Episode 202: Seed Oils, Steroids, Weighted Vests, and More…

0:00:11.0 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.

0:00:12.4 Jordan Syatt: What’s up, Michael?

0:00:13.3 Mike Vacanti: Congratulations to everyone who just joined the Fitness Business Mentorship at the deep discounted sale price, pumped ahead of you.

0:00:20.0 Jordan Syatt: Mazel tov. Mazel tov. We’re excited to have you.

0:00:23.8 Mike Vacanti: And to everyone who’s already in the Mentorship as well, obviously. Very, very happy with how things are going.

0:00:30.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. We’re excited to have you in there, we’re excited that you took advantage of the sale, or excited that we’re gonna get to work with you for the upcoming year and hopefully beyond to help you get started with your business. So, mazel tov, congratulations, we are excited to have you. What do we got going on for the podcast, Mike?

0:00:48.8 Mike Vacanti: You know, man, not a ton. Not a ton going on here with the podca… I’m just gonna have a little bite of this. Just a little.

0:01:00.4 Jordan Syatt: Did you just put ketchup directly on a single french fry?

0:01:02.6 Mike Vacanti: I did. I did.

[laughter]

0:01:02.7 Mike Vacanti: I just got these McDonald’s french fries.

0:01:06.0 Jordan Syatt: You get those right now, before the pod?

0:01:09.7 Mike Vacanti: I did, I got them before the pod. I just… I see these people saying that if McDonald’s french fries were made in beef tallow…

[laughter]

0:01:18.5 Mike Vacanti: We’d all be 7% body fat. But since they’re made with seed oils, apparently that’s why the average body fat percentage is in the 40s or whatever it is in the West. But I tend to think it as more to do with portion sizes, calories, but, maybe it’s beef tallow, maybe if we replace all the PUFAs with beef tallow. Is that how you say that word? Tallow?

0:01:44.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I think it’s tallow.

0:01:45.6 Mike Vacanti: Great. Tallow.

[laughter]

0:01:48.3 Mike Vacanti: One-take show. Then maybe that’s what it is, maybe it’s the PUFAs. We gotta get rid of the unsaturated, replace it with saturated fat, keep calories the same, even though no study has ever backed this up, nor do any human outcomes. And yeah, we’ll all just be super lean and healthy and live to a thousand. What do you think?

0:02:06.7 Jordan Syatt: To be honest, I… Number one, I completely agree with you. Number two is, I’ve never seen anyone put ketchup on a fry like that before. If you’re watching on YouTube, you individually put the ketchup on the single fry, you don’t put it on a plate or something and then dip it. That’s how you do it all the time? Or is that just for the show?

0:02:26.7 Mike Vacanti: You know, I don’t have a plate. If you saw my workspace here, there is a bag of McDonald’s and there is a thing of french fries, and it came with this individual ketchup packet. So, McDonald’s didn’t give me a plate.

0:02:39.8 Jordan Syatt: Got it.

0:02:40.9 Mike Vacanti: I wasn’t gonna plate it when I got home.

0:02:44.7 Jordan Syatt: Got it. Cool.

0:02:44.8 Mike Vacanti: So that’s what we’re working with.

0:02:45.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah, it’s… I’m literally halfway through a post on this right now for Instagram. I was making the video and it was taking longer than I expected it to, so gonna take some time off for the… We’re doing two podcasts in a mentorship Q&A that I’ll get back to that video. But, yeah, it’s very interesting how partisan this topic has become.

0:03:05.9 Mike Vacanti: Can I intro before you go that way with it?

0:03:09.2 Jordan Syatt: Sure. I don’t even have to go that way with it. We could not go that way at all.

0:03:12.9 Mike Vacanti: I think that’s an interesting way and lets us be bipartisan. But the amount of non-fitness Twitter that is ablaze, today is November 19th, over the last two or three days, over seed oils, is outrageous.

0:03:34.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:03:36.1 Mike Vacanti: And the most interesting part to me is, so you know Nassim Taleb, the guy who wrote…

0:03:40.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:03:40.8 Mike Vacanti: Fooled By Randomness, Antifragile—had a tweet where he made an analogy… You know what, I actually have it. I’m gonna read it. He said… This dude, I have no idea who he is, Colin Wright is his name, had what I thought was a very reasonable tweet, “I’m not convinced seed oils or bad. What’s the most clear and comprehensive study demonstrating their harm?” And I was like, “Oh, interesting, let’s see what studies get linked below this tweet.” He wasn’t getting ratioed, but there were a lot of replies and a lot of negative replies and not that many likes on the tweet, and there wasn’t a single study in his replies. There was a lot of… There were a lot of people saying, “Do you need me to spoon-feed you? Google it, they’re everywhere. Who needs a study? It’s obvious.” But there wasn’t a single study linked in his replies. And there were, I wanna say, hundreds of replies. So I thought that was interesting. And then Taleb quote-tweeted him and said, “I am not convinced that jumping without a parachute is bad.”

0:04:48.8 Jordan Syatt: Oh my gosh.

0:04:49.3 Mike Vacanti: “What’s the most clear and comprehensive study demonstrating their harm?” And…

0:04:54.5 Jordan Syatt: Dear Lord. That’s really disappointing.

[laughter]

0:04:58.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. He’s always had some very interesting takes around nutrition, and fasting, and fasting at various lengths and…

0:05:06.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh, that makes sense. Okay.

0:05:08.7 Mike Vacanti: Remember Tim Ferriss’s concept around… It was essentially, they were very bare bones workouts, it’s like maybe all you did was deadlift and that was what you did for the workout. And Taleb adopted some version of that. He’s had interesting takes around training and nutrition, but… And then I was going through there, and the amount of people who are super anti-seed oils and think that they are the culprit for, I don’t know, the majority of negative health outcomes over the last many decades is wild, combined with nobody following up with a single study.

