Episode 217: RFK Jr Ate Fries at Stake ‘n Shake, Our Biggest Business Regrets, A Child Ate 5 Cupcakes, and More…

0:00:11.7 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.

0:00:12.3 Jordan Syatt: What’s up, Michael?

0:00:13.2 Mike Vacanti: I’m just grinding.

0:00:14.7 Jordan Syatt: You are grinding, bro.

0:00:15.7 Mike Vacanti: I’m grinding up here.

0:00:17.2 Jordan Syatt: You’re in an undisclosed location?

0:00:19.1 Mike Vacanti: Undisclosed location. Hotel life. All is well. I just have champagne problems. Hotel bed. Wake up, neck’s a little off. Nutrition isn’t the… There’s certain cities in the world where you can be, and nutrition is relatively easy. I feel like at this undisclosed location, I’m struggling on the nutrition front to have good stuff. Unless I want to DoorDash something for $50, which is absurd for every single meal.

0:00:48.4 Jordan Syatt: Why? Is it because there’s nothing near you?

0:00:50.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, nothing that I’m a huge fan of. But I fly back tomorrow.

0:00:57.2 Jordan Syatt: What are the easiest cities to eat healthy in?

0:01:00.6 Mike Vacanti: That’s a… New York City. What’s funny is the easiest cities to eat healthy are probably the easiest cities to eat unhealthy, too.

0:01:06.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. The convenience of… Yeah.

0:01:09.5 Mike Vacanti: Increased supply. I got a banana here, though. I was gonna have a muffin post-workout, but I said no.

0:01:15.2 Jordan Syatt: I said, absolutely not. You had protein though post-workout?

0:01:22.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I had a 25 gram shake.

0:01:24.0 Jordan Syatt: Dude. Oh, my gosh, that reminded me. I have to send you this video. Eric Roberts was just here at my place last week. You saw. You did the first podcast, then Eric did the second one. Eric’s huge. If people who haven’t met him in person, I don’t think they realize how massive. He’s a giant. And he had never tried a Core Power shake.

0:01:50.2 Mike Vacanti: Which is wild by the way.

0:01:50.3 Jordan Syatt: Which is crazy. I think they’re everywhere. So for an average person, I feel like a lot of average people. Regular, everyday people who aren’t in the fitness industry drink them. Eric’s in the fitness industry and never had one. So he was like, “Okay, I’ll try it.” I was like, “Dude, they’re really good. You should get it.” And he was like, “Which one should I get because they had the 42 gram and then the 25 gram or 26 gram.” I was like, “The lower protein one tastes better. It’s just less protein. So if you just want to have the better taste, go with a lower protein option.” So we went with that one. We bring it back to my house. I have a video. I have video cameras throughout my house. I have a video of this. I’ve never seen anything like this. Eric is massive. He sits down at the table just like you did right now. If you’re watching on YouTube, you just saw Mike take a drink of water from his bottle. Just like that. He just put it up, put it down. Drank the whole thing in one sip. With that teeny, tiny… It was up, down, boom. It’s gone. He did one sip.

0:02:49.7 Mike Vacanti: I’m gonna need…

0:02:50.9 Jordan Syatt: One gulp.

0:02:51.4 Mike Vacanti: I’m gonna need to see the video to make sure you’re not exaggerating the story at all.

0:02:55.3 Jordan Syatt: I have it right now. I have it right here. I sent it to Eric. Here, look. Hold on. Let me zoom in on him. You’ll see this. This is insane. Watch. Up. Down.

0:03:23.9 Mike Vacanti: Most of it.

0:03:26.5 Jordan Syatt: He drank all of it in that one… It was insane. Anyway.

0:03:29.0 Mike Vacanti: Most of it. I get competitive over the strangest things. All I want to do right now is chug a Core Power faster than he did.

0:03:37.3 Jordan Syatt: The thing is he was so nonchalant in that moment. It wasn’t like he was trying to be competitive. He was just very relaxed.

0:03:43.0 Mike Vacanti: Well, I’m about to be very competitive. Yeah, he did. He took it down quick.

0:03:47.7 Jordan Syatt: He’s in a severe calorie deficit at 2,400 calories a day. That’s a severe deficit for him.

0:03:53.3 Mike Vacanti: Is he?

0:03:54.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. He told me he was on 2400 in his recent cut where he lost. I forget the exact amount. Insane amount of weight in, I don’t know, 12 weeks or something. And he was like, “Dude, it was a really severe deficit. I was only eating 2,400 calories.” I was like, “Bro, that’s crazy.”

0:04:11.3 Mike Vacanti: Getting lean.

0:04:11.3 Jordan Syatt: I had a halo top. And so I was letting him have some halo top, and I had named all the flavors we had. So we had salted caramel and cookies and cream.

0:04:28.4 Mike Vacanti: Real quick. And we can cut this out. Is this good content? Because you’ve told me these stories?

0:04:28.4 Jordan Syatt: I’ve told you these stories?

0:04:31.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:04:32.1 Jordan Syatt: Nevermind. Nevermind then. I thought I was telling you for the first time.

0:04:32.2 Mike Vacanti: No, no. If it’s good content, I love it. No.

0:04:34.2 Jordan Syatt: No, never mind. I was excited to tell you these stories for the first time.

0:04:41.1 Mike Vacanti: And he ate the cookie dough. He was like, “Oh, that salted caramel was amazing.”

