But speeding up. Throughout that time, I was still an athlete, right. And I was still, you know, playing basketball and working out. I did not realize this, but people would tell me they were concerned because I was getting really skinny. And in my mind, because all of a sudden when you go vegan, you know everything, right? That's another thing that comes along with this whole thing.

Yes. The Vegan or the CrossFit, like, how do you know that they are. They'll talk to you about it. They'll tell you.

Totally. Yeah.

It's so true.

Exactly. And so I knew everything at that point until I actually looked in the mirror one day and I realized the cheekbones were protruding, the skin got very thin, the eyes got sunken, almost like translucent skin. And what I'm telling you is the symptomology of what happens with long term deficiencies on vegan diets in particular. And the collarbone started sticking out, the ribs and my arms were so skinny. And I was like, oh, okay. Like if I continue on this path, I could literally kill myself or I can educate myself. And that was the moment I decided that, you know, I felt strongly about being a vegetarian. I felt like this was calling me for a reason, but I needed to understand how to do it right.

Man, I want to pause you right there because so many people go down that path where they're in pain and they're requiring healing and they get to this space where really what they want is just like, take a deep breath and just trust that. Like the veganism or the Paleo or the keto or the carnivore or the whatever, whole food, Whole 30, blah, blah, blah, fill in the blank. People are just wanting some kind of peace. Like a North Star, as you mentioned, a soulless that, hey, if I go down this path, well, my guru, my mentor, my friend, my educator, my teacher, they're telling me that If I follow in their footsteps, I, too, can have that peace. I, too, can have that meaning. If you look back at yourself, can you maybe raise your hand and say, did you want more meaning or did you want more peace?

This is a really powerful question. So I, you know, this is. This is good that we're doing this. I. Because I really value those times. Those were some of the best years of my life, I have to say. And so I honor the whole journey as I move forward, I'm integrating this whole thing. I'm not anti vegan. I'm not anti any of this. I think some of those years were some of the best years of my life. And there was an innocence. I want to say that, too. There was an innocence of perception that had been lost through my formative years, through many, many of our formative years, especially as men, many of us lost that childlike innocence in raw food. And this idea of sun food, it kind of brought back this innocent, naturalistic vibe. And so what I'm thinking about in reference to your question was, it was both. But I remember sitting at the park because I spend a lot of time at the park. You're eating all this fruit. It's like, I'm going to the park. I want to be under the sun. And there were three books that really created the foundation for my framework, which was a framework of meaning. One of the books was David Wolf's the Sun Food Diet Success System. I still love that book to this day. One of the best written, most inspiring books, definitely into the health field, for sure. It inspired, you know, me to really do this. Then one of my mentors and colleagues, Dr. Gabriel Cousins, his book called Spiritual Nutrition, which was a beautiful book. And then John A Diet for a New America. And John Robbins, of course, was the heir to the Baskin Robbins empire. And he found out where all that dairy was coming from. Again, not small dairy farms, but, you know, the pasteurized, homogenized death holocaust.

Concentration camps for animals.

That's right. Yeah. That whole thing. And so he. So. And this is what happens with a lot of vegans. That's why I want to. There's a lot of compassion involved with this. And I really love John Robbins in particular, because in the. I was thinking it was the 70s or 80s, this book came out A Diet for a New America. It was a new paradigm. So these three books and these three voices created a sense of meaning for me to move forward. And I felt like I was actually carrying the next generation of this movement on my back, which is why I carried it for well beyond probably my biological expiration date.

Wow, man. So literally carrying the weight of people's pain on your back. I mean, it makes such sense because, man, there were times where I would wonder, like, huh, you know, Ronnie seems to be really healthy. He seems to be really well. But then there were some times where I was like, I wonder from a biochemical, biological perspective. If you look at the science of the gut brain axis and the certain essential amino acids that are found in me, you know, the leucine, the tyrosine, the valine, all these spectrums of nutrient profiles, it just rocked me because when I was prepping for our show, I realized that you said something in 2017 and it applies then and now. That's why this, this podcast is not about dogma. This isn't about, like, creating camps and division of like, oh, vegans and carnivores. Like, hey, if it works for you, great. As long as it's coming from a lens of health. You said this two and a half years ago. It's important that everyone on the healing path has the experience of cleansing from all animal products for at least two to four years, depending on personal factors for reintroducing high quality animal products. Once one has the cleanliness in their body, once somebody cleans their body of all materials, they'll regain sensitivities, digestive awareness, and intuitively be led to what feels most appropriate for them. It's in your book. You said it on the last show. This is so pertinent to where you are right now. You remove the products. Most people do need to remove CAFO products, but when it comes to reintroduction, how does that help to heal the gut brain access? What have you noticed from a mood and emotional intelligence perspective there?

It's so funny you bring that up, is now I realize that this is destiny. There was something in my consciousness at the time that always knew that this was the likely inevitable kind of outcome. And I was just on the journey of experimentation the whole time. Just like all of us are, by the way, every single diet, by the way. There's the word diet in it. So, like, let's be clear about those. You know, how are we defining these?

Interesting etymology too. Dying. Die is in the word die because.

That'S what a lot of people end up doing. They're just dying and they get so obsessed about. That's called orthorexia, by the way, just for if anyone wants to look that up. But yeah, man, so this is good. This is, this is one of the main things I wanted to talk about with you. So long story short, because this could be longer, just like the raw food thing, the animal thing snuck up on me and the timing of it is pretty profound. So I am right now currently about three months into a modified carnivore approach. And when this snuck up on me, I had a number of colleagues, my friends Spencer, Mack and Kauai, who was 15 years vegetarian, highly intelligent, very fit guy, and he ended up stumbling on the carnivore diet, started to do it. He started telling me about it a while back and that was the first kind of crack in the paradigm because all of a sudden someone who I respect and who is extremely healthy is telling me he is on a fiberless, all animal food diet. And I was just like, I couldn't argue with him, I couldn't debunk his experience, but at the same time I was like, I just decided not to engage, right? I was like, okay, I don't even know what to do with that. And then a while later, one of my big brothers, really a genius in the holistic health field, his name's Dr. Robert Kassar, he has a great YouTube channel, he starts sending me all these text messages again. He was a 15 year vegan vegetarian, a very well known one, and he starts making these videos on YouTube and he's about six to eight months into a carnivore process of rehabbing from veganism. And that term is very specific. And I want everybody to just tuck that away in their mind. Rehabbing from veganism and coming from him. I sat down and I listened. I was like, okay, this is, there's something to this. And long story short, something inside of my primal body, not my intellect, right? Not even my intuition, but my primal body kicked on and it said, it's time to make a transition. So I sat with myself and I said, okay, I'm going to run an experiment. Imagine that, by the way. Oh, I'm just going to run an experiment. I don't need to go to tell everyone about it.

Wait a minute, you're not following the rules and guidelines of the guru on the mountain saying don't eat meat, right?