0:05:53.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yep. There are no comprehensive studies done proving that they’re dangerous, especially without being in a calorie surplus. Without, when you combine physical activity, eating appropriate quantities of food, an overall healthy diet, there’s no comprehensive study done showing that they’re inherently dangerous at all. In fact, there are some studies that show they actually have health benefits. And it depends on which ones you’re having and also in what quantities. But people just, they really, really don’t like to hear the nuance on this at all. And I think a lot of it is because their saviors online have come out hating on them, and whatever their savior says, then that’s what they adopt and believe wholeheartedly, even if their savior isn’t a nutrition expert, isn’t a researcher, hasn’t spent much time in this, they just take whatever someone else has told them. It’s really crazy.

0:06:52.3 Jordan Syatt: And I was telling you on our talk this morning. In 2017, I was routinely attacked by vegans, just vehemently attacked by vegans. Any time I would even mention eating meat, they would come after me and they’d be like, “How dare you mention eating meat? You should never eat meat. You’re a murderer. You’re genocidal, you’re horrible.” And now, any time I mention having a seed oil, that’s what I’m met with. It’s crazy, ’cause politically, they tend to be the exact opposite side of the spectrum, but horseshoe theory, they meet, they’re actually the same people. And, I met with the same vitriol, I met with the same anger, the same hate. It’s really, it’s absolutely extraordinary, the hate and anger. I haven’t experienced this level of hate and anger since then, specifically pertaining to something around nutrition.

0:07:44.7 Mike Vacanti: Who are… And I know we don’t really love naming names, but I genuinely don’t know, so I’m curious, and this is no hate to these individuals, but when you say their saviors, are we talking big names in the carnivore space or who are…

0:07:58.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, big names in the carnivore space.

0:07:58.8 Mike Vacanti: Okay. Okay. So, Saladino, Shawn… Is Shawn Baker anti-seed oil?

0:08:04.5 Jordan Syatt: That’s a good question. I don’t know. I don’t know if he’s anti-seed. I know he’s very carnivore.

0:08:10.0 Mike Vacanti: Okay. Liver King, is he anti-seed oil?

0:08:13.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

0:08:14.1 Mike Vacanti: So, are a lot of them…

0:08:14.4 Jordan Syatt: Well, also, Rogan, I’m almost positive is pretty anti-seed oil. RFK. Dude… So I’m making this video about RFK right now, and I’m getting a lot of clips that he’s used. I just collected a bunch of clips. And like I say in this video, there are many things about RFK that I like and that I respect, when it comes to this calling seed oils and a lot of these ingredients poisons and toxins is misleading at best and dangerous at worst. And dude, he time and time and time again calls them poisons and toxins. And it’s in the same way that we spoke about during the election discussion, and I was like, “Listen, it’s completely inappropriate to call Donald Trump Hitler.” It’s inappropriate, ’cause it leads to these massive issues where people are like, “Oh my God, he’s actually Hitler.” Well, if you’re calling these things actually poisons and actually toxins, of course people are gonna have these vitriolic responses to them because you just led them to believe that they’re literally poisoning themselves, and more importantly, they think they’re poisoning their children. So of course people are gonna have these vitriolic responses ’cause they have someone who is now going to be leading the Department of Health and Human Services, calling them poisons and toxins. It’s very dangerous.

0:09:32.6 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm. Is there any… The one summary of a meta-analysis that was within the last handful of years, for sure, of 20 different studies on this subject were several of which, I believe, I could be wrong, but I believe, did control calories and substituted types of fat. And there wasn’t a negative outcome for those consuming seed oils versus those not consuming seed oils.

0:10:08.0 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

0:10:08.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, it’s a really interesting hill to die on for a lot of these people.

0:10:15.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It just seems to be a fad right now. It just seems to be a big fad, and eventually it’ll die off, and people will slowly and surely distance themselves from it, but for right now, people are brazenly putting out content… There’s a little teeny bird on my window. They’re brazenly putting out content, just making these claims that are unsubstantiated beyond belief, and they’re really… It’s a Dunning-Kruger effect. They just believe it with every ounce of their soul, and their… Yeah. It’s really incredible.

0:10:48.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. If and after they spend some time digging deeper, will come to the understanding that seed oils aren’t the devil.

0:10:58.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And then it’ll be interesting because here’s what I think is gonna happen, with the Health at Every Size movement, we saw a lot of people basically being like, “You can be healthy and super, super overweight, da da da da,” and that died off pretty quickly because many people ended up gaining a lot of weight, they went to that movement, they gained a lot of weight, and then their joints started hurting, they got very… It was difficult to move. Then their health started to decline and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, this is not healthy.” And so that movement had a huge die-off, no pun intended. That movement had a huge… Very few people are supporting that movement now. I have a feeling that when these people start removing seed oils and start removing these things from their diet and they’re still unhealthy, and they’re still overweight, and they’re still not the way they wanna be, then they’re gonna be like, well, they’re gonna come back.

0:11:50.1 Jordan Syatt: I have a feeling that’s what’s gonna happen. My concern is, I’ve seen a bunch of, especially in the carnivore crowd, basically, now they’re moving the goalposts, where now that, not only are saying that seed oils are bad, but now they’re saying, “Oh, and by the way, your cholesterol isn’t important, you can have high cholesterol and you’ll still… That’s not a sign of bad health.” And so they’ve moved the goalpost where they’re now saying, “Okay, so you can eat all these other foods and your cholesterol can go up, your LDL can go up, but that doesn’t mean you’re unhealthy, it doesn’t mean you’re gonna have a heart attack.” And then what we’re gonna see is some really, really, really bad shit. And that’s my concern with this.

