— Go a Year Relentlessly Upping Your Discipline and Work Ethic… See What Happens

“Experience the transformative power of disciplined self-improvement and fitness as explored in this engaging article. Learn how to take control of your health, create a personalized fitness plan, and overcome your physical and mental limitations. The author shares his journey from boozing too much to fitness dedication, advocating for no-excuse accountability and the importance of conscious decision-making in achieving goals. With essential tips on proper nutrition, effective workout routines, and insights on adopting an omnivorous diet – this is your all-in-one guide to becoming the best version of yourself!”

It all started at around 04.30 in the AM on August 7th of 2022.

That’s when I swallowed the last drop of the last glass from the last pint of whiskey—and I did it on video and uploaded it quick, before I changed my mind.

It has been a year and 2 weeks since I had any desire to have a drink of alcohol. It’s beyond my imagination now. In retrospect, I was at the point where I wasn’t so much boozing from desire or dependency, but more from just habitual behavior…like having eggs with every breakfast.

Is it because you just love eggs so much—day in, day out, for life—or it’s simply what you do?

… But there are plenty of good reasons to eat a fair number of eggs. I can’t think of a good one to consume any alcohol at all, ever. Indeed, the reason back then was mostly just about “it’s what I do,” than anything else.

Perhaps that’s why from minute one, I rejected all the 12-step grovelling, weak-ass shit that surrounds cessation as an industry. Rather, I just acknowledged that I had been drinking too much, too often; that I was not going to do that anymore…and neither you nor anyone else can make me.

I mean, God bless those folks and all…whatever it takes, right? But I’m glad my essential personality drove the thing. I changed myself…by myself.

Strip away all the excuse-making, weak-&-gay bullshit, virtue-signalling, and faux humility, and you’re left with 2 basic things:

1. Make a decision
2. Stick with it; no fucking excuses

… And I swear to God that over this past year of experience on that front line, the one single thing that confronts me every damn day is how likely it is that the world is so royally fucked up in the current year because people are making excuses for every damn thing all the time and letting themselves off the hook for anything and everything.

That’s the pandemic, if you ask me.

This is not the way of men, and so society wholly lacks what it needs the very most, and that is no-excuses, accountable masculine leadership.

I aim to do my part, and I guess I’m saying that now because yes, that arbitrary first orbit around our sun is complete, and that’s as good of a mark-the-spot as any for asking and answering the question: now what?

So in some sense, the last year has been the apprenticeship for this entirely new life that’s wholly based and grounded in discipline, doing the hard thing because it’s hard, searching for excellence in all things, never being satisfied, never at rest, never giving up on anything worthwhile.

I hate the phrase “failure is not an option;” it’s self-congratulatory bullshit—right up there with claptrap like “no limits.” Failure happens all the time, almost every day, on both small and large scales. What men do is…

1. Acknowledge the failure
2. Analyze the failure
3. Distill lessons learned
4. Determine to not make the same mistakes
5. Attack the problem again, honestly integrating everything learned and known

Saying “failure is not an option” is a failure in itself.

You have evaded the plain reality of things (lied to yourself and sugar-coated…”it’s not a failure, it’s a setback”) rather than acknowledge the reality, integrate it, and proceed accordingly.

This is not a small, semantics thing. It’s a crucial, battlefield state of mind, and to become a warrior in your own life begins with your own war against the weakness of your physical, material being. This is why we have concepts like consciousness, soul, and spirit. As timeless energy that never transforms to matter, it transcends the needs of all matter in the universe in itself. It’s locked inside a physical host—you—and the physical host requires the infusions of energy, but entropy is continuous and one day, the physical host dies.

And the consciousness blinks out. Gone forever…at least insofar as we can know, so far.

So that consciousness, that soul and spirit that transcends the constraints of our body but is yet confined to it, is discreet: it mirrors the fundamental metaphysics of the universe: on or off. 1 or 0. It’s either fully operational (provided the host is minimally operational) or it’s not there at all.

