The physical mind fucking of social media

Long before the interwebs and social media ever existed, I went into the gym daily, and trained.

Yeah, we wore fanny packs.  Mainly to hold our giant cassette or CD player so we could listen to the tunes we wanted to instead of shitty gym music (some things truly haven't changed in gyms in 30 plus years).  We wore clown pants and the gym was packed with mullets (which has now been replaced by the every bit as hideous and shitty "undercut" hairstyle that is currently popular).

We did what the "bros" from the magazines said we should do (ghost written or not) and didn't argue with them about the scientific validity of a program or diet.  Mainly because we couldn't.  We had to try something to see if it worked, and were left to nothing but trial and error.  Which in turn, actually gave us something called "experience".  

Thankfully, the net has taken all of that away and made both training and diet the springboard for making things as complicated as possible, and become the playground for what should be intellectual debate and turned it into proverbial pissing matches over who is "right" or "wrong".  There's a whole sect of people who talk a lot about training and diet on the net, and a whole lot of them that do very little of both.  But that's really an entirely different article.

But even worse than that, it has completely distorted reality in regards to what people are seeking to achieve, or what they believe is even achievable at all.  To add, it has even changed how people train.

Trust me when I say that it was hard enough coming up through the 90's, being a teen and looking at the physiques of pros and believing that building such a physique was attainable on some protein powder and pills from GNC.  Steroid talk was pretty much non-existent back then in magazines and even Lee Haney himself made his own training video saying all he took was fucking Weider "Anabolic Mega-Packs".

I really can't imagine what the hell goes through the mind of a teen who finds himself looking up to guys who not only boost synthol, but then even photoshop their IG and other social media pics to make themselves look even more cartoonish, and make Youtube videos that for the life of me, I can't figure out how it pertains to training or dieting in a way that is conducive to helping them.  Entertainment value perhaps?  I'd like to think so, until I read the comments below said videos where I see lots of young lifters actually defending their "champion".

But I feel the women have it even worse.

Social media is now filled with women looking for "fame" through nothing more than booty pics, and the lengths they will go to in order to get "likes" is borderline psychotic.

From ass implants to pics photoshopped so hard that the doorframe near her ass appears to bend space and time, there's no length some of these women won't go to in order to find social and sexual affirmation....for their ass.

Men of course, drive this market.  Wait, let me rephrase; thirsty men drive this market.  I can't scroll through my newsfeed or IG without seeing a pic of some chick sticking her ass into a camera lense so close that would make any gynecologist scream "I'm not studying atoms in your vagina!" followed by men begging to wife said women.

Other women see this, of course, and want the same attention.  Let's be real here (which is also impossible on social media because no one ever admits to this shit), the women do this for attention from men.  Men give said attention - for reasons I am unaware of as it is not going to get you laid - and the cycle continues.

This is all fine, actually.  People are free to run their social media any way they please, just as I'm free to write on this blog and poke fun about it.  My point in all of this is that this is how the social media market gets driven.  Literally, by asses.  Women want them because they desire attention from men who are the poster boys for sexual desperation, and those men believe by giving that attention will somehow translate into some action in the sack.  Which of course is never going to happen, no matter how many roses pictures you post under her picture or how many times you incorrectly use the phase "god your so beautiful".  It's "God, you're so beautiful" in case you missed that.  There should be a comma after "God" and it's "you're" and not "your".  Your means.....fuck, nevermind.

Since the fitness industry is driven by judgement (whether you like that or not, it's a fact) based on some criteria, I can tell you first hand that most of the women that get propped up as having these perfect bodies rarely impress in person.  I remember the first big expo I went to years and years ago, and remember feeling quite confused after half the day had passed, and the great majority of "asses" I observed were exceptionally underwhelming.  I'm not even saying that to be an asshole.  I remember being exceptionally disappointed because as a man who does himself appreciate a great set of glutes, or in fact a well developed physique in general, I was left quite sad at the end of the day.

One particular female who I knew of from social media, that prides herself on posting pics of her ass, actually looked quite like 10 pounds of shit stuffed into a 5 pound bag in person.  I say this not to be an asshole, even though it is an asshole thing to write, I say this because I remember it being the first thing I thought when I saw her in person.  I couldn't tell she had ever trained, and remember thinking she was actually quite....fat.  But I have another reason I write that which I will get to later.

None of this has stopped the same women from shopping their pics or posting video after video of them taken from the ass side over and over again.  That's what gets attention.  And that's what women want.

Fuck, let me not be quite so sexist here.  Most of us want or desire attention from the opposite sex (or the same sex, fuck, I don't want to appear homophobic either).  God damn, now I feel as though I have to rewrite that whole bit.  But I won't.  Let's just say, in the industry people do indeed crave attention.  There.  That'll work.

But this is a normal human trait and not something I am not shitting on.  Most of us have something we use social media for, to attract attention to ourselves for either personal or professional reasons (people use social media to make a living too), or both.  Guys that post videos of themselves lifting weights often make fun of guys who post half naked pics, when in fact, both are doing different things for the same reasons.  Affirmation and accolades from peers or attention.  Again, nothing wrong with this.

Gotta write that a few times so that it's perfectly clear.

To deny a degree of attention seeking is to deny a very basic human condition.  The condition of desirability.  Some don't need this through social media, it's true.  But many do.  And that's the basic foundation of which all of this is built.

My point in all of this is that this drives the "average" fitness, or "fitfam" hashtagging female who is unaware that many and most of these "perfect body" females have their shit shopped all to hell and back, get ass implants, or generally look nothing like in person what is presented to them via social media - and it warps their perception of what is a "perfect" body, and the perception of their own.

Yes that was a hell of a run on sentence but you'll have to deal with it as I couldn't figure out any other way to write it.

In other words, that they are somehow not quite as "perfect" or will ever be as perfect as these women with 7 gagillion followers.

I truly feel for women who are in the gym daily that feel as though they have to meet some social media goddess standard in order to feel sexy or fit or attractive.  And every few months, something new pops up for women to achieve in order to appear attractive through fitness.

"Don't have a thigh gap?  No man's penis will ever become erect for you!  Want some erect penis?  Do this thigh gap training!"  

/women start posting thigh gap pics or doing thigh gap "training"/

"Don't have a big apple bottom ass?  Do my training program!  It took me from pancake ass to donkey ass in 12 weeks!"