0:12:26.7 Mike Vacanti: I feel like… And maybe these are separate discussions, but I feel like I’ve seen the… I’ve seen more intelligent voices, doctors who I respect, not say that LDL cholesterol doesn’t matter for health, but maybe matters less than we thought it did 20 years ago for cardiovascular health compared to apoB, for example, or compared to LP(a). Maybe those are completely separate discussions, and I’m not up-to-date in the last couple of years on LDL cholesterol and health outcomes/negative cardiovascular events, but… I don’t know.

0:13:14.0 Jordan Syatt: From what I’ve seen, and I’ve spoken a lot with Spencer Nadolsky about it, Dr. Danielle Belardo about it, they influence each other, until you can tell a lot about one from the other.

0:13:26.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:13:27.9 Jordan Syatt: It’s not like that they’re completely separate, but to say that having super-high LDL isn’t a major risk factor, is… That’s the example of misleading at best, outrageously dangerous at worst. And what I’m imagining is happening is people are noticing their cholesterol is going up while they’re following these diets, and the people who are pushing these diets and these products are being like, “Oh, well, no, it’s okay, it’s okay for that,” ’cause they just, they wanna keep pushing that. And they’re not willing to admit that they were wrong, they’re not willing to lose out on money.

0:13:57.8 Mike Vacanti: Interesting.

0:14:00.3 Jordan Syatt: It’s gonna be very interesting next 25 to 50 years in terms of legalities, in terms of… Eventually, lawyers are gonna go look at someone’s content and say, “You caused this to happen based on the content that you put out there.” I think it’d be a very interesting timeframe as the laws start to catch up with social media, and then by then it’ll be very different and things will have changed dramatically. But I think it’ll be interesting to see if people are held accountable for pushing things that were very, very, very dangerous and against all science-based information.

0:14:31.9 Mike Vacanti: Do you think that will happen?

0:14:33.2 Jordan Syatt: Yes. I do.

0:14:35.1 Mike Vacanti: People will be punished by the US government for incorrect positions that they held years before and spoke about online?

0:14:45.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, I do. I think, especially if they harm someone. And, dude, people literally, they buy a coffee from McDonald’s, a hot coffee, they spill the hot coffee on themselves and they get burned. Those people have won millions and millions and millions of dollars. That to me is more stupid than someone taking the advice of someone who’s actually a doctor on social media, saying, “You can have this type of a diet,” and saying, “Vegetables are poisons and vegetables are toxic and you shouldn’t eat… ” They’re positioning themselves from a position of authority, and they’re giving this, what is essentially a medical advice coming from a doctor. And to me, it makes more sense to go after that person legally than it does to go after McDonald’s for giving the person a hot coffee and the person spilled on themselves. That’s fucking wild.

0:15:35.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. In that case, I do agree. And I don’t have my finger to the pulse as well as you do, I don’t know if everyone who’s anti-seed oil is pushing a diet of 100 grams of saturated fat per day, or if some of the anti-seed oil people are pushing you the other way to what is a healthier diet of more mono-unsaturated fats, more of a Mediterranean-style diet. Which actually… Again, seed oils still are not the devil. But…

0:16:03.1 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

0:16:04.4 Mike Vacanti: You could be against them and say, “More of X, Y, Z, and not just only eat animal products.”

0:16:12.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And I think that would be… I don’t think those people are gonna be targeted as much as the more extremist versions of people who just gave false information and dangerous information, like, “Don’t pay attention to this in your blood work, just because your doctor said this and your blood work isn’t an issue, don’t pay attention, you’re fine.” It’s like, oh my gosh, that’s very, very dangerous.

0:16:35.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I think you would also have to prove that they knew they were lying and were doing it anyway to make money, and people were harmed. I don’t know. We’ll see.

0:16:48.0 Jordan Syatt: A simple one is, I’m not gonna name any names, but the guy who wrote the book on the carnivore diet came out and said that while he was writing the book, he was having really negative health issues, and he still sells the book, even though he doesn’t follow that diet anymore, because he said it caused major issues. It’s like, okay, so you’ve opened… The implications are pretty wild. If I was that guy, I would take that book off the market immediately, ’cause he’s setting himself up for some major, major issues.

0:17:18.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I don’t know the legal system well enough to know if it makes sense to go after these people. I would bet against it. But time will tell.

0:17:32.1 Jordan Syatt: Our society continues to become more and more litigious, and people can be sued and brought to court for essentially anything nowadays. And it just, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see that happen.

0:17:44.7 Mike Vacanti: But bro, does that mean that you and I could be sued for saying that…

0:17:50.7 Jordan Syatt: Of course.

0:17:52.0 Mike Vacanti: Huh? Do you think…

0:17:52.6 Jordan Syatt: Of course.

0:17:53.6 Mike Vacanti: Well, you don’t even know what I was gonna say.

0:17:55.5 Jordan Syatt: But we could be sued for anything. In terms of…

0:17:57.8 Mike Vacanti: Yes, anyone can be sued for anything. But the prediction that these people will go down… So, do you think that we will, and everyone who had the same ideas, will go to jail for saying that you don’t need to do cardio, you just need to lift weights, and that cardio doesn’t have as many health benefits as runners say they do, in like the 2010 range?

0:18:21.2 Jordan Syatt: I think that it’s feasible. I don’t think that’s as plausible, I don’t think that will happen as likely. But for example, I get many DMs, every week, many DMs from people who say, “My father, or whomever, is following this diet because of this doctor they found in social media, is following his carnivore diet. His cholesterol is really high, his blood pressure is really high, and no matter what I say, he’s just following this doctor on social media.” I think one of these family members, after one of their fathers die, after someone dies, one of these family members is going to fucking… Is going to take it to court. I think that’s going to happen. And…

0:19:00.4 Mike Vacanti: Yes. Got it. Got it. I gotcha.

