5 Fitness Myths
Learned the hard way
For the first time in 14 years, I didn’t write down a single fitness or physique-related New Year’s resolution.
No body fat percentage targets.
No step-count reminders.
No spreadsheets tracking resting heart rate, HRV, times peed throughout the night, alongside AM and PM weigh-ins.
(Yes. I did that. For years.)
It would be poetic to say I’ve given up.
That’s not quite true.
My body is still a HUGE priority. I care deeply about aesthetics, performance, & health.
I still train 6/week. I still eat the same 3 meals every day. I still enjoy the process.
What I’ve given up is the death grip…
I worked myself into the best physique I’ve ever had without needing to choke my fitness into submission. No constant monitoring. No obsessive logging. No white-knuckling every variable like my sense of self depended on it.
Fourteen years is a long time to experiment on yourself.
I’ve tested, failed, studied, stressed, optimized, over-optimized, and occasionally annoyed the hell out of friends and family chasing more muscle, less fat, better performance, perfect hormones, and flawless sleep.
When I started, I had no intuition. Just stubbornness.
So I experimented. I watched patterns. I paid attention to what worked on me and what worked on the people around me who weren’t losing their sanity.
And finally I’ve gotten to a place where I can trust myself.
Progress didn’t disappear when the spreadsheets did.
Discipline didn’t evaporate without reminders taped to mirrors.
My body didn’t revolt when I stopped micromanaging it.
Turns out some lessons can’t be taught.
I learned them the hard way, mostly by myself.
But maybe that part isn’t necessary.
Here are five things I know now that I desperately wish I knew then…
15,000-Calorie Cheat Meals
Yeah. Meal. Not day.
I can eat. That’s not news.
I convinced myself I’d cracked the code. Cheat days are obviously a mess. Anyone who’s spent ten minutes in a forum knows that. One full day of highly engineered food can undo a week of being locked in.
But cheat meal felt different.
More reasonable.
More psychological.
Train hard all week. Eat clean. Calories tight. Then one meal where you don’t think about it. A little release. You’ve earned it.
But… that meal turns into an event. Multiple entrees. Sides. A pie and a pint waiting for me back home in front of the TV.
Somehow you’re gaining weight while averaging a stupidly low intake all week.
That part took longer than it should’ve to click.
Bulking and Cutting
Bulking feels great for about two weeks.
Then I’m bloated 24/7 and the only time I feel good about my body is the 90 minutes I’m in the gym.
Cutting isn’t much better.
Training suffers. Life gets rushed. Everything revolves around some arbitrary date on the calendar. A vacation. A wedding. A stretch of days where swim trunks are the dress code.
And somehow I still end up looking like a dehydrated russet potato.
At least I’m tan.
Everyone wants to be a mass monster.
In reality, 99 percent of my problems were solved by having abs year-round.
The constant yoyoing of bulk/cut cycles seems intentional.
But really, it’s noise.
Protein Bars Aren’t Cheating
What a time to be alive.
Protein bars taste good and are actually healthy. Suspicious.
This one really messed with my friction addiction, that urge to turn life on hard mode for no reason.
Finding decent food in the modern world is hard enough. Work runs long. You miss a meal. If a few protein bars help you hit your macros, go for it.
Nothing noble about making it harder than it needs to be.
Nothing virtuous about white-knuckling lunch.
No need for moral panic.
Save that for the protein farts.
Meal Frequency
Nicomachean Ethics says happiness lives in virtuous living.
The balance between two extremes.
I’ve done one meal a day.
I’ve done seven.
Turns out the “right” choice isn’t the one that maximizes muscle protein synthesis or perfectly times growth hormone during some fasting window. It’s the one you actually like.
The one that doesn’t have you stressed because your Tupperware isn’t microwave-safe.
The one that doesn’t leave you shaky at 5 p.m. running on black coffee and chewing gum.
Pick something you enjoy.
Pick something you can stick with.
The answer is probably somewhere in the middle.
Aristotle was a bro.
The Perfect Body
You’re never going to have it.
There’s no magical unlock when the abs come in.
No secret level when your arms hit 18 inches. (Still working on that.)
Most days you’ll feel neutral.
Once, maybe twice a day, you’ll actually like how you look.
That moment is real.
It’s brief.
And it’s surprisingly enough.