/never reveals surgeon's name/

Women have it tough.  They really do.  As guys, we really don't have it quite as bad as women do because the fact is, women know that men tend to be more visually driven from a sexual aspect.  I mean, there's a reason why strip clubs are in business.  There's a reason why some chick who has never competed in anything at all has a million followers on IG, and there's a reason why certain women get put on the cover of magazines.  Men's magazines I mean.  Like Playboy.  Women aren't as visually driven as men, and often date dudes who are ugly AF because they fulfill other needs women tend to be attracted to.  Like intelligence, confidence, and a big bank account.

annnnndd there was nothing wrong with the "before" pic

I mean, dudes deal with this too, but I honestly think it's quite different.  Men who strive to become overly muscular tend to do so at some point for their own narcissistic reasons or personal goals.  I say that willingly throwing myself under the bus as one of said males.  I could really give two shits about attention from women at THIS point in my life in regards to training goals.  However, of course there was a time when I did enjoy the fact that improving how I looked brought me that.  So I'm trying to stay "real" here and not present myself as someone who is some emotional outlier who never needed affirmation and attention from women.  Hell, even Ed Coan said to me "we all want affirmation that we are highly regarded and looked up to by our competitors and peers."

And there's nothing wrong with that.  Positive affirmation is something most of us crave.  It makes us feel good about ourselves, and often times is the driver for us wanting to obtain harder to achieve goals.  Again, all good things.

What I don't like is how discouraged or disheartened a lot of women get about their own bodies because they don't realize that most of these women either don't look like that in person, or have had work done or had pics altered to look like something they are not.  Or that every few months there is some new "standard" set in place for them in regards to what they are supposed to look like.

It can do everything from creating eating disorders to terrible self body image in women, who look damn good already and worked hard to get there.  Then said female can often find herself in a place where she rarely gets a single moment of happiness from her training or dieting because she never feels like she "measures up" to what she sees online or is told is currently "attractive".

For a while, the "strong is the new skinny" phase became the rage.  And it really put more of an emphasis on women performing well, and becoming "secure" in their body image through lifting and self acceptance.  I actually liked this phrase because I thought it could transcend more than just "abs" or "asses" or how you looked.  That women no longer needed to be a size zero in order to find a place of strength in both their body and mind.

But of course, this motto too got trashed by other females because somehow trashing one body image to uphold another is not good either.  In other words "don't tell someone how to look!"

I think the bottom line is that striving for a healthy body should be the one most PEOPLE aspire to. But that's just my opinion.  There will be some 380 pound powerlifter who is on the verge of a daily heart attack that will disagree, and will say that a 600 pound bench is more important, but I digress.

Yes, I've written many times that I am against obesity acceptance because it is the physical manifestation of leading an unhealthy life, and even wrote several SCIENCE BASED piece supporting the fact that there is no such thing as "good health at any bodyweight".  But the flip side to that, are the women who have transformed their bodies through lifting, formed new eating habits that are conducive to good health, and still feel like shit about themselves because they believe that they aren't "enough" due to a lack of "likes" or "followers" on social media.

And that this obviously is because they don't have a thigh gap, big enough ass, big enough tits, full enough lips, whatever.

Let's make no mistake here, the industry has always been full of liars.  But the impact social media has now on training, dieting, and self perception has become quite tremendous.

While it's true that exceptionally beautiful people are always going to be put on a pedestal because being hot AF sells magazines, supplements, lipstick, and clothes, I truly detest the propping up of fakeness across social media and the ripple effect I see it having into the lives of others.

So let me tell you this ladies - I've seen about every "perfect body" you can imagine that you've seen on social media and as I've covered, most of the time I was very underwhelmed.  I think if you got out to some of these events you'd probably see for yourself that well, you're not as bad off as you think you are.  In fact, I've seen plenty of women in "regular gyms" whose physiques impressed me more, who did not compete, didn't have big social media followers, and really didn't give a fuck.

And despite the fact that I've written several times about how you need to give a fuck, you need to learn what to give a fuck about.  Giving too much of a fuck about the acceptance of people across social media for attention can eventually detract from your own happiness.  Giving too much of a fuck about having the perfect ass or a thigh gap can detract from you just finding happiness in your training and body image.

Everyday you're going to wake up and go to bed with what mom and pops gave you to work with.  If you want to give a fuck about something, and being in the best shape you can be in is one of those things, then worry about what you can do with that, and that alone.  And do the best you can with that; and quit giving a fuck about thigh gaps and "perfect asses" and set goals that are meaningful to what YOU aspire to be.

I told a friend the other night that I was finally in a place where I felt physically "content" with myself.  But upon reflection, I'm not sure if it's because I have actually achieved some physical form that I am actually happy with, or because I finally arrived at a place where I was just happy with who I am as a man.  Maybe it's a bit of both.  Either way, it only took me 26 years (training wise) to arrive here.  Or maybe it was just the last year, when I found myself making decisions to get "healthy" in other aspects of my life, my thoughts, and my mental and emotional well being, that led me here.

Waking up content doesn't remove your ambition to improve unless you allow it to.  It just removes the self loathing and perception that somehow you aren't "perfect" enough because you don't measure up to some photoshopped ass on social media.

And to close, whether you know it or not, a lot of these "perfect bodied" women struggle with a lot of demons and self confidence as well.  How would you like it, if everyday you woke up you felt like the only thing about you worth "liking" was what your ass or body looked like?  And that not a single person gave two shits about your interests, passions, or things outside of fitness or your body that was important to you?  I'm sure at first you'd love the attention, but I can tell you from the words of women that have been in this position, after a while being seen as nothing more than an "ass" can become pretty crippling to how they feel about themselves and their self confidence.

Life is going to be full of struggles and suffering as is.  Try not creating more than you already have by trying to meet some "perfect standard" you think will give you fulfillment.  If you base your self worth on what you lift, look like, and your bodyfat percentage compared to someone else, you're going to very unhappy most of the time.  There's always someone bigger, leaner, and stronger.  I can tell you even from a male's perspective, that is an empty well.  And one I can say I happily no longer travel back to anymore.

Finding self worth has nothing to do with how much weight you can load onto a bar, what your ass looks like, or what your bodyfat percentage is.  It is something you have to eventually recognize that sets you apart from everyone else, makes you unique, and is what attracts the people in your life who truly love you, and are there for reasons beyond your physical appearance.



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The complexities of advancement in regards to training and dietary practices

It’s very difficult to have discussion on the net about training or nutrition these days without it turning into a complete shitfest between the groups of people involved in having these discussions. 

The root of most internet arguments or discussions about diet and training come from, what I believe is, the huge disconnect between the qualifications of the lifters/athletes involved in said discussions, and their opinions about what training and/or nutritional strategies "works" and "doesn't work."

I have no idea why this is never taken into account, when it should always be accounted for when discussing ideas. 

The second disconnect, is that these arguments often pit one side of the group, that only relies on science or studies only, and the other side of the group that looks at anecdotal evidence and/or both. 

As I've often had to repeat on many occasions, I love studies.  I read tons of them.  And I appreciate the people who put an enormous amount of time and effort into really trying to find out the reasons why something does, or does not work.  It's incredibly helpful from an "understanding" point of view in regards to application of how and what we should or should not be applying in order to achieve certain results.

