Chapter II: “A Holistic Transformation” with Matt Izzo

00:00:00
It. On this episode of the from Adversity to From Adversity to Abundance Podcast podcast, I got the opportunity to interview Matt Izzo of Matt Izzo Fitness. And, man, talk about an inspirational episode. Super practical. Matt lost 75 pounds three different times, but this third time he kept it off.

00:00:23
He's kept it off for five years. And I've seen the before and after pictures on Twitter, and again, I mentioned this in the episode, but it's kind of like before and after pictures of a remodel of a house or something where it's just drastic, the difference. But obviously a ton of work has gone into that transformation. It's a reminder that progress is not always linear.

00:00:52
So much of this episode is just so inspirational and practical. He talks a lot about energy.

00:01:01
And. How it took him, I think, 25 years, he said, to kind of come to this 25 years of growth went into this transformation. It wasn't an overnight thing, but it has led Matt to quit his corporate job and get out of some, I guess, less healthy environments. And just his mindset is so positive and so inspirational. He mentions that his girlfriend lost a hundred pounds.

00:01:32
So just this positive mentality and positive energy is contagious. And now he's focused on helping others and helping others kind of with their weight loss and fitness programs. And you can tell he's just a really genuine person and is focused on true success of others and long term growth, not some get slim quick program that he's selling. So I just really enjoyed this episode. It's very practical.

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We discovered each other on Twitter and I just want to thank Matt for taking the time to chat with me, and I know that you are going. To get a lot of value out of this one. Thanks.

00:02:23
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00:02:44
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00:03:12
Welcome, everybody, to another episode of from adversity to From Adversity to Abundance Podcast podcast. I am your host, Jamie Bateman, and I am super excited. Today I've got a special guest, Matt Izzo of Matt Izzo Fitness. Matt, how are you doing today? I'm doing great.

00:03:27
Jamie, thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk to you. Absolutely. I appreciate you taking the time. I know you're a busy, so your time is very valuable.

00:03:37
So truth be told, we don't know each other very well. Twitter and social media are interesting, add an interesting dynamic to life these days. And I came across your story on Twitter and I was really inspired by it, so I reached out to you and here we are. So again, I thank you for coming on. Yeah, you're welcome.

00:04:00
Happy to be here. So you just told me that you're down in Florida now. Why don't you fill in some additional gaps for our listeners as to who you are today and what you have going on right now, and then we'll back up and get into your backstory. Yeah, sure. So like you said, I just moved to Florida in the last couple of months.

00:04:20
Southman, South Florida. Now it's great. Sunny and warm every day. I had lived in New Jersey for my entire life up to that point, and right now I am running my own coaching business where I help people primarily with fat loss, but also other fitness and mindset related things. This is something that I've started pretty much in the last year after I quit my corporate job and decided to venture out on my own.

00:04:54
I had a long struggle with obesity and depression that took me probably 25 years to overcome that. And then now that I have done that and I lost the weight, I've kept it off for coming up on five years at the end of this month. I feel like I've learned so much, pretty much from the Internet, right? I'm pretty much self taught all these things. So I've learned so much over the years from these people that I went through all this for a reason and for a purpose.

00:05:25
So now I share what I can and I try to give back as much as I can to help others overcome some of the same struggles that I've overcome in my life. That's awesome. Yeah, I think this is going to be a really relatable podcast for a lot of people and very inspirational episode I mentioned before we hit record. I probably need to talk to you more so I can get a little more inspired myself to get back into the I'm into fitness, but not as much as I used to be. And like we said, life has seasons, but yeah, so really interested to get into the adversity that you dealt with and of course we can take it where you want to go with that.

00:06:08
Some people have a few months of where it was really bad. And two or three major life events in a negative way or challenges kind of occurred in that short period of time. I'm sure you do have episodes like that or time periods like that, but it sounds like you had a long stretch of struggles pertaining to mindset and the physical, I guess, challenges that you dealt with. So pick it up where you'd like to. I want to dive into your backstory and talk about the adversity that you've been through.

00:06:45
Yeah, it really started with childhood, and it's kind of hard to really put my finger on what it was, but sometimes you just get into a negative sort of spiral. Right. And things just kind of follow. Right. If your energy is that way, that's what you attract into your life and that's the sort of life and experience that you live.

00:07:06
And from an early age, that was sort of my life and my experience, I ended up gaining weight. I was the fat kid in school back before most of the kids were the fat kid. Right? Like now, probably. Right.

