Ep. #242: How Jared Lost 23 Pounds & 6% Body Fat In Just 90 Days

Mike Matthews: [00:00:00] Hey, Mike here from Muscle for Life and Legion Athletics back with another episode of the podcast. And this time around I interviewed Jared who recently completed my 90 day coaching program, which helped him lose 23 pounds, 6 percent body fat and five inches off his waist while also gaining a significant amount of strength on all of his major lifts.

If I remember correctly, he added. Over 100 pounds to his big four to his squat, deadlift, bench press, and overhead press. And what’s even more impressive is Jared did all this at 42 years old with a family and a very full time job. And in this interview, [00:01:00] He’s going to walk us through this journey. He’s going to share with us what he had done previously and what worked and what didn’t, how he found his way to me and my work and my coaching service in particular, and how he and his coach worked through a number of challenges.

Including previous injuries, dietary hurdles, and more. And lastly, Jared is also going to share with us some of the biggest lessons that he learned along the way. Some of his biggest personal takeaways. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in, so Instead, I’m just going to quickly tell you about something of mine.

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Let’s get to the show. Hey, Jared, thanks for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Hey, I was just looking. I now I realize I remember who you are with your before and afters. And are you in better shape now than you were in your twenties? Yep. Yeah. That was my guess. I was like, this dude is jacked.

Now you’re how old are you? How old are you now? 43. That’s pretty cool. So yeah, 43 you are in better shape. And is this at any point in your life? 

Jared: Yeah, pretty close to the best shape. I don’t think I, I got down to maybe 12%, maybe in my twenties, but never seven, 8 percent is body fat is, And you have 

Mike Matthews: size too.

Like you put on a fair amount of muscle. 

Jared: That’s 

Mike Matthews: great. 

Jared: Some of the things that, you know, from your program that I had been afraid to do deadlifts and squats. And, I think through the program, I, I was I had lifted in my twenties. And I was really afraid of [00:04:00] hurting myself that for the abs and the midsection made a huge difference for me.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. So before you found me and found my work, what did, and I guess it sounds like your kind of personal fitness journey started in your twenties. So Tell us a little bit about your story, just going back to, even if it goes stretches back to then, and then how did that go from, let’s say, your twenties up until just recently, what did you tried?

What worked? What didn’t work? You had mentioned not wanting to squat or deadlift. Was that due to injuries? So forth. 

Jared: Yeah, I started in my 20s I work in software and so I had very sedentary work lifestyle. And when I got out of college, I, didn’t really have that discipline around exercise and eating right.

And so in my 20s, I started exercising. I followed I think there’s a, there was a program I embraced when it was mostly around, lifting. Mostly it was about how to efficiently get in and out of the gym, do it as little time as possible. And I had started lifting heavy weight then, but I still I would shy away from anything like, the bar mostly because I was afraid of hurting myself and, I made a [00:05:00] mistake.

And then the diet, I’m mostly it wasn’t as disciplined, I think, as your program. And I think it was more of Hey, just keep it under control six days a week. I think the big thing for me is the tracking and really keeping track of what I’m eating calories in calories out makes a huge 

Mike Matthews: difference.

Have you found that has now helped with that more intuitive style of eating? Cause I think it makes it hard if you don’t understand, the fundamentals in play. If you don’t understand energy balance, if you don’t understand macronutrient balance, what does that mean then to keep your diet under control?

There’s no context. 

Jared: Yeah. Definitely, I think my notion of what’s healthy has changed. Cause I used to think cashews that’s healthy, but if you eat too much of the cashews, it’s not, you’re going to gain weight. And I think, I knew that, law of thermodynamics, energy in equals energy out, but for me, it was having to look at each food I eat, track it, know what the calories are.

It totally changed my perspective on I think what I eat too, because even now I’ll pick up fruit more than I would have ever picked up in the past, mostly because I can eat [00:06:00] more. of it and fill up route, with less calories. Yeah. Vegetables are great like that too. Yeah. Broccoli, I’ll eat a ton of roasted broccoli at night because Hey, I can eat a bunch of it and feel full.

Whereas in the past, I don’t think I paid attention to the caloric value of it. I think, a lot of those selection diets had convinced me, Oh yeah, it’s okay. You can eat all the. Carbs in the world are all the, 

Mike Matthews: grapefruit in the 

Jared: world. These 

Mike Matthews: days, it’s all the fat, right? Oh, and if it’s healthy fat, quote unquote, then you can just eat as much as you want.

