Interview With Author and Trainer Mike Vacanti From OnTheRegimen.Com

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All right. Thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let’s get to the show.[00:03:00] 

Hey, this is Mike and welcome to another episode of the podcast. In this podcast, I interview a friend of mine and fellow writer and online trainer and all around good guy, Mike Vacanti from on the regimen. com. And in this interview, we talk about how to stay fit when you’re super busy, which Mike knows quite a bit about because he has been training a guy named Gary Vaynerchuk for the last year or so.

And Gary is a big online entrepreneur, a speaker investor type of dude. And he has a pretty crazy lifestyle, crazy work schedule. He travels all over the country and all over the world. And it has been Mike’s job to get him in shape in the middle of all that. So as you can imagine, Mike has learned a few things about meal planning and training when you’re super busy.

We also talk about how things change in terms of diet and training when you’re very overweight and how to get the best results. And lastly, we have a little discussion about why it’s important to not sweat all the minutia when it comes to getting in shape and not lose perspective and an appreciation for [00:04:00] the bigger picture of what we’re really going for.

So I hope you liked the interview. Let’s get to it. Hey Mike, thanks for coming on the podcast. It’s about time that I had you on the podcast. I’ve actually been emailing randomly for however many months now. For a long time. Yeah, I know. 

Mike Vacanti: I’m excited to be on here. 

Mike Matthews: Thank you. Yeah, definitely. All right. What we’re going to talk about is we’ll talk about just for the listeners, they know what are they getting into.

We’re going to talk about how to modify your training and your diet for when you’re super busy, which will be great, not just for people that are super busy, but then when you have periods where you have to travel or If things are a bit crazy, I, I hear from new parents fairly frequently that they, that now they go from having all this time and they can run their life exactly as they want to realizing now that’s just all gone now.

Yep. And we’ll talk about changing change, how you change things for people that are very overweight, which is another good subject that I’ve written a bit about, but haven’t really gone in depth and talked much about. So that’ll be good. And then talk about Stop obsessing about the minutia and how to not how to stay fit without turning into a neurotic, basically.

Even though I guess we [00:05:00] all you, we have to, we all, there are little bits of neuroses that come with it, but how to at least minimize that. Yeah. Move a little further away on the spectrum. Yeah, exactly. And then whatever else we get into. So those are going to be the main topics.

Sounds good. I’m excited. Yeah, man. All right. So let’s just start with with the first, which is modifying how to stay fit when you’re super busy and maybe you can tell a little bit about your story, not just your experience with this personally, but also, how you have had to deal with your, with Gary and how you’ve made it work.

Mike Vacanti: Yeah, absolutely. So I, I train Gary Vaynerchuk a client who I’m with every single day in the gym and he has the busiest schedule I’ve ever seen like Monday through Friday, just literally packed 6 a. m. to midnight with meetings and everything. And he made a decision. Back almost two years ago now that he wanted to go all in on health and fitness.

And so he hired me as his full, why 

Mike Matthews: did he, why did he decide to do that given how busy he [00:06:00] is? A lot of people they don’t they, that’s the part. I know quite a few people that maybe are not that busy, but are successful business people. And they just are like, That’s the one area that they’re just like whatever.

Hopefully I don’t get cancer 

Mike Vacanti: and die. That was actually it. It wasn’t like there wasn’t a scare moment. There wasn’t like a heart attack. There wasn’t any, there wasn’t a family member dying that put him over the edge. It was, he’s actually told me a story. He was sitting on a plane. He was 38 or 39 years old and just realized like.

I really treat my body like shit. Like I don’t pay attention to this at all. I’m not serious about working out. Like he would go through spurts where he would train, six times over the course of two months and then take a year off. And he said that he realized. Eventually, this was going to catch up to him in his late 40s or maybe mid 50s or whenever it was like his body wasn’t going to be that good to him in the bodybuilding world.

We would call like he was skinny fat at the time, five, 885 pounds, but like no muscle [00:07:00] basically. So he, his physique didn’t look that bad and just look like a normal dude. Yeah, exactly. But he realized that long term, this isn’t going to be good for me. I need to make a change. I’ve tried hiring trainers in the past.

I’ve tried doing it myself and it’s never worked before. Let me try this as like a new crazy idea. 

Mike Matthews: And how do you find his way to you? 

Mike Vacanti: So I interned for his previous trainer, John Romanello. And when Roman moved to Los Angeles, Gary needed someone new to work with in LA or in New York. Sorry. And And Roman made that intro.

That’s how we linked up. 

Mike Matthews: Nice. Cool. Okay. So sorry to interrupt there. All so now you’re with him, you’re training him. And then how 

Mike Vacanti: has that worked really well? Like it, it has just worked. I’m around 24 seven. I travel with him. I go on his family vacations. I like his business trips.

I’m with him. And so I’m keeping him on track with food. We’re getting workouts in every day, like whether it’s. just some low intensity cardio or whether it’s a stretching day [00:08:00] because he wants to do something seven days a week. Like that momentum is part of his mindset. But yeah, he’s made amazing progress.

He’s down probably 35 pounds of fat and up 10 ish pounds of muscle in almost two years. That’s great. He’s done really well. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: So logistically, how has that worked now? It’s okay. So we have somebody that’s listening. Maybe they don’t, I’m busy. I’m not, I can’t say Monday to Friday. I get up at six.

Six, but then I’m in the gym. I can’t say Monday to Friday, six to midnight. Some days is like that. But so logistically, how do you make that work for him? We can talk about food training from there’s the day to day. And then there’s also the bigger picture of week to week where I’m sure you have to, especially with the, food is easier to control, but with workouts, I’m sure you have to some things you have to change on the fly.

Like today you were going to do this. And now all of a sudden that’s not going to work because of some fire that he has to go put out or whatever. Yep. 

Mike Vacanti: Yep. First. It’s completely different for most people, meaning that the solution, if you’re really busy, isn’t hire a full time, like trainer to take care of you.

That’s just, [00:09:00] it’s not practical. It’s expensive. It’s if you can 

Mike Matthews: do that, you might as well hire the chef. And then, 

Mike Vacanti: Yeah, just go the whole nine yards. But through training him and through just working with busy people online and talking with busy people The modifications that I have found most effective are one is training frequency.

So if you are someone who wants to get the most out of, Your workout, like strength train for 45 to 60 minutes, three to maybe four days a week. Do as little as possible while still hitting your compound moves. Like things you talked about on this podcast that your listeners know to do. Yeah. I actually think that.