00:07:19
But back then, that was a really painful thing, and I got made fun of a lot. I felt excluded a lot because of my weight, when I would be made fun of for that. So it was always something that I really kind of fixated on as this was my biggest problem. I would say that as I look back on it now with the added benefit, the perspective of time and all my life experience, that I used to think I hated myself because I was fat, it turned out that I hated myself and I was fat. Right.

00:07:53
So through the years, I tried to lose the weight. I did it successfully on multiple occasions, only to gain it back again. But I never really addressed the underlying mental and emotional sorts of things that I needed to in order to say that I've overcome this and I've really healed. So that's the biggest takeaway from my journey, is it's not just, oh, I lost some weight. Right.

00:08:20
It's really been more of a holistic transformation. Yeah, I lost weight. I live a healthy lifestyle now. I do all kinds of crazy stuff with endurance sports and stuff like that, but it's more than that. It's a mental and emotional transformation as well.

00:08:37
Whereas now I'm a healthy person and I'm able to maintain this lifestyle effortlessly because this is now who I am and it's not just something I'm trying to do. Sure. Yeah. There's so many ways we could go with this, and we're obviously not going to cover every aspect today that we could. But I did watch your podcast with Zubi.

00:08:59
And that was really good. And you guys got into toward the end, how the mental and physical and spiritual aspects, and like you said, the holistic approach is necessary. They're not separate. I mean, you can somewhat isolate them and talk about them independently, but they. Go hand in hand.

00:09:18
So before we get to how you approach things, so do you mind drilling down just slightly more on kind of maybe the pain that you were dealing with? And again, this isn't meant to be therapy or painful for you in any way, but just so that our listeners can understand. So you're saying for a while you thought you hated yourself because you're fat, and those are your words, but you hated yourself and you were fat. So are you kind of saying that you may have been overweight because you hated yourself as well? Yeah.

00:09:53
And really what I've come to learn is that obesity is a symptom of these deeper underlying emotional sorts of problems. Right. It doesn't just happen in a vacuum. The inside reflects the outside and the outside reflects the inside. Right.

00:10:08
That's really good. It's really hard for me to just kind of pinpoint one or two specific things that happened. Right. But I was in a chronically negative state is how I would describe it. But what was really challenging is if you're in a chronically negative state, you don't necessarily realize you're in a chronically negative state much in the way the fish doesn't see the water that it's in.

00:10:31
Right. If this is just how you experience life, you don't necessarily realize that this is different.

00:10:40
If you would have asked me what anxiety was in my mid twenty s, I wouldn't have been able to tell you, let alone identify and say, oh, I have chronic anxiety problems. Right. Because that was just life as I knew it. That was your default. Right?

00:10:53
Yeah. And that was just how I experienced life. I really never would have thought that a life that I'm living now with the sort of energy and the emotion that I feel on a day to day basis, I didn't even realize that something like that was possible for me. But there was always a part of me, for some reason, that was optimistic. Right.

00:11:13
I would say I was in a chronically negative state, but I always had some optimism about me, and I always kind of knew that it would work out, and I stuck with it as best as I could. There were certainly lots of adversity along the way. I lost the same 75 pounds three times. Right. So I did it once in high school, and then I ended up gaining all the weight back again.

00:11:39
And it's really demoralizing to put in all that work and put in all that effort and reach a goal, right. And then just have it just kind of slip through your fingers and vanish. And you feel a lot of shame and embarrassment when that happens because you're failing so publicly. People are seeing you and seeing what you're going through, right? So these sorts of things are tough to overcome, and that's why it took me so long to do it.

00:12:07
But part of me just never gave up and always knew that there was a way out. I just needed to keep trying to do better every day, putting 1ft in front of the other, educate myself more, just try to do more with what energy I had at the time. And this is how I got to the place where I am now. Yeah, no, it's really good. It sounds like you just got, like probably a lot of people can identify with.

00:12:34
You got into a mental pattern of this is my default, this is who I am, this is my identity. And for those who are listening or are going to watch this on YouTube, even go back and look at, like, your Twitter Instagram. I mean, I've seen the before and after, and it's like HGTV pictures. People love that in real, like, the before and after pictures are amazing, but there's so much work that went into that that it's easy to gloss over. So I just have a ton of respect for your transformation.

00:13:10
And this time, keeping it off. I mean, it's really incredible.