Jared: Yeah. And I think I, I went through that phase and I had success on and off, but it’s purely, I think a psychological thing. And I think you turned me onto that book, mindless eating, which really helped me yeah, that’s an awesome book, but a lot of that kind of helped me understand how to manage my diet.

Now I feel like I’m in control just from tracking and thinking about the foods. And I always felt at the whim of my body. And now I feel like because I’m measuring it, I know what’s working, what’s not working. I can change things. I can move things around. And even if I’m, I have a meal plan, but if like in the middle of the day, I decide, Hey, I want to have a cheeseburger.

I’m in a, in that mood, I can have that as long as I change around my [00:07:00] calories, move things around. I think that was the biggest thing about your program that really helped was getting disciplined about tracking what 

Mike Matthews: I’m doing. Yeah, makes sense. So how did you find your way to me? Cause you had tried, you tried stuff previously and I guess you weren’t happy with the results I’m assuming, right?

Jared: Yeah. I think I last January, I got really at the peak of my heaviness. I think I hit two to 40, 48. I was really heavy and I just decided that I wanted to get thin again. And I started reading around for programs worked and I come across your book and I read that book and I was like, wow, this is really interesting.

And I started applying some of the ideas, but I felt, and I dropped. I think about 20 pounds just from following it. But then I really wanted to get really serious about it. And I saw your coaching program and your meal plan program. And I was like, Oh, I really feel like I’m doing this, but I’m not doing it the full enchilada kind of thing.

So for me, it was like let me try and work with the program to get this kind of close advice and see what I’m doing. Cause even though you read something, it’s hard to unless you’re living it with someone who’s done it [00:08:00] before, it’s really hard. I think to get that real advice. And so when I worked with trainers and the coaches online, it felt Oh, here’s what I’m doing this wrong.

I need to change this. I need to change that. And also it helped me get over some of my, they helped me figure out how to work slowly back into the bar and lifting, with heavy weight and, how to deal with not having a spot or, it’s like always just like a little bit of a blocker, you go to the gym and you think, Oh how am I going to do this?

But now I’m back to doing incline bench bar. And I. I was really scared without a spotter to do that. And, I got tips from, Hey, you look, move it into the cage, do this kind of stuff. That was really helpful. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Why don’t you want to share with us some of the tips?

Cause that’s also one of the things I like about these interviews is I try to do my best giving a, as much of a one size fits all approach as I can in the books. But of course there are circumstances that just require adjustments and that’s why a lot of people reach out to me via email and I’m happy to help again in these interviews, which is one of the things I like is we can get into.

into specifically for you, what were some of the obstacles that you had to overcome? What were [00:09:00] some of the things laid out in the book that you weren’t sure about? Or maybe you just couldn’t do because again, if let’s say you can’t deadlift or you couldn’t deadlift because of a, an issue that you were having physically, how did you get around that kind of stuff?

A lot of it was just mental if you’ve 

Jared: lifted 

Mike Matthews: before and you hurt yourself. Did that happen? Did you hurt yourself? 

Jared: Oh yeah. Yeah. In my twenties, definitely hurt my back. Not go to the hospital or anything, but just like slight injury here and there. And then that kind of puts you off of Hey, I don’t want to do that because I’ve hurt myself.

Then I’m not going to be able to lift or work out for a couple of weeks. And so I think a lot of it was finding how to safely do things. I think the, a lot of the advice on form. And basically being able to videotape myself in the gym and then basically say, Hey, what am I doing wrong?

How am I messing up? But also a lot of like tips about how to do things with like if a bench, a lot of the gyms don’t have like safety bars on the bench, moving it into kind of a deadlift cage and then putting the bars there. Tips like that were really helpful. I think I want to, didn’t want to do initially seated shoulder presses.

And so the tip was, why don’t you just [00:10:00] do them standing? And that kind of helped me because it mentally broke me. That whole you’re sitting down and if you drop that weight, you feel like you’re going to drop it on your head. And so a lot of it was for me, it was mental, have someone get, Hey, try this, see if that breaks you out of that mental kind of model was really the big thing.

And it was more just someone to brainstorm an idea. I, I didn’t think about doing it that way or but a lot of it was just about like understanding gym equipment, safety equipment that I didn’t really know what it did at the gym. And maybe that’s just obvious to you, but to a lot of other people, I think.

Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. No, I understand. 

