Cinemorphosis

Category: Health and Fitness

  • One Day, One House, No Excuses

    One Day, One House, No Excuses

    This morning, I brewed a pot of delicious Stumptown French roast—molten, bitter, potent—and padded over to my computer feeling dangerously wholesome. A good man with good intentions. Which, of course, is always the start of a problem. I was toying with the idea of living more virtuously: dialing back the animal fat, leaning into tempeh and nutritional yeast, pretending a plant-based diet isn’t just a long goodbye to flavor. You know, the usual summer resolutions—less cheese, more clarity.

    Somewhere between the aroma of roasted beans and my first click of the mouse, I felt something resembling courage. Not the real, bare-knuckled kind, but the kind that sneaks in when the house is quiet and you haven’t yet sabotaged yourself with toast. I thought: Gird up thy loins like a man. (Who says that anymore? Besides prophets and people named Chet.) But still, the idea stuck. Maybe I was finally ready to stop flinching and start living with actual conviction—about food, fitness, morality, and cholesterol.

    And yet I know myself. Talk is cheap. I have spent years writing grocery lists for lives I never lived. What matters is performance.

    Which brings us to today. My summer has officially begun. My wife and teenage daughters are off to Disneyland—a place I regard with the same warmth I reserve for colonoscopies and TikTok. They know this, and mercifully leave me out of the Mouseketeer pilgrimage. Which means: the house is mine.

    I have made a pact with myself. Today, I will submit my final grades, mount the Schwinn Airdyne for a 60-minute sufferfest (estimated burn: 650-750 calories, depending on whether I channel Rocky Balboa or Mister Rogers), and I will rehearse my piano composition—tentatively titled Gene Wilder’s Prelude to Mischief and Madness. If all goes well, I’ll record it and upload it to my YouTube channel, where it will be watched by six people and a bot from Belarus.

    Alone time is rare in a house shared with twin teenage girls, a wife, and the occasional haunting presence of someone asking what’s for dinner. I daydream of a private studio—soundproofed, monk-like, adorned with a grand ebony Yamaha piano and maybe a faint aura of genius. Instead, I have today: a suburban cosplay fantasy in which I pretend to be a cloistered artist, instead of a middle-aged man in gym shorts wondering if tempeh is as bioavailable as the vegan influencers claim it is.

    And yet… it’s enough. Let the performance begin.

  • Mercury Rising, Tuna Retiring: A Fish Addict’s Tofu Detox

    Mercury Rising, Tuna Retiring: A Fish Addict’s Tofu Detox

    Howard Stern recently went public with the kind of health confession that makes nutrition nerds shiver with schadenfreude: years of eating fish like a ravenous sea lion left him with sky-high mercury levels—over 30, when 8 is considered the red alert line. His white blood cell count crashed, and his bloodstream began to resemble a periodic table. So now he’s easing into a mostly plant-based diet, still clinging to salmon and shrimp a few times a week like a man transitioning from whiskey to kombucha.

    Taking a page from Howard’s mercury memoir, I’m retiring my daily canned-fish salad lunch. No more tuna tins. No more mackerel mania. In their place? A half-block of Trader Joe’s High-Protein Tofu, sautéed in olive oil like a grown-up with arteries worth protecting. The whole package is 70 grams of protein. I’ll eat one half at lunch, the other half either for dinner or for the next day.

    Preparation, of course, requires a bit of tofu theater. I wrap the slab in a dish towel and stack a Dutch oven on top like I’m pressing it into a confession. From there, it crisps nicely in the pan—unlike my nerves, which are still adjusting to life without anchovies.

    The salad base: arugula, because I enjoy a green that fights back. The dressing: Greek yogurt whipped with nutritional yeast, herbs, and spices—a tangy, umami-rich blend that says “I’m trying” louder than balsamic ever could.

