Whole Foods Founder: Why I’m Taking on America’s Health Crisis

Mark Hyman, MD

Full Transcript

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Dr. Mark Hyman
You founded Whole Foods. It's changed the face of food in America for the better.

John Mackey
First store was called Safer Way. Changed the name of Whole Foods Market, and it took off. It became the highest volume natural food store in The United States six months after it opened.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Why have you sort of turned your attention from groceries and food to health care?

John Mackey
I had a tab of LSD and it was incredibly powerful. The strongest dose of any psychedelic I've ever taken. And I basically was swept away. John Mackie, cofounder of Whole Foods Market Grew one store into a $22,000,000,000 natural foods empire

Dr. Mark Hyman
and champions conscious capitalism to elevate humanity.

John Mackey
Today, chronic diseases, non infectious diseases, are what are killing us.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Chronic disease can be contagious. You're more likely to be obese if your friends are overweight than even if your family's overweight.

John Mackey
We spend almost 18% of our GDP. But where are we in terms of longevity? When I checked it out today, we were

Dr. Mark Hyman
48. You started basically a movement

John Mackey
called conscious capitalism. We had some shareholder activists that were trying to take over the company. Basically, Amazon was the best solution for us in a very situation where we didn't have a lot of good solutions. Conscious capitalism has four basic principles to it, Mark. First principle is

Dr. Mark Hyman
Okay, John. Welcome to my podcast. We've known each other a long time. It's great to see here. We're in LA.

Actually, we both live in Austin, so don't know how we end up in LA

John Mackey
doing a podcast. Because we both had

Dr. Mark Hyman
some business here. We do. You you founded Whole Foods, which everybody now knows. It's changed the face of food in America for the better. You know, you sold food.

But now you're kind of focused on health care, which is really interesting. And, you know, if you understand that food is medicine, it's not such a big leap, right? But interesting, why have you sort of turned your attention from groceries and food to healthcare?

John Mackey
Well I do think it's a continuum. They're both about helping people to become healthier, to be the healthiest version of themselves. And I mean I did I co founded Whole Foods. I led it as CEO for forty four years. Forty four years, right.

Forty four years, exactly. We sold it to Amazon not because we wanted to sell out. We were independent publicly traded company for twenty five years. Well, for a long time, in twenty five years as a public company. But we had some shareholder activists who were trying to take over the company.

And Amazon, it's a long story which I detail in my book, the whole story. The short version of that is basically that Amazon was the best solution for us in a very situation where we didn't have a lot of good solutions. So I signed on for five years with Amazon to help integrate Whole Foods into Amazon, make sure that the culture or the values of Whole Foods were protected as best I could protect it. And then those five years were up and I retired from Whole Foods. And also, I didn't want to work as hard, to be honest.

I mean, I was getting older and I wanted to Play more pickleball. I want to play more pickleball. Exactly. And read and travel and spend time with my wife and friends and family, etcetera. That's how I got out of Whole Foods.

But here's the thing, it's like I really felt like I knew how to help thousands of people and maybe in the long term millions of people be healthier, to live a healthier more vital life. How could I not do that? Would I would I get to the end of my life with a regret? Yeah. Sure.

I could get lay on a beach and and read and do whatever I wanted. I'd made enough money. But I don't think that would be fulfilling for me. I'm a very purpose driven human being. I feel like I needed to be contributing in some way to helping.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So you started your career basically working at co op, you know, sweeping the floors, moved to create, you know, one of the most iconic brands in America that has really improved the health for so many people who shop there. And now you're you're you know, 72 and you're still at it.

John Mackey
Hey, I've got three weeks. Before I'm 72, I'm gonna I'm

Dr. Mark Hyman
gonna You're biologically 60

John Mackey
I'm but you're gonna enjoy them as well

Dr. Mark Hyman
as I can. But you're you know, you're really now focused on a on a new venture which is very ambitious. And you know, I'm just curious, what was your early experience in your life that that shifted you to think this way, to to have this philosophy around food and health and consciousness? And because you've not only, you know, done you know, the work you've done around creating a business like Whole Foods, but you started basically a movement called conscious capitalism,

John Mackey
which is how do we I'm gonna give you I'm gonna give you like a three to five minute history there. Great. In my book, the prologue The

Dr. Mark Hyman
whole story.

John Mackey
The whole story. Exactly.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Everybody you gotta get a copy.

John Mackey
Adventures in Love, Life, and Capitalism. Mhmm. And starts out, the prologue, I've just turned 22 years old and I'm living by myself, not in a very good space. I'm an atheist studying philosophy, existentialism.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That'll make

John Mackey
you depressed. I took a very I I didn't know it because back in that day, you didn't know what you were getting in terms of dosage. But I I had a tab of LSD, I took it by myself, and it was incredibly powerful. The strongest dose of any psychedelic I've ever taken. And I basically was swept away.

I use the metaphor. It's like imagine Niagara Falls and you're hanging onto a rock with one hand. How long can you do that? Not that long. And so I got swept away.

And then I found my ego dissolving basically. That separateness, you're Mark, I'm John. Yeah. It's water. It all disappeared.

There was really no thoughts. I'm now reflecting back on that state of consciousness when there was no thoughts. Really, there's no separation. And what I realized, I realized a, I was a manifestation of the one being. As are you, as is everything.

Because that's all there is, is the one being. I realized I'd always existed. There was no beginning and there's no end. Yeah. And I realized that life's this adventure.

Yeah. And it's like, I can make it whatever I want it to be. I can create whatever I wanna create. And so that was so life changing. That changed my life.

So there's a funny story about this. So I'm coming down on a trip and I'm walking around this neighborhood now. And I run-in to my

Dr. Mark Hyman
You were in the East Coast somewhere?

John Mackey
No. I'm in Austin, Texas.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Oh, in Austin.

John Mackey
Yeah. I'm walking around and I run into my philosophy professor that I idolized. He was my intellectual hero, a guy named Bob Solomon, Robert C. Solomon. He's written 40 or 50 books on philosophy.

And he was an existentialist and he was at that time very influenced by Sartre and Camus and Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. And he believed life was absurd, that there was no purpose and meaning to life at all. And so I ran into him And I think I ran into him. I think he was there. I had a conversation with him.

And I asked him, said, Professor Solomon, it's John Mackie. I'm one of your students. I've been taking a few courses from you. And he kind of vaguely recognized me, but he didn't know my name. And I said, so professor Salman, have two questions.

First question is, you teach that life's absurd. That there's absolutely no meaning whatsoever to life. That we're just sort of thrown into here. It's all been random chance. And we're going to die, and that's it.

