Read time: ~4 minutes

This week:

• My Zone 2 GoRuck protocol (and why your heart rate monitor is lying to you)
• The low-carb food label scam that's secretly wrecking your calories
• How Josh stopped sabotaging himself and started showing up for his son

My son had surgery this week...

I'll spare you the details, except to say it involved a very sensitive area and a procedure that, as his father, I felt deeply and personally.

(The jokes write themselves here, but let's just say it made me weak in the knees when I changed his diaper post-procedure. 🥴)

At the hospital on Tuesday Anya and I walked him back to the OR doors, and that was the last time we saw him until he was out of surgery.

We had to sit, wait, hope, and pray.

Anya started crying the moment he disappeared through those doors. I held it together... but barely.

That's my job in those moments, being the rock, the safe place, the security blanket equipped with 180+ pounds of muscle.

But I felt it. All of it.

And somewhere in that waiting room, sitting with the helplessness of not being able to protect the two people I love most from something that was completely out of my hands, I had a thought I keep coming back to.

I'm 43, but he's not even 1 yet. If I want to workout with him, snowboard with him, coach his teams, and maybe (if I'm lucky) meet his kids someday...

I need to treat my body like the priceless machine that it is.

That's why I train. Not for abs. Okay, maybe a little for abs...

And biceps. But mostly... for time.

Time with my family.

Let's get into it. 🚀

🏋️ Training: My Zone 2 GoRuck Protocol

Like Peter Attia, Zone 2 cardio is having a moment.

But unlike Peter Attia, Zone 2's moment is for good reason.

It builds your aerobic base, improves fat oxidation, and is one of the strongest predictors of longevity.

Most people either do it wrong or overcomplicate it.

Here's exactly how I do it:

The setup:

• 45 lb plate loaded into my GoRuck backpack (no affiliation)
• Peloton Tread at 3 mph, 12% incline
• Target: high end of my Zone 2 range (134-146 bpm), aiming for ~145
• When heart rate creeps above 148, I drop the incline by 0.5
• Typically finish around 10% incline after 45-55 minutes

This week I walked 48 minutes, just long enough to finish an episode of Turn on Netflix.

(It's about Washington's spies during the Revolutionary War. Highly recommend.)

Two things worth knowing:

💗 First, heart rate accuracy matters more than you think.

I use a chest strap linked to my Tread AND a Whoop bicep band. After years of both, the chest strap wins every time.

• 👜 The bicep band consistently lags behind... kinda like me following my wife around the luxury stores on the Champs-Élysées during our last trip to Paris.
• 💦 It also typically reads 2-5 bpm lower than the chest strap, and sweats drops tend to mess with the signal mid-workout.

If a bicep band has all these issues, a wrist wearable is even further behind. Without a chest strap, you're mostly guessing.

⏰ I train fasted and drink electrolytes with creatine during the walk.

Fasted cardio has no proven fat-burning advantage over fed cardio (old-school bodybuilding myth, story for another day) but the old-school bodybuilder in me still likes the feeling.

Some habits die hard. 🤷

🍽️ Nutrition: The Low-Carb Food Label Scam

One of my clients has been tracking his macros consistently for years.

Not perfectly, but pretty good. However, recently his weight has been slowly creeping up. We can see it in his progress photos and it wasn't muscle. 😫

So I went deep. Started reviewing his macros closer than I watch the joint American Express account I have with my wife.

Something looked off to me. So I did some basic math.

(Computer Science degree finally pulling its weight.)

The macro math:

He was eating 300-600 calories over his prescribed 1,800 daily target. Some days he was closer to 2,400.

Here's how it happened...

In an effort to maximize his macros, he started leaning on "low-carb" and keto-friendly products:

• Mission Carb Balance tortillas
• Quest Bars
• Keto bread
• Protein cookies and donuts

Smart thinking in theory. Terrible in practice.

Here's the loophole nobody talks about:

These products are legally allowed to subtract fiber and sugar alcohols from their total calorie count, treating both as zero calories per gram.

(As a fitness coach, I find this borderline criminal.)

⛔️ Fiber isn't zero calories ⛔️

Depending on type and absorption, it runs 1.5 to 4 calories per gram. That Mission Carb Balance tortilla listed at 70 calories is realistically closer to 100-130.

What the label says vs. reality:

• Quest Bar: 180 cal → closer to 210
• 2 low-carb tortillas: 140 cal → closer to 220
• 2 slices keto bread: 120 cal → closer to 180
• Protein donut: 200 cal → closer to 250

Daily gap: 200-300+ calories your app never counted

That can add up to more than 2,000 calories per week!

Here's The fix:

✅ One of these foods per day is fine
✅ Do the macro math yourself once a week
✅ If weight is rising despite tracking, check this first.
❌ Don't rely on the label alone

In this instance, I had this client create custom entries for all these foods with the actual total number of calories. I'd rather overshoot a bit than undershoot.

Numbers don't lie. But labels sometimes do.

👥 Client of the Week: Josh, Tech Sales Professional, Father

Josh came in at 210 lbs with a serious athletic background.

A lifelong cyclist who at his peak was training 20+ hours a week. He was strong, active, and going nowhere.

The problem wasn't effort, it was strategy...

He was working hard but jumping between programs with no real strategy. In his own words, he'd been "outrunning a bad diet" for years, and it finally caught up.

​

In 16 weeks:

🔥 Lost 29 lbs and 7% body fat
📏 6.5 inches off his waist
💪 Added 138 points to his strength score

How we did it:

• Structured progressive programming (not random programs)
• Dialed-in macros with precision, not just "eating healthy"
• Identity shift: from "guy who trains hard" to "guy with a real strategy"

The turning point was when Josh asked himself this question, "What would happen if I stopped sabotaging myself and really locked in?"

That question is what brought him to us.

His family doesn’t just hear what he says now, they see how he lives.

Same man. Different standards.

Outstanding work, Josh. 🙌

🎥 Watch the full interview here.