Jared: And I see people at the gym now too, who don’t, they’ll take all the safety bars off and be lifting weights. And I’m like, why you shouldn’t do that? Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: But I think that was a big tip. To be fair, I guess these days I’m not using, I’m not squatting with safety bars, I’m also not necessarily going to, I’m really not going to absolute failure in squatting.

And you’re probably, you’ve probably experienced it now where the more you work out, the more you understand your scale of RP, but so your scale of exertion and how many reps you have left and whether you should go for that next rep or not. And especially also knowing that you [00:11:00] do not have to go to absolute muscle failure and you really shouldn’t be doing it.

On your big compounds, I guess maybe you could do it occasionally on a press like a bench press, but there’s really no need to save it for your isolation work. And even then you don’t really have to be doing it much. So there’s, that’s also nice to know where, as long as where that one or two reps left in the tank point is, as long as you know what that feels like You get to a point where you just don’t really get stuck anymore.

Jared: Yeah, no, I, it’s more, it was for me, it was like getting in there once I was actually, I felt comfortable with that exercise because I’d done a lot of dumbbell lifts, if I dropped the weight, nothing’s going to happen. I always felt, and it was more of a mental thing than anything else. Yeah, that makes sense.

And so like the safety bar thing for me was more of like, how do I start to get familiar with doing the form right? Especially with a bench, you want to come down really low into your chest If you don’t have that kind of safety bar there, it’s like you might cheat a little bit So lots of stuff like that kind of helped me make that transition to, Hey, I was doing some stuff to like, Hey, I got the form down.

If there’s an exercise I’m [00:12:00] scared on, I can find some way to put myself in a space where I can do it by myself. And I think the big thing was I didn’t have a spotter and someone to work with. And I think that makes a big difference. You got someone to work out with. I think it’s a different thing.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, for sure. But like you said, you can’t do it by yourself. I’ve worked out. Alone for many months at a time. And I prefer working out with somebody, of course, but you got, you do what you got to do. Okay. So you find the coaching program and where did you start? What was your starting point when when you signed on?

Jared: I was, I think I was around two 21 and around, I want to say close to 20 percent 

Mike Matthews: body fat. Okay, cool. And then it’s three months later, you’re now around one 92, right? You’re, you lost about five inches on your waist and you’re, you’ve lost about 6 percent body fat. Yep. Yeah. 

Jared: I’m down to, I think, right now I’m down around one 86.

Oh, wow. So you’ve kept going. Very nice. Yeah. I’ll keep going on the program. So I’m right. That was last June, July, and now I’m 186 and I’m pushing 

Mike Matthews: about 8%. Very nice. Very nice. And [00:13:00] so what you’re just, you’re, are you maintaining now or what are you doing now? 

Jared: I went into bulking a little bit over the holidays and I’ve been just mini cutting after the holidays to get back to where I was.

I really like being super lean. It feels really good. And so I why, what do you like most about it? I’ve never had a six pack in my life. So for me, it’s awesome. And it’s amazing. And it feels really good to be that thin. I’m just, now I’m working with a coach to figure out how do I go back into that bulking phase, put on more muscle, get bigger.

There’s always that kind of mental fear in my head about Not wanting to get fatter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I’m working through that. But and again, this, one of the things about the program that I really like is that this kind of helped to Hey, here’s how you do it.

Here’s if you start to see this change maybe you should dial back your calories. And that’s the beauty of working with the coaching program, I think, cause I’ve been like, it’s ongoing advice and everything is, as you said It’s not one size fits all. It’s very situational. The things that I’m struggling with, a lot of them, sometimes they’re in my head but it helps to have someone to talk you through it and ask you questions and say, Hey, what you do differently?

[00:14:00] That’s where I’m at. So I’m super lean. It’s awesome. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. It’s fun being lean. It’s also though you’re going to you’re experiencing the curse now because once you get really lean, anything other than that, just feels unacceptable. And you have to, you just have to recognize that and not be too neurotic about it.

Basically. 

Jared: It definitely feels if you, if I gain two, three pounds, I feel fat in retrospect. It’s nothing. 

Mike Matthews: Exactly. And that’s how you have to look at it. And it’s also, I think it’s good to go through the experience now of doing like a lean bulk phase where you’re going to put on a bit of fat.

You don’t have to go up to 15 or 16%. Like the last time I did it personally, I started very lean. So I was off of a cut maintained seven or 8 percent or so. And then I got up to I want to say 12 or 13 percent and it wasn’t so much that my body fat bothered me. Cause I had done this before and yeah, I prefer to be leaner than fatter.