Well, you know, the funny thing about being in a movement like this for a decade is you see the ups and downs of people over a decade. And I realized that thing I was carrying, you know, the movement that I was part of leading and the generation I was part of leading as being a voice for raw food and vegetarianism, plant based diet and all that, I realized the movement I came from and the community I came from all of a sudden no longer existed. It faded away. People disappeared. Like our events. There's no more events. There was no more. That thing wasn't there anymore. And I kind of was like, oh, this thing I'm carrying isn't really real anymore. So I need to reinvent myself. This is an opportunity to reinvent Ronnie Landis moving into the future. It's like I got my black belt finally. It's like, okay, I'm ready to like figure this out. So, long story short, I sat down, I had a grass fed, grass finished steak for the first time in a decade. Well, actually for the first time ever, I had never had a grass finished, grass fed steak. Let's be clear about that. And I'm going to tell you, Josh, when I ate it, this is what happened. I had an immediate rush of blood flow circulating all throughout my arms. It was like a niacin flush. Literally I've done 30 day niacin flushes and things like that. I literally had a niacin flush. All these B vitamins. I could feel my red blood cells like getting oxygenated. And then I felt a neurogenesis stimulation in my brain. It was like literally so intense I had to stop. And I'm just like, my brain is vibrating. And that was a moment where like my. I was very happy because it worked, but I was also like, shit, it works, damn it.

I have to actually grow into this new thing. Oh my God, that's so. Dude, thank you for sharing this. Because you know, from the very beginning, if you've been watching live or if you've been feeling what Ronnie's going through, this is the life transitions that we all go through. It's like all human lessons are universal. Sometimes it can be food, like in this case it's food. Some people it's relationships, some people it's jobs or career transitions. But we all reach that moment where it's like, I think our soul knows or our body knows like you described. I loved how you're like, I could feel the niacin and the bee and my blood cells. I'm like, only Ronnie would say some stuff like that. But a lot of people go through these transitions and they get to this point where they're like, ah, the old way's not going to work anymore. And there's almost like a child wandering into to the park, just seeing what a slide does for the first time. It's like, how do I slide down the slide? How do I play in the new Playground, because I've, you know, almost like a trap door and never allowed my consciousness to even go there. That. That's okay. It's the same thing with sexuality. It's the same thing with anything in life. What has that been like for you? Like the kid looking at the new playground where you can eat the animals as long as they're raised?

Well, yeah. Well, first of all, let me just say to that point of eating animals, it was a total shamanic experience. And it wasn't just one experience. It was a progressive experience at the dinner table and preparing the food, ordering the food. Where do I get organ meats? Where do. As I had been studying Western price for a while, you know, I was into the fat soluble nutrients, okay? I get the activator X and the vitamin K2 from the ghee. I got into ghee, and that was my saving grace, man. That really was a powerful thing for a long time. So I was aware of this, right? So all of a sudden, all that knowledge of ancestral diets is kicking on, and I'm like, okay, we gotta get organ meats, we gotta get liver, like all this stuff. So I'm like, I'm actually feeling like a kid again. I'm like, this is a whole new world that I get to play with. And the thing about consuming the animals is that I had a shamanic experience one time because there were times where, like, I would show up to eat and I would have to breathe into it. There would be moments of like, whoa, okay, am I really doing this? And then I would take a few bites and I actually felt the animal, like that actual animal that I was consuming. I felt the spirit of it, and I felt something incorporate itself into my physical body. So, you know, a lot of people say, paul Check talks about this, this a lot. And a lot of other people say, like, the blessing of it is that you are giving that animal life or is like a different way of phrasing it, but you're incorporating that animal into yourself. A lot of people, and I understand why a lot of people, vegans in particular, be like, oh, that's nonsense. You're just spiritual. You're just trying to validate it. You know, they'll say a lot of this stuff, right? It's just cognitive dissonance. It's just defensive language. But until you have the experience, experience. Now I was like, oh, now I understand what they're talking about. This is a shamanic ritual. And that was a very powerful realization. And let me tell you this, Josh, and for all your Listeners, this was the most powerful thing aside from the physiological upgrades. Imagine almost like a DMT experience. It was almost like I felt this proverbial box that I was in and there was an unloading, there was a whole psychic unloading and this box fell out and the vegan goggles dropped. And all of a sudden I felt more conscious, more clear, more sober, and more able to accurately perceive my reality than I had been in the last however many years. The filter dropped. And that was, man, even just talking about it, that was a profound realization because in that moment I realized that I was being called to be a messenger for this voice, just like I had been a voice for the message before. And that didn't change. I just had my perspective got way more. Let's just say it matured, right? A new element of wisdom came through and I realized that actually animal husbandry, animal agriculture being in relationship with my food, because, you know, when it comes to the plant based thing, and people need to realize that corporations have totally hijacked the plant based movement and people have this blind assumption that plant based means better for your health, better for the animals, better for the environment, better for the ozone layer or climate change or any of this stuff. And when you run the numbers, you realize it's not true. But then when you actually study, where are these processed vegan pet foods coming from? Just talking about processed versus but let's talk about fruits and vegetables. Well, you know, there are incredible devastating effects happening to the ecosystem due to monocropping agriculture, right? All the, you know, you think about what it takes to grow basic fruits and vegetables and whether they have minerals in them or not because of the soil depletion, that's another story. Whether they're actually that good for you or not. But what has to happen in the natural ecosystem, the clearing of that land, the rabbits that are intentionally killed because they're herbivores, they're going, the rabbits, the deers, whatever's in that environment, going, trying to snack on those leaves and those vegetables, they are intentionally killed and by the hundreds, if not thousands, and dumped into some kind of hole. I mean, if vegans and vegetarians, if they knew what they knew about factory farming and they knew that about what's going on in monocrop agriculture, I think the cognitive dissonance would break altogether. And that's something I'm very just presencing myself, as I say it, because I played this thing out for a long time. That was the one thing, Josh, out of every body of information, because I'm definitely an expert on plant based nutrition. Probably the top of my generation, or at least one of them for sure. And I can tell you out of everything I've studied that was one body of information that I could not get myself to go deep into until it was unavoidable. And now that I know the truth, I realize that this whole thing is a little bit of a charade. It's not really real. Veganism is not real. There's nothing to do with nature. It's based on the propagation of ideology within the mind of a man in 1944 who's coming from an industrialized city. But when you spend time like I have in the different islands of Hawaii on permaculture farms and you study Rudolf Steiner and biodynamic farming, especially having a mentor like David Wolff, it's like it's unavoidably going to show you things that your common research into these things will not show you. And certainly the information that we're getting from the top so called vegan doctors and pundits that are kind of like almost like parroting the same information over and over, a lot of all that just falls to the wayside. And you realize this is like just some kind of like concept or aberration of reality that actually doesn't actually have anything to do with what's real.

Thank you for reminding me that we're in a big video game and the hologram continues to repeat as we speak it into existence. What hit me the most, man, is you're like, veganism isn't actually real. Let's just let that land for a moment. If veganism isn't real and it's a concept, what are the laws of nature that prove you to be true? We all see the laws of nature that correlate with this or not.

Yeah, well, definitely the laws of nature don't fit into some kind of Charles Darwinian paradigm of the survival of the fittest. However, to that credit, there is a survival of the fittest component in nature because there is predation, there is predatory survival. So the life cycle, for example, this is a. Thank you for bringing this up is. This is a point that I have to bring up too. Those farm animals that are in. We're not, again, not talking about the factory farm situation. We're talking about small scale farms, real farmers who love their animals. I know farmers, they do not abuse their animals. They love their animals. They're not projecting their own trauma and wounds.

They're emotionally moved. When the animal needs to be slaughtered, it's amazing.

