⏱️ Read time: 7 min

Back in January, I was up in Breckenridge snowboarding with a few buddies.

I had a little Rabbit Hole Dareringer from a flask on the mountain, then an Old Fashioned or two with dinner.

(My buddy, who's from Louisville, swears real bourbon only comes from Kentucky.)

Four drinks total by the end of the day.

Four drinks. The same number as Torrey Pines.

But Torrey Pines left me hungover, skipping a workout, and writing an entire email about how I overate by 3,800 calories in 3 days.

Breckenridge left me exhausted in the best way. I had fun, ripped the mountain, improved on moguls, and felt genuinely happy.

Same number of drinks. Maybe even more calories.

But a completely different result.

The difference wasn't the drinks. It was the spacing. And the activity.

If you missed last week's email, here's the setup:

🍸 I outdrank my wife at her own party.

I broke down how a "pretty good" weekend of eating and drinking with my wife quietly cost me 3,800 calories, erasing 4 perfect days of tracking in one weekend.

I got a few emails after that one...

• Would I do it again?
• How'd I feel about it?
• Was it worth it?

But a few of you asked the bigger question underneath it.

How do I actually think about this stuff day to day, and do I ever intentionally break my own rules in the name of fun?

Let's dive in 🚀

THE PROBLEM: The On/Off Switch

Most people run their training and nutrition like a light switch.

You're either "on" (tracking, disciplined, dialed in) or "off" (traveling, celebrating, screw it, YOLO).

Here's the problem with an off switch.

There's no safety net underneath it to catch you.

Once you're "off," there's no reason to stop at one drink instead of four. Or a few bites of dessert instead of the whole freakin' cake. 🎂

You already gave yourself permission to stop caring.

My "pretty good" weekend and the extra 3,800 calories is child's play compared to the damage that can come from the on/off switch.

Despite my background as a software engineer, I learned the hard way that my health and fitness cannot be a binary equation.

(Binary means a Base-2 system: just 0s and 1s. For the business majors in the audience, I'll return to English.)

I don't run on a switch anymore. I run on a dial. A spectrum. Or a sliding scale.

🧠 The Marriage Analogy That Killed My On/Off Switch

Here's how I actually think about it now.

I'm married.

When I go to Breckenridge without my wife, I'm still married.

I'm louder. More obnoxious. Drink more. Swear more. Make crude jokes. Get very competitive. Talk more trash than MJ in his prime.

But I don't forget I have a wife.

I'm not at the bar hitting on chicks, gawking at girls, or doing the juvenile stuff I used to do in my twenties.

Being married doesn't switch off just because she's in another state.

Same thing with being a dad.

(Any parent will relate to this.)

When my son's not with me, I'm still his father.

I might act different without a one-year-old attached to my leg, but if I got a call that something happened to him, I'd snap back into dad mode instantly.

I still FaceTime at night, text to check in, and pull up his crib camera more than I'd probably admit.

Your health, fitness, and especially your nutrition must work the exact same way.

I love my wife way too much to do anything that would jeopardize our marriage.

And I think many people feel the same way I do about their spouse.

Yet, most people treat their own body like a garbage disposal when they flip the switch.

Love yourself enough to never be fully "off" ever again.

There's no version of you that gets to be "off" for a weekend.

You're always on. It's just a matter of how much. That's where the dial, spectrum, or sliding scale comes in.

You're always someone who prioritizes their health and fitness, whether that's a perfect Tuesday at home hydrating, exercising, tracking macros, and going to bed at 9pm...

...or a weekend in Breckenridge drinking Rabbit Hole, raging on the mountain, housing an entire ribeye for dinner, and going to bed at 9pm.

(43 year olds have to go to bed early regardless. 😴)

The only thing that changes is how locked in you are.

Torrey Pines wasn't me being "off."
It was me at about 50-60%.

Still on. Just turned way down.

I still ate my egg white omelette with veggies, berries, and dry toast for breakfast. Hydrated between drinks. Even ate my veggies with lunch and dinner.

Once I started thinking about it as a dial instead of a switch, the whole game changed.

I stopped eating until I'd throw up, or going back into the garbage can to finish a half-eaten cupcake.