00:13:16
Okay, so you lost the weight a couple of times, regained it a couple of times, and then have kept it off for coming up on five years, you said, I believe. What's been the difference this time. So what I realized was I needed to make a plan, right? Because I lost weight again in my mid twenty s. And I really educated myself a lot about fitness and nutrition, right?

00:13:39
And I taught myself all this stuff and I did it in a really intelligent way. And then I kind of realized, I thought then at least that, okay, my problems are solved, right? I have all this knowledge now, and I didn't have this knowledge before, but now I know how to eat. I know what protein, fat and carbohydrates are, all this stuff. And I'm like, great, I did it.

00:14:00
My problem is solved. Well, knowledge is useless if you don't apply it, right? So I had the knowledge, but I stopped applying it. And I dealt with some adversity to keep in the theme of the show, I had some more emotional trauma. I suffered an injury, and next thing, I'm back being fat again.

00:14:19
And it took me eight years to kind of get around to doing it again, because it's an overwhelming proposition. Trying to lose a large amount of fat, as I'm sure many people can relate to. Right. Just the energy and time that it takes to do it, is a lot. So I always knew that I could lose the weight.

00:14:38
What I realized was I needed to formulate a plan to actually keep it off, right. Because I don't want to do all this work for nothing and just have it just go away again. So I figured out that if I just kind of kept doing the same things I was doing while I lost the weight, if I just kept that up after, then it's going to be really hard for me to gain weight again. If I'm tracking my food intake, if I'm monitoring my calories, if I'm weighing myself every day, then how could I possibly gain weight back again? And even if I did gain a few pounds, well, if I can lose 75 pounds, I can lose five pounds.

00:15:13
It's going to be a lot easier. So I really committed myself to this being a lifelong plan and saying, all right, if it takes me five or ten minutes of effort a day, well, that's a lot better than being obese, right? So I lost the weight, and I just kept on with it. And then I kind of kept on with my self improvement journey. And this is how I came to turn around my mental, my emotional, and even connect with my spiritual side, which I wouldn't say I had any connection to.

00:15:44
It was through just continuing my growth, my development, continuing to learn, continuing to experiment with different things. We'll say meditation and journaling and all sorts of other things, and exposing myself to different ideas and different books. This is when I started to really make connections and start to understand how I worked, how other people worked. And then I started to grow mentally and emotionally. And this is what has allowed me to, I would say, make a holistic transformation.

00:16:15
Whereas now I don't have to do all these things. I don't have to closely monitor what I'm doing, because this is now who I am. I have, in a sense, rebuilt my self image to be the person that I am now. So when my subconscious mind takes over, when I stop being intentional, I still behave in alignment with who I am right now, not the way I used to be 510 15 years ago. Have you read Jamie clear atomic habits?

00:16:43
I have not, but I've heard good things. I put you on the spot there. But it's almost like you could co write it, I think. But just what you were saying about. I mean, he talks about that.

00:16:55
As far know, I am a runner. This is who I am. This is my identity. It's not just what I do, it's who I am. So it just kind of takes over.

00:17:04
The other thing I thought of as you were speaking was you said it takes a lot of time to do your exercise and eat right and plan and everything. No doubt, for sure. But I imagine you're so much more productive in the other hours of your day that it's almost like, who cares? That you've gained in the end, as far as energy and productivity, I would guess. Is that fair to say?

00:17:29
It's 100% fair to say. And if I go back to 2016, when I most recently started to lose weight again, I had a number of things I guess I would say were problems with my life. I was working at a job that I really didn't like. It was doing legal collections, right? Working with people who were pretty low energy, negative people.

00:17:50
And I'd worked there for a long time, and I felt like I was trapped in that environment. There were some other things, but what I understood on some level was I only had so much energy. I only had so much time and attention, and I needed to really focus, I guess, say obsess about solving this one thing first. And that, for me, was losing the fat, right, and getting myself physically healthy. And then by doing that, and then that raised my energy and put me in a better state.

00:18:21
A couple of years later, I got another job. Someone actually reached out to me to hire me. That wouldn't have happened, and I wouldn't have been able to function at that new job, which required me to be a more capable, diligent employee, to be a better manager. I wouldn't have been able to do that had I not put in all that other work. Right, and built myself into something more than I was sure.

00:18:51
So it definitely helped make me more productive in all aspects of my life. Business, personal, everything. Absolutely. So the first job you mentioned that you quit 2016. I think somewhere around there, financially, were you a millionaire at that point?

