EP #102- Men Struggle With Body Image, Too? Tips For Finding Joy In Fitness with Jordan Syatt, Founder of Syatt Fitness and Gary Vee's Personal Trainer

(gentle music) I think a lot of people would assume maybe 95% of women struggle with their body image and five or 10% of men do. I think it's more like 99% of women and 99% of men struggle with it. And it's just they struggle with it in different ways and men are far less likely to talk about it. With me specifically when I was a teenager, it stemmed from wrestling and from this, like I had to make weight in order to compete and I had Vita Jr. out for the varsity spot. So it was a pressure to compete, but also a pressure to perform for my school and for my friends I didn't wanna let anybody down. I just had no idea what I was doing. Welcome back to another episode of Everyday Endorphins, a mental health podcast focused on the importance of finding joy and happiness in daily living. I'm your host, Stella Stafnopolis, and this week is all about redefining a healthier relationship to exercise and finding joy in physical fitness. I had the pleasure of bringing Jordan Siet onto the podcast this week. He's the founder of Siet Fitness, an online fitness coaching business. He's also a five time world record powerlifter and Gary Vee's personal trainer. We recorded this episode at the start of the new year. So in this interview, Jordan shares a bit of his perspective on sticking to New Year's resolutions, implementing fitness goals. But more broadly, we talk a little bit about how he got interested in fitness. He's own fitness philosophy and approach to training. How training and strength training in particular can differ between women versus men. And also how body image issues are prevalent in both men and women, but might manifest in different ways. We also talk about certain strategies to bring more joy into your fitness routine. Why mindset is over half the battle when it comes to anything fitness and exercise related. And bite-sized strategies that you can bring into your own routine to lead a healthier and happy life. I'm so excited to get into this episode, but before we dive in, reminder to like, rate, and review this podcast on whichever listening platform you prefer. And follow along the Everyday Endorphins Instagram and TikTok to stay up to date on future episodes and podcast events. Hi, Jordan. Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. And happy New Year. I feel like so many people start out the New Year with these big lofty fitness goals. Like New Year, New Me. And I saw you posted a video on your Instagram about this. Before we really dive into the interview today, can you talk just a little bit more about like your philosophy on the New Year and people's exercise goals and wanting to achieve like certain results just because we've hit January first or second now? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot we could literally talk about this for hours. There's two sides of the same coin, right? So on one hand, I really love New Year's resolutions. I actually like them a lot. I don't know, they're in the fitness industry. There's a lot of hate towards them. Like it shouldn't matter if it's January 1, like if it's December 21st, you should still start whatever. I always know when someone doesn't have much of a background in behavioral psychology when they say stuff like that. Because there's actually a fair amount of science showing how integral like important moments are in our life and how like certain dates can actually play a big role in what we do or even certain numbers. For example, like it doesn't take a genius to look at something like Peloton and they'll congratulate you on your 100th ride. And that will feel really good. But like why do we care about 100? Why not like 97 or 104? Like why is it 100 or why is it a thousand? And the reality is there's a lot of power in these round numbers or on these individual dates that have a lot of meaning. So there are tremendous number of people who on January 1, they make a New Year's resolution to stop smoking or to quit drinking or whatever it is. And they do it like cold turkey. Like there's and a lot of people will throw around this statistic like 95% of people who make New Year's resolutions fail. First and foremost, I've never seen that data. I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but I've never seen it. So I don't know where the fuck they came up with that number, 95%. But even then let's just say 95% of people fail with their New Year's resolutions. Let's just say that for the sake of the argument. Out of a million people, that's 50,000 people who will succeed with their resolutions. That's 50,000 people who will achieve their goals, which is like, I'm not gonna tell them not to do it. You know what I mean? Like that's 50,000 people who could change their life forever out of 10 million people. That's 500,000 people achieving their goals. That's fucking extraordinary. And what I've found is that it's often not that people aren't achieving the New Year's resolutions for a lack of trying. It's because they make shitty resolutions. They just say something like, I wanna lose weight. Or I wanna get healthier. But there's no specificity and there's no real action plan. Like the major thing for me is there has to be, you have objective-based goals and then you have action-based goals. The objective could be I wanna lose weight, that's fine. But what actions are you gonna take to get you there? Specifically on a day-to-day basis. And if you don't outline those plans, if you don't outline those actions, then you're setting yourself up to fail, right? Who knows, is it gonna be hitting your calories every day? Is it gonna be getting X number of steps every day? Is it gonna be drinking X amount of water every day? Is it gonna be in bed by a certain time every day? Essentially come up with a to-do list of things you're gonna do every single day that will set you up for success. It's not that New Year's resolutions suck in general. It's that most people don't know how to make good ones and specific ones that will help them achieve them. So on that hand, on that end, I love it. On the other hand, I also do understand, like I would love it if people didn't care what date it was and they just fucking started right now. Like I would absolutely love that. I think one of the biggest issues with the January one start date is that people often assume, all right, I'm gonna start on January one and then by the end of this year, my goals will have been achieved. That's usually not how it works. It's usually, there's a very famous quote and I don't know who said it 'cause it's genius. I wish I could give them credit. But the quote is to the effect of most people overestimate what they can accomplish in one year and underestimate what they can accomplish in seven years. And it's the most true thing I've ever heard in my life. I started my business when I was 20, 21 years old and I massively overestimated what I thought I could do within that first year, like basically nothing happened. Like I went from no one reading my articles in July of 2011 to like my mom reading them. Like that was all I did in that whole year. But now like 11, 12 years later, it's like, oh, like