    If I need a protein boost, I’ll toss in some drained beans or egg whites, though I refuse to let the salad become a protein arms race. The goal isn’t to feel full for eight hours—it’s to avoid mercury poisoning while still pretending I’m eating for pleasure.

    We’ll see how satisfying it all is. At worst, I miss the old tuna days. At best, I keep my nervous system intact and live long enough to be skeptical of my next health phase.

  • Nostalgia, Nihilism, and the Need for a North Star

    Nostalgia, Nihilism, and the Need for a North Star

    We live in a state of perpetual performance. Not just for others, but for ourselves. It’s cosplay with consequences—playful on the surface, deadly serious underneath. We obsess over how our performance lands. We evaluate our worth by the reactions we elicit. At stake is not just our reputation, but our very sense of moral character.

    This obsession isn’t new. The philosopher Blaise Pascal put it bluntly: we’d rather appear virtuous than actually be virtuous. It’s easier to sculpt the image than to develop the core. In this way, we’ve become artisans of curation, not content—architects of persona, not people.

    We live, as Shakespeare warned, on a stage. But our thirst for applause is bottomless. The more we receive, the more we crave. We become validation addicts, forever chasing the next fix of approval. And when applause falters or vanishes, anxiety rushes in. To soothe this anxiety, we self-medicate. Not just with likes and follows—but with food, consumption, workouts, and delusion.

    Some of us drown that dread in comfort food. Others sprint in the opposite direction—discipline, clean eating, high-performance regimens. But often, that stoicism is just cosplay too: hunger in a different mask. When that fails, we drift into nostalgia. We reimagine the past—not as it was, but as it flatters us to believe it was. We cast ourselves as the hero, the lover, the misunderstood genius. The story becomes so good, we forget it isn’t true. We live in the fiction and lose our grip on reality.

    This disconnect—between who we pretend to be and who we are—makes us brittle. Maladapted. And so the cycle deepens: more consumption, more self-distraction, more illusion. Consumerism becomes therapy. Hedonism becomes self-care. Nihilism becomes a badge of honor. All of it is cosplay. And all of it is corrosive.

    Philosophy, religion, and therapy exist to confront this masquerade. They offer a language for our delusions, a history of our dysfunction, and a spiritual direction out of the maze. They remind us that cosplay is not identity, and performance is not presence.

    I don’t pretend to have it figured out. But I’ve found insight in thinkers like Phil Stutz, who warns against the seductive ease of instant gratification, and Steven Pressfield, who speaks of resisting the lure of comfort in favor of a purposeful life. I’ve also been challenged—and strangely comforted—by Paul’s doctrine of kenosis: the radical idea that we’re not here to inflate ourselves but to empty ourselves in service of others. In a world obsessed with power and “respect,” that message lands like a thunderclap.

    What unsettles me most is not our ignorance—it’s our awareness. Many of us know the truth. We even live it for a while. But we drift. We relapse. We trade the hard-earned clarity for the cheap thrill of our old scripts. That’s what demoralizes me: not just the fall, but the speed and ease with which it happens.

    Yet I still believe in the power of a North Star. Call it purpose, vision, a calling—whatever name it takes, it’s the gravitational pull that keeps us from floating off into the void of our appetites. I think of Ann Kim, the Korean immigrant told to stay in her lane. She didn’t. She found her voice, expressed it through food, and became a James Beard Award-winning chef.

    The path to a good life, I suspect, doesn’t begin with fear of failure. It begins with a compelling vision of who we are meant to be. And the discipline to never look away from it.

  • Why I’m Eating Like My Life Depends on It (Because It Might)

    Why I’m Eating Like My Life Depends on It (Because It Might)

    In 2020, my mother passed away from kidney disease. She refused to go on a dialysis machine. I found out a few days ago that her sister, now 80, has stage-4 kidney disease. My aunt doesn’t drink or smoke, but her doctor told her that age can do its job on the kidneys and will give her medication and a diet to slow down the disease’s progression. 

