Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Jordan Syatt and Mike Vacanti on Beating Food Fear, Guilt, and Anxiety

Episode Date: June 29, 2022

Many people get started on their nutrition journeys being told they need to eliminate certain foods, or even entire food groups. In turn, this can cause guilt when you do stray from “the one true diet” and you can end up creating an unhealthy relationship with food, or worse, full-blown disordered eating.  If you’re familiar with my work, you know that you can lose weight and achieve your goals without completely eliminating foods. The key is moderation and doing most things right most of the time. That’s how you make sustainable progress long-term without crashing and burning or bingeing.  And so, part of the solution to helping more people get healthier is education. That’s why I write my books and that’s why Jordan Syatt and Mike Vacanti wrote their new book, Eat It!: The Most Sustainable Diet and Workout Ever Made: Burn Fat, Get Strong, and Enjoy Your Favorite Foods Guilt Free. In it, they break down nutrition myths and diet fads, how to eat sustainably (both with and without tracking macros), and even provide simple strength training programs for both men and women just getting started on their fitness journeys.  In case you’re not familiar with Jordan Syatt and Mike Vacanti, they’ve both been on the podcast before. They’re Gary Vaynerchuk's personal trainers and have their own online coaching businesses (Syatt Fitness and On the Regimen, respectively) where they’ve helped thousands of people build better bodies and get healthier. They also host their own How to Become a Personal Trainer podcast.  In the interview, Jordan, Mike, and I discuss . . .  The trials and tribulations of writing Eat It! and the origin of the title  The different styles of dieting taught in the book  The concept of “shame” and whether it’s productive towards getting healthy  Practical tips to feel less hungry  And more . . .  So if you want to learn about how to eliminate the feeling of guilt in your diet and lose weight and get stronger sustainably, you’re going to enjoy this episode!  Timestamps:  0:00 - Save up to 25% during my July 4th sale! https://buylegion.com/  5:48 - When is your new book out? 5:57 - What was the process of writing your book like?  13:01 - What is the title of your book?  16:17 - What are your thoughts on feeling guilty for yourself when having an unhealthy lifestyle?  24:28 - What type of dieting are you teaching in your book?  26:49 - If someone isn’t used to tracking food, what do you think is the best method for them?  32:54 -What is your approach when it comes to calories vs macros and does it matter if the person’s goal is muscle gain or fat loss?  38:19 - What are some tips that work for being less hungry when cutting?  1:00:22 - What kind of training do you focus on in your book?  1:07:13 - Where can people pre order your book?  Mentioned on the Show:  Go to buylegion.com and save up to 25% during my big July 4th sale! Use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% on any non-sale items or get double reward points!  Jordan and Mike’s book Eat It!: https://www.amazon.com/Eat-Sustainable-Workout-Strong-Favorite/dp/0063015005/?tag=mflweb-20

Hello, and welcome to Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for an interview I did with my buddies Jordan Syatt and Mike Baconti, who wrote a new book called Eat It! The Most Sustainable Diet and Workout Ever Made. Burn fat, get strong, and enjoy your favorite foods guilt-free. And in this interview, we kind of go all over the place. We talk about beating food, fear, guilt, and anxiety. We talk about some of the trials and tribulations that Jordan and Mike went through in writing their new book. We talk about shame, feeling shame over being unhealthy and unfit, and if that can actually be productive, if that can actually be used as a spur to help people do what they need to do to get healthier and fitter. Jordan and Mike share some practical tips to feel less hungry, especially when you are cutting and more.

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in our store. And so again, the URL is by legionion.com, B-U-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N.com. And I would recommend going now before things start running out of stock because it happens every year. It is basically impossible to predict which products are going to explode, not to speak of flavors. So if you want to make sure that you get what you want and you save big on it, go to buy fun. I'm stoked. I just hope Mike isn't mad that we just jumped this on him like seven seconds ago. We're like, Mike, get on the podcast. I can't remember the last time I went on anyone else's podcast. And this is the one that last minute I'm literally about to leave my house. I'll cancel my plans for this hangout.

I'm pumped. He was literally like, I could hear you in the driveway about to get in the car to go. I'm like, go inside, get on the podcast right now. Yeah. Yeah. For people listening. So Jordan and I are about to start. And then it occurred to me that actually originally intended for Mike to join us, but I guess maybe I didn't pass it along to Damien who works with me. And then so, so Jordan calls him and I hear Mike saying something about tuxedo and going somewhere and Jordan's like, well, are you at your house? Do you want to just come on a podcast instead? And here we are. And here we are.

You got fitted for a tux and you went to a wedding and the tux didn't fit properly. They gave me the wrong tuxedo and the wrong shoes. So I had this like Tony Soprano. Oh, you should have just went with it. I did. I had no other option. The wedding was on Sunday. The shoes were like these tiny little things. It was a was. Yeah, it was a was. But the parachute MC Hammer pants were rocked and we got through it.

The picture you set was so funny. My wife looked at the picture. She was like, why does he look so mad? I was like, because none of it fits. I was at a wedding on Saturday and I found out on Friday that apparently I don't have any suits that fit because I remember, I can remember a time years ago when I wore a suit. I don't remember if that was the last time I wore a suit, but I don't wear suits often. So, I have a few. So, it's Friday and I'm packing to, no, it's Thursday because we left on Friday and I'm packing to leave.

And, you know, pants are three inches of space and jacket too big. I'm like, oh, whatever. Just too much lean mass? I'm too jacked and shredded is the problem, actually. That makes sense, but for real, you are extremely jacked. It's actually pretty ridiculous. I appreciate the flattery, although in the context of what jacked really looks like in social media, the fact that I'd say I'll give

myself credit for looking pretty good for not being on drugs. That I can agree with. Social media is not the metric. Like it's true. It's true. It should not be. So you guys, uh, have a new book that is, when is the book coming out? It's not out yet, right? Tuesday, June 7th is the release date.

Every, every so often, uh, people reach out to me who are interested in writing. And so there probably are some people listening who, love to hear a little bit about that process of, like you said, Mike, the first time doing it, maybe some of the things that you've learned. And then I would love to hear, of course, about the book itself and why did you write it? Yeah, I think we should tell the story. It's a funny story. So we got to work with an amazing publisher, really an incredible opportunity to work with HarperCollins. They've done amazing throughout the whole way through. The only hiccup, and this was a major hiccup, was to be fair to them, when we signed the book deal, neither of us have written a book before, or at least not like a published book.

