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Exercise and health have become very important to me, partly as a result of being chubby as a kid. Sometimes folks ask about it, so here’s a bit about that part of my life.

This is just what I do, not advice. The only advice I’d give is to do safe and small experiments, so you can find out what works best for you.

Current Regiment

  1. Eat one meal a day, whatever you want. Supplement with an electrolyte drink mix (like ON’s Amino Energy) in the morning, so you don’t feel pangs of hunger and your body has the stuff it needs.
  2. Do intense Les Mills On Demand workouts (Bodypump or Grit) at home, at least twice a week.
  3. Use a low-caffeine pre-workout supplement to motivate yourself before workouts (I like C4 by Cellucor).
  4. Don’t beat yourself up if you cheat every now and then. You’re a human, not a robot. But always recommit to regiment as soon as you realize you’ve cheated.

Why one meal a day

It just makes a lot of things easier. I’m not good at controlling the amount I eat. It’s much easier to just say I’m not eating at all or I’m going to eat whatever I want until I feel full. It also saves a lot of time during typical breakfast and lunch times: don’t have to think about what to eat, don’t have to go anywhere to eat, don’t have to spend time eating, don’t have to feel sleepy as my body digests the food.

Then at night it’s fantastic, because I love eating. I can eat whatever I want. Hamburgers and milkshakes. Curry noodles. Have a Coca-Cola. I don’t feel bad about any of it, because nothing in that last meal is going to have so many unhealthy calories that it’ll knock me out of feeling healthy.

Why video workouts at home

I don’t like being around other people when I exercise. It demotivates me. Maybe it’s the social pressure or the needing to wait for a particular exercise machine, or the fact that it’s so easy to space out and just not exercise at all.

On the other hand, I tried video workouts many times and could never get into them. Les Mills struck me as different somehow. The combination of light weights, constant changing of exercises, good music, dozens of versions of the same workout to choose from, and the fact that workouts are mostly recordings of live classes–it just comes together really well. Once I press play on a workout, I just don’t stop.

Why drink those nasty pre-workout drinks

First of all, I don’t think they taste that bad. More importantly, it’s easy to drink something. Getting myself to exercise is much harder. However, if I have the drink (easy) it’s like I’m locking myself into working out (hard) soon after. It’s like a switch flips in my head, ‘Well, I just had the drink. I can’t waste it now.’ When the caffeine hits, that makes it even easier.

The Backstory

I was chubby as a kid. It made me insecure about how I looked. This peaked in high school. The more friends I had who were athletes, the worse I felt about my self image. The whole thing also contributed to making me insecure generally, although that’s pretty common for high school kids.

At the beginning of college, I just decided to become fit and I started approaching it like any other project in life. I experimented with lots of diets and exercise regiments. I started running on a treadmill for five miles a day, like a maniac. I toyed around with keto diets. In the end, it made a difference, but not a big difference. I never felt healthy. I occasionally went on a fitness bender and got close to that ever-unattainable six-pack, but it wouldn’t stick. For the longest time, I felt I was hovering just below being overweight, always a few slices of pizza away my middle school self.

Things started to flip when COVID hit. Trapped at home, I started experimenting more than ever with fitness. I tried a million things, but eventually came to the regiment I have today.