The Good Mood Food Dude
Who am I?
I am someone who loves great food, who is simultaneously interested in lifting heavy weights, being athletic and lean, improving my knowledge, helping others, and performing optimally. I want to live a life of the highest quality possible. Obviously, most of these goals cross-relate with each other. In my opinion, nutrition makes up 90% or more of what it takes to excel in all of these areas.
My goal is provide my thoughts on these subjects, and help motivate others to be conscious about the nutritional choices that they make.
Why should you read this blog?
Through this blog and my daily interactions, I hope to inspire people to reclaim their health. By constantly providing tips and tricks I've learned along the way in optimizing my own lifestyle, you will learn from my mistakes and be able to pick my brain of the knowledge within through years of experience and my own search for answers.
My history
I lifted my first weight just under 8 years ago, at the start of my Junior year of high school. I was 125 or 130 lbs, at 5'8". My daily diet consisted of two grilled stuffed burritos from Taco Bell, a few bowls of Reese's Puffs cereal or Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Eggo Waffles drowned in syrup. I might have had a banana thrown in for good measure, because I used to get constant stomach aches, and the bananas seemed to help. My father told me that bad stomachs "ran in the family" and would talk constant medicine for that. I probably woke up with diarrhea a few times a week, on average. I thought this was normal. Who would have thought that eating processed cereals, wheat products and Taco Bell was responsible?
Fast forward to graduating high school - I had bulked up to 160 or 165 lbs, still at 5'8". I started to resemble someone who actually lifted. It felt good. I was addicted to the weight training. The feeling of setting a PR was my new drug. I wanted to chase the heaviest weights possible. I remember being the smallest, weakest kid in the weight room that first day in weight training my junior year, and at by the time I was graduating a senior I could keep up with the biggest dudes in there. I had earned respect and it was extremely gratifying, although I was primarily concerned about doing it for myself.
I've been curious about everything my whole life, and bringing fitness into the equation was like opening the door to a whole new world. Once I stepped through that door everything changed. I read up on everything I could regarding proper weight training, what to eat to get stronger, how to build muscle, what exercises were best for mass gain, what supplements to take, all of the basics. I became very knowledgeable in these areas, although I was only scratching the surface.
I spent my entire 4 years at college in the back of the classroom reading through various textbooks and literature on physical fitness. I gained more of an education on the topics of weight lifting, strength training, athletic performance and nutrition than I did on my Bachelor's degree in Business Administration.
Getting into the sport Olympic Weightlifting was another extremely valuable and educational experience for me. I learned about the importance of technique and flexibility, how to increase joint mobility the proper way and the painstaking process of patient self-coaching. I did this off and on for a couple years, with about a 10 month stretch where I was fully committed, then slowly retired from this weight lifting practice.
I graduated college with a bachelor's degree in business but an expert's knowledge in the field of strength sports and weight training, with years of personal anecdotal experience to back my knowledge. During this time I started to slowly move into the study of nutrition on human performance.
Now, my prior education of food was very basic. I understood what a protein/ carbs/ and fat were and their role, but I didn't REALLY know. I knew what vitamins and minerals were, but I didn't REALLY know. My insatiable curiosity took over and I wanted to know WHY. I wanted to know HOW. HOW did protein repair muscle tissue, physiologically? What occurred between the time you ate a steak, and that steak was broken down into amino acids and shuttled to the damaged muscle tissue to repair and create hypertrophy, or new muscle tissue? How could I eat to achieve higher testosterone levels and maximize protein synthesis to make the best recovery possible?
What I learned along the way
This is where things took off. I learned how to get LEAN - getting down to a reading of 2.8% body fat on 11-point caliper test, with a bodyweight of 170 lbs. I was still pretty strong too. I learned how to get STRONG and CONDITIONED- working my way up to a single set of 20 reps with 345 lbs in the Back Squat, and single set of 50 reps with 225 lb. I did 30 reps with 308 lbs in the Deadlift. I've done 75 thrusters in under 10 minutes with 132 lbs. I went from 170 lb at 3% body fat to 193 lb at 9.5% body fat within 8 months of each other, increasing my lean body mass by over 10 pounds.
Through all this, I've experimented with different training methodologies including the Chinese and Russian methods for Olympic weightlifting, German Volume Training, super high volume full body training, low volume full body training, bodybuilding 'splits', push/pull routines, squatting to max everyday routines, squatting 10x a week routines, 20 rep squatting routines, low frequency training, Crossfit style training, conditioning work, sprints every day training, fasted cardio for over 60 minutes a day training, twice a day weight training, twice a day with cardio weight training, 10 sets of 10 training, sets of 20 every day training, training with no days off for a whole month.... It's safe to say I have had personal experience with a very wide variety of training methods and principles.
Despite all that, the biggest thing I learned is that we can control who we are, what we do and how we perform through nutrition. Food is one of the single most effective tools we can apply to becoming optimal. It doesn't matter what you do in the gym - if you fail to refuel your body properly, you will never make the best gains. Food can be more effective than the most scientific and periodized weight training program, the most knowledgeable and motivating physical trainer, and even the most anabolic steroids.
I found that food really f*cking matters. And modern nutrition knowledge, ESPECIALLY in the bodybuilding and strength sports side of things, is lacking science to back it. People still follow the advice of these gurus and competition prep coaches. People are in love with fads like 'IIFYM' and flexible dieting, the 'Paleo' (which I actually support, somewhat) and 'Primal' diet, or ancestral eating. Chicken, rice and broccoli is still a common staple. Farm raised tilapia is consumed by the pound by physique and bikini competitors.
This is all due to a lack of information available to the general population.
So that is who am I, what I've learned, and my direction.
Research has recently shown that by controlling and manipulating our environment (such as managing stress, emotions, sleep, and nutrition) we are able to influence the expression of our genes (i.e. epigenetics). We can literally change ourselves by changing what we put into our bodies and through our very thoughts.
I want to become superhuman, and I want to blog about it along the way. I want to share my insights, thoughts, ideas, and various ramblings with the world while on my quest to optimize my life. I want to do all of this while eating GOOD FOOD.
Let this place be a discussion of happy thoughts, great food, and good ideas.
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