And so they were like, you know what, just for safety on their end, they're like, we want you to use a ghostwriter. And that was a non-negotiable for the contract. It was a non-negotiable. It was like, this has to happen. And we're like, oh, geez. So we agreed to it initially. And we interviewed a number of ghostwriters, and we found one who we thought would be a really good fit. And they wrote about three quarters of the book after a lot of interviews and discussions and sending them content. And so much time devoted to giving them all of our information. And we got about three quarters of the book and we were like, there is no way we're publishing this. It's not our voice.

It's not our information. It goes against a lot of what we believe. And so we told them, we were like, we told them, we were like, there's no way we are publishing this book. End of story. So then Mike and I went back and wrote the book from page one from scratch, like from scratch. And, and like, even though we actually paid the ghostwriter out of our own pocket, it's not covered by the publisher. We paid the ghostwriter out of our own pocket. We then went back and rewrote the entire book. And now we love it.

Now it's like, this is really our book. And for whatever it's worth, I think it was, obviously I would have rather not spend all that money on something that we're not using at all. But it was a good learning experience. And it makes for a great story. But now I'm like, I'm so glad we can look back and say we wrote every single word of that book. And it's, it's ours. Like, and so even though we had to jump through those hoops, I think it ended up working out really well. Yeah. And you also had the option, of course, of saying, you know what? How about I just give the first payment on the advance back and let's just move on.

But you didn't. So here you are with the book. Because I'm sure you thought about that. You're like, that is an option. I don't have to do this. Yeah. When we sat down, we were thinking like, okay, let's go through and edit ourselves. That can be harder.

That can be harder than just writing from scratch. Which is why it became a rewrite. And to the ghostwriter's credit, that person, it's learning everything that we know about training, nutrition, mindset, basically health and fitness, decades plus combined experience, to learn that in a matter of months and come up with a book from that is very difficult. I empathize with having to learn so many different industries and put that together. But Jordan and I sat down and we're trying to edit and essentially it just became a rewrite. We're pumped with it now. Like we're very happy because it took us a year of a couple hours a day in the morning, basically every day

for a year to get it done. And now we're incredibly happy with it. Yeah. And it's a hundred percent us. There's not a single word from the ghostwriter. And what I was going to say is this, is I think especially when people accumulate an audience and they have the ability to write a book, I think a lot of times what will happen is they just want to get the book out and sell it as quickly as possible to make either more money, get on New York Times bestseller. And oftentimes, the book isn't their best work. It's not something that the book, like they're not super proud of it. They're just like, I want to get this out there. I just want to make more sales. I want to get on the New York Times bestseller. And the book isn't truly representative of what their best is. I can like very honestly say that I'm so proud of this

book because it's like our best work. It's our best work. We've spent a ton of time on it. And I'm very glad that there's, it's just our writing and no one else's writing. Because I think people reading the Ghostwriters work, as much as they were great in many ways, if people read that book with our names as the authors, they'd be like, there's no fucking way they wrote that book. It did not even remotely sound like us at all. And, and matching someone's voice can be very difficult. So, you know, I can understand it's difficult even for editors to do so. So you're giving them your writing and then

they're cleaning it up and they're fixing grammatical errors. And sometimes they'll have suggestions as to maybe how you could recast certain you went through this process so it can be hard for people to match your voice even when they're working with your material all of your words and so i can imagine um again as a ghost writer it is exceedingly difficult to work in something that you don't really understand, not nearly as well as the people you're working for and trying to match their voice when you guys have a distinct voice and have distinct personalities. And it's not just about explaining simple concepts clearly. That's part of it. But I'm guessing, again, given what I know about you

guys, there's some personality in there. There are some jokes. There's a bit of an entertainment value to it as well. There's so many components of it too. It's inherently more difficult than a more simple, like a motivational type book. It's a relatively one-dimensional type of story you can tell, and it's easier to find someone's voice and then just sort of repeat what they say. But when it's, it includes not only science-based information, which in and of itself is slightly more complex and difficult to understand, and then relay that, but also the psychological aspect has client, like a lot of components of working with real clients and trying to, like, if you've never worked with a client, like a lot of components of working with real clients and trying to, like, if you've never worked with a client, how can you be the ghost of someone's voice? Assuming that you know how to communicate with a client. Like there's so many components of the book in there. So many components

of coaching and science and fitness and exercise and nutrition. It's like, that's a really difficult job to do. Yeah. Totally. Totally. And what's the book called by the way? I just show people listening. So they know we haven't even shared the title yet. Eat it, eat it. That's it. And what's the, and what's the subtitle? The most sustainable diet and workout ever made. Cool. I mean, I'm a fan of, of short, of short titles and then using subtitles to, uh, to expound on the process of coming up with a name was super difficult. I mean, we really, we spent a lot of time trying to come up with it. It was, it was, it was so funny when we were at an initial meeting for the book, trying to come up with names. One of the women who

really led the, uh, the, who led the whole team throughout the whole process, she was like, oh, you're from Boston, because I said Wicked. And I was like, yeah, I'm from Boston. And then as a joke, just as a complete joke, we were sort of spitballing title ideas and how this is going to be for people who are very busy or like wicked busy, da, da, da, da, da. And I was just like, oh yeah, wicked busy, wicked fit. And she was like, that's it. That's the title, wicked busy, wicked fit. And I was like, I was joking. But that was the placeholder name for, I don't know, three, six months or so until we were like, no, that, that is a hundred percent, not the name we're using. And then for, I don't know, three, six months or so until we were like, no,

that, that is a hundred percent, not the name we're using. And then, so I don't know, it was probably a good three to six months where Mike and I were really like going back and forth, having long calls, trying to figure out what the hell we're going to come, what we're going to call it. And eventually it was just like, oh, eat it. Like that's, if you really boil down what the message of a huge part of the book is, is it's getting over food, fear, food, guilt, food, anxiety, so much of which plagues, not just the fitness industry, but the world in general, because there's so much misinformation. These foods are good. These foods are bad. These foods make you fat. These foods burn fat, all this stuff. So we were just like, well, the,

the basics of this book is we want you to learn how to eat your favorite foods in moderation without guilt, without anxiety. So you can still, you know, lose fat and get stronger and, uh, and, and love your body and improve your health, uh, without feeling guilt or anxiety. You know, if you have a slice of pizza at your daughter's birthday party or something like, God forbid you enjoy yourself a little bit, but the other way, and this is, you know, Mike and I joke about it because we talk about, well, the next book is going to be called Don't Eat It. Because we talk about how even in this book, we discuss how it's not just eat whatever you want and whatever quantity you want. Like there has to be moderation involved.