There, there are a lot of nutrition modifications specifically around meal timing and the types of foods you’re eating for example, very busy people often have a lot of lunch meetings, a lot of dinner meetings, a lot of fancy restaurants, and as fancy restaurant is code. Butter, oil just, sure.

Yeah, all of the dietary fats and carbs and just everything. [00:10:00] So play with meal timing. If you know that three, four, five days a week, you’re eating out and that’s just where you’re going to be factor in 50 or 60 grams of fat. And for lunch, maybe just have a protein shake, maybe have a bowl of veggies with some chicken or some salmon or some Turkey.

Yeah. Just keep it lean and light during the day, knowing that. In the evening, that’s when you’re going to use up more of your calories. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I do that. I do that. Even, I’ve just been on on a maintain for quite some time now, but just because I’m generally happy with where I’m at with my physique.

And I like to stay within maybe four to six weeks of being really lean if I need to do something for, if I have some reason to be really lean, but I’ll do that just if I’m going to go out to dinner just with my wife or whatever. I’m just like if I’m going to go out to dinner, I’m going to, I like to just.

Or eat what I want to eat and I can eat a lot of food. So I’m looking at probably two to 3000 calories for dinner to really enjoy myself. So I’ll just eat, I’ll just eat my protein and save all my carbs and fats essentially. And for the dinner. 

Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And you don’t have it’s not an all or nothing thing.

You don’t have [00:11:00] to pick the strategy and that’s what you’re doing for the rest of your life. Yeah. Day to day changes, especially when you’re busy day to day is going to change. So making those modifications to most realistically. Get close on calories and protein for the day. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, exactly. And so let’s talk about food choices then.

So he has to go out to a restaurant. Do you have you talk to me any about that? Or is he just eat whatever he feels like eating? Or is he know like, all right, these are the types of foods that you, it’s okay if you want to eat them, but if you really want to prevent damage, stay away from this or that, or try to order these types of things or try to limit alcohol consumption or whatever.

Mike Vacanti: He’s gotten an idea of good and bad, quote unquote, good and bad. Cause it’s all contextual just because we’ve been doing this for so long, but no, I literally, I go on the restaurant website, check out their menu and I make estimates early on. I would call and be like, Hey, is like, how do you prepare this salmon or what is this type of sauce?

Just so I had a better idea. We’ve loosened up a [00:12:00] little bit since those first hardcore few months. Food choices at nice restaurants, what he’s usually doing is he’s usually having fish. Even like vegetables, dude, at nice restaurants, like the brussels sprouts are good. They’re so good. They’re delicious because there’s so much butter and oil in them.

I know. 

Mike Matthews: But it’s not so bad okay, so like you get to eat all these delicious vegetables and maybe you’re getting what, a couple tablespoons of oil or butter whatever. Who cares? It’s that’s, it’s not, that’s not 200 grams of fat. That’s where the problem is. That’s where like when you’re going for the fat, the fatties, appetizers, and then you know, a fatty entree, and then the macaroni and cheese, and then the pie, and then the ice cream, and then.

Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that’s when it all adds up. However, I will say this. People don’t know that the sauce on the salmon has an extra 18 grams of fat and the Brussels sprouts have an extra 34 grams of fat that the 12 oysters they had as an appetizer that they thought were a pretty decent choice [00:13:00] actually had another, whatever, 28 grams of fat.

And you’re doing that consistently. That’s going to add up. But you can do it by modifying meal timing during the day. 

Mike Matthews: And then, yeah, in that case, again, obviously we’re not, we’re just railing against fat that you shouldn’t be eating fat. But the point of why we’re, why we keep on talking about fat is because it’s so calorie dense.

That’s the thing. And also from a nutrient partitioning type of I guess is it would be that would be the term like what your body does with nutrients, the nice thing about protein and carbs and Mike, this, I’m just saying for listeners, nice thing about protein and carbs that your body has other things that it can do with them other than just store them as body fat, whereas that’s basically what happens with dietary fat.

And that’s one of its. Primary purposes is to help maintain our fat stores because we need to have body fat, stay alive. And fat oxidation, the energy cost is very low when to when you eat fat, it doesn’t cost much energy to store it as body fat. That’s why we keep on talking about fat because the calories get out of control.

And so if you go eat a 200, a meal with 200 grams of fat, which is not that hard to do if in a restaurant, if you. [00:14:00] Can eat quite a bit of food like me. And if you choose the wrong types of foods so you do that plus alcohol. Think of a pound weighs, what is it? 453 grams or so. So if, it is very possible to gain up, I think upwards of probably a quarter to a half a pound of fat in one meal.

If you really overdo it and you drink yeah. Is that can be done? And then multiple nights a week. Yeah. And then all of a sudden now, you’re wondering how did you get, how did you gain two pounds of fat in, 

Mike Vacanti: a week or two building off that one thing, another tip, call it whatever you want for busy people is don’t feel the need to be obsessive about hitting specific.

macronutrient targets and like being very dialed. Because it’s just going to lead to a mindset of, okay, I’m trying to be perfect. I’m trying to hit these numbers. And if I don’t, then, it’s a logical fallacy, but it’s oh, I’m 10 grams over screw it. I may as well eat. X, [00:15:00] Y, Z thing. Keep calories in a range for 

Mike Matthews: what range do you try to like?

Okay. So if they’re cutting how close to the targets, also, of course, energy expenditure is really, we’re talking about an estimation of energy expenditure. And we don’t really know what our TD really is. And it’s a moving target as well. When you’re working off of a number, what do you like to see?

I like to say, yeah. 

Mike Vacanti: Plus or minus a hundred is a good 

Mike Matthews: range. 

Mike Vacanti: If you’re in there, you’re going to you’re going to see real progress over time. The difference between 2000 and 2100 calories is not a lot. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then with the specific macro nutrients, I just, because I have an article that SEO is very well about counting macros.

I get a lot of those types of questions and like very obsessive types of questions about it, but as long as you’re getting adequate protein and your calories are pretty close. Your carb to fat ratio, whether you’re consuming a bit more fats and a bit fewer carbs or vice versa On a day to day basis, [00:16:00] that’s not going to hurt progress.

It’s not going to make or break you. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And also, just to jump in on that. It’s also, I get those heavy questions too, or people are either worried from just am I going to, is it going to mess up my weight loss or am I going to gain weight from that viewpoint? But then also the viewpoint of health and because high fat dieting is trendy right now.

And a lot of people think that your body needs a lot more fat than it actually does to do what it needs to do. So I would say, I would just add to that, that get your, especially that’s especially true if you’re getting your omega three fatty acids in which can be tough to do with your diet. If you eat a lot of fatty fish, like sounds like Gary does, then maybe he doesn’t need to supplement, but then again, the better sources of omega threes, the fatty fish that are the better sources are also tend to be very high in pollutants and you’re not supposed to eat them all that frequently.

