Episode 182: GLP-1s, Depression, Creatine, Protein Adjustments While Dieting, and More…

0:00:11.6 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.

0:00:12.5 Jordan Syatt: What’s up, Michael?

0:00:13.3 Mike Vacanti: Give me a real quick 1 to 100 fear and anger, where are you at?

[laughter]

0:00:22.0 Jordan Syatt: Fear, super low. We’ll say fear is at like, I don’t know. 7? Super low fear.

0:00:29.5 Mike Vacanti: Wow.

0:00:30.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:00:31.1 Mike Vacanti: Good for you.

0:00:32.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, man. Well, I mean, in this moment, you know where the scale is just because right before we started recording, you were like, “Hey, is your door closed?” It’s like, “Oh, it’s closed.” But there are some people at my house right now, and they’re being very loud, and so I had to open the door and be like, “Excuse me, everyone. Please, quiet… [chuckle] The walls and doors in this place are paper thin.” [laughter] Which is why in the house we’re building, I… Deliberately, I was like, “I want a heavy door. For my office, I want a very heavy door for this exact reason.”

0:01:04.4 Mike Vacanti: Thick walls?

0:01:05.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, exactly. So anger was a little bit higher in that moment, but it’s quickly dissipating.

0:01:11.2 Mike Vacanti: But fear at a 7. I think you were at like 90 last time we did a pulse check.

0:01:16.3 Jordan Syatt: Where’s your fear and anger at in this moment?

0:01:20.4 Mike Vacanti: Fear is at a 3 out of 100, and anger is at a… Fear is at a 2 out of 100, and anger is at a 3?

0:01:27.3 Jordan Syatt: Oh wow. That’s great. There’s no anger? You’ve got no anger? What are you angry about?

0:01:32.9 Mike Vacanti: No. 3 out of 100. I don’t know. I just… Zero seems like such an extreme…

0:01:36.4 Jordan Syatt: What are you 3% angry about? [laughter] What in this world is making 3% anger? [laughter]

0:01:45.1 Mike Vacanti: I’m just hedging. Because zero seems like such an extreme number, I just assume that I can’t be the least angry I’ve ever been. So nothing off of the top of my mind. Maybe I’m slightly angry at myself that I didn’t eat this post workout carbohydrate before the pod, and now I’m trying to think of a way to eat it on the pod without being rude to our listeners. ‘Cause last week, I promised this podcast is gonna be next level for the rest of the year, which means not me chomping into the microphone. So let me start with a question for you…

0:02:13.5 Jordan Syatt: It must be like both, you don’t want it to be rude to the listeners, and also, you don’t wanna be a hypocrite ’cause you get mad when I eat when we’re on calls. So you don’t wanna do that either. You know what I mean? You wouldn’t wanna do that to me.

0:02:23.3 Mike Vacanti: No. I’m okay with being a hypocrite to you. [laughter] No, I’m very okay with that. I’m [laughter] super comfy with that. It’s much more about the listeners…

0:02:31.8 Jordan Syatt: Do they know the story of when I was eating popcorn during the mentorship Q&A?

0:02:34.4 Mike Vacanti: Of course. It’s been… We’ve had people… We’ve had lots of people comment that…

0:02:37.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh, I love popcorn. [laughter]

0:02:41.6 Mike Vacanti: That was different. That was different.

0:02:46.6 Jordan Syatt: Oh, I just love popcorn. Jordan, don’t you just love… [laughter]

0:02:53.4 Mike Vacanti: It’s the spring of 2021, we’re doing a Q&A…

0:02:56.1 Jordan Syatt: Is that when it was?

0:02:57.2 Mike Vacanti: It was like…

0:02:57.3 Jordan Syatt: It was that long ago? Jeez.

0:03:00.2 Mike Vacanti: There was a high intensity Q&A. I was down in Florida. We’re really getting into things. And…

0:03:04.2 Jordan Syatt: High intensity. Every Q&A is high intensity. They’re all high intensity.

0:03:07.3 Mike Vacanti: High intensity. But there were some real good questions in this one in particular, and we were really getting… There were serious questions. I was answering something, and I see Jordan out of the corner of my eye on my computer screen throwing popcorn in the air and catching it in his mouth…

0:03:23.9 Jordan Syatt: I did not throw in… No. You’re making that up. I was not throwing it in the air, you liar. [laughter]

0:03:29.9 Mike Vacanti: There’re tosses. There’re tosses.

0:03:32.3 Jordan Syatt: There were zero tosses. That is a bold-faced lie. I was…

0:03:34.6 Mike Vacanti: You were not placing it. There were tosses. Guess what. I have…

0:03:39.3 Jordan Syatt: Well, I was given in the mentorship. You got it recorded. It’s on video somewhere.

0:03:43.7 Mike Vacanti: I can’t wait to run this video. I’ll find it.

0:03:45.6 Jordan Syatt: I’m so excited.

0:03:47.5 Mike Vacanti: Me too. Now, let’s start where we’re actually gonna start with this podcast, which is Jordan. Do you use a washcloth in the shower?

0:03:55.7 Jordan Syatt: No. Do you?

0:03:57.3 Mike Vacanti: No. Good. I’m glad.

0:03:58.8 Jordan Syatt: No. What do you think I am? I’m not using a washcloth in the shower.

0:04:03.7 Mike Vacanti: How do you wash yourself?

0:04:04.8 Jordan Syatt: I put soap on my hand, and I rub it into my skin.

0:04:08.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Good. All right.

0:04:09.8 Jordan Syatt: Is that how you do it?

0:04:11.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah, I use the bar soap, rub the bar soap on. Sometimes I use…

0:04:15.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh, you use a bar soap?

0:04:17.4 Mike Vacanti: I’m a big fan of the bar soap. Always have been.

0:04:20.1 Jordan Syatt: Okay.

0:04:20.5 Mike Vacanti: And then use my hand or use the bar to wash myself.

0:04:24.8 Jordan Syatt: What made you think of that?