There has to be a focus on high quality foods. Even actually, I think one of the funniest parts about the book is the dedication at the very beginning. We dedicated this book to all of the highly palatable foods without which this book would not be possible. Thank you, food scientists, for making food that should never be this delicious and caloric. So even though the book is about learning how to eat without fear or guilt or anxiety, there is also a balanced component towards. But this doesn't mean eat whatever you want, whatever capacity you want. This is about trying to develop a healthy, balanced relationship with food in both directions. Feeling ashamed, right? So, just speaking to this point of feeling guilty, people feeling guilty for eating stuff that they're quote-unquote not supposed to, or maybe going a bit further and feeling ashamed because of their unhealthy lifestyle. Let's say you have somebody who they don't eat well, they don't exercise, they're overweight, they are having health issues. And some people, maybe the healthy at any sizers, would say that you should never feel ashamed. You should just love your body regardless of your circumstances. And a question I just ask is, is shame not the

appropriate emotional response at some point? If you are abusing a dog, if you are abusing a kid, if you are abusing a partner, if you feel ashamed about that, wouldn't most people say, yes, you should, that's appropriate. But if you abuse yourself by eating too much food and drinking too much alcohol and being too sedentary, is shame not an appropriate response? And can you not use that to improve? Yeah. What do you think, Mike? I think you absolutely can.

I think, and this is, I think of shame in terms of good shame and bad shame. And there's probably a technically correct difference, or maybe there are two different words. Mike, you had Dr. Anna Lemke on a couple months back, I remember, which I thought was a fantastic episode. So someone like her could probably give a better definition. But the difference between good shame and bad shame, and there may or may not be a technical difference between the two, or there may be multiple different words for good shame or

bad shame, but the difference between feeling bad or feeling guilty about something that is objectively bad like the examples you gave hit a dog beat a dog feel bad about it or maybe it's you know something as bad as hit your spouse or or child like you know something that i think all humans would agree that you should or maybe maybe verbally abuse maybe it's not even physical violence, but where it's inappropriately harmful. actually that bad. And someone who might have a highly impaired relationship with food for whatever reason, who has been consistent on the workout front, or maybe overly consistent on the workout front, maybe has some obsessive behavior patterns there, but also is in a fixed mindset of, I am never eating any chocolate, any dessert, any processed food, anything along these lines for a long period of time. And when they do, when they quote unquote

slip up after seven months and have that one slice of chocolate cake, they feel extremely guilty about it. They feel a lot of shame, which they absolutely should not because that person didn't do anything wrong. That's where I like to differentiate between a good shame and a bad shame. A shame that is productive to feel this negative emotion that hopefully changes your future behaviors to make you a better person and a shame that you probably shouldn't feel. And if you sat down with a professional, you can work with that person, like a psychologist, you could work with that person to not experience those feelings when you do something as simple and not objectively bad as have a piece of chocolate. Yeah, I think there's a lot to unpack with this.

And I agree with everything Mike just said. The thing that I think about with shame here is when we're looking at what people are eating, they're eating way too much on a consistent basis. We could look at someone who just had one meal that they ate more than they felt like they should have. Maybe they go on vacation and they feel shame about it. It's like, okay, you shouldn't feel shame about this one meal or this one vacation because it's, you didn't do anything wrong. Like your, your health is not dictated by a single food, by a single meal, by a single day. Your health is dictated by what happens over a very long period of time and your habits consistently. So in that sense, eliminating the shame there, because the shame isn't productive,

especially in that sense, like a feeling of shame, like doesn't do anything. And actually, if we look at research around shaming other people, it's not accurate to say shame doesn't work in sparking change, but it's a very small percentage of people for whom it does work. It's actually only about 3% of people who respond well to shaming from a spouse. Let's say your spouse is like, you're overweight, you're fat, you need to lose weight, you're disgusting. That will work for 3% of people. For 97% of people, it actually goes the other way. And so I don't actually have the research to back this, but I

would imagine it's similar individually to yourself when you shame yourself in that same way. Like, I'm worthless, I'm a failure. And I think this really leads towards self-efficacy. And if you don't believe you can succeed and you continue to shame yourself, then why are you going to bother trying? Now, on the other hand, we have people who it's not just one meal or one day or one vacation. It's something that they consistently do for years and years and years on end. Again, I'm probably biased, but I actually don't even think shaming works here because when someone is feeling shame, they often they're shaming, not even necessarily because of the action, but because of what they think the action means. So it's not like, well, it's not they're not feeling shame because of what they eat. They're feeling shame because for so long they've been out of control and they associate that with them being a failure. They will never be able to achieve their goal.

It will never work for them. It's just their whole life. They've always been a failure and that's exactly how it's going to be forever. And they feel shame because they think they're a failure. So I think a lot of the purpose here is rather than saying it's okay, like maybe the health at every size movement, like it's okay to just eat whatever you want. What we're saying is you're not a failure. You can make the change anytime you're ready. If you do make a mistake, it's not the end of the world.

It's saying let's remove this feeling of failure away. It's very obvious. If we look at in any field or in any aspect of life, if someone feels like they they're gonna fail, it's not gonna work, then why would they bother trying? Like they're gonna quit because why would they continue to put time,

effort, energy, money, all this stuff if they're gonna fail anyway? So the sooner we can get people to realize you can and will succeed as long as you don't quit, I think the more that shame dissipates and the more their actions line up with what they actually say they want to do. And just to follow up with all of that, something that I've been saying for some time

is that you can be the person who eats the whole pizza and who still takes care of their health. And you can be the person who takes a week off exercising because you're on vacation and still be someone who trains hard and takes your training seriously. For whatever reason, the human mind tends to catastrophize. We can fall into that trap. Even people, like you're saying, people who are doing very well by all standards can do something that maybe it's something they didn't intend on doing, or maybe it's something that they've been told is bad, but is actually inconsequential, but it can spark a disproportionately negative emotional response.