Our consciousness is extinguished. And there's just really no purpose. But you take sort of a romantic stance to that. You said, there's no real objective meaning, but we can make something up so we can be romantic. We can sort of throw our fist against a cruel reality and and make our life into an adventure.

And I said, is that what you believe, sir? And he said, yes, that's what I believe. And I said, I thought so. But let me ask you a second question. Are you very happy?

And he looked at me and he said, no. I'm not very happy. Yeah. And he looked at me. He was

Dr. Mark Hyman
honest at least.

John Mackey
Yeah. He looked at me and I looked at him and we went our separate ways. Wow. And what I realized after that point is I just had this I'm still having actually this incredible

Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean, you were in the trip when

John Mackey
Well, you were in was coming down. But what I don't know for sure, was he still part of that trip or had I come down enough where he was actually

Dr. Mark Hyman
I mean, what's You just imagine. I mean, it's all a dream anyway.

John Mackey
It's all my end. Anyway, he's I'm having this conversation. I think I I was down enough. Point is that changed my life. Yeah.

And and you know what I started doing after I had I stuck on my thumb and I started hitchhiking.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Across America?

John Mackey
Not across America. I was open for adventure. A guy picks me up and he says, Son, where do you want to go? And I said, Wherever you're going. I don't really care.

So he says, Well, I'm going home. Great. So he drives a couple of miles up the road and says, this is this is home. I'm getting out. I'm looking around.

I'm thinking, okay. So then I start walking back. And that's actually when I ran into Professor Solomon. Anyhow, after that, Mark, pretty soon after that, I moved into this vegetarian commune, co op. And I wasn't vegetarian at that time.

I really didn't know much about food at all. Didn't eat vegetables or I really ate I ate the same American diet. I was a junk food eater. I moved in and I had my food consciousness awakened. Don't know else to put it.

I started to cook. Learned about natural and organic foods. For the first time I began to realize, my gosh, I'm not just a machine that needs fuel driving to McDonald's and fuel up. I'm a living being. I need to nourish my cells with nourishing food.

And that was when it began. I went to work for a small natural food store, I became And I worked there for a few months. And I came back home when Went to the co op, my girlfriend Renee. I went to Renee and I said, hey, Renee. What do you think if we opened up our own natural food store?

What do you think about that? And she said, I think that'd be cool. So so we did it. I was 23 and she was 19 at that Oh,

Dr. Mark Hyman
that's incredible.

John Mackey
So we didn't know what we were doing. Yeah. But let's just say we made a lot of mistakes and I was a fast learner. First store was called Safer Way. And Mark, it was so idealistically pure.

It was a vegetarian store. We didn't sell alcohol. We didn't sell coffee. We didn't sell sugar. We didn't sell white flour.

We were very, very pure. Love that. We didn't do much business. Safer way, really struggled. And then we relocated it, merged with another small natural food store, changed the name to Whole Foods Market, started selling meat, seafood, beer and wine, coffee, tea, sugar, and some products with white flour.

But then natural organic focus. And it took off. It became the highest volume natural food store in United States six months after it opened.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It was a huge success. Driven by there in Austin, right?

John Mackey
Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Amazing. I had a similar experience. I I actually had a psychedelic experience in college, very similar to that. And then I moved into a house with eight vegetarians

John Mackey
Really? You're kidding.

Dr. Mark Hyman
In Ithaca. Yeah. Wow. And it was that was where Moose would cookbook. Moose would cookbook.

John Mackey
Yeah. I

Dr. Mark Hyman
That was

John Mackey
one of my cookbooks.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's right. Well, Moose would restaurant was in Ithaca. That's right. And and so we used to go there, and then every night we had to cook and we we took our backyard which is we rented a house in town and I had a room for a $100 in the

John Mackey
How old are you?

Dr. Mark Hyman
I was 19. 19. You know? And and we took the backyard, we tore up the grass and we planted a whole garden. One of the guys, we had these maple trees on the street in front of us.

He was tapping the maple trees, and we made like a pint of maple syrup.

John Mackey
Oh my gosh.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And we had to cook every night, and so we rotated. So every night we had basically a family dinner, and one of us was a chief chef, and then one of us was like the helper chef. Right. And then but we we got fresh delicious vegetarian food every Wow. Night for

John Mackey
How long did you stay in that community?

Dr. Mark Hyman
We lived together for a couple years.

John Mackey
Yep. And

Dr. Mark Hyman
then I ended up moving on to a abandoned commune in Ithaca and lived in a yurt with no electricity or running water. We're both were hippies. That's right. No electricity, no running water.

John Mackey
I had

Dr. Mark Hyman
take my water from a well like a quarter mile away with these two five gallon buckets.

John Mackey
What motivated you to become a doctor?

Dr. Mark Hyman
Oh, I don't know you know this, John, but I I was a student of Buddhism. So you had that first? Yeah. So I was studying Buddhism and I

John Mackey
Do you still practice? Do do Vipassana still?

Dr. Mark Hyman
I do meditate and I I feel a lot of the principles Yeah. Are kind of ingrained in me as sort of just my

John Mackey
way of doing eclectic. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And I was ended up taking a course called the Medicine Buddha and about, you know, the kind of the healing framework of Buddhism, which is really healing of the mind. Yes. And and I was like, well, I don't really wanna become a monk, so what are we gonna do? So I graduated, you know, basically with what am I gonna do with a degree in Buddhism? You know?

John Mackey
And I ended It's my degree in philosophy, but it's

Dr. Mark Hyman
just Yeah. Taking a a hike for a week in the Shenandoah Mountains, and I took Moby Dick and just me and myself and I and ended up realizing, well, maybe I should try to go to medical school and see if see if I liked it. And if I didn't like it, I would quit, you know. But so far, so good. What was your

John Mackey
You haven't met one of your either parents, doctors?

Dr. Mark Hyman
No. No. Nobody. My my the story was that my great my grandfather's grandfather from Russia was a doctor to the czar, the last czar. I think it's probably made up.

I I don't believe

John Mackey
So so you were you were not pushed into

Dr. Mark Hyman
the No. No. You

John Mackey
were We'll say you were led by your

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Was led.

John Mackey
You're led by your heart Yeah. Or your your soul Yeah. Deeper spirit.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And I was studying all these ancient healing systems, and I learned Chinese and studied Chinese medicine. And so I was very much thinking differently from the beginning.

John Mackey
Marty, you have to write your story.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I know. I will.

John Mackey
You know, I will. You've got a lot of books out there.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I will.