0:04:46.4 Jordan Syatt: “That was great salted caramel.”

0:04:46.6 Mike Vacanti: He doesn’t taste his food.

0:04:48.3 Jordan Syatt: You just ruined the story, Michael. Anyway, let’s just keep going.

0:04:49.4 Mike Vacanti: Well, you said we weren’t going to tell it because it wasn’t for the content.

0:04:53.4 Jordan Syatt: We’ll keep all this in. We’ll keep all this in. Now it’s good content.

0:04:58.1 Mike Vacanti: For sure.

0:04:58.9 Jordan Syatt: I thought I was telling you for the first time. I didn’t remember I had told you that.

0:05:00.4 Mike Vacanti: No, it’s all good.

0:05:01.8 Jordan Syatt: Okay. I’m gonna be that dad who’s 60 or 70 years old, just telling the same story 80 times to my kids and they get so mad.

0:05:09.5 Mike Vacanti: That dad. You’re gonna be 45 years old.

0:05:12.5 Jordan Syatt: Dad, you’ve already told us…

0:05:12.6 Mike Vacanti: What do you mean 70? What are you sipping on?

0:05:17.1 Jordan Syatt: I got a sugar-free Red Bull and a Topo Chico.

0:05:21.0 Mike Vacanti: Nice.

0:05:21.5 Jordan Syatt: But this is good. Red Bull stepped up their game. This is watermelon. It’s 10 calories, 80 milligrams caffeine. It’s really good. Usually their old formula I wasn’t the biggest fan of in terms of taste. But the new one’s pretty good.

0:05:34.1 Mike Vacanti: What else have we got going on?

0:05:36.8 Jordan Syatt: Bro, I don’t even know it’s good content anymore. I don’t know what I’ve told you before. I’m sort of waiting on you to run this episode now.

0:05:41.8 Mike Vacanti: The push-up guy is doing lots more sets since I last updated. He’s probably done four total sets.

0:05:48.3 Jordan Syatt: The guy out at the pool who was doing push-ups?

0:05:50.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:05:50.4 Jordan Syatt: Is he working out or is he doing it to try and get a pump?

0:05:52.9 Mike Vacanti: He’s trying to get a pump. He’s got a bucket hat on, some puka shells, socks with sandals.

0:06:01.1 Jordan Syatt: Is he with people?

0:06:01.5 Mike Vacanti: He’s strutting around. Not at the moment.

0:06:02.5 Jordan Syatt: That’s a real strategy.

0:06:03.7 Mike Vacanti: It’s a real strategy.

0:06:05.0 Jordan Syatt: Especially in a party city. You’re in bathing suits or swimsuits all day. He’s just trying to get a little pump for the next hour or so.

0:06:12.9 Mike Vacanti: I can’t even tell you how much I respect the overlap of function and aesthetic desire that this guy’s pulling off right now.

0:06:22.1 Jordan Syatt: You’re drinking water out of a plastic bottle?

0:06:25.1 Mike Vacanti: I’m on the road. They don’t have a reverse osmosis here. I do think… We can talk about that. I think that high-quality water in order of importance of things that are going to negatively or positively affect your health is very far down the list. However, I think that if you are gonna decide between getting a reverse osmosis installed for $300 that’s gonna last you 15 years and come out to… I don’t know, 20 bucks a year on average or drink out of plastic bottles all day every single day, it makes a lot more sense just to get the high-quality water filtration system. That being said, if you’re traveling and you’re scared to ever drink out of plastic bottles because a small amount of BPA is gonna have some crazy negative effect on your health or microplastics in the brain or in your balls or wherever they end up that is scary to you. I feel like those are the two places that people are most concerned on that issue.

0:07:35.9 Jordan Syatt: Is that it, the brain and the balls?

0:07:37.5 Mike Vacanti: Well, they definitely accumulate in testicles, which I don’t think we actually know what that means. And if that is a bad thing in the long term. But if you’re terrified to ever drink out of a plastic bottle even one time for fear of the negative effects, that’s not a super healthy place to be mentally.

0:08:00.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, agreed. You have the reverse osmosis installed?

0:08:03.1 Mike Vacanti: Of course.

0:08:03.8 Jordan Syatt: Did you have someone do that or you did that yourself?

0:08:05.7 Mike Vacanti: I did not do that myself. You’re asking me a lot of handyman questions now that you bought and own your own house. I feel like when I was in Dallas, you asked me two or three or four handyman type. Hey, do you do this on your own, or do you… Hey, do you do this or do you have someone else do this?

0:08:21.3 Jordan Syatt: I think there’s something to do with your treadmill. You were like, yeah, I’ll put it together myself or something. And I was surprised. That was an undertaking. That was a big deal.

0:08:33.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Because there was a little bit of electrical wiring.

0:08:36.8 Jordan Syatt: That took a long time.

0:08:39.0 Mike Vacanti: It took longer than I wanted it to take. Yeah.

0:08:39.2 Jordan Syatt: You said it was four or six hours or something.

0:08:42.3 Mike Vacanti: I don’t remember it being that long. An hour and a half?

0:08:45.2 Jordan Syatt: Got it. Okay. It’s still a while. How do you get reverse… You googled reverse osmosis installer, and they came over and they did that?

0:08:54.3 Mike Vacanti: I had my plumber install it for me.