Yeah. I've seen situations where there's like, groups of autistic kids that are brought to small scale farms, dairy farms, who love up on the cow that's being milked. Do you think that cow has a good life? I think that cow has the best life everand I'm getting to the point here, but this is just so important to get off my chest. So we all understand, because this whole thing around animal cruelty and suffering, although I agree so much and thank you, PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. The one thing that I agree with them, I don't agree with this whole idea that you can't. You don't need animal products to live. Right. But I do agree with, with them shining a light and being activists for animal rights. That is, I appreciate that. So let me say that. But if these animals, these ruminant animals were freed out, because they always say, like, you got to free them, free them into the wild. If these domesticated animals were freed into the wild, they would be slaughtered by predators and that would be cruel and they would suffer because nature is undenominational. It doesn't pick sides. That's just part of the life cycle. Now, just because an animal dies does not mean that it suffered. It does not mean that it was cruel. We have to get a handle on life and death. And that's a whole other thing. Right. And that's part of also the bigger picture of what we're dealing with.

And this is also too Ronnie. This is the closed organic cycle. If you look at Josh Tickell, if you study the work of the Rodale Institute, if you look at the literature that Paul Check states and even that Steiner talks about, we have David Brobitsch saying Steiner is the most hidden understanding of how germ theory is nonsense. Yeah. Steiner is one of the original OGs. Right. So what I'm saying is we have this closed organic cycle where we have this orb in the sky that feeds the plants. Those plants have nutrients. The animals eat the plants, we eat the animals. Then we give that back to the earth when either we perish or we give our stool to the earth. So there is this closed cycle where all the insects and bugs and everything exists, but no one tries to stop a shark from eating a seal. Because we just, look, we respect. We respect the laws of nature, yet we've almost gotten to this mindset of luxurious pontification where we have, oh, should I be polyamorous? Oh, I don't know. Oh, should I be a vegan? Oh, I Don't know. Oh, should I fill in the blank? Because I have so much time and resources that my ancestors never had that now I'm going to luxuriously step into that space where I can see if it's a fit for me. And it's crazy because Sandra actually says this. This is really powerful, Ronnie. She says yes, but very little. Once a week or so. I don't buy parts like a whole chicken. I was vegan in my 20s before people even knew what veganism was. Short story. I got very ill. I poisoned my body. I was force fed because I refused to eat anything animal. When I finally came to reality and so called healed, I realized how exaggerated my actions really were. I'm 62 years old. I just went through vitamin deficiencies. Our cells are dying. We need to eat things that supply these nutrients and we have the ability to do these through supplements as well. I agree that it is not natural to be vegan and it goes against being human.

The vegan movement at its core. And again people have to be a little bit. They need to be critical thinking about what I'm saying here because this is critical. This is critical, which is that veganism at its core ideology is anti human. And I don't think that vegans are anti human. I think that they have adopted a hijacked belief system that is actually going against natural order. Everything that we've just pointed out. And by the way, when it comes to supplementation, I will tell you right now there is a significant difference between a vitamin B12 supplement and the vitamin B12 that is in Bison, for example. I have access to the highest quality supplements and a lot of my friends own a lot of these companies. Right. I've been in the industry for quite time. Some, some time I've moved around it. I've made a lot of friends and created a lot of associations. I have never taken a supplement that has done what that piece of steak did to me that one time in over 10 years. So I want to.

So there's AMT steak experience so powerful.

There is a perspective here that there's an animal nature to us. We have an animal body, but there's also a part of us like Rudolf Steiner will talk about that we're also part plant. And what is a plant? Like a leaf for example. It's a solar panel, so it's concentrating sun, the radiation from the UV lights onto it like a solar panel. It's concentrating it and turning it into chlorophyll. We do that too. We don't turn it to chlorophyll. We can take the chlorophyll from the plant, but we actually take that in and that's what creates the vitamin D3 that penetrates the cholesterol. So if we don't have cholesterol, and the only way in the plant world that you can get cholesterol maybe is from coconut oil, but that's not well verified. That's a hit and miss. And coconut oil, by the way, I know a lot of coconut harvesters, wild coconut harvesters in Hawaii. People don't have no idea what it takes to press coconut oil. And they just have these big jars and they're like, oh, I'm vegan. It's great.

That's quite the process, huh?

It's quite the enduring process. And what human beings have to do just to process cashews. I'd love for people to look up what has to happen to people and the suffering that actually goes on in third world countries. Just to process a poisonous plant like a cashew and turn it into something that is relatively edible. And all these cheeses and replacement foods are made out of things that are loaded with subtle toxins, but they accumulate and progressively build up over time. So, you know, that's a little bit of aa, little bit of a side there.

But the challenge with this too is I think so. Manyi'm just reading the comments that are flying through. Rndaly says this subject is super close to my heart. I was veg and vegan for 20 years and it wrecked me. My hormones were so screwed for years and I didn't know it. I started eating meat again two years ago and it. It saved my life. She said it in huge letters. I relate to this so much. I mean, you're a truth warrior, dude. Like, this is why I'm so excited to have this conversation, you know, for all these people across the planet to hear. I think it's easy to forget, like people in Sweden and people in Germany and people in Italy and people in Antarctica. I have people that listen to the show in Antarctica.

Wow.

We're all human. We're all figuring out how to do this thing. And I get it. Like, people get angry, angry about politics, People get angry about COVID People get angry about what's happening with our brothers and sisters. But in my opinion, I'm curious how you feel about this. Is it time for us to just lay down the weapons when it comes to what food camp we're in? Is it time for us to just figure out what's right? For us, based on how we feel and based on how it serves the planet.

We never should have been fighting about this stuff in the beginning. It's. It's absolutely trivial and it's just more weapons of mass distraction, right? As Gay Hendricks says, I know you brought that up many times. And it's the ultimate spiritual quandary because we are in a spiritual war. We've been in a spiritual war since we were incarnated into this plane of existence. And it's becoming more obvious now because the fish tank has officially been shaken up where you can see all the muck, all the deception, all the controversy, controversy, the conspiracy facts. You can see everything coming up. And in the diet arena, the diet tribes, you know, I don't understand how we even got to this point where we're arguing, fighting, belittling each other, keyboard warriors on YouTube or Facebook. And it's all ego. You know, one of the things David Wolff taught me many years ago, and I'm really thankful for his perspective on all this, is that he said yes or no is ego. Yes to this, no to that. Black or white. That's all ego. And it's actually about acceptance and self love. If somebody is really on the journey of loving themselves, they're going to do what's good for themself. If they have self hatred, they have self criticism, they have these things. That's where the addictions come from, right? That's where the karma starts to the wheel of samsara in Buddhism, the wheel of suffering repeats itself through the lack of self love. And that can show up in our diet. It can show up in politics. By the way, I'm glad you brought this up because your food choices are about your health. They're not about your political position. It's not a bipartisan deal here. Your biology and physiology and your neurology, your brain. Brain health has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with many other factors that are neutral. They're not based on opinion or belief. They're based on cause and effect. Does this work? I do this. How do I feel? Yes, you know, that kind of thing.

This is the Socratic method in action. If you look at Socrates and it was always like, hey, I'm going to go down this path of rational questioning and iteration and testing and, and through this message, this method, I'm actually going to figure out like this works or it doesn't. Beyond like you had said earlier, where it's, oh, I have to let this belief go because I believed it for so long. I'm kind of attached to it. Can you talk about the Socratic method and really like understanding if something's for you, how you've actually figured it out, that this new path is the way, like the new path is the way for you? But it didn't come overnight.

