Episode 77: Carnivore Nonsense, Long-Distance Relationships, Water Fasting, and More…

0:00:12.0 Mike Vacanti: Hello Jordan.

0:00:12.7 Jordan Syatt: You gotta get your mood right, Michael. Your mood is not right for this podcast.

0:00:16.5 Mike Vacanti: I am in such a good mood here with my T. Jordan’s in a bad mood, but we’re gonna battle through, we’re gonna pick him up by the bootstraps, sometimes that’s what you do for best friends. You grab them by the bootstraps, you pick ’em up and you… Did you buy any VeeFriends in this launch?

0:00:31.6 Jordan Syatt: Did you just ask me if I bought any VeeFriends?

[laughter]

0:00:34.9 Mike Vacanti: Yes.

0:00:35.6 Jordan Syatt: You know for a fact, I did not buy any VeeFriends. You know for a fact. [laughter] What a ridiculous question. [laughter] Did you buy any VeeFriends? How many VeeFriends did you buy?

0:00:46.7 Mike Vacanti: I just actually… The price dipped on the series two VeeFriends pre-reveal because… This isn’t gonna make a lot of sense, but just to give a real quick context for anyone who’s completely… Most people who don’t know what this is, NFTs are digital assets kind of in the crypto space, they’re a high-risk investment, like spend very little money on them, only money you’re okay with losing, but VeeFriends are Gary’s NFT project and… Yeah, when essentially a certain number of them were released, the price just went way down, so I did… Jumped in there and pulled the trigger a little bit.

0:01:24.0 Jordan Syatt: Just crushing that crypto space. Mike is really a big crypto guy. Big crypto guy.

0:01:32.0 Mike Vacanti: I’m actually not, I’m actually not.

0:01:34.5 Jordan Syatt: You’re a huge crypto guy, you are the crypto guy that I… You are the crypto guy… If I have crypto questions, you’re the guy I go to.

0:01:41.7 Mike Vacanti: And I usually don’t have answers, I have a very limited understanding of the space, but Gary has pulled me into his corner of the world, and it’s been somewhat interesting.

0:01:52.3 Jordan Syatt: And you had Jiu-Jitsu this morning, which you’ve been crushing.

[laughter]

0:01:58.9 Mike Vacanti: This is why Jordan’s mood went slightly down and Jordan pulled himself up by the bootstraps pretty effectively, but… What did I say? Oh, you were like, lets have fun or something…

[overlapping conversation]

0:02:08.7 Jordan Syatt: You said Jiu-Jitsu puts you in a bad mood. [laughter]

0:02:11.3 Mike Vacanti: No, no, no, before, I said Jiu-Jitsu is like brushing my teeth. It’s not necessarily something that I want to do or that I enjoy while I’m doing it, but it’s something that I know I should do and I have to do.

0:02:23.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, you said Jiu-Jitsu is like brushing your teeth and that it makes your day worse and I was like, What…

0:02:28.9 Mike Vacanti: I didn’t say that.

0:02:30.8 Jordan Syatt: You definitely said it makes your day worse or you Inceptioned me and you put that in my brain and you made me think that’s what you were saying… You put that idea in my head. I just watched Inception, good movie, not great. I don’t think it should be top 10 IMDb, but yeah, definitely… You made it really clear you’re not a huge fan of Jiu-Jitsu, which is fine, but I know you like it, you’re just sort of playing that game where you’re… You’re doing the thing where if I want you to say something, you’ll say the other thing, just ’cause you know that…

0:03:05.3 Mike Vacanti: I don’t do that game though, other people do that game.

0:03:08.2 Jordan Syatt: That’s true. Sometimes you do though.

[laughter]

0:03:11.7 Mike Vacanti: Very rarely. I just… Post-workout when I have… ’cause I’m stacking… I’m only going twice a week and I’m going after lifting sessions, and I just enjoy doing so many things after lifting, like working… I still have a lot of caffeine in my veins, I feel good, it’s like a very happy, positive time and it’s fine, it’s going well, it is what I expected it to be and… What you have to realize is you’ve essentially been doing this since you were… When did you start wrestling?

0:03:43.9 Jordan Syatt: Eight, when I was eight, yeah.

0:03:45.8 Mike Vacanti: This would be the equivalent of me going and playing hockey every day or whatever, two days a week at 11:00 AM, which I would be pumped to do or going golfing at 11:00 AM two days a week, which I would be pumped to do. You gotta realize that I’m a 35-year-old old man doing any kind of mat sport for the first time, and it was just never of interest to me, but the practicality and usefulness of the skill set is interesting to me.

0:04:15.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I get it, I get it. I just think… I think you’re gonna love it eventually, one day.

0:04:21.3 Mike Vacanti: I think you’re gonna love hockey one day.

0:04:22.9 Jordan Syatt: I do love hockey. I’m a big hockey guy.

0:04:25.7 Mike Vacanti: When’s the last time you were in full pads and played a hockey game.

0:04:29.6 Jordan Syatt: Never in my life, but… I love hockey.

0:04:33.9 Mike Vacanti: Hey, three months ago, I was a big Gordon Ryan fan. I liked talking to you about it. I was a huge Jiu-Jitsu fan Bro.

0:04:41.9 Jordan Syatt: But I would like to play hockey. I was telling my wife the other day, I was like… I said… I said… My favorite sport is obviously fighting, mixed martial arts, any of that in the mixed martial art stuff, grappling, fighting, whatever. But I was like, my second favorite sport is hockey, I was like, Hockey players are no joke. I was like, It’s the only other sport where fighting is allowed. It’s the only other sport where you don’t get disqualified for… And obviously maybe you go to the penalty box, but they will let you have a full-on fist fight in hockey, hockey players are bad motherfuckers, they’re no… I love hockey.

