FOUNDER ATHLETE BRIEFING
We finished a year ago.
Adrian stopped being my client over a year ago. Then, one morning, a message from him landed on my phone. Sent from a vacation in Thailand. It's waiting at the bottom of this email. First, the story. Adrian is a CFO. Late forties, three kids. Basketball in college, then twenty years to the business. Golf was the only sport he had left. Here's the first message he ever sent me: "I know your primary focus is to help executives lose weight and build muscle. I'm more interested in improving my...
Fridge fully stocked. Another panic attack.
He came home to an empty house. Fridge full. Eggs, vegetables, yogurt, everything there. And he froze. Full panic. A grown man who built a company, standing in his kitchen, no idea what to eat. He told me this on our first call. Then he said the line I keep coming back to. "I think about food way too much. It feels like something a 16-year-old girl worries about." He said it like a confession. Like something's wrong with him. Nothing is. He's sharp. Understands calories, protein and fiber....
When your life eats every fitness plan.
You're in Italy with your kid. It's been her dream ever since she was little. You've been working nonstop leading up to this. So you make it all about her. You go where she wants to go. And you eat the way she wants to eat. That iconic slice of pizza on the way to the Colosseum. Pasta every night. Not a single day where you watch what you eat. The only thing you watch is your presence - and the pace you're at. No more anxiety-filled "Let me fucking have that." No more "Let's rush it and cross...
Nobody wants to be huge anymore.
Remember Fight Club? Back in the 90s, Brad Pitt in that movie was THE physique. Then, things started changing. Fast-forward to the 2010s, The Rock and Chris Hemsworth as Thor took over. Yoked became the goal. Now you open Instagram and even the teenagers are roided up. Jacked men in their 40s and 50s? TRT'd so hard their faces look like they're about to explode. But the standards are changing back. People are getting more educated. Tom Hiddleston in The Night Manager is bringing back the...
I just turned 40.
I just turned 40. I spent the last year or so adding size. Bulk, then maintenance, building muscle. And honestly, I'm happy with the size of everything I have. So I started leaning out again. Two things showed up that weren't there before. The leaning out is slower than it used to be. And being in a deficit leaves me more gassed in my training sessions. I could ignore both and push harder. But that's the body talking. I'm at the point where my training has to evolve, so I'm changing it now....
Why your weight comes back when life gets hard.
Last year a guy showed up on a call with me. I bet you've been where he was more than once. He came prepared. Knew exactly what he wanted, knew how to track calories, had even worked with a nutritionist and done the metabolic test. Knowledge wasn't the problem. Discipline wasn't either. The year before, he'd done it the right way. Tracked everything, got from the mid-220s down to 217. Felt good. Then his mom got sick, and between hospital visits he was eating whatever was around. It all came...
"I'd feel like I got my life back."
Meet Brian Brian booked a call after seeing my former client Drew mention me on LinkedIn. He'd been thinking about reaching out to someone for months. He's fifty-six. Lives outside Dallas. Three boys, great marriage. Just took a CEO role at a large anti-trafficking non-profit - 120 staff, operations across Texas, Louisiana, and Mongolia. First time in his life at this pace. He'd been on blood pressure medication for eighteen years. Low testosterone. Major back issues, knees flickering. Around...
The healthy eating post that got it all wrong.
I recently saw a post on LinkedIn: See, I'm not the type of a guy who goes around and criticizes things. I don't think it's a good use of my time. …But some trends just need to be contested. It also brought back some uncomfortable memories. I used to be that guy. I carried Tupperware to work, said no to colleagues inviting me to lunch, and ate at my desk. It worked. I got lean. But I didn't know any of the people I worked with. So I couldn't stop myself and left this comment: It got more...
He stopped 1 month in. Came back 3 years later.
The man who came back Phil and I worked together briefly in 2022. A month in, his parents got sick. He flew to Australia to take care of them. That was the end of that engagement. Three years later he booked another call. He's a CTO at a $91B wealth management firm. Fifty-one. Daughter just turned six. He commutes from New Jersey into the city - ninety minutes each way, on a bus, before sunrise. Most weeknights he gets home around eight, eats a heavy dinner because he was too busy to lunch...
I got lean and disappeared from my kid's summer.
A few summers ago I was on a beach in photoshoot shape. Lean. Veins on the abs. My kid was in the water in front of me. My wife was watching us from her chair. I just fucking stood there. No energy to throw him around. Head full of macros, of food I'd already eaten that day, of food I'd let myself eat at dinner if I'd earned it. He asked me something. I didn't really hear it. For years I'd been doing this work to help men climb out of the depleted body. The tired one. The soft one. The one...