Ep. #926: Jordan Syatt and Mike Vacanti on Beating Food Fear, Guilt, and Anxiety

Mike Matthews: Hello and welcome to Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for an interview I did with my buddies Jordan Syatt and Mike Vacanti who wrote a new book called Eat It, The Most Sustainable Diet and Workout Ever Made, Burn Fat, Get Strong and Enjoy Your Favorite Foods, Guilt Free.

And in this interview we go all over the place. We talk about. Beating food, fear, guilt, and anxiety. We talk about some of the trials and tribulations that Jordan and Mike went through in writing their new book. We talk about shame, feeling shame over being unhealthy and unfit. And if that can actually be productive, if that can actually be used as a spur to help people do what they need to do to get healthier and better.

Jordan and Mike share some practical tips to feel less hungry, especially when you are cutting, and more. Before we wade into it 246 years ago, a bunch of disgruntled Brits were told to give up their guns and pay ridiculous taxes to crown and country, which was blowing coin like a boozy bourbon king.

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com now. Mike Vacanti and Jordan Siet. So I’m excited to one, to speak well to both of you guys. It’s been a bit, it has been a long time since I’ve spoken with Mike and I don’t think I’ve ever done a three way podcast before. So this one’s going to be fun. 

Jordan Syatt: I’m stoked. I just hope Mike isn’t mad that we just jumped this on him.

Seven seconds ago, we’re like, Mike, get on the podcast. I can’t 

Mike Vacanti: remember the last time I went on anyone else’s podcast. And this is the one that last minute, I’m literally about to leave my house. I’ll cancel my plans for this hangout. I’m pumped. 

Jordan Syatt: Yeah. He was literally like, I could hear you in the driveway about to get in the car to go.

I’m like, go inside, put on the podcast right now. Yeah. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: For people listening. So Jordan and I are about to start. And then it occurred to me that actually originally intended for Mike to join us, but I guess maybe I didn’t pass it along to Damien who works with me. And then so Jordan calls him and I hear Mike saying something about Tuxedo and going somewhere.

I’m like are you at your house? Do you want to just come on a podcast instead? 

Jordan Syatt: And here we are. And here we are. You got fitted for a tux and you went to a wedding and the tux didn’t fit properly, right? They 

Mike Vacanti: gave me the wrong tuxedo and the wrong shoes. So I had this like Tony Soprano trench coat. Oh, you should have just went with it.

I did. I had no other option. The wedding was on Sunday. The shoes were like these tiny little things. I was a, it was a was. Yeah, it was a was, the parachute MC Hammer pants were rocked and we got through it. 

Jordan Syatt: The picture you sent was so funny. My wife looked at the picture. She was like, why does he look so mad?

I was like, cause none of it fits. 

Mike Matthews: I was at a wedding on Saturday and I found out on Friday that apparently I don’t have any suits that fit. Cause I. Remember, I can remember a time years ago when I wore a suit. I don’t remember if that was the last time I wore a suit, but I don’t wear suits often.

So I was, I have a few, so it’s Friday and I’m packing to, no, it’s Thursday cause we left on Friday and I’m packing to leave. And pants are three inches of space and jacket too big. I’m like, Oh, whatever. I’m 

Jordan Syatt: too, 

Mike Matthews: I’m too jacked and shredded is the problem actually. 

Jordan Syatt: You are extremely jacked.

It’s actually, you’re pretty ridiculous. 

Mike Matthews: I appreciate the flattery, although in the context of what Jack Julie looks like in social media the fact that. I’d say I, I’ll give myself credit for looking pretty good for not being on drugs that, that I can agree with. 

Mike Vacanti: Social media is not the 

Mike Matthews: metric.

Like it’s true. It’s true. It should not be. So you guys have a new book that is, when is the book coming out? It’s not out yet. Right? Tuesday, June 7th is the release date. Every so often people reach out to me who are interested in writing. And so there probably are some people listening who would love to hear a little bit about.

That, that process of, like you said, Mike, the first time doing it, some of, maybe some of the things that you’ve learned and then I would love to hear of course about the book itself and why did you write it? 

Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I think we should tell the story. It’s a funny story. So we got to work with an amazing publisher it really an incredible opportunity to work with Harper Collins.

They’ve done amazing throughout the whole way through. The only hiccup, and this was a major hiccup, was, to be fair to them, they when we signed the book deal, neither of us have written a book before, or at least not like a published book. And so they were like, you know what, just for safety on their end, they’re like, we want you to use a ghostwriter.

And that was a non negotiable. For the contract. 

Mike Matthews: Interesting. 

Jordan Syatt: It was a non negotiable. It was like, this has to happen. And we were like, oh, geez. So we agreed to it initially. And we interviewed a number of ghostwriters. And we found one who we thought would be a really good fit. And they wrote about three quarters of the book.

After a lot of interviews and discussions and sending them content. And So much time devoted to giving them all of our information and we got about three quarters of the book and we were like there is no way we’re publishing this there is it’s not our voice it’s not our information it goes against a lot of what we believe and so we were like we told them we were like there’s no way we are publishing this book you End of story.

So then, Mike and I went back and wrote the book from page one from scratch. Like from scratch. And even though we actually paid the ghostwriter out of our own pocket, like it’s not covered by the publisher. We paid the ghostwriter out of our own pocket. We then went back and rewrote the entire book and now we love it.

Like now it’s like this is really our book and to, and for whatever it’s worth I think it was, obviously I would have rather not spend all that money on something that we’re not using at all, but It was a good learning experience and it makes for a great story, but now I’m like, I’m so glad we can look back and say we wrote every single word of that book, and it’s ours.

And so even though we had to jump through those hoops, I think it ended up working out really well. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And you also had the option, of course, of saying, you know what, how about I just give The first payment on the advance back and let’s just move on, but you didn’t. So here you are with the book.

Cause I’m sure you thought about that. You’re like, that is an option. I 

Mike Vacanti: don’t have to do this. Yeah. We sat down, we were thinking like, okay, let’s go through and edit ourselves. Yep. And that can be harder. That can be harder than just writing from scratch, which is why it became a rewrite. Yep. And to the ghostwriters credit, that person It’s learning everything that we know about training, nutrition, mindset, basically health and fitness decades plus combined experience to, to learn that in a matter of months and come up with a book from that is very difficult.

I empathize with having to learn so many different industries and put that together. But Jordan and I sat down and we’re like trying to edit and essentially it just became a rewrite. We’re pumped with it now. Like we’re very happy because it took us a year of a couple hours a day in the morning.

Basically every day for a year to get it done. And now we’re incredibly happy with it. Yeah. 

