“CHAOS IS THE PLAN” GETS PUNCHED IN THE MOUTH

Readers, often I find myself struggling to come up with an idea of what to write about.  I’ve got a self-imposed deadline of at least 1000 words written once a week, and I’ve abided by it for over 10 years now, and sometimes I just plain can’t think of anything until the 11th hour.  Other times, I am blessed with an opportunity that is too surreal to be fake, and I have the gift of being able to simply tell a story that happened to me.  This week, THAT happened, and it was just incredible.  I will begin with the story, and try to make it a learning experience by revealing the lessons we can learn from it.

THE STORY

If David and Goliath got re-told like this, I'd pay more attention in church...

Allow me to paint the picture here: I had the day off work, and I’ve learned that, whenever I have time off, I go for walks.  Apparently, walking is something I enjoy, and I owe Jamie Lewis for helping me re-discover that.  I like to listen to podcasts, get outside, and get in vitamin D.  And to accomplish that last part, yes: I am that guy walking around shirtless all the time.  This summer has been awesome for that, and I am the darkest I’ve ever been.  Those of you that watch my youtube channel may have noticed my sick tan.  I was absolutely rocking it, having gotten in a solid workout that morning with Jamie Lewis’ “Juggeryoke” protocol and a light breakfast of some egg whites before I hit the nearby nature trail.

As I’m walking and listening to my podcast (which was, no joke, Dungeons and Dragons Lore, because I am STILL a nerd), another walker on the opposite side of the trail frantically flags me down.  He says something that my noise canceling earbuds canceled out (which should have been a warning that what was coming next was, in fact, noise rather than signal), so I removed one earbud, asked him to re-state, and he points at me and asks 

“How many calories?”

"Am I on 'Punked' right now?"

…I am STILL baffled at this point, so I ask him what he means.

“How many calories do you eat per day?”

This was STILL baffling, but at least I could answer and (hopefully…but not likely) get back to my walk.   I responded that I had no idea, I had never counted a calorie or macro in my life, and that it sounded like a terrible way to live.

“Oh, well I DO count calories, and you’re about the size I want to get to, so I was curious how much I should be eating.”

And here, I saw the golden opportunity to introduce “Chaos is the Plan: The Plan” “out in the wild”.  I informed him “When I eat, I eat meat and eggs until I’m no longer hungry.  I don’t count, weigh or measure anything.”  

Slam-dunk!  I just gave this guy all the secrets, and I did it in just a handful of sentences.  That’s exactly what my 3 Sentence Training Manual is going to be!  Well my 3 sentences just got beat by 1 sentence, spoken by one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th and 21st century.

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”-Mike Tyson

You can actually SEE the plan vanishing

“Yeah, well I’m eating 2400 calories a day, and I’m wondering if I should add 1000 calories.  I think I may be losing weight too fast.”

I stared blankly at this man.  To go with that quote from Mike Tyson, I threw what I thought was going to be a fight ending haymaker, and he managed to pull Anderson Silva on me and knock me out WHILE backpedaling.  Motherf—ker defied physics on me: he “Neo in the Matrix’d” me.  He pulled off the kind of combination you watch Scorpion perform in Mortal Kombat when your little brother says “Hold on: let me try out all the buttons so I can figure out my character”.  I was in no way prepared for his counter response.

For those of you that don't speak MMA: shutting down a man's CNS with a lazy job thrown while backpedaling is like hitting a 400 yard drive using a minigolf putter

Because allow me to take a moment to further describe this scene.  I speak not with malice but mere accuracy when I say that this man could best be described as “doughy”.  He had the typical “melted candle” physique one observes in middle-age-ish men (I turn 38 in Oct, I think I’m just about at that demographic as well): narrow shoulders, upper body mass that is a combination of some manner of muscle and adipose tissue, pear shaped midsection adorned with love handles, dutifully hidden with a too large t-shirt covered in sweat from the sheer exertion of the walk, and legs that appear to sport development primarily from the labor of locomoting its own body around.   

And here I am, talking to this fellow human, giving him the keys to the kingdom, FINALLY being at a point where I CAN take 23 years of training and nutrition and boil it down into 3 sentences…and my gift is spurned.  Rejected.  Not even genuinely acknowledged.  He deftly parried it to the side and continued the dialog on HIS terms.

I tried to re-explain myself.  “I don’t count calories.  I eat meat and eggs when I’m hungry until I’m not.  Once I’m hungry, I eat meat and eggs again.”

“Yeah, but I can’t do that.”

Rest in Peace Dale...

“..You..you can’t do that?”

“No: I’m afraid I’ll overeat”.  Remember; he was wanting to ADD 1000 calories prior to this moment, and was afraid he was losing weight too fast.

“You won’t overeat: you stop when you’re not hungry.  You won’t eat if you’re not hungry.”

“It’s something I struggle with.”

At this point, I’m already pretty upset.  I walk specifically to have time to myself, and now I was no longer walking NOR was I by myself, and I was trapped in an argument with this dude wherein there was no prize whatsoever for winning.  

I had plenty of raisins at that point...

He volunteered more information I didn’t ask for “I think I’m actually just thirsty rather than hungry.  I’ve added a 15 mile bike ride to my daily activity to burn more calories.  I’ve lost 70lbs.  All I eat is pure protein.”