0:08:56.3 Jordan Syatt: Interesting. Okay. I wouldn’t even know where to begin with something like that.

0:09:00.2 Mike Vacanti: Now you know.

0:09:00.3 Jordan Syatt: Is that common for plumbers to know how to do that?

0:09:02.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Or this guy’s just the best. He is the best. But I assume anything to do with piping and water flow through the house is up the alley of the plumbing industry.

0:09:16.1 Jordan Syatt: Is that only through your sink or is that also in your shower?

0:09:18.9 Mike Vacanti: No, just through the sink.

0:09:20.0 Jordan Syatt: Got it. Okay.

0:09:21.2 Mike Vacanti: You can throw a shower head filter on for 40 or 50 bucks. I think you’re just asking because you’re making conversation, or you think I’m interested in it, because I don’t think you have any interest.

0:09:31.9 Jordan Syatt: It’s that one. The second one. It’s the second one.

0:09:33.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I initiated this by saying it’s very far down in the order of importance. People would better spend their time on eating whole minimally processed foods, controlling their calories, eating enough protein, strength training, blacking out their room and getting it into the 60s Fahrenheit wise and getting high-quality sleep and getting enough sleep, not spending all day, every day on social media, touching grass, getting sun. These are all the good things that we know we should do. But again, to spend what? 15 minutes ordering the thing and then have someone come install it for you if you’re planning on being in the same location for a long time? I think it makes a lot of sense.

0:10:24.1 Jordan Syatt: Sick, bro.

0:10:25.3 Mike Vacanti: You don’t like ChatGPT anymore?

0:10:25.4 Jordan Syatt: Dude.

0:10:26.5 Mike Vacanti: I knew you’d see it my way eventually. It’s been wrong on so many things that you’re just so frustrated with it.

0:10:31.4 Jordan Syatt: Grok is so good.

0:10:33.0 Mike Vacanti: ChatGPT is suspect.

0:10:35.4 Jordan Syatt: It’s influenced. It’s influenced by the… Yeah, it’s overly influenced. No, Grok is great. Grok is really good. And I just like the conversational nature of Grok. I like how Grok communicates. I asked it some pretty heated or not heated questions. I asked it some incendiary questions pertaining to the Middle East to see what it would give me on those responses. Super objective and it was funny because I wanted to play devil’s advocate. I would say things that were against what I believe just to see what it would say. And I would say, “Hey, I think you’re being unfair because of X, Y, and Z.” And it would come back and be like, “Hey, I can see why you think I was being unfair. Let me clarify and try and give a little bit more nuanced perspective on it.” It’s really incredible.

0:11:24.6 Mike Vacanti: I had never even used it. When you were getting what you perceive to be incorrect answers from ChatGPT based on what I know about the founder and origins of the company. It’s like there’s so many chatbots out there, why not try a few of them and see what you like?

0:11:41.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, big fan of… I’ve fully switched over to Grok. I don’t use ChatGPT anymore. I’m actually looking to cancel my subscription. Yeah.

0:11:48.0 Mike Vacanti: Wow.

0:11:49.0 Jordan Syatt: Grok is amazing. It’s way, way, way better. And I use it for everything. Whether I wanna learn how to… Look, I use it for cooking a lot. For the grill. I use it for grilling all the time. Just grilled salmon for the first time. It came out perfect.

0:12:06.3 Mike Vacanti: I liked YouTube for DIY stuff back when they didn’t hide the dislike because similar to my Lyle versus Mercola or Alan versus Mercola and being on Google and being able to compare sources. The thing about YouTube for DIY is a like-to-dislike ratio is such a good indicator on quality of video, more so than views… More so than anything else, that I’d rather have five answers and be able to sift through and see which one is most agreed upon for DIY stuff compared to just having one answer.

0:12:45.4 Jordan Syatt: Well, I guess you could ask Grok like hey, give me five different ways to do this that are generally agreed upon to be the most popular or common ways and it would give you probably all the ones that are available online rather than having to watch all of them.

0:12:58.6 Mike Vacanti: If you had the option to get some brain chip implanted right now, that would make you smarter and I don’t know, put a lens over your eye naturally so you had more information at your disposal, would you do that?

0:13:19.5 Jordan Syatt: My initial gut reaction is no. But I want to examine that and think why that would be my initial gut reaction because I feel like it really does depend on the situation. Here’s I think maybe a little bit more of a nuanced answer. If my goal is still, “Hey, let’s focus on business, let’s grow the business… Yeah, I would do that. I would get it implanted because it would probably make me more productive. It would give me more access whatever I need in order to accomplish my business goals.” If my goal is… Let’s say I’ve already met all my business goals and I don’t need or want to continue to grow my business to reach more people, to accrue more money, then the answer is absolutely not. Because that’s just gonna distract me from what I really want to focus on at home.

0:14:10.2 Mike Vacanti: What if it helps you with your business goals but we don’t know what the long-term impact is?

0:14:14.4 Jordan Syatt: On health?

0:14:15.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, on everything. You’re putting technology inside your skull.

0:14:20.4 Jordan Syatt: I’m oddly comfortable with those types of things. Experimentation with that stuff. For whatever reason I’m relatively…

0:14:30.0 Mike Vacanti: For a guy with high fear, it doesn’t apply there.