Sure. I got to the point where I was just sick of eating. Like I just had enough of eating, whatever, 4, 000 plus calories a day. And so I went for a good four or five months and I was like, all right, I’ve had just, I’ve had enough. But it’s good to go through that experience and then get back down to where you want to be again, just so you see [00:15:00] just reinforce that.

Yeah. You know that of course now the mechanics don’t change your metabolism is going to work exactly the same as it did the first time, but it’s more just, that you can do that. You know what I mean? You can, from a dietary perspective, it’s easier to lean bulk in some ways, and that you feel like you’re you just have all these extra calories to play with.

And then you can also then just dial it in. It’s just, again, it’s reassuring that your body composition really is under your control. Yeah. 

Jared: I’m definitely, I’ve had that, mini experience. I haven’t gotten the full bulk up to 15%, I definitely can see that it’s in my control now, which is great.

It’s been definitely like life changing for me. That’s the other big thing for me. I now have feel like I can. Work my way through food. That was the big thing for me. And the whole, this whole program has been like, I love food. When you talk about 4, 000 calories, I’m like, I want to eat everything, if I could, but finding that discipline and control and being able to not feel like I’m being forced to eat a certain way is the big thing for me.

And I think that’s really been powerful. It’s yeah, I’m going to bulk up sometimes and I’ll be able to eat some more calories, [00:16:00] lean up some others, and I’ll be able to have to cut back, but I’m still enjoying all the foods that I love. Yeah. Is a big thing for me. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, in that sense, flexible dieting works very well for some people when it comes to cutting in particular, they actually prefer to be to follow a more restrictive style of eating simply because for them, they find it hard to control themselves.

So if they allow themselves too much of anything, They just know that it’s more likely to not necessarily spiral out of control, but it’s just takes too long because, they’re in essentially 50 percent of the deficit that they really should be in because when they’re trying to eat the, a hundred grams of chips or something, they, it turns into 200 grams of chips, like 50 percent of the time.

And I think it makes sense. Even that you could say even falls, under the purview of flexible dieting and that it’s for you, like you need, you can be as flexible as works as it works for you. And in the end what can you stick best to if it’s too flexible and you can’t really stick well to it.

Good. Then you’re good. Make it a little bit more restrictive if you really [00:17:00] don’t care. And about if you have no problem eating the a hundred grams of chips every single time, even though you love the chips, you’re done with that last one. Then great. Make your diet very flexible for me. I don’t know.

Maybe I’m using 

Jared: the tracking app sometimes though. It was like my fitness pal or something. Yeah. For me, if if I want to go off. I generally am really good about tracking, and that’s the one rule I have. It’s I’ll just track, and, but I’ve found that actually just tracking creates this mental thing of I can’t have that, so hey, I already had that, so I’m good for the day.

I’ve been in that binge eating place, I don’t think I knew what I was eating. You just, have a handful of cashews or nuts or something, even if it, you just keep eating. Whereas if you’re going over by a hundred calories, you’re going over. So you’re like, it’s a conscious decision.

At least for me, it was like that notion of I’m making a choice to eat now beyond what I’m supposed to was powerful. For a lot of people that may not be, conscious thing, but I think I didn’t really know what I was taking into my body. And I think that made the big difference for me overall.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, sure. And not knowing how it impacts your body [00:18:00] either, like not understanding the consequences really, 

Jared: yeah. And I think also, it’s also about a lot more protein and just balancing. I also think I also found foods. I enjoy more where I was tending to eat, whatever I could get my hands on or whatever was available.

And now I tend to eat I’ll be more thoughtful about like vegetables and fruits, but also proteins, having like lean chicken just cause it, it’s more filling. So when I’m looking at the calories at the end of the day and I’m like, Oh, I have 500 calories left.

It’s do I want a chicken breast or do I want something else? And I’ll actually be more conscious about everything. So I think it’s not just flexible. I think it for me, it’s become a game of. What can I eat and what should I eat? And, making sure that I’m balancing everything out.

Mike Matthews: It’s maximizing your calories basically in terms of not only your body composition, but also just enjoyment. 

Jared: Yeah. And I think that works for me. For me, it’s been, the eating part is so powerful. Like it’s, especially in today’s world where it’s just, everything’s, there’s tons of junk stuff out there and it’s hard to realize what you’re eating.

Especially if you go out to a restaurant, it becomes, that was like another big thing. I think I learned how to [00:19:00] track restaurants have, a lot of them don’t have the calories on their menus and it’s like, how do I make that work for myself? And I think, I started picking more simple foods when I would go out to eat.