No, it did not. Well, it's great. It's a really powerful question. I don't know how I knew other than when I did, if that makes sense. It snuck up on me. It's just like I didn't know raw food was the path for me until I did. It started out as an experiment. Let's run the experiment. Because I want to be the best I can be. For five years, I was pretty much vegan other than bee products. But I don't really play that, that like, vegan, vegan game. I was like, you know, bee product. We're not going to play that game. I'm going to have honey, I'm going to have bee pollen. Bee pollen's vegan, by the way, for everyone who doesn't realize. But I was pretty much vegan for the first five years and I was doing good until I wasn't. Yeah, right. And so I made an adjustment. Studying Weston Price and all these other people, I realized, oh, ghee, that makes sense. I can be vegetarian and ride the middle path. What did Buddha say? The middle path. I was like, oh, that. Okay, that makes more sense than this whole extreme. And I've seen what happens that people go on the extremes, they become extremely neurotic and that's not really the best ever. I'm not trying to do that. I'm not trying to alienate an entire population of people.

But it does work for a while. Like sometimes. Like on a. Schwarzenegger said in Terminator, one of the coolest phrases ever. He's like, anger is more powerful than despair. When people are in despair and they attach to these groups, whether it's. It's carnivore, whether it's veganism, like sometimes that can be the saving grace that pulls them out of depression.

Yeah. Pulls them out of suffering. Right. And a lot of, A lot of people that get wound up in these circles, they can relate to animals that are suffering in factory farms because they themselves have been traumatized. They themselves have been wounded and never had. Maybe they've been bullied. You know, maybe they really are, you know, not anti human because they're, you know, literally like bad people, but because they feel that the human race is running the planet off the cliff, which a lot of People have felt, I have entertained that I don't believe that, but I understand that. So a lot of people just don't heal through the process. And that's what I mean in the beginning, where it's like, if your diet never changes, that means you're probably not changing either. And there's a multiple layered healing process. As you know, the diet is just a toolbox, right? It's an access point for healing the human being. But when we get wrapped up and obsessed about the diet, it's actually an avoidance tactic to avoid the spiritual healing, the psychological and emotional healing. Oftentimes that created the attachment to the diet itself. And that's when I see, when people go through that, that's when it lifts.

Can we pause there and just say that again? Because. Wow. I mean, that actually encompasses every single thing that you're sharing as you go on this podcast tour, as you go down this road of sharing. Like, this isn't about dogma. This is about devotion to my truth, to my own spiritual path. Can you go a little bit deeper into that?

This is about. Yeah, this is about being a disciple to truth. Right. And that's what discipline, that's the etymology of the word discipline. Be like, oh, in the spiritual community, like, oh, I don't need to be disciplined. It's like, well, then you're probably not on a spiritual path because you're actually a disciple to a particular path. And that's what it was for me on that path. Right. It wasn't about dogmavery important distinction. It wasn't about dogma. It was about truth. And that was my truth. And that is many people's truth. And I honor that truth. But I also, in honoring my truth, I also was able to honor other people's truth. That was not that. And that was probably the best benefit I had was just perspective. Right. So, yeah, yeah. I don't know exactly where to go with that other than just to acknowledge that and say, that is something that I think we all can really take in as maybe a takeaway here. You know, for example, you know, the subtle energies of my food become my mind. That was one of the biggest quotes from the Upanishads, from the Ayurvedic Sanskrit texts, ancient text called the Upanishads. The subtle energies of my food become my mind. So when I was on the plant based journey, that was one of my ethos is from a spiritual perspective, was that the subtle energy of living food, it has life to it. It hasn't been cooked, roasted, toasted, Broiled, dehydrated, there's life there. That was kind of the principle. Right. But then getting into this now, I realize the subtle energies of my ancestors, of my genetic adaptation over millennia. I literally felt the calling and the strength and the clarity of my indigenous ancestors kind of encoded within the meat that I took in. And that's what I mean before when I said it was a shamanic experience, I felt connected to my genetics. Where on the plant based diet? Not so much. Because when you think about it, animal foods and plant based foods, they're two different operating systems. When you think of a species that has the most, a mammalian species that has an advanced nervous system, then you think of humans and the next thing is mammalian animals. So like ruminant animals and bison and like, like some wild mammalian animals, that kind of thing. Right. That becomes the next tier. And that actually is the most recognizable food source to our primal body. And this is why a lot of people do end up having challenges. And I would also say psychological challenges, mental health challenges on an only plant based diet. Yes. There's nutrient deficiencies for sure. Full blown. I've seen people go completely off the deep end.

You've also experience this yourself too, right?

Yeah. And this is where you get into the conversation of digestive problems and leaky gut syndrome and immune system reactions. Why would you have an immune system reaction to a compound? It must be from a different operating system. Right. If it doesn't fit completely into the hard drive of the human body and the human biology, then there must be something about it that that's foreign because that's what a white blood cell reaction is. It's responding to a foreign compound similar to a pathogen or a lectin in a plant, or the gluten or the oxalates, or these anti nutrient built in plant pesticides. I can go on and on about that.

The challenge with this is that I think so many people don't really know that plants protect themselves by giving off these anti nutrients. Right. I do want to go back because there's a clear connection between these anti nutrients and the gut brain axis and mood disorders. People forget like most of our hormonal mood is actually from the gut. So it's like neck down. It's not neck up. The reason that we feel the way we feel is neck down. It's all the serotonin that's produced in the lining of the GI and everything else. There was something that I wanted to mention too that was so cool. One of the viewers, Neela said, so true I couldn't have said this better myself. Let's stop the spiritual war already. It's so true. It's like let's get, let's get down to how you actually feel and let's get down to what makes everyone around us, including Mother Earth, feel the best. And I think we're really talking about this closed organic cycle. There's a closure between the brain and the gut. And that closure is fed by the different hormonal cascades that go on. What did you feel on a personal level and then what do you think that was on a scientific and biological level when it comes to veganism and mood disorders?

Wow, that's great. Well, one thing I can say for sure is that this top down approach to psychiatry and that's really become like a medium or a vehicle for pharmaceutical peddling at this point. SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. That's a top down approach. Oh, all your neurotransmitters and your serotonin is produced in the brain. It's just like this idea of like transhumanism where consciousness is produced in the brain. So we're going to take the brain out when we die and implement it into a computer, which is an operating system. So it's not actually that dissimilar to what I'm saying. But digressing from that, what we know and what you alluded to is 80 to 90% of your serotonin is produced in the gut. And your neurotransmitters, like your dopamine, your gaba, choline, serotonin, those pathways are based on amino acids, right. Without going deep into that, they're based on protein molecules, amino acids which have to be absorbed through your small intestine. The microvilli, which you and I, we're part of a company that produces a great product called Biomedics. This isn't a plug, it's a segue to. What I'm talking about is that what happens for a lot of us is that we take in certain toxins or food agitate or foods that have agitating compounds or just chemicals in our environment, take the food away. Just the heavy metals and the glyphosate and all that, that can break down the microvilli in the small intestine, which are like finger like protrusions that are the fibers that pull in the micronutrients so somebody can be. And this is another thing I want vegans to take a close listen to because you can be on the best raw food wild Food diet. I always promoted wild foods as much as possible. And in Hawaii is a great place if you want to be a raw foodist, move to Hawaii. Definitely Costa Rica or Hawaii. That's going to be the best chance to pull this thing off in a really powerful way. So I just want to make that a point there. Right. But a lot of people run these deficiencies because they actually can't absorb all the superfoods and all the supplements and even some of the animal foods that they're taking in now. One thing I noticed was that I don't have any digestive issues. Like, I don't even sense a digestive process other than like eating, you know, like I have two meals a day. Basically, I intermittent fast. I've been fasting for all this time because that's what you learn about in the raw food world. It's very associated with fasting. You learn about this idea of breatharianism. You learn about a lot of these more kind of ancient practices. And some people take it to the extreme and some people are a little more sensible and they're like, okay, cool, I can entertain the ba. Like intermittent fasting is a good idea. I can do that. I'm not going to go and just water fast for 10 years, but I'll do the intermittent fasting thing. Cool. Right. So getting on more liquids, hydration, that kind of thing. Where's I going with that? Oh, yeah. So the digestion. My experience was that after about 30 minutes, or maybe even 15 minutes after I have a meal, I'm walking and talking, I'm moving around.