0:14:33.3 Jordan Syatt: Let’s do it. Let’s try. Whatever. I’m always like, “Oh, whatever.” Do you know why though? The reason I’m like that and it might be naivete or overconfidence. Any of those. Is also, dude, we’re so good at adapting. Humans are outrageously good at adapting to whatever is thrown at us. We just are. It’s unbelievable.

0:15:02.1 Mike Vacanti: Definitely true.

0:15:08.0 Jordan Syatt: Long-term as a species.

0:15:08.3 Mike Vacanti: Generation to generation… Yeah. As a species within a lifetime.

0:15:10.6 Jordan Syatt: Not individually. I don’t know.

0:15:12.1 Mike Vacanti: Just seeing the massive negative effect that social media is having on the youth and everyone? I feel like maybe we will generation over generation adjust to the faster changes in technology. But I feel like within an individual’s life, not everyone seems to be adjusting that well.

0:15:33.0 Jordan Syatt: I agree with that. I also feel like every older generation says that about the younger generation. They’re always…

0:15:41.2 Mike Vacanti: Or prove myself a millennial like I’m not adjusting. Our parents aren’t adjusting. No one’s adjusting to it. People who are killers and using it to create are… Like, Eric Roberts is adjusting to it. But for every Eric Roberts, there’s a million people…

0:16:00.4 Jordan Syatt: A million, yeah.

0:16:00.8 Mike Vacanti: Overconsuming, wasting their lives away, laying in bed at night, blue light in the face, seeing people get murdered on the other side of the world. But at a high level, you make a good point that we are a resilient species.

0:16:17.6 Jordan Syatt: There’s also a huge movement of a younger generation to be like I’m not using social media. It is a big movement growing where they don’t want to be on social media and they do the opposite of whatever their parents do.

0:16:32.6 Mike Vacanti: Tell me more.

0:16:33.7 Jordan Syatt: From what I’ve seen, especially with the few young people that I interact with or with the content that I see online, there’s a growing movement of high school to young college kids who are disassociating from the social media world because they see how horribly… Here’s what I think happened. I think a lot of these kids have grown up with either siblings and/or parents just not paying attention to them because they’ve been on their phones all the time. And I’m acutely aware of how much I’m on my phone in front of my daughters especially my oldest one. Because I have one vivid memory that will always stick with me. So my dad was… When he was there he was often working or just not paying attention. Very rarely were there conversations. I have one vivid memory of me pitching. I was pitching in a baseball game. I don’t know how old I was. Maybe 12. Just throwing out a potential age. Maybe 11 or 12, I was pitching and he never came to the games ever. So there was one game that he came to. One in maybe two or three seasons that he came to. And I was looking to see if he was watching. And he was just on his phone. Not watching the game.

0:18:02.5 Jordan Syatt: Away from all the parents, away from the stands, just on his phone. That is burned into my memory that I’ll never. And I was just so mad, and I was like… That’s why I’m very aware of my phone usage in front of my daughters because I’ve decided, when I’m with them, I’m not on my phone. If they’re not around? Sure, that’s fine, but not when I’m with them. And I feel like a lot of the younger generation has been exposed to large amounts of that, where maybe they’re trying to talk to their parents. They’re trying to talk to their older siblings or cousins or whomever, and they’re not even making eye contact with them. They’re not even looking at them. I have a feeling that that is one of the major reasons why this is pushing that younger generation away from being on their phone so much.

0:18:44.0 Mike Vacanti: I hope you’re right. I hope that is happening. I just wonder, based on how addictive and enticing these platforms are to use, that it’s… I hope that the number of younger people who are moving in that direction is material and adds up and it’s not just a little fringe movement.

0:19:07.7 Jordan Syatt: The counter to that would be. So much of business is now done on that. So many companies are requiring their employees to be on it for any number of reasons. And if you want to start your own business. You’ve basically got to be on it. If you want to have some level of entrepreneurship, you have to… You don’t have to. But you basically have to, especially if you want more freedom and ability and more reach for essentially free. But that would be the counterpoint where so much of the future is going there so that it makes it more difficult.

0:19:43.5 Mike Vacanti: And it’s here already, not even the future, the present. I completely agree with you on that front that there’s a sacrifice in terms of health, mental health, whatever you want to call it to be in the places where people pay attention. If you want to have one of those roles at a company or grow your own business. This actually bleeds nicely into something you’ve been doing for the last four Saturdays.

0:20:03.2 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah, dude, I need to show you. Should I show you right now?

0:20:06.8 Mike Vacanti: No, no, no. I believe you. I believe you.

0:20:09.2 Jordan Syatt: But you shouldn’t. You should see. I need to prove it to you.

0:20:13.0 Mike Vacanti: I believe you. And I’d be pissed if you were… Especially the way you’re saying this and how confident you are and how…

0:20:18.7 Jordan Syatt: No, but you should just… Listen, I’m very glad you believe me. But also, I want to prove it to you. I want to show you so you can really see the data.

0:20:25.7 Mike Vacanti: You can pull it up. I don’t think there’s a way to prove it, because if you’re going… Tell them what you’re doing first.