So you have a catch 22 there, but if you, I just supplement because it’s easy, four grams of. Fish oil day done. So yeah, exactly. I take it in the morning. So if you’re getting your omega threes in and your saturated fat isn’t out the roof, I recommend that people follow just still the general guidelines of 10 [00:17:00] percent or less of your calories.

And then, so you want to get the majority of your calories from unsaturated fat from oils and nuts and things and avocado and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. If you have just your basics in, then you know your fat can be it could be 50 grams one day and 25 grams the next day. And if you just flip flop, it doesn’t, it’s not going to negatively affect your health.

Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah. And I wasn’t, the only reason I’m railing on fats is because when I want Gary being at about 50 grams and he’s at 150 grams because he’s at a restaurant, it’s just going to prevent fat loss progress. 

Mike Matthews: Or, you get into that where if then if you have to cut your carbs too much, you just don’t really have the energy that you’re used to in your training sucks.

And okay, cool. So then anything else on the nutrition side? So if you’re so people are, what about on the go? What about okay, it’s not necessarily fancy restaurants, but what about for someone like I’m sure Gary part runs in this, right? Where he’s going to be on planes and he’s going to be in meetings and he doesn’t even have, it’s not, there’s no time to stop even eat or eat at a 

Mike Vacanti: restaurant.

Yeah. I think [00:18:00] dropping meal frequency is what makes sense there or taking the little bit of time and I don’t know if it’s 20 minutes on Sunday night or whenever you can squeeze a little time in to plan, even if it’s just three days at a time or a week at a time and say, okay, this two days is pretty crazy busy.

I’m not in love with protein bars, but I’m going to buy a couple or I have them stocked up because when I’m traveling, this is a convenient, albeit not perfect solution to get me from here to here. And there are other convenient food sources, non perishables. Like you can bring many types of fruit.

You can bring nuts, you can bring like snacks. If you think that being on an airplane and binging on plain food or buying something that you shouldn’t buy is going to be an issue. Then you should absolutely try to bring a snack. That’s going to hold you over. That’s going to prevent that from happening.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, totally agree. There’s also just on that if there’s a little bit of simple meal prep that you can do the simplest would be like you were saying put some fruit in a bag or a container [00:19:00] put some nuts or whatever But there are quite a few little recipes out there that where you can whip things together that it’s fine if it’s not in the fridge for six hours, and you can eat it and enjoy it, whether it be simple salads or, cottage cheese is low fat cottage cheese.

I personally like it’s just a really easy, quick, simple source of protein that you can doctor up in different ways to make it taste good. So if with just a little bit of time and creativity and for thought, I think. It’s fairly easy to prevent where you’re stuck now and you haven’t eaten anything and you’re starving.

And then there’s the fast food joint or whatever. 

Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah. And if that. The fast food joint at the airport when you’re boarding in 11 minutes and you don’t have time to sit down, but you do have time to get Wendy’s first. You can make D like it’s true, but you can make adjustments. You can get the salad with a grilled chicken or whatever, or you can have protein powder in your bag.

And that’s a 92nd solution that you drop a little Ziploc baggie of two scoops of Legion way. Plus, that’s what I use. So I’m just [00:20:00] plug. And shake it up, chug it, rinse it out in the bathroom. And two minutes later, you literally have 50 grams of protein. Have a banana and you’re on your way, hold you over three, four, five hours until you can have that real meal.

Yep. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I do the 

Mike Vacanti: same 

Mike Matthews: thing when I travel. Just throw X number of scoops in a bag and just have it. Just, it’s also nice because when I’m traveling, I don’t travel much, but I don’t like to spend much time Eating. If I’m going somewhere, it’s usually, I don’t travel much for work. So if I am going to go anywhere, it’s going to be for something personal.

And for personally I don’t, eating’s fine, but I don’t like having to, lose a few hours a day just to eat random, just have to stop to eat random food. You know what I mean? Like I personally would probably rather just eat. Protein shake and eat some fruit, then have to take the time to go sit down and eat somewhere that it’s not like particularly good.

It’s just, you need to eat. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. And more 

Mike Vacanti: like expensive too, which matters. True. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Oh, okay. So let’s see. Is there anything else on the nutrition side that that [00:21:00] pops into your head that you’ve modifications you’ve 

Mike Vacanti: made for Gary eating foods that you enjoy? Like English peas for him have been this crazy thing where they take time to eat.

So there are a little bit of work which he likes on the weekends when he’s not working he tends to snack and being around with wife and kids and the kids are eating, he’ll pick at their plate, but if he has something and it took us a while to figure out what that is, but like English peas or pomegranates, things that.

Take work that have some fiber, so keep you a little bit more full and are low calorie density. That’s one hack, if you want to call it that has helped a lot. Finding foods that you enjoy that are healthy or reasonably healthy. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that makes sense because snacking, I’m not a big snacker personally, but a lot of people don’t realize how much, how quickly that can add up if it’s, again, just picking from people’s food or just eating little things here and there.

You can easily eat an extra thousand calories a day and snacks without really feeling like you ate all [00:22:00] that much 

Mike Vacanti: for sure. And this isn’t relevant to the busy people. When someone, Tells me that they’re hungry 24 7 or that they can’t stop snacking. The first place my mind goes are well What are you doing?

Like in life? What are you doing when you get hungry and generally it’s nothing It’s downtime. It’s relaxation It’s if you can have and I’m not saying work is the right way to go But if you can at least have something like an activity that you’re intentionally doing Yeah, go for a walk go like read a book that you really want to be reading just Avoiding the mindless waste of time because that like extra mental capacity or boredom is one reason a lot of people end up snacking.

Mike Matthews: That’s very true. It’s just a psychological trigger. It’s, it reminds me of what smokers run into where there’s certain situations where it just, they’ve always smoked or it just, Makes them want to smoke. So even obvi after they’ve quit, they have a hard time resisting it.