    I assume I may have a genetic predisposition for tired kidneys, so at 63, I’m looking to make some preventative dietary changes. I’m going to watch my potassium, phosphates, and sodium. I’m going to cut down on dairy, nuts, nut butters, sweets, diet sodas, canned fish, meat and such. I’m going to keep my creatine at 3 grams a day. Being overweight, having high sugar levels, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure are all bad for the kidneys, so my diet has to keep those areas under control. I remember Doctor Peter Attia writing in his book Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity that having advanced kidney disease presents a shorter lifespan diagnosis than stage-4 cancer, so I feel motivated to be diligent. My diet now looks like this:

    Breakfast: I’ll rotate 5 breakfast grains in which I will measure exactly one-fourth cup of one of the following: 1. steel-cut oatmeal, 2. quinoa, 3. buckwheat groats, 4. bulgur, and 5. hulled or foxtail millet (11-12 grams of protein) with half a cup of Greek plain yogurt, chia seeds, walnuts, plain soy milk, phosphate-free protein powder, berries, and coffee.

    Lunch: Salad with 20 grams of protein tempeh, rinsed from a can or cooked beans or salmon with balsamic vinegar, herbs and spices, half cup of soy milk, berries or small tangerine. 

    Post-nap Afternoon Snack: One cup of plain Greek yogurt with phosphate-free protein powder, or no powder at all, and berries. 

    Dinner: Vegetables, protein of some kind, including braised tofu, and a small apple. If I want a vegan dinner, I can make a mixture of rice or quinoa with black beans, tofu or tempeh, and a cup of coconut milk. 

    Between meals: No more diet soda of any kind, only water, herbal tea, and soda water.   

  • Neddy Merrill Disease: Lifting Weights to Outrun the Abyss

    Neddy Merrill Disease: Lifting Weights to Outrun the Abyss

    I take no glory in training through my 60s. At nearly 64, with a lifting life that began in 1974 amid the clang of Olympic barbells and testosterone-choked gyms, I no longer chase records or applause. These days, I chase mobility. I chase not falling apart. A nagging flare of golfer’s elbow—inner right, thank you very much—has made its uninvited return, forcing me to swap kettlebell rows for gentler “lawnmower” pulls and abandon my beloved open-palm curls in favor of reverse curls, the orthopedic equivalent of safe sex.

    There was a time, of course, when I confused self-worth with showing off. I strutted under heavy weights in the ‘70s through the ‘90s like a tragic extra from Pumping Iron, nursing shredded rotator cuffs and wrecked lumbar discs in my quest to impress… well, no one, really. The mirror? My dad? Arnold? These days I tiptoe a tightrope between intensity and injury, trying to silence the reckless ghost of my twenty-year-old self who still believes he’s indestructible.

    This tug-of-war with time reminds me of Neddy Merrill, the doomed protagonist in John Cheever’s “The Swimmer,” who tries to recapture youth by swimming across his neighbors’ pools like a suburban Odysseus, only to arrive at his own foreclosed house—empty, echoing, and final. I see flashes of my own Neddy Merrill alter ego every time I glimpse my neighbor, a sturdy cop in his early 40s, shepherding his twin teenage sons off to jiu-jitsu. I envy them—their youth, their purpose, their untouched joints. But I remind myself that comparison is the mother of misery. I don’t train for glory anymore. I train because the alternative is to surrender to frailty, to collapse into a slow-motion horror film of decay. I train because being strong is still cheaper than therapy, and it’s the only middle finger I can raise at time’s relentless advance.

  • From Breakdown to Brand: What Comedians Know That College Students Should

    From Breakdown to Brand: What Comedians Know That College Students Should

    In the Amazon Prime documentary Group Therapy, Neil Patrick Harris plays a surprisingly restrained version of himself as moderator while six comedians—Tig Notaro, Nicole Byer, Mike Birbiglia, London Hughes, Atsuko Okatsuka, and Gary Gulman—dissect the raw material of their lives. The big reveal? That material doesn’t go from trauma to stage in one dramatic leap. No, it must be fermented, filtered, and fashioned into something more useful than pain: a persona.