Jordan Syatt: And it’s a hundred percent us. There’s not a single word from the ghostwriter. And I, what I was going to say is this is I think what, especially when people accumulate an audience and they have the ability to write a book, I think a lot of times what will happen is.

They just want to get the book out and sell it as quickly as possible to make either more money, get on New York Times bestseller, and often times the book isn’t their best work. It’s not something that the book, like they’re not super proud of it, they’re just like, I want to get this out there, I just want to make more sales, I want to get on the New York Times bestseller, and the book isn’t truly representative of what their best is.

I can like very honestly say that I’m so proud of this book because it’s like our best work. It’s our best work. We’ve spent a ton of time on it and I’m very glad that there’s, it’s just our writing and no one else’s writing. Cause I think people reading the Ghostwriters work as, as much as they were great in many ways, like it did.

If people read that book with our names as the authors, they’d be like, there’s no fucking way they wrote that book. Like it did not even remotely sound like us at all. 

Mike Matthews: And matching someone’s voice can be very difficult. I can understand it’s difficult even for editors to do so you’re giving them your writing and then they’re cleaning it up and they’re fixing grammatical errors.

And sometimes they’ll have suggestions as to maybe how you could recast certain you went through this process. So it can be hard for people to match your voice, even when they’re working with your material, all of your words. And so I can imagine, again, as a ghost writer, it is exceedingly difficult to work in something that you don’t really understand, not nearly as well as the people you’re working for and trying to match their voice when you guys Peace!

Bye! Have a distinct voice and have distinct personalities, and it’s not just about explaining simple concepts. Clearly that’s part of it. But I’m guessing again, given what I know about you guys, there’s some personality in there. There are some jokes. There’s a bit of an entertainment value to it as well.

Jordan Syatt: There’s so many components of it to its it’s inherently more difficult than a more simple like a motivational type book It’s a relatively one dimensional type of Story you can tell and it’s easier to find someone’s voice and then just repeat what they say but when it’s It includes not only science based information, which in and of itself is slightly more complex and difficult to understand and then relay that, but also the psychological aspect has client like a lot of components of working with real clients and trying to like, if you’ve never worked with a client, how can you be the ghost of someone’s voice, assuming that you know how to communicate with a client?

There’s so many components of the book in there. So many components of coaching and science and fitness and exercise and nutrition. It’s that’s a really difficult job to do. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Totally. Totally. And what’s the book called? By the way? I just show people listening. So they know we haven’t even shared the title yet.

Eat it. Eat it. 

Jordan Syatt: That’s it. 

Mike Matthews: And what’s the, and what’s the subtitle? 

Jordan Syatt: The most sustainable diet and workout ever made. 

Mike Matthews: I’m a fan of short titles and then using subtitles to to expound on 

Jordan Syatt: the process of coming up with a name was super difficult. We really. We spent a lot of time trying to come up with it.

It was, and it was so funny when we were at an initial meeting for the book, trying to come up with names. One of the women who, who really led the the front, who led the whole team throughout the whole process, she was like, Oh, you’re from Boston. Cause I said wicked. And then I was like, yeah, I’m from Boston.

And then as a joke, Just as a complete joke, we were spit balling title ideas and how this is going to be for people who are very busy or like wicked, busy dah. And I was just like, Oh yeah, wicked, busy, wicked fit. And she was like, that’s it. That’s the title. Wicked, busy, wicked fit.

And I was like, I was joking, but that was the placeholder name for, I don’t know, three, six months or so until we were like, no, that, that is a hundred percent not the name we’re using. And then, so I don’t know, it was probably a good three to six months where Mike and I were really like going back and forth, having long calls, trying to figure out what the hell we’re going to come, what we’re going to call it.

And eventually it was just like, Oh, eat it. That’s, if you really boil down what. The message of a huge part of the book is it’s getting over food fear, food, guilt, food, anxiety, so much of which plagues, not just the fitness industry, but the world in general, because there’s so much misinformation.

These foods are good. These foods are bad. These foods make you fat. These foods burn fat, all this stuff. So we were just like the, Basics of this book is we want you to learn how to eat your favorite foods in moderation without guilt, without anxiety, so you can still, lose fat and get stronger and and love your body and improve your health without feeling guilt or anxiety.

If you have a slice of pizza at your daughter’s birthday party or something like God forbid you enjoy yourself a little bit, but the other way, and this is, Mike and I joke about it because we talk about the next book is going to be called don’t eat it. Because we talk about how even in this book, we discuss how it’s not just eat whatever you want and whatever quantity you want, like there has to be moderation involved.

There has to be a focus on high quality foods. Even actually, I think one of the funniest parts about the book is the the dedication at the very beginning. We dedicated this book to all of the highly palatable foods without which this book would not be possible. Thank you, food scientists. Making food that should never be this delicious.

Exactly, yeah. And caloric. So even though the book is about learning how to eat without fear or guilt or anxiety, there is also a balanced component towards, but this doesn’t mean eat whatever you want, whatever capacity you want. This is about trying to develop a healthy, balanced relationship with food in both directions.

Mike Matthews: What are your guys’s thoughts on feeling ashamed? So just speaking to this point of feeling guilty, people feeling guilty for eating stuff that they’re quote unquote, not supposed to or maybe going a bit further. And Feeling ashamed because of their unhealthy lifestyle. Let’s say you have somebody who they don’t eat well, they don’t exercise, they’re overweight, they are having health issues.

And. The some people, maybe the healthy at any sizers would say that you should never feel ashamed. You should just love your body regardless of your circumstances. And a question I just ask is shame not the appropriate emotional response at some point? If you are abusing a dog, if you are abusing a kid, if you are abusing a partner if you feel ashamed about that, wouldn’t most people say, yes, you should that’s appropriate, but if you abuse yourself by eating too much food and drinking too much alcohol and being too sedentary.

Is shame not an appropriate response and can you not use that to improve? 

Mike Vacanti: Yeah. What do you think, Mike? I think you absolutely can. I think, and this is, I think of shame in terms of good shame and bad shame. And there’s probably a technically Correct. Difference, or maybe there are two different words.

Mike, you had Dr. Anna Lemke on a couple of months back, I remember, which I thought was a fantastic episode. So someone like her could probably give a better definition, the difference between good shame and bad shame. And there may or may not be a technical difference between the two, or there may be multiple different words for good shame or bad shame, but the difference between Feeling bad or feeling guilty about something that is objectively bad.