Yeah, exactly. So in this book, there's obviously, there's diet advice, there's training advice. It sounds like that you're teaching flexible dieting. And is there more though to the construct, so to speak, in how you're teaching people to eat? Are you talking about counting and tracking at all? Or is it more an intuitive, good habits type of approach? Yeah, so we tried to do everything. Because generally, the way that I teach it is more calories and protein-based, just like hit your calories, hit your protein. Mike is often more, not always, but a lot more macros-based. So we have a calories protein option, we have a macros option. And we also have more of like an intuitive option, something where you don't track calories at all. So we wanted to cover all of our bases, just because not everyone is going to be a good fit for calorie counting at every time in their life, not everyone's going to

be a good fit for macro counting, and not everyone's going to be a good fit for macro counting and not everyone's going to be a good fit for a more intuitive not counting approach. So we wanted to put all of the options in there because so much of what this is, is just trying to figure out what works best for you. And even though like, listen, there's a huge obesity problem, not just in the United States, but in the world right now. And so clearly we need to help people figure out how can you lose weight in a sustainable way for you? And well, you don't need to count your calories in order to lose fat. Your calories still always count. So we wanted to make people aware of that. And we wanted to make sure that people knew what they could do in order to lose fat sustainably and enjoyably without it taking over their whole life. And so we literally gave options for all of it. In addition to the tracking that we do advocate

in some capacity for most people who want to lose body fat, if that's one of their primary goals, we also have sections on how to stay more full while in a calorie deficit. We have basically a meal timing section where we talk about different meal timing strategies that can work better or worse for each individual. We have a metabolism section kind of debunking a lot of the common myths about what metabolism is. Got some good quotes from Spencer Nadolsky in that section. Yeah, he was very helpful. And then that's the nutrition section. We also have a training section as well as the book opens with more of a mindset introductory for the first couple of chapters. So what are your guys' thoughts on if people haven't quite worked out which method is right for them or which method is right for

them depending on what they're trying to do? Can you guys speak to, again, so you have calories and protein, which of course is a very workable way of going about it. You have macros, which maybe you can combine those or at least say that they involve either meal planning, like thinking ahead of what you're going to eat, making sure that your calories and protein are worked out or your macros are worked out, and then more or less sticking to the plan or tracking on the fly. And then the kind of just good eating habits approach. What are your thoughts on, just based on your experience working with a lot of people, when these methods tend to work best for most people? Like for example, well, if somebody has a lot of weight to lose, then they don't necessarily have to use one of the quantitative methods. They can just clean up some of their habits and get rid of the soda and implement some of these simple strategies. But then once they get to a certain point, most people have to usually switch over for a period. What are your thoughts on that? In my experience, if somebody

has never tracked before, they couldn't ballpark calories. They might think they're eating 2,000 calories a day, but they're averaging 4,000 calories per day. They haven't even tried it. And they're not making any progress toward their goal and have been struggling with whatever non-quantitative based methods they're implementing around their nutrition and they come to me as a coach and want help with losing body fat, I'm going to have essentially 100% of those people tracking. Like what you just said, Mike, makes a ton of sense. Someone who is very overweight, say has more than 100 pounds of fat to lose, is going to make fat loss progress much easier than someone who is already leaner. They could make one or two simple changes,

add a little bit more activity and stop drinking sugar, calories, call it, will lose a substantial amount of weight from that change in habits alone. But it's very, very difficult for someone to eat intuitively or to just kind of quote unquote, eat healthy for fat loss who has never tracked before. The people I see who make the best progress or have the best success with eating more intuitively, implementing more of like an 80-20, 90-10 approach are people who have already spent a decent amount of time tracking learned it have guesstimates on portion sizes on you know can tell you that a chicken breast is mostly protein and that oil or butter is fat and have that you know what we

would call basic knowledge but that the majority I would say of the population actually still doesn't know at this point. Or that nuts are mostly fat, that they don't have much protein, unfortunately. Or that two tablespoons is, you know, serving sizes, all of these things that you only learn by actually doing. And by the way, learn within two weeks of actually doing. It's not like you need to track for a year to figure out that, oh, this food's very calorically dense. And like, oh, this barely has any caloriesically dense. And like, oh, this barely has any calories in it. You're going to learn this in a matter of weeks. So it is the people who have tried and not even necessarily succeeded, but at least given an honest effort to tracking

that then in the future might see better progress with some kind of intuitive approach. might see better progress with some kind of intuitive approach. Yeah. The only people that I would not have actually physically count calories are people with a history of disordered eating and or binge eating. But ironically, most of those people have counted calories before. Most of the people who have a history of disordered eating do have an experience counting calories. They know how to eyeball portions.

They know what that looks like. I think it's like 99.999% of people, if they're just starting out, especially if they have a significant amount of weight to lose, track your calories for a month. Just do it. It's going to change your life forever. I think, just like Mike just said, most people have no idea how much they're eating they have no they don't even know what they're eating how much they're eating they have no idea that starting off i mean i mean most most people don't even know what a calorie is correct and that's not because they're stupid

it's just because they never cared to look in a dictionary and understand even what it means. Yeah. So I think education has to be the foundation of this. Like it's why you see people like losing weight is actually funnily enough, the easiest part. It's keeping it off. That's the hardest part. And if you look at people who are able to maintain weight loss for years and years and years, their entire life, it's not by mistake. It's due to an education and a base knowledge that they were able to figure out, well, why was I able to lose weight? What was really like causing the weight loss? And now what do I need to do to maintain it? It's not like, okay, well, I did this juice cleanse, and then I was lost a lot of weight. And now I'm just going to go back to what I was doing before,

because they don't know what caused the weight loss. They don't even know the difference between weight loss and fat loss, which are two very separate principles and separate things altogether. They have overlap, but many people just associate weight loss with fat loss and that's it. When you don't come at it with a requisite knowledge, you're setting yourself up for failing and for gaining all the weight back and more, which is why you need that knowledge in the very beginning and starting off with the very basic, what's a calorie? How many am I eating? Yeah. Why does it matter? Yeah. Mike, I'd be curious to hear your point of view on this because over the last one to two years, I historically had had almost all clients tracking protein, carbs, fats, calories, trying to

hit ranges, obviously not hitting numbers exactly. But I have shifted towards Jordan's methodology of calories and protein sometimes with certain clients, but really only when their goal is fat loss. If I have someone who comes to me and wants to build muscle, I'm basically always going to have that person on a high carb, low fat diet. What is your approach when it comes to calories and protein versus macros? And does it matter to you if their goal is muscle gain versus fat loss? My approach is very similar. So, Legion has a coaching service, right? And we've worked with thousands of people. And I don't personally work with anybody at the moment simply because of time constraints. But it's still nice for me to, it helps me kind of just to still understand the current, I guess you could

say, to kind of keep my finger on the pulse of coaching and what is working and what is not working and what else should we try. And calories and protein works really well, especially when you're dealing with ranges. So, you know, some people, they do well with understanding that they can look at their calorie target over the course of a week, as opposed to just one day, and then just have a daily range that we're shooting for. And it's okay if they exceed the top of that range. The idea is to not. Like if you're If you're cutting, that might be your maintenance calories about what you burn in a day might be the top of that range. And the bottom of that range might be no more than a 25% or 30% deficit for the day. And then letting them decide based on

