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A client of mine had a rough summer. His nutrition got looser. Training became less consistent. He’d spent the previous couple of years losing a substantial amount of weight, and suddenly he seemed to be drifting in the opposite direction. The obvious coaching response would have been to tighten everything back up. Calories. Macros. Workouts. Steps. New goal. New spreadsheet. Everybody back to their battle stations. Except that wasn’t really the problem. We talked for a while

One of my clients’ moms recently texted me to say her son had been asked to play tight end for varsity. He's 15. She attached a video of him from his first varsity game, catching a pass and streaking down the sideline. I got goosebumps. Months of lifting, sprinting, camps, lunches, shakes, football practices, and annoying conversations with his nutrition coach had built up to that moment. Could nutrition make him better at football? His mom first approached me after seeing th

Fasted cardio has been a fixture in the fitness world forever. The usual pitch is pretty simple: Wake up, don’t eat, go do cardio, and because you haven’t eaten anything yet, your body will be forced to burn more fat. Sounds beautifully logical. Your stomach is empty. The treadmill starts. Your love handles are summoned for active duty. People also use fasted cardio for reasons beyond fat loss. Some like how they feel exercising before breakfast. Others aren’t hungry first th

Every week, I talk with people trying to improve their nutrition, training, sleep, and health while also dealing with jobs, children, travel, injuries, hormones, pets, and the general clown show of adult life. The solutions that work rarely look revolutionary. Nobody discovered a secret food that melts abdominal fat. Nobody started waking up at 4:17 a.m. to journal in an ice bath. Most of the progress came from making ordinary things easier, more flexible, or better suited to

Over the last eight weeks, I've heard some version of the same sentence from more than a dozen parents: "Summer is great, but we need the stability back." By August, the freedom of summer can start feeling a little too free. Bedtimes drift. Meals become improvised. Screens multiply. Nobody knows what day it is. Tuesday starts carrying strong Saturday energy. Then school returns and brings schedules, routines, and predictable places everyone needs to be. Parents are relieved.

Introduction Some people exercise. Others see themselves as exercisers. That difference may help explain why one person repeatedly starts a routine, lasts three weeks, and promises to “get serious” again next month—while another keeps training through vacations, injuries, busy seasons, and weeks when the calendar looks like it was assembled during a fire drill. Think about someone who identifies as a runner. When they miss a week, something feels off. Skipping a run isn’t nec

Electrolyte powder has somehow become a lifestyle. People mix it into giant water bottles before sitting at a desk, walking through Target, or completing a 40-minute workout in an air-conditioned gym. Social media tells us that plain water does not really hydrate us, our cells are starving for minerals, and the vague fatigue of being an adult may be a sodium emergency. The market reflects the message. At the time I began this piece, electrolyte powders occupied three of the l

Last week, I got two of those messages that coaches love to receive. Not because either person had discovered a secret, but because they had stopped looking for one. The first came from a former high school athlete I coached when he played football. Back then, the assignment was simple: get bigger, get stronger, and eat enough to support the game. Now he’s 20. His football days are over, he weighs about 230 pounds, and he’d like to settle closer to 215 while feeling better in

American adults eat roughly 16 grams of fiber per day, while common recommendations range from 25 to 38 grams. Depending on the person, that leaves another 9–22 grams to find somewhere between breakfast and bed. Metamucil can help. It is inexpensive, convenient and rich in gel-forming soluble fiber. It is also a rapidly thickening glass of orange paste, and drinking one every day is not everyone’s idea of nutrition. Fortunately, fiber also comes packaged inside meals people w

Holy crap, it’s August. My clients are already counting the days until their kids go back to school. My summer nights are ending a little earlier. The itch for sweater weather and college football is getting stronger. I love this time of year. Soon, Iowa will put on its annual show: cooler mornings, changing leaves, football Saturdays, warm food, holidays, and the brief stretch when walking outside doesn’t feel like entering either a sauna or a meat freezer. Unfortunately, al

