Not Breaking: A Journey from Fumes to Foundation
For decades, we got fatter.
Adult obesity topped 40%.
Childhood obesity hit 20%.
We became cash cows for corporations that profited from our decline.
But something's shifting.
Americans are waking up.
Down on the street, people are realizing that this is no way to live.
Your health isnāt an asset. Itās the account everything else gets paid from.
Not your career. Not your ambitions. Not even your family (though you should love them fiercely).
Here's why: if your meat vehicle is falling apart, you can't show up for anyone or anything.
It's the airplane oxygen mask principle.
You have to give yourself air before you can give it to others. Otherwise, everyone suffocates.
For a while there the trends were dark, but I'm optimistic.
My brother's best friend - down 30lbs, lean and strong, ripped out his dining table and installed a gymnastics jungle gym so his kids could "grow up right." The guy in the cube next to me dropped 100 pounds this past year because he really wanted to be there for his wife and daughters and he was tired of feeling like dogshit. A teammate down 40lbs in just a few months - quit smoking, quit drinking, traded Taco Bell for wraps and salads. His fatherās fight with cancer woke him up to the realness of not taking his health seriously.
And these are just three. I know dozens more across every decade, every life stage, who've dropped the weight, cleaned up their diets, started moving daily, and found the Way.
The obstacle is the Way. And the obstacle is You and Your Health.
The Truth of the matter is that there is no flight attendant in this life to remind us to āoxygen upā. You (and I) just keep running on fumes until something breaks.
Some years ago I began to structure my entire life around not breaking.
I wasn't always like this.
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From Trashy Food Pyramids to Light Bulb Moments
ā¦ the major fears of modern man could be boiled down to two things: too much e-mail and getting fat. - Tim Ferriss, The 4 Hour Body
I was a tubby kid.
Fig Newtons and milk after school. Slush Puppies and Milky Ways from the corner store with my buddy Mike more days than I care to admit. Trading lunch items for Lunchables and Dunkaroos.
Your average 90s kid.
I ran around constantly and played almost every sport, but I didn't watch what I ate.
My parents steered us right where they could, but they'd been sold the low-fat, high-carb pyramid that dominated the era.
Now we know that āthat foodā pyramid, the one us 90s kids grew up with, was absolute trash.
It took until my early twenties and several yo-yo cycles to realize how crucial diet actually was.
The breakthrough came from Tim Ferriss' The 4-Hour Body, the Slow Carb Diet, and the concept of "sliding bars."
Imagine three categories that sum to 100: diet, training, and supplementation. Most people obsess over training and supplements while leaving scraps for what actually matters most.
Tim broke it down simply: Diet is the 80%. Training and supplementation are the remaining 20%.
The lightbulb finally lit up.
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An Expensive Education
Our bodies are apt to be our autobiographies. - Frank Gelett Burgess
Within a week of reading Tim Ferriss, I adopted Slow Carb as my lifestyle. It became my gateway drug.
Legumes. Vegetables. Quality meats. Simple rules I could actually follow.
That first success opened the floodgates. From there I leapt to Paleo, then Keto, then Vegan, then Warrior (one meal per day), Whole 30, Animal Based. I wanted to find what worked for my body, not what some guru promised would work for everyone.
The diet experiments led to movement experiments. I watched Conor McGregor movement training videos on repeat and thought, "I want to move like that." Took up jiu jitsu. Found an Ido Portal school and became religious about itāorganic strength, mobility, training with people of all ages and abilities. When I moved cities, I kept searching. Tried dozens of gyms. Eventually landed at Squatch Frontier Fitness in Austināice baths, saunas, rings, sleds, a crew of outcasts doing counterintuitive movements that were actually good for their bodies.
Then came the supplements phase. Fat burners, muscle builders, nootropics, recovery stacks. Hundreds of dollars a month chasing āoptimizationā. I was one Joe Rogan podcast away from having my own supplement line.
It took a while to reach my numbskull mind: keep the main thing the main thing.
I scaled back. Started asking one question constantly: "Does this actually add value?"
That's when I realized the irony. I'd been obsessing over macro ratios, workout splits, and supplement timing. āOptimizingā everything except the one thing that actually mattered: rest.
I burned the candle at both ends until my Oura ring exposed the truth in cold, hard data. Inconsistent sleep meant running all day on fumes, then crashing tired and frustrated.
The fix wasn't complicated.
Clean up the lifestyle. Prepare the night before. Stick to a schedule.
More than a decade of self-experimentation can be boiled down to four principles:
- Diet is the 80%. Quality meats and plants. Skip the refined carbs and liquid calories. Fast occasionally. Indulge once a week. Simple beats perfect every time.
- Movement is medicine. Walk. Stretch. Grease the groove at home. Train with people who push you harder than you'd push yourself. Explore the patterns that keep you coming back. Consistency is key.
- Supplements as support, not saviors. I used to drop $300/month on optimization theater. Now I keep it under $100: greens for energy, magnesium for sleep, protein because I train. Occasionally a nootropic for deep work. Everything else is noise.
- Rest is non-negotiable. Less stimulation. Less screens. Less doing. My wife and I quit social media and don't watch TV during the week. With the baby, I'm in bed by 8-9pm, up by 4am. Sleep is the ultimate performance enhancer.
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A Story Worth Reading
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. - Mark Twain
Here's what I want you to understand: this doesn't need to be complicated.
You don't need to try forty diets or spend years in experimental gyms or burn thousands on supplements to figure this out. I did that so you don't have to.
The path is simple:
- Fix what you eat (the 80%).
- Move your body daily (the other 20%).
- Sleep like your life depends on it (because it does).
That's it. That's the whole game.
Some years ago I began to structure my entire life around not breaking. Not because I'm disciplined or special, but because I finally understood what was at stake.
The obstacle isn't knowledge.
You already know you should eat better, move more, and sleep enough.
The obstacle is you. Your habits. Your excuses. Your willingness to keep running on fumes until something breaks.
Your health isn't secondary to your career, your ambitions, or even your family. It's the foundation everything else is built on.
Without it, everything crumbles.
So structure your life around not breaking.
Don't wait for permission. Don't wait for the perfect moment or the perfect plan.
Start today. Start small. Start with the 80%.
Your body is writing your autobiography whether you're paying attention or not.
Make it a story worth reading.