0:04:25.9 Mike Vacanti: I saw a clip last night somewhere on social media of two girls podcasting and talking about this exact subject, and they both estimated that the majority of people use a washcloth in the shower.

0:04:42.8 Jordan Syatt: And you were like, “No, there’s no way the vast majority of people don’t?”

0:04:45.9 Mike Vacanti: I was like, “I hope not.” I was like, “If Jordan… ” ‘Cause they were on a podcast and we had this today, I thought, “I’m gonna ask Jordan. And if he uses a washcloth in the shower, I’m gonna be… I’m gonna feel like I’m doing something wrong here.”

0:04:57.7 Jordan Syatt: Let us know. If you’re watching on YouTube, leave us a comment. If you’re listening, shoot us a message to our Instagram. What’s the Instagram handle?

0:05:07.4 Mike Vacanti: @personaltrainerpodcast.

0:05:08.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, @personaltrainerpodcast. Shoot us a message. Let us know what you do so we can get a good idea on this one. I would imagine that more women use either a washcloth or a loofah-type… Is that what it’s called? A loofah?

0:05:23.4 Mike Vacanti: Sounds right.

0:05:24.0 Jordan Syatt: A loofah washcloth, whereas I would imagine more men just put it in their hand, on average, just speaking in generalities there.

0:05:32.4 Mike Vacanti: You had something that you wanted to bring up.

0:05:34.3 Jordan Syatt: Dude, you had a family grill-out the other day. I think it was July 4th. And your mom, I think, made this fruit pizza? It’s got that fruit with cream cheese, and across… It’s like a fruit pie type thing, but there’s cream cheese on it?

0:05:51.6 Mike Vacanti: Cream cheese frosting.

0:05:52.8 Jordan Syatt: Cream cheese frost… What’s the difference?

0:05:54.5 Mike Vacanti: Cream cheese is something you put on a bagel that’s like cream cheese, isn’t… Is not sweet.

0:06:00.2 Jordan Syatt: What do they have carrot cake? Is that cream cheese?

0:06:02.3 Mike Vacanti: Cream cheese frosting.

0:06:03.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh, it’s not cream cheese?

0:06:05.3 Mike Vacanti: There is cream cheese in cream cheese frosting, but it’s only one of the ingredients. They need to make… I’m sure they add sugar and maybe butter. I’m not sure what all goes in there, but…

0:06:14.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh wow. I never knew there was a difference. Alright. Well, I was like, “Hey, send me a picture of this for a pizza,” and you sent me a picture. I have to pull this up. I have to pull this up so people watching can see your serving size. Because it’s no wonder that your body fat is so low year around…

0:06:33.2 Mike Vacanti: It’s not that low. It’s not that low.

0:06:34.5 Jordan Syatt: It’s super low. I just wanna… Alright. First, we’ll show the picture you sent me of this fruit pizza. It looks delicious. Your mom is incredible. Look at that. That’s just stunning. And then… Look at this. This is the serving size that you had. It’s like… It’s a little bigger than your thumb, is what that is. It’s like the entire… You’re serving size is slightly bigger than that strawberry on top. And I was just like, “Man, you’re so dialed naturally. It’s other worldly.” And I wanted to bring that up. And I know you’re gonna downplay it and make it seem like it’s not a big deal, but it’s a big deal.

0:07:14.1 Mike Vacanti: I won’t downplay it, I’ll lean into it, and I’ll go the other way. I’m not even dialed naturally, I’m dialed intentionally.

0:07:20.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, you are.

0:07:20.4 Mike Vacanti: Like, Of course, you I wanna eat the whole fruit pizza. The whole fruit pizza gives you maximum satisfaction in the short-term and less satisfaction in the long run, and less satisfaction in the sum of short-term plus long run.

0:07:35.7 Jordan Syatt: You had another serving there, right?

0:07:37.2 Mike Vacanti: I had another one a couple of hours later. Yeah. That I wasn’t even that hungry for, but it’s only a once a year dessert, so I wanted to enjoy more of the taste. But it’s quite dense. There’s pie crust. There’s the cream cheese frosting, which is dense. And I just… Rarely does it make sense to eat past hunger. I’ve learned too many times in my life that eating past hunger is not enjoyable.

0:08:04.2 Jordan Syatt: Is there any time that you can think of where you just felt terrible? Was there a specific holiday or a meal with your buddies or something where you were like, “Oh, man, I hate way too much?”

0:08:14.2 Mike Vacanti: I mean, most holidays, like most Christmas, Thanksgiving, random times where I would be trying to lose body fat in too large of a deficit for too long, getting too lean and then eating an entire thing of apple crisp or eating a whole box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch or times where… Yeah, hundreds in my life. And eventually, it’s…

0:08:42.2 Jordan Syatt: You know, this story you told…

0:08:43.4 Mike Vacanti: Eventually, you just like… Go ahead.

0:08:46.1 Jordan Syatt: You were in college, and the time you realized when you were like, “Oh man… ” You were like had got drunk or something. There was a picture of someone bent over with their shirt off, and then you thought it was someone else, and it was like, “Oh my gosh, that’s me,” and you realized, “Oh man, I’ve got more body fat than I think I should have.” At that point in your life, were you aware of how much you were eating at all, or did you think you were being better than you actually were? Oh no, you’re just like, it wasn’t really much of a thought?

0:09:16.6 Mike Vacanti: That was freshman 15, because that was late in my freshman year of college, or maybe very early second semester. Sorry. Not late my freshman year, late in my freshman first semester. So somewhere in like the December, January time frame. No, I wasn’t tracking calories, I didn’t understand the importance of protein. This is 2005-2006. I wasn’t doing compound movements, it was my P90X era, and a lot of direct abdominal training. And you go from being at home, eating your parents’ cooking to being in a dorm that has a cafeteria where they make these delicious chicken patty melts, and they had this cheesy chicken tortilla soup that in hindsight, it was probably [laughter] 25-30 grams of fat per serving, and we were just down these big bowls of these, dip our breaded chicken sandwiches in it. I can’t imagine… Ice cream, cereal, peanut butter toast. They had…

0:10:19.7 Jordan Syatt: Late night drinking and eating when you’re drunk?