Like the examples you gave hit a dog, beat a dog, feel bad about it. Or maybe it’s, something as bad as hit your spouse or something that I think all humans would agree that you should, 

Mike Matthews: or maybe verbally abuse. Maybe it’s not even physical violence, but where it’s inappropriately 

Mike Vacanti: harmful, correct?

And then there is shame that someone can feel. for an action that they perceive to be bad for whatever reason that isn’t actually that bad. And someone who might have a highly impaired relationship with food for whatever reason, who has been consistent on the workout front, or maybe overly consistent on the workout front, maybe has some obsessive behavior patterns there, but also is in a fixed mindset of I am never eating any chocolate, any dessert, any processed food, anything along these lines for a long period of time.

And when they do, when they quote unquote slip up after seven months and have that one slice of chocolate cake, they feel extremely guilty about it. They feel a lot of shame, which they absolutely should not because that person didn’t do anything wrong. That’s where I like to differentiate between a Good shame and a bad shame, a shame that is productive to feel this negative emotion that hopefully changes your future behaviors to make you a better person and and a shame that you probably shouldn’t feel.

And if you sat down with a professional, you could work with that person, like a psychologist, you could work with that person to not experience those feelings when you do something as simple and not objectively bad as have a piece of chocolate. 

Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I think there’s a lot to unpack with this and I agree with everything Mike just said and the thing that I think about with shame here is when we’re looking at what people are eating like, they’re eating way too much on a consistent basis, we could look at someone who just had one meal that might have they ate more than they felt like they should have or like they maybe they go on vacation and they feel shame about it.

It’s okay, You shouldn’t feel shame about this one meal or this one vacation because it’s you didn’t do anything wrong. Like your health is not dictated by a single food, by a single meal, by a single day. Your health is dictated by what happens over a very long period of time and your habits consistently.

So in that sense, eliminating the shame there, because the shame isn’t productive, especially in that sense, like a feeling of shame, doesn’t do anything. And actually, if we look at research around shaming other people, It’s not accurate to say shame doesn’t work in sparking change, but it’s a very small percentage of people for whom it does work.

It’s actually only about 3 percent of people who respond well to shaming, like from a spouse or let’s say your spouse is you’re overweight, like you’re fat, you need to lose weight, like you’re disgusting. That will work for 3 percent of people. For 97 percent of people, it actually goes the other way.

And so I don’t actually have the research to back this, but I would imagine it’s Similar individual like to yourself when you shame yourself in that same way, like I’m worthless, I’m a failure. And I think this really leads towards self efficacy. And if you don’t believe you can succeed and you continue to shame yourself, then why are you going to bother trying?

Now, on the other hand, we have people who it’s not just one meal or one day or one vacation. It’s something that they consistently do for years and years on end. Again, I’m probably biased, but I actually don’t even think shaming works here because when someone is feeling shame, they often, they’re shaming Not even necessarily because of the action, but because of what they think the action means.

So it’s not it’s not, they’re not feeling shame because of what they eat. They’re feeling shame because for so long they’ve been out of control and they associate that with them being a failure. They will never be able to achieve their goal. It will never work for them. It’s just their whole life.

They’ve always been a failure and that’s exactly how it’s going to be forever. And they feel shame because they think they’re a failure. So I think a lot of the purpose here is Rather than saying, it’s okay, like maybe the health at every size movement, like it’s okay to just eat whatever you want.

What we’re saying is you’re not a failure. You can make the change anytime you’re ready. And if you do make a mistake, it’s not the end of the world. It’s saying, let’s remove this feeling of failure away because It’s actually, it’s very obvious. If we look at in any field or in any aspect of life, if someone feels like that it’s, they’re going to fail, it’s not going to work, then why would they bother trying?

Like they’re going to quit because why would they continue to put time, effort, energy, money, all this stuff that they’re going to fail anyway. So the sooner we can get people to realize you can and will succeed as long as you don’t quit, I think the more that shame dissipates and the more their actions line up with what they actually say they want to do.

Mike Matthews: And just to follow up with all of that, something that that I’ve been saying for some time is that you can be the person who eats the whole pizza and who still takes care of their health. And you can be the person who. It takes a week off exercising because you’re on vacation and still be someone who trains hard and takes your training seriously.

For whatever reason the human mind tends to catastrophize. We can fall into that trap. Even people like you’re saying, people who are doing very well by all standards can do something that maybe it’s something they didn’t intend on doing, or maybe it’s something that they’ve been told is bad, but is actually inconsequential, but it can spark a disproportionately negative emotional response.

So in this book, there’s obviously. There’s diet advice. There’s training advice. What it sounds like that you’re teaching flexible dieting. And what is there more though, to the constructs, so to speak, in, in how you’re teaching people to eat? Are you talking about counting and tracking at all, or is it more an intuitive good habits type of approach?

Jordan Syatt: We, we tried to do everything like we, we cause generally the way that I teach it is more calories and protein based. Just hit your calories, hit your protein. Mike is often more like, and not always, but a lot more macros based. So we have a calories protein option. We have a macros option and we also have more of an intuitive option, something where you don’t track calories at all.

So we wanted to cover all of our bases. Just because not everyone is going to be a good fit for calorie counting at every time in their life. Not everyone is going to be a good fit for macro counting. And not everyone is going to be a good fit for a more intuitive not counting approach. So we wanted to put all of the options in there.

Because so much of what this is just trying to figure out what works best for you. And and even though listen, there’s a huge obesity problem. Not just in the United States, but in the world right now. And so clearly we need to help people figure out how can you lose weight in a sustainable way for you.

And you don’t need to count your calories in order to lose fat. Your calories still always count. So we wanted to make people aware of that, and we wanted to make sure that people knew what they could do in order to lose fat sustainably and enjoyably without it taking over their whole life. And so we literally gave options for all of it.

In 

Mike Vacanti: addition to the tracking that we do advocate in some capacity for most people who want to lose body fat, if that’s one of their primary goals, we also have sections on how to stay more full while in a calorie deficit. We have basically a meal timing section where we talk about different meal timing strategies that can work better or worse for, Each individual we have a metabolism section debunking a lot of the common myths about what metabolism is.

Got some good quotes from Spencer Nadolsky in that section. Yeah, he was very helpful. And then that’s the nutrition section. We also have a training section as well as the book opens with more of a mindset introductory for the first couple of chapters. So what are your 

Mike Matthews: guys’s thoughts on when, if people haven’t quite worked out which method is right for them or which method is right for them, depending on what they’re trying to do, can you guys speak to again?

So you have calories and protein, which, of course, is a very workable way of going about it. You have macros. Which, which maybe you could, you can combine those or at least say that they’re, they involve either meal planning like thinking ahead of what you’re going to eat, making sure that your calories and protein are worked out or your macros are worked out and then more or less sticking to the plan or tracking on the fly.

