The Hard Truth

Calories are necessary to sustain life; everything outside of that statement is 100% theoretical. Nothing irritates me more than the absolute certainty and arrogance pundits engage in when discussing bodybuilding nutrition. To have a basis in honesty, or at least to have any type of lasting credibility in this game, I believe that we should set the timer at zero. By resisting the temptation to act as nutritionists and physicians, and by stating the obvious to people concerning the nutrition involved in this game, we respect the people we’re talking to and the game we love at the same time. By glazing over complex nutritional concepts and speaking as if we’ve got an irrefutable prescription for every athlete is dishonest at best, and truly despicable in most cases. Literally everyone is an expert and justified in guiding the nutritional programs of all kinds of people; it’s seriously enough to permanently jade a guy. I’m resetting the clock to zero; I’m rolling the flood waters back. I’m going to begin making honest observations concerning nutrition in weightlifting and bodybuilding. No doubt, I will be mocked and marginalized, which is perhaps my own fault for expecting intelligent conversation with people who watch clowns on youtube who alternatively cajole and badger audiences into ignoring their innate bullshit detectors. A few people preach a totally chemically driven assault on the physique and then we sit back and act surprised at seeing a trend toward the effects of the abuse of insulin, IGF-1, and Human Growth Hormone, as well as an overreliance on PEDs.

The problem goes deeper than that though. I believe the wrong path is preached and basically standardized among new lifters from their first days of exposure to the iron community. We need to be telling young people the truth about calories. The fact of the matter is that very few of you will end up as competitors in the iron sports – that’s the hard truth. Given that reality, it’s reasonable to ask the question of how far is far enough. The habits and regimes we undertake early in our lives forge the life conditions, and sometimes the pathologies, we will have to regulate and deal with later on in our lives. It’s stupid to overeat for any reason. But I find that advising people to throw out sensible dietary measures in favor of outlandish and dangerous regimes to be particularly despicable. And you will note that many of the people dispensing these guidelines are also accredited “trainers” of some variety. These buffoonish clowns are more dangerous than they are annoying these days. The advice we need to be dispensing to folks is to challenge themselves to learn more about their heredity, nutrition, and physiology… No one owns this knowledge, and doing your own research is an integral part of owning your own destiny. Clamping onto and completely buying into the ramblings of some asshole is the wrong way to go. Remember, they don’t have to live with the choices you make – YOU DO. No one will be at your hospital bed apologizing for the fuck-wit advice they gave you as you lay wondering whether you’ll live another day, or just die alone and stupid.

That’s the fucking hard truth – I don’t expect you to like it.