Alright mate,
If you want to be in incredible shape without punishing yourself, this is what this email is all about.
Because today I’m covering a huge part of my life that I rarely speak about.
“Physical fitness as a training ground for healthy masculinity and emotional wholeness.”
For over a decade, I tried to change my body.
I’d set goals, track calories, hit the gym, and then life would happen.
I’d fall off, binge, feel ashamed, and spiral. Again and again.
No matter what plan I followed, something deeper would always pull me back.
Eventually, I realised it wasn’t about food and it wasn’t about discipline.
(I had listened to David Goggins .. and then just hated myself more).
It was about my relationship with the parts of me I kept rejecting.
The inner critic.
The scared child.
The part of me that just wanted comfort, approval and relief.
I thought I had to destroy those parts to “become a man.”
But the truth is, healing came when I turned toward them instead.
And it worked.
Over the last 6 months, I dropped from 94kg to 84kg … but that was just the surface.
What really changed was this: I stopped waging war on myself.
I started listening.
Reparenting.
Slowing down.
Building a new relationship with my inner world.
I moved from self-punishment to self-leadership.
From fragmentation to wholeness.
I posted about this journey on Reddit, and someone asked me how I did it.
This was my reply:
“So for me, a binge would usually be my way of coping with feelings of overwhelming shame.
Something in my life would happen (making a mistake at work, noticing something on Instagram and comparing myself, a conversation that went badly etc) and suddenly, my “inner critic” would get busy judging and attacking me.
This would make me feel terrible, obviously. Ashamed of myself.
And the worse the shame got, the harder I would binge, the longer that binge would last and the harder it would be to recover.
I went through a couple of years of my life where I was trapped in this shame-binge-shame cycle which is pretty much where you see me in the first photo. The shame is written all over my face even.
But after trying all the diet/training strategies and failing .. I realised that the problem is probably much deeper. It’s in how I handle the usual setbacks of life and how I treat myself in my own mind.
So with the help of a therapist, a men’s group, my journal, mindfulness meditation and a lot of trial-and-error … I got better at noticing these shame triggers.
Then I would breathe deeply, slow things down and speak to myself like a loving parent with things like:
“You do not have to be perfect to get my love and protection.
All of your feelings are okay with me.
You can make mistakes—they are your teachers.”
And what I started noticing is that doing this would prevent a trigger from becoming a full-blown shame-binge spiral.
The more I did this … the easier it became to recover when setbacks happened. I became more consistent with my nutrition. I stopped craving greasy food as intensely (although I still smash some fried chicken from time to time haha).
If my life was a car, I was driving with bad suspension before. Every pothole I hit would smash the car up. But this self-compassion approach was like giving my car brand new top-of-the-line suspension. Now I don’t even really notice the speed bumps and potholes anymore.
A couple of books that helped me were No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz and Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker.
Trying to punish my way to a fit body never worked. For me, the only approach was self-love (as cheesy as it sounds).”
I believe any man who wants to live a great life should prioritise his physical fitness.
But he should be careful not to use it as a stick to beat himself over the head with.
Train because you deserve to feel strong, attractive and full of energy.
And when you make mistakes (and you will) … see them as an opportunity to love yourself deeper.
What’s your current training regime? And how’s it going?
Reply and let me know.
Stay courageous,
Oliver