0:20:30.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I decided that I… So I’ve been wanting to take Shabbat more seriously. The Sabbath more seriously. If you want to take it really seriously, there’s no electronics whatsoever. There’s none of that. For me, the app that takes up the most time for me is Instagram, because I can’t go on it and just consume because there’s always work. DMs are coming in. It’s very hard to just use it leisurely. So I decided… I think a month ago, I was like, “Okay, from Friday night sundown to Saturday night sundown. No Instagram whatsoever.” Four Saturdays in a row, zero Instagram. This past Saturday, this finger habit opened it, and boom, I immediately shut it. It was literally less than three seconds. But zero Instagram, none of that. So, yeah, man. It’s been good. And it’s crazy because I told you yesterday, as soon as I logged back on on Saturday night, it’s just like death, destruction, evil, da da da. Immediately. It’s the first things you see. Sucked right back in.

0:21:44.9 Mike Vacanti: You were saying that as soon as you log back on, you feel worse. You get hit with that negativity and just feel worse immediately. But, dude, the fact that you did it or have done it four Saturdays in a row, Friday night to Saturday night, is really impressive.

0:22:02.1 Jordan Syatt: Thank you, bro. I was telling you yesterday, the thing that I’ve done with people who are trying to wean off of calorie counting is. All right, first, just take one day a week where you don’t count calories.

0:22:13.6 Mike Vacanti: People who have a disordered relationship with counting calories?

0:22:16.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. People who are obsessive with it, and they track their spinach, they track their onion, they track their tomato. And they’re so obsessive with it that the idea of stopping… They get fearful they’re going to gain all this fat and ruin all their progress. Okay, so how about we take one day a week where you don’t track calories, and the other six you do track. You do that for a few months and then have two days where you don’t track, and the other five days you do track. Do that for a few months, until eventually you’re not tracking at all and you’re totally fine. That would be the ultimate goal here where within a couple of years, I’m just not on Instagram. I’m just gone.

0:22:54.6 Mike Vacanti: I didn’t tell him to do this. I’m not making Jordan. Any of Jordan’s Instagram followers who are upset that that’s gonna happen or when that happens. He sprung this on me. He surprised me with it.

0:23:08.0 Jordan Syatt: It might not happen. There’s a real chance it doesn’t happen. Who knows?

0:23:11.2 Mike Vacanti: It is a cool reverse exposure therapy. Weaning away from something method.

0:23:18.9 Jordan Syatt: It’s that precision, nutrition style. One little thing at a time.

0:23:23.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, but it makes more sense with somebody who’s overly obsessive with calorie tracking and very fearful to not track. It’s not your everyday guy or girl who wants and needs to lose 50 pounds and asks you how to do it. And you’re like, “All right, it starts with a month of 8 ounces of water right when you wake up.” There’s a balance to how fast you implement habits.

0:23:52.6 Jordan Syatt: Of course. Of course.

0:23:53.6 Mike Vacanti: And that varies from person to person as well. Shout out to my friend John Arnold, who listens to the podcast, who’s on 24 hours of no X and no Instagram as well. The timing is.

0:24:06.6 Jordan Syatt: Let’s go, John Arnold. Let’s go.

0:24:08.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, he was feeling positive effects after 12 hours, which is crazy.

0:24:13.2 Jordan Syatt: It’s amazing. Good for him. That’s not an easy thing to do. Man. I’ve got to say, did you see RFK Jr. getting French fries at Steak ‘n Shake or something? Did you see that?

0:24:26.7 Mike Vacanti: No.

0:24:28.0 Jordan Syatt: It’s really disappointing, to be honest. I really… Oops. My sound is on high. He made this whole fucking thing. He went to Steak ‘n Shake, I think with Sean Hannity and made a whole big deal because Steak ‘n Shake has decided to stop making their French fries… Stopped frying them in seed oils, and instead have started frying them in beef tallow. RFK went there and he put on this whole show just basically being like, they’re so much healthier now. I’m so glad that they’re doing this in beef tallow. And ironically, when you actually look at the ingredients, they are first fried in seed oil still, and then later on they fry them again in beef tallow. So now…

0:25:20.3 Mike Vacanti: Interesting.

0:25:21.2 Jordan Syatt: They’ve actually increased the caloric content. They’ve increased the fat content. Here’s my thing. Earlier on, several years ago, I was actually really excited about RFK because of how he spoke about bringing the country together. He was so non-divisive, especially when he was running as an independent. And I still think he’s non-divisive, which I really like. But that’s why I was really in support of what he was doing because it was just like I hadn’t heard of someone who was really trying to bring both parties together. Then seeing him at Steak ‘n Shake talking about how much healthier these fries are now because they fry them in beef tallow. I lost my shit. It’s like when people have those Justin’s peanut butter cups instead of Reese’s peanut butter cups. It’s like, well, these are organic. It’s still a fucking peanut butter cup, dude. Or it’s like, “Oh, I’m having a cookie but it’s gluten-free.” It’s still a fucking cookie. It was very disappointing that you’re eating fast food, dude. You’re still eating fucking French fries and a burger and a shake at a fast food. And this is how we’re making America healthy again? I don’t know if you’d want to get into it, but it was obnoxious.

0:26:46.7 Mike Vacanti: It feels like more of a publicity stunt. I’m completely off politics and we also did a whole episode on seed oils. Yeah, it sounds like…

0:27:00.4 Jordan Syatt: Performative.

0:27:00.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, some grandstanding. What’s interesting is I got a little feedback on our seed oils episode about someone with severe autoimmune issues who by cutting out seed oils, actually saw a massive increase in or a massive reduction in their symptoms and were asking about that. To which I said, I don’t know. We’re coming at this from the perspective of fat loss and what’s…

0:27:28.9 Jordan Syatt: Well, no, we could talk about it from a health perspective. Alan Aragon’s posted all the PubMed IDs on and he’s…

0:27:34.7 Mike Vacanti: Not even health but people with specific autoimmune conditions.