And then the kind of just good eating habits approach. What are your thoughts on just based on your experience working with a lot of people These methods tend to work best for most people for example if somebody has a lot of weight to lose, then they don’t necessarily have to use one of the quantitative methods.

They can just clean up some of their habits and get rid of the soda and implement some of these simple strategies. But then, once they get to a certain point, most people have to usually switch over for a period. What are your thoughts on that? 

Mike Vacanti: In my experience, if somebody has never tracked before they couldn’t ballpark calories.

They might think they’re eating 2000 calories a day, but they’re averaging 4, 000 calories per day. They haven’t even tried it. And. They’re not making any progress toward their goal and have been struggling with whatever non quantitative based methods they’re implementing around their nutrition.

And they come to me as a coach and want help with losing body fat. I’m going to have essentially 100 percent of those people tracking. What you just said, Mike, makes a ton of sense. Someone who is very overweight, say, has more than 100 pounds of fat to lose, Could not could is going to make fat loss progress much easier than someone who is already leaner.

They could make one or two simple changes, add a little bit more activity and, stop drinking sugar calories. Call it. We’ll lose a substantial amount of weight from that change in habits alone. It’s very difficult for someone to eat intuitively or to just quote unquote eat healthy for fat loss who has never tracked before the people I see who make the best progress or have the best success with eating more intuitively, implementing more of an 80, 20, 90, 10 approach Are people who have already spent a decent amount of time tracking learned it have guesstimates on portion sizes on, can tell you that a chicken breast is mostly protein and that oil or butter is fat and have that, what we would call basic knowledge, but that the majority, I would say, of the population actually still doesn’t know at this point or that nuts are mostly fat that they don’t have much protein.

Unfortunately, yeah. Or that two tablespoons is, serving sizes, all of these things that you only learn by actually doing and by the way, learn within two weeks of actually doing, it’s not like you need to track for a year to figure out that, oh, this is, this was very calorically dense and oh, this barely has any calories in it.

You’re going to learn these, this in a matter of weeks. So it is the people who have, yeah. Tried and not even necessarily succeeded, but at least given an honest effort to tracking that then in the future might see better progress with some kind of intuitive approach. Yeah, 

Jordan Syatt: The only people that I would not have actually physically count calories are people with a history of disordered eating and or binge eating.

But ironically, most of those people have counted calories before, like most of the people who like have a history of disordered eating, do have an experience counting calories. So they know what that they know how to eyeball portions. They know what that looks like. So the, I think it’s like 99.

999 percent of people, if they’re just starting out, especially if they have a significant amount of weight to lose, track your calories for a month. Like just do it. It’s going to change your life forever. And I think. Just like Mike just said most people have no idea how much they’re eating they have no they don’t even know what they’re eating how much They’re eating they have no idea that Starting off.

Most 

Mike Matthews: people don’t even know what a calorie is for and that’s not because they’re stupid It’s just because they never Cared to look in a dictionary and understand even what it means, you 

Jordan Syatt: know Yeah, so I think education has to be the foundation Of this like it’s why you CP losing weight is actually funnily enough the easiest part.

It’s keeping it off That’s the hardest part And if you look at people who are able to maintain weight loss for years and years their entire life It’s not by mistake it’s due to an education and a base knowledge that they were able to figure out why was I able to lose weight? What was really like causing the weight loss?

And now what do I need to do to? Maintain it. It’s not okay. I did this juice cleanse You And then I was lost a lot of weight and now I’m just going to go back to what I was doing before because they don’t know what caused the weight loss. They don’t even know the difference between weight loss and fat loss, which are two very separate principles and separate things altogether.

They have overlap, but many people just associate weight loss with fat loss and that’s it. And when you don’t come at it with a requisite knowledge, you’re setting yourself up for failing and for gaining all the weight back and more. Which is why you need that knowledge in the very beginning and in starting off with the very basic.

What’s the calorie? How many I’m eating? 

Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Why does it matter? Yeah. Mike, I’d be curious to hear your point of view on this because over the last one to two years, I historically had. Almost all clients tracking protein, carbs, fats, calories, trying to hit, ranges, obviously not hitting numbers exactly, but I have shifted towards Jordan’s methodology of calories and protein sometimes with certain clients, but.

Really only when their goal is fat loss. If I have someone who comes to me and wants to build muscle basically always going to have that person on a high carb, low fat diet. What is your approach when it comes to calories and protein versus macros? And does it matter to you if their goal is muscle gain versus fat loss?

Mike Matthews: My approach is very similar. So we Legion has a coaching service, right? And we’ve worked with thousands of people, and I don’t personally work with anybody at the moment simply because of time constraints. But it’s still nice for me to, it helps me just to still understand the the current, I guess you could say to keep my finger on the pulse of coaching and what is working and what is not working.

And what else should we try? And calories and protein works really well, especially when you’re dealing with ranges. Some people, they, they do well with understanding that they can look at their calorie target in a, in a. Over the course of a week, as opposed to just 1 day, and then just have a daily range that we’re shooting for.

And it’s okay. If they exceed the top of that range, the idea is to not like, if you’re cutting, that might be your maintenance calories about what you burn in a day might be the top of that range. And the bottom of that range might be no more than a 25 or 30 percent deficit for the day. And then letting them decide based on.

How they feel and what’s going on, whether they want to eat a little bit more that day or a little bit less, and then calibrating those ranges based on how they’re progressing over the week and looking at their total calorie intake for the week, which means that, if they accidentally over eight for a few days.

then they might want to shoot for the lower end of the range for a few days. And if they can’t, that’s okay. And so that approach works well with more, I would say maybe a little bit more educated and sophisticated clients. Otherwise just working with simple daily targets. Like you mentioned daily ranges here’s your calorie range.

Let’s try to hit your protein around, keep your protein around here and let’s find a carbohydrate and fat intake That works well for you, at least we find that most people that if they can eat foods that they like, then they settle into a kind of a, just a pattern of eating certain things. And there aren’t wild variations in carbohydrate or fat intake.

There might be depending on okay, if it’s Memorial day weekend, there’s just, there might be a wild variation in calories and a lot of carbs and whatever, and that’s fine. But generally speaking, as we know as far as fat loss. is concerned where your carbs and fats fall. It doesn’t matter.

Protein is very important. Calories are very important. Carbs and fats are less important. You want to make sure you get enough fat, of course. But then, as you said, Mike, if we’re working with somebody who really wants to maximize muscle and strength gain, then It makes sense to add in now the target ranges for the carbs and the fat.