how they feel and what's going on, whether they want to eat a little bit more that day or a little bit less, and then calibrating those ranges based on how they're progressing over the week and looking at their total calorie intake for the week, which means that if they accidentally overate for a few days, then they might want to shoot for the lower end of the range for a few days. And if they can't, that's okay. And so that approach works well with more, I would say maybe a little bit more educated and sophisticated clients. Otherwise, just working with simple daily targets. Like you mentioned, daily ranges, here's your calorie range. Let's try to hit your protein around, keep your protein around here. And let's find a carbohydrate and fat intake that works well for you. At least we find that most people, if they can eat foods that they like, then they settle

into a kind of just a pattern of eating certain things. And there aren't wild variations in carbohydrate or fat intake. There might be depending on like, okay, if it's Memorial Day weekend, there might be a wild variation in calories and a lot of carbs and whatever, and that's fine. But generally speaking, as we know, as far as fat loss is concerned, where your carbs and fats fall, it doesn't matter. Protein is very important. Calories are very important. Carbs and fats are less important. You want to make sure you get enough fat, of course. But then, as you said, Mike, if we're working with somebody who really wants to maximize muscle and strength gain, then it makes sense to add in now the target ranges for the carbs and the fat.

And by default, yeah, we go with a higher carb, lower fat, not inappropriately low, but higher carb, lower fat, high-ish protein diet when helping somebody lean gain just because most people do best with that. And then, of course, if someone's maintaining, it kind of goes back to calories and protein for most people who are maintaining. And most people who do well maintaining, I guess I'd be one of these people and you guys are probably the same. We've done enough meal planning and tracking. We know the foods that we like to eat. We know what those portions look like. We know that our calories need to be in a certain range given our activity level. And we don't weigh and track anything. But because we do tend to eat the same types of foods and pay attention to what we see in the mirror, it just makes it real easy to, if you overeat for a bit, you just under eat for a little bit. And if you find that you've maybe have accidentally been under eating for a little bit and your energy levels are a

little bit low, then you eat a bit more. And so that's been my experience and the experience of the people who work with me. Hey there, if you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome. Thank you. And if you are enjoying this podcast, or if you just like my podcast in general, and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend or a loved one or a not so loved one even who might want to learn something new. Word of mouth helps really bigly in growing the show. So if you think of someone who might like this episode or another one, please do tell them about it. Jordan, you mentioned

less hunger when cutting. What are some tips that work well, that you've seen work well with clients for just being less hungry? Because that is one of the biggest obstacles that we need to overcome if we are going to successfully lose fat and keep it off is it's okay if we're hungry a little bit here and there, but if we're too hungry too often, it off is it's okay if we're hungry, I know a little bit here and there, but if we're too hungry too often, it just makes it almost impossible to succeed, right? Yeah. Yeah. So we have a whole section on this. I think it's a behemoth of a section, but the first thing, and you sort of hit on it right there is a lot of people based on social media marketing and whatnot, people think that you should never be hungry when you're trying to lose fat. And I remember reading Lyle McDonald back in the day.

And I forget, he just had so many great articles up. And I remember I must have, I love Lyle's work. His original work is so good. Like he changed the industry. He really did. If you really think about it, like all of stuff that is all over social media now stemmed from Lyle, Alan, and Martin Birkin. They were really the ones who popularized everything. But I remember reading Lyle and him just making a joke, being like, just suck it up. You're going to be hungry. And I remember just being younger and being like, man, that's just so blunt. And it's so helpful because I thought I was doing something wrong because I was a little bit hungry when I was losing fat. I was like, no, that's, that's part of the process. It's normal. And the same way that when you're trying to gain weight,

you're not going to be as hungry anymore. And it might be more difficult to get your food in because your body is going to, it wants to stay exactly where it is. You, you, you feel like you're force feeding yourself after just a month or month or two, it's not pleasant. It's really not. So number one is understanding a little bit of hunger is not only okay, but it's expected. And in fact, it's something that I used to do with my clients, the clients who swore up and down that they were in a calorie deficit and they were counting properly. I would just ask to be like on a scale of one to 10, one being not hungry at all, 10 being absolutely ravenous, how hungry are you? And

they're, they think they're saying the right thing. They'll say like one, I'm not hungry at all. And I'll be like, okay, well that's the fucking problem. Like you're clearly eating too much then because it's, we're two months in, you should have lost a little bit of weight right now and you should definitely be slightly hungry, like not starving, not ravenous, but you should have lost a little bit of weight right now and you should definitely be slightly hungry like not starving not ravenous but you should feel it it should be there and that tells me that you're probably eating more than you think so number one understanding that number two is i think making sure that you're not taking your calories too low right off the bat if so many people their their whole idea is i want to lose weight as quickly as possible. And so when they do that, they reduce their calories by way too much. And that leads to a host of issues, not least of which

including losing lean muscle mass, losing energy and hurting your performance, oftentimes actually even hurting your sleep, your cognitive abilities. When you reduce your calories too quickly by too much, you're going to be so hungry. It's unbearable. So making sure that you actually have an appropriate caloric range. And then another really, really important one is actually sticking to a consistent eating schedule. And I know in the fitness industry, especially nowadays, we hear people say meal timing doesn't matter, meal timing doesn't matter. And from a fat loss perspective, they're right. It doesn't matter as much as long as calories and protein are in check. But there are other aspects that make things easier and more enjoyable and sustainable.

And when you eat on a regular consistent schedule, which I know can be difficult for people like shift workers and stuff like that, but generally speaking, when you eat around the same times every day, you will start to get hungry around the same times every day. It's sort of like, the way that I explain this is, if you've ever been to like a Thanksgiving dinner, and you get stuffed at like three in the afternoon, like you just ate so much, and you're so full, and you're like, oh my god, I'm never going to eat again. I'm not going to eat for another, for a week. But then four hours later, you're like, you know what, I'm actually pretty hungry again. It's like, yes, it's not because like you haven't had enough food. It's because you're normally, now it's probably about dinner time and your hunger hormones work on a schedule. And so that's what's going to happen.

So if you want to make sure, like make your hunger more predictable, then you can start to eat at the same times every day or within like, I don't know, breakfast between seven and nine, lunch between 12 and one, dinner between like six and eight, whatever it is, have these ranges of time so you can predict when you're going to be hungry so you can make sure you have food available and do your best to diminish it as much as possible. Yep. That works. That works well for even if you're following a type of fasting routine. What are your guys' thoughts on that though? I get asked about it all the time.