0:19:03.9 Jordan Syatt: I think the likelihood of a family member being like, “Oh, this personal trainer said you don’t need to do cardio,” that I think is many steps further away than someone being like, “This doctor on social media is saying you shouldn’t be having any carbs or fiber or vegetables or fruits, and my dad’s blood pressure is really high and he continues to follow… ” I think… And we see injury lawyers all the time. “Were you injured? Did someone injure you here? Did someone injure you there?” It doesn’t seem like a huge leap for me to hear someone being like, “Oh yeah, my father was injured fatally by the advice of this doctor on social media.” That doesn’t seem outrageous to me whatsoever.

0:19:41.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I wasn’t thinking of an individual family member trying to bring something into court. I thought you were saying like the attorney general is gonna…

0:19:49.5 Jordan Syatt: Oh, no, no, no.

0:19:50.6 Mike Vacanti: Go after all these people for doing this. It’s like…

0:19:53.5 Jordan Syatt: No, I think individuals.

0:19:54.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. It makes sense. Wild, wild times.

0:20:02.5 Jordan Syatt: We’re living in the Wild West right now, man. But…

0:20:05.5 Mike Vacanti: Speaking of the Wild West, speaking of, you’ve got a book that you’re reading.

0:20:08.3 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I was just gonna… That’s what I was gonna bring up. The text I was sending yesterday, like, we’re living in the Wild West, but also…

0:20:15.4 Mike Vacanti: The easiest times ever.

0:20:16.7 Jordan Syatt: The easiest times of all time. The easiest, the most… We’re so soft nowadays, dude. I’m reading this book on American history right now.

0:20:24.7 Mike Vacanti: Read the text you sent me yesterday.

0:20:26.1 Jordan Syatt: I’ll read you the text. I’m in the middle of this book. I’m in the first couple of chapters of this book.

0:20:31.1 Mike Vacanti: It’s a 55-hour book, so, in fairness.

0:20:34.1 Jordan Syatt: It’s a 55-hour book. I’m almost two hours in. The text I sent you yesterday. I said, yesterday at 3:59 PM, completely unprompted, I said, “We have it so easy. Life is so good, it’s ridiculous. These people came across on shitty boats and horrifying weather not knowing if they’d even make it here alive. Many didn’t. And once they got here, they were met with disease and food scarcity and harsh weather. Just insane. We’re so soft.”

0:21:05.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:21:05.7 Jordan Syatt: Bro. And that’s just such a mild way of putting it, reading these stories of these people and these families who went on these horrifying, unbelievably dangerous boat rides across the ocean. Now we’ve got these ocean liners. You’ve got planes. You’re upset because there’s a baby crying a couple of rows behind you. Imagine babies dying on the boat. Your baby dying on your boat. Imagine people being thrown overboard. Imagine your boat going… Running aground or tipping over, people throwing up everywhere, feces all over the place. You get mad now because there’s a little bit of urine on the floor in the bathroom. Good luck living back then. And then you get here, oh, and by the way, there is malaria and you’re starving. Dude, it was like 60% or 70% of the people who moved to Jamestown the first time, they starved. They didn’t make it through the first winter. 60% to 70% of the people starved.

0:22:10.8 Mike Vacanti: Man.

0:22:13.8 Jordan Syatt: It’s crazy. We live in the best of times. And I say this all the time, so people are like, “Can you please help me understand this?” There you go. You’re listening to this right now on your fucking phone, in in your home, in your apartment, in your car.

0:22:29.7 Mike Vacanti: In an airplane, in your car.

0:22:32.1 Jordan Syatt: Come on, dude. It is, not to say we don’t have our problems, but we’re cushy. We live cushy, soft, Nerf lives.

0:22:40.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And which has actually led to a different set of lesser problems, which are problems of abundance.

0:22:48.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yep.

0:22:48.9 Mike Vacanti: Right?

0:22:49.8 Jordan Syatt: Yep.

0:22:50.1 Mike Vacanti: In the West, we’re killing ourselves from overconsumption, not from starvation.

0:22:56.5 Jordan Syatt: Yep. Dude, did you know people didn’t use to name their baby until like about a year because infant mortality was so high?

0:23:04.3 Mike Vacanti: Makes sense.

0:23:05.7 Jordan Syatt: They wouldn’t even name their child for like about the first year because they just didn’t know if it was gonna be around.

0:23:11.0 Mike Vacanti: Didn’t wanna become too attached.

0:23:12.8 Jordan Syatt: Too attached. Yeah. Like your chicken, you won’t name your chicken or the food you’re gonna eat ’cause you don’t wanna become too attached to it. You don’t name your child for the first year. And even then…

0:23:24.1 Mike Vacanti: Did you learn that in the book? Yeah.

0:23:25.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It’s crazy.

0:23:26.7 Mike Vacanti: Where’s fear and anger for you right now?

0:23:32.4 Jordan Syatt: I have to differentiate between anger and passion. I’m really passionate in this moment.

0:23:36.9 Mike Vacanti: Okay.

0:23:38.5 Jordan Syatt: But I’m angry at people for not understanding this too. So anger and passion almost go hand in hand.

0:23:42.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. They get expressed similarly.

0:23:45.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, passion is super high. Anger is pretty high. Anger’s pretty high, but in a good way.

0:23:52.0 Mike Vacanti: Let’s put some numbers on it. Passion’s at an 88 out of 100, and anger is at like a 45?

0:23:58.0 Jordan Syatt: No. I’d say passion, we’ll say, passion’s at like 94.

0:24:03.5 Mike Vacanti: Okay.

0:24:04.0 Jordan Syatt: Anger’s at like 82.

0:24:06.5 Mike Vacanti: Hmm. Okay. All right.

