Thursday, October 27, 2016

Are you a meathead?


Before you stop reading, this is not an article full of puns reminiscent of Jeff Foxworthy. I want to share a conversation that literally changed my life.

Since the birth of my daughter, I felt that I was making all of the right steps a husband and new father should. I adjusted my schedule to spend more time at home. I started eating better to control my blood pressure and health as well as lower my weight and increase my mobility to play with her on the floor and overall longevity. I was getting a lot less sleep and spending less time with friends, less time watching tv and spending as much time as I could at home with her, more than happy to take more late night feedings so my wife could sleep. Life is great. I am doing what I need to and love doing it.

I did not realize how much my meathead mentality was clouding my judgment/perspective. While all of the above are 100% true, there are many things I was not considering.

Balance is key. Something myself and many others have written again and again. Ask yourself a question- how often do you think about training? How often do you think about dieting. About how your program is going. About how excited you are to squat tomorrow. About what your new bench goal is. How much more weight you want to lose. And so on. Let’s take a step back for a minute. I am not saying that these things do not require attention, but for the most part, we should not be spending our days focusing on them. You may not realize it, but this gets very mentally exhausting. I know that for so long, with the all or nothing mentality, this was life.
It was put to me like this- “Get your workout in, eat your meals, move on”.
This was coming from a 6 time national champion bodybuilder, entrepreneur and business owner. I was blown away. After talking to him about my history, passion, lifestyle and such, how could someone who would be able to identify with me so well downplay this part of my life?. But think about it. You have a workout plan. You have an eating plan and (should) have a lot of food prepped. Why are you wasting time and energy on things that are already established and prepared? Follow your plan and focus on other things. How many of us spend countless hours every week on the above? At the end of the day while we all have our own important reasons for living this lifestyle, but it cannot be our number 1 priority. Try investing some of that time and energy into your spouse or loved one. Go on that date and leave your phone in your pocket so you aren’t tracking your macros during dinner.  When is the last time you got them flowers, or went out of your way to do something small to remind them how much you care about them? Were you too busy thinking about your squats? How much time are you investing in planning for your retirement? Or the future of your career? It better not only be when you aren’t thinking about if you should cut a weight class for the local powerlifting meet. And your kids. I don’t care how important the meathead lifestyle is to you, nothing should ever come before your kids. Most of us would agree that there are many things in life whether it money, time, family, etc  that we are not where we want to be but spend far more time thinking about gym related items. 

This is my point, and touched on some personal examples. Having a meathead mentality is not just about GTL, your bench and any other ‘bro-isms’ you can think of. Do not let the gym or this life style define you, or more importantly, do not let it control your life. It should be an important piece to the puzzle, but it should never be a limiting factor in the rest of your life.

Paul Emmick

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