0:05:17.0 Mike Vacanti: It’s part of the culture. Guys, less so now, but when… There were unwritten rules back in the day, ’70s, ’80s, you couldn’t touch Wayne Gretzky, and if you did, every team had an enforcer… So if someone went after Gretzky, the other team’s enforcer was going after you, and they protected the superstars of the league that way.

0:05:41.4 Jordan Syatt: That’s crazy, interesting, man. Okay, yeah dude, I love hockey, man. And my Jiu-Jitsu coach is always talking about how… He’s like… Yeah, Jiu-Jitsu…

0:05:51.7 Mike Vacanti: He’s talking about hockey?

0:05:52.0 Jordan Syatt: He talks about hockey all the time. I think he’s trying to come up with analogies that help make sense with people. He’s like, “Jiu-Jitsu brother is like hockey. You know, it’s the same thing.” He’s like, “Offense, defense, offense, defense.” [laughter]

0:06:06.4 Mike Vacanti: How much hockey has he played in his life?

0:06:08.7 Jordan Syatt: None. But he likes watching it as well.

0:06:10.7 Mike Vacanti: I see.

0:06:12.5 Jordan Syatt: And he went to one hockey game and he was like, “This is exactly like Jiu-Jitsu, one second you are offense, next second defense, back and forth, and back and forth.” He uses that analogy all the time, so… Yeah.

0:06:26.9 Mike Vacanti: That makes sense.

0:06:27.0 Jordan Syatt: It’s funny, Jiu-Jitsu guys make everything in life about Jiu-Jitsu. I think it’s sort of like how CrossFit people make everything in life about CrossFit.

0:06:34.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah and I hate them too. They’re the worst.

[laughter]

0:06:39.0 Jordan Syatt: CrossFit people are the worst. They are the worst. [laughter]

0:06:46.8 Mike Vacanti: You’re proving my point here, but no, I really like the crew of people there, really nice people, and I’m doing it. Most of my clients, I would say, or the majority, half at least don’t love weight lifting, don’t love training, but they suck it up and do it because they know that it’s good for them, it’s that experience.

0:07:08.8 Jordan Syatt: Okay fair. Alright, I’m in a good mood now. Now you just need to get your mood in check.

0:07:15.6 Mike Vacanti: I’m up, I’m up, I had a great sleep last night, my sleep game is dialed… Getting stronger on lifts. Oh, we had another incident today, there were… You’re not gonna believe this. Have you ever seen multiple glass shards on the floor of a relatively clean gym?

0:07:37.0 Jordan Syatt: No. What happened?

0:07:40.0 Mike Vacanti: I had leg day… I don’t know, but it was my leg day, I didn’t have shoes on, and I came back to…

0:07:45.7 Jordan Syatt: Shut up.

0:07:46.7 Mike Vacanti: Dead serious.

0:07:47.7 Jordan Syatt: Did you step on it?

0:07:49.7 Mike Vacanti: I didn’t, I saw it and I picked it up, and then I was very cautious and looking around, and then I saw another one, like another foot over kind of right where my feet were on my Bulgarian split squats.

0:08:00.7 Jordan Syatt: What the fuck? Do you think it was that guy who tried kicking you out?

0:08:03.7 Mike Vacanti: Has to be coincidence.

0:08:07.1 Jordan Syatt: He strategically placed all these glass shards. [laughter]

0:08:09.9 Mike Vacanti: That is the first place my mind went, but I default to blaming others, and I think there’s probably a 90% chance it was coincidence and a 10% chance that… Yeah.

0:08:21.3 Jordan Syatt: That’s crazy.

0:08:22.6 Mike Vacanti: That I’m being sabotaged.

0:08:25.8 Jordan Syatt: Told you. Should have worn your shoes, sometimes there is glass shards around the gym. You never know. [laughter]

0:08:33.8 Mike Vacanti: But I was trying to think of what could have broken that would have produced that on… Literally in the middle of the dumbbell section, probably 15 feet out away from the mirror, 20 feet out away from the mirror.

0:08:46.1 Jordan Syatt: The only thing that I can possibly think of off the top of my head is maybe someone’s glasses broke, like someone’s glasses fell off their face and they broke… That’s the only thing I can… What else are you fucking bringing into the gym that’s glass and shattering?

0:08:58.6 Mike Vacanti: I don’t know.

0:09:00.5 Jordan Syatt: Were they big shards?

0:09:01.1 Mike Vacanti: No, they were probably half an inch in length and quite narrow, so I guess they were… No, they weren’t big chunks of glass, but… Slivers.

0:09:12.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Wow, well, lucky you didn’t step on it.

0:09:15.4 Mike Vacanti: I know.

0:09:16.6 Jordan Syatt: I wish I could see the video of you walking around super cautious that you… Feet really light on the ground. [laughter]

0:09:25.0 Mike Vacanti: It was also very busy, and I was in… You know how some gyms have two rows of benches by the dumbbell section, so I was in the back row of benches, and basically all of the benches were taken… So when I was taking my dumbbells back to the rack, I’m literally looking at my feet and taking these very slow steps, almost bumping into people, what’s up with this dumb…

0:09:47.4 Jordan Syatt: That would be so funny watching the black and white security cameras like… What is this guy doing? [laughter]

0:09:53.5 Mike Vacanti: This guy is strange. He’s looking at his feet, he’s going so slow.

0:10:00.0 Jordan Syatt: I did a presentation this weekend in Austin, which was really good, it was all to coaches, made me feel like an old man, for many reasons… First, this is my first time… I’ve been in hotels, but this hotel, the bed was just super stiff and man, my back for two days… What happens when all of a sudden… I feel like just one day you wake up and you’re old… That wouldn’t have affected me. I could sleep on a jagged rock when I was younger and wake up and be like, Oh yeah, great day, and now I sleep on a bed that’s slightly more stiff than mine, and I’m literally limping for the next 48 hours just unable to move properly.

0:10:46.0 Mike Vacanti: That’s not fun at all. What… Your bed isn’t super soft is it?