You don't feel like you need to take a nap?

No, I don't feel. I don't feel like, other than the fact that I'm aware of that my hydrochloric acid needs to be at about a 2.0 or less pH acidity pH. So I don't want to take in water or liquids to dilute the acidity of digestion. So as long as I don't do that, if I do drink water within an hour after having like some meat or eggs or something, then I will notice a little bit of a disruption. But it doesn't really affect the me. It's just more kind of like, oh, okay, there's a little bit of a. My body's working a little bit harder. But when I was eating an ungodly amount of soluble and insoluble fiber, and by the way, I had the best time ever eating salads every day, I loved it. But I also noticed the more Plant food that I ate in large amounts, I would just feel my digestion a lot more. I would feel. And there would be kind of the 50, 50 chance if I ate the wrong thing. That's what people find out because they have to go on these elimination diets. So that's what Paleo is, right? Paleo is basically like an omnivore elimination diet. Getting off the food allergies, getting off dairy, getting off the things that usually burden people's digestion and their immune system and kind of getting them back to kind of semblance of balance. That's what the raw food and in my opinion, what a well constructed vegan diet is. It's an elimination diet so you can get back to balance. And that was my experience, that was the insight I pulled out of that.

And yeah, the challenge on this too is that most people are fed so much information about what they should be doing. It's almost like there's a dragon on the Internet and it's like the should dragon. It's like you should be eating raw foods, you should be eating nuts, you should be eating cruciferous vegetables. Well, wait, what about like the cytokine storm if you take in too many nightshades? I mean, it's crazy, right? And so I think what everybody wants to know is what is the right path for me? The right path for me is the one that your soul is calling you to. And that takes spiritual courage, that takes awareness, that takes this path that you're walking right now. I mean, it's, it's. You're going to get a lot of flack. You know, you're gonna get a lot of people that you've known for years that probably don't wanna be friends with you. And I have to say this, if any of us have friends that are only friends with us because of our dietary practices, they probably aren't that great of a friend. Wouldn't you agree?

That's right, I would agree. And I would say I already weeded out most of those caricatures from my circle before because again, I never promoted veganism. People associate me with vegan or it's one of us, right? Yeah, I was never, I've never been a cult type of person or I've always crossed many communities. That's why I traveled so much, because I've always met many, many different people. Now I actually had to have a few conversations with a few friends prior to getting into this because I wanted to let them know that, hey, I want to respect your. Because I have a lot of friends that are influencers in the space. So I reached out and I actually reached out to one of my close friends. His name's Jason Robel. We've had many conversations about the vegan dogma. He's vegan. We lived together for a period of time. He's one of my best friends over 10 years. He's a well known public speaker. I asked him to look over a few of my articles on this idea of rethinking veganism and give me his feedback because I wanted to see how it landed for him. Right. So I did enough because I knew, I knew, like I've seen what happens to people. Like, you know, I don't know if you know who Daniel Vitalis is.

Sure, yeah. I mean, he's all about the wild.

Yeah, but he was, but he. But I remember when he made the transition as a raw food advocate superfood, like he came from. I came into the community that he, he, him and David Wolff were part of. And when he made the transition and went public, I. That's when I got kind of this, this insider look of how hardcore the hatred and the vitriol and all that.

Ronnie, I have to pause you right now because there are so many people watching. And it's the exact same lens. Whether you think that COVID 19 is real or not, whether you think that carnivore or vegan is real or not. We are. We are talking about the exact same same thing. Whatever you have mass hatred towards, there is probably something to look at there. And I'll even raise my own hand and be like, okay, I've been taking in a little bit too much information about fear in this world. Let me just pause. Let me go to the people that I trust and respect, the actual medical doctors, the people that are vested in health, the people that are vested in public welfare. And let me just ask them from a place of peace and calmness, hey, guys and gals, what's really going on right now? Can you share with me in your professional opinion what's actually happening? And I think a lot of people aren't doing that. They're just literally like a faucet, just drinking in the information that's coming in from mainstream media, wearing a mask, sitting on the floor and shutting their mouth and doing what they're told and not ever thinking for themselves. You are doing the complete opposite. You're not only thinking for yourself, but you're putting it out there for everybody to see. I mean, that takes balls, man, because you came from A world that they depended on you to talk and speak and eat in a certain way. Do you have any fear how you'll be received?

No, because I don't. Like, I mean, I don't have any like, genuine fear. Like, I mean, you know, fear is a primal thing, right? I could make up all these, like, illusions in my mind about wanting to fit in, but that's my whole point. I never was the person to fit in. Even when I was on the vegan. The vegan trip, I was never able to promote veganism because I'm unable to fit in. I'm just an outlier. That's why David and these other guys were like, you know, we're so similar because we're really just. I'm an outlier. My biggest challenge was trying to figure out how to fit in to something. And now I just realize, like, you know, this is the time of truth, right? This is where you find out who's who and who's not in your life. If there ever was a truth, there was a time. And let truth be the. Or how do you say, I'm allowing myself to sacrifice everything on the altar of truth. And that is the most liberating experience possible because we only have so much bandwidth for so many people and we've stretched that on things like social media. And half of. Half of it's not real and half. It's just a waste of time with all these messages and all these little articles that may or may not even be present, dated, and there's just so many distractions. We're all trying to get back to what's real. And that's the whole point of this, is to get back to what's real. What's real within your physiology, what's real within your intimate relationship with your body and your connection to your food. Do you know where your food comes from? Do you want to know? And going through that process of unraveling whatever knots you got tied up between you and your consciousness and this Covid thing, obviously that's. You know, I've been on a few podcasts where people have had me talk about my different perspectives, but the one thing I know for sure is that we are being presented with a bifurcation in the of form, fork of the road. We're either going to go full on into our truth and into our sovereign self, or we're going to get full on into some kind of. Some kind of plandemic, pandemic, scamdemic, some kind of program that is going to take us into a place that is going to further dehumanize us. And I'm choosing, I'm choosing like I want to be more human. Like that's what this whole thing did for me. It helped me feel my humanness. And that's kind of ranting a little bit, but that's really how I feel about all this. I'm in favor of the human race. And I know we have some turbulence transition going on right now, but this is the moment of opportunity. This is the moment of opportunity.

