Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 293 - Jordan Syatt

Episode Date: December 6, 2019

Jordan Syatt is a Westside Barbell and Precision Nutrition certified strength and nutrition coach. He is a 5x powerlifting world record holder and trained Gary Vaynerchuk (GaryV) one-on-one for three years straight. He runs a successful website (Syattfitness.com) and YouTube channel (Jordan Syatt) that focuses on helping as many people as possible with their fitness and nutrition goals. Follow him on Instagram (@syattfitness) Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Visit our sponsors: ➢➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/shop.aspx?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=Power%20Project for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Perfect Keto: http://perfectketo.com/powerproject Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 15% off your order! ➢Quest Nutrition: https://www.questnutrition.com/ Use code "MARKSQUEST" at checkout for 20% of your order! ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/  Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

Anyway, it's that time of year. It's that time of year when everybody gets fat, right? It's that time of year when everyone goes off their diet, everyone goes off plan. But if you have food that tastes good, you don't have to go off plan. If you got some Piedmontese steaks, you don't need to worry about what's being cooked up for Thanksgiving or what's being cooked up for Christmas or you don't have to involve yourself with what everybody else is doing. You can keep it keto or keep it, you know, keep that protein up nice and high with some Piedmontese steaks. I cooked up a big old ribeye. Did you let it sit? I did. I did. I was successful letting it sit. And I did a reverse sear, which I've never done

before. I couldn't figure out how to do it either because like the ribeye was gigantic. And so I was successful letting it sit, and I did a reverse sear, which I've never done before. I couldn't figure out how to do it either because, like, the ribeye was gigantic. And so I was just like, I don't know what to put it in or put it on. So I put it on like an iron, what the hell are those called, a cast iron pan, and I threw that in the oven, cooked it like that for probably like 20 minutes because it was massive. Somebody just told me, like, oh, you only need to do like 10 minutes but this thing was huge so i did 20 minutes and then when i took it out i cooked it for about another five on each side and it was just just absolutely ridiculous it was it was so good i ate the whole thing uh well i had a little help from daisy oh really you gave her some my little doggie. She helped me with some of it. One bite for us would be like half her body weight.

I know. And I saved the dog bone. I put the dog bone in the freezer because her birthday is coming up. Oh, that'll be cool. You guys take a bunch of pictures for us. Hell yeah. Yeah. So if you guys want to check this stuff out, like Piedmontese beef has been huge, huge for me with this whole shred down thing.

And when I noticed the biggest like eye opener was when I calculated Piedmontese macros. And then I had, you know, just like I had ground beef and I'm like, oh, I definitely don't want that. I'd rather have this because I could have way better stuff here. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, during this month, we're actually not running a promo code with them they are just giving everybody 25 off damn yeah so if you guys want to they're getting serious yeah yeah so if you guys want to check this stuff out head over to piedmontese.com that's

p-i-e-d-m-o-n-t-e-s-e.com everything's already 25 off but if you guys want to support the show use the link in the show notes right now. If you want to try to keep yourself away from some treats, then the best way to do it is to give yourself a treat that's a better option. Go with a Quest bar, the Quest donut bar, or go in with a Quest cookie. cookie. I have my, I have where we go for Thanksgiving every year. I have that house stocked up full of quest bars and quest cookies. And that way, when I've seen somebody else, you know, diving into cookies and whipping out the ice cream and desserts and stuff, I get to enjoy something too, but it's just something a little different. Yeah. We talk a lot about like habits and stuff on this show. And it's a really cool thing. Like

Andrew, I think you just said this when you're potentially dieting and you're craving something. And the first thing that comes to mind is a Quest Hero Bar instead of a cookie or something else. Like, that's what you want to, you know, not because, oh, I want a healthier option. No, I literally just want a Hero Bar because they taste that good. Again, I'm really focused on stuff right now with my body and my physique, but I truly do just want a Hero Bar. It sounds silly, but yes, it is that damn good. You're good, and you're just trying to have habits that are a little bit better than what you had before. That's the way you're going to make progress. Yeah, yeah.

You guys seriously do need to try out these Hero Bars, the chips. Everything is incredible. Head over to questnutrition.com right now and at checkout, enter promo code MARKSQUEST for 20% off your entire order. And our boys over at Perfect Keto, I'm still mixing up that MCT powder oil. Probably about every other day because I don't do a regular fast all the time. Sometimes I'll do a regular fast and not have the MCT oil powder. Sometimes I'll just have coffee. But I've been mixing in the MCT oil powder.

It gives me a little extra burst. I also mess around with the instant coffee that they have that has MCT oil powder in it as well. And I also mess with the ketones that they have. So I like that product as well. You know, that MCT oil powder is really good. If you can, just when you go home, grab a small little plastic bag. If you can just go into the just go to the salted caramel put the scoop in the bag and the next time we podcast

it might be just half it's probably gone yeah yeah days like today where i'm feeling a little bit more hungry because i've been fasting every single day uh days like today where i need a little extra something i reach for the mc2 oil powder and I'm a fan of vanilla. So after this podcast, I'm actually going to mix coffee with the vanilla MCT oil powder. I don't understand it. These two guys over here understand it. But like for me, it just helps.

The hunger goes away. I get a little boost of energy. I think that's probably because of the caffeine combination. But everything all about it, it's so damn good. And nobody really likes black coffee. I think everyone just kind of thinks they do. Throw a little flavor in there. Throw a little something in there.

That's true, actually. It's better with black coffee. Yeah. It is better. Yeah, it is better. Makes it better. Yeah. If you guys want to get better, head over to perfectketo.com slash powerproject at checkout.

Enter promo code powerproject for 15% off your order. You guys will not regret it. I'm waiting. You want it to be on air? Well, you told me to do it. Yeah, let's have it on air because everybody needs to know about this, I think. Yeah. Because there's like a special like black dude section in the grocery store when you go to like, I'm like, why is there a special section?

Like, what's the difference? You know, it's because of like hold on hold on wait okay yeah we're we're live now oh we're live now all right now yeah so in sema what is the deal with the special black dude section in the grocery store for razors and stuff is there some sort of issue here well they're they're kind of it's not like an, but you notice like our hair is curlier. Okay. So when, like if we were to shave bald, right. Or yeah, if we were to shave bald or even the face, when the hair comes out, it doesn't come out like just straight like yours. Right.

That's why you can get close shaves and you never have a problem. You can use multiple like razors on your face and not get bumps. But if we were to do that, one more advantage of being white, if we were to do that, the hair would come up underneath the follicle. And that's why you see a lot of black men. They get razor bumps because the hair is not coming out of the follicle. Yeah, sense. And I've never heard it explained before. I've never, I never, I never asked.

I didn't, you know, I didn't want to get punched in the face. That's why we got these like either just single blades. So we only can do like one pass and it doesn't get way too close or electrics but jordan to answer your question on how i figured out what i need to do for my bald head is a safety razor a single blade safety razor because i used to have to use an electric razor right because um if i didn't use that i would bump up and i would have to wait for the hair to grow out so you know that there's an awkward phase where you're kind of bald kind of not. It doesn't look fresh, right?

But that safety razor, that safety razor, though, it gets close enough where you can use it every two days. And it's not too close where you bump up. Have you ever tried to use, I think years ago they had Head Blade. You ever tried to use that thing? Head Blade? It was just like a single blade and it just kind of like clipped on your finger, almost like a ring pop. And then you can just go and shave your head.'ve never used that but it's pretty good does it have a single blade or is it like three different blades i think it just had a single blade yeah oh i might have to look into that yeah i don't know if they still make them but that that's that's i saw one recently

that was like three blades but that would bump me up because it's too much yeah it's too close yeah and if i shave if i shaved my head every, I would, my skin would get really irritated too. I gotta wait. I gotta wait. I would end up with bumps and end up all red and shit and be all jacked up. I use that electric razor. I still use like, I got, well I forget where it's from, but it's like a super thick blade and it almost

like contours to your head. I do it like once every like week or so. Is that like a maroon one that everyone has? I think everyone has that one, right? A maroon one? Yeah, I think mine's maroon, reddish. Oh, I think I know what you,

is it, is it, oh. No, it's black. Oh. Is it, I don't know. I forgot the name.

Ooh. I don't know, I think you just ruined the whole podcast. I'm sorry, man. I fucked everything up. I'll leave. Hey, but man,

if you want to get like a, if you want to get a closer shave, you can use that safety razor. So, I'll give it a check. I'll check that out. Let's shift gears for a second. Let's shave, you can use that safety razor. So I'll give it a check. I'll check that out. Let's shift gears for a second. Let's get down to something. That's not that important.

Let's get something more serious here. So Jordan, you're telling me, so is today the first time you realize you're attracted to men, or is it the first time that you're attracted to black men that bodybuild and do jiu-jitsu and do powerlifting? You know, I think I always knew I was attracted to black men who bodybuild and also jujitsu and do powerlifting. I always knew I was attracted to black men who bodybuild and also do jujitsu, but this is the first time that I'm openly admitting it. Is it the voice?

I think it's the essence. It's the overall essence of the being. He has tried to seduce many people who have come on this podcast. I think he's pretty successful so far. It's an attempt that I do have every single time. Is it everyone or only the short, bald Jewish guys? I don't discriminate.

I don't discriminate. Yeah, he actually has been kind of pushing a limit with just about everybody. Only the men though. Only the men. Because I have a girlfriend, so I don't want her to get, you know. It makes sense. That's what I said. I told my wife the other day.

I was like, my line for that is open. Like, the guy category is open, you know, because somebody was – I think Jessica was telling her that – she's like, yeah, Mark gets dick pics in his DMs. My wife was like, what? And I was like, yeah. I'm like, well, I'm single in that regard, right? She was like, that is so gross and so weird for you to say. I'm like, but it's true, right? 50% is open. Yeah.

There's an opening. Someone could just take... I get that from some guys, so I'll show it to my girlfriend. There's this one guy, every time I wear sweatpants, he'll always reply to my story and always be like, sweatpants season! And I never mark it as red.

Like, I never let him know I see it. But I'm like, oh, Jesus Christ, another time. He knows you're just going to crack one of these days. If he listens to this, he knows. He knows you're just going to cave one day. Just keep throwing that temptation out there. What's up, man? So what you been doing with yourself? I had a chance to go to New York City maybe like six or eight months ago or something like that, six months ago.

And I got a chance to run into you. Oh, yeah, in the summer, yeah. It was great that you came over to see me because I had no idea like where the hell I am and stuff. You're like, I'll just come to you. That makes things a lot easier. So anyway, what the hell have you been up to? Man, it's been good. It's been really good.

I've been making a lot of content, getting really back into lifting, which has been fantastic. Started training jujitsu pretty intensely. And I still suck at it, but loving it. And traveling, doing a lot of speaking. And that's it, man. Some people get overwhelmed and they get really crazy about being on the hook to create content. But you seem to love it. Yeah.

You seem to have a really good energy supply for it. It's my favorite part of my job, to be honest with you, is making content. I think a lot of people look at making content as like it's the, especially like when they're fitness professionals, they're like, oh, I got to make more content. They do it as like the checkoff. It's like, okay, well, I did it. And like a lot of times they don't put much effort into it.

And a lot of times I think there are people that are very insecure about, about either their knowledge or what people will think of them. And so when you're really insecure about what you're going to put out, it makes it seem much more stressful. It makes it seem like a much bigger task. Like you have to really like worry. And a lot of times people will go into making content in a defensive mode. Like they don't want someone to say, Oh, you're wrong. Oh, you're stupid. So the entire process of creating content is on the defensive as opposed to doing something to try and help the people who need it, which is more offensive. And when you're always on defense, you're always stressed. You're always freaking out when in reality, if you just stop trying to

prevent people from saying you're wrong and just try and help people who need it with simple, practical advice, it makes it way more fun because that's what we all love is we love helping people. That's like the best part of our job. So if you focus on the good that's coming from it as opposed to the possible bad, it's the same thing with our clients. The clients were super scared of going to the gym. They freak out about the possibility of Joe Fuckstick

saying like, oh, like judging you or whatever that they don't go at all versus someone who's like, whatever. How is that guy at every gym? Every guy, every gym has a Joe Fuckstick. He's everywhere. When you focus on going to the gym

and working out and how it's going to benefit you and your family and your friends and your life, then it's all worth it and it becomes less of a stressor and more of a positive.

So I think playing defense, we need it in some parts of life, but when that is your life, everything becomes more stressful. How do you personally come up with content? Is it like, hmm, I wonder like what my audience would enjoy? Or are you thinking about, you know, how to get

new people to follow you? Or are you trying to think about just like kind of almost what's cool going on in your life now that you can highlight or something that you learned? Like, how do you, how are you coming up with these concepts? You know, I think what I'll start by saying, I've been making content since 2011. And I think creating content is a skill in and of itself. But for me, the one thing that's held true above all else is that as long as whatever piece of content I make, whether it's a tweet, an Instagram post, YouTube video, podcast, whatever, as long as one, the individual, not the group, because they're not like sitting all together, reading your post together. It's like as long as the individual

reading it or watching it can take one thing away to practically apply and get better immediately, it's a good piece of content. That's all I care about. As long as they can read it, watch it, see it, hear it, and get better immediately, they know exactly what to do to get better, that's my main purpose. So every piece of content I make has some practically applicable aspect to it that they can immediately apply. I like what you said right there,

just to reiterate, the person knows what to do. And I think that's really important. That's something I've never heard before and I've never even really thought about. Yeah, I mean, it's, and I learn more about it every day. Like you and I were talking yesterday, the the idea of everyone always says, eat more

veggies, eat more veggies, eat more veggies. But when I started saying, eat a salad every day, eat just a big ass salad, people were like, that was the best advice I've ever gotten in my life. I'm like, really? That was the best advice is they're like, I knew I had to eat more veggies, but I was struggled with like how to get more veggies in. I like put in a bowl make a fucking salad and like that just the specificity of that and then from there i'm learning how to make even better content because like well what kind of salads do you make and i was like just put vegetables in a bowl

like it goes to show you that when you say a certain word that in a lot of other people's heads they're picturing something different so that's right you say vegetables maybe you're thinking hey dude like just throw in a salad and when you say vegetables or veggies they're thinking about broccoli and they're thinking about green beans and like i don't really i don't like cooking that stuff i don't like eating it i don't like the way it smells like i don't want anything to do with it but maybe they do like salad i think the same thing happens with carbohydrates. You know, when we talk about carbs and a bodybuilder will come on our show and they're like, yeah, I eat like three, 400, 500 grams of carbs to get big.

Like that's what I do. And then people are like, oh man, yeah, see carbs aren't bad. And then it's like, well, we're, we're talking about different things here when I'm saying carbs because I was heavier for a long time. And because I'm in the powerlifting space. When I say carbs, I mean carbs. I mean like donuts and cookies and ice cream and pizza and that kind of stuff. The super calorie dense, high sugar,

very palatable foods, absolutely. Yeah, and I think people conflate a lot of times fat loss and health. People conflate a lot of terms and they assume it is because one person in fitness said one thing about one topic that it applies to every topic and every individual. We really have to be specific in what we're talking about.

And people have to understand you're an individual and you have to try and fail and try and fail in order to find what works best for you. And also understand what works best for you now in life might not work best for you in 10 years. And that's okay. They get to adjust. You know, I want to hop back to what you said about content creation and then, you know, putting out content without like, guess, worrying about what people are thinking. Because when when people watch your content and even I just met you, right, I can tell that you're just like a super high energy dude. At least I think you are. I don't know.

But you have a great personality behind the camera. You put out a lot of content. out a lot of content hat when you used to put out content back in 2011 were you always that way of just putting it out or were you ever like really analytical really careful did you make a switch or was that just always your idea of content so i was very lucky from the beginning in that i had some really good mentors uh and this one guy jc dean he i i told he was like he actually bought my website for me because i was training at west side. And, uh, and he was like, what are you doing? I was like, I'm training at Westside barbell. He's like, what? Like, that's crazy. Cause like I didn't announce it to anybody. I didn't have a website. He was like, we need to get you a website so you can write content,

write articles, share what you're doing or share what you're learning. And I was like, I'm 20 years old. I don't know how to make a website. So he literally made my website for me, sent me all the detail, login information. I was like like what do you want me to do he was like just write i was like write what he's like just help people that's it and so from that i think i was set up with a lot of opportunity for success from the perspective of he didn't say anything about trying to make money he didn't say anything about like like online coaching wasn't really a thing then uh It was mainly just help people in whatever capacity possible. And so he was like, make sure you write one article a week,

every week and just help people. And so from that, I had the goal of, I had to do one article a week, every week. So even if like it wasn't exactly the way I wanted it to be, I still had to get it out. And I was much more focused on just getting content out there

that was helpful to people. And I think by making it only one thing that was practically applicable, I also didn't make it, like thing that was practically applicable, I also didn't make it like if I was like 10 things or five things, even like it's hard to put that much information into one piece of content just by having one thing that people can apply. I was much more ready, willing and able to get it out there, even if it wasn't perfect. That said, I think what I really struggled with, and you can see my content, you go to 2011, 2012, 2013,

I think what I really struggled with, and you can see my content, you go to 2011, 2012, 2013, you'll see that I was speaking much more technically with much bigger words, much like things that were more confusing. And that was me being defensive with it. That was me trying to impress other professionals with my knowledge

rather than trying to help the people who needed it. And it was my way of trying to say like, oh, look how smart I am. Like congratulate me on what i know and also trying to prevent other people from saying oh you're stupid oh you're wrong rather than saying like trying to break a deadlift down into the simplest terms like send your butt to the wall behind you rather than saying send your butt to the wall behind you i'd be like what you want to do is you want to uh initiate hip flexion with uh without like it's all about the posterior chin

yeah like what posterior what it's like and you know if you read uh shir like, it's all about the posterior chin. Like what? Posterior what? It's like, you know, if you read a Shirley Sarman, you learn about like lower cross syndrome, what you'll see. I was like,

all right, shut the fuck up. So now as I, I think as, as I become a better coach and content creator, my content has become so simple that a six year old could understand it. And that's, I think probably the best compliment I can get is when somebody finds my information.

So I use a lot of Harry Potter references and sometimes I use Harry Potter hashtags. And there are people who follow me who are like, I randomly found you from a Harry Potter hashtag. I was not interested in health or fitness, but I followed you just because of your Harry Potter references and I've lost 50 pounds. It's like, that is like my ultimate success

when someone wasn't even interested in it, but they were interested enough in my content because I made it so relatable to them outside of fitness. And like that's where I think an expert shines when they can make the most complicated topics so simple anybody can understand it. I like what you said about talking to the younger audience, you know, making it digestible for a little kid.