0:27:38.7 Jordan Syatt: Here’s how I look at it. If we’re looking at seed oils and someone cut out seed oils from their life. Okay, so were you cooking with cottonseed oil in your house? What seed oil were you cooking with? Or was it the foods that you were eating that also happened to be using seed oils? Most people aren’t using seed oils in their homes. Most people are not taking seed oils and deep frying shit and cooking shit with seed oils in their home. Most of the time they’re eating very highly processed foods that also happen to use seed oils. It’s like, “Okay, was it the seed oils that you cut out or was it all this other processed shit that then led to shocker. You feel way better.”

0:28:20.8 Mike Vacanti: Ask Grok what the most commonly used oil is for people cooking at home. Because for my whole life, it was canola oil. I would imagine for most people that’s true. Maybe not in the fitness industry or people who are more health conscious, but I think the majority of Americans use canola oil at home.

0:28:38.2 Jordan Syatt: That’s the most common one? I would have thought olive oil, even though it’s a little bit more expensive.

0:28:41.8 Mike Vacanti: No, bro. Ask Grok. Ask your new go-to.

0:28:45.4 Jordan Syatt: Vegetable oil. That is the most popular one. Also, olive oil and canola oil is also popular as well.

0:28:51.9 Mike Vacanti: Now, by the way, I don’t wanna talk about some fringe autoimmune issue. I can’t speak to that. Talk to your doctor and work with your doctor. It’s out of my area of expertise. It also shouldn’t be the focus of someone who’s focused on public health for a large population. But it was an interesting counterpoint to which… It’s much easier to make a case against this obsession around a swap that is not important at all for fat loss, when fat loss is the primary thing that America needs to get healthier.

0:29:37.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, correct. And fat loss will generally reduce inflammation, improve all health markers. Da, da, da. Yeah. For the vast majority of people. Yeah. When I’m looking at seed oil consumption, and I think there’s the data to support this, that most people are not overconsuming seed oils at home. Most people are not. It’s not from whatever they’re cooking. In fact, most people aren’t even cooking. Most people are not fat because of the way they’re preparing their own food at home. Most people are overweight because of overconsuming things that have already been made that are prepackaged and often will use seed oils as a result.

0:30:23.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I think most. Yeah, I think that’s a fair statement. The majority of. By the way, hearing about RFK going to whatever fast food, seed oil, and then thinking about people arguing about it in comment sections. I can’t think of anything in the world I would want to be doing less.

0:30:49.2 Jordan Syatt: Rather than that.

0:30:49.3 Mike Vacanti: Oh, my gosh. The intersection of fringe nutrition people having nutrition be their religion combined with politics, combined with social media arguing… All of my least favorite things. Get out there, get some sun, lift some weights, track your macros, drink some water, and get out there and do it again and again and again. Get some steps in, take some deep breaths, don’t spend eight hours a day scrolling. Do meaningful work. Get it together. Come on. This is a pep talk for myself as well. This is a lecture for everyone, but it’s also a lecture for me. Jordan’s about to hit us with a great question, I can see it. I can see it in his face.

0:31:37.2 Jordan Syatt: This woman said, “Help. My kid ate five cupcakes at a birthday party.”

0:31:44.7 Mike Vacanti: I think you’re good. Kids do the darndest things. That happens. I’d say at the next birthday party… You know…

0:31:53.2 Jordan Syatt: Here’s what I think is interesting. Obviously, it depends on the kid as they get older, but kids are very good at knowing when they’re hungry and when they’re not hungry. And they’re very good at modulating what they eat, actually pretty naturally. And I remember being a kid and I had a… I generally prefer. And I preferred my whole life. My mom would always say, “You’re the only kid who prefers fruit over cake.” I like that stuff, fortunately. If I ate more than usual without even thinking about it, I would then eat less than that the next day, and I’d probably be running around more and playing more, and I’d just be more energetic. Kids are really good with that. And I actually think if you make that a thing where it’s like, Oh, my goodness, you ate five cupcakes. Well, now we have to reduce your calories to a child. And then you force them to do things. Especially if they’re like, 5, 6, 7, 8. Just let them be a kid. It’ll be fine. But if you start inundating them with, “Okay, well, now we have to reduce your calories and now we… ” Now, you’re asking for a disorder.

0:33:16.6 Jordan Syatt: You’re teaching them to not listen to their body anymore. I just think I would just let it be. They’re a kid. They had five cupcakes. It’s not a big fucking deal. If they’re doing that at 16, 17, 18. Now, I think there might be a discussion worth having, especially if they’re getting overweight and they’re not exercising. I think by the time a kid is 14, there should be some level of exercise as part of their life. And it doesn’t have to be, “Hey, you have to work out for an hour.” But it could be maybe we’re gonna go rock climbing. You do weekly rock climbing or we go on a walk as a family or whatever. There should be some regimented exercise by the time a kid is 14 and that might even be on the later side. I think maybe 12, depending… But it should be fun. It should be fun and enjoyable. But there should be a deliberate movement and exercise that I think is part of a kid’s life.