It's a huge opportunity. And God, I mean, in one breath I can just say what's occurred. I'm leaving out details, but this is my truth. And I'm curious how your truth correlates with this. You know, 250 plus years ago, we were ruled by a monarch. And then people came over to this North American continent, and then they fought a war to have their sovereignty, but in the process, they eliminated the entire Native American tribes. And so from the beginning of human existence, we've been seeing war and conflict. And we've really come to this point in the road, like you said, where we're either going to evolve in consciousness and from a place of love, or we're going to choose to perish. I'm not a doomsday person myself. I do believe that humanity will find a way, but we're co creating this choice as it goes along. And when I say co creating, I'm not talking like the spiritual community says we're going to co create, bro, with like a, you know, like a gem on my shoulder and a white flapping cape. I'm saying like, this is a true co creation of what are we going to choose right now when it to comes comes to the food that we eat? Are we going to be in dogma? What is it? What does it happen to for us to have a connection to the earth? Are we going to do that from a love for the earth, or are we going to kind of see how much oil and how much things we can get out of her? What are we going to do when it comes to the way that we choose how we treat one another? Are we going to give each other space to speak even if we don't like what the other person's saying? Or are we going to slap a censorship label on it and quiet everyone down? What are we going to do when it comes to Covid? Are we going to cower in fear or are we going to take a breath, pause, and reassess what's happening? Nicole says fear Turns off logic. And fear can make good people do stupid things, even if it's for the greater good. Wow, Nicole, you need to be on the show. We just put Nicole's quote up here because it's so fantastic. Like, yes, fear shuts down our decision making faculty. We're literally turning off the prefrontal. We're going into the amygdala. This is what happens when we're running our life from a state of fear. And honestly, man, this is why I'm so honored to have you on the show. We've covered so much ground. We talked about mood disorder and veganism. We talked about your story and how you transitioned. We talked about the way that you're approaching life now through this lens of health, which is essentially always what you've done. What do you think we missed in this conversation about actually rethinking veganism? And by the way, it's the same lens that we see Covid, Mother Earth and our brothers and sisters.

Sisters, man, you really tied a lot of that together. I'm glad that you have the perspective that you're able to see the common threads because it really is all the same thing. It's the human amygdala. It's the fear fight or flight or freeze response. It's the sympathetic overload in the nervous system. It's this hijacking of our nervous system and the hijacking of a hyper intellectualized society. I've seen it with certain people that we both know and respect or have respected that are hyper intellectual and quite brilliant and looked at for their brilliance and maybe their intellectual leadership. But I've seen how their intellect has been hijacked by so called data from the CDC and the WHO and all that kind of thing. And I realized like, oh, they don't have any primal instinct. They can't sense something from false or truth. And when I say truth, I don't mean fact, I mean the capital truth. That's a primal instinct that kicked on more for me when I made this switch. My primal instinct and the confusion, maybe it's from all the plant toxins or whatever, but something happened where the confusion in my biology and in my mind cleared up. And I was able to discern between nonsense and sense. And I don't mean just like logical sense making. That's, you know, that's the thing out there. But I mean like sense of sensibility, because I can sense truth and falsehood and that's just something that's so important for all of us and we can get to There we can get to that place through the congruency of our own practice. Whether that's meditation and breath work and emotional intelligence like you talk about so much in your work. You know, obviously what you put in your mouth has a massive effect. It's the biggest lever you have in your biological sovereignty. And that's what we're seeing right now. We are given the opportunity to stand up for ourself as a human race and say no or yes. I want to be microchipped, I want to get forced vaccinated, I want to get inundated, indoctrinated.

What else should I do? Should I wear the mask at home or should I wear it in the car with the windows up? That's what fear does to the brain.

Yeah. So it hijacks sensibility. Right. And it actually numbs the system, which is the same thing that food, you know, food addictions or drug addictions or pornography or this kind of thing does, is that it numbs us. And so I want to just invite all of us to come to sobriety. And that doesn't mean that you can't enjoy something. Sobriety, to me, it's chemical sobriety. We got to clean up this chemical system. That's where detoxification and cleansing is really, really powerful. That's the thing I got from the plant based world more than anything is the knowledge of cleansing. That's key. Hydrating, having the best quality water, etc. Etc. Right. Biological sobriety. But then consciousness sobriety, that really to me is the spiritual quest, is the ability again to discern between truth and falsehood. And if we can allow the truth to penetrate us and go through whatever ruffling of the feathers that happens, I promise you that you will be led to a level of liberation within yourself that is going to feel so damn good and is just going to be such a relief. It's going to be amazing.

Ronnie, you just gave me a chill. This is like the coolest part of our podcast today because you're making me remember what was talked about when Brian Rose was on Infowars. And look, I'm not a fan of 100% of anyone because I make my own decisions, but you can't fight the kind of real educated conversations that happen with Brian Rose. And especially when he was on Infowars. And there was this quote that was mentioned and it was Alex Jones, which I don't believe everything he says either, because I make my own decisions. But he said this one that resonated and it's exactly what you And I are talking about. And he said, authenticity is like a spiritual coin. Authenticity is like a spiritual coin. People are hungry for it. We want it. It's that primal edge, that. That primal feeling of embodiment of intuition that we actually know when someone's full of shit or not. We don't need facts and studies and figures to tell us. And it's exactly what you wrote in your book, too. In your book, you said, the connection between self mastery and mastering our diet cannot be overstated. Proper nutrition is a riddle for many, it is an enigma that holds them hostage to confusion. Your choice of food represents your state of mind at that point in time. This is on page five of your book, which we'll link in the show notes. To me, that's exactly what Alex Jones is talking about. It's exactly what you and I are talking about now. And this is why when the truth sticks, it sticks for a lifetime. This intuitive faculty that we have where we're able to see food as a way of our mind being clear, of our spirit being clear. How do you think this will unfold for you in the next 3 months? 6 months? 9 months? 12 months? Based on the change that you've had already, from veganism to eating, you know, whole foods, including safely harvested animals, how is that going to change for you?

Well, I can tell you for sure. I have a glimpse into the future based on past experience and just based on pattern recognition. Right. This is important, the ability to recognize patterns. And not just like you said, not just take people's information or their word, but just actually recognize. Recognize a pattern playing out and then follow. Is this producing positive momentum, keep doubling down on that, or is this taking me off track? Okay, I need to change something, right? There's a pattern there. The pattern that I'm recognizing is that I'm in a rehabilitation process. Like, I feel good. I feel like a human being. I feel really good. However, I also know that I'm recovering from a long, long series of deficiencies that I myself did not realize I had. Right. There was an identification recovery process that I had to go. I had to recover my identity. As one can imagine, being a public figure in such quite a thing like this, there's a lot of uncertainty. There's a platform that's been built. Again, I never promoted the message itself. I was always Ronnie Landis. My YouTube channel isn't Ronnie Landis the Raw Vegan. Thank God. I never did any of that. So I am who I am. I'm happy with that. But I know on A physical level, I'm still in a recovery process. I'm excited about that because what that tells me is that I did not hit my limit. And I thought I had hit my limit a few years ago and I was doing well, especially when I incorporated different things like some of the purium products, the amino acids. I have to just. This is kind of a shameless plug. But I'm doing this for a reason.

