HOPE IS NOT A PLAN

Already it’s fascinating for me to discuss plans when I am the champion of “Chaos is the plan”, but let us appreciate that often, within chaos, there IS no hope, so the premise that “hope is not a plan” actually fits well here.  “Hope is not a plan” is one of my favorite quotes to introduce into discussions WHEREIN we are attempt to develop plans or courses of action because, quite often, I find that “hope” is the contingent variable OF the plans of many, in similar manner that the “Underpants Gnomes” of South Park had no real notion of what step 2 of their plan was to make a fortune.  Everything else will be laid out in meticulous detail, all variables accounted for and squared away, but finally, when it comes time to actually make the plan SUCCEED, we discovered that success is entirely premised around hope…and, in turn, destined to fail.  “Abandon all hope” is not necessarily a call to pessimism but, instead, actionable advice and guidance when it comes time toward drafting up plans for success, because in the absence of hope as a variable, one must begin to actually implement strategies and tactics that will succeed in the absence OF all hope.  Let’s discuss wherein we observe these failures in the realm of physical training.

It's practically foolproof!

Quite often, in the topic of “bulking” (a term I deride because it’s meaning continues to get twisted, abused and manipulated by hucksters and the ignorant that ape them), hope is the PRIMARILY tool being implemented, and the results go on to show just how hopeless we are.  The term “dreamer bulk” originally referred to a screename on Bodybuilding.com that went on to perform one of the most nutritious failed bulks of internet history but now goes on to accurately reflect the reality of all failed bulks: you must have been dreaming to think this strategy would work.  This is, again, because these bulking plans are premised entirely around hope.  Specifically, the dreamer bulker approaches the entire process backwards: they eat a LOT of food and then HOPE that it turns into muscle when they go lift weights.  Very often, these individuals have the diet “dialed in”, reflected by having a set macro and calorie goal that they ALWAYS hit, if not exceed, every day no matter what!...while the training is a bit of an afterthought.  “Yeah, I’ve been getting in 3500 calories a day, 250g of protein, I make sure to get in all my carbs pre, post and peri workout, and then I go do PPL 6x”.  What the f**k is PPL 6x?  That’s not a plan, it’s not even a training split, it’s 4 letters and a number.  It creates the ILLUSION of intensity because “everything is taken to failure”, of which you realize that, in order FOR that to be true, with a training protocol that necessitates training 6x a week, the actual effort employed in each session has to be SO paltry that there is ZERO stimulus FOR muscle to grow.  It’s all machines and isolation work with minimal heavy loading, “great pumps” and zero progress, followed by a gigantic caloric surplus, most often of “protein maxxed” hypergarbage, wherein the result is 16 weeks wasted and being in a terrible physical state that necessitates going on a “cut”…which oh boy, let’s talk about hope there!

 

Because thinking is hard, most in the fitness sphere want to sell all physical transformation as a math equation, and never is this more accurate than in the realm of fat loss.  “It’s all Calories In/Calories Out” which, though accurate, is unhelpful when it comes to formulating a plan for success, because new trainees will simply take THAT maxim and make THAT the plan.  “All I have to do is eat 500 calories below my maintenance and I’ll lose 1lb a week, and then I just do that until I’m lean.  How come EVERYONE isn’t a bodybuilder?”  And really, it’s the absence of THINKING that final thought that is the downfall here, because if we DID ask that question, we’d realize how much hope is the necessary operating variable in such a “plan”.  “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”, and diets are OFTEN punched in the mouth by things like…hunger.  Hunger, cravings, schedules, social obligations, feelings of fatigue, and all of these are issues we can run into when things are going RIGHT on the diet.  What if we discuss all the fun biological variables that come into play as well, like how our metabolisms will downregulate and NEAT will naturally reduce when food intake is restricted and suddenly we need to re-adjust our math equation, and how THAT might be an issue if we came into this fat loss phase overdieted with minimal caloric runway, primarily because we ran that “dreamer bulk” above and didn’t really build any appreciable lean tissue to begin with so we don’t have much of BMR to operate off of.  You came into this simply HOPING you could eat 500 calories below maintenance until you were lean, and reality punched you in the mouth.

"What's the harm of just one bite?"

 

Hope is not a plan.  We must be hopeless, which does NOT mean that we must be powerless.  Much as per Nietzsche’s declaration that God is dead, when HOPE is dead, we “re-create yourselves: and let this be your best creation”.  Instead of relying on hope to get us to our objective, we take success into our own hands and MAKE it happen.  When we gain, we do so by ensuring that our TRAINING is dialed in and effective at the intended goal of building muscle and THEN we eat in a manner in order to fuel that metabolic process.  And that “manner” is not simply based on numerical value but on QUALITY of nutrition as well, understanding that our biology is complex and benefits from a wide variety of contributions from nutrition that are not necessarily easily quantifiable.  And, in turn, we appreciate that, on the opposite side of the spectrum, it’s not a matter of eating less food, but of developing the necessary strategies to ensure COMPLIANCE with such a protocol of controlled starvation.  Discovering the foods that trigger binging and coming up with strategies to remove them from the diet WITHOUT creating a sense of restriction that results in hyperfixation, figuring out how to navigate blood sugar response to avoid feeling foggy, weak, and experience significant sugar cravings, discovering the foods and eating windows that allow us to feel satiated, managing schedules in order to ensure access to the foods we need when we need them, etc etc.  Success in physical transformation means having a strategy that will lead us along the path toward the goal, NOT depending on sheer willpower and hope to make it all happen.

 

Hope is not a plan, which is not a negative, because in a world without hope, we still have ourselves to depend on.