0:10:51.4 Jordan Syatt: It’s pretty soft. It’s an amazing mattress. It’s… You’ve slept on that bed before?

0:10:58.3 Mike Vacanti: I’ve definitely watched a movie on that bed… When have I slept on that bed?

0:11:00.9 Jordan Syatt: You stayed in my apartment in New York. Remember?

0:11:04.8 Mike Vacanti: Oh, that’s the same mattress from Jones…

0:11:07.1 Jordan Syatt: Same mattress. Great mattress.

0:11:10.4 Mike Vacanti: That is a soft mattress.

0:11:10.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, it’s super soft.

0:11:12.0 Mike Vacanti: That’s weird because hotels usually don’t have firm mattresses. I usually don’t like that hotel mattresses are… They’re usually too soft for me…

0:11:21.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh, interesting. So either way, it was good though. It was… Dude, everyone was so young at this conference, all the people in the seats that I was speaking to, I just felt like I was talking to such young people, which is… I just felt so old up there, it was the first… ‘Cause I remember being young and a kid and being at these conferences and looking up at the people presenting and being like, I wanna do that one day, I wanna be speaking. And so it’s cool to be in that position, but it’s also like, Man, now I’m the old guy. You know what I mean?

0:11:56.3 Mike Vacanti: But you’re not. It was in Austin, Texas?

0:12:00.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, it was good. It was good. It was a bunch of good speakers and the people were super nice, all the people there were really nice and very attentive and good listeners and asked really good questions, so it was fun.

0:12:13.3 Mike Vacanti: Did you do… You had an hour.

0:12:15.8 Jordan Syatt: I had an hour, I went for an hour and a half. It was one of those things where I said at the beginning, I was like, Listen, I’ll stay up all night, I’ll stay up here and whatever questions you have, I’ll answer them. I told a couple of stories, and then I was like, “Alright, let’s just do Q&A, whatever questions you have, we’ll talk about it,” and then just went off. So I spoke for an hour and a half, which is really good.

0:12:34.8 Mike Vacanti: That’s awesome.

0:12:35.8 Jordan Syatt: The main thing I spoke about, the number one take home that I spoke about… Let’s see if you can guess. The one thing… I’m gonna give you a preface, the one thing that I…

0:12:44.8 Mike Vacanti: No, no, I wanna guess it cold.

0:12:45.6 Jordan Syatt: Okay, guess it cold. Alright, I’ll say this, if I were to start over my business from scratch, right now, what would be the number one thing that I would do… If I lost all of my social media, if I lost all of my website, if I lost my email list, if I lost everything, and I wanted to start building back up a sustainable business, what would be the first thing that I do?

0:13:10.3 Mike Vacanti: Long-form articles.

0:13:12.2 Jordan Syatt: Yes, that was it. That’s what we spoke about for the vast majority of it, and it was funny because after the hour was over… After that hour is over, there are… Most people stayed and then slowly people started to trickle out so they could go get food and stuff. And by the end of the extra half hour, there was probably about 10% of the people were left in the room at that point, ’cause the rest of the people left to go eat. It was pretty late at that point, and I said, I was like, “I love this, and we’ve only got 10% of the people here, I was like, if all of you in here, if all of you start writing long-form content on a weekly basis, you will all beat everyone else who’s already left the room.”

0:13:52.2 Mike Vacanti: I love that.

0:13:53.1 Jordan Syatt: And they loved it. I thought it was funny, but I was like, “I’m serious. If all of you just start making long-form content now, in three to five years, you will all be winners. You will all be beating everybody else out there who’s just going for the quick short form content.” It’s just like… Yeah, that’s it.

0:14:08.0 Mike Vacanti: It’s so true. And was that message being echoed… I don’t know if you saw… It was a two-day thing. I don’t know how much of other people’s talks you heard, but what was the general vibe of the conference in general, like was it mostly business or was it business and coaching specifics?

0:14:25.4 Jordan Syatt: It seemed to be mostly business. It was funny, so my buddy, Cody McBroom, he said the same thing actually, which was really cool to see him talk about. Because his business is basically built on the backbone of SEO as well, long-form content, website articles, all of that. Yeah, he started around the same time that you and I started. And so he did the long-form content for years, he still does long form articles on a monthly basis.

0:14:49.9 Mike Vacanti: Good for him.

0:14:50.6 Jordan Syatt: So he said the exact same thing. Yeah, and I said… When I went up, I was like, Cody spoke about it, like let’s dive more into SEO and long-form articles. This is like yeah, Instagram’s great, TikTok’s great, YouTube… All this stuff is great, but long-form articles and videos for YouTube are good, but long-form content, SEO-able content, this is the game. And, yeah, so really, really good.

0:15:13.3 Mike Vacanti: That’s a great man. I’m glad it went well. That’s the first time you’ve been able to do an in-person thing like that since pre-COVID, right?

0:15:19.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, I have a bunch coming up over the next six months or so.

0:15:24.6 Mike Vacanti: Sweet.

0:15:24.8 Jordan Syatt: Yes, sir. What’ve we got for today? What are we jamming on?

0:15:28.9 Mike Vacanti: We got questions. Let’s dive in.

0:15:30.6 Jordan Syatt: Let’s do it. Advice for long distance relationships.

0:15:38.1 Mike Vacanti: I think it’s a bad idea to start a relationship long distance. I think if there’s light at the end of the tunnel with someone who you know, and this is all under the guise of you’re dating to marry. You’re not just like… Dating someone to have fun. You’re doing it with the sole purpose of vetting them for a marriage. And you have someone who you think is a really good candidate for that. And there’s distance… I think there are times when it makes sense to make that effort. But if you’re like, I don’t know, I don’t really know how the dating apps work these days, but I’ve heard of people like setting locations to… I actually have a friend in Minnesota setting his locations to different… To New York City, ’cause apparently he’s swiped through all of the women in Minnesota. I’m not exactly, sure.