0:10:22.1 Mike Vacanti: Oh yeah.

0:10:23.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:10:23.6 Mike Vacanti: And then layer in the Thursday, Friday, Saturday nights, Wisconsin party school, you’re getting Gumby’s Pizza after or going to Ian’s Pizza or… What was the name of the… General Tso’s Chicken from AA China. [laughter] Just degenerate food choices that were outstanding. Later on in my college career, Big Red’s cheese steaks. Yeah, does that answer your question?

0:10:54.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:10:54.1 Mike Vacanti: No, I was not aware of hunger cues or calories or protein at that time in my life.

0:11:00.4 Jordan Syatt: Isn’t that funny how at the time when you were doing P90X, which is a workout marketed as a fat-burning workout, you do this, you get shredded. You’re doing P90X, a lot of ab work, but you weren’t focused on your nutrition, that’s when you had the most body fat, but when you started doing compounds, focused on your nutrition, you did the opposite of what the mainstream fitness marketing tells you? Is that when you really started to understand how fat loss works?

0:11:26.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I wish that’s exactly how it played out. It was more… Because then, I still wasn’t training correctly, my spring of freshman year. But I dialed in nutrition, marathon train, ran a marathon, and…

0:11:40.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh, did you? [laughter]

0:11:43.2 Mike Vacanti: And was just over-restricting calories and protein and lost a bunch of body fat and got very lean.

0:11:50.8 Jordan Syatt: How long did you train for the marathon? From the moment you just… Did you decide to run a marathon because you were like, “Oh, I’m too fat?” Is that what you were… You were like,”I’m gonna run a marathon now?”

0:12:00.2 Mike Vacanti: That was a group decision with three of my best friends who went to the same university that I did. One was my roommate. The other two were next door to us. And we all had got sloppy first semester. And second semester, the phrase, “I need to turn over a new leaf.” One of the buddies… [chuckle] Not just for physical health reasons, but also other reasons, needed to turn over a new leaf, and we’re like, “Alright, we’re dialing in second semester,” and we all decided to run a marathon.

0:12:25.9 Jordan Syatt: And how long did you train for it?

0:12:27.4 Mike Vacanti: 16 weeks.

0:12:28.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh man. [laughter] That’s not much time to really train.

0:12:33.5 Mike Vacanti: You don’t think so?

0:12:33.6 Jordan Syatt: It’s actually going from zero to that. That’s… No. 16 weeks is… Which makes it really impressive, but no, 16 weeks is not a long time to train for a marathon. It’s sort of like, if someone was like, “Hey, I wanna do my first MMA fight. I’m gonna start training MMA,” 16 weeks before their first fight. It’s like people might do a training camp that’s 12 or 16 weeks, but they’ve already been training for years. It’s like to go from not really being a runner to running a marathon in 16 weeks is… That’s intense.

0:13:05.5 Mike Vacanti: It was.

0:13:06.3 Jordan Syatt: Were you super sore? For the next week after the marathon, were you wrecked, or not so bad?

0:13:10.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, incredibly sore. But I did everything wrong. I was wearing gym shorts, baggy gym shorts that went down past my knees. I didn’t have… [laughter] That’s not the least of it. [laughter] I didn’t have proper tennis shoes. I had this thesis that thin socks felt better than thick socks during the last few weeks of my training, so I would put on dress socks that were like…

0:13:39.3 Jordan Syatt: Stop. [laughter] You wore dress socks? [laughter]

0:13:47.5 Mike Vacanti: What else? Slept on an air mattress the night before and only got three hours of sleep.

0:13:53.4 Jordan Syatt: Oh my gosh.

0:13:54.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, it was not a good experience.

0:13:57.2 Jordan Syatt: Were you running it to try and beat a time or just to run it?

0:14:00.2 Mike Vacanti: Just to run it. Just to run the whole thing. Finish.

0:14:02.7 Jordan Syatt: Were you pacing yourself on your watch or something, or no?

0:14:04.7 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:14:05.7 Jordan Syatt: No? [chuckle]

0:14:06.5 Mike Vacanti: No. Dude, I had this playlist of 10 songs on my iPod, and they were playing on a repeat, and I was just running with anger. Came out…

0:14:16.7 Jordan Syatt: Were you with your buddies, or you just ran at your own pace?

0:14:20.5 Mike Vacanti: I started with a buddy, and we came out hot, [laughter] and we both slowed down. [laughter] Yeah, this was not a professional job, by any means.

0:14:33.6 Jordan Syatt: Do you have any pictures or videos from this, or no?

0:14:36.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, if I dig back in my Facebook, there’s definitely pictures.

0:14:40.0 Jordan Syatt: I need to see this. The long shorts past your knees. [laughter] You were wearing dress socks. [laughter]

0:14:48.6 Mike Vacanti: I think the shirt came off in mild one or two, very early on. It was very hot. Grandma’s Marathon in Northern Minnesota in June. And it was… I wanna say it was like 90 degrees that day…

0:15:00.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh, man.

0:15:01.6 Mike Vacanti: By the time we finished, around… I don’t know. I forget the exact time. You started early in the morning.

0:15:05.6 Jordan Syatt: Was it like a three-hour, three and a half hour?

0:15:08.7 Mike Vacanti: No. I ran four.

0:15:10.2 Jordan Syatt: Okay. Okay.

0:15:10.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, it wasn’t…

0:15:12.2 Jordan Syatt: That’s still good. And it’s good for not really having much time to train, and we’re in dress socks and shorts that go past your knees. [laughter]

0:15:20.1 Mike Vacanti: It wasn’t good. It wasn’t good at all, Jordan. [laughter] You really J’ed this episode though. Are we still interested in hearing about this line of questioning? ‘Cause I’m great to continue with it.

