A Little 70's BIG Education

The following is a re-post from www.70sbig.com and I thought it is a great post that makes some good points about nutrition, fitness, and lifting weights.  The link to the article being referenced takes you to the NY Times web site which requires you to log in to gain access, so I did not re-post it here. 

This is what we’re up against.  The media acts like the media in that it takes an idea and then turns it into a big ball of fuck. In this article, researchers allowed fat people the option to have sugar-dense (fattening) food in the morning (i.e. cakes, cookies, chocolate, and ice cream) and found that those people lost more weight than the other group. The average American will see this, fist pump, and proceed to continue eating like shit.


There are numerous problems with the news article itself. It points out that the “cakes breakfast” was also “protein enriched”, though it doesn’t indicate any quantified amounts. It doesn’t note if the non-cakes group also focused on “enriching their protein” or not, and if so what the quantified amounts were. Both groups were essentially on a calorie deficit diet, but the emphasis on a balanced breakfast — or having breakfast period — is going to play a major role in metabolizing fat. In other words, the author fucking sucks because they didn’t describe the study well. And if the author was restricted by editors, the editors fucking suck because they are okay with providing a stupid-ass message as a perceived authority. Even if half of the population understands basic science to realize that this article blows (they don’t), that still leaves the other half of the population that is going to say, “Hey, I can eat like shit and lose weight!”

This irritates the shit out of me for several reasons. First, it provides a shortcut. If you’ve been training for a while, you know that there are no shortcuts. To anything. The first line on the back of “FIT” says, “Fitness is hard. Very Hard.” Giving people the erroneous impression of ease makes me sick. More often than not, fat people are fat because they do things that make them fat. Poor people are poor because they do things that make them poor. While this isn’t always the case, the belief that it is empowers the individual to actually give a shit.


Second, the food choice itself is a selection of crap that will only cause problems. Eating like shit is going to have shitty consequences; garbage in = garbage out. It must be nice to have the mindset that you can eat whatever you want and not worry about the repercussions of those choices. People who do that are called “lazy” or “mediocre”. It’s not easy to make a choice that’s going to help you recover better, or to have the creativity to find or make the things that can still make you strong and muscular. It’s not easy to make the choices in life that lead to what you want. But if you want to be mediocre, then keep doing mediocre things.


Lastly, the article coddles people and reinforces their shitty behavior. The little shit dog is barking incessantly at others? Pick it up in your arms and soothe it. The kid whines about not getting their way? Hug them and console them. The fat person wants to lose fat but not at any real expense? Tell them they can eat fucking cake for breakfast. CAKE! Literally eating a big-ass cookie for breakfast! Positions of perceived authority shouldn’t reinforce negative behavior because it results in a sub-par follower.


This is what we’re up against. The world wants to make things easier. Ease reduces sacrifice, but sacrifice is the thing that makes us better. Sacrifice is necessary to be great, and being great is the maximization of your potential. If you truly want to achieve what you’re capable of, then ignore shortcuts, consider the consequences of your actions, and don’t coddle your feelings. It’s not always easy, but neither is lifting weights.