    Mike Birbiglia delivers the central thesis of the show, and I’ll paraphrase with a bit more bite: You can’t stagger onto stage mid-breakdown and expect catharsis to double as comedy. That’s not a gift—it’s a demand. You’re taking from the audience, not offering them anything. The real craft lies in the slow, deliberate process of transforming suffering into something elegant, pointed, and—yes—entertaining. That means the comic must achieve emotional distance from the wreckage, construct a precise point of view, and build a persona strong enough to carry the weight without buckling. In other words, the chaos must be curated. Unlike therapy, where you’re still bleeding onto the couch, stand-up demands a version of you that knows how to make the bloodstains rhyme.

    This process is a perfect metaphor for what college students must do, and what adulthood means for all of us, whether we realize it or not. College students are not just acquiring credentials—they’re building selves. And that takes more than GPAs and LinkedIn bios. It requires language, history, personal narrative, and a working origin myth that turns their emotional baggage into emotional architecture. And yes, it sounds crass, but the result is a kind of “self-brand”—an identity with coherence, voice, and purpose, forged from pain but presented with polish.

  • His Royal Hairdresser: A Dream in Kettlebells and Class Anxiety

    His Royal Hairdresser: A Dream in Kettlebells and Class Anxiety

    Last night, my subconscious staged an outdoor fitness class without my consent.

    I found myself in a park in Redondo Beach, the sun blinding, the grass impossibly green—an Instagram-filtered fantasy of Southern California wellness. I was mid-kettlebell swing, drenched in purpose and a light sheen of dream-sweat, when I realized I was surrounded. Dozens of adult learners had appeared from nowhere, kettlebells in hand, eager and expectant. Apparently, I was their instructor. No one had hired me. No one had asked. But the dream had spoken, and I complied.

    Midway through a set of Turkish get-ups, a British emissary arrived. She looked like a character from a post-Brexit spy novel: stern, sun-dried, calves like cannonballs, dressed in a starched khaki uniform that screamed military cosplay and mid-level bureaucrat. She informed me—in clipped tones—that she worked for Prince Charles and that, regrettably, I lacked the proper haircut to instruct kettlebell technique. Apparently, the heir to the throne had strong feelings about grooming standards in recreational fitness.

    I explained, gently but firmly, that I was bald. Smooth as an egg. No haircut necessary. She did not care. My objections were irrelevant. Orders were orders.

    We marched off to a nearby luxury hotel, the kind with carpeting so plush it slows your gait. Prince Charles was there, sitting cross-legged on a massive hotel bed surrounded by two open laptops, deep in what I can only assume was royal doom-scrolling. When he saw me, he snapped both laptops shut with the speed of a man hiding state secrets or Wordle stats.

    He gestured toward a massive, throne-adjacent salon chair, upholstered in padded leather and colonial guilt. “You need your hair parted down the middle,” he declared.

    Again, I protested—I was bald. But His Royal Highness was undeterred. He placed a comb on my scalp, and as if conjured by the Crown itself, hair appeared. Thick, black, center-parted. The haircut was bestowed.

    Feeling both knighted and absurd, I reached into my wallet and tipped him two twenties. He accepted the bills with the contempt of a man too wealthy for paper currency. It was as though I had handed him used Kleenex. He nodded, purely out of ritual, and turned back to his laptops, already erasing the memory of me from his mind.

    I returned to the park, my hair neatly parted, my purpose restored. I resumed leading my eager students in kettlebell swings, disappearing into the warm fog of belonging, convinced—for at least this dream—that I was a vital member of my sun-drenched community.