0:16:26.6 Jordan Syatt: That’s ridiculous.

0:16:30.2 Mike Vacanti: It’s not though, because I’ve… It’s not that ridiculous. Setting their location to different cities, like meeting someone who lives on the opposite side of the country and then trying to start a long-distance relationship, probably more work than it’s worth but… If there’s a solid base there, it can make sense.

0:16:47.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. So my wife and I, we were long distance for a couple of years before we moved in together. She was in Atlanta and I was…

0:16:56.7 Mike Vacanti: How do you throw this question at me to start when you have the personal experience that I wasn’t even thinking of? Yeah. What do you think, Mike?

0:17:01.5 Jordan Syatt: Because I was interested… I didn’t… I never know which question you’re gonna wanna answer, so I just threw that one out. So I definitely don’t think setting your… If you’re doing the online dating thing, don’t set your distance to 3000 miles away, that’s probably really fucking stupid. Probably keep it and I don’t know, maybe like a 10 mile radius. But it’s funny ’cause a lot of people hate on long distance relationships, and they’ll say things like, Oh, it’s just… It’s really hard. And I’m like, first and foremost, that’s what she said. Second, regular relationships are hard too. You have someone who lives down the street from you, that’s hard for a whole separate set of reasons, like you’re basically living together from the very beginning, and you see each other so much. And here’s the thing with super close distance relationships from the beginning. I think the biggest issue with that is it’s very easy to rely on sex and intimacy in the beginning rather than actually getting to know the person.

0:18:06.3 Jordan Syatt: And it’s easier to justify things that you wouldn’t accept because maybe the sex is really good, or the physicality is really good. You might like… I’ve had that before where I’ll be with someone and they’ll do things that are clear red flags where I’m like, that’s not what I want, but the physicality of the relationship is great, so like… Cool, whatever. And then it builds and builds, and builds and builds until it explodes in your fucking face, like I should have ended this a long time ago. Whereas if it’s long distance, you are forced to talk and interact with that person and understand what their moral character is, understand what their ethics are and build a real relationship with them outside of physical, which I think is a major benefit of long distance. Obviously, it’s super, super hard, especially as it gets more and more serious and you’re trying to decide, well, who’s gonna move to the other person, ’cause someone’s gonna have to get up and leave eventually. But it was funny ’cause someone actually asked about this at the seminar.

0:19:06.0 Jordan Syatt: They were like, “How did you meet your wife and where were you in building your business when you started dating?” And I said, I was actually… I was really in that grinding era of mine where I was pulling all-nighters and I was working non-stop. And I said, “To be honest, if we weren’t long distance, it probably wouldn’t have worked out because I wouldn’t have been spending much time with her. I would have been working so much and she would’ve been like, “Well, let’s hang out, let’s hang out, let’s hang out, and I was like, well, I gotta work.” But because we were long distance and we were only hanging out like once a month at most, it actually worked out really well. So it was… Yeah, so I thought that was an interesting question, and an interesting way to look at it, that long distance can be great if you’re a good communicator, and depending on where you are in your business, it might actually be better than a really close distance relationship.

0:19:55.5 Mike Vacanti: You also knew her from your childhood. So there was a foundation pre you guys dating?

0:20:04.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. And we weren’t close from our childhood, but I knew who she was and I knew she wasn’t a serial killer. So that helped, but we knew of each other and we had the commonality of growing up in the same town.

0:20:20.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I remember her visiting was usually timed well with you going hard for a month straight, and then needing a couple of days to relax and unwind.

0:20:33.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, exactly. And then usually when she would go to sleep, I would stay up at night and work until she woke up and then we’d spend the day together and then… That was it. So yeah, it’s tough, but I think the main thing is, I don’t think that they deserve all the hate that they get, I think that they actually be… They can be really good.

0:20:52.6 Mike Vacanti: Do they get a lot of hate?

0:20:54.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I think in general, when someone… Almost always, when you hear long distance relationship, I think the initial gut reaction is, Oh those don’t work. I think that’s almost always like, No, that doesn’t work. It’s too hard, it’s too difficult. And I think that if we really wanna… We could talk about why people just need like dopamine… That dopamine hit, they need… I can’t go that long without sex or I can’t… Whatever it is, it’s like, they need you there. And it’s important, all of that is important, but if you want a really solid relationship with someone, it’s you have to be great at communicating with them, and I actually think it’s one of the reasons why my wife and I have a solid relationship is because so much of it is built on the backbone of communication and talking. And from the initial foundation of, Let’s just get to know each other first rather than rely so much on the physicality of the relationship.

0:21:43.3 Mike Vacanti: That makes sense.

0:21:46.9 Jordan Syatt: Is there anything wrong with the carnivore diet? Is the next question.

0:21:53.1 Mike Vacanti: I like to think of things like this on a continuum. There’s probably something wrong with most diets that you could pinpoint.

0:22:04.7 Jordan Syatt: There’s nothing wrong with your diet.

0:22:07.3 Mike Vacanti: That’s not true at all.

[laughter]

0:22:09.9 Jordan Syatt: You’re on the regimen.

0:22:11.8 Mike Vacanti: I am on the regimen recently, you know what… You know what change I made recently that I forgot how much it helped, is not eating within at least two hours, sometimes three, before bed, and how that positively impacts my sleep quality.

0:22:31.7 Jordan Syatt: That’s interesting. Didn’t your doctor friend tell you to do that?

0:22:34.7 Mike Vacanti: I have done that when I have had bouts of acid reflux historically and… Yes, he did suggest that, and I actually noticed the benefit in sleep quality from it. I had done it previously for sleep quality, and then I did it because I was forced to because I was having that uncomfortable heartburn probably back in the fall and… Yeah, so that’s something that has really helped. Is there anything wrong with the carnivore diet? Yeah. I don’t even know where to begin with this. I actually…

0:23:09.8 Jordan Syatt: We’ll start with a lack of fiber. Complete lack of fiber.