Whereas previously it was an Anderson Silva backpedal  counterpunch he threw at me, this was more like a clusterbomb of pure Kafkaesque lunacy.  He just threw a “Brazilian kick” at me, which, if you’re unversed in the world of kickboxing, is yet another physics defying act of brutality wherein a combatant throws a kick where the knee is saying “I’m going low!” but the shin goes “haha jokes on you: this is a head kick!”  It breaks your brain in multiple ways.  

Notice how, in the example, you need 5 legs to pull it off!

I zeroed in on the two biggest red flags right away: “pure protein” and the fact that, up until this point, I only know that this dude walks and rides bikes.  

“Pure protein?  Dude, you need fat in your diet!”  Why did I care?  I genuinely don’t know.  Despite my misanthropy, I suppose I didn’t want this guy to be one of those rare humans that starves to death while being overweight…

“Oh, there’s fat in the meat I eat.  And eggs”

But then…then it’s not pure protein…

“What kind of meat are you eating?”

“Beef.  Sometimes chicken”.  What a “not response”.  The fat profile of beef jerky is vastly different than a chuck roast.  Give me some DETAILS here man!

“Are you engaging in any sort of resistance training?”

“Oh yeah, I do weights 3x a week.”  Again…what does THAT mean?

“I brought in the bike because it gives me a chance to really emphasize the lower body.  I feel like a lot of people neglect it.  You can burn a lot of calories that way.”

At this point, I switched to one word responses and grunts.  I realized we were simply a bridge too far here.  He was giving ME advice now…and all I wanted was to go for a walk.  A walk, mind you, that I WASN’T doing to burn calories…simply to walk.  Because I like walking.

LESSONS LEARNED

Aside from parents being absolutely right about “don’t talk to strangers”, this was a fantastic real-life case study both in all the issues I’ll experience when I release my 3 sentence training manual along with mentalities regarding eating and training in general.  Let’s examine here.

* This person sought ME for MY help, and when given it, tried to spin it into his preferred paradigm.  And the literal casual observer would be able to deduce who was successful and who wasn’t between the two of us in the pursuit of physical transformation.  Paradigm breaking hurts, it’s hard, and it’s necessary.  If you are asking someone for their help: ACCEPT their help.  Come at it with an empty cup.  Do you need to do what they say 100% without question?  No: of course not.  This isn’t about cult-leader worship, but it IS about being open to new information IF you find yourself in a situation where what you’re doing ISN’T getting you to your goals.  I had achieved this guy’s goal, and irrespective of the fact that we would NEVER look like each other simply because of genetics variances, I at least had a case study of n=1 to contrast his n=0 in physical goal achieving.  He had nothing to lose and everything to gain by at least TRYING my approach and abandoning his current one.

They wouldn't make it a meme if it didn't really happen

* Having the diet and training relationship flipped.  This guy saw training as purely a means to burn calories in his pursuit of losing weight…but not “too fast”.  I don’t even know what to do with that, but I imagine his fears were in regards to “losing muscle”, in which case it makes the LEAST sense to try to burn fuel with training.  Training is there to IMPROVE us, and the food is there to recover from and facilitate the process OF improvement.  When we approach it with that understanding, we tend to be exacting about WHAT we put into our bodies.  We recognize that the food is key to actually REALIZING the results of the training.  But when we train simply to burn fuel, we, in turn, put any fuel we want into the gastank.  This guy was eating “pure protein”, which, taken at face value, is a recipe for dying from essential fatty acid and vitamin deficiency, but all he cared about was putting fuel in his body so he could burn it all up.  

* Hell, from a “losing fat” perspective, he’d be better off skipping the exercise and just keeping the fuel low.  OR, if he DOES exercise, make it primarily resistance training focused so he can signal to his body to build/hold onto muscle WHILE he loses the fat.  Instead, he’s telling his body “Hey, everyday, we ride a bike 15 miles and walk a ton: you need to re-configure yourself to be optimal at that”.  The body is going to say “Roger that: let’s start by getting rid of ALL this heavy and metabolically taxing MUSCLE.  It’s really weighing us down on these bike rides and walks.  We’ll be MUCH more streamlined AND we won’t need as much fuel!”  If you remember “being that which does”, this dude was being that which does long endurance activities, and the body was responding in kind.  And he was EATING like a scavenger vs a predator.  You ever see a really jacked coyote?  Me neither.

* “Help me help you”.  I genuinely had no interest in the success of this person, and I STILL was pulling teeth trying to get details out of him that actually mattered in the pursuit of things.  Don’t say you’re eating “pure protein” when you’re not actually doing that.  I heard that and assumed this guy was following a protein sparing modified fast, only to learn that he most likely meant “meat and eggs”.  And as I’ve learned from Dr. House “Everyone lies”.  I know his “pure protein” included some off menu things at this point: cop to it.  I’ve told several people that I only eat meat and eggs, only to have those people agree with me…only to observe those very people loading up on all sorts of debauchery at an office get together.  Once, I struck gold: we had a “build your own fajitas” table at an office function, and I was going to TOWN picking out chicken and steak and leaving behind all the veggies, only to turn around and see another self-proclaimed carnivore with his plate dutifully loaded with several tortillas, salsa, fajita veggies, rice and beans.  Yes, this person ate a LOT of meat; they did not eat ONLY meat.  These realities are worlds apart.  And it does you NO good to lie when asking for help: don’t try to impress the person giving you advice with a fake lifestyle, because the REALITY is as apparent as the love handles were on this dude.  What his mouth said couldn’t be heard over what his body said.

* The simpler the solution, the more complex the excuses have to be…apparently.

But, if nothing else, this will make a great Q&A/Annex for my book, so I am thankful for that.