  • The Vegan That Lives in My Head (and Nowhere Else)

    The Vegan That Lives in My Head (and Nowhere Else)

    At six a.m., mug in hand, I sat down at my desk with the smug satisfaction of a man pretending to be in control of his day—only to be ambushed by a large brown spider launching itself from my desk drawer like it was fleeing the FBI. It vanished into the shadows, and I was left stewing in the indignity of defeat. I didn’t catch it. Worse, for the second morning in a row, I couldn’t remember my dream. Something about a car near the ocean, a faceless authority figure mumbling instructions, and then—blank. Freud would be disappointed. I’m more annoyed.

    My dreams often involve cars. They also often involve the ocean. I suspect this means I’m perpetually trying to get somewhere, while simultaneously wanting to be swallowed by the Great Womb of the Deep. Birth, Death, and the Cycle of Life.

    Midway through my coffee, my teenage daughter wandered into my office, eyebrows raised in alarm as I recounted the spider saga and my failed dream recall. She showed the appropriate amount of concern, then casually announced she was heading to Starbucks for a chai latte. It’s comforting how the rituals of youth persist, even as their fathers spiral existentially over arachnids and unconscious symbolism.

    I banged out a new essay prompt for next semester—something about manufactured authenticity and influencer FOMO—then drove the girls to school, came back, and burned 805 calories in 61 minutes on the Schwinn Airdyne. Or as I’ve come to call it: The Misery Machine. This isn’t exercise. This is penance. Only those seeking redemption or working through unresolved guilt buy these medieval contraptions. The bike doesn’t offer health—it offers absolution.

    Post-shower weigh-in: 231. Still twenty pounds away from my goal, but less disgusting than I was yesterday, so—progress.

    Later, I drifted into my usual morning fantasy: becoming a vegan. No, not a preachy zealot in hemp sandals, but a serene, plant-based domestic monk, stirring lentils and sipping soy lattes like some morally superior Miyagi of meal prep. In this fantasy, I don’t haul home slabs of meat leaking blood onto Trader Joe’s paper bags. No. I have evolved.

    In this alternate timeline, breakfast is steel-cut oatmeal or buckwheat groats with walnuts, berries, soy milk, and a dash of protein powder. Lunch and dinner are identical—because I’m disciplined, not boring—a sacred Le Creuset Dutch oven bubbling with a Caribbean rice-and-beans concoction: quinoa or white rice, black beans, cubes of tempeh, coconut milk, tomato sauce, and enough spice to remind me I’m still alive. The afternoon snack is a tall glass of soy milk with a scoop of vegan protein, because the aspirational me is nothing if not consistent.

    Of course, this will never happen.

    My wife and daughters won’t eat this way. Neither, frankly, will I. I’ve known student-athletes who withered into pale husks trying to go vegan. Others have thrived and glowed like enlightened celery sticks. I, on the other hand, turn into a foggy-headed anemic with the energy of a depressed manatee. But the fantasy persists. This vegan version of me—let’s call him “The Better Me”—exists only in the realm of self-mythology, filed away with other fictional selves: The Novelist Who Writes Before Dawn, The Man Who Loves Yoga, and The Guy Who Only Checks His Phone Twice a Day.

    They’re all gathering dust in the mental trophy case labeled Deferred Dreams. To catalogue them all would require another post—and a second pot of coffee.

  • Bro Science and the Collapse of Critical Thinking: Why Fitness Influencers Thrive in a Post-Truth Culture (College Essay Prompt)

    Bro Science and the Collapse of Critical Thinking: Why Fitness Influencers Thrive in a Post-Truth Culture (College Essay Prompt)

    In the digital era, health is no longer just about wellness—it’s about performance, optics, and identity. Two recent Netflix documentaries, The Game Changers and Untold: The Liver King, serve as cultural artifacts of a rising genre: influencer-fueled fitness propaganda wrapped in moral theater and masculine branding.