I have, thank God, a very much more successful business and a much, much larger reach. I never would have expected. I could have gotten this far, but it's taken over a decade now. Same thing with fitness, same thing with health. I think most people assume, all right. So I start on January one, by January one the next year, I'm gonna be a completely different person. No, you're gonna be the same fucking person with slight differences. But if you do this for the next five, seven, 10 years, that's when massive changes are gonna happen. - Yeah, I mean, you touch on so many important points and I definitely wanna speak a little bit more to the topic of goal setting and how to actually achieve your goals and how to reframe the way that you set your goals so that you can achieve them. And I think we can look at this from a fitness perspective, which is something that I think a lot of people are putting in their new years resolutions, like wanting to lose weight or wanting to achieve a certain body or look a certain way or feel stronger, whatever that goal is. But then we can also talk about it from like the founders perspective, from the entrepreneurial perspective, which I'm also really fascinated by. But before we dive into that a bit deeper, I wanna talk a little bit about how you got interested in fitness, you're a five time world record power lifter. And so how did you get involved in fitness and exercise and really where did this passion for working out a ball front? - Yeah, so I'll start by saying, I come from a very short family, I'm five foot four, I'm not a big dude. And you know, short Jewish family. And my mom wanted my brother and I to be able to defend ourselves. And we're short Jewish kids, like she thought we were gonna get picked on and bullied, which like people tried to. But when I was eight years old, she walked into the living room and she was like, I'm gonna put you two in wrestling. And the only wrestling that I knew at eight years old was like WWE style wrestling. And so I remember I'm lying on the couch and I look at her and I said, you want me to hit someone with a chair? And she was like, no, you idiot, like Olympic style wrestling, which I had no idea what that was, but she put us into it and I fell absolutely in love with it. Like I just, and I was never good academically, which I was the black sheep in my family because my whole family is doctors and lawyers and professors and superintendents, like everyone is super, super, super academic and very smart. And I was in special education, I was not good in school, but I was, I was good athletically. So I got into wrestling and I fucking loved it. It's like all I thought about, it's all, it's like, as a young boy grown up, I all I thought about was wrestling and girls. It's like the only two things that I pick up my mind. And so by the time I got to high school, I made Barcy as a freshman. I beat a junior out for the Barcy D spot. And I was good from a technique and endurance perspective 'cause I'd already been wrestling for a number of years. But I was 14 years old going up against mainly like 17 and 18 year olds and the strength differential there is huge. So I was living outside Boston, Massachusetts and I essentially wrote an email to a gym, a couple of towns over from me and I was like, listen, I'll take the trash out, I'll clean the floors, I'll do whatever you want for free. Just let me come and learn from you, how to get stronger. And I was very blessed because number one, they accepted me, they took me under their wing. And number two is they were unbelievably science based. It was a super, super science based facility. So from 14 years old, I was thrust in the science based fitness industry and I didn't really spend much time on the pseudoscience nonsense. Like, from 14 years old, I was really involved in a very science-based fitness community. I knew from then on that's what I wanted to do. And that's literally like the only real job I've ever had is coaching people from when I was 14 and it's just progressed from there. Yeah, and you spoke a little bit about like the science-based fitness community. I think what's difficult in like the fitness and wellness industry is that there's so many fads out there. There's so much noise and it's so hard to filter through like what's actually true and what is just completely false and just people trying to sell you things. So through your training, what were some of like the most important things that you learned about just becoming fitter and healthier from a science perspective? You can talk about this for days and weeks, kind of an entire library of this. There's a lot. I mean, for me early on, I think one of the biggest things was the importance of strength training early early early on. I was because I was wrestling and because you know making weight and losing weight is such a huge part of wrestling. Before I started working at that gym, I was just like, hey, I'm going to run. And I like had a very unhealthy relationship with food and exercise. And so the only way I thought that you could lose weight was essentially by starving yourself and by running an outrageous amount. So there was a period of a couple of years where I was running 15 miles almost every day. I was like, I would go to school. Wow. Sometimes I would skip school just so I could run so I could like try and make weight, which got to be very bad because my mom was like, what the fuck is happening? Why am I getting phone calls saying you're almost going to be like, have to be held back because you've missed so many days of school. My idea was I have to run an unbelievable amount and I have to starve myself in order to lose weight. And then going to this gym and learning about how to get stronger, they're like, it's not not only is it not healthy, it's not right. It's completely inaccurate. And so they taught me about the importance of strength training for both men and for women getting stronger, lifting heavier weights. Why that's actually going to help you lose weight, why that's going to help you be healthier, overall, emphasizing more protein in your diet, learning how to have an improved your diet rather than starving yourself, actually, feeling your body properly. So I mean, those were the main takeaways that I got at a very young age and they only progressed from there. I think also for women in particular, there's this misconception on like the value of strength training, like, oh, I don't want to get bulky. I don't want to look like so big. But really, like, what is this misconception? Like, what can strength training do specifically for women if you're looking to like improve your your fitness and your workout routine? Yeah, I mean, number one, it's funny. I've realized that when when people hear strength training, the image in their mind is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Like the image in their mind is a bodybuilder. And I know that because I've spoken with like the majority of my clients for years have been women, like 75, 80% of my clients over the last 15 years of my life have been women. And one of the first things I'll always say is when we're going to get in a strength training, the first words out of their mouth are, okay, I want to get stronger, but I