Update

A lot has happened since my last post.

I got a little bit injured, a lotta bit sick, and lost all interest in training. In all honesty it was the last thing I wanted to do period. My diet suffered, my energy levels slumped, and it all kind of created a vicious cycle of unhealthy action.

But, like always, I learned a bunch and I'm back.

I want to take some time to address a few issues that I have been noticing with folks.

1) Most weight loss products are bullshit.
 People are generally pretty lazy when it comes to their fitness (which is understandable; it can be frustrating) and they would love to be able to take a pill or powder and make all the fat go away, lean mass accumulate, and energy flow like a river. But this isn't the case, nor will it ever be.

Knowledge is the first step in obtaining your fitness goals. What food is good for you? How much do YOU need to function? What forms of exercise will give you the body or abilities you desire? How does your diet effect the exercise you're doing?

This is where specificity is important because there are tons of information floating around out there from many different sources. Some advice on fitness may come from someone who is knowledgeable in endurance activities, and maybe this advice is solid and correct for obtaining endurance related goals, but it won't help someone looking to do strength training. In the same regards, dieting advice for a person bulking will not be best for a person looking to burn a lot of fat.

So you have to be specific in what you want to obtain, then make it your business to learn the ins and outs of reaching that goal. Then, once you have the knowledge, you have to apply it and be consistent with it. That's the formula for success: Vision + Knowledge + Application Over Time - Bullshit Excuses = Success

2) You can't out-train a bad diet. 

How long does it take you to burn 100 calories on a treadmill? Well I guarantee you that you can consume those 100 calories in less than 10 seconds with the right food source. I was looking at the calorie info for a dark chocolate bar today, half the bar was 1 serving which equaled 210 calories and 21g carbohydrates. Less than half a handful of food took up 10% of my daily caloric goal.

The takeaway message is it doesn't matter how much you work out, if you don't have your diet in check, you won't do much about those love handles.

3) You don't know everything about health and nutrition. 


I don't know nearly everything about health and nutrition and I make it my business to study and test as much as I can. I do know that what advice I give has worked for me, and probably a lot of other people since a large majority of it is backed up by sensible science. I only bring this up because I still get people who hear what I say, nod and smile, and then proceed to regurgitate conventional mistakes and fallacies that have been drilled into their psyche for probably more than a decade. Many times the people doing the regurgitating seem more than happy to believe the false information even though it's never worked for them in the past. Chalking their failure up to age and genetics.

It's sad that people are so used to being told what to believe that they begin to trust secondhand musings over firsthand experience. If you are eating high carb - low fat foods, and are not losing any weight, it's not because you're genetically predisposed to being fat, it's probably because your diet isn't geared for fat loss.

Anyway... Like I said before, I fell off the wagon for a bit, but now I'm back on and beginning to remember why this lifestyle is so lovely. But just as an added insurance. I've created a little challenge for myself that should be fun and interesting.

I want to be at 10% body fat.
I want to bench press 260 lbs
I want to squat 300
I want to deadlift 350
I want to do chin ups with 60lbs around my waist.

And I wont shave my beard until I reach those goals.  HOO-RAH!