    The Game Changers promotes a plant-based diet as not only an ethical choice, but as a gateway to elite athleticism, virility, and moral superiority. It uses cinematic flair, celebrity cameos, and pseudoscientific claims to repackage veganism as a Bro Lifestyle—a body-hacking shortcut to strength, stamina, and environmental salvation. Meanwhile, Untold: The Liver King profiles Brian Johnson, a self-styled “Ancestral Living” guru who gained millions of followers by promoting a raw-organ-meat, shirtless-in-the-woods routine before being exposed for secretly spending over $10,000 a month on performance-enhancing drugs.

    Despite their opposing diets—one vegan, one carnivore—both narratives follow a suspiciously similar script. They offer simplified solutions to complex problems, appeal to masculine insecurity, and promise transcendence through aesthetics, all while playing fast and loose with science. Their real power lies not in evidence, but in storytelling—stories that market identity, exploit fears, and seduce with cinematic emotion.

    This style of rhetoric, often called “Bro Science,” thrives in an age of algorithmic truth, where virality trumps validity. In this environment, influencer-driven wellness culture doesn’t just ignore science—it weaponizes it, bending facts to serve a brand. The result is a cultural climate where image, ideology, and emotional resonance increasingly matter more than data or critical thinking.

    Assignment:

    Write a well-argued, 1,700 word essay that analyzes The Game Changers and Untold: The Liver King as case studies in rhetorical manipulation, identity-based marketing, and the collapse of evidence-based discourse. In your essay, argue that the success of these Bro influencers lies not in their scientific credibility, but in their emotional, aesthetic, and ideological appeal.

    You must compare the rhetorical strategies used in both documentaries and analyze the cultural implications of how masculinity is rebranded, how virtue is commodified, and how fallacious reasoning is normalized in the guise of motivation and self-improvement.

    Your essay should address the following:

    1. Rhetorical Strategy – How do both documentaries use visual storytelling, celebrity testimony, repetition, and emotional appeals to persuade the viewer?
    2. Logical Fallacies – Identify and critique examples of cherry-picked science, false cause arguments, appeals to authority, or false dichotomies in each film.
    3. Branding Masculinity – How do the documentaries construct competing visions of the “ideal male”? What do they promise men, and what fears do they exploit?
    4. Collapse of Evidence-Based Thinking – Situate these documentaries in a larger cultural moment. Why do identity-driven narratives flourish in a time of disinformation, algorithmic echo chambers, and a crisis of expertise?

    Style, Structure, and Submission

    • Your essay must include a thesis with mapping components, clear topic sentences, and evidence-based analysis.
    • You may write in a formal academic tone or use a more critical/cultural studies voice with vivid prose—as long as your argument is coherent, supported, and original.
    • Use MLA style consistently.Final draft due: [Insert Date]

    Sample Thesis Statements (with Mapping Components)

    1.
     While The Game Changers promotes lentils and The Liver King pushes liver, both documentaries peddle the same myth: that aesthetic transformation equals virtue. Through emotionally manipulative storytelling, logical fallacies disguised as science, rebranded masculine identities, and algorithmically engineered messaging, these films reveal the dangerous collapse of evidence-based thinking in modern wellness culture.

    2.
     The success of The Game Changers and Untold: The Liver King lies not in their nutritional claims but in their weaponization of narrative. Both films rely on emotionally loaded visuals, performative masculinity, fallacious scientific rhetoric, and identity-driven marketing to sell a fantasy of bodily perfection that exploits insecurity and bypasses rational analysis.

    3.
     By glamorizing extreme lifestyle choices through visual spectacle, moral branding, and rhetorical sleight-of-hand, The Game Changers and Untold: The Liver King reveal a disturbing cultural trend: the replacement of scientific rigor with personal mythologies, the commodification of authenticity, and the rise of Bro Science as a post-truth performance of health.