John Mackey
You know, always tell people everybody should write a memoir. Yeah. Because in some ways, only looking retrospectively, a lot of patterns and threads came together in writing the book. It's like, wow, I never quite thought of it that way before. You know, as you know, when you write, it's a discovery process.

Yeah. You're you're you're creative and you're and you're discovering things. It's hard, but you are discovering things you didn't necessarily put together before. A memoir is also a gift to your family, your children, your descendants. Yeah.

It's true. I think,

Dr. Mark Hyman
you know, you're right, John. You you can't always tell going forward where things are connecting. But looking back, you can see all the threads and all the choice and all the decisions that led you to the moment that you're doing what you're doing.

John Mackey
It helps you actually, I think moving forward as well. Because you When those pat When you're clear about those patterns, then you have less sort of uncertainty.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I think people live a lot in fear. I think it's one of the challenges.

John Mackey
Fear is what keeps people from following their hero's journey. Yeah. I think we're all called a hero's journey in all in our own unique ways.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

John Mackey
But you know, we're we're too scared. Scared we might fail, scared of ridicule Yeah. Scared our parents won't approve, blah blah blah blah. I just did it anyway.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

John Mackey
And so did you.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. I don't know what makes some people like that and others not. I I was always like that. I I actually, I have a title for my memoir which I I've started but I haven't really finished yet, which is called Notes from God and it stumbling toward the truth. And it's basically

John Mackey
You shouldn't sell that. Don't That's such a great title. Keep that title to yourself.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. It's okay. But you can actually you can write Moby Dick. Nobody can change nobody can copyright a title, so it's okay. But the the idea is basically that, you know, when you're moving through life, there's these little doors that open.

These little Post it notes from God, let's call them. Yeah. And you can choose to go through or not. You somebody gave you a tab of acid and you're like, I'm gonna try this and look what happened. And then, you know, you need a job, so you went you know, you worked in a whole of a natural food store.

Just one thing connected to next, but you chose to actually do those things. And I think people live less from fear and more from love, which is why I love the title of your new company, the name Love Life. It's just like It's

John Mackey
not an accident.

Dr. Mark Hyman
No. It's not an accident. Those those moments we often don't pay attention to in our life. Those little those little notes from God. But I think the more you pay attention to those and listen to those things, the better your life's gonna be.

And I think what's happening around chronic disease in America is that people are not listening to their bodies, not listening to their conversation that they should be having with their soul. And so they end up in this narcotized, polluted

John Mackey
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Self that's sick and unable to think clearly and feel right.

John Mackey
100%. You know what thinking about the Notes from God is that they're always being written. And you can Even if you haven't been listening to them before, you can start listening

Dr. Mark Hyman
to them. It's true.

John Mackey
Just have to It's always so you just have to quiet. You have to be still. Be quiet. And and it's always speaking. And even if we make bad decisions, there's new notes.

Mhmm. It's totally true. It's always waiting for us to listen to it and follow it. I had been thinking about love life or something like that for a long time. I was thinking Just for

Dr. Mark Hyman
people listening, what is Love Life?

John Mackey
Life is a holistic health center. A one stop holistic health wellness center. It's big. Our first flagship location here is in the LA area. It's down in El Segundo, Manhattan Beach.

It's It's an old Best Buy, so it's big. So we have 45,000 square feet in there. So just real quickly, you go in and of course I want to get you there. I'd love to you a tour and You see what we're go in, first we have a healthy cafe. So healthy food is one of the foundations for people to be as healthy as possible.

So starting with food. Then we have sort of this whole community space, co working space, but also a big gathering community room where we can do lectures. So let's say you were to come do a talk on functional medicine, then we would invite members and the outside community and we can get in that Expanding it in the cafe, we'd probably get 75 people in there pretty comfortably. Then you go into a fitness center. So we've got like The category most people try to fit us into is like a gym because we have a really nice gym.

Yeah. But of course that's just one little small part of what we're doing. And then in that fitness center, we're sort of state of the art like Equinox in a way, sort of upscale, lots of the most recent cool technologies in there. We have a physical therapy room. We have a physical therapist on staff.

We really think physical therapy for many people that have injuries is very very efficacious.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Or you go for your pickleball injury.

John Mackey
Well, yes. We have lots of sort of biohacking stuff, which I'll get Speaking to in a of pickleball, we have three pickleball courts there. Amazing. So I did hurt myself on the court. One of the biohacks we had there was a pimp machine.

So I went and I did that a And couple of I think that's helped.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's post electromagnetic frequency, which helps to sort of reduce inflammation.

John Mackey
Yes. Yes, it does. I think it helps a little bit of the circulation and starts to move some of the inflammation out of the injured, in my case my calf. So then we've got a yoga studio. We've got a pilates studio.

In that yoga studio we do breath work. Sai Yoga we do breath work. We do sound baths. We do meditation classes. We're about all things to help people be the healthiest version of themselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Those are all part of the love life vision. We have a really nice spa. So for you can do things you do in any really nice spa with lots of different kinds of massages, facials, wraps. It's not a medical spa per se. We're not doing Botox or

Dr. Mark Hyman
other

John Mackey
type of medical injections in that way. We have all this recovery stuff and all these sort of biohacks. So we've got our pimp machines. We've got two hyperbaric oxygen chambers. We've got cryotherapy.

We've got four red light beds. We've got four infrared sauna rooms. We have a huge steam room. We have six coal plunges. And we have the biggest sauna you've probably ever seen.

We can jam like 40 people in that sauna if we had to. So those are for the recovery things. And then of course what the real thing that sets us apart is that we have primary healthcare. We have a center. We do very comprehensive testing like function health blood tests.

We do a comprehensive blood test. We add a gut test because we work with partner with Viomes.

Dr. Mark Hyman
We do

John Mackey
a gut test. We do oral tests. We do checking the feces. We're doing a VO two max.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's your fitness level.

John Mackey
Yes. Trying to grip strength. We're doing lots of stuff.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Body composition.

John Mackey
Yes. Body composition. We have a DEXA scan.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's really one stop shopping. It is. All things is health and wellness.

John Mackey
One thing we don't have, although we have access to MRI, because we have a deal with Prenova on that one, like functions bought a company there. Yeah. But I think in our next center, which we plan on that being in Austin, although we don't have the location yet, we will put the MRI in. Because we really want to have that executive health so you can come and do everything there. Bring a dermatologist in, maybe do a colonoscopy.

And just so people can get a complete report card in-depth. But after you get the testing, now we sort of know where you're at. You get your

Dr. Mark Hyman
Your baseline.