0:15:32.3 Jordan Syatt: I was just interested. It took a natural turn, and I was just interested in hearing more.

0:15:38.9 Mike Vacanti: The punch line on hunger though, is I think that…

0:15:43.1 Jordan Syatt: I forgot that’s where we started.

0:15:44.4 Mike Vacanti: I think that it is something anyone can learn about themselves by paying attention to how they feel during and after eating certain foods in certain quantities. And of course, if you’ve never tracked before, that’s gonna give you the best idea of where your maintenance calories are, what a large or small deficit or surplus is, and how you feel on various intakes.

0:16:10.8 Jordan Syatt: When did you go from… So you were P90X, no compounds, then you went to running a marathon. When did you find the science-based industry? At what point in that?

0:16:22.2 Mike Vacanti: I found Lyle McDonald through a poker forum. So I was big into internet poker my sophomore year of college, 2006, and this poker forum had a health and fitness sub-forum, and in that health and fitness sub-forum, everyone was like… The answer to any question was Starting Strength, calorie deficit, Starting Strength… “Oh, you wanna gain weight? Starting Strength, gallon of milk a day.” “You wanna lose weight? Starting Strength… All right, read this, bodyrecomposition.com.” So I found Lyle, and then I spent a lot of time… The bodyrecomposition forums were big back then. So I not only was reading his articles, but also reading the forums.

0:17:07.5 Jordan Syatt: The forums, yeah…

0:17:08.4 Mike Vacanti: This is maybe 2007 into 2008. And then Martin versus Lyle, Martin Berkhan and Lyle back and forths in the forums was how I found Leangains, which introduced me to intermittent fasting, and the rest was history.

0:17:22.8 Jordan Syatt: Man, those forum days, bodybuilding.com forums, T-Nation forums, Lyle forums, those were classic.

0:17:32.5 Mike Vacanti: They really were.

0:17:33.6 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I don’t know if you’ve ever… Do you spend time on the T-Nation forums?

0:17:37.2 Mike Vacanti: Not till 2012, I would say.

0:17:40.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that sounds about right. I was probably around 20… I was about 20… Yeah, 2011, 2012. I just remember seeing some of the craziest steroid advice everywhere in those T-Nation forums. [chuckle] I don’t know if you ever stumbled across that, but I just would go look just because people were just taking advice from random dudes who just had the most juiced up profile pictures ever, and they’d be like, “Here’s what you gotta do,” and like, Oh my gosh, they would give the most [laughter] insane advice to like 14, 15 and 16-year-old kids. It was unbelievable.

0:18:19.6 Mike Vacanti: There was such bad information on the internet, I mean a lot of good, but a lot of bad as well.

0:18:24.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah. And there’s no way of vetting it.

0:18:27.6 Mike Vacanti: Right.

0:18:28.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Now, there’s a lot more ways to vet it.

0:18:31.4 Mike Vacanti: And the cream has risen to the top in terms of, for the most part, the bigger and more reputable creators are… Got there for a reason. On the subject of anabolics, More Plates, More Dates achieved his level of notoriety and YouTube status because of quality information plus years of effort and output.

0:18:54.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, makes total sense.

0:18:56.7 Mike Vacanti: You had a DM from a therapist that you wanted to talk about.

0:19:02.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I was doing a Q&A the other night, and… Oh, you know what it was? Someone asked… Oh, they were like… They were just so shocked at how… They were like, “I don’t have a question, but I feel so good after I go for a walk.” [chuckle] And I sort of just… I went off, in a good way. I got really excited and I was like, “People talk… ” You know, the cliche response is always… The cliche talking point for exercise is endorphins and how, “Oh yeah, releases endorphins.” But people use the word endorphins like a lot of people use the word metabolism. They don’t really know what it means, and they don’t know what they do. And when you actually start to dig into what endorphins do, it’s really insane. And a very simple way to think about it is, endorphins have a similar effect as morphine from the perspective of, it reduces pain, your perception of pain, and it actually brings… It elicits a feeling of elation and joy. And obviously, it’s not as intense as morphine, but it goes after the same neurological points. It goes after the exact… Very similar processes. And so for me, it’s just like, “No, shit. Yeah, this is what you do when you exercise. It’s why you feel so freaking good, and it’s also why or one of the reasons why your perception of pain is decreased, whether it’s physiological pain, psychological pain.”

0:20:55.7 Jordan Syatt: One vice people have is they turn to alcohol and they talk about how it numbs the pain. So does exercise. It numbs the pain. It’s why oftentimes when people go through a break-up, they start working out. And it’s not… Yes, they start working out because they wanna… Like, “I wanna have a break-up fuck you body type thing,” but they don’t get addicted to it immediately because of the physiological changes, they get addicted to it because of what actually happens from the endorphins release, in the same way they would get addicted to morphine. So that first time they go like, “God, it just feels so good. I wanna go back. I wanna go back. I wanna go back,” and it helps numb the pain. So I wrote that, and a therapist reached out, and she said, “The first thing I prescribe any patient who is depressed is walking. Before I prescribe medication, before I… Is always walking, specifically for this exact reason.” So I thought that was… And that was very cool.

0:21:49.8 Mike Vacanti: Amazing story. And shout out to that therapist. That’s outstanding. What’s hilarious and great timing is I literally made a note this morning when I was walking that steps… I literally wrote this. “Steps and sunlight are the game. Mood/mental, how body feels/injury reduction/miscellaneous pain.” So in addition to everything you just said, I have noticed, because I’ve been averaging probably in the 10-11,000 step count now for 10 weeks.

0:22:20.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh, wow. Jeez.

0:22:23.7 Mike Vacanti: And prior to that, for… I have it in my phone, the 18 weeks prior to that, it was about half of that amount. So I wasn’t making any conscious effort for the majority of… Or I guess the first three, four months of 2024, to get a certain number of steps. And then when I started to focus on getting more steps, not only that upside mentally, but also the durability, and I don’t wanna say reduced risk of injury, it’s more a reduction in the wear and tear pains that often come from inactivity rather than over-exertion, has been night and day. So like my back, hips feel infinitely better when I’m taking 10,000 plus steps per day compared to when I’m taking half of that.