You might say it's important to be – why are vegetables and fruit and protein, why are these important factors in our life? Well, if you try to explain it to someone who's six, they're going to be like, I'm not about it. Give me some ice cream. But if you said, who is your favorite character on TV or something like that? And like, I love the Red Power Ranger. And be like, all right, well, that guy kicks other people's butt, right?

Like, that guy, when he gets into like one-on-one combat with somebody, he jacks them up, right? It's because he's stronger. He's quicker. He's flexible. He's healthy, you know? And you kind of almost, you know, bring it down to that kind of level and have it in simplest form. It's funny you use that example because I haven't thought about this for my entire life until you just said that. Like little things jog your memory.

I remember my favorite superhero characters were the Ninja Turtles. And my mom, I vividly remember her being like, the Ninja Turtles love broccoli. And I was like, really? She's like, yeah, Donatello loves broccoli. I remember that. It was like he was my favorite one. And from there, I was crushed broccoli. Try this one like, yeah, Donatello loves broccoli. I remember that. It was like, he was my favorite one. And from there, I was crushed broccoli. Try this one on for size and see how it fits.

There's a comedian that has a whole bit about eating vegetables and it making your dick bigger. Seriously? He's like, as a kid, he's like, I was diving into those vegetables like crazy. And he's like, as an adult, when I'd have a girl come over, he's like, I would be pounding on tons of vegetables before she came over. You guys ever watched Dragon Ball Z? No, i never got into that kid no i just remembered this they're all about like powering up and everything right all about powering up and one thing that goku always did like before big battles he'd eat like a feast like goku always ate like there's scenes of just goku eating tons of food i remember i'd always think about that when i'd eat food and

ask for seconds and then he has like, uh, he has a whole brand kind of with some of those names and stuff like that. Yup. That's crazy, man. That's sick. Yeah. Eat big and get big and jacked and,

and then go beat the crap and go save the universe. Pretty much. I want to get back to the West side barbell stuff because this is stuff that's not talked about enough. You know, so much is made out of the, and we can talk about that section of it too, but so much is made out of like the mystique of what west side barbell is and so much is made out of uh you know louis simmons uh being like a genius half genius half psychopath and and all these different kinds of things but i want to point out and these are just

this is just a small list of people that would that came to my brain just now. But keep in mind, Jordan and myself, along with just a few of these other people, and then a massive list of the best people in the game, the best people that you can possibly think of, the biggest authorities in fitness, the biggest authorities as strength coaches. Louie Simmons and Westside Barbell has had such a crazy impact. And when you were saying you went to Westside and the guy was like, why don't you have a website? I remember that time period and it just I never even thought about it this way before. But that was like a hub where everyone was trying to figure out a way to get ahead.

But it wasn't closed off. It was pretty open. It was like, yeah, dude, why aren't you pursuing? Louie does this with these guys, and then this strength coach over here is now taking some of these west side principles and he's utilizing them with this team over here. You have people like Coach House,

you got Eric Cressy, Charles Poloquin, John Berardi, Paul Cech, Dave Tate. I mean, what a list. Louie Simmons is the Bill Belichick of strength and fitness. Not even just strength, though. I think everyone wants to try to put him in a bucket of powerlifting and just powerlifting and just strength. But no, it's like when you're at Westside,

if you're at Westside for two weeks, you're going to into nfl players yep you're going to run into mma world champions you're going to run into brazilian jiu-jitsu black belts you're going to run into soccer teams volleyball teams people from all over the country are coming from everywhere uh to go and rub elbows with louis simmons and to see what he created so. So it's not by accident that you're in the position that you're in, and I'm in the position that I'm in, trying to figure out how do we navigate, how do we continue to push this information out. That's what we saw Louie doing, and he's the king of it. I could not be more grateful for having Louie in my life and for what he did for me.

He treated me like a son. And I don't think it's an accident that so many people who've come and contacted louis have done incredible things i think because he really fosters it he encourages it i remember when i was at west side everybody in the gym aj roberts was there brandon lilly was there uh some of the like best lifters ever and uh it's very easy to get sucked into the world at west side and think like that's it like i was very close to getting a Westside tattoo on my chest. I was like, I was 20 years old. I was like, I'm going to get a Westside tattoo.

What's the name of the documentary? Westside versus the world. Yeah. Like you feel that way when you're there. And when I was there, I was ready to just stay. I was ready to stay. I was like, this is it. This is all I want to do.

And the only person who encouraged me to go back to school was Louie. He was the only one. He was like, he said, what I want you to do. And the only person who encouraged me to go back to school was Louie. He was the only one. He was like, he said, what I want you to do. He's like, schools don't let me come speak. He's like, I have tattoos all over myself. He's like, I curse. I'm like, not like what people want to see at a school. He's like, I want you to go back and teach people the right way to lift. And he spent that entire three to four months with me every day, teaching me, helping me study, reading books, like spent hours with me, took me out for lunch me helping me study reading books like spent hours with me took me out for lunch took me out for dinner he went out of his way to make sure that i learned everything he very rarely talks about anything other than lifting that's he's so

passionate and he always said he was like when i he's like when i stop lifting i'll die that's it he's like this is what's keeping me alive it me alive and just truly like my heart is full with gratitude and love for him because he's incredible and people that haven't seen West Side Versus the World you're doing yourself a disservice you gotta watch the movie one thing they don't mention in the movie is is how like they

touch upon it and they talk about his genius with the products and stuff but they didn't even allude to it at all and I think it was a mistake and I think it i think it was a mistake and i think there's probably certain reasons for it because uh people develop different ideas and concepts around like people that are wealthy but louis simmons a multi-millionaire that guy has absolutely fucking crushed it when it comes to fitness i mean he has you know his reverse hyper is everywhere and uh you know rogue doesn't have, they don't make reverse hypers without getting licensing permission from Louie Simmons.

I mean, these things are literally all over the entire world. I remember when I was, you know, getting heavily into it, you probably felt the same way. You'd be like, oh, my God, this place doesn't have a reverse hyper or a sled. Like, I'm not training here. This place is bogus, man. I'm not training here. This place is bogus, man. I'm out of here. This place is bullshit. You know, having a reverse hyper and glute ham raise was like,

it meant that you knew about Westside. It meant that something somewhere leaked out, some sort of information leaked your way where you knew that these things were important to have in your facility. And if you didn't have them, it meant that you were chump. That's exactly right. You'd be like, I'm not working out there.

I can't work out without a reverse hyper. But Louis, he had such a huge impact on a lot of people and I think that's something that's missed. And I wish the documentary

would have just talked about his success a little bit more in that area. Yeah, I think a lot of people look at the stuff Louis puts out,

whether it's the articles, the original articles or the videos he puts out on YouTube. And it's easy on social media to create like in your mind what you think somebody is like just based on what they're saying. But we forget that like they have a whole other life outside of that. And like just because you see someone on camera doesn't mean you know them as a person. And like some of the stuff Louie says on cameras is hilarious. And like I think what people miss out on is how truly

remarkably kind he is how loving he is how like everything he does like he can't buy the guy lunch oh he got really mad at me i tried he'll be pissed he was livid i tried he's like don't ever do that again it is livid and every day he takes the entire squad out for breakfast and he took me out for lunch and dinner over and over and over again. He gave me the Westside certification. He made me take it, but I didn't pay for it. I was a kid. I was 20 years old.

He was like, come out to Westside. Just train for a few months. The hell? Yeah, you're like, I don't have $700 to take the course. He's like, fuck it. Seriously, I don't care. He's like, I just want you to pass. He's like, just study.

He's so unbelievably kind i think now especially with uh the more accessible fitness has become the more people want to coach i think because they see like how much good is good it's doing like instagram i think has i think it's more net positive than negative i think uh as instagram has really made fitness more accessible, more people have started to change their lives and they want to coach as well. And I think there's so much positive that can come with it. But I think one of the negatives is that people want to start making money too soon and they want to start coaching because they think it's going to be an easy road, fast road to money. And I think what was going on back then, at least in the environment that I was in with Louie and a lot of those guys, it was like they weren't doing it for the money. They were doing it because they really loved it and because

they really want to help and improve the industry as a whole. And I think that mindset of not just trying to improve yourself and make yourself better, but to bring the entire industry up, to lift the industry up and bear that responsibility on your shoulders will lead to more money for sure, but helping others will also help you help yourself. I gotta admit, when I see your posts, I'm sometimes so pissed. I just look at your posts and I'm like,

fuck man, you have figured out social media. I'm angry because I'm like, man, how come I haven't figured it out like that um but but i sincerely i i'm i'm proud of you and i and it excites me to see uh how fast you advance but i'm almost like kicking myself because i'm like man what jordan pumps out sometimes is so simple but look how you know look how effective it is and look at how much uh not just not just the likes You mentioned likes being overrated. That would be a great thing to talk about.

But it's the traction and the comments and the shares and the saves. And I really appreciate that about the content that you put out. How are you kind of – how have you kind of found your stride if you even feel like you have? How have you found your stride with this? found your stride if you even feel like you have how have you found your stride with this because you feel i feel like you have a really good pulse of what the hell's going on out there and what to deliver first of all thank you that's like i appreciate it a lot and i think i hate you get out that's the way i deal with stuff i love you by the way i hate it i uh i'm gonna hate andrew actually real soon.

When Andrew gets shredded at Christmas time, I'm going to be pissed at him. I'm excited for that. God. I know I'm a very angry individual. It's bad. Yeah. By the way, the video that you posted made two people cry. The one that I posted?

No, the one that Mark posted. Did I cry? No. Well, I don't know. Me and Encima? Did Encima cry? He said something about his butthole was covering up oh yeah he put who cried uh so i guess i wasn't there for it but stephanie was showing jasmine and i guess she she teared up so like that made that made me tear up she's proud of you yeah and that's awesome and then stephanie's dad so my

soon-to-be father-in-law wow Wow, that is really amazing. That's really cool because that's cool on so many different levels, and I'm getting goosebumps about it. That's exciting because they haven't even I mean, your daughter, I'm sure has seen you with your shirt off and stuff, but you're not a fat guy. You're not a big guy. It's not like you have this transformation story of losing 90 pounds. Right. You just sliced up a lot, and you obviously put a lot of hard work into getting rid of being scrawny and skinny fat, right?

Yeah, that skinny fat. But the fact that they recognize that from that video, that's awesome. That's huge. That's incredible, man. Yeah, thank you. And Mark said it in the past before, but he's like, we don't want to be too shallow, but everybody wants to look better. Everybody feels better when they look better. And when I was doing SARM again, it was like, yeah, my strength's finally getting somewhere.

And it's like, yeah, I could easily rep 225 pounds. And the response is like, is that a lot? Well, for me, it's a lot. And then like we were saying yesterday when we were all me, it's a lot. And then like, you know, we were saying yesterday when we were all talking, it's like, people don't really care. Like, can you deadlift 300 pounds or 3000 pounds? They don't really care, but they see me with my shirt off. Like, Whoa, dude, what's happened? Like, that's like a universal thing, right? Like everybody can look at that and recognize like, Oh, you're doing some shit now.

You remember yesterday when I said about the mirror, when we were working out and I had you take your shirt off oh yeah about like uh the mirror will tell you like certain things about you yeah but i also just said a lot of people don't even know what a mirror is for there it is yeah but they don't really understand like i think i think they think like oh look at these jack dudes looking in the mirror a bunch of fucking idiots a bunch of meat a bunch of meatheads. But, man, is it encouraging when you start to see a little change in definition? You start to see an extra vein popped out or a little bit of a shoulder thingy going on. It's encouragement.

And, yeah, you are staring at yourself. And, yes, you are kind of admiring yourself. But if you ever get your body to that point, it makes you feel amazing. It really does. And I don't think, I don't think people should feel bad about that. Now, if you're standing there all day, like in SEMA does, and it might cause some problems, but if I look like in SEMA, I would definitely, I would be, I'd be staring a lot more too. But Andrew, like seriously, I've said this on the last podcast, but it really does. Whenever I like see a video of you, like the changes that are happening, I tighten up because I get excited. Because seriously, man, like you're looking fucking amazing.

Thanks, dude. People don't realize like they need to go down your IG and like look at it. It is drastic. I mean, it's it's you know, it's drastic when it's not only in a specific moment, because I think most of us can kind of get that from training in the gym. You can go get a good pump and you can look good for, everyone can kind of look good for a few seconds. You'd be like, oh dude, your chest is really pumped up. Great. But it's not that. It's just like you'll be sitting like maybe wrapping your wrist in between sets of something and you could see your shoulder moving around. You could see your bicep moving around like I didn't see that before. Or

when you used to bench press, I would see sometimes your shirt would come up and you would have a little bit of a belly or sometimes your legs would move around but now i'm seeing like hamstring lines i'm seeing veins in the calves and like like hey what's going on with this guy what do you think the switch was like what like led to making such like was it a radical shift was it like what changed well so we were actually doing um some like show prep before we went on uh to record for a podcast and i don't even know how it came up but i just told mark and sema i'm like yeah you know i've never been able to obtain abs like i don't know what it is about me you know i've just never had it like i've weighed 200 pounds i've weighed

150 pounds like i've never had nothing. Correction real quick. You said, I can't get abs. You said, I've never been able to get abs. I can't. Okay, so there you go. That's important. And then Nsema was like, no, anybody can get abs.

I'm like, I don't think so, man. I can't get abs. And he's like, yeah, you can. And then so being coached by both of them, like Mark's been by my side. Well, I've been by Mark's side for a really long time now. And so I've learned a lot from him. And then now in SEMA, I'm learning a lot more from him too. And it was a total mindset change is what it is. Um, I started taking literally everything like more serious than I ever have.

Um, people ask about like the, uh, like, oh, aren't you like craving certain things? Like, no, dude, like cravings have no chance against like my, like my, my focus on my goal right now. And the biggest change has definitely been 100% clean diet. Like it's not, it hasn't been like, oh, I'm good. You know, like seven, eight out of 10 or last week it was like a nine and a half. Like now it's 10 out of 10 every single day. You know? So like yesterday we were eating at Camden and it was like, Oh, what do you want to eat? Like, uh, just let me get the chicken. Like what sides? I don't want any sides. Are you sure? Like I can't have any sides like whatsoever. Yeah. You were super like, you were just like,

no, that's it. Matter of fact, no sides. Yeah. It's like those sides don't taste as good as these abs are going to feel. What's interesting to me is like is I'm very interested in behavior change. And I'm very interested in like what causes someone to go from saying I can't do this to literally changing everything in your life to like being like, no, I'm going to do this. Like it's very interesting where was it a challenge? Like was it like did you all of a sudden believe maybe you could do it? Like what happened internally to make you do this? There was definitely a little bit of the belief because I had, you know, two guys that I look up to, probably more than anybody now, telling me, yes, you can do it. But also, and I said this in the series that I'm doing on IGTV, and it's something I barely realize right now now is like, I've been seeking approval from

my dad this whole time because when I was a kid, he told me like, he straight up said like, your body sucks. And I've been, I've been hanging onto that my whole life without even knowing it. Now I'm like, oh shit, that's why my confidence has always been like down. Like, uh, instead of like a lot of people, it pushes them like, what? No, like, no, no like screw you man like i'm gonna go the other way like i'm gonna you know this is fuel for the fire i'm so fired up now it pushed me the other way i'm like i'm gonna get into video games i'm not gonna eat like i'm gonna

feel like crap my whole life and so just recently recognizing like that's why i've been struggling my whole life and understanding that and then being like, okay, let's, let's, let's do this. And then on Thanksgiving, he actually seen a picture of me and it was like, he didn't say like, like, oh my God, I'm so proud of you or anything. Like he gave me a compliment in his way. Yeah. And so like, it's just like, I never would have believed that I would get that from my dad. And from other, other stories you've told about your dad, he doesn't seem like he's that negative. No. He seems like he's a pretty damn good dad. Dude, he's awesome, okay?

And that's why I definitely want anybody to know. How can maybe other parents or other people that are mentors and stuff or coaches, how could they avoid? Your dad probably doesn't even really know that he said that barely, right? I'm pretty sure. Unless he heard the podcast, right? I'm pretty sure he has no idea i mean it's common sense like like we can i can obviously just say like it doesn't do me any good to like you know insult jordan flat out right it doesn't make any sense i mean we're kidding around it's one thing but other than that it doesn't make any sense but

how do you think someone else could maybe avoid you know doing that with their teenage kid or their kid who's you know, maybe they're not as smart as the other kids. Maybe they're not as tall as the other kids, maybe they're not as strong as the other kids or whatever it might be. Yeah. I think, so you hear it a lot with like, whether it be like an online course or like a class or hiring a coach or a trainer, it's like, oh man, that one positive thing can turn your life completely around. Like, you don't know, like you, you, you watch YouTube videos all the time. Like there's one nugget in here somewhere.

It's like, okay, that's definitely, that's, that could potentially change my life. Flip that around on its head. It's like, you might be joking around like, oh, like, oh, my son, he sucks at basketball. And it's like, he heard it. He didn't hear it. You think it's a joke that could change his life the other way. Right. So I think just being real conscious and understanding that like kids are just gigantic sponges and like any little thing can totally alter like their path.

Like, I mean, what if that day he just like said like, oh, man, like, yeah, mine's like not even mine's like him. But like, oh, we got to get andrew in shape so that way he could look better than all the other kids that might have been like oh you want to help me like oh my gosh like this is so cool like yeah you we want you to be as strong as your cousin that's two years older than you that would have been like oh shit i get to work out with my cousin sick yeah yeah so like you know that could have been totally different and you know i i just think like yeah like understanding that like any one, one, two comment, like you're joking, like, Hey, you've been alive for whatever, we'll say 30 years.

You understand like sarcasm from not this other small human that's only been around for a couple of years. They're not going to be able to decipher that shit. So it's like, you know, don't't don't stop something that could potentially like explode and be like amazing by you just saying one silly little comment and it's like was it fucking like you know amateur hour like are you trying to make other people around you laugh like at the expense of your child like don't be silly yeah yeah i think this is all belief system based because uh in working with andrew on a bunch of other things, we've had success at every turn. Even with lifting, I would tell him during training session, I'm not allowing you to get hurt.