So same type of deal. There are just [00:23:00] circumstances that make you want to eat. And that’s a good point. And that, that, that’s just, that’s with some self-awareness. Then if somebody can reflect on that, where, ask them that question. What, instead of just chalking it up to genetics or I’m just always hungry or whatever, what am I doing that makes me want to eat food, not because I’m hungry, really, or because there’s that overlap between the physiological and the psychological when it comes to hunger and what is it really, is it, is your stomach like growling and it’s painful, that’s real physiological hunger, or are we talking about a psychological desire to eat, which then we classify as hunger, 

Mike Vacanti: for me, when I’m back at my. Parent’s house in Minnesota, like I will go for the carb cupboard every single time. Yeah, like cereal, granola bars. There used to be pop tarts in there sometimes. That’s crackers. That’s just where, and even now, even on a rest day, when I’m a little bit lower carb, if I’m hanging out at home with my family, I find myself opening the cupboard door and I’m like, [00:24:00] why am I doing this behavior when I’m not hungry right now?

It’s funny. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, 

Mike Vacanti: totally. 

Mike Matthews: Okay, cool. And now let’s talk about the exercise and training side of things. What kind of modifications and how do you make it work for Gary with how insanely busy he is? 

Mike Vacanti: I don’t know that he is the best example. I guess there’s something, so if he’s coming off of a red eye and on the training program, we have.

We’re starting with four sets of heavy bench press in the three to four rep range. And then after that, we’re doing three sets of incline. If we have a big day scheduled, I’m backing off with weight. I might move that workout to the next day and do something else, lower intensity in its place.

I might just do a lighter weight, lower volume workout, depending on like the context of the entire schedule. Not getting married to just like increasing weight on the bar every single session Regardless of what’s going on in your life because what’s going on in your life matters a lot Yeah, stress matters a lot sleep 

Mike Matthews: matters a lot.

Yeah, I ran into that myself just recently [00:25:00] where I wasn’t sleeping randomly like it doesn’t I’ve even read about this and apparently there’s no real validity to it. But for whatever reason My I sleep maybe about six hours. That’s my average. And that’s totally fine. If I don’t wake up multiple times, if I can just go to sleep and wake up, that’s naturally about what I what it takes for me to feel rested.

But if I go to bed, so I was like, I was working late. And then I would read and I would read until maybe like 1215. Usually not later in 1215. My alarms at 615. And I for whatever reason, if I stop reading, and I just like a time to go to sleep at 1145. Five. I don’t wake up. I sleep better throughout the night and I tried changing caffeine intake.

I don’t have that much caffeine maybe four or 500 milligrams a day on average and not either, either one to 200 or none on the weekends. But for whatever reason, what time I actually start going to sleep cause I fall asleep within maybe five minutes. That’s the only thing I could find that was correlated at all.

And I like did it multiple times where. I’ll try to go to bed later. And even from this placebo affecting myself, I don’t know. At [00:26:00] this point, though, I just have to accept that if I go to sleep before 12, I just tend to sleep better. And so I was running into that in my training where I was waking up, with I wake up to I wake up at it was really annoying, actually.

So I go to sleep, let’s say 12 30. I’m asleep or 1220 or whatever, depending on when I stop reading. And I would wake up at I’d wake up and I’d be like, Oh, it’s time to get up. But I’d feel like tired. And I’d look and it’s 2 30. I’m like, Okay. And then go back to sleep and wake up again. Okay, now it’s definitely time to wake up.

And it’d be like 5 30. And then now it was only a 45 minutes. So that was like over the course of a month. And in my training, it was just it was getting hard. Not only it was like mentally, it was hard to push myself through my workouts. And then physically, I actually started to feel like a bit run down.

Not that’s a big surprise to anybody, but I’m just saying that’s the first time it’s ever really where I was like, so this is what it feels like. And so what did you do? Did you back off on things? Did you, yeah, I had to, I just started going, I started going higher rep. Yep. I started just doing which ironically, like 10 rep deadlifting.

If it’s real 10 rep, that’s not [00:27:00] easy. Like it’s different. It’s different than the heavy stuff that I more prefer, but it was exhausting. But yeah, so I had to just cut down on the volume. I tried the higher rep, with dead lifting. I did that for a little bit and then even just cut back that volume a little bit where I was using a weight that maybe would be my 10 rep max, but I was only doing sets of six and that was only for the last couple of weeks.

And then, or I guess the last couple of weeks I actually went okay. Cause I finally fixed my sleep, but that was for like two weeks where then I just was like, okay, I got to figure out, so I just tried going to bed a little bit earlier cause I remembered. Quite some time ago, I was going to bed a little bit earlier and it was better.

Match that pattern when you were in a good groove. Yeah. I don’t know. And that was it. So now I stopped reading at 1145 and I sleep totally fine now. I don’t know what that means, but Hey, I’ll take it. And 

Mike Vacanti: even without researching and being able to figure out, Oh yeah, it’s this, like you figured it out.

What works for you. And then whether that’s in here or not, I can’t it’s, yeah, whatever, 

Mike Matthews: I’ll take it. I don’t have anything else at this point. So anyway, sorry to interrupt there, but I just want [00:28:00] to say I’ve experienced that where you want to go heavy. I want to keep pushing. I, this is, I, even in some cases, like this is the week I wanted to go for one rep max because I haven’t done it in about a month, but I was just like, It’s gonna suck.

I just already know it’s gonna suck. So I’m just not gonna do it this week. 

Yeah. Yeah, 

Mike Vacanti: it’s a there’s actually another entrepreneur Alex Hillman who I work with online had a we had a conversation where he was going three days a week. And maybe I bumped him up to four. And they were solid 60 plus minute workouts.

And he’s Mike I’m so busy. I don’t know some of these exercises. So looking them up takes time. Sometimes I’m in the gym and I have to watch a video and then try to do it. Is there anything else we can do here? And we had talked about the check the box mentality. You get a streak of green checks, like day one, day two, day three, day four.

You don’t want to break the chain. Right now we’re literally just doing 25 minute workouts, 20 to 25 minute workouts that are much more simple, but every day and he’s knocking them [00:29:00] out every day. And that momentum philosophy is something that Gary uses as well, which is I don’t have to lift every day.

I don’t have to do intense cardio every day, but I want to do something every day because that’s what I do now. And I’m going to mold myself into following this behavior and I’m going to make it a habit. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah that’s an important point. It’s also, it’s important, not just in working out, but it’s important.

And I think life and business and everything is, especially when you have a lot of different things going. So you have your different work projects and you have your self projects of working out of reading or whatever. That even if you can’t get in the amount of time you wanted on something, just doing some of it has a psychological effect.

I’ve experienced that myself, especially just having a lot of things going where I would have liked my plan was maybe to put an hour in on that project, but that’s just not gonna happen. It was 20 minutes instead. But there’s value in that check that box mentality were like, It’s still in my mind now.

And I’m, it just it staves off the temptation to 

Mike Vacanti: quit. Yeah, [00:30:00] seriously. What else with training so busy people I associate with having worse posture more sitting more leaning over screens often I’m generalizing more in your phone in email, just more upper back rounding. So something I’ve added actually just in the last six months to Gary’s training is a lot of upper back volume.