0:24:08.2 Jordan Syatt: And fear is at like a 39.

0:24:14.2 Mike Vacanti: Okay.

0:24:16.0 Jordan Syatt: What about you?

0:24:17.9 Mike Vacanti: I like that you… I like that I guessed passion at 88 and you were like, “No. 94.” That was such a bad…

[laughter]

0:24:24.0 Mike Vacanti: Such a terrible guess.

0:24:25.4 Jordan Syatt: “What an idiot.”

0:24:26.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

[laughter]

0:24:26.8 Jordan Syatt: That’s how you know my passion’s higher right now. [laughter]

0:24:30.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yep. Where am I? Well, I told you I’m on this new cardio kick that has lasted two days of…

0:24:38.5 Jordan Syatt: Two days in a row. 100%.

0:24:41.9 Mike Vacanti: Two days in a row of incline walking for an hour, which is a long time to…

0:24:47.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:24:48.6 Mike Vacanti: 8-10 degrees, in the threes at speed. But definitely Zone 2. My heart rate within 15 minutes is up over 125, 130 and stays in the 130 to 145 for 45 minutes. And that has me feeling a little more chill. I feel like a little bit lower energy. Mood slightly elevated. So, fear is a 12 and anger is a 16.

0:25:21.5 Jordan Syatt: Interesting.

0:25:22.7 Mike Vacanti: While I was doing it… While I was doing it, anger was an 85.

0:25:24.9 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah. Oh, I know.

0:25:27.7 Mike Vacanti: Because I realized that, it’s almost like getting it out, is how I used to view workouts and cardio especially. And so, throw it on, throw some music on and just like, “This is not fun. I don’t wanna be doing this,” but just trudge through and get that out of you. Yeah.

0:25:45.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, you really threw it on me.

[laughter]

0:25:49.5 Mike Vacanti: Bro.

0:25:50.3 Jordan Syatt: You really dumped that anger on me. “I’m wasting my time!” [laughter]

0:25:53.8 Mike Vacanti: Coins. Coins. Not time. Coins.

[laughter]

0:25:58.5 Mike Vacanti: What extroverts need to realize is imagine you are in a room by yourself with no phone, no human interaction, no stimulation, sitting on the ground. Just imagine sitting like that. That’s how introverts feel in conversation.

0:26:12.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:26:14.3 Mike Vacanti: And so, it’s a delicate balance. It’s a delicate balance.

0:26:18.1 Jordan Syatt: Dude, do you wanna share that tweet you shared about meditation?

[chuckle]

0:26:20.9 Mike Vacanti: Sure.

0:26:22.4 Jordan Syatt: That was a good one.

0:26:23.7 Mike Vacanti: It hit my for you.

0:26:25.4 Jordan Syatt: And you sent it twice. You’re like, “Hey, just in case you didn’t see this, you gotta make sure you see this.”

0:26:27.8 Mike Vacanti: Did I send it twice?

0:26:28.9 Jordan Syatt: You sent it twice.

0:26:28.9 Mike Vacanti: That means it popped up for me twice. When did I send it prior?

0:26:35.0 Jordan Syatt: You literally sent it like just above the fold.

0:26:35.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I sent it on Sunday. But you didn’t reply, so…

0:26:39.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I’m glad you sent it again.

0:26:43.7 Mike Vacanti: Bro.

[laughter]

0:26:44.2 Mike Vacanti: The picture of Trump and Elon and RFK on the plane.

0:26:48.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It’s amazing.

0:26:50.1 Mike Vacanti: Wait, did I send you the…

0:26:53.5 Jordan Syatt: The meme version?

0:26:53.7 Mike Vacanti: “The boys posting a group pic at the strip club.” “The dude who told his wife he was at poker night.”

[laughter]

0:27:01.2 Mike Vacanti: So funny. Okay. So this random tweet from, I don’t know who or what this account is, “met a long-time meditator today, who told me his inner monologue vanished and he missed it and regretted losing it. Also that he missed having some anxiety/neuroticism because it’s a useful source of fuel/drive. Meditation is great, but should come with a warning label.” And the reason I saw it again, is someone quote-tweeted it and said, “My biggest conspiracy theory is that, meditation is bad for you,” something to that effect. And then someone tweeted a page from a book of this monk, this long-time monk who would spend hours and hours meditating every day, who ended up getting cancer. I’m just… I don’t have the context here other than the highlight of pages of the one book.

0:27:54.0 Jordan Syatt: Are you saying meditation gives you cancer?

0:27:55.5 Mike Vacanti: No.

[laughter]

0:27:56.2 Mike Vacanti: But he was in his dying days and came to this realization that all of that time… And by the way, there’s a difference between 20 minutes of mindfulness to make you better and show up in life, compared to this guy who spent all day meditating, I assume. And he was saying that, it was actually selfish of him and he could have been spending that time helping his wife with this thing or family or whatever. And so, I’m not anti-meditation. I might be slightly anti-transcendental meditation, but… And I know you are from your childhood experiences with TM.

0:28:39.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:28:45.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. But there’s definitely…

0:28:46.1 Jordan Syatt: I saw an interesting quote…

0:28:48.4 Mike Vacanti: There’s two sides. It might help you, but for some people, it might not. And it’s good to know whether it’s benefiting you or not.