That's not happening. That's not on my watch. You might get a bump or bruise here and there because it's training and we're pushing the envelope but like while we're working out together um i'm not going to allow you to all of a sudden go from a 225 deadlift to try 315 right you got to take the steps in between and we got to make sure we do everything uh everything the right way so he's had success um when it comes to doing a powerlifting meet and hitting a certain number on the deadlift, hitting a certain number in the bench press. And then even work-wise, I've thrown some things his way

and said, hey, man, let's see if you can do this. And he's like, oh, shit, I'm doing photography, I'm doing the podcast, I'm doing, and I'm like, yes, I totally recognize that. But I think that you're totally capable of adding this thing to your plate if you prioritize, if you make time for it. And it will provide more value for all of us that do this podcast. It will help with sponsorship and everything. And his kind of reason why elevated and then his ability to figure out how obviously got a lot easier when you're, you know, when your why is more important, you just make it work.

Yeah. Yeah. Mark works in mysterious ways. I think one of the one of the most amazing things about Mark is that he is the epitome of helping you believe in yourself by showing you that he believes in you unequivocally. showing you that he believes in you unequivocally. And I think, I mean, it's, you can look in the research on self-efficacy and self-confidence and belief. Like one of the single best ways to help someone else increase their belief in themselves is to show them that you believe in them. When you have someone saying like, you'll never be able to get a certain body. And then like, that gives you one train of thought. Then someone else is like, oh no, yeah, you can. Absolutely. You can. And it's like, just matter of fact absolutely you can it's like oh okay like let's do this and i think that's what you do and i've seen you do it in person i see you do it online it's like i think probably one

of the best things that you do is show people that they can do it and you don't sugarcoat it like it's going to be hard you say that very clearly and it's going, there are going to be times where you go off track. There are going to be times where like you, you're disappointed in yourself, but don't confuse that with a lack of ability. It's like, you absolutely can.

You just have to do it. I think that's what probably one of the things I admire most about you is how you interact with people and on social media. And I think that's probably something that attracted you to Westside Barbell because you've done a four times body weight deadlift. And so a 535 deadlift when 132, right? Yeah. You know, I think so, you know, if it seemed it came in here, it seemed as crazy strong.

But if he came in here and said, you know, I want to squat 900 pounds. And I see him, you know, he squatted 600 for like two or something. This is not the gym where I would say, that ain't going to happen. I would say, okay, well, you know, your size and your body weight, we probably need to, one of the first places to start is we probably need to work on gaining weight and then kind of finding out what optimal weight you need to be to, you know, start to execute some of these bigger squats. But we'll get there.

My first place wouldn't be like, oh, like, dude, nah, man, let's say you squat 600 for two. I'm like, I don't think you can, you know, other places would do that because they just haven't practiced that before. They haven't really seen it before. You want to be around people that believe it that have seen it that know that you can advance that know you can get better and i think with something that's really important to point out about andrew is that he's been working on this for a long time and he lifted before he ever knew in semen i so he was already doing stuff and trying stuff on his own he already

tried a keto diet he messed around with some different things. The effort to get better was already there. And that's huge because if that effort's not in there already, at least a little bit, that is hard to spark. And it's not impossible, but it's more difficult. And it might be harder to get momentum. And it might be harder to really start to feel good about yourself because you don't have the momentum to really do much. And I see a lot of people paralyzed by that. I think that that word momentum is huge. And that's where I think, you know, we're talking really about walking. It's like people are looking for ways to get motivated to do like full workouts, get motivated to go like really hard and like in with the most intense thing. It's like, just start with something because it's just the momentum that

will pick up from consistently doing anything, just working towards it rather than you were talking about earlier in the gym, like people will go in, they'll do 10, 12, 15 exercises and be so sore. They can't go the next day or for the next week. It's like, what if you go in, you just do one thing, two things, and you just get the momentum rolling. I think that having momentum is so overlooked and so important and coming up with different strategies to get the momentum rolling is invaluable. Back to you, buddy. How do you have the best damn content on Instagram? I pay someone on Fiverr to make it for me. No, no, no, no. How many people got working for you? 20, 30? Yeah, right. No. I have Rico, and I have an assistant named Kat.

And those are like the only two people who are like consistently, and I like outsource. I have a web guy who works with me as well, but those are the only two. And without them, I wouldn't be able to do it. Basically, he pays for his likes. That's okay. No, I mean, like I said before,

I think content creation is a skill, right? And like anything in life that you're doing. And I think it's part skill and also part priority. I think I have very high standards of myself with my content. Like I'm not okay just writing a quick caption and putting it out. I'm not okay with that. And then how do you manage that? Do you just make sure that you have time for it?

Like if you have a picture or you have something, because I think it's easy for people to kind of get caught up in it. Like I need to turn and burn. And they kind of learn that from Gary Vee, who's like, just keep getting stuff out there. But at the same time, other people aren't Gary Vee. He has a lot of really valuable and amazing things to say. So maybe it doesn't matter as much if he has a little bit of stuff that gets burned and lost in the shuffle. But for the rest of us, it probably like everything that we put out is probably pretty important. So how do you make time for that or how do you prioritize that?

Well, I think just to quickly go back to what you're talking about, Gary, you and I were talking the other day about, you know, being a black belt in, uh, in nutrition or being a black belt in strength training, being black belt in jujitsu. You can't really compare yourself to a black belt when you're a white belt because there's so much time and skill and so much stuff that elapses between those two levels. It's like, it's literally, it doesn't make sense. It's illogical to make that comparison. And I think when you look at Gary who's making a hundred pieces of content a day, it's like it's literally it doesn't make sense it's a lot illogical to make that comparison and i think when you look at gary who's making a hundred pieces of content a day it's like that's based on a decade of of starting off with maybe one piece of content a day or maybe one piece of

content a week and i think for me more than necessarily especially at the beginning more than making a lot of content it was making whatever content I did put out amazing. Like when I first started, I just had a website and I was like one piece, one article every week. And I tried to make it as amazing as possible. And it was one of those things where like, I wasn't putting out tons, but when people did know that I put something out, they knew it was, would be worth it. I think that is a very important concept to keep in mind. Like if you're just blasting out content for the sake of making content, everything, people won't necessarily read it. People won't watch it because like it's not changing anything. They're not practically

applying anything. But if you put out one thing a week that is consistently helpful and consistently high quality, they'll keep coming back for more. Let's pause for just a second and dive into this a little bit more. How important is that? How important is it to stop, to take a breath and say, you know what? I need to make sure this is 100% or 90%, you know, the best of my ability because I got to keep my footing with, you know, the content I'm putting out. But how do you stop yourself and slow down and then say, okay, well, it needs to have a really good title. It needs a really good thumbnail. It needs to have words on the screen. Um, I did talk about a workout. I did talk about percentages of macros and that needs

to pop up on the screen. So I better take my time with that. How do you, you know, how do you slow yourself? How important is that? Is that, is that a, I mean, that must be a major part of what a lot of people are missing because they got anxiety to kind of keep firing stuff out. Yeah. I think it's massively important. I think at the beginning, the most important is developing the habit of creating content before you get fancy with any of the, the high. I hope people are like, right.

I seriously hope people have a pen and I hope people are writing this down. This is awesome. Like before people get like, when I first started my website and i told you yesterday before i decided to pay for a web designer i was like i have to make enough money through my website in order to fund that i wasn't going to use other funds for it and people would comment on my website hey this is a great article but your website looks like shit the comments are still there from 2011 2012 before i funded my first web redesign. And I think that stuff is important. But in this, I always try and compare it to health and fitness.

It's like before you have the perfect diet or perfect workout, just get in the habit of focusing on it. Just make it a habit. And I think one of the best ways, I think you do a great job with this, sort of like by letting people know it's going to be difficult. One of the best ways to help people stay consistent is to give them realistic expectations of what's going to happen. If you tell people fat loss is super easy, you'll never be hungry. You'll never be tired. Like you're gonna be great. It'll be super good. Then like when they do get hungry and they do get tired and like cravings come on, like they'll quit. Cause like, well, this isn't supposed to happen. And like, I'm a failure.

So I like probably a very brief caption of mine on Instagram will take me a bare minimum, like bare minimum of 30 minutes to write. Like that's a very like quick caption. Rico will tell you like, we'll just sit there like 30 minutes. I've spent three hours. The longest I've ever spent on Instagram caption is three hours. And it's no coincidence that that's also one of my highest performing posts.

Have you always been pretty good with your writing?'ve been very blessed i was very fortunate my mom was like super strict about me like i did a lot growing up where like whether it's for my bar mitzvah like my bar mitzvah speech she would literally she'd make me stand in front of her for hours and practice my speech like she would like go over my writing i had an incredible history professor in high school did you uh did you like Did you really hate that or were you okay with it? I was a kid. I was like, what is this about? And I always said growing up, when I first started my website and things started to get traction,

I always said, if you told me five years ago that I would be writing for part of my career, I'd say, get out of here. I just want to lift weights and get people strong. But I think learning how to write and communicate through writing is, is one of the most valuable skills you can ever have. And keep in mind, everyone should keep in mind that all we're talking about here, this is all just communication. That's it. This is, I mean, the video photography, the writing, um, and then all the different forms of social media, there are just all different ways to communicate with people. And I think this is a good lesson for parents that are listening to the show um you gotta kind of force your kids

to do stuff that they don't really want to do yeah i mean otherwise you're not really you're not really parenting you know that's good that your mom did that i mean what else would you be doing i mean you know like you should be um every parent is different every kid is different so it might have to be different but you should be forcing your kid to do an activity you should be forcing them to use their brain you should be forcing them to do stuff and i'd say also like be super open-minded to whatever it is that they want to do so like we got we got our daughter into uh to dance class and we're like you know i was i've been listening to hip-hop my whole life so i'm like yeah you're doing hip-hop dance and she loves it and then uh her last practice was this um this past tuesday and they're

like so like they're doing like the whole like uh recital like practice run right and i'm looking at the contemporary like dancers and i'm like the hell is that like that doesn't make any sense they're not even on rhythm they're just like twirling in circles and then we leave and she's like i want to do contemporary next year i'm like are you sure you don't want to do like you know anything else it's like now i want to do contemporary i'm like all right i guess i'm going to become a contemporary fan you know jordan real quick on the um back to your writing do you intentionally make it sound like you're talking to a single person? That's an amazing question. Yes, you do. If you look at my writing,

you will never, ever, not in the last few years, see me say, hey everyone, or what's up guys and girls. I'm never speaking to the crowd because like I said earlier, no one is all in a crowd together. When you post, being like, oh look, look, look, Mark posted.

Let's all look at it together. They're in the bathroom. They're in there at their desk. They're in traffic on a train, and it's one person reading it. Yeah, and the second that you say, hey, everyone, you're like, that's not that special. It's a divide. Yeah, it's kind of like, oh, it's just out there. You always want to think that things are like special or unique, right?

A hundred percent. And when I try and use the word you a lot, so if you look at my writing and you count the words, the amount of times in any caption that I say I versus the amount of times that I say the word you, the word you, nine times out of 10 will radically outnumber the times I say I.

Because I think a lot of times it's very easy to talk about yourself. Well, I do this, I do that, I do this. But no one cares as much about you as they do about themselves. So I'll always be like, hey, if you are struggling with this or if you are having a hard time with this

or if you love doing this, I'll always talk about you, you, you, you, you. And sometimes I'll relate it back to myself. But statistically, over and over and over again, the content that gets the best engagement and the best, not even engagement, I mean more the best response from people feeling like, wow, I really feel like you're speaking to me here,

is the one when I talk about you. And I help them reflect on themselves as opposed to trying to extrapolate from me talking about myself. And you probably try to take on a coaching perspective where a coach, coaching is a unique thing. It's a unique talent and uh a coach isn't really gonna they're not gonna say should a lot they're not gonna say like here's what you should do and they're not gonna they're they're gonna they're gonna present ideas and concepts to you that they

have strong beliefs in and they're gonna want they're gonna want you to do it they're gonna want you to try it and so that's when you're communicating to people on social media, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to sell them on this concept or idea, just like your thing with carrots the other day. Let's just slow down for a second. Yeah, okay, maybe carrots can make your glucose go up, but are people getting cut out of their homes

and helicoptered out of their house because they're too fat because they ate a lot of carrots? Right. Probably not. You know, carrots probably aren't that big of a deal. They're probably not that negative of a thing. People probably don't love carrots that much, but maybe it's more like the carrot cake or the excessive amounts of just food. Right. Continuously over every single day. And so it's kind of hard to have a message

where you're trying to coach people and influence them to have them kind of go towards something without throwing in the shoulds and coulds because everyone already knows there's a lot of should'ves and could'ves in their life and they already have tons of anxiety over it. I think one of my all-time favorite quotes that I've heard about coaching and teaching is saying, my job isn't to tell you what to see.

It's just to show you where to look. It's like I just want to show you like all of your options and then help you find which one is best for you and help you – give you the confidence to make a decision on your own. I think a lot of times just basic human psychology and behavior. Like if you say like, Hey, you need to do this. Yeah. You need to eat more vegetables. Say fuck off. Like, I don't want to do that. But if you talk to them, I, one of my favorite stories, when I first started doing nutrition coaching, this woman named Dawn, she's lost 75 pounds and she's kept it off. And when she first walked into the, uh, it was when I was doing in-person coaching at a, at a gym in Boston and she comes in and she's super hard Boston accent. She

was like, I'm not going to eat fucking vegetables. Like the first thing she says right at the, and then she was like, okay. And she was, and she was like, what do you mean? Okay. And I was like, if you don't eat vegetables, you don't have to. She was like, I've been to a bunch of fucking nutritionists and everything. And no one's ever said that. And like, she goes on and she's like, why don't I have to eat vegetables? Like, listen, you can lose weight without eating vegetables. It's going to be easier if you do eat vegetables, but you don't have to. And she was like, okay. So we start talking and talking. I'm like, so what has usually been like the hardest part of dieting for you? And she's always been like, I get so fucking hungry. I'm like, okay, so like, what do you think like might be some strategies to help you decrease your hunger? She was like, well, obviously I could eat increase, eat more vegetables. And I was like, no, no, no, I don't want you to eat vegetables. And she was like, what do you mean? I was like, obviously i could eat increase eat more vegetables and i was like no no i don't want you to eat vegetables and she was like what do you mean i was like you don't eat like vegetables let's not eat them she was like no i could eat some vegetables so literally she went from saying i'm not going to eat vegetables to now arguing for why she can eat

vegetables and i was like i don't want you to eat vegetables but like if you had to pick one favorite what would it be she was like i like peas which like it wouldn't be my first choice but hey she went from saying no vegetables to peas i was like all right listen i don't want to eat vegetables but like if you want to eat peas you can eat peas she's like i'll eat peas i was like all right what meal are you gonna eat peas at she was like i'll have peas at dinner every day i was like listen i still don't want any vegetables but if you want to have peas at dinner you have peas dinner she's like i'm gonna have peas at dinner every night she literally started arguing for eating peas and it just goes to show it's like a really good coach and teacher and mentor isn't gonna say tell you hey this is exactly what you need to do this is what you

should do it's almost helping you helping you find the answer to what you know you need to do already and helping you argue for doing what is best for you because a lot of times just ego and human nature will almost like fight against what we want. Another way to do it is say like, well, what would you tell your best friend? Like what advice would you have for your best friend? And they always give like the better advice. It's like sounds like good advice. Maybe you want to take it yourself.

And like it helps people make the right decision on their own. Have you found that people, they kind of know what to eat already? Yes. Yeah. People know. People know. And there's obviously differing opinions and everything, but generally speaking, people know.

More fruits and vegetables, more lean proteins, drink more water. And in your opinion, why would something like, why would vegetables help encourage weight loss? Mainly because you can eat more for fewer calories. It'll fill you up. Also, the psychological aspect of most people when they eat vegetables, they feel better just because they feel like they're doing good for their body. And it's one of those, it's, it gets momentum going, right? Where it's like when you eat them and you find ways to incorporate them, it's like,

I'm doing good for my body. I'm it's like, and it becomes a habit and you feel better for it. So, and obviously being able to stay more full for fewer calories will help you eat the right amount to help you lose weight. Yeah. I mean, that's what I've seen as well. It's like, you know, you have like a light popcorn at your house that you, you know, heat up in your microwave. It has like no, hardly any fat, has hardly any calories, you know, stuff like that.

Things like that, that you could, um you know maybe get your stomach a little full get some sort of satisfaction out of them it doesn't really have anything uh it doesn't really have it you know especially something like that it doesn't necessarily have anything real super positive in it but it's just not anything like negative and it helps fill up your stomach and then when it comes to vegetables it doesn't hurt to have some fiber in your diet and it doesn't hurt to have it just got to to be where I would caution people is like, just pay attention to how much dressing you're using or how the vegetables are being prepared.

You know, the vegetables are kind of free. I would say like on any diet, you can just kind of go for it really. As long as it's not hurting your stomach. As long as your digestive system seems to be intact, you can go for it, but it just,

you know, just be aware, you know, maybe get the dressing on the side. That way you can kind of partition it out. Why, in your opinion, would something like bread maybe not be a great idea on a diet? There are a number of reasons. I mean, I'll always say if you want to have bread, nothing is wrong with bread. I think issues arise when, let's say for example, bread's a trigger food for you, where when you, once you know you have bread, like, oh, you can't have one slice or one roll, like you have the entire loaf. It's like, if you know that about yourself, then it might be a good for a period of time to just eliminate it until you, until ideally you can develop a healthier relationship and you can have it in more moderation. I think this idea of flexible dieting

and probably more even intuitive eating, it's a very advanced style of eating. And people are trying to go, it's like trying to take- So you think you might need to be like a brown belt or something like that to even really mess with- Yeah, 100% it's a great example. Yeah, it's like if you take someone who doesn't eat very well,

someone who doesn't eat very well and they don't really exercise much or it's not a part of their life, and you say, I want you to eat intuitively. Okay, well, intuitively, I want to go to Papa John's. So let's go. Yeah, let's do it. You have to learn. It's like when someone comes into deadlift

and the first thing they're learning, you teach them the kettlebell deadlift. You don't start off with like four-inch deficit deadlifts versus chains and bands. You teach them how to do the movement first. And the reason you would them the kettlebell deadlift you don't start off with like four inch deficit deadlifts first chains and bands like you teach them how to do the movement first and the reason you would do a kettlebell deadlift is because you can step over top of it exactly you can have your center of gravity in a much safer position the bar doesn't have to get out in front of you and you can learn how to do the movement correctly without really a lot of weight you can learn the pattern and you can get used to that first we talk about exercise progression a lot but we don't often talk about nutrition progression about teaching people the skills they need and the habits they need and i think too often like it nutrition is so cultish

it's like you're either keto or you're intermittent fasting or you're gonna be both i'm surprised you and i are even friends if people use carbs right i tell the truth do you eat carbs i'm sorry mark i do eat carbs jesus christ have you i've gotten dms people like you know you and mark don't agree on nutrition i'm like you know people can fucking be friends and like not always agree on every single people might not know the fucking fistfights we've had you know i probably don't know about that um the other thing actually i think is really important i was going to say this earlier one thing about nutrition that i've started to talk about more recently that has had a big

effect i don't know if you noticed yesterday when we were out to eat and eat at that restaurant what is it called again uh camden really great restaurant i got the chicken and i also i got the fries i got that on the side but i didn't really touch the fries until i finished my chicken and what that allowed me to do was I only had four or five fries, not because I wasn't allowed to eat them, but because by the time I was full. And then coming up with order, like starting off with vegetables, starting off with your salad first.