0:23:16.8 Jordan Syatt: Makes total sense. It must be one of the reasons… And maybe I’m wrong. I’m assuming one of the reasons you didn’t focus on it as much the first few months of the year is just the weather, and now that it’s sunnier, it’s just easier for you to get out and more exciting ’cause you have the sun, it’s not cold-slapping you in the face, so I’m assuming that’s part of it?

0:23:35.8 Mike Vacanti: I would imagine that subconsciously, that’s probably the main component. Because if I look at random weeks where I was down in Florida, during that week, I would average 8-10 per week. Part of it is lifestyle too. So if I’m out coaching Gary in the city and it’s 2500 steps just to walk from my hotel to his apartment to coach him and back, that’s 5000 to start the day right there.

0:24:03.1 Jordan Syatt: Easy. Yeah.

0:24:04.3 Mike Vacanti: It’s only 7:30 in the morning. Yeah. Plus moving around, training him, 6-7000. There’s just so many benefits. Mental, physiological, longevity, which we know. Like, more steps is better, and it doesn’t really… I don’t know that I’d call it linear, but it’s not like a U-shaped curve. Or 10,000 is optimal, but 15,000 is detrimental. No, 15,000 is better than 10,000. Now, does that mean everyone needs to hit 15,000? No. Of course, not. But for anyone thinking, “Oh, I can’t get X number of steps, so it’s not even worth it,” no, every additional 1000 per day on average is going to be good for you.

0:24:43.7 Jordan Syatt: I think… And correct me if I’m wrong. I think we see a legitimate linear increase for every 1000, up until 7500. Then you still see a dramatic improvement, but obviously, the rate of return diminishes. So every 1000, you see a huge increase in physiological health and also psychological emotional health for every 1000 up until 7500. Then after there, then it starts to diminish. But it never… I shouldn’t say never. It would take a lot for it to actually start to negatively impact health far more than I think anyone is willing to do. And that’s when you would get into other areas of the wellness wheel, where it’d be like, “Okay, are you taking 30,000 steps a day? And is that negatively affecting your community, your family? Is that negatively affecting your sleep? Is that negatively… ” There are so many other factors that come into play when it’s health, it’s not purely physical health. But from a physical health perspective, it linear improvements up until at least 7500 steps. And then after that, you still get improvements even after that up until for… As long as I’ve seen. And I think 16,000 is where I’ve seen the research go to, but that doesn’t mean that’s where it ends.

0:26:02.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, that all confirms what I know as well. My speculation, and I don’t think the research has gone this far, is that that 7500 number has to be different for different people. Meaning, the more conditioned you are, the more in shape you are, the higher, I would imagine, that number is. So maybe it’s like a 6000-10,000 range, where some people see linear benefits up to 60000 and then it more plateaus, whereas others see linear benefits up to a higher number and then it… Not plateaus, but the rate of improvement just slows down.

0:26:47.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that makes total sense.

0:26:48.9 Mike Vacanti: But yes, anecdotally, more is better. And you mentioned the outlier scenario, of course. If you have someone who’s hyper-obsessed with getting their 30,000 every single day and letting other areas of their life slip that are related to health, that’s a problem too. It’s just…

0:27:08.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, far fewer people are doing that?

0:27:10.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, maybe for every 10,000 people who don’t get enough steps, there’s one who’s trying to hit 30,000 steps every single day, realistically.

0:27:20.8 Jordan Syatt: Realistically in terms of global population, yeah. I think if we break it down to just within the science-based fitness industry, we’d end up seeing a much greater percentage of obsessive behavior and people who are unhealthy with it, but that’s a very small percentage of the global population.

0:27:36.9 Mike Vacanti: Of creators in that community?

0:27:38.6 Jordan Syatt: Yes.

0:27:39.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, sure.

0:27:39.6 Jordan Syatt: Or even just… Not necessarily creators, even people who are just really into it and follow it very closely.

0:27:45.7 Mike Vacanti: Dude…

0:27:46.3 Jordan Syatt: I’ve had a number of DMs with people like that. But again, it’s still a very small percentage. Yeah.

0:27:50.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. We’ve been over the disproportionate number that you see relative to the population. Like, the population wide data is just crystal clear.

0:27:58.2 Jordan Syatt: Yes. There’s no question.

0:28:00.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Bro, I got a call… No, I got an email from the bank that holds my mortgage. So in Minnesota, property taxes and home owner’s insurance are wrapped into your monthly mortgage payment, so you pay them in 12 equal installments throughout the course of the year. I think different states might do it differently where you’re paying one or both of those in a lump sum, but here, they’re made in your monthly payment, like 50%-60% increase year over year in those payments, I’m facing.

0:28:43.5 Jordan Syatt: What? And you have say in it?

0:28:46.3 Mike Vacanti: I mean, you can shop… Well, no, you have no say in property taxes. There’s a way to argue your property taxes, but, I don’t know, I’m not doing that. And with homeowner’s insurance, you can obviously get a new insurance company. So I might shop around for a quote, but it seems to be across the board. And a lot of the reasoning, supposedly, is that there have been more natural disasters across the country, and so the premiums get distributed across everyone, not just the places where there are more natural disasters. Which makes sense and might account for some of it, but 50-60% increase is massive, and I can’t help… Like, when you look at price increases in all kinds of baskets of goods, if you look at groceries, if you look at anything, how much prices are up over the last few years…

0:29:44.6 Jordan Syatt: Dude, it’s insane.

0:29:45.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And look, we’re in a good place, given our age and what we have done over the last 10-15 years, because we benefit from… Because alongside price increases, there have been increases in asset values. So people who own assets, stocks, equities, land, property, etcetera, are not hurt as badly because net worth is increasing alongside the increases in monthly expenditures that are inflation or causing. But people who either haven’t saved/invested or people who are just younger and haven’t had the opportunity or the time to buy assets are getting pretty screwed. It’s not good.