don't want to look like Arnold. It's like the first thing that and Arnold has a very famous quote when people say that he's like, don't worry, you won't. Right? It's like it, which is sort of his way of like snapping back, but it's true. Like the amount of the amount of drugs that you need to be taking in order to get like huge like that is unbelievable. Never mind the amount of commitment and intensity and consistency that you need to bring to your training. But in order to look like a professional bodybuilder, you would need to take a truly unbelievable amount of anabolic steroids. And if you're not willing to inject those in your ass, which I don't recommend to anybody do, you don't need to worry about it. You're not going to. Not to mention, it's hard enough for men to get bigger and bulkier. And their hormonal profiles are significantly more, they help with that significantly more there. Chastosterone levels, everything. It is very difficult to get big and bulky. It's tremendously difficult. So what a lot of women will say is I just want to get toned. I want to get toned, which is fantastic. That's great. But when I say like, well, what is toned? What does that actually mean on a physiological level? Like I just want my muscles to show more and be more defined without getting too big. I'm like, I understand that. But what does that mean? Do you know what toned means? And so we have this educational discussion. Toned muscles is the exact same thing as a bodybuilder is doing. It's just the bodybuilder is making their muscles way, way, way, way, way bigger. And you probably aren't going to be able to do that because your hormonal profile doesn't allow for it. Your schedule, your consistency isn't going to allow for it. Like you're not injecting steroids in your ass. So it's like a toned muscle is literally your building a bigger muscle. And then when it gets more toned and more visible, that's when you lose body fat so it can be more visible. Like that's all it is. As you build a bigger muscle, then you lose body fat so it becomes more toned and defined so people can see it. So whether you strength train because you want to get more toned or you strength train because you want to look like a bodybuilder, it's the same shit. It's just it. People are going to respond differently. And I wish I have nothing against anabolic steroids from the perspective of a lot of friends and colleagues who use them that the media like all things has sort of gone over the top and demonizing them. There are ways to use them safely and appropriately. And there actually is a time and a place when people really do need them, burn victims, use them. I mean, we have hormone replacement therapy for women for men. It's like a little bit more taboo, but it's like it's not a weird thing. And there are many, many positive benefits from it. But most people don't talk about when they're actually using steroids. They lie about it. They don't say it. If every day people knew how common anabolic steroids are, it would blow them the fuck away. How even the people they follow on Instagram and social media, the people who they would never imagine are injecting steroids in there. But it's like a huge percentage of people of doing it. Is that meant to like accelerate the process to getting toned? Like if you're a woman and you're taking steroids, not to get bulky, but is it meant to like what's the goal of for taking those kinds of steroids? Well, so most of the women doing it are doing it to try and you know, there are, so there's different types of steroids. Some of them do accelerate fat loss. They like accelerate fat, but at a huge cost to your health, like at a huge cost, depending on which ones you're taking. And most people are not taking them appropriately or under doctor supervision. But there are some that accelerate fat loss, some that accelerate muscle growth. What a lot of people don't realize though is what real, what anabolic steroids do is they allow their recovery process to happen more quickly. So when a lot of people hear about people who are taking the steroids and say they're cheating, if they're taking it in an organization that doesn't allow it, yes, that's cheating. But from the, a lot of people think taking it about steroids just means you're going to get jacked and shredded without really doing any work. What it allows you to do is it allows you to work harder because you recover more quickly. So when you're, when you see someone who's taking these steroids and they're open and honest about it, like they're putting in an unbelievable amount of work in order to look the way they look and to perform the way they perform is they can do more work. So instead of going to the gym once a day and then needing like a 24, 48 hour recovery window, they could go two times a day and they could go with how any rest days because their body is recovering more quickly. So they can, it, what it allows you to do is work harder with less rest so you can get more done and then build more muscle. You would be shocked at how many people actually take it. Marijuana is like the number one most recreationally used drug. Antibox steroids are number two, like, and people don't know this. Like it's, and if it's funny, depending on where you go in the country, you go to Miami, you will very quickly see like how many people are taking it. It's pretty insane. But even like high level actors, like people who are very famous and like if you think that you've seen a movie star go from like an average physique to a ridiculous physique in a period of like six months or something for their role. So many of them are taking steroids. I know they're trainers. Like I'm friends with their coaches who are telling me what they're taking. Like people have no idea. Like this is not, it's not normal to do that type of stuff. And if it's, if it looks like shit and it smells like shit, it's probably shit. Like it's, it's a good idea like to, if it doesn't pass the smell test, then it's probably someone doing something super physiological. Yeah, I mean, I, now I'm going to look at film in a completely different lens. And I'm also, I would go into Miami next week. And so now I think what, what's that gym? It's like muscle beat or something along. Yes. Every time I was in Miami last year in the winter and you definitely see some pretty jacked built up guys there. So now I have a hypothesis that maybe they're taking these steroids. It's more common than you think. I want to go back to what you were talking about when you were, I think in high school, you were saying how your perspective and relationship to fitness was completely different than the way it is now. If you were exercising to an unhealthy point and you weren't actually doing the right types of fitness routines or workouts to actually yield the results you were looking for. And I personally find it interesting because I don't, I don't know if this is true, but I feel like not a lot of men have this kind of impaired relationship with cardio. Like it's, I, and what from what I've seen, it's mostly women who are exercising to the point of fatigue or overexercising because of this unhealthy relationship to food and fitness in particular, just wanting to quote unquote, be thin. I feel like