And I guess I probably answer, I give my answer once a month or so. It's just still such a phenomenon. Yeah. It depends on what type of fasting we're talking about. My mind immediately goes to a lean gains, Martin Burkins, 16, eight, kind of just like a,

probably because it's how I was- Skip breakfast, basically. Yeah, introduced to it. It's like, skip breakfast, have a coffee, get your shit done in the morning. You don't need to be eating. I think he used some kind of hungry like a lion analogy that really stuck. And that form of skipping a meal so that you can have more calories later in the day, more calories if you're going to go out to dinner, be social. It's just easier to follow that form of

fasting for fat loss for people who want to. I haven't seen people successful in the long term with these long-term fasts for fat loss. I've seen longer-term fasts for, Jordan and I actually talked about this on a podcast not that long ago, spiritual reasons or whether it's just do something difficult or sacrificial, but not for your physical health, fasting, but trying to fast for 36 plus hours because you want to lose body fat. Like it, it, uh, it leads most people to a bad relationship with food to a real binge restrict mindset. Um, so for people who want to skip breakfast, great, do it. I have way more bro in me. I feel like than I lead on. I, at this point, am actually like,

get the extra protein dose in the morning. Like, rather than having two protein intakes a day in these two giant meals, have three. And it's probably going to lead to, over a very long period of time, slightly more muscle gain or more lean mass retention. And also just a more normal, kind of like steady steady sustained eating schedule. Yeah. Yeah. There's a fair amount of research now that supports that. I mean, that's my position on protein timing is if you want to maximize muscle growth, ideally, you're probably having five or six servings of protein per day separated by a couple of hours. And there are studies that show that that is clearly better than two, three, maybe, maybe not,

but two for sure. And one without a doubt. We actually see this a lot in research with elderly people, but like the protein pulsing throughout the day where it's like when you're younger, you might be able to get away with it. But as you get older, having these consistent protein feedings throughout the day is super, super important for lean mass retention. And I remember when I first saw that research in elderly people, I was like, man, if this is what's happening for elderly people, then this definitely matters for lean mass building and retention

regardless of your age either way. is definitely, it definitely matters for lean mass building and retention for, for regardless of your age, either way. Um, if you're not trying to build an unbelievable amount of muscle, I don't think it will matter that much. If you're the person who's really trying to get the most out of your training and nutrition and build as much muscle as possible, then it would absolutely make sense to wake up and start your day with, you know, significant amount of protein and have these consistent feedings throughout the day. If you're more like just general health and fasting feels good for you and you like skipping breakfast and you feel better, feel more energetic. I know like for me, just cognitively, I feel better when I'm not super full or I don't eat something really early in the morning. So for me, that is great. And I'm also not trying to be a bodybuilder. So that can work really well.

But it really does depend on your personal preference. And I know for a lot of people who travel a lot for work and people who are working shift workers, like nurses, or even people who are truck drivers, fasting can be super beneficial for them just because they have a clear defined eating window, fasting window can make hitting their calories much easier. Truck drivers and nurses especially, those are two people who I work with pretty extensively and they really struggle with their eating schedules. So fasting for them I've found can be super helpful,

especially the truck drivers who just they're sitting for like 16 hours a day, like mostly eating out of out of truck stops and not these like gas stations and whatnot. So having these clearly defined eating windows where like, you know what, eating is off limits right now. Okay, cool. Now I can sit down and have a meal can be super helpful for them. But if you're the kind of person who wakes up because your stomach's your alarm clock, and you're hungry in the morning, like there's nothing wrong with eating when you wake up. Like it's totally fine. I remember when I did intermittent fasting, I started when I was like 16, 17, because my wrestling coach got super into it. And he introduced me to this book called The

Warrior Diet by Ori Hoffmeckler. And that was one of the things that sparked my binge eating disorder because I would fast for- I was going to say, that's a weird- It's awful. That's a weird- What is that, one meal a day? A 20-hour fast, four-hour eating window, one meal a day. And the whole- Although if I remember correctly, I think you're quote unquote fasting, but you can eat some fruit or something if you want

to. I'll never forget this. Yes. You could have small little bits of like an all, a couple almonds here or like a small piece of fruit here. But then he had these whole like good foods and bad foods list. So like, I'll never forget this. I was reading the book. I was reading the warrior diet. I was working at a gym in Newton, Massachusetts, and I'm reading the book on a break and I'm eating a bag of grapes. And I turned the page and on this, the first thing in this page of things of to not eat, do not eat our grapes. And he just went on a huge rant of how grapes, they spike your insulin and it's really bad for you. And I, my jaw dropped and I threw this whole bag of grapes out. And, and that was like one of the biggest reasons I had such a disordered relationship with food. I was like, I threw this whole bag of grapes out. And that was one of the biggest reasons

I had such a disordered relationship with food. I was like, who got fat from fucking grapes? No one ever ate, it's like, yeah, you probably shouldn't have pounds and pounds and pounds and pounds of it every day, but no one's doing that. No one's eating pounds of grapes every day. If you want to have a bag of grapes, go for it.

And so yeah, that book and that eating style, I think is very detrimental and can can lead to some serious issues, mainly because I remember when I first started it, I was like, this is amazing. Because I can eat as much as I want in this four hour window. And when I first started, I couldn't eat that much. Because like, how much can you really eat in that like, you can gorge yourself only so much and he did a he was smart. He was like, how much can you really eat in that? Like, you can gorge yourself only so much. And he did a, he was smart. He was like, start with a big salad. The first thing you eat has to be a big, big salad. And the next thing you eat is your protein and like your main meal. Then after that, then you can have your dessert, which makes sense from a food ordering perspective to get you the most full very quickly. But within two months, the amount of food that I could eat within four hours was unbelievable. Like I could eat so much food. It was insane. So initially, first two months, I lost a lot of weight.

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

basis. Yeah, I myself, my personal experience with IF is I just don't particularly enjoy it. So I don't do it. And that's then my advice to people is exactly what you guys just explained. Hey, if you like it, if you like skipping breakfast, skip breakfast, you're not going to lose fat faster. You are not going to live longer because you're skipping breakfast. Nothing, nothing magical is going to happen. But if that works better for you, like some people, they also like to have, let's say, three larger meals.