0:23:13.0 Mike Vacanti: Lack of fiber, lack of carbohydrates, which, yes, you can survive without, but one, there’s the enjoyment of eating, two there’s… Using glycogen as a fuel source in the gym and how that makes everything better when it comes to physical performance, there’s sustainability and ability to adhere where if you literally only eat meat and nothing else, it’s tougher… Your life… I don’t know, you’re at Disney World with the family, and what are you gonna do? You’re gonna have… I’ll have eight hot dogs, please, no bun, no ketchup, no mustard… Yes, there’s plenty wrong with it. But part of me wants to rail against… I don’t know if you saw… I saw a clip of Paul Saladino. Is that his name?

0:24:03.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, the carnivore doctor.

0:24:06.6 Mike Vacanti: And actually I like a lot of… I’m never gonna do it myself, nor am I gonna have a client on it, but when the mainstream goes so hard against something, I almost want to play devil’s advocate intentionally, and he was on one of those…

0:24:23.1 Jordan Syatt: I said you do this, earlier, and you said, No, you don’t.

0:24:25.5 Mike Vacanti: Not with you.

[laughter]

0:24:29.8 Mike Vacanti: He was just getting torched by… It was like The View or one of those like daytime gimmicky type of shows, it wasn’t actually The View, it might have been Doctors. But they were just railing into him and not addressing his points of just… Yes, there’s plenty wrong with it. But I would prefer someone be on a carnivore diet with a reasonable caloric intake, than I would for them to be in a 700-calorie surplus every single day on a bunch of processed foods for their life, like if… It’s like, Okay, you can pick between these two diets, we’ll call it the standard American diet, since the majority of our country is either overweight or obese, I’d rather someone eat a reasonable number of calories and only eat meat than eat shit and be in a surplus for their whole life.

0:25:21.6 Jordan Syatt: Fortunately, we don’t have to choose between those two options. [laughter]

0:25:25.5 Mike Vacanti: Fortunately we don’t but there are more people eating that diet than there are eating like a dialed-in balanced calories in check, eating enough protein, getting lots of fruits and vegetables, getting lots of fiber, drinking lots of water, there are more people eating like complete shit than there are people doing it right. So yeah, there’s plenty wrong with the carnivore diet, but there’s also plenty wrong with other diets.

0:25:51.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, that’s true. I hate the carnivore diet. And I don’t know Paul Saladino personally. I remember when I said I was gonna do the carnivore diet for my YouTube video, then I did it for a couple of weeks. He actually reached out and he was like, “Hey, if you need anything, please let me know,” which was… I thought that was very nice of him. So I have no problem with him personally, but frankly, I hate his content, he says a lot of shit that really pisses me off in his content that’s very inaccurate. He recently came out with a video that was like, There’s no reason to do jogging, he’s like, either walk or sprint, but anything in between is worthless. I’m like, Come on, man, what the fuck are you doing? And it does really piss me off, especially… I don’t know what type of a doctor he is, but I remember reading about him, he’s not the type of doctor that should be giving nutrition advice. I think he’s a psychologist or something, I forget what type of doctor he is, but I’m like, you’re using your doctor title as a way to get people to believe you, and in reality that has nothing to do with your degree or your area of expertise, not to mention, it’s just, the carnivore diet specifically, I think it’s super dangerous.

0:26:49.6 Jordan Syatt: I really do, especially looking at rates of colon cancer and all of that, and the clear association of lack of fiber plus a lot of meat can really, really screw you up. So yeah, I’m a huge anti-carnivore guy. I’m also a huge anti-standard American diet that’s causing people to be massively overweight, but yeah, yeah, not a fan of it at all.

0:27:27.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I remember when around, we were actually in Florida together. We were on a business trip.

0:27:32.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

0:27:34.8 Mike Vacanti: And I did… I was trying to do a day of carnivore. It just ended up like… I hadn’t eaten anything. I’d only had coffee and water on the flight. We flew down in the morning, and then we got lunch by the beach and I got a 16 ounce New York strip steak.

0:27:53.1 Mike Vacanti: And you said here to a carnivore. [laughter]

0:27:54.8 Mike Vacanti: And she asked, it was like, I didn’t want the fries and the vegetables didn’t look good, so I just didn’t eat them, and I had only had the steak and I was like, “I’m doing carnivore today. I am carnivore,” [laughter] and later that afternoon, you went and did Jiu- Jitsu with that random academy that was just, it was hated.

0:28:13.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah it was awful. It was so bad.

0:28:16.8 Mike Vacanti: I fell asleep and when I woke up, I felt terrible. [laughter] I eat 300 grams of carbs every single day of my life, usually more historically, and so to go all day until 7:00 PM with no carbs, and I remember I took an Uber to your Jiu- Jitsu place to meet you, and I got there 20 minutes early. There was a gas station across the street and I got two Muscle Milks and three bags of Peanut M&Ms, and I was like, “I’m done with this.” [laughter]

0:28:46.8 Jordan Syatt: “This is the worst diet ever.”

0:28:48.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. So, am I a fan? No, I’m not a fan at all, but I don’t know why I simultaneously feel the desire to defend the diet that I don’t like at all personally. I think it’s maybe because it gets more hate than the standard American diet when they are equally bad or maybe it gets hate and it gets mimicked and gets made fun of by people who are on a standard American diet, which is equally bad. I don’t know.

0:29:18.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, I think that’s a good point. Alright, next question. I’m trying to decide between two here. Alright, we’ll go with this one. I’m gonna go with this one just because I think it could actually be good for people who might, from a business perspective, someone asked, What is the hardest part of podcasting? And I thought we could talk about that ’cause I want more people in our industry, especially people who are listening to this podcast, if you’re listening to this podcast and you don’t have a podcast, I want you to start one. But Mike, what do you think the hardest part of podcasting is?

0:29:57.7 Mike Vacanti: Very little.