0:30:41.8 Jordan Syatt: Man, I don’t even know… It’s not good at all. It’s scary. It’s like wondering like, is it ever gonna… Do you think it will ever go the other way? Will ever reverse? Historically, has that ever happened? Or is this the new status quo and it will just continue to rise?

0:30:58.0 Mike Vacanti: I don’t see how it can… And we’re getting outside of my league a little bit here, but I don’t see how it can reverse. This is… Both, the right and the left have been printing like crazy. No one’s really incentivized to cut government spending. No one’s gonna run on a campaign of like, “We’re gonna eliminate Social Security.” It’s like, “Okay, well, you’re not getting elected if you… ” [chuckle] Any of the ways that the US would attempt to reduce the deficit or even reduce the speed that it’s increasing, because the interest payments on the national debt are either approaching or may have surpassed a trillion dollars a month.

0:31:49.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh, my gosh.

0:31:50.2 Mike Vacanti: Maybe it’s annual. I don’t know. But basically, we can see with our own two eyes that everything is way more expensive and scary.

0:32:00.6 Jordan Syatt: I just can’t get over the morality or any aspect how property taxes are legal. It just doesn’t make any sense to me. Because it would be like if you… Do you still have to pay taxes on your car once you own your car?

0:32:20.8 Mike Vacanti: Nope.

0:32:21.6 Jordan Syatt: What’s the difference… It would be like, “Alright, cool, I bought this computer, but I still need to pay taxes on the computer once I fully bought the computer.” Why in the heck… It’s not technically your land if you still have to pay taxes for it.

0:32:34.4 Mike Vacanti: It’s an income source for each state so that we can have public utilities and public education and whatever the primary thing… Roads. I don’t know what the primary things that states spend money on. But yeah, it’s wild. Okay. What do you think about… I was gonna ask you about this, because it’s something that I see you do. And I’m calling it “contrarian marketing.” But basically, any time something gets too popular, [laughter] even if you agree with the thing, you’ll go the other way. And I’ve noticed this several times. I noticed it with creatine. From 2011 until 2020, everyone who had looked at the research was pro-creatine, like, one of the most effective studied supplements, very little downside, improved strength in almost everyone. But then when it got too hyped up, you’re like, “Alright, screw creatine.” [laughter] And I’ve noticed it in other places as well. Is this something you do intentionally? Do you find it to be effective? Is it something you recommend to other coaches and trainers? Does it help you gain more attention? Tell us about this.

0:33:56.5 Jordan Syatt: It’s funny. I know I do that. It’s not a content strategy. And I say that with 100% honesty. It’s not, “Oh, hey, what can I give contrarian advice on?” It’s purely in relation to or is purely related to the feedback I’m getting via questions and comments from average every day people. And I recently made a post because, dude, the most common question… And this is not hyperbole. The most common question that I get in my Q&As over the last two years is, “Should I take creatine? What are your thoughts on creatine? Does it matter if I take creatine in my rest days? [laughter] Is creatine gonna make me gain weight? Does creatine cause hair loss?” It’s creatine. Any question related to creatine is the most common question every time I do a Q&A. And there is no question that it is arguably the safest and most effective bang-for-your-buck supplement from… Outside of something like protein powder, which I don’t consider that a supplement. I mean, this is something where it’s an actual supplement that you would take, whereas protein powder just is protein, and you could get it in food. You could get creatine in food, but not enough from the supplemental perspective.

0:35:22.7 Jordan Syatt: Either way, I get so many questions about it. And in my mind, when I’m thinking about… Sort of like what we were talking about in terms of large scale data, what most people are struggling with. If you had to give one message to the global population, it would not be about creatine. If you had to give one message… If you had to give 10 messages to the global population of what they need to do to live longer and healthier and to improve their life and the lives of their community and people, creatine wouldn’t be top 10. Probably wouldn’t be top 20. It might not even be top 50. So with that in mind, I get fucking furious that so many people are asking me about this when I can go to their page, and on their page, I see they’re saying like, “Oh, fell off the diet again,” or, “I haven’t been consistent,” and I’m like, “Why are you asking about creatine? This is such a waste of your time. It’s a waste of your energy. It’s not gonna help you.” And so I’ll take a contrarian view, not for the sake of being contrarian, but because I think so many people are making content just be… The reason so many coaches are making content about creatine is not because creatine is gonna make such a big difference, it’s because they don’t know what to make content about.

0:36:44.9 Jordan Syatt: So like, “Okay, I’ll make content around this because I can sound smart. I can sound smart about this supplement that maybe the every day person doesn’t know about. I can make them think that I actually know what I’m talking about, I can create unique content that maybe they haven’t seen before. Maybe this will get me more likes, maybe this will get me new clients. Maybe they’ll use my affiliate code for whatever company I’m supporting,” when the truth is, if you really had to boil down what’s the most important thing someone following you should start doing right now, creatine probably isn’t even in the top 50. And so that’s why I take those contrarian views because it’s just like you don’t fucking… It’s just not that big of a deal. Realistically.

0:37:23.0 Mike Vacanti: I like it. Great answer, that makes sense. It seems like you… It’s like when something is very overrated, it almost becomes something you wanna speak out against, because even if it’s a net positive, it is occupying way too much time and attention from many people, it’s almost like even if something is good… If people think that it’s better than it actually is, then you should be putting in energy and effort to dispelling the myth, it’s not that great, it’s not this savior supplement.

