(Brian Shaw and Hafthor Bjornsson)
It’s hard living in a world where everyone strives to be skinny yet lean, is strong enough to lift a truck and on top of that have shredded abs while eating pizza because it fits your macros. Everyone is giving into the hype; trying to be as lean as a super model and as strong as a bodybuilders. Although this is manageable for some people that have grown up being skinny all their lives and continue to maintain an extremely high metabolism into their adult life, they are genetic freaks- whom I wish I could be- and are not like the rest of us.
If you’re like me and have a hard time of losing weight while trying to keep your strength, then I have a solution. Just be BIG AND STRONG! For most guys, we have tried for many years to be super shredded and have that 6 pack that isn’t made of beer while also being as strong as Arnold. Not *really* possible. How about we be a Brian Shaw or Hafthor Bjornsson. Be the biggest, strongest person you can be. Don’t keep trying to starve yourself or spend loads of money on popular weight-loss programs and supplements. Spend all that money on the food you want to eat and a gym you want to train at.
Before I started lifting I was severely under-eating, just like the majority of those in the fitness world. I felt hungry, fatigued and nostalgic all the time. My lifts never got better and I didn’t really lean out. I was, more or less, a skinny fat person. For all the training I was doing, I wasn’t eating nearly enough to see an increase in preformance. I look back now realizing how much time I wasted focusing on getting lean. For the past 2 months now I have been eating on average 2,600 calories a day. What I have seen in the past two months is that I have now surpassed personal records I set when I was in college, while eating almost a thousand calories more daily and have not seen nearly as much of an increase of weight on the scale as you would imagine.
I’m not saying I’m a big guy at all. I weigh around 200 pounds in the morning. I got sick of constantly trying to lose weight and not being happy or energetic every day. Now, I look forward to being able to wake up, eat and train each day. It’s also nice eating when Im hungry rather than trying to fast the entire morning or plan out super small meals every two hours. I get to eat 1,000 calories from my pre and post workout meals and enjoy nearly 200 grams of carbs from these meals, which is great because I love carbs! So go out and enjoy your food. But also enjoy going to a gym and getting stronger while you do it. As Mark Rippetoe says, “Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general.” So be a strong, useful and harder to kill person today!