John Mackey
But that's a starting point. Unfortunately, I've learned kind of the hard way. Knowledge is not enough to get many Some people get the knowledge, that's all they need, they never look back. Others, that's interesting. But they don't really want to change anything they're doing.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I want to eat my ice cream.

John Mackey
That's right. I want to eat my ice cream. It tastes good. I like it. And I feel okay.

Yeah. Most people actually, I found, actually don't want to get tested because they don't want to know because they don't want to change. Anyway, so once we've got that, we now have a well care team. We have a medical doctor that is function medicine trained. We have a nurse practitioner.

She can do IVs. Well, she can do everything. The doctor can really just we don't have to pay quite as much. We've got a registered dietitian nutritionist who really knows her stuff. We've got medical assistants.

We also have DEXA scan operators. We've got a whole WellCare team. And so the whole idea is first we test, then we create a plan, and then we track. We track through additional testing. But also we can download into our app their Oura Ring results, their Apple Watch results, Garmin.

We've got like, I don't know, 10 different devices we can put in. Continuous glucose monitor, can put that data in there. That's another thing we test, by the way, we have people wear that for a couple of weeks. So we get all that information Very comprehensive. But mostly it's about the care team.

Problem you know, Mark, what's wrong with our medical system is basically I call it it's a plumber's model. Yeah. It's when you get a plumber. When your sink's broken. When your sink's broken.

Your pipes clogged. Exactly. Most people don't go to a doctor until something breaks. Yep. And that might have been fine a hundred and fifty years ago.

But today, diseases, non infectious diseases are what are killing us. Yep. And so we know heart disease is our number one killer, then we got cancer. We know medical care itself is one of the leading causes for death for too many prescription drugs, mistakes made, infections they get in hospitals, etcetera.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's true. People don't realize that. But I think it's the third or fourth leading cause of death.

John Mackey
Third leading cause of death. And obesity, Americans are sad to say is that seventy three percent of Americans are overweight, seventy three percent. And forty three percent are obese. Yeah. Those And the trend lines are continuing.

It's not like we've peaked. It's still going up. Standard American diet is killing people.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Mean, when I graduated from medical school in 1987, there wasn't a single state that had an obesity rate over twenty percent. Now, there's not one 30 and most are 40.

John Mackey
Is Colorado and Utah over 30? They the two best. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Think they're popping over 30 now.

John Mackey
Wow. Those trend lines keep going up. And basically, America The United States, as you know, spends far more than any other country on healthcare. We spend almost 18% of our GDP.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Well, $5,000,000,000,000

John Mackey
is Yes. Exactly. But where do we where do where are we in terms of longevity? When I when I checked it out today, we were 48.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. So

John Mackey
most money on health care, we have terrible results.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I think we're worse than Q by them. They spend $184 a year.

John Mackey
So I'm saying all that because Love Life we think is one of the solutions. We want people to join Love Life. We want them to enter into our medical programs. We do primary healthcare, we'll see them. It's not a concierge program, but besides the doctor times to go over your test results and work on your plans, we have 10 acute visits a year you can use that are part of your As part of the membership, exactly.

What I'll tell you one other story, so how I got to

Dr. Mark Hyman
this thing. So Yeah, because you know you

John Mackey
At Whole Foods we were self insured. So we paid. It means we had UnitedHealthcare might have been the administrator and they might have had a network. But we were actually paying all the cost of it. What we discovered was, as we tracked it, was that 10% of our employees, team members, were spending 90% of our healthcare dollars.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's right.

John Mackey
So we began to think, how can we take these 10%? If we can get them healthier, that's going to be a win win win, right? Be good for them, and it'll be good for Whole Foods. That's right. And it'll be good for everyone else as well, their families and everyone else connected to it.

So we began to create what we call a total health immersion. And we worked with four different sets of four doctors. And we worked four different times a year. And we would invite any team member to apply for it. We'd cover all the costs.

And of course we favored those who we knew were in our magic 10%. What ended up happening was pretty extraordinary. We'd go in a retreat setting for a week. And my biggest takeaway from the retreats was, did you know, I mean you know this, the human body is far more resilient than I realized.

Dr. Mark Hyman
A 100%.

John Mackey
If we just stop poisoning it, it starts to heal.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Bingo. It's incredible. Yeah. It's

John Mackey
I had not known that personally because I've sort of been on this gradual health journey for decades, decades, right? Yeah. So I never had any radical improvements. But what we saw in those weeks were people that if they were obese, they generally lose seven to 10 pounds in that week. We saw type two diabetics that could actually in in even just a week Yep.

Normalize. Normalize and get off their meds. Yep. We saw people's cholesterol drop 30 to 40 points in that week. And we saw blood pressure and sometimes drop 30 to 40 points.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's what people don't realize, John, is that people are just a few days away from feeling better.

John Mackey
They are.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And they don't know it.

John Mackey
They don't know it.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's like Dorothy in the ruby red slippers,

John Mackey
you know. Right. That's what's so powerful about a type of retreat like setting. Because now, here's another takeaway though. Again, like knowledge, we taught people the principles.

We showed them what to do. Some took that knowledge, Mark, and they never looked back. Their life was transformed. I'd travel around and visit our stores and they'd come up and hug me and say, thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. Mackie.

Changed my life. You know, I'm gonna see my grandchildren now, and I'm playing with my kids. It's so great. Thank you so much. And others who were apologizing because they had lost weight and then they gained it back because they went back to their diets.

And the takeaway was when you look a little further was for people to really make lasting change, some people can do it on their own. Most people need a community of support.

Dr. Mark Hyman
A 100%.

John Mackey
And so Love Life aims to be that community of support for people who really want to become the healthiest version of themselves. If just like I say, let's say you're an alcoholic and we send you to rehab for ninety days and you come back sober. You don't crave alcohol any longer. But if you go back into the same social network Yep. Your friends are

Dr. Mark Hyman
alcoholics, right?

John Mackey
And you're going to fall off the wagon pretty quickly. So you need a new set of friends basically. We found that out and it's like that's my takeaway from that total health emergence. You need community of

Dr. Mark Hyman
And how did you apply that at Whole Foods after that? Because I think that you're hitting on something that's very important is that we call chronic illness non disease, but that's completely wrong. It's not infectious but it's contagious.

John Mackey
Yes.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And just as chronic disease can be contagious, you're more likely to be obese if your friends are overweight than even if your family's overweight because you're basically as healthy as your five closest friends. You know, if all your friends are drinking green juices and going to yoga as opposed to drinking beer and having burgers and fries, you're going to be healthier, right?