0:38:01.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, same thing with ice baths and stuff, right? Ice baths absolutely have some physiological benefits, there’s no question, there are some physiological benefits that ice baths have, but I’m seeing people spending outrageous amounts of money on ice baths who might not have that much money, I’m seeing people spend outrageous amounts of time, even if they don’t spend a huge amount of money on it, maybe they just get like a trash bin, they’re filling it up with ice, which this process takes a long fucking time, and then they’re actually spending their time getting in the ice bath and focusing on improving being in the ice bath, and it’s like, Man, what if you just went on a 30-minute walk? You would get so many more benefits, but you’re doing this ice bath shit because you see these people on social media doing it. I very much view… I’ve come to view, I didn’t start this way, I’ve come to view part of my role as, within the fitness industry, is trying to balance the messaging that is out there, so if I see people going too far one way, then I end up trying to go the other way just to bring balance to it.

0:39:14.1 Jordan Syatt: And I also know that the content I make will influence other people creating content, so if I make a piece of content saying like, “Hey, stop focusing on creatine so much, these coaches are only saying this because they don’t know what else to post, da da da.” Well, then great, maybe fewer coaches are gonna be making content of creatine now, so those coaches will spend more time making content that actually matters and actually makes a difference, and they’ll help people with actually legitimately helpful information rather than making more content about how they should be loading their fucking creatine. It’s also, I think, my job to balance the industry in some way, and that’s where that also comes in.

0:39:56.5 Mike Vacanti: Do you take creatine?

0:40:00.2 Jordan Syatt: No. I don’t.

0:40:02.2 Mike Vacanti: Did you in your heyday?

0:40:02.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, of course, absolutely. Of course, I took creatine. I begged my mom to let me take it when I was a teenager, and she wouldn’t ’cause she thought it was a steroid, she was like, “You’re not allowed to have that in my house.” And so I didn’t take creatine as a teenager or not when I was in high school, I didn’t take it when I was in Israel, when I was like 18, I didn’t have enough money. I had literally no extra money for that.

0:40:26.6 Mike Vacanti: It was so much cheaper back then though.

0:40:30.6 Jordan Syatt: I know it was way cheaper. It was way, way cheaper. I first bought creatine when I was in college, there was a Rite-Aid or a CVS right near me. Oh, right near No. 1 Chinese Restaurant that I was telling you about, I’ll tell that story in a second. But there was a Rite-Aid and they had in that, like supplement aisle, creatine, that was the first creatine that I bought. And I took it for many, many years, and then… And I took different types, I took monohydrate, I took micronized. Monohydrate would give me a little bit of a stomach upset, so micronized seemed to be a little bit better once I had a little bit more money to spend on it. It just didn’t upset my stomach at all. But then after a while, I was just like… I’ll tell you what, if my goal ever goes back to being as strong as possible, I’ll get on it immediately.

0:41:19.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah.

0:41:21.2 Jordan Syatt: For sure, there’s no question.

0:41:22.8 Mike Vacanti: And not even…

0:41:24.1 Jordan Syatt: Okay, if my goal…

0:41:25.2 Mike Vacanti: And not even as strong, even just if getting stronger was a primary goal.

0:41:29.4 Jordan Syatt: I would take it.

0:41:30.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:41:31.7 Jordan Syatt: And if my daughter goes into sports. And if she’s like, “Hey, I wanna play lacrosse or soccer, or wrestling,” or if she wants to play a high school sport, I’ll be like, “Cool, let’s get you on some creatine,” for sure.

0:41:44.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And if you did take it, you wouldn’t spend all day making content about it, you would just take it.

0:41:49.0 Jordan Syatt: Yes, correct.

0:41:50.2 Mike Vacanti: Take about 3-4 grams in the morning and that’s it.

0:41:53.1 Jordan Syatt: Yes, exactly. I’ll just tell a quick story about the Chinese restaurant.

0:42:00.7 Mike Vacanti: No. 1.

0:42:00.8 Jordan Syatt: I think it’s just genius marketing, potentially. It’s just one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard. When I went to the University of Delaware… Oh, you know, I was thinking about this because you were naming all the spots you used to eat at in college earlier, and at the University of Delaware, my freshman year, there was a restaurant, it was called No. 1 Chinese Restaurant in [laughter] New York, Delaware. I’d leave after freshman year, come back after summer vacation sophomore year, and now there’s… And I was looking on Google ’cause I was gonna order from No. 1, and then I Googled No. 1 Chinese Restaurant, and then… So there was No. 1, but then a new restaurant had opened up called New Number One Chinese. [laughter] And they were both there for the rest of my time in college, I was like, “Oh my gosh, that one restaurant must have been so fucking pissed.”

0:42:48.5 Mike Vacanti: That’s hilarious. New Number One Chinese…

0:42:53.4 Jordan Syatt: New Number One Chinese Restaurant.

0:42:58.1 Mike Vacanti: Some stiff competition. Do you wanna dig through the questions?

0:43:00.7 Jordan Syatt: There’s a question from Kelly Gates, she says, “From media/many experts, I’m starting to feel like weight loss is hopeless without GLP-1 drugs.” What do you think?

0:43:11.6 Mike Vacanti: It’s absolutely not hopeless. I think GLP-1s have a… Are having and are going to have a tremendous positive effect and be a very helpful tool for many people, especially those who have a significant amount of body fat to lose to be healthy, and have tried for a long time to lose that fat and haven’t been successful. I think that there are going to be benefits to GLP-1s that we haven’t recognized yet that might not relate to weight loss, or I guess we could say that we are beginning to recognize around impulse control specifically. I think that there are costs to GLP-1s that we do not yet know, and I think a lot of the… They’re 100% fine. I don’t think there are a lot of people saying that they have no downside, but I’ve seen a weight loss doctor who runs a clinic who puts every single one of her patients on GLP-1s, which doesn’t seem like they’re… And we’re talking about thousands of patients. I don’t think that’s the right thing to do either. I think on a case-by-case basis makes the most sense, that being said, you do not need GLP-1s to lose body fat.

0:44:43.5 Mike Vacanti: The mechanism by which GLP-1s help you lose body fat is they help you eat less calories, they help you eat fewer calories via reduction and hunger through a pathway that we don’t even know. Which is interesting to say the least. Short answer is no. And this person probably knows this, so we can expand upon this answer more, but finding a way to be in a calorie deficit will lead to you losing body fat.