    Sample Outline

    I. Introduction

    • Hook: The modern Bro doesn’t just lift—he converts.
    • Brief overview of both documentaries and their appeal
    • Thesis statement with four components:
      • Emotional storytelling
      • Logical fallacies
      • Rebranded masculinity
      • Decline of evidence-based thinking

    II. The Emotional Power of Narrative

    • Use of cinematic techniques, voice-over, editing, and transformation arcs
    • Celebrity endorsements (e.g., Arnold, athletes, Johnson himself)
    • Case study: how emotion trumps empirical data in both documentaries

    III. The Rhetoric of Fallacy

    • The Game Changers: cherry-picking studies, false cause arguments
    • Liver King: appeal to nature, denial of PEDs, appeal to “ancestral purity”
    • How fallacies are disguised through slick production and confidence

    IV. Masculinity as Lifestyle Branding

    • Compare how each documentary rebrands masculinity (lean vegan warrior vs. raw primal alpha)
    • Analyze underlying fears being addressed: weakness, softness, irrelevance
    • How “virtue” (animal ethics vs. authenticity) becomes a selling point for muscle aesthetics

    V. The Cultural Crisis of Truth and Expertise

    • Rise of influencer health culture amid distrust in traditional institutions
    • The algorithm as echo chamber: content tailored to belief, not inquiry
    • Bro Science as the new gospel in the post-truth digital age

    VI. Conclusion

    • Recap major points
    • Reflect on the danger of narratives that bypass critical thought
    • Call to rethink how we engage with health media and influencers in the age of viral propaganda
  • Workout & Diet Strategy for Thriving in My 60s

    Workout & Diet Strategy for Thriving in My 60s

    I’m 63 and maintaining strength, stamina, and mobility with a sustainable weekly routine. Here’s my current workout and diet plan—structured, protein-rich, and cardio-intense without trashing the joints.

    Training Plan (6 Days/Week – 1 Rest Day)

    I rotate three different 1-hour sessions. All kettlebell (KB) workouts are circuit-style with minimal rest.

    Workout A – Strength & Squat Emphasis

    • Goblet Squats – 3 sets of 20
    • KB Lat Rows – 3 sets of 15
    • Push-Ups – 2 sets of 20
    • KB Clean, Squat & Press – 15 reps
    • Hand-to-Hand Swings – 30
    • Around-the-Worlds – 30
    • KB Circles – 20
    • Turkish Get-Ups – 3/side
    • Lying KB Pullover + Sit-Up + Press – 15
    • Medicine Ball Slams – 30

    Workout B – Swing & Flow Emphasis

    • Hand-to-Hand Swings – 2 rounds of 40
    • Single-Arm Clean, Squat & Press – 15
    • KB Lat Rows – 2 rounds of 20
    • Figure 8s – 20
    • Push-Ups – 20
    • Side Plank Deltoid Raises – 20
    • KB Deadlifts – 20
    • Around-the-Worlds – 40
    • Turkish Get-Ups – 3/side
    • Lying KB Pullover + Sit-Up + Press – 15
    • Single-Arm Chest Press – 15
    • Single-Leg Romanian Deadlifts – 20

    Workout C – Schwinn Airdyne Session

    • 1 hour at 80–95% HR max
    • ~700 calories burned

    Weekly Cycle

    Rotate A → B → C, repeat. One full rest day weekly.

    Diet & Macros (Maintenance/Cutting)

    High-protein, moderate-calorie, lowish-carb. Simple meals, consistent results.

    Breakfast

    • 1 cup plain Greek yogurt
    • Scoop of whey protein
    • Chia seeds, berries
    • Coffee

    Lunch

    • Arugula salad with balsamic
    • Canned fish
    • ½ block Trader Joe’s tempeh
    • Cottage cheese
    • Jalapeños, herbs, spices

    Post-Nap Snack

    • ¾ cup yogurt with berries

    Dinner

    • Lean protein
    • Vegetables
    • Apple

    Macros:

    • Protein: 160–180g
    • Calories: ~2,300
    • Carbs: 100–120g

    Supplements

    • Fish Oil
    • Creatine (5–7g daily)
    • Magnesium