0:28:55.4 Jordan Syatt: I saw an interesting quote in that thread ’cause I got into it when I looked at it this morning and someone was like, yeah, there’s this picture of a monk who’s meditating and just surrounded by mosquitoes. Thousands of mosquitoes are all over him. And he just doesn’t care. He just doesn’t care. He’s sitting there, he’s meditating. And the person’s like, “I don’t wanna be that. I don’t wanna be so okay with… I wanna take action. I wanna do something.” And the way he framed it was a little bit different. But I think it’s important, there has to be a balance. You can’t just be completely unresponsive. You can’t just be completely not about not being aware, but unresponsive, lacking action, just sitting there meditating, you’ve gotta do shit. And I think, like you said, there’s a difference between having 20 minutes, getting centered, enjoying the moment, learning how to maybe calm yourself down, not overreacting. But just like you don’t wanna overreact to stuff, you also don’t wanna under-react to stuff. And when you have things you want to achieve, when you wanna bring light to this world, when you want to do something good, you have to come out of yourself, and you have to actually do things that will make you uncomfortable, do things that you have to take action. And I think, I would imagine most people are not overdoing it on meditation, but maybe some people are. [chuckle]

0:30:18.7 Mike Vacanti: I think way more people are overdoing it on…

0:30:21.8 Jordan Syatt: Social media. [laughter]

0:30:22.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. On mindless consumption. And would benefit from… This actually reminds me of, by the way, I saw that as well and really liked it. It’s like, “no, I wanna kill those mosquitoes. I don’t wanna just be okay with them biting me.”

[laughter]

0:30:33.9 Mike Vacanti: “I wanna kill the mosquitoes.” And then, “I’m not okay with having all those mosquito bites on my face.” Do you remember from like 2013, RSD Tyler, the pickup dude?

0:30:48.7 Jordan Syatt: Of course.

0:30:50.3 Mike Vacanti: So he would have these long YouTube videos. It’s been 10 years since I watched one of these. He would have these long YouTube videos…

0:30:56.1 Jordan Syatt: He is an amazing speaker.

0:30:57.8 Mike Vacanti: Where he would just riff for like an hour and a half, and upload it to YouTube. And it wasn’t about pickup, it was about life, basically.

0:31:06.0 Jordan Syatt: Becoming a better person. Yeah. Yeah.

0:31:07.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah. And I remember him saying something to the effect of, you can find your life’s meaning like sitting in a cave, meditating by yourself, or being out there taking action nonstop constantly. And I do believe that both paths are… What do you say? Both are pathways to enlightenment. You can get there either way. And I really… I think I am slightly more tilted towards action. Maybe 55/45, or 60/40 towards action. You’re like 99/1 towards action on this one.

0:31:52.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That’s true.

0:31:53.2 Mike Vacanti: Just the way you’re built or whether it’s nature, nurture, some combination of the two. Yeah. It was a good tweet.

0:32:02.3 Jordan Syatt: Should we do Q&A?

0:32:03.3 Mike Vacanti: Do you think you would benefit at all from, not meditation, but maybe a meditative practice such as going for a 10-minute walk without a phone or any inputs?

0:32:16.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, for sure. 100%.

0:32:19.9 Mike Vacanti: Would that be hard for you?

0:32:22.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. That’d be super hard.

0:32:22.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:32:23.0 Jordan Syatt: It’s not difficult though. When I’m with my wife and daughters, I have no phone or input. I’m very good at putting that away. But…

0:32:32.4 Mike Vacanti: They’re the input. They are the input.

0:32:34.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.

0:32:35.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah.

0:32:36.3 Jordan Syatt: I don’t need phone inputs, but having an input or having… You know what it is, having someone else to give myself to is also really helpful for me. Just being alone without something is very difficult for me. It’s like, what could I be doing? What could I be doing? Could I be giving myself to my daughters? Could I be giving myself to my wife? Could I be giving myself to others through my content? Could I be putting myself into study of history or whatever? What could I be doing? That’s, I’m 99/1, to just be doing nothing…

0:33:09.8 Mike Vacanti: You’re more than 99/1.

0:33:11.2 Jordan Syatt: Is very difficult for me. Super, super difficult.

0:33:14.8 Mike Vacanti: Do you think there’d be any benefit to doing what you just referred to as nothing?

0:33:18.7 Jordan Syatt: Literally none.

[laughter]

0:33:22.2 Mike Vacanti: Cool.

0:33:22.7 Jordan Syatt: No, there would be. I’m sure there would be. But also, there also would be a cost. Right. You know what, for example, one thing I would like to get to a point of doing, ’cause in our new place, we have a pond. And in the pond I wanna put fish. And I dream of a day in my life in which I can just go to the pond and fish, without anything…

0:33:51.9 Mike Vacanti: Inputs?

0:33:53.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, without inputs. Would fishing count as an input?

[overlapping conversation]

0:33:55.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. But I would call that very low in terms of stimulation.

0:34:03.3 Jordan Syatt: Interesting. Yeah, I’d like to do that. But you know what, my mind goes to, I’d probably have a podcast playing, or an audio book playing while I’m fishing. Which is, yeah, it’s very difficult for me to just…

0:34:19.8 Mike Vacanti: Do you have an inner monologue?

0:34:20.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, of course. I know some people don’t, which is pretty crazy.

0:34:25.0 Mike Vacanti: I think a lot of people don’t.

0:34:26.6 Jordan Syatt: I forget, I think it’s like 20% or 30% of people have no inner monologue. They just don’t talk to themselves. I’m talking to myself constantly.

0:34:34.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Cool.

0:34:34.5 Jordan Syatt: I’m in my head, I’m like, “What the fuck was that?”

[laughter]

0:34:38.7 Jordan Syatt: Do you have an inner monologue?

0:34:39.9 Mike Vacanti: Oh yeah.

0:34:41.2 Jordan Syatt: What do you say to yourself?

0:34:42.2 Mike Vacanti: What don’t I say? I’m just…

0:34:44.0 Jordan Syatt: Do you have a conversation with yourself? You’re like… Or is it more just like stream of conscious thoughts?

0:34:53.4 Mike Vacanti: I have a conversation with myself if I want to.

0:34:54.6 Jordan Syatt: Okay.