And also being maybe a little reasonable, because you could have finished the fries. I could have forced it. Oh, my God. But you were like, I had enough. Exactly. And I think sometimes we'll- I actually did notice, because you ate your chicken chicken and then you stopped for a little bit and then you went back to it and then you ate your fries, which is even that's even a little bit of a technique is to kind of stop for a second and maybe take some inventory.

That's right. You know, am I filling up? And then your body after you've been you know been eating for 10 minutes or 15 minutes your body's like yeah it's enough yeah and like make sure that like i had drank at least half of my water like it's like all these things but this is this you don't learn that in a day this is progression this is like when and that's when you can start doing it intuitively it's like you know do jujitsu intuitively it's like what intuitively. It's like, do jujitsu intuitively. It's like, what the fuck are you talking about? Do jujitsu.

You have to learn. You have to learn the skills and it applies to nutrition just like it applies to everything else. And I think part of doing something intuitively is trying and failing and trying and failing and trying and failing. If eating carbs is a trigger for you,

if eating carbs makes you more hungry, if eating carbs makes you tired, don't feel like you have to eat carbs just because I'm on Instagram saying like, carbs aren't bad for you. If you know that doesn't make you more hungry, if eating carbs makes you tired, don't feel like you have to eat carbs just because I'm on Instagram saying like carbs aren't bad for you. If you know that doesn't make you feel good, don't eat carbs. But if you know that saying no to carbs all the time will make you binge on them once a week, it's like, hey, then maybe we should develop a healthier relationship with it and have in smaller portions throughout the week rather than just binging because you're restricted the entire week. It's all finding what works best for you.

And the idea of just not having any of these delicious foods in sight for long periods of time is just an awful idea. It's okay to kind of set out a goal and say, I'm going on this thing for two months. I'm going to do this as strict as I can handle for a period of time. But that's, I think, where people need to be really cautious. If you're going to start to lower the amount of fat intake that you have in your diet or you're going to start to lower the amount of carbohydrates, in my opinion,

those are the two options that you have. You either lower your fat or you lower your carbs. Protein is just kind of stagnant. It stays about one gram per pound of body weight. Those other two can be floaters depending on what you're looking for with your, your style of nutrition. But this idea of like, I'm going no carbs.

Like I, you know, I, I am, you know, a huge believer of a low carb diet. It's worked really, really well for me.

It's worked really well for a lot of other people, but it doesn't mean I don't ever eat carbs. Right. It doesn't mean that I'm not allowed to eat pizza. I just choose for, especially like right now, I don't ever eat carbs. It doesn't mean that I'm not allowed to eat pizza. I just choose for especially like right now, I'm just working on getting a little leaner, so pizza's just not part of my life at the moment, but

it will be. And I just want to kind of finish back on the topic of something like bread or something like vegetables. Bread and vegetables can just be, or a lot of different foods really, can be just transportation systems for a lot of other calories., can be just transportation systems for a lot of other calories.

So I mentioned, you know, the vegetables could be cooked in butter or you could be dumping ranch dressing all over it and you didn't realize there's 30 grams of fat in that salad that you're having, you know, every time at lunch. And then something like bread, like think about, okay, bread is absolutely delicious. Bread is really, really good. Some fresh, warm bread is unbelievable. And I know there's some people that are like, yeah, I could just eat bread just like that with nothing on it. And that is delicious. And it is coming at a lower cost than as soon as you start

to put butter on it. And again, butter's not bad, but now we're combining the two things together. And what are we going to end up doing? We're going to end up eating more of it. Or if you were just to take the bread and put cheese on it, or if we were to take the bread and turn it into pizza, um, that's where we run into trouble. And I hope that, um, people are advanced nowadays to just understand that that's what the hell we're talking about. If we start, you know, talking over anybody's heads, we just want to try to simplify stuff and just think about like, you know about what are the different foods. You could be eating a sandwich every day that has 30 grams of fat in it. I mean sometimes these even quick sandwiches that you can grab at like a Starbucks, it has the nutrition information on there.

So just take a peek at it and see does that make sense for you to have a sandwich that probably doesn't taste that good. Have 20 grams of fat. Like you might want 20 grams of fat to come from somewhere else where it might otherwise taste better, be more nutritious, those kinds of things. A hundred percent fill you up more. You'll be happier about it. And like we were talking about earlier, like whatever decision is going to make you more proud once you've done it, that's usually the right answer. So for you personally, what does your nutrition look like? Like how do you handle your food? Because it seems like you just eat what you want. I think I saw him eating McDonald's a lot.

I did do the Big Mac challenge. Did you see that? I didn't see that. So I ate one Big Mac a day, every day for 30 days. And it was basically my way of... Your heart didn't give out? Thank God.

And how are your poops? That's probably the best question to ask because I had more diarrhea than usual. Yeah. I did. That's what happens to me. I had more. It was literally the very first day. Was it the first day, Rico?

The second day. The second day. Well, the first day. Poor Rico. He's had to be there for all that. And he didn't get one thing. He didn't order one at McDonald's the entire 30 days. He didn't get one thing.

He's a savage. He's trying to look like Christian Guzman over there. I see what he's doing. For me, a lot of people, uh, oh, there it is. There's a challenge. A lot of people were, um, freaking out. They're like, this is so unhealthy. This is so bad. The first thing that I should say is it's not me saying Big Macs are healthy and it's not me saying you should eat more Big Macs. The whole point is I know people who get nervous and anxious and feel guilty for having a slice of pizza at their daughter's birthday party or people who like god forbid like they want to have an ice cream cone with their wife or their husband and they feel bad about it i literally i have clients who will or not even

clients but like people will dm me on instagram being like my husband will not have ice cream with me because he's so scared of like ruining his progress. And it's like, this isn't okay. Like, I'm not saying you have to eat ice cream all the time, but you should be able to enjoy it as part of life. And so the whole point here was sometimes you have to do something drastic in order to make a simple point. And so what I did was for 30 days straight, I ate one Big Mac a day every day as part of my overall diet and I lost seven pounds. And, uh, you know, that was it. Do you, um, also, cause like we've, we've had a lot of guests on and you know, some people love tracking macros, et cetera. Um, and there's not really a, it's not a bad idea, but do you, do you have people

track calories or is it just depending on what their goals are and where they are in terms of their understanding of nutrition? So I'll give you an example using jujitsu, right? And I'll go back to answer like in jujitsu, a lot of times, like when you first start, like you do gi and you do no gi and they'll teach you all these different moves, all these different setups. And you don't use all of them in a match. You find which ones work best for you, which ones you're best at, which ones you're most comfortable at. And you have a handful that you choose from on a regular basis based on like what you find to be best for you. That all starts with learning the basics,

learning how to roll, learning how to like go from turtle position, learning how to go from guard, learning how to go from side control, whatever it is. For me, I think the basics of nutrition is learning calories, proteins, carbs, fats. You have to learn that first. So I like to start people,

even if it's just by 30 days, track your calories just to learn how, because most people don't know how much they're eating. They just don't know. And if after that you want to continue doing it because you're that kind of an individual and like it makes it easier for you and you enjoy it, doesn't take too much time. Great. If you don't want to continue, then we can come up with other strategies to moderate your total portion control. But at least now you're operating from a place of knowledge rather than just going in blind. So for me, I really like tracking calories and tracking protein.

Not so much worrying about the carbs and fats as long as calories and protein are in check. And from there, if you're more of a macros person, track your macros. If you want calories, do calories. If you do keto, do keto. I don't give a fuck how you eat as long as it makes you healthier happier and it's sustainable i'll definitely say this too i think some people you know some people are um some people really love to like graph and fucking chart every aspect of their life but they just love that like that's just some people learn that in school and they they learn how to do that and they're going to make a chart for everything.

They're going to have everything printed out or on their phone or they need to write everything down. And that's fine. Like if that's just the style of person you are, there's no reason to really – there's no reason to cramp your style. Like just whatever you need to do to be healthier is the way that you should go. That's it. I find it that it gets rid of a lot of the anxiety from the day. So what I'll do is I'll actually input what I'm going to eat before I even, and then so then I know like, oh, should I have to, or I have to, or I get to eat a little bit more rice right now. This

is cool. Or it's like, Hmm, maybe I'll save like that one big carb meal for the end of the day and then go that way. And, but like, yeah, what I said was like, it, it just, it relieves so much pressure off of like, Oh shit, can I have this? Or should I do this? Should I do that? It's like, no, I already know. Cause it's done. It's written down. Like this is what I'm going to eat. It's so helpful. I love that. because it's done. It's written down. Like, here's what I'm going to eat.

It's so helpful. I love that. Me too. No one blinks when you say that you have a workout program. But when you start telling people that you're like following your nutrition, they think, oh, disordered eating. Or it's like, no one says anything bad when you're tracking your finances, but you start tracking your calories. People are like, oh, oh, no, that's not good.

Disordered eating. It's like, what the hell are you talking about? It's like, you're just getting more knowledge. You're just keeping track of the numbers so you have better understanding of what you're putting in your body. Do you like, do you still track now? Or is it just like, okay, so how did you progress there?

Cause like we're in this, like I don't track anymore at all. So how did you get there? And it goes back to, you have to start by, so any skill, skill acquisition takes time. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of energy. You have to learn new things. You're going to make mistakes. It started by me, literally everything that I ate. And when I started, when I was in college and I was like 19 years old, I just went through a period of time where I tracked everything. And it was a lot of time

on Google. A lot of time I used fit day, uh, like looking up like different things. And like, I would, if it wasn't in the system, then I would input it myself. So after about a month, like I had everything that I normally eat already input in the system. But that month took a lot of extra time and effort. And there's a lot of learning process going on. I would spend more time than usual in the grocery store to look, oh, has way more calories than I thought was an alternative. And I would go in different sections that I might not have gone in before and found foods that would fill me up for fewer calories, try new things. And after about two years of doing that pretty religiously, it's like I could look at any plate of food and within about 100

calories tell you probably where it's at. And that just goes in the bank for the day. Generally, maybe like once or twice a year, I'll track for a week or so. Just like if I start getting softer than I want to be or like just to like get myself back on track, remind myself what appropriate portions look like. But otherwise, it's just it's intuitive now because I have the knowledge as the base. But you can't do something intuitively if you don't understand it. Has there been anything weird or different with nutrition that people are missing or is it just it's been similar for a long time? You over consume food and you're going to be fatter. Are people missing out on a supplement or an exercise routine?

Or, you know, like it's just the same stuff over and over again, right? I mean, people just have an issue with overeating, which is a massive issue and a really hard thing to overcome. Yeah. And I think one of my favorite sayings that has hit home with a lot of people is just don't eat like an asshole. And when you do eat like an asshole, don't be an asshole to yourself. Being very irresponsible with yourself. Yeah. You know, like if you, if you had a new car, you know, if you have a rental car, you're going to treat it like a rental car, right? You can treat it like a piece of shit. But like, if you have a new car, you can treat it a certain way. And I think a lot of times people are just abusing their body,

unfortunately, multiple times a day with the foods that they're eating. The multiple times a day is huge. And especially this time of year around holidays, right? Enjoying some pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving, that's not eating like an asshole. But taking that pie home and all the other desserts home and eating that for the next week, that's eating like an asshole. And that doesn't let people,

oh, I want to enjoy the holidays guilt-free. It's like, so go to Thanksgiving and enjoy it. But Thanksgiving is one day. And Seema had somebody ask him about if they should just wait until New Year's. They were thinking about kind of starting something now. And he's like, man, there's a lot of days before that time period. We should probably – and then also too, I think, you know, these different levels that you need to get to in terms of your nutrition, like prowess is, it's going

to take a lot of practice. You know, it's going to take a lot of, you need to go to the store, you need to buy stuff, you need to do good for a few days, you need to do bad for a few days, you need to be doing great for a week, you need to be fucked up for another week and you need to get, you know, you need a lot of that. So it's going to take you probably about three months, maybe even longer if you have real problems with your food. But it's just something that people need to know. It's going to not be very smooth in the beginning.

It's going to take some time. And I think one of the reasons people become so inconsistent with it, one of many, but one of the very powerful ones is because they're basing their progress off of something they have no control over, which is their weight. I think weighing yourself daily is very important. I think it's a great tool. But if you're basing your success off of the day-to-day scale weight, you're setting yourself up for failure because you could fast for a full day and weigh in heavier the next day for any number of reasons. It's like what you should do is base your success off of your level of consistency, which is one reason why I say get a calendar.

If you hit your calories that day and you get your training in, red exit. If you don't, if you go over your calories and or you miss your training, black circle it. Look at the end of the month, at the end of 30, 31 days. If you were 80% consistent or higher, you should have seen some trend downward, some progress. If you were not at least 80% consistent, you don't deserve to be frustrated with your progress. So tracking something that is completely and utterly in your

control, which is consistency, is a far greater likelihood to succeed and be more consistent rather than basing it off of something like your day-to-day weight, which that's not in your control. And that is way more like if you feel like a failure when your weight fluctuates up, that's ridiculous. Your weight will fluctuate and you can't feel like a failure just because your weight fluctuates up. It's just data. Keep going. How do you utilize being more proud to help motivate people? Because you mentioned that a little bit earlier in the show and it's something you mentioned to me, um, on our 10 minute walk today. Yeah. I mean, it's, I remember the first time I started to think about this cause I was, I was actually, I was coaching Gary. I was on an airplane. Uh, I was on a flight back. I forget where it was. I might've been in LA and, uh,

the stewardess came by and she offered me ice cream. I remember sitting there and I was really starting to get my nutrition back on track. And I was like, I wanted the ice cream. Like I wanted it, but I was like, no, no, I'm okay. And in my head, I was like, why did I make that? Like what happened internally that made me make that decision? And I, I realized that I had thought when I was finished eating the ice cream, I was going to be disappointed in myself. So, and it started and I made content. I made a quick video in the cab ride back to my apartment about like, I made the decision that made me more proud. And I was infinitely more proud of myself the entire day.

And it made me more confident in my ability to succeed. And I think pride and being proud of yourself, it's addicting. It's addicting to feel that way. And doing little things that allow you to be more proud of yourself on a regular basis will drive more consistency. Yeah. What about five or six times a day? Yeah. Right. Like you've made the decision to go to the gym. Boom. I'm more proud of myself. You made the decision to eat a little bit better. I'm more proud of myself. You made the decision

to not eat the ice cream, made yourself more. I mean, it could happen multiple times a day. It could be really feeling awesome about yourself by the end of the day. A lot of people talk about it's important. A lot of very successful people I know talk about the importance of making their bed first thing in the morning. And it's one thing that I do a lot. I said to my girlfriend, I was like, that's my job to make the bed. I was like, I don't want you to do it. I hate making the bed. And like, I actually hate it. But every time when I do it, I feel proud of myself. Like I'm all right, good, got it done out of the way success. I think going out of your way to find things, no matter how small or miniscule it may seem to do something that maybe you don't want to do, but you'll be proud and happy yourself. Once you've done it, the more you can stack those up, the better you're going to consistently do in all aspects of your life. And I think, you know,

we talk about this a lot, doing things that you might not want to do. Usually doing the things that you don't want to do, you'll always be proud of yourself once you've done it. And I think pushing past that feeling of uncomfortableness is also a skill and also a habit. And the more you can do that on a consistent basis, the more times something new comes up that makes you feel uncomfortable or makes you put in more effort that you don't want to do, the more likely you are to get it done because it's become something so ingrained within you. I think that goes back to what we were mentioning about momentum a little bit ago, trying to do those little things each day to help you build some momentum in the

right direction. That'll help a lot. Even if it's a small one that has nothing to do with your nutrition, like making your bed, that'll set you up to feeling like you've won something already for the rest of the day so much of it is also going back to that like defense and offense thing i think so many people are so quick to tear themselves down they're so quick to like say like they could drink as much water as they want but they could be like still not enough or they could be like they could get their workout in but they're like oh like it wasn't the way i wanted to be and everything is like negative and pessimistic probably better pessimism versus optimism when most people treat themselves far worse than they treat their best friend but these people treat themselves worse than they treat their worst enemy

like if their worst enemy came over and i'm really disappointed myself they'd probably like try and pick them up because like it's a good it's the right thing to do try try and help pick people up. But when it's yourself, it's so easy to be like, I wasn't as strong as I should have been in the gym today. I wasn't as good as they could have been in my nutrition. It's like, I think it's important to find areas where you can improve. But in any situation, you have the choice between optimism and pessimism. And I think it's important to know optimism doesn't equal happy. Optimism just denotes finding the option to move forward and progress. That's it. It doesn't mean you're happy all the time.

It means you're always looking for the next step of action as opposed to trying to tear yourself down or finding the negative route. And the more you focus on the route that will allow you to be more optimistic, which is taking more action, even if it's not the quote unquote right action, at least it's action. You can always adjust along the way. You know, on that note of optimism, since you've worked with so many people, this is one thing I think is a it's very difficult to do when someone is naturally pessimistic. Right. And they're trying to do all the right things. But it's just a continuous loop of negative, negative talk. They always find the negative thing in situations. How do you help people flip that switch? They always find the negative thing in situations. How do you help people flip that switch?