I’ll have things like, oysters. I know there’s one oyster. It’s one, the calories are pretty consistent. So I got like a lot of these kind of like, how do I eat? How do I function also with my friends and go out and eat and not feel like I’m trapped in a diet. It was a huge thing for me.

So being able to go out socially and not feel like I have to live like a hermit was like a big transformational thing for me in this whole program. So 

Mike Matthews: yeah, totally. How did the holidays work for you? Because it sounds like you did what most people do. You just ate more than you normally would.

And how did that play out? I’m 

Jared: mostly just up, I was up in my calories to a bulk anyway. And so I think I added to, I got up to about 2, 800 calories. The bigger thing for me in the social scenes to drinking, because if I drink, that’s where, you start to lose control, at least for me on, what I’m eating, I’m pretty disciplined when it comes to food.

If I’m not having, a glass of wine, two glasses of wine, suddenly it’s Hey, pizza sounds good right now. [00:20:00] And so for me, I think the holidays were always just keeping my drinking in check. Were there any, did you just, was that just a decision that you made or in general, I’ve been dialing back my drinking over the last year to like minimal.

I went from probably drinking part of my job is very stressful too. So I was drinking a lot on the regularly three drinks a day. Now I probably have that. Maybe three drinks a week, if that. So my alcohol consumption has gone way down, which has also led to, it’s the, controlling the inhibitions around food.

Definitely alcohol has that tendency to be like, Hey, we just had a beer, let’s have some tachos or whatever. Even, the tracking helps me with that. Cause I track my alcohol too. So I’m thinking, oh, I have either one drink that’s actually lowered my alcohol consumption pretty drastically as well.

And I, I think that, a lot of people would get to a point where alcohol becomes this de stressor and you use it as a method. So that plus, working out helps balance everything out. I think too. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. So when you were cutting down, what did your diet look like and were there any adjustments that you had to make, were there any [00:21:00] struggles or obstacles that you had to overcome?

You started obviously with a meal plan that checked the boxes had the right calories, right macros, foods you like, how did it go though over the course of the three months? 

Jared: Yeah. The first three months are super strict. I think it was more about getting into the groove and knowing how to do it.

The diet was pretty simple. It was basically, I don’t like eating before I work out. So I would basically have I think your pulse supplement to get started then after workout, have a protein shake and a banana and then lunch, usually tuna or like a sandwich and then for dinner, usually chicken breast or and veggies, a lot of veggies and like a potato or something, depending on what it is.

And that’s generally like what I was eating. I was really strict the first. Yeah. Two, three months. And I didn’t really even go out at all. And then I started figuring out how am I going to make this work in my regular life? 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Cause by that, by then you obviously had seen really good results, but now it’s time to look for sustainability.

Jared: Yeah. And so that, the first two, three months, that was pretty much just try to follow it exactly to get super lean. [00:22:00] And then I was like all about how do I make this, how do I incorporate everything into my life? And I started asking a lot of questions like, okay what are the physics of the diet?

The coach gave me some advice. He’s first, make sure you get your protein, then make sure you get your fat, then put the rest of the carbs. And that kind of helps me figure out how do I work it. And then I started like thinking about if I go out to have sushi with my wife, how am I going to make that work?

And how do I plan that out? And how do I think about it? So I can feel like I’m not restricted in any way. And slowly just to learn the kite, how do I go to a restaurant and plan for calories? And if I go there I’ll, I think one tip was also to buffer, leave an extra 150 calories just to make sure if, the restaurant miscalculated, 

Mike Matthews: it’s up so that basically yeah. If they do provide numbers, increase them by 20 percent or if you, even if you’re estimating yourself, eh, just bump them up because you never know how much oil and butter is in anything. 

Jared: Yeah. And so that, that was and also changed where I went to eat. So like I’ll go to places like steak houses where I can order a steak and they’ll have the size Of the steak on the menu, I’ll tell them [00:23:00] no butter.

Stuff like that. 

Mike Matthews: That’s a good little tip for people listening. Actually. You might be surprised how many calories steaks have at steak houses because of how much butter these steaks are soaked in. They’re basically like saturated in butter. 

Jared: Yeah. You got to tell them no, and a lot of them are really cool about it.

They’ll tell you, Hey, yeah, we cover it in butter and they’ll take it off. All those kind of learning those kind of tips and how to make it work for you is I think the really hard part of going from a strict program, because I think could have followed that strict program for another three, four months.