0:34:55.5 Mike Vacanti: I think usually it’s a stream of conscious thoughts. But no, I’ll ask myself questions and then answer, which is super weird because it’s like, “Wait, am I the one asking, or am I the one answering? I feel like I’m the one asking. And if I’m the one asking, then who’s the one answering?” And, yeah, that’s… Yeah.

0:35:17.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. How often do you think, do you say… Do you think to yourself, “What the fuck?” throughout the day, just like, you’re just looking at something like, “What the fuck?” I say that to myself a lot. I’m just like, “What the fuck was that?” [laughter]

0:35:28.7 Mike Vacanti: You sound like Rogan when you say that. I think way less than you. I think way less than you.

0:35:35.0 Jordan Syatt: What’s the most common thing you say to yourself?

0:35:38.6 Mike Vacanti: I would have to live my life, pay attention to this, and then report back in a future episode.

0:35:42.1 Jordan Syatt: Okay. Let’s do that.

0:35:45.3 Mike Vacanti: Okay.

0:35:45.4 Jordan Syatt: I think at least like 50 times a day. At least 50 times I’m like, “What the fuck?” Probably on the low… I need to count. I need to count how many times a day I’d be like, “What the fuck?”

0:35:53.3 Mike Vacanti: Track. Get a little tracker. Yeah, let’s… We’ll rip a couple of rapid fire Q&A.

0:36:00.5 Jordan Syatt: “What happens if you don’t get enough protein? Thanks.” From Bab Jacobs.

0:36:07.2 Mike Vacanti: How little are we talking?

0:36:08.9 Jordan Syatt: I don’t know. Let’s say instead of… Let’s say you have someone who they should be getting a minimum of 100 grams and they get 50 grams.

0:36:15.9 Mike Vacanti: Well, you’re going to… All else equal, you’re gonna end up consuming far more carbohydrate and fat, and probably more total calories, right? So from 100 to 50 grams of protein, it’s 200 calories. You’re gonna end up consuming more than 200 calories worth of carbs and fats due to the satiating effect the protein has helping you stay full. You will not build as much muscle as you otherwise would, or retain as much muscle as you otherwise would if you’re in a deficit.

0:36:49.8 Jordan Syatt: If you keep calories the same, you’ll be hungrier.

0:36:51.7 Mike Vacanti: Yep, you’ll… That’s an excellent point, Jordan. Do you know, that would actually be interesting if someone was dialed on their calorie intake, but at a body weight of a buck 75 was eating 50 grams of protein per day.

0:37:04.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:37:05.5 Mike Vacanti: That’d be catastrophic.

0:37:06.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it’d be super… That’d be really difficult.

0:37:09.5 Mike Vacanti: ‘Cause they’re putting in all the effort of tracking and being on point with their tracking, but then not getting nearly enough protein.

0:37:13.2 Jordan Syatt: They’d have to be like, “All right, I’m just gonna have,” I don’t know, “just rice, or just… “

0:37:20.7 Mike Vacanti: Dude, people do it. People find a way to eat very little protein. Yeah, it wouldn’t be good. Don’t do that.

0:37:29.7 Jordan Syatt: Don’t do it.

0:37:30.6 Mike Vacanti: But in that example, 50 grams is not enough to… The negative health consequences would compile over decades, and I guess years and decades, but it’s not an amount of protein where you’re in imminent danger. It’s not like you’re going two years consuming zero grams of protein. Although, I don’t know, at 50 grams per day, if you’re training hard. Yeah, there’s definitely gonna be some gluconeogenesis in there. Little muscle breakdown. Conversion to fuel.

0:38:04.8 Jordan Syatt: What are your thoughts on weighted vests?

0:38:05.3 Mike Vacanti: We just talked about this this morning.

0:38:08.1 Jordan Syatt: You and I did?

0:38:09.5 Mike Vacanti: We did.

0:38:10.2 Jordan Syatt: We spoke about weighted vests this morning?

0:38:12.2 Mike Vacanti: We did.

0:38:13.2 Jordan Syatt: I don’t remember that at all.

0:38:13.3 Mike Vacanti: This was a mere two hours ago.

0:38:15.1 Jordan Syatt: No, we didn’t. We spoke about your cardio. I don’t think we spoke about weighted vests.

0:38:18.8 Mike Vacanti: Yes, we did. ‘Cause I talked about incline walk versus walking outside. If you’re walking outside, you can add a weighted vest to get into Zone 2. But when you’re on a treadmill, you don’t need to add a weighted vest because you can just incline it. And that’s gonna get you there.

[laughter]

0:38:37.4 Mike Vacanti: It’s like, see, now when I say I’m wasting coins, I’m having this conversation with a guy who’s not even remembering what we’re talking about two hours later. It’s like…

[laughter]

0:38:46.7 Mike Vacanti: I gotta get back to my YouTube I’m listening to.

[laughter]

0:38:51.6 Mike Vacanti: He’s asking me all these questions. I’m answering his questions, but he’s not retaining the information.

[laughter]

0:38:55.4 Jordan Syatt: Man, now you know how my teachers must have been so mad with me when I was a kid. They’re like, “I just fucking taught this kid this, and now he’s saying he doesn’t remember it.” I spoke about how I was in SPED growing up. And people are like, “What do you mean you were in SPED?” Yeah. It’s very difficult for me to… For me to remember something, it takes many, many, many repetitions of it over and over and over. Anyway.

0:39:20.7 Mike Vacanti: Weighted vests are a great tool to… The primary use that I see for weighted vests is getting into Zone 2 cardio, doing outdoor walks. And so I’m a big fan of them for that reason. I guess you could argue that walking with a weighted vest also has a little bit of bone mineral density, a little bit benefit there too, you’re just walking with a little more weight.

