Chapter 20

Eight weeks into my beef, lamb, and eggs experiment, the face rash was gone. Just vanished. Like it had never happened.

And get this—my sweet tooth disappeared too. No more blackout cheesecake consumption. It was like someone had reached into my brain and deleted the entire “sugar cravings” file. Just poof. Gone.

And I think finally looking like a normal human again helped lift my depression.

I found a one-bedroom apartment in Seven Hills, right by the mountains. The place had all these carved-out nooks and crannies that fit my books perfectly, like a puzzle only a neurotic could appreciate. Outside, the grounds were full of greenery with little white and brown rabbits darting in and out of the bushes

But the real reason I grabbed the place? The walking route.

One day, I was driving when I saw a group of girls in red hoodies jogging. Naturally, I followed them. They led me to a park where their cars were staged, coolers and all. When I got close enough, I saw “UNLV Track Team” printed on their hoodies. If Division 1 athletes were training here, it had to be good. Half uphill, half downhill, with a breathtaking view of Las Vegas on the way down—the kind of view that makes you pause and wonder how the hell you ever ended up here.

WORK THAT MATTERED

I kept excelling at my job at the facility. Turns out, I was good at this job. They promoted me to Senior Clinical Associate—which is just a snazzy way of saying Supervisor.

Working with the homeless and mentally ill felt… right. It gave all my past disasters—addiction, mental illness, everything that had nearly taken me out—an actual purpose. The patients trusted me. One of them said, “I listen to you because I know you wouldn’t tell me to do anything you didn’t do yourself.” That hit deep.

I started getting thank-you cards. Real, handwritten notes from people who had zero reason to be nice to me. I kept them all in my tokonoma like proof that I was, against all odds, doing something good in the world.

I started dating again. Dropped into Chinatown to see my recovery buddies. Got back into painting wounded bodies and then hiding them from the women I brought home. Things started changing.

SHIFTING INTO OVERDRIVE

As my mental health kept improving, so did my cooking. My meals got complex. Then, somehow, I started baking, which is the kind of thing you do when life is going suspiciously well. I don’t know what happened—one day I was just making steaks, the next I was pulling sweet potato pies out of the oven.

I got really good at it too. Italian cheesecakes, homemade Reese’s cups, blueberry crumble blondies—you name it. And I knew myself. I didn’t want to try to trust myself around unlimited desserts, so I’d keep one or two for myself and dump the rest in the break room at work. My co-workers thought I was being generous. Really, I was just using them as human trash compactors to avoid making bad decisions.

I enrolled at the community college for social work. Still hated school, but for some reason, I was crushing it—straight A’s, good feedback from professors. One of them even emailed me, saying the college needed English tutors for finals and that I’d be a great fit. I ignored it.

I even started a podcast. A sociology professor from Virginia invited me to co-host a weekly show. We covered everything—politics, philosophy, social trends, class divisions, technology, sex, culture, taboos, the slow collapse of modern civilization and whatever else kept people up at night. We ran for three seasons, 26 episodes total.

THE OPPOSITE OF DEPRESSION

Clearly, I wasn’t depressed anymore. In fact, I was the most functional person I knew.

After two summers of this, I had become one of those insanely productive freaks you read about on the internet, who:

• Walks 10,000+ steps a day

• Home-cooks most meals

• Takes three college classes per semester

• Works full-time

• Reads philosophy for fun

• Dates regularly

• Co-hosts a podcast

• Paints for no reason

• Bakes cheesecakes for co-workers on Monday and still somehow sleeps 8 hours a night.

I wasn’t just not depressed. I was in overdrive.

BODILY STRENGTH

“It’s a great thing when you realize you still have the ability to surprise yourself. Makes you wonder what else you can do that you’ve forgotten about.” —Lester Burnham, American Beauty

By my third summer in Vegas, I developed a sudden interest in strength. Not just looking strong—I wanted to feel strong. Looking strong is just a side effect of actually being strong. And I wanted both. I wanted to be able to lift heavy things, stare at my reflection with newfound respect, and know, deep down, that I could crush the version of me from a few years ago.