John Mackey
Yeah. That's why they know, it's like if if you're a teenager who hang around kids that smoked, you Yeah. More likely become a smoker.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And community is medicine. And we did this at the Saddleback Church with Rick Warren. We got fifteen thousand people lose a quarter million pounds by doing it in community. So And it was powerful.

And I'm curious how at Whole Foods you you did the community pieces. Well, this was

John Mackey
this was the flaw in the program. We're still doing the program. We still have follow-up with people afterwards. Here's the problem. We've you know, got over a 100,000 team members.

And they're from all over the country, Canada and The UK for that matter too. So they might go back, but the people they met, the community of people that they were with, they are scattering. So that community is not together. Now if some of them came from the same store, then they have a little bit of community support. We can put them in touch with others that were on the journey.

Again, they're so spread out, we didn't solve for it. It's still a problem.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's still

John Mackey
a challenge. I really do think these What Love Life's doing and what other wellness centers, holistic health centers will create will be also social places for people to go and hang out. We've we've designed it in that way. When you see our space, you'll see the co working space, the community areas, the cafe, the couches, the the chairs are all set up for people to hang out, work, network with their friends that are there. You know, most health clubs formula is to get people to become members and just keep paying, but hopefully never come.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Right.

John Mackey
We have the opposite philosophy. We really like people to spend a couple hours or more every day at Love Life. Come in after work, do some of the recovery modalities, or do a workout, do some recovery, have a meal, meet some people, play some pickleball, take a class. Have all kinds of different classes there. There's so many.

Stay around for one of our talks or one of our events that are happening. We really want to nurture community.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And how do you see this intersecting with health care? Because you know, people have their health insurance and people aren't very motivated usually to pay out of pocket for healthcare, which they think this should be

John Mackey
That's the biggest challenge, to be honest. Of course everybody asks about that. We do create super bills for people. Most of our doctors are out of network most likely for them. For a lot of the testing that we're doing, you can also use your 125, your HSA, your HRA.

Those can all go towards this. Yeah. I I was talking to somebody about it recently, and I just said, you know what? Insurance will be one of the last dominoes to fall. It won't it won't change until the market demands that it change.

Until people are complaining. And then until the government maybe steps in and starts saying, you But need to cover this stuff

Dr. Mark Hyman
also if you if you track your data at Love Life, you can see longitudinally how people do. Oh we do. And that way you can actually show payers how this is actually saving them money.

John Mackey
That's going

Dr. Mark Hyman
to change reimbursement.

John Mackey
I really do think before we get the insurance companies to change, Now we have We're This is a We think a b to b potential is big there. Remember I told you about how Whole Foods was self We think we can go to big employers in the area and and do two things. We can say, look, give us your sick people. Because we know if you're self insured that like Whole Foods, 10% are spending 90% of your money. Give us those people that are motivated, only the ones that want to come.

Because we can't do anything if people don't want to heal themselves. And we can help them heal. And we can help them heal pretty quickly. And do that on a fee per person basis. And also, but also we'd like to go to those same corporations and say, now give us your up and comers, your executives, and get them an optimized gold membership at Love Life as a perk, as a benefit.

These are the people you're counting on to make the most important decisions in your business. The healthier they are, the more vital they are, the better their decision making they're going be. And the less likely they're going to leave because this is one of your perks that the competitors are not offering. So there's two ways to approach the B2B. I think the, again, the insurance will change.

But it's like it's just not

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's slow.

John Mackey
It's it's we got to go for the low hanging fruit first. Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
No. Agree. I think you're right. And you know, I think the you know, the the question is can you kind of force people into collective change together? I don't know the answer to that, but I know What in America?

I know in Cleveland Clinic, we had a waiting list of 3,000 people for our Center for Functional Medicine. Wow. And so what we said was, you can't get into a one on one appointment, but you get into a group visit. And we were able to put people in group visits who necessarily maybe wanted to see someone privately, but they were willing to just get in. And what we found was that the health outcomes were three times better for the same condition treated by the same doctors in the same clinic.

And we compared a doctor treating diabetes in a group versus a doctor one on one.

John Mackey
Same. Same.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And it was three times better outcomes And in the and and the savings were far more. So better outcomes, lower costs is what health care is is the holy grail, like value based care. So it was interesting because not everybody kind of, you know, really opted in. Mean, I guess they sort of opted in because they they couldn't get an appointment, but it wasn't like they were motivated to be in a group. They they actually were motivated to be seen.

Yes. And that just was what we found. So I think I think if we can kind of encourage people to do that. And A is a great example. Weight Watchers is a great example.

People change in in the collective.

John Mackey
I totally agree. And that's why in the b to b approach, if we can get a group of peers that are coming in from the same company and they're motivated to try to heal themselves, we have a much better chance if they come in as a group, might say. So you know, sort of you're sort

Dr. Mark Hyman
of an unlikely character. You're like a hippie from the seventies who started a health food store and you know, now they turn into Whole Foods. And then you help build this movement around conscious capitalism, which Yeah. Is is sort of I'd love you to sort of talk a little bit about that because I think it's part of what you're doing with Love Life, which is a business, but it's also bringing more light into the world as opposed to darkness.

John Mackey
So Conscious Capitalism is a movement I co founded and did I wrote a book called Conscious Capitalism, co authored that with my good friend, Raj Sisodia. And as I built Whole Foods, what I began to realize was that because I didn't have a business background, I hadn't worked for any corporations, I began to realize that Whole Foods was very different than most other businesses. And that we had this higher purpose. We really cared about all of our stakeholders. We were trying to create these cultures where humans were flourishing.

We wanted to lead with love. It was And these were just you know, I just thought we were sort of just kind of one weird a weirdo company. And then I read a book called Firms of Endearment by my co author of Conscious Capitalism, Raj Sesseldia. Not terms, but firms. Firms.

Firms. Companies. Firms of endearment. And what 30 that he identified they had he and his co author identified. And the firm of endearment was one All the stakeholders love the firm.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Not the shareholders.

John Mackey
But the shareholders do too. Yeah. Shareholders love them too because they all perform really well economically. But the customers love them, their employees love them, their suppliers love them, they're sort of universally loved. And so Whole Foods was one of those 30 companies.

And you know what got me excited when I read the book? I said, I'm not alone. There are other weirdos out there too doing similar stuff. Yeah. And so I got together with the authors and said, listen, can you put me in touch with some of these other people?

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah.

John Mackey
And so they did. And I started to realize, this is great. This is great. And I realized more people need to know about this because all of these people are financially very successful. Being loved by all your stakeholders and having a higher purpose is good business.