0:29:58.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’s the easiest way to make content.

0:30:01.0 Mike Vacanti: It’s the easiest way to make content. If we tweak the question into what’s the hardest thing about making a podcast good, that might change the answer slightly, but just as far as making it, it’s so low friction. It’s so… Maybe that when you’re first getting started and you don’t have an audience because there isn’t organic reach within, there’s a very little organic reach within podcast apps, it’s hard to grow a podcast when you don’t have any audience on any other platforms. I don’t think that’s a reason not to do it. I mean, don’t launch your online fitness business and the crux of your business is daily podcast episodes and focus all your time and attention there when you haven’t built an audience yet because that doesn’t make sense. But still podcasting at some frequency while making content in other places and then driving that audience to your podcast is a really good idea and something that’s been very effective for several people in the mentorship. Brooks Hurbis is coming to mind right now. Jeff Pachtman I feel like has been doing a good job of that. But yeah, what do you think is the hardest part of podcasting?

0:31:24.6 Jordan Syatt: Yes, number one, I think you hit the nail in the head. It’s the hardest audience to build, by far I think. It’s the hardest medium to use to build an audience to get people to pay attention. Usually, they’re at least 30 minutes, often times 60-70 minutes plus. And it’s very difficult for people who don’t know you to just say, “I’m going to dedicate that amount of time to listen to this individual.” So it’s the hardest one to build. I think that’s the hardest part about doing it, especially logistically.

0:31:58.1 Jordan Syatt: The hardest part about actually doing it, about actually doing the podcast, I think is being comfortable enough to just be fully honest and just be who you are. I think in my earlier days of podcasting, I used to get really nervous sometimes, especially around whether it was political issues or whatever it is, because I was worried about saying something that would make someone upset, and now I’m not gonna say it’s fully gone, but I’m much more comfortable just saying, “Fuck it, this is what I believe” at this point. I am way more comfortable, and I think and the podcast has been doing better as a result of it. I really wanna push people listening to make their own podcast because there is a reason why the only content Mike and I make for our business together for the mentorship is podcast.

0:32:49.6 Jordan Syatt: There’s the reason. The reason is because this is by far, number one, it’s the most enjoyable for us. Actually, there are many reasons. Number one, it’s the most enjoyable for us. We get to hang out and talk and shoot the shit, and we just have a blast doing it. Two, it’s the easiest way for us to make content. It’s very, very, we just sit down and have a regular conversation like we do normally.

0:33:07.4 Jordan Syatt: There’s nothing censored or… It’s literally whatever we talk about on a regular basis, this is how we would talk. And three is it has the highest conversion to business, without question, more than Instagram, more than TikTok, more than YouTube, more than… This has the highest conversion to business. We know that if we had the same amount of people looking at our Instagram versus watching our YouTube versus listening to our podcast versus on our Twitter without question, we’d get more people signing up for the mentorship just from podcast. And I’ve seen this in the Inner Circle, I’ve seen this in the mentorship, and I’ve seen this with other people’s businesses as well. So I think it’s interesting, even though it’s very hard to get people to listen to your podcast, it’s so valuable for you and for them and you don’t need as many people listening to your podcast to build a successful business. You need a significant amount of people on Instagram in order to build a successful business just on Instagram, you don’t need that many people listening to a podcast in order to build a successful business, because if they’re listening to you for an hour, they’re already super invested in you.

0:34:10.4 Mike Vacanti: We talked about this, it was probably three weeks ago at this point, on Jeff’s call for the challenge he won, and it was that people who will listen to… And whether this is coaches who join the mentorship or if your podcast is about fitness and there are clients who are gonna sign up for your coaching, people who will listen to you for 45 to 60 minutes, and people who listen to podcasts end up being more aligned with you, they know your beliefs and your… Call it philosophies, nutrition training philosophies, when you’re talking about them more frequently, they’re gonna sign up for coaching already knowing what you’re about and having a pretty good understanding of what they’re getting themselves into, versus someone who just catches a random before and after picture and signs up, and then they get their first program and they’re wondering why it’s so short and why it’s so easy, and why they’re not sweating enough, and why do they have to take rest times. That there’s a deeper connection between you and a podcast listener, that plays out in the type of client that they’re going to be, and how easy or hard they are for you, and how enjoyable the interaction often is because you’ve pre-selected for someone who took the time to get on the same page as you, by listening to so many hours.

0:35:33.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And another thing about it is, even if you… Let’s say you have literally zero people listening to your podcast, which is very realistic, if you don’t have a big audience and you’re just starting out, you have zero people, cool. If you do a podcast for 20 or 30 minutes and you’re just talking about something, you will, without question, come up with more pieces of content for your shorter form pieces of content for Instagram, for TikTok, all that stuff, because sometimes… If you just see… I don’t know. Well, let’s just say, Bulgarian split squat. You’re like, Oh, I don’t know what to say about a Bulgarian split squat that I haven’t said before on Instagram yet. Well, let’s say you make an entire podcast about it, 30 minutes, which you could probably easily do, 30 minutes just on Bulgarian split squat, no problem. And if you can’t do that, you have more to learn, but either way, you do 30 minutes, you’re gonna talk so much, I guarantee you as you’re talking, you’re gonna be like, Oh, I should make a video on this, Oh, I should make a post on this, I can make a post on foot position, I can make a post on…

0:36:30.0 Jordan Syatt: Should I load it bilaterally or unilaterally? Should I load it with a barbell, should I load it overhead, should I do it with a kettlebell or a dumbbell. Should I load it like a goblet squat? How deep should I go? Should your foot be further out or closer in if you wanna work the quads to the glutes, should I add a pause at the bottom, should I do one and a half reps, constant tension reps. Should I do explosive type Bulgarian split squat with no weight and I’m just doing plyometric stuff, there’s so much you could talk about with just that one thing, and if you just think, Well Bulgarian split squat, you’re probably only gonna go for just technique stuff. But there’s so many things you can discuss with this one simple movement, and if you do an entire 30-minute podcast on that one thing, you’ll come up with 10 different ways to discuss the exact same movement that maybe no one else has before.