0:34:19.5 Mike Vacanti: I couldn’t agree more with the whole answer. I would actually push it way earlier. And I plan to incorporate a lot of sports/activities. Probably as young as like 5 or 6 years old. Not ultra-competitive, but getting out there playing with other kids, learning teamwork, having activity that is enjoyable, trying different sports and activities to see what the kid likes. I think focusing on making active play fun for kids is a way better strategy than trying to micromanage their nutrition. Now we could… I don’t necessarily want to, but we could talk about what types of foods to keep in the house. I think providing access to lots of good, high-quality healthy foods is a better strategy than trying to micromanage intake of cupcakes at a birthday. Pizza when they go out to eat with their friend’s parents or whatever. But I fully agree with your wanting to encourage some type of exercise at some point in the childhood.

0:35:39.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I also feel like in this situation if you… And this person wrote help in all caps. Help. My child ate five cupcakes as though… That’s not a help. That’s not an issue. If your child’s a diabetic, then yeah, maybe there’s a medical emergency that you didn’t have insulin or something. But for just a kid eating five cupcakes at a birthday party, that’s not a help. I used to tell my clients when I was doing one-on-one coaching before we started working together, I was like, “Hey if you need anything, email me. If it’s an emergency, you shouldn’t be emailing me because there’s no emergencies that you should be emailing me about. If there’s an emergency. You go to the hospital.” They used to laugh when I would say this. It’s like there’s no emergency with nutrition coaching. If you feel like it’s an emergency, then you need to calm down. There’s no emergency here. It’s like, you ate more calories. Not an emergency. Relax. Go to bed, and we’ll talk about it. But if you are putting that fear and anxiety and guilt on your child because you have it. If you ate five cupcakes then you would feel that. And now you’re putting that on your child. You’re now…

0:36:46.3 Jordan Syatt: Number one, you’re putting way too much pressure on them and way too much guilt and anxiety and shame. And you’re actually teaching them to not listen to their body. You’re teaching them to remove that and say, “Oh, so that’s something I shouldn’t do.” Now they are creating that fear and guilt and anxiety and shame within them that you’ve put it on them. Just let them be kids.

0:37:05.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, the short answer is I’m not addressing it or really even thinking twice about it.

0:37:10.0 Jordan Syatt: I do think you should get that rock wall for your kids. The one that you saw at my…

0:37:18.6 Mike Vacanti: You like the rock wall?

0:37:18.9 Jordan Syatt: Dude. She’s literally… Not yesterday, the day before, she climbed it all on her own.

0:37:24.7 Mike Vacanti: Wow. Sweet.

0:37:26.7 Jordan Syatt: At two and a half, she climbed the thing on her own. Insane. Insane. At least on that type of thing she… She’s fearless with that stuff. But then she sees like a teeny tiny speck of a bug on the slide and she’ll run away as fast as she can. But yeah, just having as many opportunities for exercise and movement around as possible. It’s the most amazing. I think it’s the one of the greatest gifts. Aside from just unconditional love. It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give your kid. Your favorite book other than the Hebrew Bible.

0:37:58.1 Mike Vacanti: What’s yours?

0:38:00.4 Jordan Syatt: I didn’t think you were gonna like that.

0:38:05.7 Mike Vacanti: Exactly. You never know, bro. You never know.

0:38:10.8 Jordan Syatt: I did not think that you were gonna like… I literally… It was the next one and I was like, he’s not gonna like this one.

0:38:16.1 Mike Vacanti: What do you…

0:38:16.9 Jordan Syatt: Harry Potter is the greatest book series, literally of all time. What’s yours?

0:38:23.7 Mike Vacanti: I also really enjoy Harry Potter for fiction.

0:38:31.5 Jordan Syatt: Or nonfiction. Maybe you just didn’t get your letter.

0:38:32.1 Mike Vacanti: Good one, Jordan. Dopamine Nation has probably been the most impactful book I’ve read in the last five-plus years.

0:38:49.0 Jordan Syatt: I should read that.

0:38:50.0 Mike Vacanti: You should read that.

[laughter]

0:38:52.7 Jordan Syatt: “You need that.”

0:38:54.7 Mike Vacanti: I just think it’s unbelievably insightful for this one blip in human history that we live in, where we have access to cheap dopamine everywhere. Our bodies are not equipped for it, our brains are not equipped for it, and it has a massive impact on how we live our lives. And the idea of the pleasure/pain equilibrium, the somewhat recent discovery, definitely within the last hundred years that pleasure and pain originate from the same part of the brain. It’s a fascinating book. I’ve read it multiple times and really enjoy a bunch of the episodes that the author, Dr. Anna Lembke has been on. A bunch of podcasts.

0:39:41.0 Jordan Syatt: Biggest life regret?

0:39:46.7 Mike Vacanti: No regrets. In the words of Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights.

0:39:55.4 Jordan Syatt: No regrets.

0:39:55.5 Mike Vacanti: No regrets. Yes.

0:39:55.5 Jordan Syatt: Is there anything business-wise you wish you did differently?

0:39:56.5 Mike Vacanti: I’d have to think about it. Nothing comes to mind right now.

0:40:01.8 Jordan Syatt: Is there anything business-wise that you’re really glad you did it the way you did it?