Like three to four times a week, we’ll hit face pulls. We’ll hit rear delts. We’ll hit some lighter horizontal pulling motions, just strengthening his upper back, which is helping his posture, which, which is producing shoulder pain, which is just helping the way his upper body feels. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. You’ll see that.

A lot of people that busy or not busy, a lot of weightlifters have the problem of way too much. Pressing and very little pulling. And, so you’ll see all that. You’ll see this all the time in the gym. Yeah. 

Mike Vacanti: Pulling is not sexy. Yeah. Having a big benches. 

Mike Matthews: But you only, when you look in the mirror, I always 

Mike Vacanti: use chat.

You don’t ever see your back. So yeah, exactly. It doesn’t exist. If you don’t actually doesn’t [00:31:00] exist. So that’s been a good switch for what 

Mike Matthews: about, what about when, so you guys are not in New York where you can go to your gym and stuff. So how have you made it work when you’re, And so other places 

Mike Vacanti: in the world take the equipment we have and do our best with it.

The most common situation is we’re at a hotel, they have dumbbells that go up to 50 and a couple of treadmills and an elliptical and that’s it. Let’s get the best workout we can and a bench. I have found that for most hotels and he stays at some nicer hotels. So some of them have. Like pretty legit gyms, but a lot of hotels it’s dumbbells and it’s a few cardio machines.

So dropping rest times first, it’s the mentality of you don’t have to be perfect. Oh, this gym sucks. I’m not going to work out this week on this business trip. If you’re on vacation and you want to take the week off cool, but on a trip you travel frequently. Do what you can with the equipment that’s in there.

And so that means Reduce rest times. That means increase reps. That could [00:32:00] mean increased total volume, increased sets and reps. It could mean 

Mike Matthews: we’re doubling up on maybe, you’re going to do an upper lower, maybe you wouldn’t normally do upper lower, but you’re just gonna do it that way. Or even do a whole body because of, if you’re only in a.

Be in there 

Mike Vacanti: a couple of days or whatever, yeah, making the modifications to use it as effectively as you can and combining two workouts into one, like you just mentioned, switching the moves you’re doing. If something doesn’t make sense with lighter weight to one in the last few days, we had a flat dumbbell bench press and instead the dumbbells only went up to fifties and he can do a lot of volume with that weight.

So we yeah. We started with some pushups and weighted pushups and then moved to a single arm bench press, which was actually pretty challenging for him with a 50 pound dumbbell. But the biggest thing is just like doing even though you’re not in your perfect home gym with the bar you like and the chalk over it, like still doing it.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, absolutely. Let’s move on to the next cool topic here, which is how do things change for people that are very 

Mike Vacanti: [00:33:00] overweight. I think there’s a mental change that I can’t even fully wrap my head around. Because. I’ve never been very overweight and to quantify it, I don’t know, say you have to lose 80 pounds or a hundred pounds, or you want to lose that much weight to come from an obese range to a not even overweight body weight range.

One, one question I get a lot is. I use this equation for setting up my calories and my macros that’s on my site and it has me eating what feels like so much protein. Do I really have to eat that much? If you take a woman who is 225 pounds at five foot six. She’s not going to eat 225 grams of protein in a day.

Like the one gram per pound recommendation does not apply to everyone. And she doesn’t need that much protein. So that’s one modification right off the bat. To be 

Mike Matthews: fair, if it wouldn’t, if she liked eating that [00:34:00] much protein, I would say that then it’s not bad. It’s not that it’s terrible, but yeah, for most women, they’re not used to eating maybe even a third of 

Mike Vacanti: that amount.

And that’s just I’ve heard complaints of like stomach pain and just I physically can’t get this much in there’s nothing wrong with it at all. It’s just when you make something very difficult for an individual, it’s going to drop adherence, which is going to lead to. Yeah, I 

Mike Matthews: mean, that’s like the old, the best diet is one you can stick to there’s truth in that for sure.

For sure. So how do you, what’s the modification 

Mike Vacanti: there? I start around a gram, like 0. 8 to a gram per pound of lean mass. A lot. Men and women, but women particularly who are overbeat or who are obese. Sorry underestimate body fat percentage When if you have to plug it into an equation that’s gonna spit out calories or macronutrients and for good reason like it doesn’t feel good it might be a little bit embarrassing like to see a big number, but 50 or 55 percent [00:35:00] body fat isn’t uncommon for Yeah, definitely.

Mike Matthews: Another, I think another easy way for people that can think with 40, about 40 percent of their calories, the old 40, 40, 20 type because, let’s say in that case, that woman, let’s say she starts around. I would say, I don’t know if you go about it in the same way, but like with obese people that obviously when they’re at that point where they’re like, I just want to lose this weight, I’m sick of this.

What do I need to do? Big deficit. Yeah. Yes, be as aggressive as possible with deficit without just being, without everyone’s talking about 500 calories a day, but yeah, they’re not going to lose muscle, especially if now they’re doing any sort of resistance training whatsoever. Even if it’s just body weight, I don’t care if they just start with body weight squats and like the, simplest pushup regression you can do or eat a little simple things, but they’re not going to lose muscle.

Maybe it’s 1500 calories. So 40 percent of those calories came from protein. Okay, cool. 

Mike Vacanti: 100%. And that’s actually my, the next thing I wanted to talk about was following a 15 percent deficit in trying to [00:36:00] lose 0. 75 to one pound per week. Doesn’t make sense when you have to lose a lot of weight, like even from a psychological point of view, looking at it and saying, I’m going to lose how much, and I have to say, it’s going to take me two years.

What exactly, which, and the other side of that. Equation is in a lot of situations. You want to be up front with people about how long results are going to take. And of course for the dude who wants to get jacked out of his mind, it’s No, you’re not going to do that in three months. It’s probably is going to take two years or longer depending on how he wants to look or she wants to look but yeah just making Progress because progress is motivating and there are tons of non scale versions of progress you feel stronger your clothes fit better you have more energy you can mentally 

Mike Matthews: clear and people are going to compliment you.

They’re going to notice changes Yep. Yep, 

Mike Vacanti: which are all huge but scale progress as much as the scale is imperfect in the short run scale progress reflects [00:37:00] fat loss in the long run and seen two or even three pounds a week fall off for those first four, six, eight, 10 weeks is super motivating to be down 35 pounds in three months.