So this is something where with online coaching, when I was really coaching a lot of people online via email, it became very interesting for me to spot this. And it's always a difficult subject to broach with people. So what I would usually do is, and what I found worked very well, if I saw someone emailing me, and it's great to have it in writing because you can see it written out. If consistently it was a very pessimistic route, a very pessimistic, well, this just emailing me and it's great to have it in writing because you can see it written out if consistently it was a very pessimistic route a very pessimistic well this just isn't going the way i want like this just isn't working i would ask them like can i ask you a personal question like if you had to say you're either a more optimistic or pessimistic person what would you say and there's only been

one instance where someone said i I'm pretty pessimistic. Most people like to consider themselves very optimistic. So they would always say, well, I'm pretty optimistic. I'd say, what I want you to do is I want you to go back to this email thread and read your responses out loud to yourself. Like read every word. Don't skip around. Don't mumble it out loud. Read them to yourself and then tell me what you think. From there, they're like, oh my God, I didn't realize how pessimistic i've been throughout this whole process and i think the goal is to just make people aware in all aspects of life like making people more aware of the decisions they're making how they're responding to things

i think we do things and it's so unconscious it's so habitual that we don't even recognize it and the lucky part about that for me is having all of that in writing and allowing them to go back and see it. And so I think in general, on a person to person basis, sometimes having that conversation, not just being like, hey, you know, you're pretty pessimistic, but asking like, what do you think you are? And then having them self-analyze what they've been saying and how they've been responding to things so that they can find out on their own, like, wow, like I'm being way more pessimistic than I want to be because only with that realization can they then make a change. I think it's really huge because you mentioned this again before, when you were helping that

lady, your client who wants to listen, Dawn, right? The idea of not just telling someone the answer, you know, but trying to help them come across those answers. It's, I think it's something that even I have a problem doing because in my head, I'm like, Oh, I know, I know, I know. But, but trying to help them come across that, how, how do you develop that? Or where did you start to know that that was the important thing to do? So it's a wonderful question. I'm really glad you asked. I didn't come up with it. It's actually a tool. It's called motivational interviewing. And it's a, it's a tool that a lot of psychologists will use in therapy to help the individual come up with the answer on their own because usually we know the answer like we could just hey just do this but nothing is as powerful as you coming up

with it on your own as you coming up with that idea as though it's your own and it is your own just sometimes it takes more work and a longer conversation to get to it sometimes it's not even just one conversation it might be a series of conversations. And so when you're thinking about how to help someone come up with that idea on their own, you have to think about not what to tell them to do, but what questions to ask. It's a lot of just active listening and asking them questions that allow them to go down.

That is a much longer path. And you have to have a lot of patience to do it, which is actually why it can be difficult with family members because like a lot of times you just want to blurt out the answer, just do this already. But when it's where you're working with clients and you, I mean, if you can do this with family, it's amazing. Not just telling them what to do, but ask them questions that like help them follow the path to then answer it on their own. And I think if any, one of my best piece of advice for any coach and anyone who wants to help people is to buy the book Motivational Interviewing and read it.

It's probably from a behavior change perspective, the best resource I've ever had on like how to actually inspire people to make a long lasting change. That's huge. Yeah. I think, you know, the best person you'll ever interview is yourself, you know? And so when you start to kind of reflect and go down that road and you, that's all you're really doing is you're trying to have someone interview themselves, take inventory of what was being said, what are these suggestions? And then they're like, oh yeah, like I probably should do that with like a family member or something like that. If you,

if you say, you know, you need to go on this diet, that's a, that's just like a statement, right? You know, and it's not open to discussion. If you said, you know, what are some things that you think, um, you need to do to feel better? And then they might say, ah, you know, I could, I really need to relax. I need to read and say, okay. And, and they might blurt out a bunch of stuff that they don't really have a lot of control over that happens to them kind of on the daily. And you can then kind of break it down and say, okay, well, what are some things you control over? Hopefully they start to kind of open up and say, yeah, you know what? I, I, I don't sleep that

good. I'm not good at that. I need to get better at that. And then maybe you can suggest some strategies and then maybe they say, yeah, you know, when it comes to the, I don't drink enough water, I don't, I don't eat enough vegetables, I don't eat enough fruit. Like you start to like, okay, now we're starting to head in the right direction. Hey, did you ever think about this book? Or I can assist you with that. I have a friend that can help you or, you know, however that looks, right? And there are a lot of ways to structure a conversation that I think is, this is probably one of the more important parts of it is to get them, help them find a way to argue for themselves as opposed to against themselves. I think almost intuitively we often do the wrong thing. So for example, one of my favorite questions to ask is like, all right, on a scale of one to 10, one being zero confidence in yourself, like you don't, you know, for a fact you can't succeed. 10 being a hundred percent confident, you know, you're going to do this. Where would you be on that scale? And they'll say, I don't know, like you don't, you know, for a fact you can't succeed. 10 being a hundred percent confident, you know, you're going to do this. Where would you be on that scale? They'll say, I don't know, like a six, right? I think a lot of people would usually say, okay, so

why'd you say a six, not an eight? The issue with that is now they start telling you all the reasons they can't succeed. They're telling you, well, I know I struggle with it, but if you say, well, why'd you say a six, not a four? They start arguing, telling you why they know they can succeed. And they start literally putting this optimistic perspective in their brain, telling you, well, you know, I've done it before. And I know if I really stick to something that like I can do it. And what they'll usually tell you in that response are the things that as a coach, you need to hammer home.

They'll tell you what has built their confidence. And so from there, you can really try and help them live up to their own highest expectations of themselves. Like people like to think that they're very optimistic. People like to think they're strong and they're powerful and they're resilient. And by helping people see that they have these high expectations, that they are that person and reinforcing that's really what you do all the time is what you said earlier. What you do is you help people believe in themselves by showing them you believe in them. And it's part environment, but also part like being that person there for them.

That's not necessarily telling them what they need to do, but showing them that they know what they need to do. And they are strong enough and capable enough to do it, even and especially when it becomes more difficult and they can make it through because they know they've done it before and they can do it again. Or maybe they haven't done it before, but they want it enough and they're, they're ready enough to make that change and to fight through it. When you have that support system there and that person who's keeps like putting them, those into that brain and saying like, yeah, like I can do it. I can do it. It's when most people would quit.

Most people would fail at whatever it is. When you can help them just push a little bit further, push that they are proud of themselves more and that then it becomes more of a habit, more of a habit, more of a habit. How do people overcome the thing? How do people overcome the excuse or excuses that they have? Usually it's like just one or two things.

Normally it's kind of in the way. How do they get past that? That's the billion dollar question, right? I wish I had a definitive answer to it. I think number one is becoming very aware of it. And then you have to decide at a certain point, is it something you're going to prioritize or not? And that's really the hardest question to answer is like, is it something that you're

going to prioritize or not? And we can talk all about coaching. Have you ever had a problem with like drinking or anything like that? Fortunately, no, but I also, my father was like serious alcoholic. And so I'd like, it almost pushed me the other way where I was like, I actually took all of 2019.

It's completely sober, no drinking, no nothing. Not because I've ever had any like inclination to drink too much, but- And then how did you do that? I made the decision. That was literally, that was it. It was like, I call them bright lines where and i should do you did you previously kind of enjoy drinking a little bit here and there what i realized was i would do it in public and like social situations because other

people were doing it and like i enjoyed it but i was only doing it because other people were doing it i would never do it by myself and i was like why am i spending money on something that i'm not really enjoying that much did you stop hanging out in those same kind of circles or what? Or did it look differently? Same people, but it was the bright line. It was those like for 2019, I'm not drinking period, end of story. And I think it's one of those things where when you, this, this is probably my biggest gripe with flexible dieting. Keep in mind, I'm a huge flexible dieting proponent. One of the biggest issues I see with how people promote it is that you should never restrict ever.

I'm like, what are you talking about? Would you say that to an alcoholic? Like, would you say like, we have to realize like in some aspects of life, restriction is very helpful and very important in creating these lines in the sand that are- It makes your mind really powerful. It makes it so much easier because it's a yes or no.

And when you make it a yes or no situation, keeping in mind yes or no doesn't mean good or bad. It just means I've made this rule with myself for this period of time because it's important to me and treating it as a challenge, treating it as this is what I'm going to do. And people automatically have some of those rules already built into them that just don't even know it. You know, like if someone bumps into me like on the street, like I wouldn't care because

that's not a line for me. I don't care if someone even if they hit me pretty hard. I just I don't care. I don't care. Now, if somebody like did that to my child or something, then I'm going to be really fucking pissed off. And I have no idea what I would do. But you have these things kind of built into your system, right?

Yeah. I think it's important, over-communication with people in your life, coworkers, friends, family. One rule, one bright line that I have in my girlfriend is, we never go to bed before we've settled a disagreement. We're not going to go to bed angry. That's very healthy, yeah.

And it's like we cannot do that. So whatever happens, no matter what we're feeling, we have to discuss it. My wife and I are the same way and we both have stood in front of each other for like an hour and no one said anything. Like you could just, you know, the tumbleweed could go across the room, you know, like an old western or something, right?

And we've just been like, we just know we need the result. I don't care what time it is, you know, and it'd be like midnight and we're just been like, we just know we need to resolve. I don't care what time it is, you know, and it'd be like midnight and I'm like, fuck, we need to go to bed. But this is worth it. You would resolve it in the morning. You'd feel a little bit better and everything would be fine-ish later on. And I think in with, with exercise, with nutrition, with fitness, with business, with whatever, it's like the same thing with content, right? It's like the reason that I am so consistent with content is because that's a bright line for me. it's like the same thing with content, right? It's like the reason that I am so consistent with content is because that's a bright line for me.

It's like, I have to make content. It's not like a, it's not flexible content creation. It's like, no, this is what I'm doing. Like I'm going to do it, like period, end of story. It's, I think it's really important and very powerful when you have so many options to choose from, you get, you know, decision fatigue and it's like, you don't know what to do.

So you often opt for the easier emotional response rather than the harder, but probably better logical response. And so I think in that becoming more intuitive with stuff, becoming it becoming a habit, you have to make a hard line in the sand and say yes or no sometimes in order to help you make the right decisions until it becomes a habit. What about something like binge eating? Have you had an issue with that before? Yeah, big time. Wrestling growing up my freshman year of high school, I started wrestling at eight years old, made varsity as a freshman, and I was cutting from 112 pounds to 103 pounds every week, sometimes two or three times a week for competition. And it's one of the things when you're in that environment, like you're a kid and you don't know, and also everyone else is doing it. So you don't think it's an issue. You think, oh, this is just part of the sport. you're in that environment like you're a kid and you don't know and also everyone else is doing it so you don't think it's an issue you think oh this is just part of the

sport got to do it for the team whatever just just to stop you just for a second andrew and i we were just in here talking the other day and a guy walked by right next door to us is a uh a uniform place for police officers and the guy was walking into the place or walking out of the place rather with a bulletproof vest and i'm like that's just part of that guy's day to day. Like that, how dangerous of a job, like you can't even have the job unless you got the bulletproof vest. But I think a lot of times our sports can be that way too. You just don't even think about how damn dangerous, you know, this next squat could be, or this jujitsu practice. Yeah, absolutely. And you could even carry that over to like how you're brought up as a kid in your family. Is exercise part of your family routine or not? Just how you're brought up. It's like what life is like and it becomes routine. It becomes normal for you. But yeah, so binge eating became something I seriously struggled with. And actually for me, I started intermittent fasting when I was 17 years old. I used Ori Hoffmeckler's warrior diet.

Yeah. For wrestling. Yeah, that's awesome. And at the beginning, it was amazing. The issue was when you struggle with binge eating, intermittent fasting can exacerbate more binge eating. Because he says really get after, right? Not one meal, he says to go hogwash.

He's like, you fast for 20 hours, and then he's like, eat as much as you want. Oh, God. Eat as much. And I was like, really fast for 20 hours. And then he's like, eat as much as you want. Oh, God. Eat as much. And I was like, really? At 17 years old? Like, eyes go big. Oh, my God.

I was like, that's crazy. And for some people, it works incredibly well. Generally speaking, with people who struggle with binge eating or disordered eating, not the best bet because they'll save their calories for a shorter, shorter window so they can then binge. It just exacerbates that habit. So I struggled with that for years. And for me, the best thing that helped me get over binge eating was eating breakfast. It was like, just, I have to eat breakfast every day. Cause a lot of times what people will do when they binge is they'll say people binge in private. People aren't binging publicly. They're not like with their friends are, let's go like, like binge eat. They, not like with their friends, oh, let's go binge eat.

A lot of times people who struggle with binge eating, their friends will be like, well, this person, they eat very little. They never eat when I'm around. I barely see them eat anything, but they're struggling with their weight and that's oftentimes their argument for starvation mode. Everybody eats very healthy here at Slingshot Headquarters around each other, right?

And then we all go home and do our own separate things. And not that anyone's really binging and going crazy. But that's where all of our stuff that we don't want everybody else to see us eating is. Right. I've spoken to people who, I have this one woman in my inner circle. She's a woman, she's like this 18 year old girl. She lives in Hong Kong and she's like struggled with binge eating for years. She literally waits until her entire family is sleeping in the middle of the night. She'll go up and like, she'll like go nuts. And what actually helped her was,

and I did this on a podcast with her. I gave her a 30 day challenge where I was like, you number one, have to eat breakfast. And number two is in the middle of the night when that urge comes on, just wait 20 minutes. If you still want to binge go for it go nuts. But if you don't after 20 minutes just go back to bed. She hasn't been a sense. And a lot of times it's just that like very uncomfortable feeling in the middle of the night when like you want to go do it because I just wait 20 minutes just wait. like feel that uncomfortable feeling, get used to it. And then it dissipates and getting people to feel comfortable with just not letting the emotion dictate their action immediately. Just allow the emotion to sit, make it more logical and then try and find a way out of it. And so that's what I did. I started eating breakfast and I may, I just, I remember I

looked myself in the mirror. I was in my mom's apartment in Chelsea, Massachusetts. I looked myself in the mirror. I was like, I got to stop this. Like, I was like, this is not okay. I would be nervous to go out and like, go to friendlies with my, my friends. Was there a particular, was there a particular way or reason or something that happened that you were reminded that this is not a healthy practice? Did something happen? What happened was I, number one is when I was like, I think I need to eat breakfast. I got nervous. I was like, and I always try and be very aware of my emotional responses. Like why in the hell am I nervous at the idea of eating breakfast? Like that's not okay. That's, that's not acceptable. Something has to change. So usually

for me, when I feel like something that makes me nervous or anxious, I'm like, that usually means I have to do it was because i was like super focused but the reality was because i was scared i was nervous and and like that's not okay and then you know what like a decade later i have a big mac a day every day to show people that not that big macs are healthy but to show that like part of life is being able people talk about health health and like, well, what are you eating? And what's like the physiological response, like the insulin response. It's like, what about mental health? If you're scared to have an ice cream cone and anxious and you can't do that without like then fasting for an entire week, that's not a healthy mental relationship with food

is that we really need to not only talk about the physiological response, but the mental response and really address both of those in conjunction. about the physiological response, but the mental response and really address both of those in conjunct in conjunction. Um, was there any in particular breakfast that, you know, helped more so than another, like, um, you know, did you wake up and eat cereal and that, that wasn't great. And that didn't have a great response or, you know, did you have to shift to like having like eggs and bacon or something like that? So it's a really good question. Thank you. For me, my rule was I was like I wasn't going to count calories because like that was sort of make me want to save them up for later in the day. So I was like I have one plate for each meal. So for breakfast, I had one plate and I could put as much as I wanted on the plate.

But there had to be protein and there had to be vegetables. So a lot of times for breakfast, it would be like that's a fucking great rule. Period. Is it any meal? Right. So a lot of times for breakfast, it would be like, that's a fucking great rule. Period. That was it.

Any meal, right? As usually my main breakfast was three or four eggs. And, uh, and like I'd saute some vegetables, just like a bunch of like a lot. Cause I was worried about getting super hungry with that binge mentality. And over time, eventually like I got my hunger signals back and I was like my fullness signals. And so three to four eggs, bunch of vegetables. I'd usually have an apple with it. Some Greek yogurt. I was set.

You probably felt pretty full, right? Stuffed. Yeah. Stuffed. And that first breakfast, I was scared shitless. You're like, I'm going to be fat. But I never binged again. You were scared that you were going to like eat too much or? I was scared because up to that point, binging at night was my habit and I would save calories because I didn't want to get fat. And I knew that the binge, I was going to go nuts. So if I ate breakfast and I still binge, that means that I just ate like 500 more calories on top of it. And in reality, by eating the breakfast and not saving my calories, I reduced that urge to binge. But it was a scary thing to do at first because my habit was binging. So by then eating breakfast and eliminating that that fear from the beginning

and stopping to save calories by the time the night came, I was like pretty comfortable. What did your binging look like? Was it a fricking like wild? It's funny. I've actually, I don't think I've ever spoken about that yet. I remember one time, I think it was around the time when I like realized something was wrong, like legit. My mom had a, my mom like was not like a very healthy person especially nutritionally she had a bunch of like just junk in the house she would always have like full um sleeves like big bags of bagels and like one of like cinnamon and sugar raisin bagels just like tons of them and i literally ate an entire delicious like eight in a row oh my god i ate in a row like a world

record but that wasn't even all i ate like i ate more than that but i literally and here's the worst part of it put on butter no just ate them just ate them just ate them just hungry just some cream cheese on someone but i literally every bite i was like stop i don't want to do this like i'm not enjoying this but it was a compulsive response and it's just like one of the reasons I'm very passionate about talking about this is because a lot of people struggle with it and very few people discuss it, especially men. It's like not okay for men to discuss.

It's not okay, but it's not normal. Very not common. And I remember I put out a YouTube video talking about it and the number of messages I got from everybody, especially men being like, wow, like I've never spoken about this. Like my wife has always been asking me why I get up in the middle of the night. Like I don't come back for half an hour. Like it's, it's making this known because I think one of the biggest

struggles people have is feeling alone. Feeling like when you're up at two in the morning, the middle of the night, binging like uncontrollably, you feel alone and then you make it a secret and then nothing good's happening nothing good's happening then the following day you try not to eat at all to make up for the damage and then you just perpetuate the cycle and you're not just uh not eat at all but you got to do fast cardio yeah yeah it's it's a it's a it's a terrible feeling to feel alone like that feeling that nobody understands you nobody will get you nobody uh will accept you to feel like that you're just like doing so many things wrong.