They prefer that over four or five smaller meals, and that helps with their compliance. And that's about it. I mean, that's my position now. And I think that that's in line with the weight of the evidence, especially when you look at research on IF with healthy people who are exercising regularly um a lot of the the the supposed benefits that i've seen it's a bit a bit of a kind of a sophistry because you can cherry pick research that was done with very unhealthy people and you can show market improvements and let's say insulin sensitivity and then use that though extrapolate that just straight over to healthy people with healthy body compositions who eat well who exercise regularly no that's not correct you can't say

hey look in this obese sedentary person simply uh restricting eating it improved these biomarkers. Therefore, it will do that in everybody to a meaningful degree. No, that's not true. And is that even in obese individuals, is that with calories and macros controlled? Well, I mean, you're getting at like, yes, it's putting them into a calorie deficit. So often there is a confounding variable of weight loss, which we know improves insulin sensitivity, hey, mechanistically, here's something that happens physiologically when our body's in this fasted state and therefore extrapolation of a hypothesis of what would happen if we were to extend this state for longer than normal periods and do that regularly. You'll find that type of stuff i've seen it in the longevity uh debate on whether restricting your feeding windows so to speak

restricting your calories restricting your protein if you do all of those things can you significantly improve your lifespan and um so i've i seen, I've seen a bit of that kind of slight of hand in that debate in particular, but, but to your point, what would be more effective for the, for the obese person, even if we want to look at specific biomarkers, lose weight, start exercising regularly, do some resistance training, get enough sleep, eat good food, don't abuse alcohol. If you just do those things, whether you skip breakfast or not, it just doesn't matter. Do you drink alcohol? No, no, I don't. I never got into it. And then I figured it's not a habit worth taking up.

So I just don't drink and that's it. Does anyone in your family drink or no? No, no, really. So my wife does not. My parents don't drink. My brother, maybe. I don't know. Do you have any vices?

Don't say you work too hard. I work too hard on meaningful work that helps a lot of people. I have to have something. I can't say that I have no vices, but I don't maybe have the normal ones. So I don't look at porn. I don't drink alcohol. I don't do drugs. I don't gamble.

Stay out of the crypto market. Keep that no gambling one going strong. Yeah, yeah. No, speaking of crypto. So ironically, one of the guys I work with is really into crypto, very smart guy, knows a lot about it. And he got in Bitcoin early. I mean, he's made a lot of money in it. He's taken out a lot. And so back in 2017, his name is Matt. Back in 2017, I was like, hey, Matt, you've made a lot of money in crypto. You're a smart dude. You

understand this. I'm going to put some money that I don't care about. So don't feel bad if it goes to zero. I do not care. I don't really care to know about this myself. I'm just going to defer to you. So you just tell me, what should I buy? He's like, okay, put 60% of the money in Bitcoin, put 20% in Ethereum and 20% in Litecoin. Cool. Thanks, Matt. And I don't really even pay attention. So I don't know where it's at right now. But at its peak, which was obviously not now, which is not now, at its peak, it had 7x. It was seven times what I put into it.

And then the last time I looked, I'm still three or four times up. So I'm like, whatever. If it goes to zero, then oh well. That's the best way to do it. That's my crypto story. With an amount of money you're okay with going to zero and you're not checking it every single day. It's not affecting you emotionally. It's almost like trust this person who has expertise in the area and then forget about it just as a little bit of diversification. And I assume you're fine

answering this. It was, I would imagine, less than 1% of net worth. It wasn't like... Yeah. And my thinking with the amount was, I want to put an amount that if this smart guy, and he's not the only guy, there are a lot of smart people who believe that, for example, Bitcoin is going to be, what's the number? A million dollars a coin plus at some point, right? And so I'm like, eh, and that Ethereum and Litecoin are also going to be much higher than they were in 2017. So I was like, all right, I'll put an amount of money that if these people are right, that is a nice, that's nice. It would be nice to, to, to say that turned, that turns into

seven figures. Uh, and because, you know, if I put $3,000 into it, I don't know, then it's, then it really, uh, by the time it, it would ever turn into anything like that. If that amount of money matters to me, then I've done something very wrong considering where things are at. You know what I mean? So that's how I came to that number, even though it might sound a little bit high. No, I mean, yeah. If it 10Xs or 100Xs, you want to be happy about it versus regret that you didn't put more in. Yeah. And that's interesting i'm not um that type of person i have disciplined myself and business has been a good has helped me discipline myself to

look at decision making based on the information that i had and the circumstances that i was in and I'm okay with making what I think was an objectively good decision that didn't work out the way that it quote unquote should have or that the most likely outcome did not pan out. So in this case, it's not so much that I would regret like, oh, why didn't I put more money into that? Because again, I would say, well, looking back, I still think that was the right decision. Let's say it was only $3,000 because my circumstances were different and that was the smart decision. And I try to approach

decision-making with that mindset as opposed to focusing exclusively on outcomes because if you chase outcomes you can get into some wacky uh places and and make some some really some really bad decisions um and so so no i was just thinking more along just that that i mean i do know a bit about the technology i'm not um i'm not what do they what do they call it oh there's there's a term orange pilled i think is the is the is the phrase i'm not i'm not orange pill because i don't i don't care enough uh but i know enough about it and to to to say well if there's if there's at least a 10 chance that this can happen then um you know i'll know, I'll, I'll, I'll play along and I'm treating it like gambling, even though I'm not a, I'm not, uh, I'm not into gambling at all. Like Las Vegas is very

boring to me, but, um, I thought that, yeah, taking, taking what is a small percentage of net worth and putting it into that just for fun. It, it made, I think fun. I think it makes sense, particularly with Bitcoin and where things are going. Yeah. Your explanation makes a ton of sense. I learned that from very smart professional poker players who coined the term. I was going to mention poker, but I didn't want to go off on a poker tangent. I used to play a lot of poker. Yeah. Results-oriented versus process-oriented. It's like, okay, you went all in with three aces, and it turns out your opponent had a flush draw, and you were the favorite. You made the best decision based on all the information available, but your opponent ends up getting

lucky and winning. It's not like you should have done something different. You made the right decision based on all the information you had, and you're not going to, you know, regret your action based on newfound future information. Exactly. EV, right? Expected value of the decision. Yeah. Yeah. So let's shift back to the book and, and what's the, what's the training philosophy or, or yeah. So, so is the focus, is it on resistance training? Is it resistance training plus cardio? So the, the focus is on resistance training for sure. Um, the resistance training is what I think most people really struggle with. And the cardio side is, is something I've been speaking a lot more about, but it's, it's very basic. It's just, you know, just move,

been speaking a lot more about, but it's, it's very basic. It's just, you know, just move, just like even just to just get more steps in. So most people, most people, especially in the general population, mostly struggle with resistance training. So we have two different programs. We have a program for men and a program for women. I know a lot of people say that they, they should train the same way, which I actually very much disagree with. There are basically a lot of the same movements and a lot of the same principles apply. But if we're looking at goals, there are usually different goals for men versus women. And the goal is really what drives the training program. So when we're looking at just large scale data and over tremendous population sizes,

most women are going to say something like they want to grow their glutes and they want to get more defined shoulders. Maybe they want to get their first chin up. They want to improve pushups. So we made the women's program geared towards all of that stuff, more defined arms and shoulders, more defined, getting a bigger, more defined glutes, good core strength, and then also working towards push-ups and chin-ups and all that. For men, it's often more like bigger arms, bigger shoulders, bigger chest,

just like generally all around a little bit more proportional, bigger, and just overall general strength. So we have two programs for that in there as well. And they're very basic. Like it's not like, just like all good strength training. I think Ben Bruno said it best. He's like good strength training is doing the same 15 to 20 exercises over and over again until you die. It's like, that's, that's really what it is. You do the same things over and over and over again.