To be perfectly honest, I’m not a fan of people who rely ONLY on scientific based models or studies as the basis for “fact”, then refuse to accept that even the guys doing the research understand that there is something called "evidence based practice".  

Evidence based practice is made up of a tier of principles that include several variables that are used to arrive at the most efficient manner as possible in order to sustain progress.  There is no overriding or "most important" principle in regards to priorities of ideologies.  

In NO particular order...

1.  Scientific research

2.  Individual needs, and preferences 

3.  Personal expertise and field observations 

All three of these things play a role in developing a completeness in regards to creating training modalities and paradigms in training and nutrition. Excluding any of these three principles is going to leave the person doing so, with a very incomplete process in regards to developing what is best for them, or their clients.

All three of these things overlap in order to create a trinity, if you will, in order to manipulate one's training needs and priorities so that they are efficient and optimal.  

The other disconnect in training and nutritional methodologies between people arguing on the net often arise because of personal experiences only, or that they read a study and believe that it has application across the board regardless of others needs, experience, or level of development.  

This is often most severely the case discussing dietary strategies or practices.  

The war between IIFYM and "clean eating" is probably the best example of this.  

The IIFYM crowd clings to both studies and anecdotal evidence that says you can lose bodyfat while instituting the IIFYM approach, and has research and anecdotal evidence that proves that it can.

And they are right.  But only to a degree.  

The people who say IIFYM misses the mark and is not the most efficient way to approach lean also have research that backs up their stance, both scientifically and anecdotally. And they are also correct. To a degree.

So how is this possible?  That two camps with opposing opinions can both be correct.  

Because number 2 and number 3 in the evidence based practices says so.  Not only that, but there are studies that "prove" one theory correct (for example eating more frequently does increase increase fat oxidation), and studies that say it makes no difference (eating all of your calories for the day in just two or three meals).  

To add to the confusion, there are people who have implemented all the various strategies with different degrees of success or failure.  So one guy says "my body composition got worse eating only 3 times a day compared to 6 times a day", then gets countered by another guy saying "I noticed no difference" and/or says "my body composition improved on just eating 3 times a day compared to six."

The layers of complexity get even deeper as each individual pushes closer to either his or her genetic ceiling in terms of potential fulfillment, or is trying to obtain a very extreme degree of body composition (like bodybuilding stage condition) or elite level strength ability. 

What I mean by that is, going from 20% bodyfat to 15% bodyfat most likely would not require a very complex change in one's dietary practices.  Simply eliminating excess calories, while adhering to a sound and/or ideal practice of macronutrient intake could easily accomplish this, regardless of food choices/food composition.  So someone could do something as easy as get into a calorie/energy deficit by simply reducing portion sizes of the foods they are currently eating, and actualize fat loss from that alone.  Food composition may never have played a factor here.  

Getting from 15% to 10% might add a bit more complexity to the issue, depending on the individual, however.  And from there, getting from 10% to say, 6% would most likely indeed require infinitely more complex strategies to achieve such a goal.  

During each transition, certain principles may become more or less important in that time.  

Going from 10% bodyfat to bodybuilding stage ready bodyfat percentage (let's say 3-4%) is indeed going to be far more complex and require far more exactness in regards to things like nutrient timing and food composition than it would in going from 20% to 15%.  Especially if the person who was at 20% had previously been eating a lot of overly processed food with low nutritional value.  

And this is how arguments start.  

If someone has never gotten stage ready, then they will have no association with what their body may or may not need in regards to reach such a level of conditioning.  If they lost fat, and took their bodyfat from 20% to even 10% using a particular technique, they may assume that same technique could be applied to go from 10% down to 4%.  And the truth is, it might....or it might not.  The problem is, they don't know yet.  Just because someone else did it, has zero bearing on what they may have to do.  So pointing to half a dozen other guys or gals who swim in a completely different gene pool than they do, gives no substance to their argument.  

My own experimentation with this showed that once I got stuck in regards to fat loss, changing my food composition alone did indeed get me out of a fat loss plateau (my macros never differed while instituting these changes).  However, there may be another guy that says he was able to eat ice cream the whole time while getting leaner and leaner, while simply reducing his calories the whole time.

53 weeks apart - Three different dietary strategies 

What I needed to progress was different than what he needed.  Factually, for me, I needed to make changes to continue making progress that he did not need to make.  At my age, I don't have the metabolism I did at 21 years old.  I can't get away with eating cheat meals on a weekly basis, or have too many high glycemic index carbs throughout the day and continue to lose fat.  This isn't something to be debated.  That's how it works for me.  I know this from personal experience.

Does that mean it has to be this way for every other person?  

Absolutely not.  

As the saying goes, different strokes for different folks.  

Training is no different.  And ends up manifesting similar disagreements. 

"I took my deadlift from 315 to 500 in six months training it three times a week.  So training it that often can be done with great results."

I get this.  I took my deadlift from 405 to 500 using some very basic principles that one could be described as "cookie cutter progressive overload."  Getting from 500 to 600 however, was a different story.  My training had to change in a myriad of ways to accomplish this.  And getting from 600 to 700 meant yet another change in training application that looked nothing like what it took to go from 405 to 500, and 500 to 600.  

I wasn't built for deadlifting.  So I had to experiment and fine tune my training for a long time in order to break through those barriers.  Throughout each phase, I needed something very different in order to make progress again, once a plateau was reached.  And at each plateau, I had to be open to different ideas, cognizant of what my own body was telling me from each training cycle, and then manipulate all of those factors in order to move forward again.  

So as I progressed, complexity often increased dramatically.  

People who want to actualize genetic potential must realize that as they progress, what got them from point A to point B, most likely is not going to be the same thing that gets them from point B to point C, then from point C to point D.  

As one progresses, overemphasizing certain ideas at the expense of others could be the very thing that keeps you from moving forward along that path.  Nutrient timing is often an example of this.  A novice who is basically a recreational lifter probably doesn't need it the same way a very advanced guy who is training six days a week, two hours a day, that is training for a competition does.  Yet on the net, I will often see very inexperienced trainees arguing with very experienced guys that it matters very little.  This is often because the two people arguing might as well be arguing about what is applicable on Earth, and what is applicable on Mars.  The guy on Earth may be arguing completely valid concepts as to what is applicable to him.  But to the guy on Mars, such concepts may or will be completely useless, and/or false all together.  

These things should be taken into consideration during the course of discussion, but I rarely see that happen.

Even more so, they should be taken into consideration during the course of your training life.  What you need the first three years of training is probably not going to be as applicable as what you need when you're in year 15 to continue progressing.  

When I see certain guys who don't progress very much, my usual thought is that they haven't learned how to let go of the principles that got them to that particular point in time, and are willing to embrace the fact that a different sets of principles will need to now be put into place to elicit new progress.  

When I was at the NSCA conference a few months ago a speaker there made two very astute points.