But I think the bigger thing for me was about how do I start to work all those things into my natural every day so I can feel like I can do whatever I want and not feel constricted, even though I am really constricting myself. Hey, quickly, before 

Mike Matthews: we carry on, if you are liking my podcast,

Would you please help spread the word about it because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else [00:24:00] who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say it.

Thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. And what about on the exercise side of things? How did your workout program start? Did you guys have to change it? Did you have to work through any issues? 

Jared: I think I’ve, I’ve had a, I hurt my shoulder, during the program a little bit.

Just tore a little bit of muscle tear, nothing crazy, but definitely had to work around that a little bit. So I laid off shoulders for a little bit and then just. Focused on doing legs a little bit more till that side came back, switched up the exercises. The big thing is if you hurt yourself, it’s going to happen.

Yeah. It’s how I, you’re going to have a little bit of hurt and wear and tear here and there. But the question is like, how do you keep going without feeling like you’re going to have to stop working out for a month while that heals 

Mike Matthews: and stuff? So it’s [00:25:00] okay, let it stop you, unless it’s a catastrophic injury, you can always work around it.

There are always things you can do. And usually you don’t even necessarily have to stop training the muscle per se. You may have to stop a certain exercise for a little bit, but usually you can find Alternative exercises that feel totally fine in the case of a muscle tear. No, if you have a little nagging kind of aches and pains, those are usually very easy to work around without just having to abandon the muscle group altogether for a little bit.

Jared: Yeah. But even then it was like, it’s Oh, switch to the side, do more legs, move stuff around. I felt like there’s always something you can do and it’s just about moving things around because you 

Mike Matthews: can even get fancy like blood flow restriction. If you really want to go there, which anybody listening, if you want to learn more about it, just, I wrote an article on Legion athletics, just search for blood flow restriction, but that’s, for example, it’s great for if you’re dealing with an injury and you really need to be using lightweights, you can make it Far more effective, at least for maintaining your muscle [00:26:00] by incorporating blood flow restriction.

For example, it looks goofy, but it works. 

Jared: And you’re right. It’s like sometimes just a little bit of a. Oh, I hurt my leg. It’s not that big a deal, but if you keep hitting it, three weeks later, you’re going to be in a real bad place. And so that was, I think, really being able to move, Oh, I’m going to move over to this muscle group, shift this around made a big difference for me throughout the program.

Mike Matthews: So where you are now and what you’ve achieved so far, how has it impacted other areas of your life? People 

Jared: comment at work all the time, which is people like, what are you doing? Like, how did you do that? It’s especially visibly people like notice, cause it’s such a physical transformation.

I went from being 248 pounds to being one 92 and not just that I’m like, people can comment to me a lot, but I also think it made me feel like I’m in control of my health. Biggest thing is I went to the doctor and I had, some slight triglycerides were really high. My triglycerides are like the four hundreds, they’re now sub 90.

Very nice. 

Mike Matthews: So your doctor is happy. 

Jared: My doctor asked was like, what are you doing? I want to get on this program. So [00:27:00] in general, my, my health is way better than it was. And that leads to everything, like with my kids, picking my kids up or, playing with them is not a, I’m not winded.

I don’t feel like I’m run down at all. My energy levels and a lot of why I even thought about getting healthy was about making sure I’m around for my kids. That’s ultimately, I think, part of this for me was about how do I get healthy for them so that I’m not in a place where my health is a problem.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And also setting a good example for them. And now they’re going to grow up seeing that’s just what they’re going to be used to seeing is like the super fit dad. You know what I mean? 

Jared: Yeah. And my wife too, my wife is also really she, she was laughing at me when I first started, cause I was weighing my food and she’s I’m not going to weigh my food.

That’s just dumb. And then, about a month later, she’s weighing her food with a trainer doing the same thing. And I thought, she, it’s great because we’re both healthy now. But, people have come up to us both and they’re like, my God, you guys are the only couple I’ve known who’ve gone from being heavy to being super thin and in shape.

And it’s great. And overall, we’re living a different lifestyle and [00:28:00] we both, that’s the other thing. I think, my wife, started doing a lot of the same things. She didn’t do the the program, but she, the same principles she’s implying and we’re, we live both very cleanly.

We eat the same way now. And that really helps to makes a huge difference for 

Mike Matthews: both of us. That’s awesome. Has it impacted your I’m sure it has. So how has it impacted your. Psychology, like your mood, your confidence. What have you noticed there? 