And by default, yeah we go with a higher carb, lower fat, not inappropriately low, but higher carb, lower fat, high ish protein diet. When helping somebody lean gain, just cause most people do best with that. And then of course, if someone’s maintaining goes back to calories and protein for most people who are.

And most people who do maintaining, I guess I’d be one of these people and you guys are probably the same. We’ve done enough meal planning and tracking. We know the foods that we like to eat. We know what those portions look like. We know that our calories need to be in a certain range given our activity level and we don’t weigh and track anything.

But because we do. tend to eat the same types of foods and pay attention to what we see in the mirror. It just makes it real easy to, if you overeat for a bit, you just under eat for a little bit. And if you find that you’ve maybe have accidentally been under eating for a little bit and your energy levels are a little bit low, then you eat a bit more.

And so that’s been my experience and the experience of the people who work with me. Hey there, if you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome, thank you. And if you are enjoying this podcast, or if you just like my podcast in general, and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend?

Or a loved one, or a not so loved one, even, who might want to learn something new. Word of Mouth helps really bigly in growing the show, so if you think of someone who might like this episode, or another one, please do tell them about it. Jordan, you mentioned less hunger when cutting, what are some tips that work well, that work well, that you’ve seen work well with clients for just being less hungry, because that is one of the biggest obstacles that, that we need to overcome.

If we are going to successfully lose fat and keep it off is it’s okay. If we’re hungry, I know a little bit here and there. But if we’re too hungry too often, it just makes it almost impossible to succeed. 

Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah. So we have a whole section on this. I think it’s a behemoth of a section, but the first thing and you hit on it right there is a lot of people based on social media marketing and whatnot.

People think that you should never be hungry when you’re trying to lose fat. And I remember reading Lyle McDonald back in the day. And I forget, he just had so many great articles up and I remember I must’ve, I love Lyle’s work. His original work is so good. Like he changed the industry. He really did.

If you really think about it, like all of the stuff that is, is all over social media now stemmed from Lyle Allen and Martin Birkin. Like they were really the ones who popularized everything. But I remember reading Lyle and him just making a joke being like, Just suck it up. You’re going to be hungry.

And I remember just being younger and being like, man, that’s just so blunt and it’s so helpful because I thought I was doing something wrong because I was a little bit hungry when I was losing fat. I was like, no, that’s not true. That’s part of the process. It’s normal in the same way that when you’re trying to gain weight, you’re not going to be as hungry anymore and it might be more difficult to get your food in because your body is going to, it wants to stay exactly where it is.

Mike Matthews: You feel like you’re force feeding yourself after just a month or two. It’s not pleasant. Correct. It’s really not. 

Jordan Syatt: So number one is understanding a little bit of hunger is not only Okay, but it’s expected and in fact It’s something that I used to do with my clients the clients who swore up and down that they were in a calorie deficit And they were counting properly I would just ask to be like on a scale of one to ten one being not hungry at all ten being absolutely ravenous How hungry are you?

And they’re, they think they’re saying the right thing. They’ll say one, I’m not hungry at all. And I’ll be like, okay, that’s the fucking problem. Like you’re clearly eating too much then because it’s, we’re two months in, you should have lost a little bit of weight right now and you should definitely be slightly hungry, like not starving, not ravenous, but you should feel it.

It should be there. And that tells me that you’re probably eating more than you think. So number one, understanding that number two is I think making sure that you’re not taking your calories too low right off the bat. If so many people their whole idea is I want to lose weight as quickly as possible.

And so when they do that, they reduce their calories by way too much. And that leads to a host of issues, not even, not least of which, including losing lean muscle mass. Losing energy and hurting your performance. Oftentimes actually even hurting your sleep, your cognitive abilities. When you reduce your calories too quickly by, by too much, it’s you’re gonna be so hungry.

It’s unbearable. So making sure that you actually have an appropriate coic range. And then another really important one is actually sticking to a consistent eating schedule. And I know in the fitness industry, especially nowadays, we hear people say meal timing doesn’t matter. Meal timing doesn’t matter.

And from a fat loss perspective, they’re right. It doesn’t matter as much as long as calories and protein are in check, but there are other aspects that make things easier and more enjoyable and sustainable. And when you eat on a regular, consistent schedule, which I know can be difficult for people like shift workers and stuff like that.

But generally speaking, when you eat around the same times every day, you will start to get hungry around the same times every day. It’s the way that I explain this is. If you’ve ever been like a Thanksgiving dinner and you get stuffed at three in the afternoon, like you just ate so much and you’re so full and you’re like, Oh my God, I’m never going to eat again.

I’m not going to eat for another, for a week. But then four hours later, you’re like, you know what? I’m actually pretty hungry again. It’s yeah it’s not because you haven’t had enough. Food is because you’re normally, now it’s probably about dinner time and your hunger hormones work on a schedule.

And so that’s what’s going to happen. So if you want to make sure, make your hunger more predictable, then you can start to eat at the same times every day or within I don’t know, breakfast between seven and nine lunch between 12 and one dinner between six and eight, whatever it is, have these ranges of time.

So you can predict when you’re going to be hungry so you can make sure you have food available and do your best to. To diminish it as much as possible. 

Mike Matthews: Yep. That works. That works well for even if you’re following a type of fasting routine, what are your guys thoughts on that though? I get asked about it all the time and I guess I probably answer, I give my answer once a month or so.

It’s just still such a phenomenon. 

Mike Vacanti: Yeah. It depends on what type of fasting we’re talking about. My mind immediately goes to a lean gains Martin Burkin, 16, eight, just a, because probably because it’s how I would get breakfast introduced to it. It’s like skip breakfast, have a coffee, get your shit done in the morning.

You don’t need to be eating. I think he used some kind of hungry, like a lion analogy that really stuck. And that form of. Skipping a meal so that you can have more calories later in the day, more calories if you’re gonna go out to dinner, be social it’s just easier to follow that form of of fasting for fat loss for people who want to.

I haven’t seen people successful in the long term with these long term fasts for fat loss. I’ve seen longer term fast for Jordan. I actually talked about this on a podcast not that long ago, spiritual reasons or whether it’s just do something different, difficult or sacrificial, but not for your physical health fasting, but trying to fast for 36 plus hours.

Because you want to lose body fat, like it, it it leads most people to a bad relationship with food to a real binge restrict mindset. So for people who want to skip breakfast, great. Do it. I have way more bro in me. I feel like then I lead on, I, at this point I’m actually like, get the extra protein dose in the morning.