0:40:13.0 Mike Vacanti: Taking a long-term perspective on assessing success versus failure. Not a month or three months or even one-year or two-year perspective. Having a thank you economy approach. A give, give, give, give, give without expecting anything in return allowed me to frame my expectations around success in a way where I was excited about the entire process rather than thinking about, how much am I making right now? How can I close sales right now? How can I get more clients right now? Looking at it all from the perspective of help as many people as possible, and if any one of those people wants to work with me, wow! What a blessing. And working as hard as I possibly could to help as many people as possible. Which is kind of a… I don’t know, it’s hard to say exactly because that ethos came from many different places. But yeah… I don’t even remember the exact question, but I’m very happy that I took that approach because I see people… I see maybe some people struggle because their natural inclinations are to look at things differently or because they learned business from different “gurus” than the people who I looked up to in business at the time. I don’t know. But I’m grateful that that was my perspective.

0:41:56.9 Jordan Syatt: Amen. It makes me think there’s a lot of shady business strategies everywhere but also notably in the fitness industry. And I think one of the best things that I feel like you and I have both done is we’ve never forgotten that we’re just personal trainers. Is what we are. And I say we’re just personal trainers. It’s not to diminish what we do, it’s actually to uplift what we do. In terms of. Oftentimes I think coaches will be like, “I want to be more than just a personal trainer. I want to have an empire.” And then as a result of wanting this empire because they follow motivation shit on Instagram. I want to have this empire, they end up going down these really scammy, smarmy sales routes to try and make as much money as possible off of each person. And now it becomes they’re no longer a personal trainer. Now they are a marketer or now they are a salesperson and they don’t coach people. They don’t do any more coaching, they don’t do any more client interaction. It’s just they now become a manager of a larger team. And I should say there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But I think for us it’s always been I don’t want someone else to do my coaching. I like being a coach. I enjoy being a coach. And that for me is far more important than building an empire.

0:43:27.8 Jordan Syatt: In fact, building an empire sounds pretty fucking awful and horrible relative to just having a relatively manageable list of clients that I can work with and give a really high level of service and positively impact their life and also make enough money to provide for me and my family comfortably, but without this never-ending pursuit of extreme wealth that won’t actually bring you happiness. I found myself in some of those circles probably in that 2015, 2016 era of people who are like, “You’ve just got to make as much money as you can, make as much money at all costs. Do this. High ticket, high ticket.” And it just never felt good. It was like, “What are you guys doing? I thought we were coaches. Why did I spend so many years studying how to be a great coach and putting out so much content on how to help people if it’s just all about trying to make more money.” I will say one thing I’ve been really happy about that I didn’t do. To answer the first question I asked you was, I’m really glad I never hired a huge team of coaches. And I should say there are some people who do that and they do it very well. They do it very well and they have a great business with whether it’s Beth Feraco or Eric Roberts. They’ve hired pretty substantial teams of coaches and they also give great coaching and they do wonderful.

0:44:53.1 Jordan Syatt: Both from business and from what I see as a quality of coaching perspective. But oh my lord, dude. Even just Eric was here the other day and I was talking to him about how it’s a full-time job just managing his team of coaches. And then never mind. There have been issues when you have coaches and then people leaving and trying to take clients and you have politics within your own organization and it’s like oh my… Just keeping your team small I think is a massive advantage. You don’t have to deal with all the intercompany politics. You don’t have to worry about being politically correct. You don’t have to worry about dealing with people trying to steal your business or people undermining you or insubordination. It’s just like, I just want to help people. It’s keeping your team small. I think a lot of people look down on it like, “Oh my God, you’ve got this many employees. It’s amazing.” It’s like, “I’ve got a couple and that’s it. I’m way happier as a result of it.”

0:45:53.8 Mike Vacanti: Also the reason we all got into it is to help people. Helping people on the nutrition front, on the training front is the primary skill set of most people who start an online fitness business. And so managing people or managing teams or teaching an assistant coach how to coach or managing app developers, all of these things are different business skills that are very different than the reason you got into this in the first place. And so let’s say you can get really good at all of those other non-fitness skills? Cool. You can scale more and you can build a bigger business. But most people’s both passion and stronger skill set is in coaching and is in helping people. And so not only is it not a great fit for a lot of people to end up trying to build an “empire”. It’s also not in the skill set of most personal trainers. Myself included.

0:47:00.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yes. Exactly right.

0:47:00.6 Mike Vacanti: We’ve got a mentorship Q&A. Thank you very much for listening. If you listened this long, please, please. Please from an undisclosed location, leave a five-star review. Spotify, Apple, wherever you are listening. Next week let’s read some written reviews. Jordan, can you remind me next week we’re going to read written reviews?

0:47:17.3 Jordan Syatt: You want me to remind you?

0:47:21.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I do.

0:47:22.1 Mike Vacanti: You might want to make a note on your own phone.

0:47:22.8 Mike Vacanti: I want you to dig deep right now and place that right there. Where the Neuro link is gonna go but isn’t there yet. I want you to put that little piece of information right there. Remind me in the next couple of weeks. Thank you for listening. Do you have anything to say before we go on to our Mentorship Q&A?

0:47:35.6 Jordan Syatt: Thank you for listening. We love you. It was a nice, brief conversation. It was good. We’ve got to hop on this mentorship Q&A. Thank you so much for all your support. Thank you to everyone who’s in the mentorship. We love you. We’re about to go talk to you right now. The Instagram growth guide is… It’s actually all uploaded onto Vimeo. We’re just putting it together into a PDF for you. Volume 2.0. That’s it. Thank you so much. Talk to you soon.