And then when you people that have families that feel alone, yeah, because they kind of have fallen into this trap. And so for me, I think one of the biggest parts about making content is helping people realize they're not alone. It was like doing everything. If that's the only practical application that people get from a piece of content, it's a huge win. There's like making them feel like I'm not alone because that's going to help them make a better decision on their own. Yeah. They're like, oh shit, someone else out there is doing the same weird stuff I'm doing. I thought it was just a weirdo. That's it. Yeah, that's right. We talked on this podcast before about masturbation and it's like, you figure masturbation would be something that men would talk about often. But for some

reasons, guys, we just don't get around to talking about any emotions or addictions. Or we just, I don't know, you just kind of tend to sweep things under the rug and it's not a big deal. I'll stop watching porn tomorrow. I'll stop eating those donuts tomorrow. It's all stuff that you think can wait another day. But it's good to check yourself and to say you know do i have you know maybe i got an issue and nowadays a cool thing is you can just dm one of us yeah you could slide into our dm and hopefully we answer or you can uh you know hit us with a message i mean there's a lot of people

that you can communicate with one thing i want to go back to because you just just you deconstructed and demolished excuses uh in a really good way because in the beginning I asked you, you know, what's the way that you would, you know, get rid of that hurdle excuse or get rid of that thing that's blocking people. I think sometimes when people look at their excuses, they think of them as like a giant brick wall, you know, that they can't get past.

I can't do this because, you know, I can't wake up early in the morning because I have to be to work at, you know, six o'clock. It's like, well, that might be true. But do you work at six o'clock every day, seven days a week? You know, can we start to find some wiggle room? Can we start to, you know, can we start to take this excuse and just fucking light it on fire? You know, is there an opportunity to work out you know on your way home from work are you passing by a gym um maybe during the week maybe you don't go to a gym maybe you do some exercises maybe you wake up a little bit

earlier do some exercises before work head off to work get your work done and then the weekend maybe that's where you pick up some points and pick up an opportunity to find some time to hit the gym and then someone will say well i got a family on the weekend i'm with my family your family is probably dead asleep until nine or so or whatever it is right get your butt up a little bit earlier it will be harder but when you start to um when you start to go out of your way to do something that is everything I think. I think that's where the missing pieces and the missing points in people's lives are

is when you make things inconvenient like an inconvenient diet. Like here's an inconvenient diet. Eat meat. Only cooked meat that you cook at your house. Holy fuck, that's really inconvenient. Yeah, but you'll be in great shape. Like the more inconvenient it is, probably the bigger the result, you know, to a certain extent.

It can get a little out of hand, right? But, you know, what's better for you to do the leg extensions or to take the time? I mean, the leg extensions, just the pins in the machine, right? Or to do the squats, right? Squats are kind of more of a pain in the ass. I got to put the weights on the side. It kind of hurts my the squats, right? And squats are kind of more of a pain in the ass. I got to put the weights on the side. It kind of hurts my knee. It kind of hurts my hip. It kind of hurts this kind of hurts that you can just hop on a leg press. You can just hop on a leg extension. It's easier. It's quicker. It's faster. But we know that the things that

we need are probably in the things that are a little bit more inconvenient. But for what you just said right there, it was amazing because I asked you about alcohol. Didn't seem like you had much of an issue with that, but with the binge eating, if we back up and we think about why you said you were binge eating, it was from something that happened a long time ago when you were a kid. And it's like, well, Jordan, you fucking idiot. You don't wrestle anymore, dude. Like, but it's stuff that you carry. Like we all carry, we all have dude. But it's stuff that you carry. We all carry. We all have scars.

We all have things that we carry from when we're younger. And so then we start to kind of open up and start to figure out how do we fix this? What's the thing that we can do? How do we smash this excuse over the head? And for you, it's as simple as having breakfast. That's it. It was that simple, but you had to overcome a huge barrier because your excuse wasn't really that you didn't want to have breakfast. Your excuse was that you were too nervous to have breakfast.

That's right. You had maybe body image issues? Yeah, absolutely. Of course. And then how much did you weigh at this time? Because this is completely ridiculous. I remember I was about 124, 125 pounds. So this is good for people to know.

Like this is not based in any sort of truth. Yeah. It's all stuff you made up about yourself. You certainly had 124 pounds. You weren't fat. No, I had abs. I had abs. But like those abs were from then restricting the entire next day, doing a ton of extra

cardio, lifting like crazy. And like people wouldn't people would be like, oh, man, like you're so lucky you look like that. Or people would be like, you know, man, I wish I could have like I could be as motivated as you. And then in the back of my head, I'm like, if only you knew, which makes you feel like a fraud, which makes you feel awful. And that makes you feel further alone. Right? It's like, which is so important. Like one of the reasons I talk about it so much again is because all of these things can compound and compound and compound into feeling alone. It's like we're the worst feeling in the world.

How long did it take you? Like, cause it probably wasn't just like one day you woke up and had breakfast. No. Everything was cool. Like how long did it take? It's interesting. The first few days were very difficult

in terms of convincing myself to eat breakfast. It was very challenging. But the urge to binge was gone within a month, which is crazy, like because I did it for years. So the urge to binge is still mess up. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Still messed up.

Still like still had struggles with it. Still like had some food anxiety. But just that one action of eating breakfast was like the catalyst for one of the, like such a healthy relationship with food. And like, I haven't binged in years and years and years, like probably well over five years at this point, like no more than that, close to a decade. Like it was just that one simple thing that really made a huge difference. And, uh, you know, going back to what you were saying about about uh excuses and and a lot

of like inconvenient stuff there are a bunch of things people say but one of the things that really is interesting to me is people say well you know it's easier said than done and i was like you're right everything literally everything is easier said than done and just because it's easier said than done doesn't mean it's not worth doing and it's one of those things where a lot of people people say like, well, you don't know me. I'm like, you're right. I don't know anything about you. I don't know your life situation. I don't know your past. I don't know what you're going to do in your future. I don't know anything what you're struggling with. But I've worked with people who've been in the most dire of circumstances. I've worked with people who literally, I had this one guy, he worked two jobs. He was a single dad and he got a nighttime job being a janitor in order to pay for coaching.

And he went out of his way to make sure that he was like, this is important. I'm going to prioritize it. I mostly coach women. I have women who they send me their technique videos of them doing lifting or doing exercise. Two, three kids like jumping on them while they're trying to work out in their basement. I'm like, you're right. I know nothing about you, but I do know just based on my experience with thousands of people, if you really want this, you will prioritize it, which is why you have to ask, what do I want to prioritize?

And if you honestly don't want to prioritize it, then don't. But if you say you want it, then you have to have that honest conversation with yourself. You know, real quick, I'm, I'm curious about this because you mentioned like making rules for yourself, right? Um, now you said that you started eating breakfast and that was one of the things that got rid of the binging problem. But do you have any like foods that you kind of just like stay away from because you might go wild or that just, that's not the case with you anymore? Because I know even for myself, I have certain foods that I don't buy and certain things I just don't keep in the house because i know if i have one i'll have a lot yep pretzels oh okay pretzels and keeping in mind i don't think there's been a time in years that i

haven't had pretzels in the house but for me it's like i'm i have enough self-control where it's like if it's there it doesn't mean i'm going to eat it. But when I eat it, then it's the whole bag is gone. So actually Rico was talking the other day, he's like, do you want pretzels? And I'm like doing some experiments with blood pressure and looking at like salt intake. And I got, I bought a blood pressure monitor off Amazon to monitor mine and see what happens. And anytime I have significantly more salt, it'll spike up. So he was like, do you want some, some pretzels? And I was like, no, no, I'm good. He's like, really? Cause usually I'll say, yeah. And I was like, no, I like no i like i'm good like i just i don't want it but i made the rule with myself i was like for this amount of time while i'm doing the blood pressure

monitor experiment like i'm not gonna have pretzels and they sit there and like i just got a huge shipment of like quest quest chip sent me a bunch of questions i love i love them but one bag is 15 percent of your sodium intake i was like no i'm gonna stay off until i'm done with this experiment it's for me it's it's the act of making this rule, this bright line with yourself. It's very powerful. It's just like – and it's difficult. And yes, it's easier said than done. But just because it's easier said than done doesn't mean it's not worth doing.

And if you can make this rule with yourself and stick to it, which is one of the reasons I like challenges a lot. It's like 30-day challenge. Do this. You learn a lot about yourself during some of those challenges. It's also just like, as a side note, very easy for whatever reason. If I go out to a party or whatever with friends and they're like, do you want something to drink? I'm like, no, no, I don't drink for whatever reason.

They think it's okay to be like, come on, like whatever. But if I say, you know, I'm actually, I'm doing a 30 day challenge or whatever challenge 2019 challenge to not drink all of a sudden, like, oh, cool. And not only that, sometimes they're like, wait, what's this? Yeah. Like, oh, and they'll get their other buddy, like, hey, he's doing this challenge. Like, maybe we should try it.

Like, do you want to try it? Any other guy might be like, fuck that. But like, at least they are considering it, right? It's so interesting to me, like, how their response will change. So yeah, I mean, for learning how to just make a rule with yourself. And I think a lot of people in the flexible dieting crowd get mad when I say this stuff. So yeah, I mean, for learning how to just make a rule with yourself. And I think a lot of people in the flexible dieting crowd get mad when I say this stuff. I recently made a post being like, if you want to get rid of sugar cravings, the best thing to do is to stop eating sugar, which is true. Like if you struggle with sugar cravings and you know when you eat sugar that you go nuts, like the best way to get rid of them is to stop eating it.

It doesn't mean forever and it doesn't mean sugar bad. Just because you make a rule with yourself not to have something doesn't mean it's bad. It just means in this period of time, you're making a challenge with yourself, a rule with yourself to stay away from it. And I think it's one of the most powerful things you can do, even if for a set period of time,

just to challenge yourself, make yourself, give yourself the opportunity to be proud of yourself. And the more times you can create that opportunity for yourself, the more times that will become a habit. Try not to eat any sugar for a day. Yeah.

Just for one day. That's it. For 24 hours. See what happens. See how you feel. Definitely nothing bad is going to happen. That's for sure. If you tried 30 days, at the end of 30 days,

you might binge on something. You might find something that was calling to you the whole time. But a lot of times you're not like, I don't want to say cured, but a lot of times you're going to realize that you didn't really feel bad without it. That's right. You weren't really missing out on anything by not eating some of that junk. I think that's, I mean, you gave such great information on that. I just think that's awesome,

the way that you were able to overcome that. My cousin, I mentioned this before, my cousin, she lives in New York, super cold out in New York, especially in the wintertime. And she was looking to lose weight. She wanted to get into like a diet and exercise routine. And her excuse was that she's a teacher. She's like, you know, I got to get to school, get to work early. And, you know, I got to, you know, it's hard with traffic and these different

things. Right. And then I started kind of telling her, well, you know, working out in the morning might be a great option for, you know, trying to, you know, just say, screw it, go to bed earlier and try to wake up a lot earlier. I realized it's a huge commitment and it'd be tough. You can maybe pick up a two times during the week to exercise before school. And then maybe you can hit up the weekend and in summertime you got, you know, a lot of free time to exercise and stuff like that. And so, um, it took her a while to learn this about herself, but her biggest hurdle was she just did not want to get out of bed, especially when it was cold. She just didn't want to get out of bed.

So what did she do? Like, what was her, what was her way to get rid of this one thing? She just wore her workout clothes to bed. I love that. You know, her husband probably didn't dig it. I was like, this is kind of weird in sweatpants or whatever. But, um, and then, you know know then she started out on her her workout she started out doing better with her nutrition she lost 30 pounds she never gained it back she still

has that habit it's amazing she still does that all the time you know and especially in the winter time and it's like each person can probably figure out their own situation and they can probably say yeah what is kind of like what you know should, you know, maybe I have a little bit of an eating disorder. Maybe I should eat breakfast or maybe I should try this thing or maybe I should try. Maybe they do have, you know, this kind of poor relationship with food. One thing I think is kind of ridiculous when people talk about having a poor relationship with food, everybody has a poor relationship

with shitty food. That's a great point. Everyone has a poor relationship with shitty food. That's a great point. Everyone has a poor relationship with pizza and ice cream and shit. I mean, there's not, you don't go through any days, I'm sure, like without like some urges and without some cravings, right? I mean, every day you get pizza place, every, every block and the soft pretzels and the hot dogs and stuff on the street. You're dying, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Of course. Bacon, egg and cheese on a hard roll. Those are so good. People out here don't understand. They don't understand. Those are too hard to, I get one every time I go to New York. On a hard roll?

I know. It's a hard roll. I know. They don't, no one understands. It's hard to explain. Like, why would you want a roll that's hard? And you're like, it's, I don't know why it's called a hard roll. It's actually soft. Yeah, it's a soft one. a roll that's hard and you're like it's i don't know why it's called a hard roll it's actually soft yeah it's a soft one okay that's or like if you get a buttered roll in

new york there's so much butter on there you can't even believe it it's like a steak on it yeah they pour it on big time so hungry now i know i have to stress every every time what's uh what's one of your main goals with some of the information that you're sharing out um you did just say like you think it's that, you know, people hear messages that maybe they otherwise haven't heard before. When it comes to, you know, specifically some of the stuff I see from you, there's a lot of humor brought into the mix. And there's a lot of like you're wearing a wig and you have different personalities as a rabbi in there and all these other things going on and there's challenges and what are you trying to accomplish what are you trying to do my main thing i'm trying to do is there's a lot number one it sort of goes back to what i was saying about the people who find me

from the harry potter references who aren't interested in fitness at all is i want to make fitness accessible to everybody i think this is something a lot of coaches say, but they don't necessarily know how to do it in a way that's going to make it easier for people. Lower the barrier of entry, but not just lower the barrier of entry, but also do it in a way that makes it fun. It makes it enjoyable. Not dogmatic, not like there's one way, this is the only way, but doing it in a way that this is probably the best way to put it, doing it in a way that allows people to get momentum rolling in whatever capacity that means to take one step, just one, just to do one thing that maybe they haven't been doing. Maybe they didn't even know they should be doing that. They could,

they could be doing the ability to do just to do one thing get confident in that and then that momentum will lead to more and more and more that's why i'm i could not be a bigger proponent of walking i could not be a bigger proponent of just making walking a habit because from that comes so much just like and we were talking about earlier on the walk like some people they, they're very binary with it. You're either going to work out three, four days a week or not at all. And I'm like, well, you know, I can't do this program. So like, what's the point? It's like, if you knew the physiological benefits of walking for 20 minutes on a cellular level, you would shit. You'd be, you'd be like, that is the dumbest thing to say. If you can't go to the gym three or four days a week, they're just going to do nothing at all.

It's so outrageously illogical and stupid and short-sighted. And it's like, I just want people to walk because from that walking, number one, the massive benefits from it physiologically, but also psychologically and emotionally and behaviorally, what happens from that walk? It's like, there's so much that comes. So that's all I want to do is just make it in a way that people enjoy watching me talk about fitness so that they get more ideas. And

it's something that they're not just like sitting through like this. They're like, just like, okay, I don't want to watch it. They're not even paying attention. They're just sort of watching it. So they can say like this, they're checking the box, like, all right, watch my fitness stuff for the day, but they don't actually remember anything you said. So it's like giving people the opportunity to learn one thing that they can do in an enjoyable way so that they can start getting their lives better and more healthier for themselves, for their family, for their business, for their friends, for, for just for everything. Do you feel like there's a bell that you have to unring in the fitness community? Like, do you feel like there's

some just stupid, uh, fake truths that people, uh, people adhere to adhere to that have them anxious and have them too worried about what they eat and stuff like that? Yeah. I mean, there's a million. There's so much. I always say, someone asked recently, what's the difference between when you first got in the online world in 2011 versus now? And I say in 2011, when Instagram didn't exist and Facebook was still relatively new and the main way people got fitness information was in long form articles. I was like, people didn't know what to do. They just didn't know where to go, what to do. There's a lack of information that was readily available. Now there's so much information that they just don't know who to trust. They don't know what's right. And it creates a lot of confusion

and that leads to inaction. And so, I mean, there's a bunch, whether it's like, I made a tweet once that people loved it. I was like, some people say don't eat carbs because carbs make you fat. Some people say don't eat fat because fat makes you fat. Some people say don't eat protein

because protein's gonna hurt your kidneys and also too much protein turns into fat. Some people say, and then I said, but so basically just don't eat anything at all. But also that makes you fat because starvation mode. It's like, there's so many myths out there. It's like the reality is that's why I like to go back to don't eat like an asshole. Like we know what that means. Like we, we know what that means, but don't be an asshole to yourself when you do eat like an asshole. So my way of saying, do your best to eat the highest quality food, the most fruits, the most vegetables, the most like high quality proteins on a consistent basis, but don't allow yourself to

guilt yourself for getting anxiety or feel bad for enjoying a slice of pizza at your daughter's birthday party. Like there has to be balance. And I think one of the aspects of creating balance is through letting people know in order to create balance, there has to be balance and i think one of the aspects of creating balance is through letting people know in order to create balance there has to be periods of unbalance you have to toe the line to know like where like okay this is too far it's like and realistically if we really break it down i don't know if i would have such a good relationship with food now if i didn't go so far with binge eating i wouldn't i number one i might i don't know if i would and i definitely wouldn't been able to help as many people because i wouldn't understand the psychology of it i wouldn't understand the behavior of it i might understand like look at the science of what

happens when you binge eat but sort of like strength training it's like it's one thing to know how to get stronger it's another thing to actually like get really strong like the mentality of it it's so you can understand the science of strength training you can understand programming but you know lifting 500 pounds is very different than learning, like talking about lifting 500 pounds, the psychology of it, like the fear of going to the bar and like worrying about, are you going to hurt yourself? Like how do you handle it? The, the psychology of the behavior aspect of it. So I think one of the best ways to actually create balance in your life is to sometimes go to the extreme and then, okay, I know where the extreme is now. Now I can come back and learn where that balance is. Um, what is one of the more inflammatory posts that you posted that

maybe people may have misunderstood? That's a great question. Oh man. Let's see. I mean, usually some of the, a lot of stuff I see, the responses are usually pretty darn positive. Yeah. And it's usually you making light of, you know, like, I love the carrot thing the other day where, you know, somebody was asking the question about like, you know, you know, carrots making people fat, like that kind of stuff is, is amazing. Cause it's like, well, let's just really think about this for a second. I don't really think there's a problem with carrots, you know, I don't think there's a problem with, you know, vegetables or think there's made major problem with just people, you know, finding things that taste delicious and they overdo it on them.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's interesting, like the people who will, especially after a period of time, people will, if they like you, they'll follow you. If they don't like you, they'll unfollow you. But I think a lot of the biggest negativity and inflammatory responses that I've gotten have come around. Oh, I know for sure. Saying a calorie is a calorie.