There ain't no shame in quality.

Ain't no shame in quality. So these amino acids saved. They probably did save me, but they took my muscle kind of, what is it, protein synthesis. They took my weight training to another level. When I was hardcore vegan and vegetarian, they allowed me to go to another level. But at some point I plateaued and I knew it. And I had a decision to make. I had to decide, is this where I want my set point to be? And yes. Was I compared to most people, whether they were eating meat or not? Was I outperforming them? Yes. And I've been a peak performer my whole life. So was that because of the diet or was that because of genetic factors and a certain psychology and an A type ambition that I have that maybe I can go harder than other people in certain departments, but is that really the best indicator of optimal health? And so what I'm excited about is to find out what that is. Now that I don't have a box that my head is bumping up against, I don't have a visible ceiling. I'm really excited to find out how much can I take this game? What level can I take this game now?

So looking at the recovery process, like what was some of the recovery processes besides the reidentification, can you share for people that are feeling like their truth light up where they're like, wow, Ronnie has The courage, after 10 years of eating in the vegan and vegetarian way, he has the courage to go into this space and explore, lovingly childlike, explore eating meat. Just let them know if they're thinking about doing this. What is some of the recovery process anchors for them? You know, psychologically, biologically, like, what are some of the ways they can, they can recover from this? Based on your own experience, I'm really.

Happy you're diving deep into this question. So what I realized for me is that on a biological level, I needed organ meats, you know, because it makes sense that our organs, just like physical, like muscle meat.

Yeah.

Is very powerful for our muscle meat. There's no confusion that we're going to put on more muscle if we're training and working out in recovery. Our physical muscles are going to recover better if we have more muscle meats in our diet. I can tell you that for sure the experiment has proven true. I also figured that that probably is true with my organs. So things like the liver, I don't know, you could probably tell there's still a little, and I'll just be transparent about. There's still a little bit of, a little bit of a bag or a little bit of, you could tell, like this would be associated with the kidneys. There's still a little bit of a bag that I'm recovering from underneath my eyes. I feel fantastic. And this is the key here is I feel fantastic, but I know I'm not perfect. I know that through iridology and through facial recognition there's certain signs that my organ systems are still in recovery. So, so I've been doing a little bit more liver, like the actual liver, organic grass fed, grass finished liver, and then also taking liver, a freeze dried desiccated liver from a company called Ancestral Supplements, which I never did before and I wish I actually did. If you're, by the way, if you're listening to this and you're vegetarian and you're like, man, I'm really feeling a conflict here, but I know I need to make a change. Desiccated, dessiccated organ capsules can be the difference between light and day. I really encourage people to really entertain that. We know a lot of people with thyroid issues have to take desiccated pig thyroid and certain issues to keep them off of Synthroid and armor and those medications. So that's been really helpful. Organ meats and some of those supplements have been supportive. So just rebuilding my endocrine system, rebuilding my kidneys, my adrenals. Because one of the things I noticed, and this goes back to that first year on veganism, I felt high. Wasn't just the glucose, it was gluconeogenesis.

Can you share with people what that is? Just for people that don't have a science book in their backpack?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So gluconeogenesis is basically. Well, there's different ways to explain it, but in this case I was basically cannibalizing my own muscle tissue and it was being rendered into simple sugars for energy because your body works on a priority system and it's based on survival. So if I'm in a famine state and I don't have food nourishment to support my biology and my metabolism, my body will go into reserves. And we know this through autophagy and fasting and stuff. Not the intended effect of that, though. So this is what was happening to me. And so I felt freaking high. I was working out. I was running like most vehicles that are athletes running all the time. I had the appearance and the illusion of great health. But when I looked in the mirror, I realized that there was a significant missing piece here. And so all that, when I factor all of those experiences together, it's like, wow, okay, I have survived a grand experiment. I have learned a lot through it. But I also know that I'm recovering from injuring myself through no fault of anyone or my own. Just the fact of the matter is that this is not a species specific diet, and I am a human being and I have a mammalian nervous system and biology, and I'm genetically adapted, like most of us are through millennia to eat a certain way. And the assumption that I'm just going to, through hubris and arrogance and ego and my belief system, I'm just gonna cut out an entire segment of food that I'm most genetically adapted to, and I'm gonna play this other thing out that's created some damage. And so I accept that. I honor that. And I'm also excited that I finally have accepted that. So now I know. Okay, you're in a recovery process. So you're feeling really good now. I'm feeling good enough to actually speak about this. That's a big thing, right?

Yes.

But then also knowing that there's more levels. Right. I'm going to continue to feel better. I'm going to continue to educate myself so I can better educate people and I can push the limits of, you know, what's possible from a human potential.

Perspective, which is so rad because I look at your work since the beginning when I met you, and it's always been about human potential. I mean, that's your podcast. Your podcast is about human potential. Some of the questions that are coming through, and we can't get to all of them, but some of them, one specifically from David was if I eat an animal, am I ending perspective with my own global consciousness or ethically raised? Is okay for my consciousness asking as a meat eater, who is eating less? So essentially what he's asking is, what am I doing when I'm eating ethically, does it enhance my consciousness? And then maybe you could paint a picture for us of what happens for the, I would say 8 out of 10 person that just eats the K foam meat. How is that affecting their consciousness?

That is a really good question. So you Know, I don't know if you listen to the whole, whole interview, but when we were talking earlier about my experience of having that shamanic connection with the steak, the grass fed, grass finished steak, I felt connected to that animal. Like I knew that animal.

Yeah.

Through my own, through its own kind of incarnating within myself, if that makes sense. Like incorporating it still there was life force within the blood medium, within the blood chemistry, there's still life force present, which is a very interesting idea because then it shows us we don't really know anything about life. We don't know anything about life and death and spirit. And like, is there something left over in the body from that incarnation? I believe from my experience there must be, because I could feel, I could feel it. So that, that was a very, it was a beautiful experience. There's no other way about it. I felt more powerful and I felt that I was being gifted by that animal. And I actually felt that there was, there was some kind of like gifting to the animal itself. And that might sound one way or another, but it was almost like helping it cross over. And, you know, that's the only way I know how to explain that. But I will also say, to answer that question, I don't support factory farming of animals or plants because ultimately the devastation that's caused ecologically from agriculture is the biggest predicament that we have. Agriculture as a phenomenon that started about 10,000 years ago, according to whatever we think we know, again, especially modern day agriculture, the industrial revolution, that is what is plaguing our environment. It's not animal or plant, it's agriculture as a practice itself and the corporate takeover. So it's a paradox. It's something we have to just sit within ourself and come to that answer for ourself. But I can definitely tell you that the whole CAFO situation, I don't see anything positive coming from that. Maybe if you're in a total survival situation, but how many people in our world have ever been genuinely hungry a day in their life unless it was voluntary through fasting? So a lot of these things that people make up, like, oh, what if you had to survive? It's like, well, that's irrelevant because I don't. That's all. Yeah, the only time anyone I know has to survive is when they voluntarily put themselves through some kind of hormetic stressor.

Right.

To challenge.