00:19:13
You don't have to answer, because I think what happens is because I worked part time for the last seven years, and I just finally resigned myself to focus on my own businesses. And there's always that struggle of when is it the right time? And there's no one size fits all answer. But I'm just curious, was that more of cutting out negativity and then you could move on. It sounds like that's the case versus, oh, I've made it now, so I can kind of quit my job and do whatever I want.

00:19:44
Yeah, I made a very, I guess I would say, sort of lateral career move, but it was in a completely different field. The collections field is not a great place to be in, and I think it's hard to find happiness when you're doing something like that all day, every day. So I was able to move on to another job, which I worked there for a couple of years, and it was great. I really expanded my horizons and my skill set, and I since came around to leaving that job to start my own business. I guess what I would say is, what I've learned along the way is that energy is more important than money.

00:20:25
Because if you have energy, you can always make more money. Right. You can always grab a shovel and go out and dig ditches or whatever. Right, sure. But money can't buy you more energy.

00:20:36
Right.

00:20:40
I understand that. I'm always going to have the money that I need to do the things that I need to do. Right. Are there luxuries that I'd love to have? Sure.

00:20:53
Right. I'd love to be driving a 911 turbo instead of a Subaru. Right. But that's not money that I need.

00:21:02
It's just about really believing in myself and doing something that I think is making the world a better place. Right. Is adding value to the world, because it's no way to live your life. If you're spending all day, every day doing something that's not making the world a better place. Right.

00:21:20
Then that's not a recipe for anyone to live a happy or healthy lifestyle, no Matter how much money you're making from it. Yeah, I might have to relisten to that. What you. Just the last five minutes, that was really good. Yeah.

00:21:37
I just think entrepreneurship is such a sexy term. I'm an entrepreneur and I love it. I love doing my own thing, but I think that's just something everyone has to kind of decide for themselves as far as when they're ready. But in that process, there's always something, a reason you shouldn't quit your job. There's always fear.

00:21:59
There's always something holding you back in the end. You could get another job if your business fails or whatever. If the money runs out. Right, you get another job, and it looks like every place is hiring right now. Yeah, exactly.

00:22:18
It doesn't seem like it'd be that challenging. Exactly. Awesome. So I'm going to fire off some questions here and we'll see where it goes. What do people misunderstand about you?

00:22:31
I think I post on my Twitter feed a lot of sort of unorthodox things that I do, right. And I think people might think that these are the secrets to my success. So I'll give you an example. I just bought some toe spreaders. I saw this, right?

00:22:50
It was a viral tweet. It ended up getting like over 500,000 impressions, which I was really kind of shocked by. I figured it would get like five or six likes or whatever.

00:23:03
I'm training for an Iron man race right now. I'm coming up on 40 years old. I have really almost no athletic background, so I'm looking for every little advantage that I can get. And what I find really great about Iron man racing is that it requires me to be dialed in pretty much with everything. Nutrition, recovery.

00:23:23
Right. Because it's just such a demanding thing to do every day for nine months. So I talk a lot about these unorthodox things that I might do, these small things that I try. I'm always experimenting, but this isn't what got me to the point that I'm at now. This isn't what I have clients doing.

00:23:42
Right. These small things aren't the things that move the needle. If you're someone looking to make a change. The entire kind of philosophy behind my approach is called boulders, not pebbles. Right.

00:23:54
If you're looking to make a change in your life, you want to concern yourself with the boulders, the really big rocks, and not worry about the pebbles, the stuff like toe spreaders or something like that. Right. Right. You want to get out there and start to build healthy habits that you can sustain that are going to make a difference in the long term. So while I talk about these things on my social media channels, people find them interesting.

00:24:17
I find them interesting, too. Right. This isn't what got me to where I am, and this isn't why I'm successful. Right. Because the fundamentals, I think for anybody or any business, focusing on the fundamentals and really nailing those are what's going to lead for success in the long term.

00:24:32
Definitely. That's really good. That's a really good answer. On episode four of our podcast, I had Matt four, f o r e. He does Iron man.

00:24:42
He's really into that stuff. So the only experience I have with it is watching my sister years ago do. She did a Chesapeake man, which is an Iron man. I don't know if they still do it, but it's in Maryland on the eastern shore. It's an Iron man distance triathlon, and it was delayed to two plus hours due to fog.

00:25:02
And so that's already like, I'm already even. Your timing and everything is all off. But yeah, we went out to lunch. We went out to watch Ladder 49. We went out to dinner, and she's doing this thing the whole time.

00:25:15
It was like 17 hours.