People lose their shit when I say that. Like people get really mad. No, it's not. They get really mad. And it's funny. I've offered to debate people. I've offered to pay people to debate me on it and no one's taken me up on it yet but when you really don't understand when you when you're saying i when you're saying a calorie isn't a calorie you're not understanding the definition of what a calorie is and like we have to understand we're

talking about calories we're talking about a unit of energy just measurement that's all it is just like a mile it measures how long a mile is it's like how long a distance you're traveling it doesn't matter if you're in the forest doesn't matter if you're on pavement doesn't matter if you're in the sand doesn't matter if you're in the forest. It doesn't matter if you're on pavement. It doesn't matter if you're in the sand. It doesn't matter if you're in water. A mile is always a mile. It might take you longer to run a mile on sand than it does on pavement, but it doesn't change the fact that you're still running a mile. Same thing with the calorie.

If you're looking at calories in an apple versus calories in a donut, it's just a unit of energy, how much energy is in that food. The macronutrient composition, the micronutrient composition changes radically, and that composition of it will radically affect how it affects your body, how it affects you psychologically. And it can make one food better or worse for you on a long-term basis from both a physiological health and a mental health aspect. But it doesn't change the fact that the unit of energy, the unit of measurement is still the same regardless of what food you find it in. Yeah, and I would even say that like – I mean better is always better, right? I mean we can just say that an apple is like, it would simplify it.

They can just say, let's just say, I don't know, a handful of apples, you know, is a similar amount of calories than donuts, you know? But I think common sense would just tell us that better is better, you know? And I think people should just kind of, like, leave it at that, you know? There's no reason to get all crazy and hyped up about, hyped up about what's going to have more of a negative impact. Because I think if we start to really think about all the different food options that are out there and we start to think about like the nitrates that might be in some of the foods and we start to think about some of the fillers and some of the this and some of that, and we start to think about all those things, like are those things making us less healthy?

Yeah, probably. But so is driving our car, you know? And so it's just pollution and destruction of the earth, like all these things. The earth is already tainted. It's already fucked up. And some of the foods and some of the stuff that we're consuming probably might even pale in comparison to like what we're breathing and what we're drinking you know that there's

toxins in our in our uh in our tap water you know i mean there's it's it's crazy there's a lot of things so you you don't i don't think it's a great idea to like try to bottle yourself up and and think like you know you need to fucking shrink wrap yourself but that would be unhealthy unhealthy too. But you think you're going to like wrap yourself up in something and protect yourself away from everything just because you had, you know, grass fed, you know, farm raised omega three fucking eggs or beef or whatever the hell it is. It's that if you believe that that helps you, then that's awesome. And that's what you should lean towards and go towards that. But if you don't really fucking care, I think that's fine too.

I don't think, no one can really prove that you're going to die faster from eating a burger from McDonald's versus eating a grass-fed burger. However, I'll go back to what I said originally, better is probably better and you should probably just use some common sense and say, that probably makes more

sense for me to eat that thing that was cared for a little bit more. That's exactly right. It's 100%. And you can always go back to like, all right, I'm going to get this really fresh meat, cook it myself, I know what's in it, everything like that, versus going somewhere else and I don't know what's in it and there's obviously a lot of sodium,

whatever is else in it. It's like, which one is eating like an asshole more? Better is better. You know it. We know it intuitively, but we so overcomplic in it. It's like, which one is eating like an asshole more like better is better. You know, it's like, we know it intuitively, but we so overcomplicate it. You know,

I'm curious about this in terms of like where you are now, as far as like the people you coach in the online type business, do you work with anyone in person other than like when you worked with Gary or? So right now it's all online. Um, occasionally I'll have people if they're traveling from either out of town or whatever, they'll say, could I do a one-on-one session with you? And, now it's all online. Um, occasionally I'll have people, if they're traveling from either out of town or whatever, they'll say, could I do a one-on-one session with you? And, and I'll do that. But because I travel so much, uh, and because like I have,

I have so much other going, so much other stuff going on. It's hard for me to commit to coaching in person right now on a consistent schedule, but I coach for years and years and years in person. And I very much believe for anyone who wants to be an online coach, being an in-person coach will make you a better online coach, but being a better online coach will not make you a better in-person coach. So I very, I think coaching in person is the best way to get actually better at coaching. How did you build that? Like, cause be like, were you doing, have you been doing online for a long time and how did you like transition from in-person to online from in-person to online? in person to online so well actually so from wrestling when i was cutting from 112 to 103 i was a freshman i was like 13 14 years old going up against 16 17 18 year old kids so

i uh technically was a good wrestler endurance wise i was a good wrestler but strength wise going up against those older kids i didn't have it so i wanted to learn how to get stronger while i was losing weight for wrestling and i applied to intern at a gym nearby. Actually, the first gym that I applied to said, no, our clients don't want a high school kid walking around. So I applied to another gym. Turned out to be a huge blessing because they were huge fans of Lou Simmons, huge fans of Eric Cressy, huge fans of Dan John, huge fans of Pavel Sotsulin. They were very science-based. So from 14 years old, I was in a very science based gym. And, and so that's really where I started coaching. And so from there, it's like, I just became obsessed with it. I was

reading everything, going to seminars, learning from a really young age and coaching people for hours and hours and hours. And when I went to Westside, got my website, started writing, and I didn't, at that was 2011, July, 2011. coaching. Wasn't really a thing then there were some people doing it, but it wasn't big at all. Uh, so when I started my website, I didn't even know a business was possible. I didn't know PayPal existed. Um, I was just making content and slowly and surely people started to reach out and be like, could you write my programs? And I would do it for free. It was like, yeah, I love this. And I remember the first time someone reached out and they're like, how much do you charge for online coaching? It was this woman from Brazil. And I was like, yeah, I love this. And I remember the first time someone reached out and they were like, how much do you charge for online coaching?

It was this woman from Brazil. And I was like, 300 bucks. Just made it up. And she was like, okay, how do I pay you? Oh, my God. That's crazy. And so I figured I Googled like how to make payments online, found PayPal. And over time, you know, I built my online coaching business in college.

Basically, literally just writing content online. People would find me and like I wasn't advertising when I'm on coaching, but people would ask. And so by the time I got out of college, I had an online coaching business. And then I moved back to Boston. I was going to University of Delaware, moved back to Boston. I was coaching in person and I was doing that for the better part of six months. was doing that for the better part of six months, did not like the guy I was working for, really dogmatic, very like old school. And so I made the decision. I was like, I have enough online where I can do it myself. So I moved in with my mom, just did online stuff for better part of a year and a half until the point where I had enough of an online support that I could go off on my own. And actually I moved to Israel and I was in Israel for a while, just like working on my online coaching business and building it up, making more content. And I will say, I think one of the really important factors that allowed me to switch online was the people who were my in-person clients. I still have people that I coached in 2013, 2014 that are online clients that like, they've just stayed with me because we built

such a deep connection from that in person. I think transferring people from in person to online. First, what I started to do was I would say, I'd be like, listen, like if I was training them four times a week, number one, that's a lot of money on their end in person. And I was like, Hey, I'm doing this online coaching program. How would you feel about if we met two times a week? And then the other two times, like I still wrote your program for full, but we'd communicate via email. And I'd be like, it's going to be way less money for you. And it's like helping me build my online system.

They're like, great. And then from two times a week to one time a week. And then eventually it would go from one time a week to two times a month where I would meet. And then one time a month where I'd meet with them, I'd take them through the entire program. Then they'd go do it on their own. And that was how I transferred people

into my online coaching system from in-person. And my in-person business built the beginning of my online business. And then that was enough for referrals and everything from there to then get everything rolling. Wow. You had enough to make the jump. And we talked about that earlier with Andrew, you know, having enough belief in himself that he can go off and, and, you know, get in better shape and, and, uh, start to get leaner. And you got yourself closer to, um, you know, probably a, uh, dollar amount closer to, uh, a reasonable number with clients where you're like, yeah, I could probably, I could probably make the jump. I could probably make the leap. And I think that's where a lot of people get hung up is they're like, you know, when would I know? Or like, you would just know,

like you're going to know cause you're going to feel, you know, you don't want to wait around until you feel totally a hundred percent comfortable. It should be a little bit of like, I don't really know. It's going to be a little bit like that. Yeah. It should be a little bit scary, but there should be enough of a net there to where you feel comfortable. You feel like you're close enough to that to, uh, you know, take on that next that next thing even

for myself with bodybuilding like i would have never done a bodybuilding show if i uh wasn't already in in halfway decent shape i would be like yeah i don't think that's i wouldn't have the belief in myself to even attempt it or try it um what are um share with us uh because i think this is a cool story on how you got the job with Gary V. You also, I guess before you even say that, if you could share with us a story about how you really worked really hard on this program and you thought it was going to kick ass and you thought everyone was going to be pumped about it and it just didn't work out the way that you wanted it to.

So that was the first thing I did. I'll start by saying when I first started creating content online, a bunch of people were like, you got to get an email list. You got to get an email list. And I was like, no, I don't. I was a stupid young kid. And I was like, I don't need it. I was like, if people like my website, they'll go to my website.

I was like, I don't need an email list. So I remember I wrote an article. This was in 2012. I wrote an article, how to stay full on a calorie deficit. I spent like a month wrote an article. This was in 2012. I wrote an article, How to Stay Full in a Calorie Deficit. I spent like a month on this article. It was like so detailed, so helpful, like everything you know how to stay full. And I published it. It got like next to no views, next to no.

And I was so upset because I was like, this is so good. And a couple months later, someone from lifehacker shared it and it went viral i had in like a day i got 24 000 views to my website my website crashed so many people went to it i remember getting a text from uh this guy named roger lawson he was like dude you must be getting so many email signups and i was like i don't have an email list he was like what so he was like we gotta get you an email. I was like, damn it. So I was like, all right, so I need to make, make, they call it like a lead magnet to get something that is valuable for people. So they'll want to sign up for your email list because people say it's always, it's,

it's for free. It's like, well, no, like they're paying you with their email and they're paying for like giving you access into their inbox. They're paying for something. So I, uh, I was like, all right, you know what? Like I'm super into like optimal warmups because I had been like studying Eric Cressy stuff and the anatomy and physiology.

And I was like, all right, I'm going to make the most incredible warmup manual. And realistically, I think probably it is one of the most incredible warmup manuals. It's so in-depth, so like intensive, so meticulous based on every single body part and joint and movement, mobility, stability, blah, blah. I went nuts on it. And I made this whole thing. I was so super excited about it. I put it out there. I was like, it's free guys. It's free. Like just put your

email in, you get it for free. And not one person got it. Not one person. I was like, what the fuck? I was like, I was like, this is free. Why aren't you getting it? And then later, obviously, it's like, well, no one likes warming up. Why are they going to get this? Why would they get something they don't want to do anyway? I was like, try and make the warm-up sound as sexy as possible. No one's going to want it. So that was a huge mistake that I made. It was a learning experience.

It taught me. Sometimes you have to give people what they want in order for them to get what they need. It wasn't a failure. That was a learning experience. And then you also wrote an article, and this is how you ended up with the job with Gary, right? Yeah. So I love this story because it's very much Gary's thesis. And actually, one thing you said to me when you were on Gary's podcast, you were like,

you'll never know what piece of content is going to change your life. In 2012, I published an article that is to date one of my least viewed, least liked, least shared articles. It was an article about three ways to improve your posture when you're working at a desk. And, you know, it's just like good information, but no one cares. Like no one cared about that one. Like it wasn't something people cared about, but one person commented on it. And one person commented on it. And like, like I still, I try and reply to as many comments as I can. But back then when I would have like, you know, 20 views a day on my website, 10 of which were my mom, the other 10 of which were myself. Like anytime someone commented, I would go over the top. I would go nuts. I think he was actually in Chicago at the time, but from Minnesota. And he just asked me a question. I replied to it. I didn't know who he was, just a random guy. But several years later, that guy ended up switching to health

and fitness and becoming a coach. He ended up moving to New York City for a fitness internship. And through that fitness internship, he ended up meeting Gary Vaynerchuk. And that guy became Gary Vaynerchuk's first personal trainer. And then when his term with Gary was up, Gary was like, who's going to be my next coach? And he was like, I think I know a guy. He's living in Israel. And that guy, his name is Mike Vacanti. And he's one of my best friends in the world. And the only reason that I got the job is because number one, I wrote that article. And number two, I responded to him. because, number one, I wrote that article. And number two, I responded to him. I replied to him.

I helped him out. And from there, he trusted me. He followed all my content. He liked it. And because Gary had a lot of mobility issues and a lot of pain, and Mike knew that that's a specialty of mine, especially working with Eric Cressy, he was like, I know the guy. And that was it. That's how I got the job. I know a guy that's got a fucking sick warm-up manual. Gary, you will not believe it. It'll knock your socks off. You're going to was it. That's how I got the job. I know a guy that's got a fucking sick warmup manual. Gary,

you will not believe it. It'll knock your socks off. You're going to love it. Oh man. It's, it's one of my favorite stories because so many people will just see what I have now. They're like, ah,

so lucky. Like whatever this, like you don't like, I've been doing this every day since 2011, since July, 2011. It's like you only see the successes most people don't see they don't they might see the failures but they don't remember the failures they only remember like

when they're comparing themselves to you and they think like oh that person is doing so well that's so sick i'd love to do what you're doing you're like no you wouldn't like no you would like obviously like you do feel blessed and stuff but there's there's an old story about a golfer who like they got this guy you know says to him him as he's as he's just knocking these balls out of the park he's just smashing them and and he has a beautiful uh stroke and everything and uh the guy walks up to him and he just kind of caught the guy on like a not not a good day and he's like man i'd love to be able to drive the ball like you and he's like no you wouldn't you know like you would like to only do it like if it was easy probably it was easy for you you'd

probably enjoy that but if your hands were bleeding if you had the calluses if you hurt your back as many times as I have like and if you're doing in the rain and doing it when you don't want to do it and you're you know the guy kind of like went on and on but yeah it's a good point that you know there's a lot of things that happen um and it takes takes a lot to get yourself uh to be able to be recognized by somebody like uh gary v what is the coolest most impressive thing that you've ever seen gary v do you know besides push-ups and a slingshot obviously which he does love that um i would say and this is again it's you know it's not sexy it's not fancy but that dude works harder than anybody i've ever seen in my life not just one day or one week but i coached him seven days a week for three years straight

and for three years i mean he didn't stop it was just like that's what he does that's what he does it's just like and people look at him like oh man like i would love what he does. That's what he does. It's just like, and people look at him like, Oh man, like I would love what he has. And it's like, well, no, you wouldn't like that guy gets next to no sleep. He is in charge of over 800 employees. He's putting out fires constantly and still staying the most optimistic person I've ever met in my life. It's like, if anyone like people see what he does online sort of but they don't really understand it wasn't until i actually got his schedule i got and his google calendar and i was like before i started working with him they added me the calendar so i could see what was going on every minute of every day is booked from 5 36 in the morning until midnight one two in the morning

it's like yeah i remember you telling me that showers were on there. Yeah, showering, travel, driving to work, everything. Who has a shower written into their schedule? Every day. Absolutely crazy. But that was probably the best lesson I learned from him too is when I started working for him, I thought that I was working hard.

I think I was working decently hard hard but when you're around that it's like being around like world record lifters world like like high level jiu-jitsu athletes like when you're around the best of the best of the best just being around them makes you better because like you realize you could work so much harder you just and you're but you're seeing it day in and day out and I think that's the important thing you know it's not like it's not like you trained them for three days you You know, you were, you've been around him. You've been in car rides with him.

You've been in airplanes with him. You've been, you know, all over the world with him really. And you had firsthand experience of seeing that every single day. What is kind of the, he, he seems,

you know, I had the opportunity to meet him and stuff. He seems like a really cool guy, but he seems very genuine. He seems like he, he does give a shit. He seems like a really cool guy, but he seems very genuine. He seems like he does give a shit. He seems like he cares about people. What's kind of the coolest thing you've seen him maybe do for somebody else that you maybe had an opportunity to witness?

Or even for yourself. That's a great question. No one's asked me that. The first thing that comes to mind is something I've never even told anyone. It's a really cool story. I remember one time, I think it was early on we were we were in canada i believe he had just given a a huge keynote people went nuts it was great they always do and uh he's in the back of the car and he's always he's dming he's just answering

comments like not talking to anybody and um he gets a message from a random person and the random person is like just basically saying uh hey i don't have the money to like to your next keynote like i think i'm in the city and like i can't go and gary was like i'll get you a ticket but he didn't screenshot it and put on a story he didn't tell anybody like he didn't like make this like a big deal just he did this for this one person without saying anything to anybody else and i remember him just like we're talking about it. He's like, people don't know 90% of the things that I do, which is like includes like his business and everything else. But it's like most people, they can't do one single good act without wanting to shout about it on social media

and get recognition for it. And I think one of the coolest things about Gary is he'll do it because he loves to do it, not because he needs the recognition for it. And, you know, I learned a lot from that. And it goes to, you know, there are always people who are like, never discount your stuff, never give stuff away for free. And Gary's just the complete opposite. He's like, I'll do everything in my power to help anybody and everybody that needs it without charging. And he's like, obviously it's good to charge and to make money. But, you know, I think one of the things that makes Gary and all humans in our nature to help other people. And he really goes out of his way to help people in every capacity he can. They seem like maybe opposites, but is there any similarities between Gary Vee and Louie Simmons?

They're both psychotic in their own ways, that is for sure. I mean, I think it's a really good point. We were talking earlier. Louie once told me he was like when I stop lifting I'll die it's like he lives to lift like that's his life Gary lives to be an entrepreneur

like in every aspect of his life I mean I'll be with him on vacation and I'll never forget he ordered like thousands of dollars worth of baseball cards or like just sports cards, football, baseball, basketball, everything. And like on vacation, like we're just hanging out and he makes a separate like account online

where like he can start selling these baseball and like flipping them for like pen, like not like much money. Like he doesn't need this money, but he loves it. He just loves being like, I got this baseball card. It's like one of five, like selling it, like making all the copy for it, but he loves it. He just loves being like, I got this baseball card. It's like one of five, da, da, da, like selling it, like making all the copy for it. Like he goes nuts. And like he just gets so excited.

