MY GOAL IS TO SEE as low a number as possible, so I take no chances. I do not wear clothes when I weigh myself. I use the toilet beforehand but do not drink any water. Sometimes I even suck in my gut while standing on the scale, as if rearranging my torso to look more superficially flattering will somehow change the number glowing back at me. I have an ideal weight in mind for myself: 210. The scale rarely, if ever, hits this magic number. When it goes higher, particularly if it nears 220, my brain instinctively conducts a mental inventory of the previous day's eating, looking for the primary culprit. It was the cookies. You had too many cookies. Today you will not eat cookies.
And then I begin my day with the appropriate amount of shame.
This routine constitutes progress for me. I am healthy for my age (47), although I didn't arrive at this point without a struggle. I was an overweight child who never weighed myself because I knew what I'd have to confront if I did. The word husky still triggers me. I still have stretch marks on my sides from my love handles breaking contain. I still have breast tissue. I went to a weight-loss program in middle school that accomplished nothing except making me feel like I was at fat camp. I topped the dreaded scale at 280 in college, then dropped back down to 200, then gained 60 of it back more than a decade later, and then dropped the weight again. I have tried fad diets, exercise, posting my weight daily on social media, calorie counting, intermittent fasting, you name it. Some of those weight-loss schemes worked, others did not. In the end, always in the end, the scale served as the final arbiter of how much that month's scheme had succeeded. How much I had succeeded. I needed that scale. I fucking hated that scale, and still do.
Denne historien er fra January - February 2024-utgaven av Men's Health US.
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Denne historien er fra January - February 2024-utgaven av Men's Health US.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Tren Nation - How an obscure bovine steroid became gym Gen Z's favorite social-media muscle flex.
Not anabolic steroids. Not testosterone. Not creatine or multivitamins or a high-protein diet. No, Frank and Jesse (who both spoke on condition of anonymity because trenbolone is deemed illegal) immediately jump to trenbolone, which has quickly developed a rep for increasing muscularity and decreasing body fat all at once. Among bodybuilders it's known as the god of all steroids for its potency. To teens and young men, it's simply tren, a ticket to the prototypical social-media-friendly physique. Why? Frank, who's now 18, explains tren's growing popularity with all the confidence and expertise of someone who Googled tren once (mostly to see how jacked it made cows), watched hundreds of hours of tren content on Tik Tok, and made a ton of tren jokes. If the only thing you care about is putting on muscle, he says, it really does seem like tren is the thing to take.
Say What? - Hearing loss isn't just a thing that happens to your parents. Nearly one in five people in their 20s show signs of it already. And it puts your brain and well-being in danger, too. Luckily, new tech can help. Listen up.
Hearing loss isn't just a thing that happens to your parents. Nearly one in five people in their 20s show signs of it already. And it puts your brain and well-being in danger, too. Luckily, new tech can help. Listen up. An estimated 15 percent of American adults-that's about 38 million peoplehave some level of hearing loss, according to the CDC. Research increasingly suggests that untreated hearing loss can lead to other significant health issues, including depression and Alzheimer's disease.
Back-Round Check! - Tap into next-level total-body strength and supercharge muscle gains by learning when and how) to round your back in the gym.
Lift with your legs, not with your back. It's a cue many trainers use anytime you bend down to lift something heavy. It makes sense, too, since conventional wisdom holds that rounding your back with heavy weight leads to injury. But if you look closely at a strongman like Tom Stoltman hoisting a 300-kilogram (661-pound) Atlas stone, you'll notice that his spine isn't ramrod straight at all. Instead, he's almost hunching forward, curling his entire spine around the stone. And if you scroll fitness social media long enough, you may come across an exercise called the Jefferson curl, which asks you to stand holding a light barbell, then lower the barbell while simultaneously rounding your back as much as possible.
Christian Mccaffrey is Him - He's entering his eighth season in the NFL, but the league's most electric running back is not slowing down.
Every off-season for the past seven years, Christian McCaffrey, the San Francisco 49ers' All-Pro running back, has met up with Brian Kula, C.S.C.S., a trainer he's worked with since eighth grade. They talk about any injuries and any niggling pain from the previous season, do a battery of strength and movement tests, and then create a program "to turn CMC back on."
A Merciless Sun
Just over a year ago, Kekoa Lansford watched from a hilltop as the Maui wildfires incinerated his hometown.
ARE YOU THERE, GOD? IT'S ME, JAKE
How societal menace and serial disrupter JAKE PAUL is trying to change the sport of boxing, influence influencer culture, and, gulp, maybe change the world, too.
THE REINVENTED QUARTERBACK
A 2023 bookended by injuries pushed the Bengals' JOE BURROW to reconstruct his entire approach to fitness and nutrition.
THE WRECKING BALL WIDEOUT
DK METCALF pursues an old-school path to hardcore strength: PUSH. YOUR. LIMITS.
FATHERHOOD BUT WITH QUESTION MARKS
I've always wondered if I'm a good dad. So I did something drastic: I asked my kids.
CAN MARVEL REGAIN ITS SUPERPOWERS?
Critical savaging. Box-office meh-ness. Cultural irrelevance. How did the MCU lose its dominance over all screens, and what will it take to restore it?