that's a desire that less men want. So can you talk a little bit more about maybe like the motivation behind like what was kind of fueling that unhealthy relationship to fitness and then what that point was that maybe you shift your mentality and recognize that there's like a much healthier approach to working out and gaining strength. Yes, so this is a very, very common misconception. Number one is I think anyone with a little bit of a knowledge around psychology understands women. Women are more likely to express their concerns and to seek out help than men are, which is why we see men are four times more likely to commit suicide than women are. And all like, it's very obvious that women are more likely to express their issues and concerns and fears. As a result of that, many people think that men don't struggle with their body images, much, and I can tell you from doing this for well over a decade, it's men struggle with it just as much as women do. They just don't talk about it. I mean, and think about it from the perspective, what do, what does every woman say they want in a man is confidence. It's like literally, like confidence and being funny, like those are two of the two of the main things. And what is the least confident thing you could possibly do is express your insecurity over how you look. So it's, this is, and I can tell you from having so many conversations with men over the years, whether it's myself or many clients and people throughout the industry, men struggle with it just as much as women. And it's interesting because, you know, we see more men taking anabolic steroids than women do for obvious reasons. But I mean, well, women will often be more likely to do stuff like with the cardio and over exercise on cardio to try and get smaller. Men are far more likely to risk going to prison to buy an illegal substance to inject in their body and then risk severe health issues as a result of it. And then just to try and get bigger so that they can like look the way that they often hear men are supposed to look or desirable men look. It's a real fucking problem. And I would say it's, it's, I think a lot of people would assume maybe 95% of women struggle with their body image and five or 10% of men do. I think it's more like 99% of women and 99% of men struggle with it and it's just they struggle with it in different ways and men are far less likely to talk about it. With me specifically when I was a teenager, it stemmed from wrestling and from this like I had to make weight in order in order to compete and I had beat a junior out for the varsity spot. So it was the pressure to compete, but also the pressure to perform for my school and for my friends. I didn't want to let anybody down. And I just had no idea what I was doing. I just had no clue. I didn't have someone to tell me, Hey, this is a bad idea. Hey, like thank God I finally went to this gym a couple of towns over for me and thank God my mom let me go at 14 years old to this other town to go work at this other gym and I was surrounded by people who are very science based. But it really stemmed from yeah, they're the insecurity aspects of it. It was really funny. I mean, I was about to say go into a boys locker room in high school. Like don't do that. Like don't just walk into a random boys locker room. Like you'll see a lot of insecurities in these locker rooms with boys in there. Like boys talking about like whether they're talking about it or even in their own heads talking about how they wish they had a six pack or talking about steroids at 14 years old. Hey, could I get steroids? Could it like it's a real fucking problem? 14 year old boys are having 15 16 17 like all the way out forever. But the way that men that boys and girls go through these struggles is different. Girls will often starve themselves. Girls will often do excessive hours on on on cardio machines, bulimia and a rexia. Like these are real issues probably more with girls than with boys. But boys do struggle with it. But they also will tend to be like, Hey, I want to get big. Now it's really interesting is in the body positivity movement, which I agree with some things and I disagree with others. I think they're pros and cons to it. The body positivity movement has really done a wonderful job in some ways for women. And that like we can now look at women's magazines and we see all different shapes and sizes and colors of women. And it's wonderful to see that you don't have to be shredded in order to be healthy. That has not happened in men's fitness at all. You will never find a higher body fat percentage male on men's fitness or men's health. You don't see that at all. You still only see jacks to the gills super shredded peeled dudes on these magazines, which is just, you know, it's. I hear a lot of women saying all the way we're marketed to is it's bad and it's misleading and it is. It's equally bad for men. And it's just not really talked about as much. So when we hear like men don't struggle with it, it's not accurate. It's just they're not likely to talk about it because they don't want to be seen as insecure and not confident and unattractive. That's such a good point. I mean, we could even do a whole separate like they're going to be even a whole separate interview on just male vulnerability and the psychology behind that and men's mental health in particular. And for your clients, how do you bring your own experiences in fitness into like your coaching philosophy so that your clients can see exercise and strength training as something that's giving them confidence instead of like using these types of exercises as a way to, I don't know, just engaging with them in like an unhealthy way. Yeah. So I think a lot of it. And again, the vast majority of my clients are women like 80% from the defer for years. A lot of it has to do with where I focus, right? It's sort of like when you have a child, I think one of the best ways to help your child develop a healthier relationship with food and fitness is is not by what you say, but by how you act, what you do because the child is watching. They're watching from a young age and they're seeing how you're acting with food. So if your child sees you step on the scale every day, then sees you get upset about it. And then sees you starve yourself because you don't like the number on the scale. Well, that's that's what the fuck the child is going to do. So if I have a client who sends me their weight and I see their weight spiked up and then I'd be like, oh my god, like what the fuck did you eat? Dutted like, well, now they're going to have a really bad relationship with the scale. But if they send me their way and I'm like, and the scale spiked up to pounds, like, cool. How are you feeling? No worries. Like, how do you sleep? How are you feeling? Are you feeling confident? How are you close fitting? What are we going to do today? It's essentially where do I decide to focus as the coach? What if let's say after this, you know, right now we're recording this. It's what January 2nd they command they just spent the last two weeks eating a lot. I'm like, cool. I could either say, oh, you're such a gluttonous pig, dead of that, whatever. And then like now, like, that's not going to be good. Or I was like, awesome, you