We'll spend hours. He like forced me to spend hours with him doing this. It's just like he just loves it. He loves being an entrepreneur. And I think anyone who's psychotic enough to just be the best of the best of the best of the best and whatever they do is like that's what they love most like that's like that's what keeps them alive before you started working with him did you know who he was yes yeah i had a bunch of his books i had all that it was one of the things when uh when i got the job i actually thought they were playing a joke on me when i first like i didn't think it was real i thought it was a joke and i remember calling mike i was like because i was living in tel aviv and uh and mike was like yeah you got the job i was like oh my

god that's crazy i started planning like my move back to the states and i like was like what if this isn't real and so i called mike i was like listen man i need to be very honest i need to be honest with me like is this a joke because i'm literally about to move from tel aviv to new york and he laughed he was like are you like, this isn't a joke. But it was one of the more odd experiences as a coach, being in charge of someone that you admired and looked up to so much, like telling him what to do. It was very difficult at the beginning being like,

if you had bad technique, like usually with the client, I have no problem being like, no, like this, we're going to fix it. But with him, I was like, oh, like, I don't want to tell him what's wrong. But one of the best things he ever said to me, he was like, listen, I like to know when I'm bad at something because it means that I can improve. And that's, that's always great. And I was like, all right. And then from there, I was, I was never a hesitant to tell him when he could improve. What was one of the biggest things that you learned from him that you applied to your business maybe while you were working with him or afterwards now?

business maybe while you were working with him or afterwards now? Um, and I was talking about this yesterday a little bit was, uh, how to handle negativity and like negative comments from people. Um, so it's, people often ask me what I learned from him and they want tactics. Like they want like, well, what business strategy is like, I didn't learn any business strategies. I learned mindset and emotion and how to better control my emotions and better assess my emotions, be more self-aware. And I remember like I asked him one day, cause I got like super mad at some comments online. And like, it really got under my skin. Like when people are so mean and negative for no reason. And I still get that a little bit. I still, it's like still bothers me. But I remember asking him if he ever got annoyed by it or got upset by it. And he was like, listen, I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me, but

you have to think about it from another perspective. He's like that person, like, as like, first of all, he's like, have you ever spent time going through social media and leaving negative comments on people's stuff? I was like, no, never. He's like, it's because you're happy, happy people. Don't try and bring other people down. He's like, if someone is spending their time to consume your content and then leave a negative mean hurtful comment that person is a very very sad person they're alone they're not happy he's like you should feel really sorry for that person like you should really feel bad for them and i was like wow it's a huge mindset shift so even like when it still bothers me i don't let that emotion dictate my action to the best of my ability. Like sometimes I still mess up. But now I remember one time, the first time

after that conversation, someone with the super mean comment on my, on my Instagram and I DM them, I was like, Hey man, like, I don't know if you're having a bad day or if you're going through something, but if you need anything, I'm always here to help. And I was here to chat. He went, he deleted his comment and he wrote like, this dude just DM me. Like, he's like super nice. And he came back and he DM me. He was like, man, like I had a really shitty day. I'm sorry.

Like that came out of nowhere. I apologize. And then he became a client. It was just because I could have responded being like, you're a dick, whatever. I could have come back with a snarky comment, but it goes back to killing them with kindness. Like, and remembering like that person

isn't a happy person. And like the more you maybe can show them that you're there to killing them with kindness and remembering that person isn't a happy person and the more you maybe can show them that you're there to support them no matter what, odds are or hopefully they'll come back and be appreciative but sometimes they won't and that's okay. It's like you should feel sorry for them and empathetic for them and that's going to help you have a better response.

Sorry, bastards on YouTube. Oh, YouTube is rough. Those comments. Andrew, what you got over there, buddy? Um, been jotting down notes left and right. Yeah. Like crazy. Um, it's been an amazing conversation, like so much information and anybody in like any walk of life is going to get so much out of it. It's just a really intelligent, uh, conversation. So it's my job to kind of bring it down a couple notches um during your 30 days of uh big max uh there had to have been some type of poop story somewhere in there right like um i mean yeah there we actually put some in the in the video i think the on the second day when i had super bad diarrhea oh like really, really bad, I was in the bathroom

and Rico didn't think I could tell he was filming. We've gotten to know each other pretty well and I could tell if he was trying to trick me or something, but I was in the bathroom and he was filming behind the door. He was like, you okay in there? And I knew he had the camera rolling and I was like, yeah, I've got super bad diarrhea. It was awful. It was the diarrhea that really burns your butthole you know like that one that's just like when you're wiping it it's just like

hurting there's nowhere to hide yeah because it just hurts and i don't my girlfriend's gonna kill me for saying this she buys the toilet paper that's like not like soft and i was like why are you doing this and she was like i like it better i'm like this toilet paper like it melts when you have like diarrhea like this is like the it just like disintegrates and i was like we need to like invest in better toilet paper but it's like that's what she prefers like all right whatever you're the boss you gotta get wipes get wipes wet wipes oh i can't believe i haven't done that yet yeah yeah that's what you get yeah so that was that was a brutal poop story diarrhea Diarrhea story. So like during the, uh, the filming or during the, the, uh, the whole journey, like

some people are going to think like, dude, a Big Mac a day. That sounds great. Like, was it awesome? No. By the, by the third day I was sick of it. I was sick, but it was, uh, it was arguably the, the most rewarding piece of content that I've ever made just to see like the thousands of messages that I got from people being like I've struggled with disordered eating and food anxiety for a long time. Like I haven't been able to – a lot of people like they struggle with seeing their weight and they get discouraged when their weight fluctuates up and they quit. And they're like – I still get messages from daily people being like, you know, I've been more consistent now than ever. And I think one of the major goals of that was to reduce food anxiety, help people have a better, healthier relationship with food, and also to help people be more consistent and help people realize if you're judging your progress based on something you can't control, you're setting yourself up

for failure. So a lot of people being like, I just, I remember the first time I was outrageously consistent with the fat loss program. Uh, I was in college, uh, you know, Martin Birkin? Uh, no, I don't. So Martin Birkin, he, he is like the guy who popularized intermittent fasting. Like he owns lean gains.com. And I remember, uh, Oh, I have, I have heard of him. He's in Sweden. He's incredibly intelligent. He was the guy like in the early 2000s who was battling people on the bodybuilding.com forums. They were always like six meals a day, six meals a day. He's like, guys, I promise you it's not true. And he was like citing research

and no one really believed him until it became a huge deal. But I remember I hired him and I emptied my bank account to hire him. I had like a little over 300 bucks and he charged 300 bucks for 12 weeks. And I was like, I have to do it. I have to learn like, cause the success stories on his page were remarkable. It's like, this guy knows the key to fat loss and getting abs. And like, I was like probably around 13, 14, 15% body fat at the time. And like, I just couldn't get

abs no matter what I did, no matter what I tried. And, uh, so I hired him. I emptied my bank account. And for the first time in my life, I like legitimately was 100% consistent for 90 days straight. And I got abs. I got shredded. And I remember just when it was all said and done, like all he gave me was my calories and macros and a three-day-a-week strength training program.

And that was it. I just followed that 100%. It was the first time I ever did that. I didn't modify it. Whenever people are like, well, I'm doing this program, but I'm modifying it. I'm like, then you're not doing the program. It was like when 531 came out, people were all the, there were a bunch of, I love 531. I think it's one of the best programs. It's so simple, so effective, but people are like, oh, I'm modifying

531. I'm like, why? It's great. Do it. And people are like, well, I'm not making progress. I'm like, if you're not making progress, odds are it's a consistency issue. And I remember the first time that I was outrageously consistent with something. I was like, this is what I need to help people do. People know what to do, but they're not doing it. And if we can figure out how to just get them to be more consistent, not quit at the first like possibility of failure, then they'll be more successful. Sounds very familiar. sounds very familiar yeah um shit dude what i was gonna ask you something um it lost i'm lost sorry okay there is this then while andrew's thinking about that i really wanted to know this you know how you did that um this year you're not drinking any alcohol do you do a yearly type of challenge or was that just you said came up with that this year and you're like i'm just

gonna do that this year that was random like, I'm just going to do that this year. That was random. It was completely random. Um, it was something where I was just like, I realized, I think the biggest catalyst was, I realized the only reason I was drinking was because I was at a social event. I sort of felt like, well, I'll do this to like, cause everyone else is. And I was like, that's a really stupid reason to do something. I was like, sometimes I get headaches when I woke up from it. I don't drink a lot. Like even just one Moscow Mule would give me a headache in the morning.

So I was like, why am I doing this? Like it costs a significant amount of money and like, I'm not really enjoying it. It doesn't, I'm not getting drunk. Like it's not like making me happier. It's like, I was like, why am I doing this? Just because I'm in a social situation, other people are doing it.

So I was like, all right. And I did it with my girlfriend. I was like, let's do like a year with no drinking. And she loves wine. She loves wine. She was like, really?

I was like, yeah, I mean, I'm not going to force you, but I'm going to do it. And she was like, you know what? I'll do it too.

And like, we've done it together. And guarantee, she's going to have a lot of wine as soon as it's over. But I think it, I think, and maybe I will make it a yearly thing. Now that you bring it, it's a great point. I think she's going to have a lot of wine as soon as it's over. But I think it – and maybe I will make it a yearly thing now that you bring it up. This is a great point. I think it's cool to have these challenges, like something to stick to. It doesn't have to be outrageously difficult, but something to challenge yourself to give yourself something to strive for.

It might seem insignificant, but I think it's valuable. Okay. Yeah. I was just thinking – and it's not to be mean or anything but like we i'm already offended so we joke around about like people's excuses like i'm gonna start monday or like in sema's friend was saying like i'll wait till the new year uh the best one i've heard recently was i can't go on a diet because there's a recall on romaine lettuce oh my god uh if you can do you have any of like the

like most odd excuses you've heard of why people can't go on a diet well after that one nothing i could say could tell i mean i was like are you serious fucking nonsense um i one of my favorite excuses for lifting this was funny uh it wasn't even my client. One of my buddy, his name is Eric. He's a strongman competitor in Boston. He owns Titan Barbell. Amazing gym. We were working at this gym in Boston and I'll never forget just like looking at him as he watched his phone, he just shook his head. He was like, you know something just happened. He was like, I was like, you're right. He's like, my client just canceled on me i was like are you all right he was like yeah yeah he's like it's not i'm not mad about that i'm mad at the excuse that he just gave me and he was like what do you i was like what do you say he was like his infraspinatus is flaring up

and i was just like it was one of those things where it's like that's the overthinking to the max is like you cancel your personal training session because your infraspinatus is funny the fact that you could even identify that it's that specific muscle it was uh you know i mean but there's a million different ones but i think a lot of it just comes from people don't want to do it yeah and you can find any excuse you want when you don't want to do it which is why you have to that conversation with yourself like are you ready to prioritize it or not yeah yeah i don't even know what muscle that is nor how to pronounce it. So that's good.

Gets one more excuse out of the, out of the way for me. There's, there's a saying that says, you know, when you find things that you, you can't do, it means that you must,

you know, I can't find the time to do this or I, I don't think I can do that. Well, that means you probably, uh, I probably should work on it a little bit. Yeah.

I can't die. I can't die at the way you do. Well, maybe not right away should work on it a little bit. Yeah. I can't diet. I can't diet the way you do. Well, maybe not right away, but you could practice it. I can't write the way you do. Well, yeah, not at the moment, but maybe if I worked on it. Yeah. Maybe I could smoke you. Who knows?

Let's see. Anything else for this guy? Actually, you know, you mentioned that book, Motivational Interviewing. Yeah. Are there any other, like, resources and books that you think that trainers should get their hands on? Trainers and coaches. Stop holding out on us.

From a behavioral perspective? Behavioral, like even certification wise, like what you think individuals should pay attention to. Because like you're precision nutrition certified, right? Yeah. So I haven't re-upped it. So technically not still certified. I'm Westside Barbell certified, but most gyms when they hear that, they're like, get out.

That's the usual response to that certification. When people ask me what my top recommendation for a certification is, I'm always like, get an internship. Cool. I would way rather you spend time learning from a coach in a facility than spending $500, $800, $1,000, $1,200, $2,000 on a certification. Not that certifications are bad. I think there are some great ones out there. But I think if you want to be a great coach, there's no better learning option than to coach. And interning at Westside, interning at cressy performance i learned more from three months at cressy performance than i did in four years of college

and like it's just it's the fastest way to absolutely just skyrocket your your your your coaching ability your anytime you want to do something there's nothing better than doing it that's it so i mean i would say if if there's anything that you could do is get an internship. Um, I would say, uh, from a book perspective, unfortunately, I have yet to find any resource about behavior change in psychology better than motivational interviewing. And, uh, I know precision nutrition does include some of that within their certification process, which is why I promote it very much. But they don't go too in-depth on it, which is where I think just go straight to motivation interviewing for sure. And Harry Potter.

And Harry Potter. Actually, to be very frank with you, whenever people ask me, well, how do you become a better writer? I was like, well, number one, write more. But number two is read stuff outside of the fitness industry. And I always say, read Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling is a genius. You read a chapter of her book and like, you'll be a better writer from it. It's like, you see words you wouldn't have thought of. You see descriptions, you see the way like you can create imagery in someone to create an emotional response. When you really think about it, helping someone make a behavior change is a lot based on

emotional response. And it's like, when you can do that in your writing, when you can create that emotional response of people, whether it's writing or speaking video, whatever. But when you can get better at creating an emotional response within people, you've won. Like people know what to do. Logically, people know smoking cigarettes is bad for them, but people still go out and people today will go out and get their first pack of cigarettes ever, even though there's a skull and crossbones on it. But one of the best ways to help people stop smoking cigarettes, prevent them from is showing them like a lung with emphysema, a lung from lung cancer, from smoking. It's like, it's just the emotional response that you can get from it. And so I think learning how to create that emotional response through communication and through writing is like one of the best things you can do. Made to Stick is an amazing book. Chip and Dan Heath, they're tremendous authors, very science-based, but it's all about the concept of making ideas more sticky. People know what to do, but how do you say things in a way that people will always remember? So for example, I guarantee you, anytime you ever hear the concept around

calories a calorie, you'll always think of the mile. From this point forward, you will always remember that mile example. Just like that'll, it's sticky. The saying that I grew up with is like, eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a popper. Like that's what like, just always remember that.

My mom said that to me as a kid and for generations, people have said this, but it's been sticky. People just repeated it over and over and over again. And it's learning how to, I mean, if you really want to do the long and the short of it is getting really good at making analogies and making giving people analogies teaching but it's a skill to do that and that book helped me a lot learning how to help people relate to things more rather than just only if you only focus on nutrition they don't understand nutrition it's hard to relate to it but all of a sudden for example people like

okay calorie counting is like a disordered eating. It's like when I was like, okay, but tracking your finances isn't disordered. Like why is tracking your calories disordered? It's learning how to create these examples and analogies that really stick with people. So I think, and for me with coaching, programming is very important, right? Learning how to write a great program, learning how to exercise, learning how to do nutrition coaching, but you could have the best program in the world, but if someone's not following it, it doesn't matter. So for me, equally, if not more important as getting, learning how to be a great coach and learning how to write good programming, learning how to

nutrition, do nutrition coaching is learning how to communicate and communication, whether it's through social media, whether it's through email, through phone, podcast, whatever. It's like, when you become a better communicator, you actually don't just tell people what to do, but you help them make that decision on their own to make the change. And that's where I think, uh, made the stick. Uh, uh, I believe the, another book there, it was called the power of moments, which is another tremendous book. Uh, the, a lot of the idea of it being, we don't always remember. We don't remember everything. We usually remember individual moments that cause a big spike in emotion.

And so learning how to create these moments deliberately in life to really help make things stick, to help people make better decisions. And one of the examples they use in the book is like if you're going to Disney World, you know, you don't remember the entire trip. But, you know, you remember on the flight down, like your kid was crying so loud and screaming that they shit themselves. And you remember that moment. So that's like a bad moment. But then maybe you go out and you land and then you're going in the hotel. You don't really remember everything, but they come up and greet you and they give you champagne. You just remember that moment.

Oh, they give you free champagne. And then you're going through the room. All this other stuff happens. You go out to dinner and there's an issue at dinner there's like an issue like there's a wrong order there's hair in your food glass whatever and the manager comes over and says the meal's on us that's a moment and so basically you'll sort of judge the quality of a trip quality of an experience not based on every single thing but based on the good versus bad moments and like you could have like the kids shitting themselves you could have the bad the not based on every single thing, but based on the good versus bad moments.

And like, you could have like the kids shitting themselves, you could have the bad meal, but that bad moment turned into a good moment because they comped the meal. So it's like, you could look back and like, how was your trip? Amazing. And like, you'll think about like all of the moments overall

and learning how to create those moments with friendships, with relationships, with business, with clients can make a huge difference. So I think that book is tremendous as well. Awesome. You're on your way to Canada? Yes. Yeah.

I think you got to catch a flight. So we got to get you on out of here. What are you doing up there? A seminar? Doing a seminar. Doing a seminar and talking to the coaches about how to communicate better. And then also the members of the gym about how to better incorporate nutrition in their life. Fortis gym?

Is that the gym? So actually, I think that's where I'll meet Omar, but the seminar is in Kitchener, which is just about an hour train ride out of there. So I think we're doing like a snap fitness. Cool. Are you, uh,

traveling around a little bit extra on top of that? Um, in this trip? No, but, uh, just, I'm going to go do that and come right back to New York.

But then I have seminar in, uh, another one in Canada about a month later than in Ireland and Australia later this year, next year. So I've got a lot of speaking coming up. Yeah, that's awesome. Where can people find you? Where can they find out more information about your seminars and some of the knowledge that you have?

So I have my own podcast, the Jordan site, mini podcast, S Y A T T Google. I mean, you just Google my name, you'll find everything. Instagram site, fitness, YouTube, Jordan site. But yeah, feel free to reach out. I'm always happy to help. And thank you both for having me on. Google I mean you just Google my name you'll find everything Instagram Sight Fitness YouTube Jordan Sight but yeah feel free to reach out I'm always happy to help and thank you both

for having me on it's been like I said yesterday it's a blessing to have you in my life and I appreciate you've helped me more than you probably know

thank you so much I appreciate that it's an honor to be here and really thank you so much yeah thank you and the best thing about Pornhub is creamer

strength is never a weakness weakness is never a strength catch y'all later