I honestly, I think the cold tub is more fun than doing like the extended fasting, you know, and fasting is like a whole different podcast because, you know, there's so many people that are watching and hearing this and they're like, oh my God, there's another way. Like there's another optional way rather than what I've been fed. And it's so funny. Like, you know, we, we eat the truth with our eyes. You know, we, we take it in, we see. But even some of the things that we think we see, we're seeing them through our own lens. And if you look at the holographic theory, potentially the stuff we're even seeing isn't true because we're just referencing it from our subconscious lens from the things that we already know quote to be true. So my question for you, is this man, as you look for the rest of 2020, to be the most optimized human, you know, the most amazing lover, the most amazing man into your woman, the healthiest version of a human being that's sentient here on planet Earth, the type of person that is trusted to be able to disseminate health content, all these things that make a human optimal. What are a few of the guiding principles, both mentally and emotionally, that you have that you can share with everyone else? In other words, what's your day look like?

Yeah, okay, that's great. So one principle I want to kind of consolidate the whole health and nutrition thing, the nutrition thing in specific is that you have short term diets which are like healing therapeutic diets. This would be like, you know, a lot of the raw food diets and the wheatgrass cleansing, like Ann Wigmore back in the 50s of the Hippocrates Institute and some of these great pioneers in that realm, that field. Right. They were healing people. That's what they were doing. They were healing people. So they were promoting a healing diet that is short term, whatever that means. But it's really challenging when people confuse short term with a long term lifestyle. So there's short term healing, therapeutic approaches, elimination diets, et cetera. Then there are long term sustainability lifestyles. And ultimately it has to become a lifestyle. It's not just one component. My model of holistic health is like many people, I just break it down into the four quadrants of health, which is mental, emotional, physical and spiritual. And they all piggy, they all intersect with each other. And our physical body is like, it's the, I don't know, it's the transmitter, it's the feedback system. That's what it is. So your nervous system is literally a feedback system. Like Paul Check talks about the pain teacher. Such a great analogy because that's really what it is. So to the degree that we're not numbing ourselves, we can get an accurate assessment and read on what is going on at any given time and where do we need to put our attention. And what I mean by that is, is this thing that I'm experiencing, is it more physical? Is it a digestive thing? Is something I need to tune up in my nutrition or my fitness? Is it a lack of movement? Too much movement, not enough rest and recovery? Is it some kind of neurotic pattern that I have that's very common? Am I obsessing over something? Or is there something in my consciousness, like a blind spot that I'm not seeing? Seeing? Is it emotional? Do I have. What's the stress in my life? Geez. Do I have financial issues? Am I worrying? Do I have relationship issues? Number one thing, relationship issues? Do I have some kind of emotion? Am I some kind of trauma in my life that I'm not able to deal with or I haven't gotten the help to deal with? Is it a spiritual issue? Do I know why I'm here? Do I have cosmic illiteracy? Right. Am I aware that I'm a spiritual being and there is an immortal context to my existence, that this physical thing, that it gets so wrapped up? I'm obsessed about a diet because I'm obsessed with this meat suit and avoiding dying, which is the whole anti aging movement is just an avoidance of death. That's the whole thing in itself. But all the supplements and all the biohackers, it's like, dude, you're gonna. You're gonna die. So just so you know, we're gonna.

Die, but we want to be here. We want to live well while we're here. And I think for some people, like, the. The whole quest of not dying actually makes their life here kind of feel like they're dying the whole time as they're trying to not die.

And that's a spiritual issue. Yeah, that's a. That's an example of a existential issue. So meaning, purpose. I'd say if somebody feels something like that. Viktor Frankl Man's Search for Meaning. Great book. If you think you got problems, read that book.

Oh my gosh, man. What a conversation of rich exploration and really just dynamic perspective. Dude, I honor you. I honor the path that you're on. It's been a total joy to see you go from squeezing juice, eating only raw nuts and seeds, to now going back to the middle. As we started this podcast, which has been so touching for so many people. I mean, look at all the comments and all the energy. And this isn't even promoted. This is just us jumping on to record this epic podcast. If you don't know where Ronnie lives, Ronnie, tell everybody where you live, man. Tell everybody where they can connect with you, where they can learn from your work, and where they can start to reach out to you about the transitions that they're going to experience. I know people are going to transition just from hearing this.

Awesome. So I'm physically located in Sedona, Arizona. I'm usually between Southern California, which may or may never happen ever again. But I'm in Sedona, Arizona, and I kind of go back between here and Hawaii. But people can find me on Facebook, Instagram, just Ronnie Landis. My website is mykajabi.ronnialandis.com I think that's a little confusing, but we're trying to get the URL recovered. Isn't there also holistichealthmastery.com yeah, there is. Holistichealthmastery.com that's my online holistic nutrition certification course. And I've since incorporated all my stuff onto this Kajabi website. So that's. If you look me up on Facebook, it'll be right there in the. I'm still, you know, there's still a few little things we have to tighten up for the public, but easy to access on Instagram, Facebook. And you can look up my podcast. It's now the official Ronnie Landis show. And there's a lot of good stuff there, too.

All right, so 2017, your lens of wellness was way different. And it's cool. There's already a couple of people, like, defining what they mean as wellness on the channel. But for you, with this massive transition, with the shedding of an ideology that was no longer serving your soul, with the open exploration, like a child in a playground, to learn how a slide feels when you. When you slide down it. What does wellness mean to you now? You know, 2020, clear vision. How do you describe wellness at this point in the journey?

The felt experience. Ooh, that's a good one. The felt experience of, you know, you could say joy, inspiration, motivation, intrinsic human qualities that are progressive and motivating towards a more positive future. So the felt experience of that, not the concept, right? Because a lot of times it's conceptual and the self help and, oh, something's wrong with me. I got to fix myself, so I'm going to go, you know, and all that's just mental, right? But the actual felt experience that your life is Moving in a positive, progressive direction is something you feel in your body. And that to me is wellness. Because that incorporates spiritual health, mental health, emotional health. And that all has the biggest factor to play in physical health. And my experience is if you love yourself, you will do right by yourself. And so, you know, that kind of my little impromptu feeling about wellness.

Well, thank you for your guests, man. And just being a warrior, you know, like the real truth warrior, not the sensationalized kind. We're in fucking crazy times right now. And we all get to just take a big deep bellow breath, calm down, make educated, rational decisions. And part of that comes from asking yourself, what would love to do now? I know we've all heard that question, what would love do now? But what would love do now? Would love protect? Would love be grounded in sacred anger and fight for what's real? Would love hold someone? Would love have a conversation that was scary? Would love go walk down a path just because their heart told them that that's the right way? Ask yourself right now, like what would love do? And as parting guidance, Ronnie, can you please love leave us with a mantra or just a phrase that people can trust, that can guide them in uncertain times?

Yeah, two come to mind. God's delays are not God's denials.

Right.

So patience is critical and you're always on the right track, even if it doesn't feel like that. God's delays are not God's delight. Denials. And then the other one comes from one of the greatest mystics in American history for sure, Walter Russell. He said that mediocrity is self inflicted. Genius is self bestowed. So ultimately it is just a choice that we make in the moment as to who we're going to be. And you can play the mediocrity game and the blame. Point fingers and wear your mask everywhere you go and deoxygenate yourself if you'd like. And that's cool. Or you can play the human potential game in the immortal soul game and access your intrinsic genius and bestow that genius upon yourself. And it's literally just. It's a choice.

So what would love do now? Love would choose. Choose to be with us and choose to follow Ronnie. Thanks for being on the show, Ronnie. We'll talk to you guys.

Thanks, brother. Thank you. It.