Like rather than having to. protein intakes a day. And these two giant meals have three and it’s probably going to lead to over a very long period of time, slightly more muscle gain or more lean mass retention. And also just a more normal kind of like steady, sustained eating schedule. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah.

There’s a fair amount of research now that supports that. That, that’s my position on protein time. Protein timing is if you want to maximize muscle growth. Ideally, you’re probably having 5 or 6 servings of protein per day separated by a couple of hours. And there are studies that show that is clearly better than 2, 3 maybe not, but two for sure and one without a doubt.

Jordan Syatt: We actually see this a lot in research with elderly people, but like the protein pulsing throughout the day where it’s like when you’re younger, you might be able to get away with it. But as you get older, having these consistent protein feedings throughout the day is super, super important for lean mass retention.

And I remember when I first saw that research in elderly people, I was like, Man if this is what’s happening for elderly people, then this is definitely, it definitely matters for lean mass building and retention for regardless of your age, either way. If you’re not trying to build an unbelievable amount of muscle.

I don’t think it will matter that much if you’re the person who’s really trying to get the most out of your training and nutrition and build as much muscle as possible, then it would absolutely make sense to wake up and start your day with, significant amount of protein and have these consistent feedings throughout the day.

If you’re more like just general health and fasting feels good for you and you like skipping breakfast and you feel better, feel more energetic. I know For me, just cognitively, I feel better when I’m not super full or I don’t eat something really early in the morning. So for me, that is great.

And I’m also not trying to be a bodybuilder, so that can work really well, but it really does depend on your personal preference. And I know for a lot of people, like who travel a lot for work and people who are like working shift worker, like nurses, or even people who are like truck drivers.

Fasting can be super beneficial for them just because they have a clear defined eating window fasting window can make hitting their calories much easier. And truck drivers and nurses, especially there, those are two people who I work with pretty extensively and they really struggle with their eating schedules.

So fasting for them, I’ve found can be super helpful, especially. Especially the truck drivers who just, they’re sitting for 16 hours a day, like mostly eating out of truck stops and not these like gas stations and whatnot. So having these clearly defined eating windows where you know what, eating is off limits right now.

Okay, cool. Now I can sit down and have a meal can be super helpful for them. But if you’re the kind of person who wakes up because of your stomach’s your alarm clock and you’re hungry in the morning, like there’s nothing wrong with that. Eating when you wake up, like it’s totally fine. I remember when I did intermittent fasting, I started when I was like 16, 17, cause my wrestling coach got super into it.

And he introduced me to this book called the warrior diet by Ori Hoffmechler. And that was one of the things that sparked my binge eating disorder because I would fast for, 

Mike Vacanti: let’s say that’s a, that’s a. Yeah, that’s a weird, that’s a weird, a one meal a day, 

Jordan Syatt: 20 hour fast, four hour eating window, one meal a day.

And the whole, 

Mike Matthews: although if I remember correctly, like I think you’re quote unquote fasting, but you can eat some fruit or something if if you want to, 

Jordan Syatt: I’ll never forget this year. Yes. You could have small little bits of an all, a couple almonds here. Or like a small piece of fruit here, but then he had these whole like good foods and bad foods list.

So I’ll never forget this. I was reading the book. I was reading the warrior diet. I was working at a gym in Newton, Massachusetts, and I’m reading the book on a break and I’m eating a bag of grapes. And I turned the page and on this, the first thing in this page of things to not eat, do not eat are grapes.

And he just went on a huge rant of how grapes, they spike your insulin and it’s really bad for you. And I, my jaw dropped and I threw this whole bag of grapes out. And that was like one of the biggest reasons I had such a disordered relationship with food. I was like, I threw up, who got fat from fucking grapes?

Like no one ever ate, it’s yeah, you probably shouldn’t have pounds and pounds and pounds of it every day. But. No one’s doing that. No one’s eating pounds of grapes every day. If you want to have a bag of grapes, go for it. And so yeah, it, that, that book and that eating style I think is very detrimental and can lead to some serious issues mainly because I remember when I first started it, I was like, this is amazing because I can eat as much as I want in this four hour window.

And when I first started, I couldn’t eat that much. Cause like, how much can you really eat in that? Like you can gorge yourself only so much. And he did a. He was smart. He was like, start with a big salad. The first thing you eat has to be a big salad. And the next thing you eat is your protein and like your main meal.

Then after that, then you can have your dessert, which makes sense from a food ordering perspective to get you the most full very quickly, but within two months. The amount of food that I could eat within four hours was unbelievable. Like I could eat so much food. It was insane. So initially first two months, I lost a lot of weight after that, started to gain it back.

And I was like, what’s going on? I’m not changing anything. I was like no, like now I’m actually severely binging and I can eat. Such an outrageous amount of food, like I lost my ability to feel full and so then it took me a while to get that back. So that’s one of the dangers with the really long duration fasting on a consistent basis.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I I, myself, my personal experience with IF is. I just don’t particularly enjoy it. So I don’t do it. And that’s then my advice to people is exactly what you guys just explained. Hey, if you like it, if you like skipping breakfast, skip breakfast. You’re not going to lose fat faster. You are not going to live longer because you’re skipping breakfast.

Nothing magical is going to happen. But. If that works better for you, like some people they also like to have, let’s say three larger meals. They prefer that over four or five smaller meals, and that helps with their compliance. And that’s about it. That, that’s my position now.

And I think that’s in line with the weight of the evidence, especially when you look at research on IF with healthy people who Exercising regularly a lot of the supposed benefits that I’ve seen. It’s a bit of a kind of a, of sophistry because you can cherry pick research that was done with very unhealthy people and you can show market improvements and let’s say insulin sensitivity.

And then. Use that though, extrapolate that just straight over to healthy people with healthy body compositions who eat well, who exercise regularly. No, that’s not correct. You can’t say, Hey, look in this obese, sedentary person, simply restricting eating it improved these biomarkers. Therefore it will do that in everybody to a meaningful degree.

No that’s not true. 

Mike Vacanti: And is that even in obese individuals? Is that with calories and macros controlled? There 

Mike Matthews: it’s you’re getting at yes, it’s putting them into a calorie deficit. So often there is, there are, there is a confounding variable of weight loss, which we know improves insulin sensitivity, for example, if we’re talking about that, right?

So then there’s the question of is it the fasting or is it the weight loss or some of the research is more mechanistic in nature where it’s showing, Hey, mechanistically Here’s something that happens physiologically when our bodies in this fast state and therefore extrapolation of a hypothesis of what would happen if we were to extend this state for longer than normal periods and do that regularly like that.