00:25:19
I just don't even know where to begin. But that's really good. So what your post may not be, it's really you, it's genuine, but it's not what people probably should focus on. If they're trying to kind of start the change, they should focus on fundamentals.

00:25:37
What's one of your biggest failures in life? I don't know that I really kind of frame things as failures. And actually, I recorded a video about this yesterday. It's going to be coming out on my Twitter feed probably this week. Like I said, I lost 75 pounds twice, only to gain the weight back again.

00:25:59
And for years, this hung over my head as a failure, right? Because again, in some ways, it was a failure. Things are a failure from a certain perspective, right? But from a different perspective, it's not a failure. But now when I look back on it, I'll say, okay, well, I lost weight in high school.

00:26:15
I had no idea what I was doing. I basically starved myself and I did a lot of calisthenics, but I proved to myself that it was possible, right? Because before I did that, I didn't even know that I could do this, right. So, yeah, I failed. I gained the weight back again.

00:26:29
And then again in my twenty s, I did it again and I failed and I gained it back again. But I taught myself a lot, right? And I really built the foundation for my knowledge that I'm still using today in my business. So I can look back on these experiences now. And I would say, well, these weren't failures at all.

00:26:46
These were important stepping stones for me to become ultimately successful. So I think really, anything that you might see as a failure, it's only a failure from a given perspective, right? From a given point in time. Because if you zoom out and you look at it from a different perspective, I think you'd find that you can take a different look at it. Because in every one of my failures, and I've done a lot of journaling about these things and traumatic events from the past, I've always been able to kind of reframe them from a different perspective.

00:27:18
And the old silver lining from a dark cloud, I think you can always find something that you can take from that, even if you're failing the same level for the 100th time. Right. There's still something you can learn from that and take away from that. Yeah, that's really good. Awesome.

00:27:36
If you could have coffee with. I don't know if you drink coffee, but there's no calories in coffee. Yeah, I do. If you could have coffee with any historical figure, who would you choose and why? That's a tough question.

00:27:49
I think I would pick Theodore Roosevelt. He's been a really kind of influential figure in my life. And really, these last couple of years, I read a interesting or fascinating three part trilogy about his life by, I believe, Edmund Morris off the top of my head. But it was like a 75 hours audiobook. If you take up all three of these kind of individually, and if you just stop and think.

00:28:17
Right. How long would an audiobook about your life be? Or my life. Right. It certainly wouldn't be 75 hours.

00:28:24
And he's just somebody who really was able to reinvent himself so many times throughout his life and just the breadth of his experience. He wasn't someone that let a single role define him. He was police commissioner in New York. He was president of the United States. He led the Rough Riders.

00:28:45
He basically single handedly won and started and won the spanish american war. He later wins a Nobel Peace prize for avoiding a war between Russia and China. He did exploring. He was a noted author and historian. So someone like that, you don't really see that in figures today.

00:29:06
The most prominent figures, they really kind of drill down into one specific area. But he's somebody that I would love to have coffee with and talk to. And it's interesting because I find that even by studying a historical figure, you can really almost sort of bring their energy into your life. So maybe you don't get to literally sit down with them and talk to them and have coffee with them. But if you ever read, think and grow rich by Napoleon Hill, in that book, he talks about having a sort of virtual system of mentors that he.

00:29:43
Would talk to, like a virtual mastermind. Virtual mastermind group with historical figures in there. And I think you can definitely do something like that even if you don't have formal meetings with them. Right. But just by studying historical figures and reading about them, you can bring some of their energy into your life, and you can definitely sort of build on their influence and gain some of their wisdom.

00:30:05
Yeah, that's awesome.

00:30:09
Speak about your business. What's a challenge that you're facing in your business? Right now, I think the challenge I face is selling myself and selling what I'm doing because I'm taking a different approach to fat loss from pretty much anybody else that you'll find. Right. Well, because, again, I'm not really promising a short term result.

00:30:30
Right. I'm not saying you're going to drop ten pounds in four weeks or anything like that. What I'm saying is you will make a holistic transformation, and yes, you will get results in the short term, but they will be results that you can sustain and build upon. And I will give you the tools to make this a permanent change. Right.

00:30:55
It's a different approach than most people are taking. It's not like something I could package in a PDF, necessarily, and say, well, here, just follow these instructions because everyone's going to be different. But you know what? I'm working on it every day. Right.