1.  "Training is more art, than science."

2.  "The best coaches in the field are generally about 10 years ahead of the scientific field."

Let this not be lost on you, that this was at an NSCA conference, which prides itself on relying on science as its foundation.  

The reason these two points are so important, is that in regards to point #1....

"It is practically IMPOSSIBLE to precisely predict the individual training effect due to the heredity factor(s)".  

And in regards to point #2....

The best coaches tend to have a unique ability in regards to intuition as to what will serve their athletes to the best of those individual needs.  

And points #1 and #2 tend to cause the most disagreements because without the understanding that the things that make up an optimal training or nutritional paradigm ALL involve the inclusion of the principles of evidence based practice.  

So great coaches tend to implement all of the characteristics of EBP, understand the importance of all three, them "weigh" each accordingly in terms of importance in regards to helping people perform better.

That may mean at times, they ignore science due to the fact that something science cannot support (at this point in time) is indeed helping their athlete perform at a higher level.  Or it may mean, they implement science because THAT is what is the athlete needs to perform at a higher level.  

Due to "individual needs" (once again, another scope of EBP), or preferences, the coach or athlete manipulates their training or diet, based not only on what they need at the time, but also what "resonates" with them as an athlete.  And the mental part of performance cannot be overlooked.  After all, most people aren't going to get much out of a training program they flat out fucking hate.

Change is hard.  Because it means we have to challenge our belief systems.  Lots of people confuse this as an admittance of being "wrong" about said belief systems, when it's simply not the case.  If certain principles or modalities produced the results you were seeking, then they were indeed the right ones AT THAT TIME.  However, moving forward, those principles may need to be discarded, with a new set of principles replacing them, in order to do so.  

It's not an admittance of being wrong, it's an acceptance that change is required to grow.  And in order to “grow”, literally speaking, change in training and nutrition will eventually be required. 

And isn't that often the case in the parallels of both life and lifting?  

"Food" for thought. 

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How much do you really need to eat to grow?

Last week my friend Charles Poliquin put out a really funny and informative article from several people (including myself and Thibs) in regards to all the stupid shit we did in order to gain weight.  From a high level overview standpoint, basically all of us had stories of gorging until we could barely stand life anymore and could only do these things for short periods at a time.

The timing of it was funny because that very week I ended up in this fairly ridiculous discussion with this young kid about nutritional requirements to gain mass.

His premise in the discussion was that "4,800 calories wasn't enough for someone to get up to 275 pounds."  

This struck me as very odd as, I've been around for quite some time and am very aware of the kind of eating most very large individuals have done in order to grow, and obtain that kind of mass.  

I am not sure how he arrived at such a conclusion because eating and training to grow is a very individualistic thing based on a myriad of factors, including where someone is in regards to experience level, to genetics, to drugs, to even the type of job they have.  However, even with that said, there are some pretty standard baselines in regards to optimal calorie consumption and optimal growth rate.  Meaning, you're eating enough to grow at a steady pace without turning into White Goodman at the end of Dodgeball.  

Different people - different needs

"Calories in vs calories out" has become such a staple in the science world today in regards to what is needed, or not needed to either grow muscle or lose fat from a nutritional standpoint.   And let's be clear, it's perfectly valid at face value.  Where things become tricky, is that the amount of calories needed to be taken in, or out, in order to meet certain strength or physique goals, can be significantly different from individual to individual depending on a myriad of factors.

For example, the guy working at a desk all day who is well above 20% bodyfat, and has been sedentary for a long time, who naturally has a natural slow metabolism is going to have very different caloric needs in order to lose weight, than the very active and fit dude who sits across from him, but is in the gym 5-6 times a week, even if they weight the same.  Yes, BMR and lean body mass ratio changes all of that, I promise, I understand.  But believe it or not, not everyone does.

The lean and jacked guy has to eat an enormous amount of food just to maintain his high degree of lean muscle mass.  Of course he does.  This only makes sense.  He has a ton of muscle.  And muscle is metabolically active, and requires tons of calories just to be maintained.

Right?  

Well, not so fast.

Despite what you may think, most people who have been lifting for a very long time, and have developed a great foundation of muscle mass, often don't eat as much as you would think they do.  They probably went through phases where their caloric intake was indeed fairly high, but once they reached a "set point", maintaining that degree of muscle mass doesn't require the same amount of calories or effort in regards to eating as it did in actually building it.

In fact, John Meadows and I had this conversation the other day in regards to eating and guys who have been training for a long time, and have established a foundation of muscle mass.

Most of the guys you see that are exceptionally jacked, and have been for quite some time, don't often eat as much as you think they do.  When I was over 280 pounds, I actually did not eat a lot of food.  My foundation of muscle mass was already in place.  Maintaining it was not very difficult.  If someone were to look at my caloric intake for the day, they would probably be surprised at how little I ate.

To give you a real life example of this.....

When John and I were in Aussie together, neither of us ate a whole lot.  At the time, I was around 265-270 pounds.  And John was in the upper 230's, but very lean, at only about 4 feet tall.  Breakfast was usually 3-4 eggs and a few slices of toast.  We would teach for a few hours, then have a pretty normal looking lunch.  In fact, our meals were already prepared and the serving sizes were very moderate.  We'd have a shake somewhere in there, train for two to three hours, have another normal sized prepared meal, and that was really about it.  Maybe a shake before bed.  Nothing outrageous. 

We did go out for pancakes once, of course.  

When Dorian Yates was well over 300 pounds very lean, he said his daily caloric intake was somewhere in the 5,500 calorie range (his own words from "Blood and Guts") and that this allowed him to "gain weight at a slow and steady pace."  He reduced his calories down over weeks into the 3,500-4,000 calorie range in order to get shredded for his shows.

Strangely enough, Ronnie Coleman's diet looked similar in regards to caloric intake as well.  About 5,500 calories a day.  I understand I am violating my own theory of "Coleman's law", which states that when you use Ronnie Coleman as an example of why something works you automatically lose the argument.  I'm also aware that both Dorian and Ronnie are genetic outliers, and of course are not natural.  However John and I both pretty much had the same experience.  Once a degree of muscle mass had been laid down, and once a foundation is really cemented into place, it doesn't really require that much food in order to simply maintain that degree of muscle mass.  Or let's be clear here, not as much as most people would imagine.

Something to add to this, I want you to go eat 5,500 calories a day of "clean food" (fuck you if you don't like that term, you skinny internet nerd pretend scientist), and see just how much food that is.  The whole reason so many people can't do a "clean bulk" for very long is because eating pounds and pounds of chicken breast on top of can after can of tuna along with mountains of rice, is flat out hard.  So they just resort to "dirty bulking" in order to make the calories fit.

Back in the 90's, Mike Francois was one of my favorite bodybuilders.  He had that incredible look of power and strength that I greatly admired.  He was an absolute tank.  