This provides an opportunity. In the same way a Stephen Hawking can be a brilliant, productive physicist, locked inside the worst possible host in the worst possible circumstances, so too, you have your full conscious faculties to overcome the petty, silly, and dumb demands of your physical host at will.

If you should weigh 180 but weigh 300 instead, it’s an identical thing to the guy who fucks up the lives of his wife and kids by “listening to the little head.” The. Same.

Those physical desires and drives are there for good evolutionary reasons of pure survival and procreation. You need to feel excruciating hunger if you’ve not eaten in a good while. Not because you’re on the verge of starving to death or of having nutrient deficiencies, but because you require energy infusion above all, first and foremost, and there were no fridges, cabinets, or pantries. No convenience marts. In most places on earth removed from the tropics—where food grows on trees and fish and shellfish abound in easy-to-access shallows—it requires much effort to get the energy required to survive.

And in that equation, your consciousness is your alley. It can spiritually motivate you to do what your body requires and in turn, the conscious spirit remains too.

In the modern world of plenty and excess, and stuff engineered to seduce your conscience, it turns against you.

Doesn’t it realize what it’s doing to itself?

Not really.

Why? Because it’s 1 or 0. On or off. It’s there, or it’s gone for good.

Now listen up: as your body becomes decayed, fat, unattractive, dysfunctional, diseased and all other manner of anything and everything that can go wrong…your consciousness is just peachy. Sometimes, it can even be better than good; say, then you’re stuffing your face with pizza or pie, or throwing it a party with booze and other drugs.

Your conscience, soul, spirit…it doesn’t feel the same pain your body does on the downside and on its upside, it feels better whenever you give in.

Your conscious mind is the root of all the problems, but the rub is, we’re all beings of self-made soul. We programmed ourselves; we can deprogram, or we can reprogram.

This turns the tables. Whereas before, your physical body felt like shit but your soul and spirit were flying high; now, by reprogramming yourself with discipline, thought, hard work, and control, your soul is really bummed, and your spirit is haunted…while at the same time, your physical host is feeling better, sleeping better, getting and keeping it up, getting stronger, getting more attractive…and all the good stuff.

So in the end, your consciousness can be your friend, or it can be your enemy. And just as being present or not, on or off…it’s one or the other.

Which is it going to be?

Item 1

I got wind of the new thing from Dr. Mercola where he’s all on about these new things in metabolism and its pathways, etc. he’s recently learned of, which I have no desire to get into. You can read it here if you like. In terms of some of the metabolic biochemistry that Mercola puts forth as justification for his newfound lifestyle of same protein levels, high-carb, low-fat approach (he was previously LC/keto), my friend Dr. Eades dismantles that, though stops short of criticizing how Joe is eating and according to him, thriving better than ever and even dropped a few pounds and percentage points of body fat. You can read Mike’s post here.

At the time these came out, I didn’t delve into either Mercola’s or Eades’ takes. Happens sometimes. Then a member sent Mercola’s thing my way and because of what I have been doing, I did a let’s see. Later, I was reminded of Mike’s post of a few weeks back.

… And you know what? My experience over the last couple of months and really, at various times and periods going way back, the reasons Joe cites and the reasons Mike say’s they’re wrong are trees and groves to me.

What’s the forest?

It’s the same issue I’ve had with LC, keto, and carnivore in forever years…and it’s essentially the same as I have with vegans.

The forest is that we are omnivores. In no scenario did ancient peoples eschew starches or sugars if available, even if they lick their chops at meat the most. And in no scenario did inhabitants of regions where starches and sugars from plants were more reliable and available—so that’s what their base diets were—turn up their noses at animal foods when presented.

That’s full-stop impossible. Go back to where I talked about fridges, cabinets, and pantries.

We’re omnivores, and so in the context of carbohydrate in the diet:

1. If you can’t handle a few hundred grams of carbohydrate regularly, something is fucked up, because any normal human should be able to do so. It’s estimated that about 117 billion humans have ever lived, so about 109 billion have lived and died. Well over 99% of them could handle a few hundred grams of carbs daily with no problems whatsoever.
2. Various low-carb approaches are fine interventions for metabolic fucked-upedness…the best non-drug approach hands-down, I’d say. But they are just that, interventions that part from what is ideally the omnivorous norm.