00:31:09
I'm connecting with more people. I'm getting better at sharing my message and connecting with people and convincing them of that. So that's, I guess, the biggest challenge I'm facing. My end goal is to help over a million people lose weight. I'm still not exactly sure how I'm going to accomplish that.

00:31:32
But that's okay, right? You don't have to know step 38 when you're on step four, right? Sure. So I know if I just keep moving in the right direction, keep working with people, keep putting myself out there and positively influencing people, that it'll work out. And if I keep making adjustments, I'll reach my goal the same as I reach my fat loss goal and the other goals that I've reached in my life.

00:31:55
Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. I've heard the analogy of the driving and fog. I spoke of fog earlier, but you're not able to see the whole path. Right.

00:32:03
But if you drive 20 yards, you see the next 20 yards and it kind of opens up for you. If you're trying to do something that no one else has done before, then there's not going to be a roadmap for you to follow. You just kind of have to figure it out as you go. And you don't have to get into how you approach things with a client. But would you recommend someone who's trying to lose a lot of weight that they only focus on the physical at that point?

00:32:31
Or do you take like, a multipronged approach and they should also deal with the mental and spiritual all at the same time? Yeah, I take a multipronged approach. It's important that you don't bite off more than you can chew, so to speak. Right. So make sure that the things that you're doing really are moving the needle.

00:32:52
I guess one of the challenging things from what I did is I can look back at what I did really over. I guess I would say an eight year period of when I kind of started turning my life around. And if I analyze how I did it, I don't think I did it the most efficient way possible. I didn't really have the top down picture of it. So as I kind of try to rebuild that, and I'll say, okay, well, we can definitely make this more efficient.

00:33:20
Doing the things that I did could have been done a lot faster. Right. And a lot more intelligently. And I certainly took some missteps along the way. I think at one point, my fitness plan was switching from beer to liquor.

00:33:37
Right. I may have been guilty of that one, maybe even currently, and it kind. Of worked, probably a little bit, but it certainly opened up a whole other host of problems. I wouldn't recommend it. Right.

00:33:50
So it hasn't necessarily been a linear progression from step one all the way to where I am now. So I think it's important that people really focus on their mental and emotional health is probably even more important than the physical in a lot of ways, is. At the end of the day, I've kind of come to understand that my physical form really isn't all that important if I'm healthy, if I'm able to do the things that I want to do. It's really more about what my emotional state is and how I'm feeling and how much energy I have. That's much more.

00:34:26
I was waiting for you to say energy, because you've mentioned that three or four times, and that's definitely a takeaway for me from this episode, for sure, is just keep going back to the energy, and I love that. That's awesome. That's almost like what links the two, the mental and the physical. It seems like it's your energy, but I can tell you have a lot of energy. You have a lot of optimism.

00:34:48
You're definitely a man on a mission, and you're definitely moving forward, and you're in a growth mindset. I mean, it fits perfectly with this podcast. This isn't necessarily a rags to riches show.

00:35:04
It's more about just overcoming adversity and getting to an From Adversity to Abundance Podcast mindset, and you're the perfect guest for it.

00:35:14
Anything to add to that? Yeah, look, having an From Adversity to Abundance Podcast mindset, I think, is challenging for me anyway, right. And it's it's something that, it's hard to do that if you don't have an From Adversity to Abundance Podcast mindset. You can't just flip a switch and get one, right. It's something that's deeper than an intellectual understanding, right?

00:35:37
So it's how do you, on a deep level, have an From Adversity to Abundance Podcast mindset and not just pay lip service to have an From Adversity to Abundance Podcast mindset? I actually just tweeted something earlier today that I think encapsulates it pretty well. It's that if you believe in yourself, if you believe in your ability to overcome adversity, if you believe in your ability to adapt to whatever life throws at you, then there's not much to worry about at that point because everybody likes to panic about how the world is changing, right? Go on to any news source or social media feed. You'll see all this stuff about inflation and Ukraine and pandemics and all these other things, right?

00:36:23
But when I stop and look around right now at my own life, what problems do I have? I don't see a whole lot of problems, right? And life is pretty good, and I don't allow myself to get caught up in those things. I know that the world is going to change and what I want to do is be adaptable, and when it changes, I'll change along with it. And I know if I can do that, then there's really nothing for me to worry about.