It was rumored at the time in the magazines that John was working with a guy by the name of John Parillo and was eating upwards of 10,000 calories a day.  However, according to Mike's own words in an interview, that simply wasn't the case.

"I always tried to eat 5 times a day. Any more than that never seemed to work for me. I would guess I was eating around 6,000 calories a day when I was in peak growing phase."

How big was Mike in the offseason in this "growing phase?"

"My off season weight topped out around 290-300 lbs. and my contest weight would be 255-265 lbs. So, taking out 15 pounds for water, I never really had a lot of fat to get rid of."

Just to set a bit of a pattern here...

Dorian was about 310 pounds, and ate 5,500 calories a day.

Ronnie was well over 300 pounds, and ate about 5,500 calories a day.

Mike Francois was in the 300 pound range, and ate about 6,000 calories a day.

You may or may not remember the exceptionally huge Gunter Schlierkamp, but via his own words his offseason food intake was "between 5,000 and 6,000 calories a day."  He was 330 pounds or so during that time.  

My own IFBB Pro client, Fred Smalls, who now pushes the scales at between 275 and 280 pounds at 5'7" told me his "clean eating offseason calories" total up between 4,500 and 6,000 a day depending on the training volume for the day.  

Both Dorian and Mike were exceptionally meticulous about their eating, and ate "clean" pretty much year round.  And despite the fact that Dorian said one time in a video that he ate a chocolate bar after a show, he was not a IIFYM guy.  Once he was competing at the Mr. Olympia level, he was so exact that he weighed his food even in the offseason, and generally ate the same foods year round.

So we're talking about guys who are indeed meticulous in regards to their food intake, and not just winging this and taking guesstimates. 

Just to be thorough here, I tried to make sure to use interviews from the actual guys about how much they ate in the offseason to grow.  

Rich Gaspari weighed in on this on bodybuilding.com back in 2014....

WHAT DID YOU DO TO TRANSFORM YOUR PHYSIQUE FROM THE ONE YOU DISPLAYED AS A TEENAGER TO THE MASSIVE PHYSIQUE THAT WON THE JR. NATIONALS ONE YEAR LATER?

Well, I went from 189 as a teenage competitor to about 205-210 for the Jr. Nationals. One of the things I learned is that I was over dieting as a teenager. When I would get ready for a show, I would drop my calories down to about 1000 calories a day. That was way, way too low. I didn't really know what I was doing. I would just eat tuna, water, eggs, etc. When I looked at the calories, I was shocked at how low it was.

Actually, a guy named Bob Gruskin gave me some guidance. He didn't really help me but he looked at me as a teenager because I was beating a lot of his guys in competition. He looked at what I was eating for my diet and he told me I was really over dieting. I would normally eat between 3000-4000 calories in the off season and then drop it down to 1000 for a competition. When I started increasing the calories for my pre-contest diet, I cut out the simple sugars and less refined foods but ate low-fat proteins and complex carbs, I was now eating around 2500-3000 calories. That's when I started looking bigger for a competition.

3000-4000 calories to grow.  Rich's offseason weight?  About 245 pounds.

So when some clown argues with me that "4,800 calories isn't enough to get to 275 pounds" it's one of those times when talking about training and nutrition on the internet is exceptionally frustrating.

 To get to around that weight (275 pounds), from about the 250-255 pound range I was at, my caloric total was just about exactly that.  4,500-4,800 calories a day.  Just using the basic model that I use to establish baselines for fat loss, maintenance, and growth stages (bodyweight times a certain number), on the highest end of the 255 pound weight gain scale (255 x 20), it's still only 5,100 calories.  Mind you, that's the TOP END of the scale.

So even if you're the skinny but shredded 175 pound guy, so desperately trying to reach a buck-90, the odds of you needing 5,000 calories a day to accomplish that are slim.  

Because there's these two words that have to be taken into account in just about every situation in regards to gaining muscle, losing fat, or getting stronger.

"It depends..."

If you're 17 years old, and weigh 175 pounds with 7% bodyfat, and have a hellfire and damnation metabolism, work a part time job during the week that is very labor intensive, and train 5-6 days a week, you may need 6,000 calories a day just to work your way up to 190 pounds. Yes, this is quite possible.  But that is due to age, metabolism, training frequency, and your part-time labor intensive job.  If any of these factors change, then so does the amount of calories needed to grow.

There are no absolute solutions here.  There are no absolute rules because the law of individuality will always be in effect.  There are baselines.  And the baselines get manipulated in regards to your age, training, job, metabolism, and genetic potential.  Different diets work differently for different people, for a whole host of reasons we can't always identify.  Some of which, are as simple as what people prefer.

I saw this happen with my own eyes many years ago with a client.  I gave her two options for dieting for fat loss.  A low carb one, and a high carb one.  Protein was relatively the same for both diets, but obviously the fat and carbohydrate intake was quite difference.  After three weeks on the low carb diet, she came to me and said "I flat out cannot do this.  I hate not being able to eat carbs.  I want to switch to the other diet." 

We switched her over to the higher carbohydrate diet, dropped her fats, and she literally showed up at my doorstep a few months later, and had lost so much weight and changer her body composition so much I barely recognized her at first.  

A big part of that of course, is finding what training and diet "styles" resonate with you, then manipulating things from there.  

However, not to get off track, these kinds of exchanges get frustrating to have with people because so many of them have very little experience to draw from.  Mainly, the only experience they have to draw from, is their own.  And of course, since the world revolves around how things work for them, it has to be gospel.  That's a heavy dose of sarcasm in case you missed it.

A client I have that had been stuck at around 260-262 pounds for quite some time came on with me and we found his baseline for maintenance caloric intake.  To make sure this was his baseline, I kept his calories at that total for quite a few weeks.  

Why?

Because understanding your maintenance level of calories is a huge part of understanding how to manipulate your diet in order to get leaner, or to grow, at an optimal pace.  Optimal being, you're not gaining fat at an exponential pace compared to lean tissue gain.

After a few weeks, I made one minor change to his diet, adding in just half a cup of one food (that was already in his diet) in one meal, and within a month, he was between 268 and 270 pounds.  

"That's impossible!"

No, it really fucking happened.  

Adjusting calories up or down in small amounts can have tremendous impact on muscle gain, fat loss, or fat gain.  It really all is just very individualistic.  And making small changes at a time is the best way to obtain an understanding of how your body reacts and responds to certain foods, and caloric intake levels.  

Then of course, if your training frequency changes, or the volume of your workouts change, depending on goals, your eating has to change along with it in order to obtain said goals.

All of these things becomes moving targets based on your age, metabolism, frequency of training, your degree of experience and foundation of muscle mass.

Yes, it is true that there are some good general guidelines to start with.  But from there, individual manipulation becomes the most important aspect in creating a design nutritionally that works optimally for YOU based on those factors.