0:37:12.5 Mike Vacanti: A 100% right.

0:37:16.2 Jordan Syatt: Alright, next question, what are your thoughts on water fasting?

0:37:21.2 Mike Vacanti: Does that mean only drinking water for extended periods of time?

0:37:25.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:37:26.9 Mike Vacanti: So should we say, what are our thoughts on water fasting for the purposes of fat loss?

0:37:34.0 Jordan Syatt: We could do it for anything ’cause it’s not just fat loss, we’ll discuss the nuance.

0:37:39.3 Mike Vacanti: I’m not an expert on water fasting for religious or spiritual purposes, so I’m just gonna leave that alone. Although I will say that I’m…

0:37:49.5 Jordan Syatt: Or you could just talk about it and just say, Hey, I’m not an expert, but here’s my thoughts. What are your thoughts on water fasting for religious and spiritual purposes… Not fat loss related.

0:38:00.6 Mike Vacanti: My thoughts are that I don’t know very much, but I do think that acting out a sacrifice and doing something difficult has benefits. I would have to think about it. I’d probably have to write about it to come to some actual conclusions.

0:38:25.8 Jordan Syatt: Long-form content, love that. Long-form article…

0:38:29.4 Mike Vacanti: “Mike’s coming back with water fasting for a sacrifice to God, he took a few years off and there he is, glad he’s doing well.” For the purposes of fat loss, I think that not ingesting any calories for extended periods of time is a pretty terrible idea.

0:38:53.9 Jordan Syatt: What’s an okay amount of time and what’s an extended… Too long.

0:39:00.5 Mike Vacanti: When I hear the word water fast, I’m thinking that someone is fasting for a minimum of 24 to 36 hours.

0:39:06.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s not like an overnight fast, it’s not like an eight-hour or…

0:39:10.8 Mike Vacanti: It’s not an eight or a 12 or even a 16. We can talk about the new meta-analysis on which… I’m so torn on that too, because everyone’s like, Yeah, meal timing doesn’t matter, time-restricted eating is bullshit, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, the feeding windows were very close together, they were like two hours apart. If you’re going to do that study, you should have… You should have one of the feeding windows being normal, which is basically 15 hours, people wake up, have sugar in their coffee and then they’re basically eating until the moment they go to sleep versus… I don’t know, call it an eight or a six or however you want to do the other window.

0:39:56.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, it’s just way easier to eat every single day and be in a deficit every day, than create this massive deficit for a few days where you’re not getting any protein, you’re not… You’re gonna lose more muscle if you’re… If you’re creating the same deficit over the course of a week by cutting out calories for 24 to 48 hours and then eating at maintenance for the rest of the time compared to actually having three to four “doses” of protein per day and eating in a reasonable deficit every single day, you’re gonna retain way more muscle and a higher percentage of the weight that you’re gonna lose is gonna be body fat than if you’re doing these water fasts. There’s also the binge restrict mindset like, which you can talk about more at length, if you want to, but that’s a serious component to it too, it’s not a good way to develop a healthy relationship with food is to not eat for days on end for the purpose of fat loss, but I do think that there is merit to…

0:41:00.1 Mike Vacanti: We talked before, about not eating a couple of hours before bed, and the impact of that on sleep quality. I think there is merit to having a 10 or a 12 or maybe a 14-hour fast… It’d be interesting. I don’t know. I’d like to see calories controlled and someone who eats in a 10-hour window versus someone who eats in a 16-hour window, but you can’t do it. It’d have to be over a long period of time. It would literally have to be years before you start really seeing the compounding effects, and you’d have to… It’d have to be metabolic ward, you can’t just go self-reported with…

0:41:41.6 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

0:41:44.7 Mike Vacanti: It basically can’t happen.

0:41:46.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that type of study is, you can’t do it, you can’t put people in metabolic warden for years at a time… [chuckle] How much money would it take you to do that study?

0:41:56.9 Mike Vacanti: I wouldn’t.

0:41:58.0 Jordan Syatt: You wouldn’t do that for any amount of money. Or what would it take for you to do that?

0:42:03.4 Mike Vacanti: 10 years ago, I would have done it for…

0:42:06.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah.

0:42:06.8 Mike Vacanti: I probably would have done it for two million bucks. [laughter] Two years in a… But then whose funding that thing and how many…

0:42:15.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:42:17.6 Jordan Syatt: No taxes on that money.

0:42:19.4 Mike Vacanti: Well, no, you can run that by Uncle Sam, we’re definitely still paying taxes on that money.

0:42:23.9 Jordan Syatt: Well then, so you would do that for two million if you’re even paying taxes on that?

0:42:25.7 Mike Vacanti: Like basically, the day I quit my accountant-ship, yes. All I would do is write long-form content, follow this regimen that they have me on. I’d be lifting like a champ. I’d have the best sleep quality, I’d be living in this… Are there other people in the metabolic ward or is it… Am I like in solitary confinement? I assume there’s other people…

0:42:43.0 Jordan Syatt: There’s gotta be other people. Yeah. You’ll have your own bedroom.

0:42:49.4 Mike Vacanti: You can go outside. It’s not like you’re… You’re not in jail. But yeah, at this point in my life, this is actually fun and interesting, and we’ll go back to fasting… I know we don’t have that much more time. The diminishing marginal value. There’s a concept in economics known as diminishing marginal value or diminishing marginal utility, where if you’re starving, if you’re super hungry and you get a cheeseburger, that first cheese burger gives you a tremendous amount of value, and then you have a second cheese burger and it gives you quite a bit of value, but not as much as that first one, and the third one gives you… Not very much, right? It goes down over time and the same… You can find that concept applied to many aspects of life, one of which is savings is net worth. We’ve talked about it on here, going from not having any money to having $20,000 in the bank, that really, really, really, really matters for people’s quality of life the most. And going from 20 to 100k really opens up doors and opens up opportunities and lets you make moves and lets you do things.