It's a way to make more money. It's not The money comes from practicing those principles, in other So people think there's this dichotomy between

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's like honestly, when you're motivated by money, you make more money.

John Mackey
Yes. There's a good metaphor for it. If you pursue happiness, you probably won't find it. Because you'll just People that pursue happiness the hardest oftentimes end up being narcissists. Happiness comes from It ensues.

It ensues from love, from goodness, from compassion, forgiveness, kindness, generosity. You become happy because of Not because you're pursuing it directly, but because it's a byproduct of these other qualities. Meaningful work, caring, loving, family. These things lead to happiness. So anyway, it's the same way with money ultimately.

Profits come from creating value for customers, our members, or patients, or whoever you're working with. That's the ultimate way profits come about. They indirectly come about from creating value in the world. So conscious capitalism has four basic principles to it, Mark. First principle is higher purpose.

Every business has its potential for higher purpose. For example, my body has to produce red blood cells or I'm gonna be dead. But it doesn't logically follow that my higher purpose is to produce red blood cells. Similarly, businesses must make money or they will die. That's not why they exist.

The purpose of creating value for their customers. Whole Foods' higher purpose was to nourish people in the planet. Love life is the helping people to become the healthiest version of themselves. So every business has its higher purpose. Then you have stakeholders.

They all are important. They all matter. Customers matter. Employees matter. Suppliers matter.

And investors matter. The community matters. The environment matters. And business has to create strategies where they're all simultaneously winning. Third is leadership.

Leaders can't be in it just to line their own pockets. Leaders have got to be those who are purpose driven, are serving the stakeholders, and they're ultimately servant leaders. And finally, we create cultures. A conscious business, a conscious leader creates cultures where human beings flourish. Where they are happy, where they're fulfilled, where their work is meaningful, and they're part of a community that cares about them.

That's conscious capitalism in a nutshell.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. That's beautiful. And has it taken off? I mean, I you heard

John Mackey
Oh yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I think the guy who's I think Larry Fink who sort of writes this letter every year, one year wrote a letter about how we need to think about our stakeholders, not only our shareholders. But I wonder how much that's really filtered into the business world.

John Mackey
Well, know, it's interesting. It has filtered in. So when they had that roundtable, business roundtable came out basically checking off the principles of conscious capitalism, they got a lot of pushback, lot of controversy in business circles. I found out later that women that had been the leader of that, the conscious capitalism had been their framework, the book had been their framework for those principles. They did not credit us.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. But

John Mackey
nevertheless, what any author wants to hear is that their ideas are having an impact and influencing things. So speaking of Larry Fink, so I'm going to the We're having a special conclave down in Cabo for CEOs of very large corporations. And there would be about I think, I don't know, 30 or 40. And Larry's hosting it down there. And we're not calling it conscious capitalism as principles of responsible business or something like that.

Anyway, got an invitation to So I'm I'm going be going to and excited to talk to some of these other There's some there's some big big names going down there. So I'm excited to be be part of that.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. Because we live in such an extractive world. And we have extractive capitalism. It's the opposite of conscious cap Like we have extractive agriculture, we have

John Mackey
extractive healthcare. It's just they don't take a systems approach. Mhmm. And really what we're talking about with conscious capitalism is viewing things in a larger context, the larger system. And that that actually leads to better business.

It's harder. It's harder to do it. It's Think about it's like you think about health care, because that's what we've been talking about. As you say, that's like extractive healthcare. Because it's just dealing with symptoms.

It's not dealing with root causes, right?

Dr. Mark Hyman
Right.

John Mackey
I mean functional medicine, you're probably the leader in functional medicine, that's going to root causes and trying to root them out and help people to heal at the deepest levels. That's revolutionary medicine. It's a really, really big deal. So you should be really proud of what you've done.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Thank you. Yeah. It's sort of what drives me is how do I needless suffering for millions of people because Exactly. So many people don't have to suffer like you're talking about before when you would bring the team members of Whole Foods to these retreats. And they would have this radical transformation in a week and they were suffering before and then they end up in a short period of a week not suffering.

Know, and I think that you know, created something called the ten day detox diet, essentially eliminates all the processed food and crap, it adds in all the good foods. And it's so powerful.

John Mackey
Ten days is like the seven day Yeah. Ten days is even better because it's three days longer. That's right. Thirty days is better than that.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I know. But if I called the thirty day diet, no one would do it.

John Mackey
That's that's right. People, you know, you decide ten days was kind of the The sweet spot. The most you could hope for. The sweet spot.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And it and it was it's amazing to see that. And I think when people have the experience of what it's like to feel good, they they they actually can connect to something and come back to it. Even if they kind of

John Mackey
Those notes from God

Dr. Mark Hyman
are a little

John Mackey
more, you can hear them a little bit better. Exactly.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Yeah. And I I think, you know, the work you've done around this conscious capitalism movement is so important because it is so much of the things that are happening in our world are all because of of a lack of consciousness and a lack of awareness and a lack of understanding that value creation isn't just about the bottom line. It's about multiple bottom lines where everybody wins. Where the planet wins, where you win, where your community wins, you know, where

John Mackey
Win win win. Yeah. I just did a TED Talk a few months ago on win win win.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And what what were you saying in there?

John Mackey
The win win win is seeking, in its simplest, it's looking for everyone you interact with. You're looking a win for them, a win for yourself, and a win for the larger whole that we're all part of. If all three aren't winning, bad strategy. Yeah. So it's kind of giving your mind and your heart permission to go down that path.

And so if you unleash your mind to look for the win win win, it will find it. And we generally make trade offs. And we generally approach it win lose. We're in a culture where sports and game metaphors are somebody wins, most people lose. Hey, that's the way life is.

No. That's particular approach to life. And it's not the best approach for your happiness or for the betterment of the world. The win win win strategy, I argue, is a universal ethical system. I challenge you to think of any ethical dilemma you're in where win win win isn't the best way to approach it.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's hard to get people out of the scarcity mindset and and into it this idea of abundance. And, you know, I I find that the more I give, the more I get. The more I give money away, the more I give my time away, the more I give my love away, my energy away, the more it comes back Because to

John Mackey
the universe is a mirror. It reflects exactly back what you're giving. Yeah. The more love you give, the more love you receive. The kinder you are, the more kindness comes back.

