This has been the first week in over a month that I’ve felt amazing (physically, at least) every day. I’ve gotten lots of sleep, put in a lot of work at the gym and have eaten well every day with no exception. It’s so freaky how the holidays have a tendency to throw us off as bad as they do. Even we, the dedicated ones.

So I’m looking forward to my weekend workouts and even have some extra Clean Eatz meals in the fridge to prevent me from doing anything stupid over the weekend save for a planned Saturday night treat that will remain my little secret until I start posting about the importance and non-evil-ness of “cheat meals” (gag — I hate that term, for real).

Anyway, There isn’t a lot to share this week but share I shall do anyway. Here are the cool things I read:

• Slay Your Own Giants by Pete Hitzeman via Breaking Muscle
  Here, Pete discusses the importance of setting goals that actually mean something, and what setting meaningful goals actually means in our lives. Ultimately, the idea here is to set goals that scare you and push you toward an existence or toward experiences that you never thought you’d see yourself in. This is how we grow — this is how we get better, faster, stronger. In doing so, we’ll also alienate ourselves from a lot of our peers because many will see our goal as either unachievable or not worth the effort. Goals that are worth achieving, after all, are often goals only we can see the value in — they’re our own giants to slay — and this is as good a time as any to begin our glorious quest.
   
• How I Learned to Make the Perfect Omelette by John Romaniello via Roman Fitness Systems
  If it seems like I include Roman in every edition of this post, it’s because Roman writes a lot of good shit. He’s back this week with a story about going on vacation with a girlfriend, being assigned to a breakfast cooking class and learning how to make a proper omelette by a World-Champion Omelette Maker. What does this have to do with fitness? Nothing, really, but also everything. How you make your omelettes could easily be a window into your life for others to see — an abstract, if you will. If you half-ass your omelettes, there’s a good chance you half ass a lot of other areas in your life. Simply put (and to quote Roman): how you do one thing is how you do everything. So maybe strive to do everything awesome!
   
• MyFitnessPal’s Essential Guides
  I get it. Nutrition is hard. It’s way easier to just find a fad diet online, do what it says and pray for results. You may find them, who knows. But more often than not, fad diets (also known as crash diets) are usually pretty extreme and extreme is no way to live … nutritionally speaking, at least. But learning about nutrition is crazy. There’s all this talk about macros and protein and BMR and blah blah blah MATH. But ultimately, therein lies the “secret” to weight loss or muscle-building. Hell, therein also lies the secret to simply living a healthy lifestyle. You could buy a whole book on the topic, which you either won’t read or at least won’t understand, or you can check out these articles from MyFitnessPal: The Essential Guide to Macros, The Essential Guide to Protein, The Essential Guide to Carbohydrates and The Essential Guide to Fat. They’re not books and while they’re science-based, they’re not scholarly written (read: you’ll be able to understand them). Check these out and don’t be afraid of making your own diet anymore.
   
• Successful Meal Prep 101 by E Rock via Cellucor
  I hate to take anything away from my own meal prep series but I figure this is a good little teaser for anyone just looking for a little nudge in the right direction. Cellucor does a pretty good job of giving you a short list of good practices as well as a list of bad habits folks tend to fall in when they first start prepping their own meals for the week. Again, expect a complete revamp of my now-dated series, but for now it’s okay to check this out for a little inspiration. And just for fun, maybe check out this Jen Jewell (also of Cellucor) article about Are You an Ectomorph, Mesomorph or Endomorph? but don’t get too caught up in the lingo. It’s really not that important at this point.

Music to Lift Heavy To

Holy shit, you guys. Today was an amazing day for new metal releases. I’ve bookmarked releases by Tribulation, Watain, Bleeding Gods, Centuries and Heidevolk but it’s the below song that really got me today. It’s not a new release but it was new to my ears and I feel stupid for not digging into this when it was released back in September of last year (thinking I may have been a little distracted back then, no?). Anyway, this is a murderous track from the mighty Electric Wizard from their record Wizard Bloody Wizard. DIG IT!

This world has made me depraved and sick — Yeah, baby, I tortured you just for kicks
But I am obsessed by evil — forever a servant of the Devil

If THAT doesn’t make you want to go pick up heavy shit, you don’t pick up heavy shit.

See you freaks on Monday.