Or to be down 11 pounds in three months, that determines it sets your trajectory. It sets your where you’re at mentally with the rest of that journey. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. Totally agree. Okay. So we’re talking about high protein, talking about a larger deficit. And in terms of how do you quantify that in terms of deficit?

We can even say relative to BMR because any, that’s a very, that’s something that anyone can calculate. It doesn’t matter how overweight they are. They can go find out what their BMR is. So where do you generally set it in terms of caloric intake? And it 

Mike Vacanti: depends on the person and it depends on what I think their ability to like psychologically and physically stomach a big deficit is like mental strength, lifestyle how busy they are.

There are a lot [00:38:00] of factors. Probably starting just above BMR, a hundred calories above BMR. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. When we make meal plans, we do a lot of meal plans for people. And that’s generally someone’s very overweight and they’re like, let’s do this. Then we’re starting them around a summer around BMR and then they don’t have to really, they don’t really have to reduce here you go, do this.

We’re going to do this for six months and then you’re going to be very happy. 

Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And monitoring progress along the way too. If you start someone, if you start a little bit less aggressively with the deficit, so a smaller deficit, say several hundred calories above BMR and they feel pretty full, the more vegetables and higher protein that they’re eating has them feeling good.

They think they can eat fewer calories. They want to make faster progress. Great. Drop calories by another 300. 

Mike Matthews: Have you run into, I run into people that are actually like lean, wanting to get really lean and they go down that road, which then I don’t recommend. I tell them like, no, you, you need to, let’s not [00:39:00] start, let’s say it’s a girl at 20 percent body fat and let’s not start you at your BMR.

Let’s not start you under 

Mike Vacanti: BMR. Come on. We want her, that girl to eat as much food as she can while still making progress. Yeah. Because then you have nowhere to, you don’t have anywhere to adjust down if you start her at BMR. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And then, and it’s also that large deficit, that’s a very different experience when someone’s at a very high body fat percentage to a very low body fat percentage.

And sometimes people, they haven’t experienced that and they experienced that for the first time and they experienced what the, the decline in energy. And then if in the case of guys, you’re going to see, you’re going to see a decline in, in, in anabolic, your libido is going to go down.

Anyways, so training performance yeah, I’ve had people write me because then that, that turns them off. Like they didn’t realize they were just trying to be too aggressive with their deficit. So then they, but they, as they incorrectly ascribed the problems to, Oh it must be that I just, being under X percent body fat is just.

It’s just unhealthy. Like it’s not, but no, that’s not [00:40:00] true. You can, as a girl, you can maintain 17, 18 percent body fat for your entire life and be perfectly healthy as a guy. I would say 8 percent or so is maintainable for everybody. The people, I don’t know, I don’t know about in your experience or the people I’ve run into with guys in particular that can stay very lean.

There’s obviously drugs, but if you exclude drugs, then there are just some people that genetically they’ve always been super lean and it’s. They don’t have a problem maintaining six or 7%, which is a real like six or 7 percent shredded ab veins, everything. And they’re just like, yeah, I don’t know.

I eat 3000 calories a day, but whatever you suck. 

Mike Vacanti: I’m having it right now. I’m trying to add mass and I’m eating around 4000 a day in the scale isn’t moving. And so I’m Like a high neat responder. Probably we talked about this before but it just more volume more food, more volume. I know.

That’s what I need to do. That’s what I’m doing. 

Mike Matthews: Anything else with working with very overweight people, 

Mike Vacanti: I think from a training perspective, finding something that you enjoy And [00:41:00] obviously we want it to be strength training because maintaining and building some lean mass is going to help you.

It’s going to help keep your metabolic rate higher. It’s going to help you in life. There’s, I think you might have actually linked to this study is where I saw it, but the correlation between it was either the leg strength or lean mass in the lower body compared to Death or life expectancy like, cause 

Mike Matthews: mortality.

Yeah. 

Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah. It’s just good to strength train, but your 

Mike Matthews: body just 

Mike Vacanti: works 

Mike Matthews: better when it’s strong and yeah, and that’s functionally and physiologically, 

Mike Vacanti: but you don’t necessarily have to walk into gold and go in the squat rack with bodybuilders and like lift there, right? You can do dumbbell workouts.

You can do body weight workouts, especially if you’re obese, like doing things that you can, that yeah. That feel good. 

Mike Matthews: Some people I’ve started with, I recommend, they’ll read one of my books and then say, Hey, should I just start here? Very overweight. And I’ll just tell them, you know what, why don’t we start with let’s start with a diet.

Let’s get a meal plan in place here. Here’s an article, set it up, and then let’s just start with [00:42:00] walking. Just go for a 45 minute walk every day and let’s get that. And let’s get that. Let’s do a month of that until you’re very comfortable with that. And then let’s look at maybe then some resistance training two 

Mike Vacanti: or three times a week.

Yeah, that’s the throwing too much at someone at once. It can be overwhelming trying to change 16 things versus Two or three or four, but yeah, find something that you somewhat enjoy and that you can do and you can stick to and in that vein, like talking about, so say this person loses 12, loses, some of that’s going to be water weight, but say they lose three pounds, four pounds of fat in those first three, four weeks.

And they do move on to strength training. Understand. I get a lot of, I’m embarrassed to go in the free weight section. I feel like I’m being judged. Yeah. And I get that too. The big Jack dudes. Are generally very insecure and I’m not ragging on them at all because like we all have our own [00:43:00] issues.

I have my issues, but like to be embarrassed that, that like you’re a beginner and that you’re training in the same vicinity as someone who’s really big. Like they are not thinking badly of you. 99. 9 percent of the time it’s, this is awesome. You’re in here, you’re doing your thing. I’m doing my thing. Like we’re trying to get better.

Let’s go. Let’s do this. So yeah, 

Mike Matthews: and a lot of people like those types of people. And again, we’re all narcissistic to one degree or another. They’re so into themselves. They don’t even notice you. They’re staring 

Mike Vacanti: at themselves. Look at that tricep. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: They don’t even, they didn’t even realize that you’re there.

And it’s funny cause I’ve had that, it’s whenever you’re starting anything new. I had that experience. So like in the last, Year to two years I’ve taken up golf and put a lot of time into that and just being terrible in the beginning. Of course, it’s awkward. I’m out on the driving range with a lot of cases, a lot of cases, people are actually terrible too, but there are some really good players and yeah, you look like an idiot, just duffing every shot and thin, fat and left or whatever.

But everyone has gone [00:44:00] through that. Everyone knows what it’s like to suck at something. And everyone sucked at some point. And every that person, even if there were someone that were being judgmental or Oh, ha. Look at that. That person was you at some point?