00:36:48
And I think that is kind of the cornerstone to the From Adversity to Abundance Podcast mindset. Because if you don't think like that, if you're scared of the change, if you think things aren't going to work out well for you, well, that's where you start to get a scarcity mindset. And that's where you start to become really risk averse and you start to, I guess, gather the acorns for the winter, right? Because you're not optimistic about the future. So if you're optimistic about the future and you, on a deep level, believe in yourself, which happens through action, not through words, you believe in yourself by putting yourself out there and overcoming things and doing it and proving it to yourself that you're worthy of the belief, then you have an From Adversity to Abundance Podcast mindset and these things will take care of themselves to a certain degree.

00:37:34
Yeah, I love it. It's awesome for me. And again, we're not saying that you don't have any adversity or I don't have any adversity currently, or you never slip out of your From Adversity to Abundance Podcast mindset. But I made a switch around 2015, actually, 2014, 2015, where I stopped watching the news. And again, I still pay attention to what's going on, but I was watching cable news and just, like, it's depressing and I have zero control over it.

00:38:02
So what's the point? So then I did start to switch to, okay, who do I know that is on my team and what are my strengths and start taking action. And I've experienced a similar thing where it's so encouraging to be able to only focus on what you can control. And personally, I think people can control or influence more than they give themselves credit for. And, like, for example, you may correct me if I'm wrong, but did your girlfriend also lose a lot of weight?

00:38:37
Yeah, she's lost about 100 pounds, and I definitely helped her along with that. Right. I would say I did it more by example than by anything that I said. Right. I think this is key for everyone, is talk is cheap.

00:38:56
No one's going to listen to your advice. Right. Lead by example and show people that the way you're doing it is better. And some of them are going to follow, and some of them will start to sort of embrace what you're doing. It's interesting because at her job, before we moved, she was doing that challenge 75 hard, right.

00:39:20
Which a lot of people do to lose weight. And a bunch of her coworkers started doing it, right. And they saw her walking at lunch and how happy she was and how good she looked, and they started saying, oh, okay, she must know what she's doing, right. So I think it's up to us. He talked about cutting out the mainstream media.

00:39:39
I think that's a great thing for everyone to do. I talk a lot about the importance of really auditing your social media feed, making sure the people that you're tuned into are the influences that you want to be tuned into. Exactly. And that's really important. So if the people in your life aren't like that, it's going to be problematic.

00:40:00
You got to kind of put the blinders on a bit and just block them out. And social media is a very powerful tool. You can connect to other people who are aligned with you, who are like minded. You can follow people who set a great example, and you can use that as your kind of support group. If you can't find these people in the real world.

00:40:18
I know I have a hard time finding them sometimes. No, I love it. It really is about taking ownership, taking control of even your social media feed, because that might sound like no big deal, but social media is not bad or good. It's very powerful. It can be.

00:40:35
Right. And so, just like the way I see money, I don't see money as bad or good. It's very powerful. It can be used for good or for bad. And so that's really important is controlling what you're exposed to online.

00:40:51
Technology amplifies, I think, the things that are already there. So if you want to use it for bad, it's going to be that much more worse. If you want to use it for good, well, they could be that much better. Because I've built out my Twitter, and I hear from dozens of people every day who I'm inspiring, who I'm influencing, and that is so rewarding for me. That's more rewarding than any money.

00:41:16
Right? And that's not to say, well, money doesn't Matter or whatever. Obviously, I can't eat and pay my rent with happy messages from people. But at the same time, if I zoom out and look at the big picture, right, these people are making their families better, their communities better, right? And so the old butterfly effect, right.

00:41:38
Just by smiling at one person, you can really help hundreds, if not thousands of other people just by kind of spreading that positive message. And it's very powerful. I love it. The world needs more of that right now, for sure, coming out of the pandemic and everything. And there's a lot of hate online.

00:41:55
And I just love the message that you're bringing and the passion that you're bringing to this and the energy you have and so many things that I could go on and on about. So as we wrap up here, Matt, let our listeners know how they can reach out to you online and add any final thoughts that you'd like on. You know, Twitter is my prominent kind of social media. I'm at m a t t I z z o, just at Matt Izzo. And my DMs are always open.

00:42:26
I'm happy to answer any questions or talk to anybody. I am selling services. But again, that's not necessarily my only thing. So if it's a quick question, I'm happy to answer it. I'm happy to help you out.

00:42:40
But what I would say is, obviously, you don't need to hire me to be successful, right? I did it without hiring me. So this isn't something that anybody needs. You can figure it out on your own. But it took me 25 years, right?

00:42:55
So if you could tell me, I could have all the information and knowledge that I have now, we'll say 15 years ago, how much money would I pay for it? Well, I would have paid every dollar I had for it, basically, right.