And so we, we made it super simple. We have a YouTube channel up that's for the book. It's a YouTube channel that like we give the link once you're,'s for the book. It's a YouTube channel that like we give the link once you're, you get the book. And so if someone's not sure about how to do an exercise or what it's supposed to look like, we have videos up that'll show them exactly how to do it. This book is really for this. It's not for like the super advanced individual. It's just not. And it's probably going to lose some sales. Which is great. There needs to be more high-quality educational material out there for people who are brand new to all of this because those are the people who need the most help, not the jacked guy who wants to get super jacked. I mean, that longest time, the only books that would be there were more sort of nonsensical stuff that were, it wasn't very science based because. Fad-ish.

Yeah, it was more fad stuff, just what they thought they would make the most money on. And now with social media and with science based professionals actually beginning to build an audience and have a voice, now those types of texts are becoming available to the everyday people. And so that's what this is. This is the text that's for the people who don't know very much. It's funny. If I was going to have my mom read one book on health and fitness, it would be this. And my mom is not into health and fitness. She's at all. I'm the only person in my family who's into health and fitness, it would be this. And my mom is not into health and fitness. Like she's, at all, I'm the only person in my family

who's into health and fitness. So if my mom was like, hey, where should I begin? I'd give her this book. Like my own mom. This is, like, I sort of wrote this book, or we wrote this book with that in mind. It's the people who need it the most. It's not the people who are already like,

they know everything about this stuff. They know how to track their macros. They know, that's not who it's for. It's for the people who are already like they know everything about this stuff they know how to track their macros they know that's not who it's for it's for the people who really really really need it and don't really know where to begin that's uh that's exactly um the the audience for the the book that i recently released and for the same reason as my version of it is Muscle for Life and written for the same crowd and just trying to give people good evidence-based information that they can apply, that they can stick to, right? So, get them out of the 30-day challenge mentality and into like the 30-year plan thought space. Yeah. Those are not only the people who need it most, who have the most potential downside to not, we'll just call it figuring out their habits around working out nutrition. When you're already a couple years in, you're more likely to be into this stuff.

You're more likely to go read a technically challenging article. You're more likely to maybe sift through, read an abstract or two, or follow people who are very advanced and are delivering more advanced information. So yeah, those people are not only more likely to self-educate, writing it in a way that is going to be very easily digestible and easy to understand for these beginners or people who aren't even interested right now, but maybe just making it as easily consumable as possible was something top of mind when we were writing this. I've always tried to do with my work is make it as accessible as I can and not try to write solely for peers or people in academia, for example. I mean, even you start with jargon. If you use too much jargon, you are going to turn off a lot of people. They're just not going to take the time to try to wade through it all. And if they have two choices, they can either be confused because they don't understand a lot of this terminology, or they can go to a search engine and maybe spend

more time trying to understand the words you're using than what you're even trying to say. And both of those experiences are enough of a turnoff for most people just to go, nah, this is not for me. Yeah, vocabulary. And even this doesn't apply to the book, right? Because a book's formatting is quite standard. book, right? Because a book's formatting is quite standard. But if you think about each of our websites, like a great deal of thought went into, you know, font choice, font size, colors, formatting, you know, indentations, even within each article. It's like, how can I make this as easily consumable and digestible as possible so that the person who needs it will read it?

consumable and digestible as possible so that the person who needs it will read it. Yep. Love it. And are you guys doing any sort of book launch, bonanza of any kind? Do you have a website up that people can go to if they want to pre-order the book? Yeah. If you go to eatit-book.com, we have a whole bunch of stuff. I'm actually going to it right now. So there are a bunch of prizes you can get. I mean, so I will say a lot of people have been saying, well, which, where do we order it from to make sure like you get the most money? We're not getting any money from this. And we appreciate the kindness. We cannot dictate the price of the book. we cannot dictate the price of the book so we have no say over whatever the book costs that is completely out of our control

and we have a book deal with the publisher so we essentially already, we get paid by the publisher it's not based on how many books so whichever one is easiest for you whether it's Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, Bookshop whatever it is, you can get it from any of those we do have a bunch of options for prizes. You'll see on that website, eatit-book.com.

If you buy it from other retailers outside of Amazon, those actually count more towards helping make it a New York Times bestseller, which I had no idea about that. There's a whole other world, and it's a lot of politics and stuff into who is on the New York Times bestseller list and who isn't, which is sort of very discouraging, to be honest with you, like to see how much that plays a role in it. It's not just total books sold. It's actually a lot of other factors. So. And you can imagine the type of people who control access to the list. What type of persuasion they might be. Mike, you're actually going to laugh at this.

So it's every prize includes Legion supplement discounts, which I don't even know if you knew this, Mike. We set this up with Miles. But like, so if you order from other retailers and you send us the receipt, we'll give you a 20% discount on Legion supplements. If you order from other retailers and you send us the receipt, we'll give you a 20% discount on Legion supplements. If you order 12 copies, then you get Legion supplement discount and a free four-week training program. 36 copies, more stuff. 100 copies, you get even more stuff.

There's a lot, a lot, a lot of opportunities there to win prizes. But the reality is this, and I know Mike is going to agree with me. Even if you just get one copy, it would mean the world to us. Um, and ideally leave a really great review once, once you get the book, but you don't need to buy tons of copies. You don't need to worry about us making sure we get money. Like just if you get one copy and even if you buy it for a friend or a family member who you think would benefit from it, uh, that would be the most amazing. And that would just make us super happy. who you think would benefit from it, that would be the most amazing. That would just make us super happy. Summer is, I guess it's right around the corner. So for a person, if this is the year that they want to get into, get into beach shape, as they say, then get, get a copy of the book and

give it to them and say, Hey, I care about you. So I got you. I love that. Well, Hey guys, thanks again for, for doing this. You were very generous. I love that. Well, hey, guys, thanks again for doing this. You were very generous with your time. Congratulations on finishing the book and getting it out. I know that's a nice feeling. And I look forward to checking it out myself. Thank you, man. We appreciate you.

Thank you very much. Great talking to you, man. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did, subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which, of course, then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about

maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.