You’ll find that type of stuff. I’ve seen it in the longevity debate on whether. restricting your feeding windows, so to speak, restricting your calories, restricting your protein. If you do all of those things, can you significantly improve your lifespan? And so I’ve seen a bit of that kind of slight of hand in that debate in particular but to your point, What would be more effective for the obese person, even if we want to look at specific biomarkers, lose weight, start exercising regularly, do some resistance training, get enough sleep, eat good food.

Don’t abuse alcohol. If you just do those things, whether you skip breakfast or not. It just doesn’t matter. Yeah. Do you 

Jordan Syatt: drink alcohol? 

Mike Matthews: No, I don’t. I never got into it. And and then I figured it’s not a habit worth taking up. 

Jordan Syatt: So I just don’t drink and that’s it. Does anyone in your family drink or no?

Mike Matthews: No, really. So my wife does not. My parents don’t drink. My brother, maybe, I don’t know. Do you have any vices? Yeah. Not many . 

Mike Vacanti: Don’t say you work too hard. . I work too hard on meaningful work that helped other people I to have something. I 

Mike Matthews: can’t, I can’t say that I have no vices, but I don’t maybe have the normal ones, so I don’t like, I don’t look at porn.

I don’t drink alcohol. I don’t do drugs. I don’t gamble. Yeah, 

Mike Vacanti: stay out of the 

Mike Matthews: crypto. Keep that no gambling one going. Yeah. Yeah. No speaking of crypto. So ironically, one of the guys I work with is is really into crypto. Very smart guy knows a lot about it. And he got in Bitcoin early. He’s made a lot of money in it.

He’s taken out a lot. And so back in 2017, his name is Matt. Back in 2017 I was like, Hey, Matt you’ve made a lot of money in crypto. You’re a smart dude. You understand this. I’m going to put some money that I don’t care about. So don’t feel bad if it goes to zero. I do not care. I don’t really care to know about this myself.

I’m just going to defer to you. So you just tell me what should I buy? He’s okay put 60 percent of the money in Bitcoin, put 20 percent in Ethereum and 20 percent in Litecoin. Cool. Thanks, Matt. And And I don’t really even pay attention. So I don’t know where it’s at right now, but at its peak, which was obviously not now, which is not now at its peak, it had seven X.

It was seven times what I put into it. And then the last time I looked, I’m still three or four times up. So I’m like, whatever, if it goes to zero, then, oh but that’s my, that’s. That’s my and that’s my, my, my crypto story 

Mike Vacanti: with an amount of money you’re okay with going to zero. And you’re not checking it every single day.

It’s not like affecting you emotionally. It’s almost like trust this person who has expertise in the area and then forget about it just as a little bit of diversification. And exactly. I assume you’re fine answering this. It was, I would imagine less than 1 percent of net worth. Like it wasn’t like yeah.

Mike Matthews: And my thinking with the amount was I want to put an amount that if this smart guy, and he’s not the only guy, there are a lot of smart people who believe that for example, Bitcoin is going to be, what’s the number, a million dollars, a coin plus at some point, and so I’m like, eh and that Ethereum and Litecoin are also going to be much higher than they were in 2017.

So I was like, all right, I’ll put an amount of money that if these people are right, that is a nice, that’s nice. It would be nice to say that, that turns into seven figures. And because, if I put 3, 000 into it, I don’t know, then it’s, then it really by the time it. It would ever turn into anything like that.

If that amount of money matters to me, then I’ve done something very wrong considering where things are at, so that’s how I, that’s how I came to that number. Even though it might sound a little bit high. 

Mike Vacanti: No, if, yeah, if it 10 X’s or a hundred X’s, you want to be happy about it versus regret that you didn’t put more in.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And that’s an interesting, I’m not that type of Person I have disciplined myself and business has been a good has helped me discipline myself to look at decision making based on the information that I had in the circumstances that I was in and I’m okay with making what I think is the right decision.

It was an objectively good decision that didn’t work out the way that it, quote unquote, should have, or that the most likely outcome did not pan out. In this case, it’s not so much that I would regret like, Oh, why didn’t I put more money into that? Because again, I would say looking back. I still think that was the right decision.

Let’s say it was only 3, 000 because my circumstances were different. And that was the smart decision. And that’s I try to approach decision making with that mindset as opposed to focusing exclusively on outcomes. Because if you chase outcomes, you can get into some wacky Places and make some really bad decisions.

And so no, I was just thinking more along just that, I do know a bit about the technology. I’m not I’m not, what do they call it? Oh there’s a term orange pilled, I think is the phrase I’m not orange pill because I don’t care enough.

But I know enough about it and to say if there’s a, if there’s at least a 10 percent chance that this can happen, then I’ll play along and I’m treating it like gambling, even though I’m not I’m not I’m not into gambling at all. Like Las Vegas is very boring to me, but I thought that.

Yeah taking what is a small percentage of net worth and putting it into that just for fun. It made, I think it makes sense particularly with Bitcoin and where things are going. 

Mike Vacanti: Yeah, your explanation makes a ton of sense. I learned that from very smart professional poker players who, I was going to mention poker, but I didn’t want to go off on a poker tangent.

I used to play a lot of poker results oriented versus process oriented. It’s okay you went all in with, three aces and it turns out your opponent had a flush draw and you were the favorite. You made the best decision based on all the information available, but your opponent ends up getting lucky and winning.

It’s not like you should have done something different. You made the right decision based on all the information you had, and you’re not going to, regret your action based on newfound future information. Exactly. Evie, expected 

Mike Matthews: value of the decision. Yeah. So let’s shift back to the book and what’s the training philosophy or yeah so is the focus, is it on resistance training?

Is it resistance training plus cardio? 

Jordan Syatt: So the focus is on resistance training, for sure. The resistance training is what I think most people really struggle with. And the cardio side is something I’ve been speaking a lot more about, but it’s very basic. It’s just, just move. Just move, like even just get more steps in.

So most people, especially in the general population, mostly struggle with So we have two different programs. We have a program for men and a program for women. I know a lot of people say that they should train the same way, which I actually very much disagree with. There are basically a lot of the same movements and a lot of the same principles apply, but if we’re looking at goals, there are usually different goals for men versus women, and that the goal is really what drives the training program.

So when we’re looking at just large scale data and over tremendous population sizes, most women are going to say something like they want to grow their glutes and they want to get more defined shoulders. Maybe they want to get their first chin up. They want to improve pushups. So we made the women’s program geared towards all of that stuff, more defined arms and shoulders more getting a bigger, more defined glutes good core strength, and then also working towards pushups and chin ups and all of that.