Being in my late thirties, I knew the reality—most guys start losing muscle at 40 and just keep losing it. I had no interest in that fate. I wanted to be the guy who got jacked at 40.

BALCONY BEAST MODE

So, I started lifting weights. And let me tell you—when you first start lifting weights it’s the best drug on the planet. Instant biofeedback. Almost like taking a pill and watching the results unfold in real time. My body responded like it had been waiting for this. I grew like I was on steroids.

With no gym membership and no clue what I was doing, I kept it simple: pull-ups, push-ups, and a few lower body weight movements. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were upper body. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday were lower body. I had a barbell and some weights sitting on my balcony and that’s where I did deadlifts and Bulgarian death squats. Simple. Brutal. Effective.

And I got jacked.

After six months of bootleg balcony training, I finally stepped into an actual gym. I started listening to natural bodybuilders on YouTube, learning and taking notes. I hit each muscle group with 10 to 12 sets a week. Before training, I was 5’9″, 170 lbs. After six months in the gym, I was still 170 lbs, but I looked like a completely different person from the neck down. Veins in my arms and abs. Shoulders blasted out. Lats flared like a damn cobra. Neck thick and yoked. Upper back looking like a mountain range. Love handles? Gone. My same old shirts suddenly fit better—turns out they weren’t the problem. My pants? Whole different story. Had to buy a new belt. And I do have a butt, after all.

I kept showing up. I kept adding weight to the bar. And I kept getting stronger, bigger, and leaner.

DID I JUST GROW AN INCH?

Then something weird happened.

I grew an inch at age 36.

Now, I’d always been 5’9″. No matter how much I wished or stretched, I could never squeeze out an extra quarter-inch. Trust me—I measured myself whenever I had the chance, hoping for some kind of miracle. Never happened.

But suddenly, doctors’ appointments started clocking me at 5’10”. Even the county hospital put me at 5’10”. Then my mom straight-up told me I looked taller. And that my teeth were whiter.

The teeth thing made sense—no more smoking, no more meth, duh. But the height? Best guess: the strength training fixed my posture. Years of slumping like a sad homeless person had probably shaved off an inch, and all that heavy lifting straightened me out. There’s also a theory—courtesy of Alexander Lowen—that mental health affects body structure. He wrote, “If a person has a strong and secure sense of himself, his body will stand erect. If he is frightened, he will tend to cower. If he is sad or depressed, his body will droop.”

Maybe fixing my mind fixed my body. Maybe I was standing taller because I felt taller.

TRAINING FOR LONGEVITY

Eventually, my training shifted. Hypertrophy was fun, but I started thinking long-term. Explosiveness. Flexibility. VO2 Max. Strength where it mattered. My legs were still my weakest point, so I focused there. I wanted to reach a point where, if I had to, I could ditch the weights completely and still maintain strength, muscle mass, and a solid physique with just calisthenics.

At a certain point, it just stops making sense to keep chasing numbers. You see all these guys wreck their bodies chasing PRs well into their 40s. Why? You’re not a powerlifter, dude. You’re just some guy with a mortgage and back pain. If we’re not careful, progressive overload stops being healthy and starts being destructive.

I’m not here to be the next Tom Platz. I don’t need to deadlift a car just to prove a point. I want to train for longevity—to avoid injuries, not cause them.

Because at the end of the day, muscle mass isn’t about looking good in a tank top. Actually, I take that back. Yes, it is. But it’s also about not falling apart when you’re old. Science says you start losing 1% of your lean tissue per year after 70. That means if you don’t build muscle while you can, you’re basically just waiting to wither. In other words, we should be training for old age.

So yeah, respect to the gym bros. But I’ve figured out I can stay strong, athletic, and mean-looking without wrecking myself for an extra plate on my squat.

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