got some extra energy in you. Let's use that energy to hit some amazing workouts now. Let's go hit some personal records in the gym. Let's show like how strong you are. So my focus as the coach is going to be where they follow. It's going to be what they look at as well. So rather than looking at it as like they should punish themselves and starve themselves now, it's like, no, let's get back on track, like be more consistent with an appropriate amount of food. That's not the holiday season. But let's also like use it to your advantage. You just fed yourself some great food and you ate a lot. Let's have some killer workouts now and get back on track. So as opposed to them learning to shame and guilt themselves for what they've done, it's like, hey, let's enjoy it. You're an adult. You had some fun. Now let's get back on track. So for me, it's a lot about where do I choose to focus? How do I choose to view things? You can view literally anything in life optimistically or pessimistically. You get to choose. So as a coach, as long as you're viewing it from an optimistic perspective and not a shaming or gilting perspective, odds are they're going to have a much better result. And there's a tremendous amount of research showing this, a very small percentage of people respond well to shame. Only like 3% or less respond well to shame. 97% of people are more do not respond well to shame. They actually have the opposite effect. So the more you try and whether it's shaming, gilting a client or shaming, gilting yourself, odds are it's not going to lead to the results that you want. Yeah, totally. I find that like if I'm feeling shameful or guilty for not sticking to my fitness goals, it is that much harder for me to just get back on track. And I think a lot of it comes back to the importance of self compassion and being kind to yourself because we're often our own worst critic. So it's really difficult to practice what you preach and also to remind yourself that it's okay, like kind of like what you said, maybe it's the holiday seasons and you've eaten a lot of food, maybe more than usual. Okay, well now you have fueled your body and why don't you get like some great workouts out of this? I think that's a really great way to kind of reframe maybe some of those thoughts that are more negative that may come into your head. And I know that you train one of the most motivational people ever, Gary Vee and mindset is so important with everything in life, but also in fitness too. We chatted a little bit before the interview about how I used to be a competitive rower and when you're in such a physically intense sport, it's so easy to just give up. Like your mind will decide before your body that you're done and something that I found to be so important at that time in high school was learning how to build a more resilient mindset in the fitness space and as an athlete. So what is like your approach and philosophy on the power of mindset and motivational thinking when you're doing a hard workout or you're trying to achieve your fitness goals? Yeah, it's a great question. This is one of the reasons I love sports so much is because they really, really teach you that you are far more strong and far more powerful and far more resilient than you could ever then your brain would have you believe. There are so many times in sports, whether it's team sports or one of individual sports that like you just want to quit with every fiber of your being you just want to quit, but you keep going, you keep going, you keep going, you finish it and you're like, oh my god, there were times during that thing that I thought like I was not going to survive. And then you make it on the other end and you're like, let's do it again. Let's do it again. So it's like seeing is believing type things. It's like once you see that you can push yourself far more than you thought, it's like, oh my god, I can actually do this. And I try and bring that over to health and fitness where the only way that people fail with health and fitness is when they quit. That's the only way that they fail because the reality is this. Most people, and I alluded to this earlier, and I was talking about New Year's resolutions, they think they're just going to accomplish their goal in the year. And I said, they overestimate with the kind of accomplishment of year and underestimate with the kind of accomplish in seven years. Most people, they put a timeline on their goals to like, well, I need to lose 20 pounds by this day, or I need to do whatever it is. And those timelines fuck you up. The number one, they're completely arbitrary. Like it's, you've made it up in your head that you've decided a good rate of progress would be I have to lose this amount of weight in this time. Says who? Like at what? What educational background made you decide that I need to lose this amount of weight in this time? Usually it's because there's an event, there's a wedding, there's a party, whatever it is. And you've decided unilaterally that you must lose this amount of weight by this time or you are a failure. That is so fucking stupid. It's mind bogging like it hurts my heart when people say that it's just so dumb and and people. Let's say it's January 2 right now. Let's say I'm like, all right, well, I need to lose 40 pounds by April to, right? It's like number one. That's a fuck time to wait to lose by April to, but let's just say I quote, unquote, only lose 20 pounds by April to why I've only lost. I've barely lost half of what I wanted to in that time frame. I must be a failure. So I quit. It's like, are you out of your fucking mind? You lost 20 pounds by April to what if you just kept going and then by September, you had lost the full of 40 and then you could keep it off for the rest of your life. What most people do is they try and lose it as quickly as they possibly can in this outrageously short time frame. They don't do it. They feel like a failure than they regain it all back and more when the reality is if they had not put a deadline on it and just been like, you know what? I'm going to do this sustainably and enjoyably. They might not have lost as much as they wanted to in that time frame, but they'll lose it and they'll keep it off for the rest of their life. So they never have to worry about losing it again. And one of the biggest issues is they create these timelines, these arbitrary deadlines by which they must achieve their goal and then they quit because it doesn't go the way that they wanted it to. Like if you stop setting these arbitrary deadlines and start understanding, this is a forever thing. Like this fitness thing is for life. There is no end date. There is no. The end date is when you die. Like that's the day at which your fitness journey stops. This is there is no other end date in this. There's no other timeline unless you are a competitive bodybuilder or your competitive athlete and you're if you're an Olympic athlete and you need to peak for the 2024 Olympics. That's one thing. But if you're just trying to lose weight and get stronger and feel better and be healthier, the end date is when you die. So stop trying to rush it. Stop trying to set these arbitrary deadlines and do what you can do sustainably and enjoyably. And the only way you