0:44:00.7 Mike Vacanti: And to 500 k, the list goes on and on. As you have more money, it’s just like… We’ll just throw out a random example, if you went from a 10 million net worth to a 25 million net worth… What’s changing about your lifestyle? Your vacations are at 6-star hotels instead of five, you fly private all the time instead of first, you have your own plane versus flying private, it’s just… There’re nothing like the bumps in net worth early on.

0:44:25.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that makes total sense, that makes total sense. So that’s why now you wouldn’t do it ’cause you’re more comfortable, but 10 years ago, it would have made a huge difference.

0:44:36.5 Mike Vacanti: Yes.

0:44:38.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that makes sense.

0:44:39.8 Mike Vacanti: How about you? What’s your number to go, to not see your wife or future… I mean, you have to go check in today, so you would meet your child when your child is…

0:44:49.5 Jordan Syatt: Well, they could probably come in and see me, I’m not in prison.

0:44:52.9 Mike Vacanti: It’s a metabolic ward. You’re focused on your meal timing, Jordan. What if your child snuck in a little cookie…

0:45:00.1 Jordan Syatt: So assuming I can’t ever see them for two years, I’m just in there doing my thing for two years…

0:45:06.1 Mike Vacanti: You can face time with them within your feeding window.

0:45:08.8 Jordan Syatt: Within my feeding window… Once my feeding window’s closed… Feeding window and interaction window…

0:45:14.3 Mike Vacanti: Yes.

0:45:17.8 Jordan Syatt: Okay, in this completely hypothetical situation that will never exist, but I would do it… I would do it for 50 million knowing that I’m gonna have to pay taxes on that. So it’s really like 25 million. A net total of…

0:45:30.3 Mike Vacanti: A little… A little more than 25 here in Texas.

0:45:34.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah, that’s true. Yeah, I would do it for 50 million total or like a tax-free 25 mill… [laughter]

0:45:44.5 Mike Vacanti: I mean you can do so much good with that money, but…

0:45:45.9 Jordan Syatt: You can do so much, I mean, yeah, there’s just a lot that can happen with that.

0:45:50.1 Mike Vacanti: You can also go full monk mode, you know what?

0:45:54.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:45:56.7 Mike Vacanti: You can just do so much reading and lifting and if you can make content in there too.

0:46:00.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, during your feeding window, you can make content.

0:46:07.9 Mike Vacanti: At the end of the day, I am obviously, like my thoughts on fasting in general are, if you enjoy it and can be consistent with it, and you’re trying to lose fat and it helps you stay in a deficit, great. Use various forms of fasting, if it works for you. But absolutely not necessary, and probably about the same as eating the same number of calories in a larger window. But when you’re trying to make little tweaks at the fringes, go from whatever, 99% to 99.5%, little things like not eating a giant meal right before bed will add up.

0:46:43.6 Jordan Syatt: I agree, I agree. Next episode is gonna be all about spiritual and religious fasting.

0:46:47.7 Mike Vacanti: Alright, I’ll do my homework. [chuckle]

0:46:53.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I agree completely with you on that, and I think… I’m not… I did intermittent fasting for several years when I was younger. Many of my clients still do it. I think lately there’s been a huge amount of people hating on it, and people who think that I hate intermittent fasting. Like, no, I don’t hate it. I just think that it’s not… It’s not the amazing thing that many people have made it out to be. So… Yeah, if you like it, do it. If you don’t like it, or if it sparks a binge eating issue, don’t do it. Water fasting for 24, 36, 72-plus hours… I doubt I’ll ever do it. I know there are some people who do it for religious and spiritual purposes, and they swear by it, and that’s amazing for them. That’s just definitely not me at all. But for them, great. And a couple of times a year, I do a fast for different holidays in Judaism. Where like, never mind, I don’t eat anything, or can’t even really brush your teeth if you’re really following… Which I still brush my teeth, I’m not gonna walk around with halitosis and just awful breath all day. But like…

0:47:57.0 Mike Vacanti: I believe it’s pronounced… Yom Kippur.

[chuckle]

0:48:01.7 Jordan Syatt: That was close. That was very close.

0:48:03.6 Mike Vacanti: High holy day, day of atonement.

[laughter]

0:48:06.4 Jordan Syatt: And you didn’t even say it like super white either… Like super white…

0:48:09.9 Mike Vacanti: I tried to say it without an American accent.

[laughter]

0:48:15.9 Jordan Syatt: Yom KIPP-er is how like they all say…

[laughter]

0:48:21.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh yeah, happy Yom KIPP-er.

[laughter]

0:48:27.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, but that is a completely different fast than trying to do it for the purpose of losing body fat. It’s better to just build the food habits, the meal timing habits, the food choice habits to help you stay in a deficit on the day-to-day for times when you need to lose body fat.

0:48:41.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right, brother.

0:48:45.8 Mike Vacanti: Well, let’s wrap it here, Jordan has back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back episodes today, five hours in a row of just on. You’re an animal.

0:48:53.9 Jordan Syatt: Five straight hours. Yeah, got a lot, so I gotta hop off… Hop on another podcast. But this was great. Thank you everyone for listening. If you have not joined the mentorship, we would love to have you. The link is in the show notes. To everyone who’s in the mentorship, we fucking love you, you’re the best…

0:49:06.4 Mike Vacanti: Yes.

0:49:07.0 Jordan Syatt: You’re crushing it. We love having you in there…

0:49:08.9 Mike Vacanti: Let’s go…

0:49:09.6 Jordan Syatt: Whether you’re brand new or you’ve been there for a couple of years… Just, you’re the best, so thank you very much. We love you and we’ll talk to you soon.

0:49:14.2 Mike Vacanti: Bye, everyone.