0:45:16.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It’s really interesting, the way that she worded it, she was like, I’m feeling hopeless because of so much media, so many experts, also, there are so many people who are taking it who are losing weight rapidly, and so I would liken this to… And keep in mind, I’m in full support of using them if your doctor prescribed them and if you need them, I’m in full support of them. I’m specifically talking to someone who’s not on them yet and who’s feeling like it’s hopeless without them. I would liken this to… If someone who’s not using anabolic steroids is looking at someone who is using anabolic steroids and saying, “I feel like building muscle is hopeless because I’m not building muscle or strength nearly as fast as that person is, or as easily as that person is. That person is just… They literally haven’t gone… They’ve gone to the gym four times in the last month, and they look completely different, whereas I’ve been going four times a week, every week for a year, and I haven’t seen much change at all.” It’s like that’s how I would… It’s very similar from the perspective of when you take GLP-1s, they should be making it so you are not, number one, reducing your hunger, I know people who have trouble getting 800 calories in under GLP-1s. It’s difficult to get 800 calories in, so they are losing weight rapidly.

0:46:39.8 Jordan Syatt: Whereas, if you’re not taking GLP-1s then eating 800 calories, you’d feel like you’re fucking starving, ’cause you are. It would be miserable. Your… Never mind the impulse reduction effect of it, and not thinking about food as much. It’s not a fair comparison. So if you’re not taking it, it doesn’t mean it’s hopeless, but you can’t compare your progress to someone who is on it, because it’s a different physiology, they’re getting help in a way that you’re not getting help. Again, this doesn’t speak poorly to GLP-1s or anyone who takes them, it’s just… It’s two different things. I also have many friends and colleagues who use anabolic steroids, and that’s totally fine. I don’t view them negatively at all, it’s not a bad thing inherently, but I’m not comparing my progress to theirs, because that would be stupid, you can’t compare the progress of someone who’s natural to someone who’s not.

0:47:37.6 Mike Vacanti: Good analogy. I know we’re bumping up on time, so do we wanna rapid fire the last two.

0:47:43.6 Jordan Syatt: All right. Felipa Fernandez, “Do you need to constantly adjust your protein intake as you lose weight?”

0:47:49.3 Mike Vacanti: No, not constantly.

0:47:51.1 Jordan Syatt: What about periodically?

0:47:54.2 Mike Vacanti: Periodically, but not nearly as often as you would expect. First of all, there’s a cost to micro-managing your intake to that level where you’re like, Okay, 172 protein. Oh, this week we’re not. We’re 171 and a half grams of protein. Now we’re at 171 grams of protein. The benefit there doesn’t exist, secondly, you’re not going to be tracking with a degree of accuracy where making constant micro-adjustments to any macronutrient makes sense. Also, if you are basing your protein intake on how much lean tissue you have, hopefully when losing body fat, you’re not losing a ton of lean tissue, you’re losing mostly body fat, so if your lean tissue is staying relatively consistent throughout the course of your fat loss phase or only trending down slightly, then you don’t need to adjust your protein technically.

0:48:57.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s exactly what I was gonna say. I was gonna talk about, this is why I prefer establishing your calorie and protein goals based on your target weight or your lean body mass, because it doesn’t matter where you start, you’re not changing it until you get to that point, especially from a protein perspective, there’s an argument from a calorie perspective, the change of a protein stays the same until you hit that target weight, and then if you wanna change your weight, cool, then the protein would change, but otherwise it stays the same the entire time.

0:49:28.7 Mike Vacanti: Good. Rapid fire number three.

0:49:31.4 Jordan Syatt: “If I’ve lost the weight I need to, is it possible to target areas to tone up like abs and obliques?” This is from Deborah.

0:49:39.5 Mike Vacanti: Good question, Deborah. I’ve lost the weight I need to. So you’re at the weight you wanna be. Can you target specific areas like abs and obliques, you can’t target fat loss from those specific areas, but in general… And I’m gonna go a little bit outside the question here and let’s assume it wasn’t just abs and obliques but it was abs, obliques, glutes, bicep, tricep definition, hamstrings, like you wanted to tone up other areas in general. Yeah, you can absolutely do that by spending time around your maintenance calories or perhaps even in a slight calorie surplus, building muscle on those areas, right? So you’ve already hit your target goal weight. Spending… We’re talking longer term here, so six-month chunks of time working on gaining strength and muscle, followed by potentially another fat loss phase, so if you were to spend nine months in a very slight surplus, gaining a little bit of weight, adding muscle, and then you spent… You did a 12-week cut, at the end of the year, at the end of that 12-month cycle, that would lead to you having less body fat and more tone in the areas that you’re describing.

0:50:57.4 Jordan Syatt: That’s it. I’m not even gonna add anything to that. I completely agree.

0:51:00.2 Mike Vacanti: That’s it. That’s the episode. Every Tuesday. Thank you for listening. You got anything else you wanna say, Jordan?

0:51:08.1 Jordan Syatt: Please leave a five-star review. Only five-star reviews would be wonderful. Please leave a written review wherever you’re listening. If you’ve been listening to the podcast and you enjoy it, please, please, please take a couple of minutes, leave us a five-star written review, it would mean the world to us. Follow us on YouTube, follow us on Instagram. And…

0:51:25.3 Mike Vacanti: Real quick, a real quick funny Jordan’s story. One of Jordan’s biggest pet peeves, and rightfully so, is someone who leaves a positive review on anything, I think Amazon Book Review is where I remember this.

0:51:37.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah.

0:51:38.1 Mike Vacanti: But they would go, “love the book. Awesome. Will recommend it to anyone. Great job. Four out of five.” You’re like “what? What is this? That hurts our rating!”

[laughter]

0:51:48.5 Jordan Syatt: What’s the point of that? Yeah.

0:51:49.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:51:53.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, so please, only fives. And that’s it. Have a wonderful week. Talk to you soon.