WISDOM OF FORREST GUMP

I know my readers are well aware of my age and upbringing in the 90s, but seriously, if you’ve never watched the movie Forrest Gump, stop reading now and go watch it: that’s your homework.  That and Fight Club.  You do that and you pretty much got to live the parts of the 90s that mattered, for those of you born too late to have that joy.  But for everyone else fully aware of the movie, you now it’s full of tons of quotes that I could easily steal to turn into a blogpost.  I could discuss the duality between Forrest’s mom’s quote of “Life is like a box of chocolates” as contrasted against Lt Dan speaking about destiny, or I could go into “Stupid is as stupid does” and how that relates to the man stupid things I’ve done in my training, but probably a lesser appreciated quote is a one off that Forrest says one day when checking his mail.  He relates to the listener that “Lieutenant Dan got me invested in some kind of fruit company (for my readers, this was Apple Computers). So then I got a call from him, saying we don't have to worry about money no more. And I said, that's good! One less thing.” 

Even with my most recent carnivore bent, I can appreciate the value of an apple

 

I love that quote.  I love the genuine innocence of Forrest there combined with a level of deep, profound wisdom.  The juxtaposition is absolutely delightful.  It speaks to another pithy quote: “Money is like oxygen: it’s no big deal, as long as you have it”.  Here, Forrest has classified money in the realm of “things”: it’s simple one of many things that one has to be worried about.  Now that the money “thing” has been sorted, it’s one less thing to worry about.  He can clear that thing from his mind and go on to focus on other things now.  That “penguin is off the iceberg”, to go with another analogy you may be familiar with.  And for most other folks, money is a HUGE “thing”.  It’s THE thing.  But to Forrest, it was simply A thing, and now that thing no longer needs to be worried about.

 

Consider that in the realm of physical transformation: how many “things” are you thinking of as “THE” thing, when really, they are simply “A” thing?  How many things could you actually relegate to the realm of “one less thing”?  That you could simply STOP worrying about those things, so you could focus on OTHER things?

Like settling this debate for instance

 

Pre-workout supplements?  I’ve literally never used one in 24 years of lifting weights, nor do I ever intend to.  When they first came out, I assumed they were going to be one of many gimmicks that were going to blow over, much like glutamine supplementation, D-aspartic acid, engineered creatine delivery mechanisms, etc.  I could not fathom how much they were imbed themselves into the culture of training to the point that some folks won’t even TRAIN if they don’t have a pre-workout supplement to take…and for me, they’re just “one less thing” to worry about.  Think of the sheer financial benefit (Hah!  Still worrying about money) I get from NOT needing to buy that stuff, along with not needing to worry about timing my workouts around it (helpful when you train first thing in the morning at 0400), not having that experience where I take the pre-workout and show up and the gym is closed, or I hit traffic, or any of the other variables that could be at play.  Think about how I don’t have to worry about developing a tolerance, having to up the dose or find a new product.  This is just “one less thing”.

 

And hell, one of the reasons I’ve never worried about pre-workout was because I don’t drink ANYTHING during my training.  I’ve never cared to.  I don’t like the feeling of fluid sloshing around in my stomach when I’m doing physical activity, which is why I’ve run 2 half marathons and 3 10 mile races with NO fluid intake, alongside all the hellish Deep Water workouts, Super Squats, Murph and Kalsu WODs, my insane ridiculous conditioning workouts, etc.  And with this “one less thing”, I’ve never needed to worry about making some sort of super shake to sip on in the middle of my workouts, never needed to worry about nutrient timing, never needed to worry about being overcaffinated and needing to poop in the middle of a workout, never needed to wonder where to put my stupidly oversized shaker bottle while I’m training, etc etc.  Heck, I’ve, once again, saved money never needing to BUY all this stuff.  It’s all “one less thing”.

 

At least go with a brand you trust!

And this is why I’m so attracted to nutritional protocols that are all about ELIMINATING stuff.  If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM) is SO much the opposite of anything I’d ever care to employ nutritionally because there are SO many “things” you need to worry about with that approach.  You need to calculate 3 different macros in order to achieve a caloric goal, which means needing to weigh, measure and evaluate EVERYTHING you put into your body at any given time: how exhausting!  What was my first “love” of nutrition?  Low/no carb.  Why? Because I just eliminated an ENTIRE macronutrient from the equation.  I now have “one less thing” to worry about.  And again, to SO many people, carbs are “THE” thing…but are they really?  We have SO much evidence, anecdotal and otherwise, of how UNessential carbohydrates are, both for simply living AND for getting bigger and stronger, that the vast majority of those trainees interested in physical transformation could easily get rid of them and achieve all of their goals.  And from here, my nutritional journey has been one of constant elimination, which landed me in the realm of carnivore, because plants became “one less thing” for me to eat, and upon doing THAT I saw some AMAZING transformations.  But even before that, I had so many other “one less thing” nutritional interventions.  A gallon of milk a day for Super Squats?  One less thing to worry about: just get in that gallon.  A dozen eggs and 1.5lbs of meat for “Building the Monolith”?   One less thing: get in the eggs and meat.  The Velocity Diet?  Oh my goodness I LOVED that diet: you don’t count calories or macros, you don’t COOK, you don’t think about anything: just drink shakes dummy.

 

All you out there in internet land who are too cool for school and HAVE to have your own personally developed training program OR extensively modify an existing one: think about all the “things” you’ve just added to yourself to worry about.  Why do I like running premade programs built by people that know what they are doing?  Because it’s “one less thing” I need to worry about.  Who cares if some study out there says that you need to do exactly 12 sets of curls to get big arms: Jim Wendler says that Building the Monolith will make me bigger, so that’s what I’m going to do.  Once I start adding stuff to these programs, I’ve added more “things” to worry about.  When I just sit back, do the program as written, and get the benefits, I’ve got time to worry about OTHER things instead.

Like trying to remember how to feel joy again

 

It’s why “Chaos is the plan”.  When I don’t have to worry about “the plan”, I’ve got time to worry about other things instead.  When I embrace chaos and say “yes: that’s exactly what I planned on happening”, I never need to worry about things NOT going according to plan.  I give myself that freedom to have “one less thing”.

 

Make it a thing TO worry about all the things you don’t NEED to worry about.  Give yourself an honest self-evaluation and see what REALLY matters and what is simply A thing that could very well be “one less thing”.