So how much do you really need to eat in order to grow?

The first thing to do, is establish  your baseline for maintenance level calories.  Again, just as a generic solution that works pretty well with most people, it's usually in the bodyweight x 15 range for overall calories.  Seeing as how 1 gram per pound of bodyweight is the standard, you start there, fill in 20% of the diet with fats, and the remainder of calories left over with carbs.  

Hold your baseline for at least two weeks, then increase your calories by a measly 200 per day.  Do this via carbohydrates.  You do NOT want to be gaining more than 1 to 1.5 pounds a week.  I understand that lots of guys get really excited when they see the scale moving at an astronomical clip, but if that's the case, I'm telling you that you're just getting fatter.  New muscle, even chemically enhanced, can only be synthesized so fast.  And for natural guys, after the first two or three years of training, it's at a snail's pace.  So if you are natural, let me spell this out for you.

Bulking should never be an option.  And by bulking I mean, allowing your bodyfat levels to climb over 15%.  Even more bad news, the fact is, as a natural guy you are going to be pretty "maxed out" in terms of muscle mass after about 7-10 years of consistently hard training and eating.  Before you proceed to pound your keyboard with fists of fury in disagreement, I said 7-10 years of CONSISTENT hard training, and eating.  Not "well I've been on and off for...".  Yeah, not that guy.

And lastly, if you're actually eating what I consider "clean" food like chicken breast, tuna, rice, potatoes, etc then you have no idea just how much 5,500 calories worth of food a day is.  It is A LOT.

How much?  

Well, at 6 meals a day that's an average of 916 calories per meal.  Let's say you're 275 pounds, and meeting the gram of protein per pound of bodyweight ratio.  

That's 275 grams of protein.  Only about 1,100 calories.  If we did a diet split where 20% of the 5,500 calories came from fats, that's another 1,100 calories.  Between fats and proteins we now have 2,200 calories.  Which means we need to make up 3,300 calories from carbs.  Which is 825 grams of carbs.

Let that sink in for a bit.

One large baked potato is around 63 grams of carbs.  1 cup of jasmine rice (cooked) is around 45 grams of carps.

So even if you ate 4 large baked potatoes, and had 6 cups of jasmine rice, you're still at only 522 grams of carbs a day.  So we've still got 303 grams of carbs to go.

So hey, let's throw in 2 cups of uncooked oatmeal, which is 4 cups cooked.  Which is well, a metric fuck ton.  Now we've added a measly 108 more carbs to the diet.  Fuck, we're only at 630 grams of carbs.  195 left to go.

Let's add 4 bananas.  Which is 108 grams of carbs.  Now we've got 87 grams of carbs to go.  No big deal. We'll add 4 ounces of raisins to that whopping 4 cups of Oatmeal for 88 more grams of carbs.  

Boom, now we are there.

So on carbs alone here is what we ended up with - 

4 cups of cooked oatmeal

4 ounces of raisins 

4 large baked potatoes

6 cups of jasmine rice.

4 bananas.  

We haven't even talked about the fact that all of this comes with 275 grams of protein.  

Which is like 20 egg whites (72 grams), 20 mother fucking ounces of chicken breast (130 grams), along with 12 ounces of tuna (59 grams)....and we're still just a little short on the 275 grams.

So you're telling me, that you can't grow on that amount of food?  In what world is this not possible?

Dieting rules to grow- 

The only "rules" in place are the rules that work for YOU, as an individual, based on what goals it is you are trying to reach.  What the other guy doing may or may not pertain to what you need in any way, shape, or form.  Once you understand that, you'll be able to make better choices in regards to deciding in how to create a plan that is efficient for your needs.  Not based on someone else's.

The gene pool is a big place.  One man's mass gaining plan is another man's fat loss diet.  However the fact is, we're not special snowflakes.  And regardless of the myths you've read on the net about caloric consumption and growing. the majority of the most muscular, chemically enhanced men ate very similar amounts of calories to obtain or maintain that degree of muscularity.  More than likely, if you looked at the truly natural guys, you're going to find they probably had similar levels of caloric intake.  

Setting some realistic goals in regards to growing is a great place to start.  The problem is, no one wants to work their ass off for "5 pounds of lean muscle in a year."  When in all reality, you may indeed have to work your ass off for that "measly" 5 pounds of muscle for that year.  

Dial your calories in so that weight gain comes at a slow and steady clip, and don't increase them until you've plateaued for a while.  Once you do make an increase, make one small increase and note the results from there.  

And to close, if you're well over 15% bodyfat, you have literally no reason to bulk.  Unless White Goodman is indeed your ideal bodytype.  

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Reflections on 2015 and how I changed my life

Reflections on 2015 -


I doubt anyone remembers, but I wrote last year that 2014 was possibly one of, if not the, worst year of my life.


A reflection of 2015, physically obviously shows that I made major changes in how I look, and ultimately feel from a health perspective, but I made an enormous amount of changes in every other facet of my life that made 2015 great.


If I had to reflect on most of the things I did in order to change my life, here are some of the things I did, or made concentrated efforts on to make that happen -


1. I let go of resentment, hate, and bitterness -


As 2014 came and went, I had a lot of guilt a lot of anger and bitterness about the actions of others.  There were major parts of my life that had been turned upside down, and like most normal people my first response was to harbor bitterness and resentment towards others that were involved in creating all of the chaos.

Over time, I realized that shouldering those feelings did nothing but weigh me down, and make my life more miserable.  And I realized, I had to let go of it.  

Lots of people say this out loud, or write it on social media, but then don't actually embrace the application of it.  

There is a quote from C. JoyBell C. I remember reading years ago that, at the time, rang true to me because it "sounded" correct.  But until you actually apply a motto or belief to your life, you're just regurgitating empty words and ideas to people that you yourself are not living.  

And it was this....

“If you want to forget something or someone, never hate it, or never hate him/her. Everything and everyone that you hate is engraved upon your heart; if you want to let go of something, if you want to forget, you cannot hate.”

People often spew this shit in person or across social media, then live their life with an incredible amount of resentment or bitterness towards people they felt wronged them.  Never realizing that all it does it take up space in your heart and mind, leaving less room and time for happiness, joy, and it shackles you to something you can no longer change.  

I didn't wake up one day and make this change.  It did happen gradually over time.  I do think that most wounds do require a certain amount of time to heal, but you actually have to make an effort to accelerate that healing process.  Some people just love to brag about how they can hold a grudge.  I used to brag about such things myself.  Then I realized all that showed was a magnificent flaw in my character and inability to move forward in life.  

Bragging about what a bitter and grudgeful individual you are is essentially letting people know how emotionally and mentally immature you are.  Moving forward is exceptionally hard to do when you willingly wallow in anger or hate about something someone else did to you.  