00:43:10
It's really a process and you can figure it out yourself. But if you want to save some time and look into coaching, not even from me, right. There's tons of great coaches out there. It's really an interesting space because there's real people out there who have experience, who are now selling their services, and you can hire them and you can get real impact from people who are on social media that can help guide you and help you down the path in a way that really never existed before. Because now there's a way for you to find these people and connect with them and get some sort of verification, right.

00:43:50
Because I'm out there posting the receipts of what I'm doing every day. So you could see that I'm not just some fraud or some kind of charlatan, right. And there's other people like that, too. So I think it's a powerful tool that everybody can use and can really help kind of make the world a better place if we kind of get away from the mainstream media sorts of these big corporate influences that don't necessarily have making the world a better place as their core mission. Right.

00:44:20
No, that's really good. So just very quickly, so what does a typical, if someone is interested in working with you, what does that look like? Yeah. So we would have an initial kind of assessment call. And then I build a program, basically something that meets that individual's needs, right.

00:44:39
Because it has to be customized to that individual. What their situation is, what their physical situation is, what kinds of food they eat. Right. What their lifestyle is like. Right.

00:44:50
So it's not just a cookie cutter thing, it's something that's customized and it starts and then you have to live your life and you have to make adjustments and see how it works because not everything you're going to do is going to work out at first. So it's definitely a give and take process of making adjustments as you go and layering in new things. Right. Once certain behavior patterns become a habit, then finding other behaviors that can be added to that and just layering habits one on top of the other. Right.

00:45:21
I talked a bit about some of the unorthodox things that I do, and if you would have showed me my daily routine now, six years ago, I would have said, you're crazy. There's no way I could do that. But I didn't just wake up overnight and start doing it. Right. I started by making simple changes on the important things and I just kind of built on it from there and seeing what worked, seeing what didn't work, and just periodically making adjustments.

00:45:46
And that's the only way to do it. It's unrealistic to think that you're going to just wake up one day and become a new person and follow this crazy program and do that. Right? Maybe you can do that for eight or twelve or 16 weeks, but when your willpower gives in, when your motivation goes away, what are you going to be left with? And this is why so many people fail so often.

00:46:09
And this is why I try to instill in my clients, hey, this is how you can be successful, not just for the short term, but for the long term, and how you can make this a permanent change and not just a temporary thing that you do for a while, and then you stop and you go back to what you were doing before. Yeah, I can tell you're a genuine guy who really wants to help. And that's like you said, you have the long term in mind and the best interest of the client, I can tell. Which, in the end, hopefully comes back to you financially in other ways. But I know it will really quickly.

00:46:44
So what's more important, diet or exercise? Diet would be more important. Right. I started walking 10,000 steps every day at the end of 2013 when my mother gave me a Fitbit for Christmas. And I ended up doing it every day for seven and a half years just because I kind of became determined on that.

00:47:06
But it was another two and a half years until I really started losing weight. So I walked and all that stuff. But then once I kind of got the diet dialed down and I downloaded, my fitness pal, started tracking my food intake, restricting my calories. I was able to lose 75 pounds in about nine months from that. Got you.

00:47:23
And when I say diet, I know you know this, but I don't mean going on a diet per se. I mean your intake of food. Yeah, it's about intake and it's about food choices. Right? Both Matter to a certain degree, obviously, but exercise is great for everyone to be doing.

00:47:41
It's not something that people who are only trying to lose weight should do. It can be as simple as just going out and walking, though. It doesn't have to be something that's straining or strenuous if you don't want it to be. Everyone should be exercising. But if you're trying to drop some pounds, diet is what you need to focus on for that.

00:47:57
Yeah, that's really good. Awesome. Well, Matt, thank you very much. I know we went a little bit long, and like I said, I know you are busy. I know you have a hard stop and I really appreciate you coming on and sharing.

00:48:10
There were so many knowledge bonds that you dropped. Really, this has been excellent, so I really appreciate it. Thanks a lot, Matt. Oh, you're welcome. Thanks for having me, Jamie.

00:48:19
I appreciate absolutely so. And to the listeners out there, we appreciate you as well. We want to thank you for spending your most valuable asset with us, which is your time. Thanks everyone.

00:48:33
Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the from adversity to From Adversity to Abundance Podcast podcast. If you're enjoying the show, please feel free to rate, subscribe, and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts that help helps others find the show, and we greatly appreciate it. Thanks again for listening, and we'll catch you in the next episode.