Jared: I don’t mind taking my shirt off. Which is something I never would have ever thought I would feel comfortable doing.

Going to a beach or going to a sitting out of the pool is something I would have never felt comfortable in my body. There’s definitely that. Definitely more confident in physical situations and, exercise and moving around and doing stuff. Working, it, but, there’s also this Intangible thing I think you get from being in shape and being healthy, that people pick up on when they interact with you.

You’re more confident, you feel My general my stress level is way down, so I think, people think I’m way calmer and I’m chill. Especially at my job, I think people notice me being much more happy and [00:29:00] positive, and even in a high stress situation, I’m just way more calm than I was maybe a year ago.

Mike Matthews: Makes sense. Your, what you’ve been doing is adapting your body to higher and higher levels of stress. That’s essentially what you’re doing with exercise in particular. And that spills over to the psychological side as well. There’s definitely a connection there.

Jared: Yeah, I was in a really high stress role for, for years and I my body took the brunt of it and now I’m rolled it all back and, people are commenting to me like, you’re super happy and you’re pumped up and your energy level is great and you’re, encouraging people to do all things they didn’t used to do.

And so it’s a pretty tremendous effect in my life. It’s just like hard to sum it up in two, three words, or in a couple of sentences. It’s just, it’s so pervasive. And sometimes it’s not even apparent to you, other people will come up to you and comment to you like, man, you’re really happy.

And I’m like, ah, I guess I am. Yeah. I feel really good about it. Cause you don’t, you start to, it becomes so natural to you that you feel that way that you’re just not, you’re not thinking about as a very first class kind of [00:30:00] thing. It’s just, yeah, this is how life is now. Oh, yeah.

When you want to go do something on the weekend and go hiking or, go out and do stuff. Oh, yeah, that’s no problem. Whereas, I might have been like, I’m gonna stay home, not do some stuff. I’m more open to doing stuff now, too, and exploring 

Mike Matthews: than I was probably about a year ago, too.

That’s great. That’s interesting. It makes sense if you’re feeling better just in general than you’re. You’re more interested in engaging with the world and when you don’t feel so good, you are less interested in engaging with the world. Have you noticed also that yeah, I’m sure you do. I just, I think it’s one of the unsung benefits, one of the big benefits of being in great shape that you have to experience to realize is just not having to have attention on your body, really not having to work, knowing that you have nothing really to worry about.

Even if you catch your reflection in a mirror. Previously I can say, I just know working with a lot of people like that alone could just be a, almost like a jab where they just, they don’t like what they see. But if you were to, if you were to add up all the time and all the energy that, and again, I’ll speak with [00:31:00] just speak for people that I’ve worked with previously that they would spend every day.

Just worrying about their body or feeling bad about their body or feeling bad for themselves. All that just goes away once you get into good shape. And now you have this new found amount of energy and attention to put on other things that are positive. 

Jared: Yeah. Definitely for me, I felt that more around like health in general.

I used to worry about going to the doctor, Oh, what am I going to hear? Am I going to hear about it? Blah, blah, blah, I got to do something different. So from that perspective, I definitely feel like I don’t worry about that anymore. That, that worry, that energy you spend on worrying is pretty substantial and to have it just taken away all of a sudden is wow, now I got all this energy to apply elsewhere.

I definitely have felt that for my health overall. 

Mike Matthews: Which is great. Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s a huge point. My wife’s grandpa died just recently of cancer. And she was just like she was saying stuff just freaks her out. And I was, saying, I understand, but she. It had been both of our cases, right?

I was like, look, if [00:32:00] you’re talking about us, we do everything that we’re supposed to do. We exercise, we eat, right? We don’t destroy ourselves with stress and we take supplements to help with our health and blah, blah, blah. So for me personally, if I get cancer one day, Then, oh I’ll say that right now where I’m not worried about it because I guess that was, I guess that was just meant to be or something.

And I, there’s not, there’s nothing you could point to that’s yeah, of course you fucking have cancer. You’re an alcoholic and you smoked two packs of cigarettes. Say what did you expect? You know what I mean? But I think when you do a good job taking care of your health, you can let go of that stuff.

At least for me, I found that and legitimately not worry about it. Because it’s like similar to what you were saying earlier with diet. Once you start to understand the mechanics, you were able to disassociate from food or be able to see food a bit more objectively and see it as something you can use as opposed to something that’s using you.

I think that again, I’ve experienced this at least a similar type of effect with health where I understand the big [00:33:00] levers I can pull. To positively impact my health and I’m working on all of those. And so what is there to worry about? Worrying doesn’t even actually, not only do I not need to worry, it doesn’t lie.