Defeat your enemies with your own personal success.  Get your revenge by moving forward by living a life that is rewarding and fulfilling.  This is a virtual impossibility when you wallow in the muck of being a bitter and resentful bastard.  Whether you realize it or not, when the people that wronged you realize you're still suffering from it (and yes, holding a grudge is a form of suffering) then they continue to win, and you continue to suck at life.  

2. I forgave myself and let go of my guilt -

Honestly, this was much harder than forgiving those that I had felt wronged me.  

After the storms had passed and I was left with enough time in personal and emotional isolation, I struggled deeply with forgiving myself and letting go of the guilt I had for so many of the things I had done.  

Some people can walk through life and hurt others, live life through selfish behavior, and then never look back and feel anything about it.  I am not one of those people.  

When you are in the midst of emotional turmoil you make a lot of terrible decisions because logic and emotions wage a terrific battle in regards to decision making.  There's few things more challenging than trying to make a decision where your heart tells you one thing, but your logical thinking keeps countering those thoughts.  

Even worse, is when regardless of which choice you make, you know you're going to hurt people you care about in the process.  This is generally where you know what the right thing to do is, but you lack the courage to follow through with it. 

So as to put myself out there, and present myself as flawed as possible, I often was not strong and courageous enough to make the right decisions throughout these storms.  And inevitably by making the wrong choices, I extended the time frame in which the pain and trauma would extend itself.  

One thing I've learned in the past year is that life is about suffering.  This is something I have wholly embraced and accepted as a part of just being alive.  

You are going to suffer.  There will be times where regardless of what choice you make, you will end up suffering greatly from it.   Ultimately, you have to decide what it is you are willing to suffer for, and understand there may be a significant amount of grief that comes in the aftermath.  

I don't think I'm unique in the fact that I can forgive others more easily than I can forgive myself.  The struggle was learning how to let go of the things I could no longer change, do my best to make amends for them, and truly forgive myself for the weak and cowardly decisions I had made when times were at their hardest.  

However at the same time, I used those experiences to grow, and forge me into a more relissiant and decisive person.  And I learned how to make better choices, that hurt very few people, and accepted the suffering that came along with being far more selfless.  

Much like resentment towards others, harboring guilt absolutely does not allow you to grow and move forward in your life.  At some point, you have to forgive yourself and make peace with yourself to move out of the past, and take steps towards a better future.


3. I owned my part in the situations I had created for myself

More of an addendum to #1.

In order to properly forgive and let go of hate and bitterness, I had to actually own my part in the creation of what my life had become.  

Once I really did this, and I mean REALLY took responsibility for my part in creating the shitty situations I had been in, change became easier.  Forgiveness became easier.  Forgiving both myself and others. 

If there is a fairly constant I see with people it's that they are so quick to blame everyone else for the things that have gone wrong or gotten twisted in their life, without ever taking a moment out to reflect what it was they did to help create those shitty situations.  

Everyone knows someone who places 100% of the blame on someone else for something awful that transpired in their life, without ever admitting that they played a role in the other persons decision making.

Look, at the end of the day, we are all responsible for the choices we make.  But the fact is, we are often put in positions to make a choice due to the actions of or words of someone we love or hold close to our heart.  

As the saying goes, life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you react to it.  

Our actions or reactions in regards to what happens to us, generally puts someone else in a place to make a choice because of it.  

Then when they make a shitty choice, we put 100% of them blame on them.  Without us ever taking into account that it's possible the outcome may have been different had we reacted differently in the first place.  

This doesn't excuse their shitty behavior, but it doesn't absolve you from the situation either.  You're supposed to be an adult as well.  Life is often a chain of events that get spawned from singularity.  If you were the catalyst for said chain of events, then regardless of what eventually transpired you played a part in making it all come to fruition.  

Taking ownership of your part in all of the awfulness is paramount if you ever want to learn from it, and grow into a wiser and more mature individual.  After all, being able to say "look, this was my fault, and I need to make amends for it" is a huge part of personal growth.

4. I eliminated both the toxic people in my life, and my own toxic behaviors the best I could

I don't want to regurgitate this part because there's been about 1,238,098 articles written about this particular topic.  

But half the time, most of them miss the mark in a very specific way.

If you constantly have toxic relationships or people in your life, then you yourself are probably very toxic as well.  

I generally call these the "I give no fucks" people.  Wow, what an outstanding individual you are.  And how unique you are to give no fucks.  That certainly takes a significant amount of effort in regards to being a quality individual to run around talking about all the fucks you don't give.

Great people do give a fuck.  People worth having in your life, give a fuck.  

Sure, you have to know what to give a fuck about, but consistently saying "I don't give a fuck" about everything you say and do really just makes you a total fucking asshole. 

Show me someone exceptionally successful and I will show you someone who is usually surrounded by other successful people.

Show me someone who is an exceptional antagonistic asshole and I will show you someone who is usually surrounded by other exceptionally antagonistic assholes.

Who you are and what you project will tend to attract those sames kinds of people, and turn off those who oppose that (or are jealous of your success).  

So before you run around talking about how you need to eliminate all the assholes in your life, you may want to sit down and examine your own attitude and behavior and wonder if the reasons you're surrounded by assholes, is because you are one.  It's hard to eliminate toxic people when you're a toxic magnet.  

All of us have certain selfish traits and things about us that make at least a percentage of who we are part asshole.  The key is to reduce that percentage as much as possible, then you'll begin to identify what people have that larger percentage of the asshole in their personality pie chart.

5. I narrowed down my life to mainly things I had control over.

A while back I posted a study from a 75 year study from Harvard that talked about what ultimately created happy and fulfilling lives for people.  

At the end of the study, they summed it up very easily.

"Happiness is love; full stop."

The problem for most people, I have observed, is that they have no idea how to actually find what makes them happy.  

Or to rephrase, they spent a lot of time being unhappy looking for an external source to create happiness in their life.  

Unfortunately, one of the biggest factors they found was the bond between you and your mother.  And not everyone is going to have a deep and loving relationship with their mom.  

As unfortunate as this is, it doesn't mean you have short change the amount of happiness you have in your life due to circumstances out of your control.

One of the most common flaws I have personally witnessed in unhappy people I know, is that they consistently base the amount of happiness they have in their life based around their romantic relationships.  In my own opinion, the root cause of this is that they are absolutely miserable being alone.  So they end up in a state of unhappiness because they cannot cope with being "alone".  

So when they talk of such things as "I'm tired of being alone" it tells me, from my own perspective mind you, that they haven't filled their life with enough things that give them happiness that they have a significant degree of personal control over.  

Once I accepted that I needed to fill my life with things I had the most amount of control over, it got better every single day.  I emptied myself into my kids, my training, my diet, writing, drawing, growing my business, and now I've turned somewhat obsessive into redecorating my house.  

All of these things generally give back to me what I put into them for the most part.  The more effort I apply in those areas, the more happiness I generally get in return.  