And maybe someone treated them like that. And maybe that’s why they’re doing that now. But being on, I think, it. To actually expose yourself to that discomfort. I think there’s actually value to it. Even in hockey, same thing. So I would take up taking up hockey again. I’ve been skating for a couple months.

Initially I was, it was, I was terrible. I couldn’t, it was a joke. And of course I look like an idiot, but I think there’s, I think there’s value in that in being able to subject yourself to that. And so you don’t just stay in your comfortable little bubble of a life and you’re not afraid to go do new things because you’re going to suck.

And you’re going to look around everybody else. It’s better. And it’s going to make you uncomfortable. You know what I mean? 

Mike Vacanti: It applies to everything new that we do. And think think of something you’re pretty good at. Think back to when you started that thing whether it’s in your business, [00:45:00] whether it’s Like being a really good mom or dad and whatever, 

Mike Matthews: talking to 

Mike Vacanti: girls or guys or anything, a hundred percent.

I’m terrible at that, but I’m sure. But just deriving confidence from other areas of your life and knowing that while some things come a bit more naturally and other things are a bit more awkward. You can improve and you can get better, but it’s going to take time. It’s going to take some reps.

It’s going to take some discomfort to get to that point to break through. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, totally. And also just remembering that at some point, especially with working out where a lot of people in the gym, they don’t know what they’re doing is I don’t care. If a guy is big or a girl that has a nice body or good physique or whatever, a lot of them don’t know what they’re doing.

So when you go in there with. That with a very good idea of what you’re doing, regardless of how you look now, let’s, give it six months and then let’s see how, people aren’t, it reminds me of the whole rise of the of Trump where people were laughing in the beginning. They thought it was a joke.

He’s a clown. Now they’re not laughing so much anymore. So [00:46:00] similarly who cares if someone judges you in the beginning one and this is another reason why I’m going on in this. Cause I get these questions too. And this is like my, always my response is that in my opinion, a lot of people, I don’t care what they think about me or what they judge me for this, that, or whatever, because they can’t even live up to their own standards themselves.

I don’t, they, whatever kind of standards they are saying I’m not living up to, I would just hold the mirror and be like, yeah you, 

Mike Vacanti: you got plenty of things coming up. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, don’t, I, do you want me to follow you around for a week and Let’s start looking at your life kind of thing.

So I think that when coming back to that point of insecurity, like what you said, if somebody is the type of person that is very judgmental of others, that just only reflects badly on them and shows how insecure they are and probably how little they can even how unsatisfied they are with themselves, 

Mike Vacanti: a hundred percent.

And it’s I guess to close this out, it’s caring more about. yourself and the people in your life and making yourself better for whatever reason, then [00:47:00] you care about the pain of the judgment or the awkwardness or the bad thoughts that person is having or the, that you think that person’s having that they’re actually not care more about making this happen in the next four, six, 12 months.

Then the pain of the other thing. 

Mike Matthews: Absolutely. And there’s also, there’s a difference between the experience, the experiencing self and then the remembering self. The, there’s that I read about it. There’s isn’t a book called thinking fast and slow. A very good book that yeah, it’s one of the best just be smarter and have a better outlook on life type of books that I’ve read in a while, but they talk about, have you gotten it’s later in the book.

I don’t know if you’ve gotten there yet, but they talk about, and they’re Duration neglect and how people it’s not so much the duration of how much pain or pleasure that you derive from something that’s not when you’re looking back on things that determines your outlook on it. It’s the peak. So how at its worst or best, how bad or good was it?

And then how did it end? So but applying that to something like this that [00:48:00] you might go into the gym every day and feel uncomfortable for 30 minutes out of your 60 minutes. But if you just keep doing that in six months, when you look back on it, it’s not going to feel, even though it might be very, it is painful or psychologically painful while you’re doing it, if you just get through it, when you look back on it, it might not, depending on the circumstances it won’t, you will not feel the accumulation of all the psychological pain.

It’s just, it might in the end, because it’s going to end on a good note here. We’re talking about six months where you look the best you’ve ever looked. You’re actually going to look back on that and you’re going to think. Because we’re talking about low peak, low intensity cycle. It’s not like people are running up to you in the gym and like crowding around you, laughing at you and shaming you.

So we’re talking about low intensity, whatever, a little bit of discomfort that then ends on a really high note is you’re gonna look back on that and you’re gonna be like, I’m so glad I did that. That was a great experience. 

Mike Vacanti: Yeah. No, no one has ever gone through the process of making themselves stronger and healthier and leaner and feel and look better and then being like, 

Mike Matthews: that wasn’t really worth it.

[00:49:00] Yeah, or that was a that’s a bad memory. That was a bad period of bad episode in my life. 

Mike Vacanti: It’s a source of pride. 

Mike Matthews: Totally. Totally. That’s great. I think that’s great. All right. So let’s touch on this last bit here before we wrap up. And that is, and we’ve actually talked about it a bit, but to not obsess about the minutia.

So we were talking obviously earlier about you’re not going to hit your calories to, to, to the calorie and not that it even matters to do that. Anyway you had mentioned in our emails, right? Yeah. that like you probably get this question because I’ve gotten this question of people, especially shift workers.

So like how, Oh, do I just roll over these calories? I ate it after midnight. Now is that next day’s calories or just things like that where they people are making it a bit, they’re overthinking it. 

Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And it’s not even one or two. Like I get that question too, but it’s all of the questions like that.

And for me, I get it from people like shift working is one thing, but someone who thinks, Oh, I can borrow a few calories from tomorrow if I eat it after midnight, but then emailing to make sure that’s [00:50:00] okay. It’s take a bigger look at the big picture. If you’re doing the four, five, six things, recovering enough strength training having your calories in the right place, eating vitamin and mineral rich foods, at least a decent amount of those.

And. Patient time, like good things are going to happen whether or not you hit your macros exactly or whether or not you aided at 2 a. m. or at 10 a. m. The next day, they just don’t matter for your progress. 

Mike Matthews: It can 

Mike Vacanti: help 

Mike Matthews: taking the bigger view of okay, what are we? What are you trying to accomplish?

You’re trying to lose 20. So you know, a pound is approximately 3500 calories. I know that’s not an exact bill, so we’re talking about a 70, 000 ish caloric deficit over a period of time. That’s really what we have to do. We have to burn about 75, 000 calories worth of energy that in our in our body that is stored.

So when we’re talking about little like, Oh, do I need to shift the calories or can I borrow the calories? I’ve explained it that way to people and that [00:51:00] helps them take a bigger look at it. Oh okay, yeah, I guess it doesn’t really matter because then I can, even if you, okay, fine, you over eight kind of one day and then maybe you can under eat a little bit the next day.