0:39:55.4 Jordan Syatt: That’s the biggest one for women especially I would say, in that perimenopausal area, it’s huge, huge potential impact for women. If you’re strength training, it’s probably not gonna make that big of a difference. But for someone who might not be strength training or who just wants some extra added weight to your walks, that is definitely an important one, especially for women around perimenopause, but…

0:40:25.0 Mike Vacanti: You wear a weighted vest when you walk.

0:40:25.5 Jordan Syatt: Not all the time, but yeah, when I’m doing a dedicated walk for fitness, yeah, I’ll wear the weighted vest. If I’m just out with the family, I’m not putting my weighted vest on. Or if I’m just even out going on a stroll while I’m doing a business call or something, I’m not putting the weighted vest on. But if I’m doing a dedicated Zone 2, or a dedicated walk, yesterday for example, I only had 20 minutes before my inner circle live, and I was like, “I’m putting this vest on and I’m gonna get the most out of these 20 minutes.” So yeah, if it’s dedicated fitness, I’ll just… ‘Cause it’s just, you get added benefit with no negative.

0:41:06.4 Mike Vacanti: How heavy is your weighted vest?

0:41:07.7 Jordan Syatt: It’s like 15 pounds or something.

0:41:10.4 Mike Vacanti: Nice.

0:41:11.1 Jordan Syatt: Anywhere between 10 to 20 pounds is fine. But yeah, there’s no negative, there’s only positive. And, yeah, you burn more calories. And that shouldn’t be the main thing, but you do, you have greater energy expenditure for… You’re carrying more weight over that distance. Bone mineral density, easier to get into Zone 2. I think there’s postural benefits to it. I can feel myself, I have to work to stay upright more, which, just that extra muscular work, I’ve felt is really, really nice. So, I love it.

0:41:48.6 Mike Vacanti: One more.

0:41:49.7 Jordan Syatt: “What are your thoughts on Anavar for women?”

0:41:51.6 Mike Vacanti: Bro, I have no idea.

0:41:54.2 Jordan Syatt: Okay.

0:41:54.3 Mike Vacanti: I wish I did too. And I know the name, like steroid Dbol, Anavar, tren, test. But Anavar, I don’t really know.

0:42:03.4 Jordan Syatt: Listen, so for anyone who doesn’t know, Anavar is a steroid. It’s relatively mild compared to testosterone. It’s relatively mild compared to Dbol or to Winstrol. And there are different effects of all of these different steroids. Each has a different effect. Anavar is relatively mild. Here’s what I think. I think that if you are considering taking anything, you really have to ask yourself, is it worth the potential costs and what is the best case scenario of this? What’s the best case scenario of you taking these drugs? And how will that change your life? And is that best case scenario worth the potential downsides? That’s really the conversation you need to ask yourself, or you need to have with yourself. Even though Anavar is relatively mild, it doesn’t come without its own risk. And I think one of the major risks of any of these drugs, whether it’s… By the way, and they’re not in the same class, but whether it’s a GLP-1, whether it’s steroids, whether it’s… Any drug, anything you’re taking, what’s the risk, and what’s the benefit, and in the best case scenario, are those risks worth it to you?

0:43:52.3 Jordan Syatt: I don’t think, for the vast majority of people, it’s worth it. Especially, and this might be controversial, but especially for women. I think it’s especially even more potentially dangerous. And there’s an argument to be made that it’s even more dangerous for men, especially with blood pressure issues and all of that and the cancer issues as a result of it. But my answer would be, I don’t think it’s worth it for the vast majority of people. Not to mention, where are you getting it from? You’re not getting Anavar from your doctor or your pharmacist. So it’s like you’re just trusting whoever’s giving it to you, that they’re giving you something that is at best a pure clean form of it. But even then, it still has its own potential negative side effects. And even if it is purely clean and all that, it could have real negative side effects, at worst, have negative side effects and not be a pure clean form of it. So, you really have to weigh out these pros and cons, and I don’t think for the vast majority of people, it’s even worth considering. I just don’t.

0:45:01.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. It’s a great point on the sourcing of the drugs.

0:45:07.9 Jordan Syatt: That’s one of the scary things right now about… Theo Von made a joke about it where he was like, “Can’t even do cocaine in America anymore.” And if you don’t know Theo Von, he’s one of the most hilarious comedians in the world right now. I think he’s just hilarious because of his personality. But it’s like, the cocaine from the ’60s and ’70s is very different than the cocaine from today. And we’ve had hundreds of thousands of Americans killed from laced drugs that aren’t actually the drugs that they say they are. And I know people who’ve gotten what they thought were steroids when it wasn’t actually steroids, because they bought it from someone. And there was… I’m not gonna name any names, or I’m not even gonna give any hints. I know people who were sold what they were told was steroids, when in reality, in this case, they literally just put oil in a vial. They put olive oil in a vial and sold them. And you don’t know what else they could have put in there. But number one, it wasn’t even effective. They didn’t do anything. They were just injecting olive oil into themselves. And it’s… That’s the best case scenario because at the very least, it’s probably not gonna harm you. But you never know. You could probably hurt yourself injecting olive oil into your muscle.

0:46:23.3 Mike Vacanti: Dude, or grape seed oil. Imagine if that was a seed oil.

0:46:23.5 Jordan Syatt: Dear lor…

[laughter]

0:46:27.1 Mike Vacanti: It’d be awful.

[laughter]

0:46:29.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It’s… I just don’t think it’s worth the risk for the vast majority of people.

0:46:34.8 Mike Vacanti: Thank you very much for listening. If you enjoyed the podcast, please take 47 seconds out of your day to leave us a 5-star review. We would greatly appreciate it as we try to grow the pod. Like that YouTube video, and we will see you next Tuesday.

0:46:49.5 Jordan Syatt: Have a good one.