If people could understand that we are all connected, we are all one. That when they attack someone else, they're attacking themselves. When when If we can understand that love is the deeper reality and that we share love, it comes back to us, we help light somebody Somebody lights the candle of love in us, we send it and give it to somebody else. And that's how this planet's gonna heal. It's gonna heal ultimately through people waking up and being more conscious about how how they show up in the world and how transformative love is.

I'm like, I'm a big apostle of love.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I think you're right on to something. But we live in such a divisive world now, and I feel like we're less connected and more divided and It

John Mackey
starts with yourself. Yeah. Only you can transform the world. I don't mean that in a narcissistic sense. I mean as we offer love and peace, it is offered back to us.

And right now I can't worry about absolutely the whole world, that just puts you into despair. All I can do is show up every day. My wife has a mantra that I try to follow, it's just love everyone All the time. No exceptions. That's pretty good.

That's super easy. Exactly. She says, John, it's so much simpler. You don't have to worry about, well, I'm mad at him, I like her, I'm not so sure about this guy. She says, no, don't have all those comparisons.

Just show up open hearted and love everyone. Yeah. And yeah, she's she's my teacher.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's actually an incredibly powerful way to live. And you know, I don't know if I do that all the time in in my regular life. Most of us don't. But as a doctor That's how you show up. I sort of reflected on like, what is what is it that makes me good at what I do and why do people keep coming back?

And I think when I meet with someone because when you're a doctor, you get to into this sacred space with someone where they're sharing their vulnerabilities Yes. Their suffering, their fears, their relationship stuff, like whatever, their life story. And I and I take a very deep life story. I don't I'm not the eight minute doctor visit, you know, I spend a couple hours with people initially and then, you know, I get to know them.

John Mackey
We can offer you a job at Love Life. You're the kind of doctor we're looking for. Right. I mean,

Dr. Mark Hyman
I I know. I wish I had more more of me to go around. What I let myself do is is love every patient, is is to see who they are as a human being. And no matter who they are, where they're from but I used to work in the Idaho State Penitentiary, you know, when I Wow. And and I mean, as a part time gig when I was a doctor in Idaho.

And I would walk in there with murderers and rapists and people who'd done horrible things. And I would just try to meet them and see who they were and love them. And what was really actually shocking to me is most of them were just scared little kids that Yeah. Didn't grow ever grow up. Yeah.

And they did these horrible things out of their own trauma. And so to be able to sort of see that and you know, and if you just stop and spend enough time with somebody and talk to them like the homeless guy on the street and

John Mackey
You're helping heal them because you're you're actually You're being present like that and open is love. Yeah. You're you're radiating love to them, whether you're conscious of it or not. That was probably helping to heal them. Yeah.

Because that's what everybody wants.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I'm sure. I'm sure. And also it also, yeah, helped them to, you know, feel safe. And it helped me to actually, you know, care for them enough to to really work hard to figure out what was going on. And I it's it's like I I I don't know why I started out like that, but I just I've always been like that.

And I remember being like three years old and and seeing all these grown ups who were just so unhappy and not nice and not acting out of love. Mhmm. And I'm like, I I didn't get it. I literally remember You were three years old. Three year old self.

I'm like, I just was full of love all the time and I didn't get why everybody wasn't all full of love all the time, you know. It's like, that's our natural state.

John Mackey
Yes. You know? That's right. Love is the essence of what we are, but it gets blocked. Mhmm.

It gets blocked by anger, fear, judgment, attack, envy, resentment. All those type of emotions clouded over so that the light doesn't shine through. Mhmm. But if we practice forgiveness, and we work at opening and being present, the light begins to shine through us again. Here's an interesting thing that I've learned.

It's maybe one of the most important tips I will give. If you love everyone all the time, don't we forget that every day at times? We go back into judgment, we judge, you're driving over here, somebody cuts me off, asshole. I'm not very loving when I'm saying thinking that or saying that. But what I've learned is that the past doesn't exist any longer.

Yeah. All that's real is this moment. And no matter how many times I forget, I can go back in the next moment and choose love. Yeah. I can choose to be present.

I can choose to let my heart open. Even if I forget it, next moment I can choose it. If I forget it, next moment I can choose I can practice going back to it. And it's like kind of like meditating. The more you practice it, the more skilled you get at it.

The more you practice being present and opening to love, the easier it gets.

Dr. Mark Hyman
It's such a simple idea, choose love over fear.

John Mackey
Yes, choose love over fear. Kind of like that first LS, that massive LSD trip I took, there's nothing really to be afraid of. Because the things we're afraid of like death or suffering or pain, in an ultimate sense, those things really aren't real in any ultimate sense. We make them real through our our own minds. Yeah.

Our

Dr. Mark Hyman
beliefs. Our beliefs will keep us imprisoned, you know.

John Mackey
And anyway, I found that. Actually anyway, an important thing that I've learned is that no matter how many times I forget, I can always remember in the next moment. I'm always I can be free in the next moment. Isn't that

Dr. Mark Hyman
the truth, John? I mean, yeah. I've, you know, I've thought a lot about death and life because I I almost died recently.

John Mackey
Yeah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And I I realized that the real secret, the meaning of life, like the purpose of life is to get free so you can be loved. Yes. Right? It's like most of us are in a self made prison Yes. Of our beliefs Yes.

Of our thoughts true. Our ideology. And it you know, we're we're always in this trap, but it there's actually a way to get free.

John Mackey
Yes.

Dr. Mark Hyman
And and when you're free, all you want to do is love. Yes. It's kind of like a magic trick.

John Mackey
You know, I felt that about you the first time I met you. I felt like you were a very loving person.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Thank you. You had

John Mackey
a very open heart and you were very caring and I felt that vibe from you. Yeah. And you know what? Here's the good news. It's a lot stronger now than when I first met you.

Dr. Mark Hyman
So Yeah. Well, I've gotten more free. I've gotten shit all the old stories and all the bullshit. Oh my god. It's hard work, you know?

But I think, you know, this revolution in in in health and well-being that you're part of and this revolution in mental health, which in in some ways love life is really helping to solve because you're building community and loneliness is this big one of the biggest causes of illness. You know, it's like the community aspect is such a big piece. And for me, at the end of the day, it's just about how do we how do we sort of always move into the space of of love rather than fear?