fail is if you quit. Yeah. And I think like you bring up a lot of good points and oftentimes when we set these big goals and we're like trying to get there, we're like trying to hit the peak. Once we got there, then it's like, okay, now what? How do we stay in this optimal state of being or how or whatever you want to call it? And then oftentimes because it's actually not enjoyable to get to the top because you're like guilty yourself or you're making it like excruciatingly challenging and it's just not pleasant. Once you get there, how do you stay there? You often just kind of crash and come down and then it's like this horrible vicious cycle. So what are some of your strategies for, you know, like you said earlier, finding the joy in the process, like finding joy in movement, finding joy in fitness, having the sense of delayed gratification so that you can really continuously live this fitness journey. Yeah. It's a great question. And there's a lot of like multifaceted answers to this. The number one thing I'll say is this. I've always said if the methods are unsustainable, the results are unsustainable. And what I mean by that is if the method you use to lose 20 pounds is unsustainable, whether it's a juice cleanse or a detox or going keto or some stupid bullshit, if you cannot sustain that method for the rest of your life, then the results you get from using that method will inherently be unsustainable. Period. And then the next thing I want to say is that if you want to cut out carbs to lose weight, but you can't cut out carbs for the rest of your life, then don't fucking cut out carbs. And by the way, they're delicious and you shouldn't cut them out. There are like many ways to lose weight while you while eating carbs. And you need to cut carbs out is a fucking idiot. Don't listen to them. You don't need to juice cleanse. You don't need to detox. These things are stupid. So number one is if you want to sustain your results, then you have to use a sustainable method in the first place. Another thing to talk about is, and this is really, really important. And I can always tell when someone hasn't been coaching for a long time when they say like, you just need to find what you enjoy, which I don't think is terrible advice because ideally you would find what you enjoy. But once you've coached enough people, you'll realize not everybody is going to love or even like health and fitness and exercise. There will be a significant number of people who absolutely fucking hate it with their with every ounce of their being, but that doesn't change the fact that they still need to do it. Right. And with these people, I'll often use the analogy like, listen, let's say you have a son and his name is Charlie. Right. And Charlie comes home from school and he's like, I fucking hate homework. I'm not going to do homework. You would laugh and say, tough shit, Charlie. Do your fucking homework because that's what you need to do. Right. So if like if you hate exercise, I get it. I have a lot of empathy for you. Tough shit. You've got to do it so that you can live your longest, healthiest life and with the highest quality of life. So ideally in an ideal world, find the one you enjoy the most in a practical world, find the one you hate the least. That's really what it boils down to. And I think one of the best things you can do is walk every day. Just get your steps and walking is I think the most underrated exercise in the entire world. You know, people are always talking about whether it's a zoom bar or Pilates or strength training or whatever it is. They're always touting theirs is the best. If we look at the longest living populations, the healthiest populations in the world, it's not the powerlifters. It's not the bodybuilders. It's not the zoom bars. It's not the pilot. It's the people who walk the most. That's it. People who walk the most live the longest. We can look in the healthiest living populations. Now, we can also look at their work schedules and the American work life is fucking awful. And I think it's killing us like rapidly. But from an exercise perspective, like regular movement is the most important thing you can possibly do. And there's actually a recent study that came out. I forget the exact multiplier. But we all know how terrible smoking is for you. But what this recent study came out and found was it was remarkable that walking is better for your health than smoking is bad for your health. And I believe it was like three or four times different. So like walking will call it is three times better for your health than smoking is bad for your health. And for me, like this immediately clicked because I mean, I've seen a lot of very, very old people who smoke like a lot of very old, but they were all very active. They were all soup. They were they were walking while they were smoking. They were and I'm not promoting smoking and I'm not promoting it. But like I've been around a lot of very old people. None of them were overweight. They were all very relatively small, leaner people active and a lot of them smoked and a lot of them drink. And again, not promoting drinking or smoking because like it's just factually, like objectively, those are not healthy habits. But walking is the best thing you could possibly do. And like you could call a friend. You could listen to a podcast watch YouTube. I don't give a shit, but just walking is one of the best things you can do for your health. Yeah. And I think, you know, being in New York, we're blessed to be in a walkable city. So we can just walk around everywhere. And one of the, I think better things that had come out of COVID in 2020 and even 2021 was when we were all isolated and we couldn't do anything, at least you could go on walks at the time, masked walks, like socially distance walks, whatever. But like that became so like rooted in like what I was doing with my friends and I was a senior in college in 2020, 2021. And all I could do was, literally all I could do was walk. But now like an ideal day for me, if I'm going to see a friend is like grab a coffee and go for like a seven mile walk genuinely because it's just the time goes by fast. You're getting in your exercise and it's fun. It's you're moving and you're being outside and being in sunlight makes you happier. So it kind of is like, it kills three birds with one stone, honestly. Um, really there's a lot of power in walking and something I've also gotten really into doing at the gym is like, have you heard of the Hawker walk? Yeah, yeah, yeah. For those who are listening who maybe don't know what the Hawker walk is, it's, um, you're on a treadmill for 30 minutes at three miles an hour, um, a 12 in climb. So it's like the 12 330. And honestly, I'm working up a sweat from that walk. It's like hiking on the treadmill essentially. Um, so there's a lot of power in walking. And I think, um, to that point, doing more like low impact exercises, um, that are still cardio based can also kind of reframe maybe an unhealthy relationship to exercise and fitness and cardio where, you know, you feel like you need to kill yourself going on like a 20 mile run or, um, just being in such intense cardio. But really you can get a lot of benefits from something that's a bit more gentle on your body, but consistent to your point. 