A lesson in how modest research becomes a miracle before breakfast I went looking for one of the week’s most widely circulated nutrition stories. I found a small study about meal timing and cognitive tests that had been picked up by The Guardian, The Times, MarketWatch, the New York Post, and The Sun. By the time it reached The Sun, the headline read: “The four-hour eating rule to ‘slash dementia risk’ — AND lose 7kg in 6 months.” Well, shit. Who wouldn’t click that? One sim

Weighted vests, micro-workouts, and the underrated skill of keeping exercise alive Lately, some of my best workouts have happened while I was mowing the lawn. I put on a weighted vest, start pushing the mower, and turn a household chore into loaded conditioning. I use the same vest on my indoor treadmill and on the walking path outside my house. The route doesn’t change. The speed may not change much. I’m simply carrying more mass, so my body has to work harder to move me thr

Introduction Have you ever tried to cut back on sugar and felt surprisingly awful? Maybe your energy crashed. You became irritable. You thought about dessert constantly. By day three, the cookies in the pantry seemed to be communicating with you. People often interpret this experience as a lack of discipline. They assume they simply need more willpower. But researchers have been asking a more interesting question: When some people stop eating sugar, do they experience symptom

It is hot in Iowa right now. Not pleasant summer hot. Not “let’s eat dinner on the patio” hot. It is the kind of heat where stepping outside feels like being wrapped in a warm, wet towel. Temperature alone doesn’t explain it. Humidity interferes with the evaporation of sweat, which is one of the primary ways the body releases heat. That is why 90 degrees in Iowa can feel substantially worse than the same temperature somewhere dry. The National Weather Service combines tempera

Ask someone about their work ethic, and they will happily explain it. They show up early. Stay late. Push through. Never quit. Handle their business. Outwork the competition. Ask the same person about their rest ethic, and they look at you like you insulted their mom. “Are you saying I need rest, bro? I’ll fight you.” Seriously. It gets that intense. We have turned work into evidence of character. The more tired you are, the more committed you must be. The busier your calenda

Almost nobody follows national nutrition guidelines. In the United Kingdom, fewer than 0.1 percent of adults follow the government’s Eatwell Guide. In the United States, fewer than 5 percent of people meet recommendations for foods such as dark-green vegetables, orange vegetables, legumes, or whole grains. Meanwhile, ultra-processed foods make up more than half of the average diet in many developed countries. They are convenient, highly palatable, profitable, and unlikely to

This morning started like thousands of others. For some reason, I woke up with Good Charlotte's Girls Don't Like Boys stuck in my head. I have no idea why. It had probably been fifteen years since I'd heard it, but there it was. I made a cup of coffee, sat down at my kitchen table, and was quickly surrounded by three dogs who had apparently decided I wasn't allowed to drink it alone. As odd as it sounds, I think random moments like that are one of the quiet signs that life is

Introduction Before a hard week, it would be nice if sleep worked like money in a savings account. You know a rough stretch is coming: travel, work deadlines, a newborn, a tournament weekend, night shifts, family stress, or several nights where your sleep is probably going to get wrecked. So you go to bed early for a few nights beforehand, “stock up,” and hope the extra sleep protects you when life gets messy. Most people think of sleep like a daily phone battery. Charge it o

America turns 250 today. That number is almost too big to feel. Two and a half centuries of argument, invention, sacrifice, contradiction, repair, failure, progress, noise, work, and cooperation. A whole country built by people who often disagreed about nearly everything except the next necessary thing that had to get done. That is the image that comes to mind when I think about America. Cooperation. Not the sentimental kind. Not everyone standing around in matching shirts pr

A brief note from Mike: I’ve spent a lot of time creating for social media. Some of it has been useful. Social platforms can help people find ideas, recipes, coaching lessons, research reviews, and the occasional reminder that they are not the only person trying to eat enough protein while living inside a modern circus. But over time, I’ve become less interested in building my work around platforms that are not really designed for thoughtful work. Social media is not neutral