So that’s the nutshell, and it offends my sense of forthright dealing when LC (+ keto and carn) advocacy goes beyond that; and just like vegans, it begins to paint itself as the ideal dietary milieu for humans. Ironically, LCers often counter vegans by saying simply that we’re omnivores; but some on the extreme end ought to qualify that and add “except for carbs.”

This reminds me of two things I have done for a long time that’s not the current year norm, and it sometimes comes up in conversation. I like to fast and I like to walk barefoot.

When it comes up in conversation, I am often told by people they can’t do that. They have no energy, or they’re a “tenderfoot.”

In both instances I have learned a simple direct answer: “yes, you can.”

They “can’t” fast because they have never done so, because every time they get hungry, they put something in their mouths. They “can’t” walk barefoot because their feet have been entombed in shoes their entire life.

Both abnormal—from the standards of fully human being—and can easily be rectified in very short order.

So can the difficulty of eating keeping-it-real amounts and kinds of carbs, for most people.

Item 2

I’ve been hitting the gym most days for just over seven weeks now. The first 4 weeks and 2 days were every single day, 30 days in succession. My gains in total volume were on the order of 50% on average.

I took a week off, ate and slept, then began a new “Push-Pull-Press-Legs” 4-day-per-week routine that’s around 4–5 exercises per session, 4 sets each, and rep ranges in the 8-15 on average.

I do those 4 days in succession. Gains are happening.

The first week in that program, I did the 4 days, not measuring anything, then ate the following day, then did a 48-hr fast, which was easy because of my experience in having my consciousness tell itself to fuck off in the mirror when it whines about being hungry.

But it felt really good, so I decided to kick things up a notch for week 2, both in terms of dietary specifics and fasting duration.

Item 3

I decided to eat about 2500-ish kcal per day, target protein, eschew fat, get some carbs. It came out to 10,304 kcal for the 4 days total, 2,576 per day. I didn’t track meals or days. I went to the store, eyeballed 4 days worth of food, and when I ran the numbers on the stuff in the shopping cart; it came out to 2,681 per day. I ended up leaving a few things uneaten…but the beauty was tracking without making a chore of it. Who cares what I eat in any meal, or day, so long as I don’t go over on the total amount?

Here are some examples of what it looks like on plates. It came out to 244/86/197 for protein, fat, and carbs average daily over the 4 consecutive days.

Item 4

So I keep it real simple.

• Proteins/fats: pork, chicken, fish, eggs, skim milk, whey powder
• Fats (isolated): only a little coconut or palm oil for cooking, a little butter sometimes for finishing
• Carbs: boiled, cooled, and reheated potatoes, onions, oranges, whole grain bread (2 slice daily)

Having the previous week experience, no need to chart it out this week because I know how much to buy. Here’s what it looks like so far this week:

And here’s what I looked like yesterday afternoon, with the shoulder and arm areas of my shirts fitting tighter and the waistline looser.

Item 5

That above photo was taken yesterday, the afternoon after completion of the 3-day, 72-hour fast.

Here’s what can help. Get off your ass and do something that’s more than just a neighborhood thing.

On day 2, I decided to jump on the motorbike, drive 30 clicks, and check out Sai Kaew Bech for the first time.

And, I also did a video, and besides the tour and description of how nice the beach is and well maintained, since it’s on a Thai Navy base, I talked about fasting.

Item 6

The 114-Lesson, No-Matrix/No-Pill Advantages course is really taking on a nice role. The roughly 25 preliminary lessons are done, basically the freshman year. I move on to tougher stuff and especially the editing, because some things are over 20 years old. Updating is required but zero on the essentials. That’s how I know they’re right. They still hold.

Mostly references to things being updated, and also adding important things.

Not sure how to integrate AI yet, but it will be. Maybe a bump to 120 or 130 Advantages.

The project kicks ass and is the most important work on this website in its 20-year history. Nothing compares, anywhere. Not just now, but for long into the future, as it will be going through periodic editing and updates in perpetuity.

Free The Animal