The point is more, you’re making progress toward this, you’re filling up this thermometer here of your caloric deficit or, how many, how much Has your expenditure exceeded your intake and it’s going up, it’s going up. Maybe some weeks it’s a little in and other weeks you make a good jump.

So I don’t know that frame has helped people. 

Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Be less obsessive and be less worried about the small mistakes in the short run. Totally any other type of in case there are any shift workers actually working. I think the are listening. I think the advice to busy people really applies, which is plan your schedule, look at the hours you’re working and figure out where you can get enough sleep so that you feel pretty good and then slot your workout in.

On the days or the time of day where it makes sense and where you’re going to have some energy and then stick to that [00:52:00] plan the best you can most of the time. 

Mike Matthews: Yep. Yep. And then on the diet sometimes intermittent fasting type approach can help, or especially, if they’re going to be up late and they don’t really care to eat breakfast anyway.

Okay, good. Let’s skip breakfast. And let’s and fitting also with meal timing with. Their preferences. Some people prefer like these days, I actually to eat a lot of my calories at night. That’s just the way they like to eat these days. So I accommodate that. It’s may not be the best for muscle building purposes, but I’m again, I’m just maintaining and I’m not trying to maximize every little edge for muscle growth.

So I’ve, just working with shift workers that has helped. And then also sometimes just knowing that like today, Okay. There’s no deficit today. Today’s going to be maintenance because when they say they’re cutting, because they’re going to have a long day and especially medical professionals and they don’t they need the energy and you know they can’t afford to be working at, 70 capacity so that has helped too or then they realize oh so I can just I can be in a deficit Five days a week and then two days a week i’m going to just eat around maintenance [00:53:00] and 

Mike Vacanti: okay I can do that, and i’m going to make progress doing that exactly the same Extended day thing can happen with travel, like flying east to west adds three hours to your day.

If you’re in a deficit, if you’re late in a deficit, you’ve been in it for many weeks or months. And you’re very hungry and very irritable. Yeah, if you know you’re having a longer day applies to the shift workers to have more calories on that day. If you have an extra 500 calories one day in the context of everything that’s going on, you’re gonna be just fine.

Totally. Totally. 

Mike Matthews: That’s great. Okay, good. I think we’ve covered everything. Is there anything else that has is Banging around in your head. I’m just so into Snapchat with you and Snapchat. What is it? What is it about Snapchat? Why do you like it so much? I’m just so not social media. I just, I have to force myself to even do anything with Instagram.

Mike Vacanti: I think that I you’re such a beast writing too, that that’s what you’re doing. 

Mike Matthews: So you’re saying I’m writing and you’re Snapchatting. 

Mike Vacanti: One takes a lot of time and thought and skill and the other one’s 

yeah, communicating [00:54:00] with my community, both in in the format where they can consume like the general content I’m putting out, but also these quick one to one interactions, which can be accomplished via email.

But I’ve found people really. Value the face to face interaction. There’s just something very real, very authentic about. So 

Mike Matthews: how does that work? Does that mean like someone messaged you and 

Mike Vacanti: then you reply with like you talking? Exactly. And the videos are capped to 10 seconds and they can either send like a text through the app or they can send a video or a picture through the app.

And I just, I get a lot of questions that I. Oh, that’s cool. Yeah. 

Yeah. 

Mike Vacanti: Point them to, Hey, this article on my site or wherever. And yeah it’s just fun. It’s something I’ve been going hard at for the last five or six months here. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. I could see that. I could see, obviously then that’s a service.

So at least there’s some value there. I thought it was just like, cause I don’t have Snapchat on my phone. I don’t have it personally. I don’t have it like on my phone. So my wife has it though. And so whenever I see it, she follows like [00:55:00] these random model Muppet girls. And I just see them like trying to look.

Hot and yeah, and you can show how their life is a vacation. Basically, 

Mike Vacanti: you can use any platform to put out the message you want to put up. Like I’m answering questions about egg yolks versus egg whites. And people learn from vlogging type content if you’re putting good information in that format.

So 

Mike Matthews: yeah, 

Mike Vacanti: but no, it was like, do I have any like real, maybe I’ll 

Mike Matthews: get on Snapchat. Maybe I’ll do it. But then the problem is if I get hooked into that, then it’s going to feel like, Oh, I’m getting all this work done. So I’m answering all 

Mike Vacanti: these questions, but then everything else is going to 

Mike Matthews: pile up. 

Mike Vacanti: What one thing I have found is because you spend a decent amount of time, like emailing one on one with people who have questions for free, just because you are like, that is something that has come down a little bit in place of Snapchat, because on my email newsletter, I say, Hey, for one on one communication, let’s use this.

I’ll consider it. Alright. That’s all I ask. 

Mike Matthews: Alright so where can people find you? What do you have coming what’s up with [00:56:00] you? In, in 

Mike Vacanti: your work on Snapchat at Mike Vicon. . Okay. And then I’ll give your website too. So I [email protected]. If you just google my name, that’ll come up first, but yeah I’m done training Gary, we had a two year contract, so we’re done in July and.

I’m going to be moving somewhere where it’s warm 12 months out of the year and just continue to write. And you might 

Mike Matthews: be coming to Florida, right? 

Mike Vacanti: I could be coming to Florida. We’re going to miss each other though. It sounds 

Mike Matthews: would, you would not 

Mike Vacanti: live in this area. You probably live somewhere.

It’s, there’s not much going on 

Mike Matthews: here. 

Mike Vacanti: You’d probably want to be somewhere south. Yeah. Likely if I went there, that would. That would make sense. But yeah, I just I like creating stuff. So I like making video content I’ve been going hard at youtube recently. I enjoy writing. I should be doing more of that But that’s my game plan is just keep making stuff that helps people.

Mike Matthews: Awesome. Awesome Okay. It was great talking to you mike. Thanks coming on I know everyone’s gonna this just because we talked about some stuff that I haven’t monologued about already and I think it’s always fun just to [00:57:00] have a more conversational type of Podcasts as opposed to me, just like, all right, here we go.

40 minutes of I’m going to, I’m going to lecture. Like I’m a professor. 

Mike Vacanti: Absolutely. This was fun. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, sure thing. 

Mike Matthews: Hey, it’s Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did, go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two. Where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness.

Also head over to my website at www dot muscle for life. com where you’ll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you’ll also find a bunch of different articles that I’ve written. I release a new one almost every day. Actually, I release four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I’m involved in over at muscle for life.

com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.