100%. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I mean, so much of this is being able to do it forever, right? It's like, with, I mean, odds are at some point in your life, you're not going to be able to do sprinting. You're not going to be able to run. You're going to get injured. There's going to be something that happens. You're going to back pain, hit pain, knee pain, something, I mean, unless like you, you don't have legs. Like you're gonna be able to walk, right? And for if you don't have legs, which there are people who don't, like you could grow, you could, there are, you, there are many other options. You could swim. There are many options if you don't have the ability to even walk. But so much of what we, what is going to help your health over the long run, is just doing the lower stress, lower intensity things that do not destroy you for days and weeks at a time, but you can do every day. We're not meant to sit down for eight hours straight every single day and then move a little bit on either end. Like we're not, that's not what we're built for. We're made to be, to be moving. And that's, you know, I love United States. I think it's the greatest country. I think our relationship with money and work is fucking killing us. I really do. And I think, you know, the, you know, abusing Adderall and stimulants in order to work longer and make more money is actually causing people to die earlier, not even be able to enjoy their life. So it's one of my favorite parts about traveling and going other countries, whether it's Israel or Greece or wherever it is, it's like there are like, people have a much healthier relationship with their bodies, with their communities, with health and fitness. And it's far, they don't, they don't live to work. They work to live and like that's it. And then they get out and it's so important. I love that you named dropped Greece because my family is from Greece and I love visiting when I can. (laughs) Any opalus, anything with opalus, like it's just a giveaway that it's something related to Greece. And actually one of the blue zones in the world is like an island in Greece. There's like, I don't know, five or seven places in the world and that's where there's like the highest longevity. And when you look at their habits, I mean, yeah, like in Greece people smoke. It's just culturally, you know, what that's what they do. And of course, it's not healthy for you, but you know, there's no surprise that there's other ways of living that promote better health than the long-term. And I think especially in our culture, we're so focused on immediate quick fixes and that's just not healthy in the longer run. I mean, it's not gonna help you. But, you know, I wanna go back to what we talked about earlier in this interview on the importance of goal setting and how to do it in a way where you can actually achieve your goals. And we spoke a bit about this from a fitness perspective, but I wanna switch gears and talk more about from like a business perspective, you know, how you've grown such a successful business and being really an entrepreneur. So, you know, it's been, I don't know, 10 plus years by now. Can you talk a little bit about that journey and some pieces of advice for just growing something of your own and really sticking with it for the long haul? - Yeah, so I'm about to go back on a lot of what I just said because the reality is, if you wanna build a big business, then you're gonna have to, I'll start with this, a great friend and mentor of mine once told me, out of family, friends, business, health and sleep. Those five things, you can only ever choose three and realistically only two at one time. At one time, doesn't mean you have to go them forever, but if you really wanna focus, like really only two, you can really focus on it once. And when I was really focusing on my business, that's all I've just business, that that was the one and I lost friendships, I lost relationships, my health went to shit, my blood pressure went up, my body fat went up, my muscle went down, my strength went down, my sleep went down, like I for it went everything just for my business. And I think it was helpful that I was in my 20s and it was really from about 2021 until about 28. Those years, I just fucking grind it. And I don't regret it because it's given me a tremendous amount of freedom now on the other end of it. Now I can take a step back, I have a wife, I have a newborn daughter, she's four months old, I can work way less now and be with them and provide for them. But there's also, if your goal is to build a big business, you've got to fucking work. You have to work a tremendous amount and they're pros and cons. Like I don't know how many years I took off my life doing that. I have no idea, I know now my blood pressure is great and my health is probably the best it's ever been and all of that. It's one of the things that I've said many, many times for years now is that sometimes in order to have balance, you have to go through periods of unbalance, right? And so I would never be where I am today if I didn't have unbalanced periods earlier in my life. And even before the business side of it when I was an elite world record power lifter, I didn't have balance either. I was all of my time and energy went into my strength training and my nutrition and my sleep. And my business was not really doing very well and again, my friendships weren't really doing well and my relationships weren't doing well. But that was actually a very pivotal four, five, six year period of my life where it was just like I put so much time and effort to my training that actually boosted me into the world so they found out who I was and knew who I was from training and from my competitions. That helped then lead into the business side of things then I went all in on business. I had a little bit more attention, people knew who I was and I had established a significant amount of knowledge from that than I'd spent however many years doing all that in my business. And now I'm at a point in my early 30s where I can just sort of take the foot off the gas with that and I can finally, well, not sleep anymore because I have a newborn. But I had a little bit of time where I had more sleep but now like yesterday for example, I spent the whole day with my wife and daughter, like the whole day, no work, no nothing. It was just as an entrepreneur, you don't really hear that being said very much that the entrepreneur is spending the entire day with their with their wife and kid. Like that's usually doesn't happen. It's like you've got to work, got to work, got to work, got to work. And at this point in my life, I don't want to be a quote unquote entrepreneur. I don't want to be like the guy who's at work all day every day and only gets to see his wife and kid like for a few minutes on either end of the day. Like I would rather work for a couple hours in the middle of the day and then the rest of the day, all day, every day is with my wife and my kid and some friends and family and we get up and we walk, have a glass of wine, whatever it is. Like I'm, I definitely belong in like the Mediterranean Middle East world. Like I love like noon hits glass of wine. Like in me glass