When you are miserable being alone, and so desperately want to find someone to share your time with (in a romantic way, mind you) you really have no idea if you end up picking that person because they are the right person, or because they simply fill a void.  

When it's the latter, then the probability that you're opening the flood gates for a shit storm become incredibly high.  

If you want to fill your life with people, fill it with the people who want to be there because they love you, and above all, desire success and happiness in your life.  This is what unconditional love really looks like.  And for you to be smart enough to pick those kinds of people, you need to go back to #4 and become a reflection of the people you want in your life, and then you will find that they start showing up.  

But most importantly, these things will not become clear until you have enough time to become comfortable with being alone, and loving who you are.  If you are still violating the other parts of what I wrote above (hating and resenting people, living life full of guilt for past transgressions, having the "I don't give a fuck" attitude), then all  you're doing is bringing a shit ton of negative baggage along with you into someone else's life.  

Start with improving your attitude, start with loving yourself better, and then you'll find that you attract positive people with positive attitudes, that will love you back in the way you really desire.

6. I stopped worrying about the future, quit being idealistic, and appreciated the "what is right now" and the gifts life was giving me - 

I really loathe the term "life is short."  No, life is the longest thing you will ever do.  

However I appreciate the sentiment behind it.  Because at the core of it, it's telling us to embrace what life is giving us on a day to day basis, and to stop worrying about what tomorrow, or next week, or next month may bring.  

Life often changes in an instant.  So creating this idealistic view of what your "perfect life" is supposed to look like 6 months or 5 years from now, sets you up for an awful lot of failure.  Most of the time, we end up navigating through the mine fields we have to walk through in the most delicate fashion that we can.  And we're all going to have our own personal mine fields that we must walk through. 

The problem is, so many of us don't appreciate the garden of eden we might be residing at the time, because we're so worried about how we are going to make it through that mine field that may or may not exist on the other side of it.  

Not only that, we often pass up what could be incredibly significant moments in our life because we can only see the finality in embracing them, and don't deem the worthy of our time.

Not to be sexist, but women are often the worst about this.  Women often idealize this perfect man in their life, and if each man that comes along doesn't "look" like that perfect lifelong mate, they cast him aside.  

I'm not saying men are immune to this either.  I'm just saying I've spoken to enough women who were so worried about their biological clock that all they can think about is "finding a husband for the kids they don't even have yet."  

I don't believe in finding the perfect person.  And there is no such thing as a perfect relationship.  Not only that, the odds of you finding the "perfect partner" are about.......1 in 285,000.

Don't hate me for presenting the odds to you.  Accept that life is full of random events and that you get to decide what you do with them.  

Marriages lasting 70 or more years are less than 0.1%.  Marriages that last 50 years are less than 5%.  

In other words, that person you're with right now that you think "completes you in every way"....you're probably not going to spend your life with them.  You may beat the odds, but the likelihood of that is exceptionally slim.  You're far more likely to die in a plane crash than find "that perfect person."  By a very significant margin.

"So why even entertain relationships at all then?"

Because all relationships come with something that most people refuse to acknowledge.  

Suffering.  

And without suffering, we cannot grow.  We cannot learn.  And we cannot decide what we really want in our life in order to make it as fulfilling as possible.  

And to come full circle, what I learned was, narrowing down your life to the things you have control over, and working on becoming the best possible version of who you want to be, gives you the best possible chance of filling your life with people who will indeed provide a tremendous amount of love and support.

7.  I became a better listener - 

People often cite communication as one of the biggest keys in a healthy and sustaining relationship.  I personally think that respect trumps all, but I get how important communication is.  

The problem is, most people don't communicate as well as they think they do, because they are poor listeners.  

I too was very poor at this for a long time.  I love to monologue and belabor all the points I need to make during a discussion.  Lost in this, was that I was not taking the time to actually shut the fuck up and listen to what the other person had to say, and wholly understand it.

It's virtually impossible to actually listen to what someone is trying to tell you when all you're thinking about is your retort.  

Instead of writing another novel about this, I found an easy solution.  Shut up, listen, and then repeat back to the person your perception of what you think they said.  I think you'll often find that there is a bigger communication gap than you realized.  Two people can "communicate" until they are blue in the face, and leave the situation with nothing but more frustration if each person doesn't actually understand what the other one was saying.

And the only way to actualize this is to repeat back to each other, how you interpreted their words.  From there, your communication skills will begin to improve.  But not until you both realize that it's a very good possibility that you don't understand each other as well as you think you do.

8.  I let go of the "no regrets" bullshit and embraced repentance - 

This is another pet peeve of mine.  And something generally the "I give no fucks" crowd embraces as well.

When someone tells me that they have no regrets in life, what I automatically assume is that I just met Jesus.  Because in essence what they are saying is, they made every perfect choice in every situation they ever encountered.  

Their comeback to this is often the cliche of....

"I wouldn't be the person I am today had I not made those choices."

This is true.  And who is to say that maybe you're in a better situation, or a more well rounded individual if you had made different ones?  

Maybe your life is a million times better if you had made other choices.

The problem with not having regret means that there is no room left for repentance.  And to repent means to change.   And the only way you can better yourself, is to recognize the poor choices you made, have regrets about them, then change so that you make better choices in the future.  

The way to better ourselves is to be cognizant of our mistakes, make amends for them the best we can, and change the parts of who we are that drove us to make poor decisions in the first place.

But that can't happen if you're not willing to sit down and say "I have regrets."  

You have no regrets about hurting people you love and care about?  

What does this say about you as an individual, and about the amount of integrity and the degree of character you are living your life with?  

Not a whole lot.  

You're probably going to attract a lot of people who also have no regrets about taking a massive shit on your chest and saying "no fucks given".  You know why?  Because that's who you are too.  So why should they care when you keep saying you have no regrets and wouldn't change a thing? 

I have many regrets.  And I had a lot of time to spend on self reflection this past year and put forth a significant amount of energy into my own personal repentance.  And while I am not perfect, and never will be, I went from a time in my life where I could barely stand to look at myself in the mirror each day, to a point now where I can at least recognize that I am no longer ashamed.  

It takes a lot to put yourself out there like this, and it is very difficult to write because most of us want the rest of the world to see us as wonderful human beings.  Sure, not all.  The "I don't give a fucks" make that very clear.

But at the core of the majority, we want affirmation that we are worthy of being loved, and that our love is worthy of being accepted.  

As the study said, happiness is love; full stop.

If there was anything I learned in 2015, that made my life better - it was that very thing.  

Thank you to so many that helped me through a very difficult time in the last year, and thank you for helping me to start on a path in reshaping my life.

For those of you who read this that are struggling, make the hard choices that ultimately will lead you into suffering, but deliver you into peace and contentment.  

All the best to everyone for 2016.

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