It doesn’t make any sense to worry. There’s nothing that I haven’t, I’m not shoving things into the memory hole, chanting affirmations all day about how healthy I am and how I’m okay. I’m okay. I’m not, cause you don’t have to, if you’re doing all the right things, there’s no part of you that’s nagging saying, Hey, You’re lying to yourself just so you know, hey, yeah, no, like 

Jared: you just made me think about one of the things is that, when you’re unhealthy, you’re constantly looking for the boogeyman and, you’re constantly worried. At least I was constantly worried about all these things come out of the woodwork. And I think just getting healthy is, you go, eh, I don’t really have to worry about that.

I’ll be fine. And I think also, one of the things that was unique about you, Your books that I really appreciate it was the level of research and the quotes from articles because there’s so much crap out there about health in general. Every day there’s an article in the, in the news about how you get cancer from this, that, this.

And it’s, it’s nice to have someone [00:34:00] actually have pulled together a bunch of research for you. They say, Hey, this is. This is what all of this is really telling you, just made me think of what you’re talking about. It’s the more intellectually armed you are with information about your health, the better off you’re going to be.

And I think that’s a big difference, both whether it comes from diet or even, even from cancer or whatever. Being informed is what makes the difference, I think, ultimately, and yeah, you could get unlucky, if you know what you’re doing, you if you’re drinking and smoking every day, yeah, eventually you’re putting yourself at risk, but if you know what your risks are, and you’re managing them, and you’re, you go, huh.

It’s going to be okay. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And that’s what you do every day. When you drive to work every day, that’s what you’re doing. There’s a, the probability is low, but there’s always a chance that anything, something bad could happen. But when you go, all right I’m a good driver and this, that, and the whatever.

And so that’s just, that’s life. There’s a little bit of risk and everything, but yes, if you can minimize that risk, then worrying just becomes not only counterproductive, but really it just becomes unnecessary. It’s very hard. For us to dilute ourselves. It’s easy to [00:35:00] lie to other people and trick other people into believing things, but it’s very hard to do that to ourselves.

And yes, if you are drinking a lot and smoking a lot, there’s always a part of you that knows this is a bad idea. This is a bad decision. I’m making a mistake right now. And you could quantify it, somebody out there could quantify it and say that your base rate of this or that disease has now gone up by X percent, but you know that intuitively.

And so I think, again, it takes a lot of energy and a lot of attention to keep whacking that mole every time it pops up, whack it down. It’s something you have to constantly keep your eye on. But then once you free yourself of that, you, I just think, again, it’s very liberating to not have to play that whack a mole game with yourself.

Jared: Yeah, no, definitely. It definitely pushed a lot of that health stuff aside just by, being educated, but also being right. It’s about being in control some ways. Getting your car, you know what you’re doing. Yeah, random things could happen, but if you’re in control, you feel like it’s a decision you’re making.

Exactly. And that’s what the tracking stuff comes into. I think, it’s like that for me was [00:36:00] like now I’m making a decision on what I’m eating, right? Versus and I’m informed and I understand the inputs and the outputs of it. All together, it all comes together that way. So it’s great.

Mike Matthews: Absolutely. Okay. Awesome. That’s everything that I wanted to ask you about. Is there anything else that you’d like to add? Anything that we didn’t cover that you think we should talk about? 

Jared: Oh, no, I don’t know. I just want to thank you. Really, if I hadn’t turned on to your book, I wouldn’t have been turned on a lot of great stuff.

And so even your podcast is a bunch of great stuff that I’ve been turned on to like that. Estrogenics book was really great and a bunch of other stuff that I think, 

Mike Matthews: yeah, that’s good information. That’s something that isn’t yeah. Isn’t spoken about much. I was pretty happy to get him on the show and to break that down.

Jared: Yeah, no, it was, it’s awesome. Plus the, I think the mindless eating book was also another great one. You turned me on to, which I thought was, probably super impactful in my life too. Both are really 

Mike Matthews: helpful. Awesome. Awesome. Glad to hear it. Okay. Thanks again, Jared. I appreciate you taking the time and a great job again on what you did and what you’re doing now.

And that’s cool that you got your wife into it and it’s cool. It’s great. It’s a great story. Hey [00:37:00] there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did and don’t mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from.

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Lastly, if you didn’t like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscle for life. com. and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I’m always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. Alright, that’s it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.

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