of wine, let's go on a walk, let's hang out and talk and I'll go work for a couple of hours. Like that's the lifestyle that I love. I could not have done that five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years ago, but I can do it now. So the truth of the matter is that I did a lot of very unhealthy things in order to get to where I am with my business. I don't think that they're necessary or essential, but I do know without a fat, without a doubt that if you want to build a very successful business, you've got to work unbelievably hard and you have to be OK with the sacrifices that come from that. And if you don't, if you're not OK with those sacrifices, that's OK. That's super important. Like I think the Western culture idealizes and idolizes these like grinding and hustling and working so hard and all of this. And it's great for many, many things, but it's not good for longevity. And I don't think you're supposed to live your whole life like that at all. So don't feel guilty if that doesn't sit with you. If you, if you want to go out and hang out with your friends at the bar, if you want to relax and sleep in a little bit more, and you're OK working for somebody else, I also, I could never work for somebody else. Like I am, I am not good with taking, with, I'm not, I'm not going to take in direction for other people. I hate authority. Like I am, I hate it. I'm terrible with it. And I will always be the guy who's like, well, they're doing it stupid. I'm going to do it my way. So it makes sense for me to do my business because then I can tell people what to do and tell myself what to do. No, I mean, it makes sense. And I think it also speaks to the, are kind of like a theme of what we were talking about today is this importance of delayed gratification, like putting in the work then in your 20s, so that now you're really reaping the benefits. And you can have more flexibility and time in your day to focus on the people and things in life that bring you joy and happiness. And on this topic of focusing on other things in life that really do bring you joy, a central theme of everyday endorphins is finding activities, experiences, just things in our mundane activities in our day to day that really make us happy. And focusing on that to have this fulfilled sense of well-being and health and happiness in life. So a question that I ask every guest that comes on to the podcast, Jordan, is centered around that. And so my final question to you is, what is something that brings you a bit of endorphins in your daily life? Honestly, I don't know if this is endorphins, but there's literally nothing better than going into my daughter's nursery in the morning and waking her up, because she's four months, she's four months old. And when you wake her up or she's already up and she sees you for the first moment, it's like she has a big smile on her face and she squeals a little bit. It's literally the best thing I've ever experienced in my entire life. So I wouldn't necessarily say that it's endorphins. It's just like serotonin and dopamine, just like the best ever. But like, yeah, I've known I've wanted to be a dad my whole life. And so now being able to have a little girl and a wife, being able to support them and just see the happiness on my daughter's face from waking her up, that's the best feeling in the world. It's amazing. So that for me, but then also one thing I've done since I've had her is I've shown, like I haven't missed a day working out since I've had her. And I obviously feel better when I work out. I give the endorphins from that, but I wanted to show people listen, I've got a newborn, I run my own business, I have all this stuff. Like my workouts are now at about 10 or 11 at night because I'm doing late night feedings for my daughter. So my wife can get some sleep. And so people like, man, how are you, how are you doing this? Like how do you have your business and you work on that and you have family and you're doing these 10 or 11 PM workouts to it? Like, I know for a fact, I will feel better and be healthier if I get the men versus if I don't. So right now, I, one of those, you know, going back to those five things, sacrificing a little bit of sleep in order to make sure I can get those workouts in in order to make sure I can focus on my family and my health. So, you know, seeing my daughter and then also making sure I don't miss my workouts. I think they're the, like, the most important thing in terms of being able to stay healthy long term. It's interesting because we can look at all these different diets across the world. So if we Google, if you Google search like the top longest living countries in the world, we have a list of the top 10, right? So number one, we've got Hong Kong, we've got Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Switzerland, Singapore, Italy, Spain, Australia, Channel Islands, and Iceland are the top 10. Israel is actually number 12. Sweden is number 13. So one of the cool things about these, these countries is they're all so different in terms of their nutrition, right? So we look at the difference, like we have Hong Kong at number one and Switzerland at number four, okay? Like talk about different fucking diets, right? Like very, very different. And Hong Kong, their average male life expectancy is 82.38. Switzerland is 82.42. It's like, it's so close. It's super close. So but the overall average life expectancy, Hong Kong is 85.29. And Switzerland is 84.25. It's like matter of months, right? It's not like a long difference, but their nutrition is so different, right? What's the common denominator among all of these countries? Movement. It's movement and it's their lifestyle and relation to work and all of that. So I think that the most important thing is there are many ways to eat in a healthy way. There's movement is the common denominator among the most healthy countries and people in the world. Consistent movement consists in exercise. That's it. So not sacrificing that now that you're a new dad is super important. Keeping in those endorphins and, you know, enjoy the feeling while it lasts until she's a teenager. Because I can assure you by then she's not going to be waking up with a smile on her face. If you go into her room from personal experience, but there probably is no feeling like being a new dad and just, you know, I think babies give unconditional love. So what an exciting time right now. So thrilled to have you as a guest on the podcast, Jordan. It was so awesome getting to chat with you this afternoon. Where can my listeners follow along with your content? Yeah. If you if you Google my name, Jordan, say it. That's why ATT you'll find me on every platform, Instagram, YouTube podcast, all that stuff. Amazing. Well, thank you so much. Awesome. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of Everyday Endorphins. If you liked what you heard, make sure to like, rate, and review this podcast on whichever platform you prefer. You can also follow along the Everyday Endorphins Instagram account to stay up to date with episodes, future events, and all things related to mental health, well-being and happiness. Don't forget to keep spreading endorphins and find things in life that bring you joy every day. Until next time.