For men, it’s often more bigger arms, bigger shoulders, bigger chest, just like generally all around a little bit more proportional, bigger and just overall general strength. So we have two programs for that in there as well. And they’re very basic. Like it’s not like just all good strength training.

I think Ben Bruno said it best. He’s like good strength training is doing the same 15 to 20 exercises over and over again until you die. It’s that’s really what it is. You do the same things over and over again. And so we. We made it super simple. We have a YouTube channel up that’s for the book.

It’s a YouTube channel that like we give the link once you’re, you get the book. And so if someone’s not sure about how to do an exercise or what it’s supposed to look like, we have videos up that’ll show them exactly how to do it. This book is really for this. It’s not for the super advanced individual.

It’s just not. And it’s probably going to lose some, which is great. There needs to 

Mike Matthews: be. More high quality educational material out there for people who are brand new to all of this, because those are the people who need the most help, not the jacked guy who wants to get super jacked. And I think that’s fun, but I think 

Jordan Syatt: if we look in like bookstores, whether it’s Barnes and Noble or whatever it is.

I think for the longest time, the only books that would be there were more sort of nonsensical stuff that were it wasn’t very science based because it was more fad stuff, just what they thought they would make the most money on. And now with social media and with science based professionals actually beginning to build an audience and have a voice.

Now those types of texts are becoming available to the everyday people. And so that’s what this is. This is the text that’s for the people who don’t know very much. This is, it’s funny. If I was going to have my mom read one book on health and fitness, it would be this. And my mom is not a doctor.

Into health and fitness like she’s at all. I’m the only person in my family who’s in health and fitness. So if my mom was like, Hey, where should I begin? I’d give her this book, like my own mom. This is I wrote this book or we rewrote this book. With that in mind, it’s the people who need it the most.

It’s not the people who are already like, they know everything about this stuff. They know how to track their macros. They know that’s not who it’s for. It’s for the people who really need it and don’t really know where to begin. 

Mike Matthews: That’s that’s exactly the. The audience for the book that I recently released.

And for the same reason is my version of it is muscle for life and written for the same crowd and just trying to give people good evidence based information that they can apply that they can stick to, right? So that get them out of the 30 day challenge mentality and into the 30 year plan thought space.

Mike Vacanti: Yeah, those are not only the people who need it most, who have the most potential downside to not like, we’ll just call it figuring out their habits around working out nutrition when you’re already a couple years in, you’re more likely to be into this stuff. You’re more likely to go read a technically challenging article.

You’re more likely to like, maybe sift through reading abstract or two or follow people who are very advanced and are delivering more advanced information. Yeah, those people are not only more likely to self educate the writing it in a way that is going to be very easily digestible and easy to understand for these beginners or people who aren’t even interested right now.

But maybe like just making it as easily consumable as possible was something top of mind when we were writing this. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That’s something I’ve always tried to do with my work is make it as accessible as I can and not try to write solely for, for peers or people in academia, for example who, even you start with jargon, if you use too much jargon, you are going to turn off a lot of people.

They’re just not going to take the time to try to wade through it all. And if they have two choices, they can either be confused because they don’t understand a lot of this terminology or they can Go to a search engine and maybe, spend more time trying to understand the words you’re using than what you’re even trying to say.

And both of those experiences are enough of a turnoff for most people just to go. 

Mike Vacanti: Nah, 

Mike Matthews: this is not for me. 

Mike Vacanti: Yeah, vocabulary. And even this doesn’t apply to the book, right? Because a book’s formatting is, Quite standard. But if you think about each of our websites, like a great deal of thought went into, font choice, font, size, colors, formatting, indentations, even within each article.

It’s like, how can I make this as easily consumable and digestible as possible so that the person who needs it will read it? 

Mike Matthews: Yep. Love it. And are you guys doing any sort of Yeah. Book launch bonanza of any kind. If people do you have a website up that people can go to if they want to pre order the book?

Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s a, if you go to eat it dash book. com, we have a whole bunch of stuff. I’m actually going to it right now. So there are a bunch of prizes you can get. So I will say a lot of people have been saying which, which where do we order it from to make sure like you get the most money?

We’re not getting any money from this and we appreciate the kindness. It’s, we cannot dictate the price of the book. So we have no say over whatever the book costs. That is completely out of our control. And we have a book deal with the publisher. So we essentially already, We get paid by the publisher.

It’s not based on how many books. So like whichever one is easiest for you, whether it’s Amazon, Barnes and Noble Indie bound bookshop, whatever it is, you can get it from any of those. We do have a bunch of options for prizes. So you’ll see on that website, eat it dash book. com. If you buy it from other retailers outside of Amazon.

Those actually count more towards helping make it a New York Times bestseller, which I had no idea about that. Like I had, there’s a whole other world and it’s a lot of politics and stuff into who is on the New York Times bestseller list and who isn’t, which is very discouraging to be honest with you.

Like to see how much that plays a role in it. It’s not just total books sold. It’s actually a lot of other factors. So yeah. 

Mike Matthews: And you can imagine the type of people who control access to the list. What type of persuasion they might be, 

Jordan Syatt: Mike, you’re actually going to laugh at this. So the it’s every prize includes Legion supplement discounts, which I don’t even know if you knew this, Mike, we set this up with miles.

But so if you order from other retailers and you send us the receipt, we’ll give you a 20 percent discount on Legion supplements. If you order 12 copies, then you get Legion supplement discount and a free four week training program, 36 copies, more stuff, a hundred copies. You get even more stuff.

So there’s a lot of opportunities there to win prizes. But the reality is this, and I know Mike is going to agree with me. Even if you just get one copy, it would mean the world to us. And ideally leave a really great review once you get the book. But you don’t need to buy tons of copies.

You don’t need to worry about us making sure we get money. Just if you get one copy, and even if you buy it for a friend or a family member who you think would benefit from it that would be the most amazing. That would just make us super happy. 

Mike Matthews: Summer is I guess it’s right around the corner.

So for a person, if this is the year that they want to get into beach shape, as they say, then get a copy of the book and give it to them and say, Hey, I care about you. So I got you. I love that. Hey guys thanks again for doing this. You were very generous with your time congratulations on finishing the book and getting it out.

I know that’s a nice feeling and I look forward to checking it out myself. 

Jordan Syatt: Thank you, man. 

Mike Vacanti: We appreciate it. Thank you very much. Great talking to you, man. 

Mike Matthews: I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did subscribe to the show, because it makes sure that you don’t miss new episodes.

And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn’t like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have. Ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email Mike at muscle for life.

com muscle F O R life. com. And let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you’d like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I’m always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.