John Mackey
We'll forget, but we can choose it the next moment. Just remember, no matter how many times you forget, the past you don't you don't have to bring the past into the present. Yeah. You can be free of the past by just letting it go, realizing it's not real. And in this moment, be present, be conscious, let love flow.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I think I think the psychedelic revolution, and it was your awakening, and certainly it's part of mine. And I think a lot of peoples, to be honest with you, if you look at like Steve Jobs It's

John Mackey
what knocked me off the path my parents had programmed into me.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Exactly. And you know, you think about some of the big corporations that are going on, I think that people don't talk about it, but like Apple came out of psychedelics. Right? And and I think for me, and I think increasingly like for the population at large, it's this sort of psychedelic revolution around psychedelic therapy

John Mackey
Yes.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Is part of the answer to helping people to let go of the idea of separateness and to let go of the idea that they have to meet life with fear or that they are stuck. And I think I wish everybody could I mean, wish I could literally just take a giant bunch of mushrooms or LSD and put it in the water in Congress.

John Mackey
That would be scary to people. So there One way to think about it is I read this book a long time ago, which it was a very simple little 50 page book. And it basically said, The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Oh yeah, remember that book.

John Mackey
And it had one big idea in it. And that big idea was you're either expanding or contracting. So expanding opens our consciousness and opens our hearts for love. Contracting closes it down.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's right.

John Mackey
So fear, judgment, hatred, anger, these all contract. The heart shut us down. And then forgiveness, love, generosity. I practice gratitudes every day. Gratitude is a huge expanse in everything.

Matter how my little petty problems might be there at work or whatever, Practicing the gratitudes in the morning is always expansive. It always reminds me, that's petty stuff. This is what really matters. I do think the daily practices are important for people if they want to help not get lost again.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Why we sort of close by having you share with us your practices. How do you keep yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually on track?

John Mackey
Sure. I start out my day peeing, then I weigh myself. But then when I Then I then I do my spiritual practices, which involve reading some type of spiritual text. I'm a long time student of A Course in Miracles. So frequently that's what I'm reading.

Then I then I do gratitudes, the expanse of gratitudes. They they And I just let my mind go whatever I feel I'm grateful for and and let that go as long as it feels right. Then I put forth what you can call them, you can call them affirmations, you can call them prayers, intentionality. I put out there things that I would really like to see manifest. I put it out in a clear visualization of it.

And then I meditate. After that, I'm going to go make a smoothie. I start every day off with a smoothie. It's 50% fruit, 50% vegetables. It's got some protein in it, but it's extremely nutritious.

I make a whole two liters of that Vitamix. And I'm gonna have two glasses for breakfast and then the rest My wife will have a glass and the other glass will get finished off sometime later in the day. And then I exercise. I'm usually going for a walk. I'm playing pickleball.

I'm doing pilates, I'm doing yoga, or I'm doing a couple of those. Mhmm. Then I will go I might read or might go off to work depending on what's going on or I might have meetings. I will try to do some other kind of exercise at the end of the day. Now, for food for me, I am ethical vegan.

So 100% plant based. So I try to eat a whole foods plant based diet, minimize salt, and minimize oil, minimize processed foods of all kinds. Not perfect in that regard, but you know, probably compared to most people, I'm very high up the list there. I really think fruits and vegetables are extremely healthy. So I'm on a would say I'm on a high complex carb diet.

I'm eating because I'm eating a lot of fruits, a lot of whole grains, a lot of beans. I do get a lot of protein because I I really do eat a lot of foods that have a lot of protein in them. Greens. I eat tons of greens. I think my diet's healthy for me.

And I think work, I think having purpose. I read a lot. I also have I think having purposeful work like love life. I'm on six boards, so I've got other distractions that way. And so And I then I want to spend a lot of time with my wife.

She's kind of my spiritual

Dr. Mark Hyman
You guys have a remarkable relationship. I mean, you've had Whole Foods for a long time, you've also had this marriage.

John Mackey
I've been with Deborah for thirty five years now. Yeah. And she's You know, I I tell the story in the book, the woman in the dream when I met her. She was seven years younger than me. I I considered myself, my ego being what it is, thought I was a pretty conscious dude.

But I was just blown away on the very first date. Talk about the notes from God, my whole soul was saying, this woman is the most awake person you've ever come across. Don't blow it. Don't screw it up, John. I pretty much did because I was so nervous.

First thing I did when I picked It was a blind date.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I never First met her

John Mackey
I pick her up and first thing I do is I'm nervous. She's the most beautiful person I've ever woman I've ever seen. And I said, hey, mind if I look in your refrigerator? She says, that's weird but sure.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Refrigerator biopsy? Well, you can tell

John Mackey
a lot about a person in your right.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Bookshelf in the refrigerator.

John Mackey
I went to the bookshelf second. That was more socially She was she ended up being the great love of my life. And I will tell you a story that I I tell in the book. Yeah. I I call the chapter The Woman and the Dream.

Because I had a recurring dream. Mhmm. And this dream that I'd had many times. I'm going to this park, Peace Park in Austin near where my house is. Mhmm.

Near central in Central Austin. I'm going there and I'm there, it's in the morning. And I'm looking and this beautiful woman is walking to me and she's naked and she's radiating, she's shining. And she comes up to me and I break up a conversation. I start a conversation and I say, so who are you?

And she says, you know who I am. I said, okay. Well, what are you what are you doing? She says, I've been waiting. What have you been waiting for?

I've been waiting for you to catch up to me. Oh, wow. Well, why? And she grabs my hand and she says, so we can run together. And we take off running and then I wake up.

Dr. Mark Hyman
That's amazing.

John Mackey
Now Beautiful dream. After I'd had the blind date, I had the dream again. And the first time I knew who she was, it was her, Deborah.

Dr. Mark Hyman
Wow. That's incredible. She's a woman

John Mackey
in the dream.

Dr. Mark Hyman
I got chills from

John Mackey
that story. I know. Incredible Beautiful

Dr. Mark Hyman
note to end on. I I'm just really honored to be able to know you and your wife and be in Austin with you and look forward to playing pickleball and more things and more conversations. I

John Mackey
really I really admire what you're doing, making a big difference in the world. I'm very appreciative and I wish just love and happiness to you in all ways. Thank you so very much. Thank you, John. Thanks for being on the podcast.

Thank you.

Dr. Mark Hyman
If you love this podcast, please share it with someone else you think would also enjoy it. You can find me on all social media channels at Doctor Mark Hyman. Please reach out, I'd love to hear your comments and questions. Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to the doctor Hyman show wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to check out my YouTube channel at Doctor Mark Hyman for video versions of this podcast and more.

Thank you so much again for tuning in. We'll see you next time on The Doctor Hyman Show. This podcast is separate from my clinical practice at the Ultra Wellness Center, my work at Cleveland Clinic, and Function Health where I am chief medical officer. This podcast represents my opinions and my guests' opinions. Neither myself nor the podcast endorses the views or statements of my guests.

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