🥃 Exactly How I Think About Alcohol Now

If you read last week's email, you know my two rules:

1. Two-drink max.
2. Eat like a king or drink like a fish, don't do both.

Those weren't pulled out of thin air. I created them after I finally learned from my previous mistakes.

Here's what I've added on top of those two...

1. Timing matters more than the drink itself.

I try not to drink close to bedtime. The closer to bed, the worse the sleep: less deep sleep, less REM, higher resting heart rate.

My WHOOP made this impossible to ignore. Everyone I know who gets one and actually reviews their data drinks less as a result.

There's a big difference between a true nightcap and a drink or two 4-6 hours before bed.

2. I don't drink on hard training days.

More true for weight training than cardio.
Even more true on leg days.

(If you train legs. Please, for the love of Jesus, tell me you train legs!)

Nothing tanks my HRV, recovery, and sleep like a hard leg day plus a few drinks.

Guys like Menno Henselmans cite research saying alcohol doesn't reliably increase soreness after training.

But I can tell you from experience, it has a serious negative impact on my soreness and recovery.

Maybe the people in those studies don't train hard enough. Maybe they didn't drink enough.

Or maybe my body is like a finely tuned Ferrari, where any disruption feels like a major one.

I can't say for sure.
I can only share my experience.

Either way: drinking on a hard training day is about as smart as smacking myself with a hammer...

Or asking my wife if it's that time of the month.

Just don't do it.

3. The Coravin is a cheat code.

For my fellow oenophiles...

Open a bottle of The Discussion by Duckhorn, silky and expensive enough to make you wince at the price, and the clock starts ticking.

Drink it or you just wasted $200. 🤬

The Coravin lets me pour a few ounces without opening the bottle.

No pressure to finish it, no waste.

(Every wine enthusiast in the world has thought about this problem & wishes they'd invented it.)

At 3 ounces or less, I barely notice any impact on recovery, trained or not.

Past that, I need to drink earlier in the day or just deal with the consequences.

4. Vacation gets a different rule.

On a trip, I'm not stressed about work, and I'm sleeping more.

And even if I'm training, the gym probably doesn't have the big boy weights I need to really push myself.

What can I say, I'm an uncaged lion.🦁

Four drinks that would wreck me on a stressful Tuesday, grinding at 5am, barely registers on holiday in Greece, or this September in Italy.

Context changes the cost.

Spacing beats stacking.

That's the whole Breckenridge story up top.

Four drinks over a full day on the mountain hits completely differently than four drinks crammed into one evening just before bed.

And right now I'm extra locked in about all of this because I'm training for a sub-75 HYROX in November.

Having a big goal with a deep and meaningful purpose makes drinking less, or not at all, a hell of a lot easier.

Especially when you're making progress. 📈

🍔 Why I Don't Do "Cheat Meals"

I have no problem with an occasional untracked meal.

I have a problem with the word "cheat."

A cheat meal shows up loaded with emotional baggage before you even sit down.

The burger needs bacon, extra cheese, and an egg. You need the truffle fries. You're also getting dessert (ideally with a milkshake) because #cheatmeal.

You'd better get all your forbidden fruit in before it's over.

There's a quote often attributed to Bruce Lee, though nobody can actually verify he said it (true of about half the internet's favorite quotes):

Whoever said it, they were right.

"Cheat meal" is a spell you're casting on yourself before you've even ordered.

An untracked meal doesn't carry any of that baggage.

It can be almost anything: a cheeseburger with a side kale salad instead of fries, or a salad with grilled chicken and a side of truffle fries.

It's not about earning your forbidden fruit.
It's just a meal you're not logging.

One untracked meal a week is fine. Plenty of my clients do exactly that.

But I don't schedule mine. I let it happen organically.

Schedule it in advance, and you paint yourself into a corner. My dad's in town wanting a steakhouse, or friends show up wanting pizza, and now I'm stuck.

Break my plan, or feel boxed in by my own rule.

Food is supposed to be enjoyable.

Stuffing yourself like a Thanksgiving turkey rarely feels good.

Hours later you've got heartburn, acid reflux, or you can't sleep. You wake up dehydrated and still feeling stuffed.

A few bites of something, fully present, is great.

Mindlessly stuffing yourself out of obligation is the opposite of that.

👉🏻 The Takeaway

Stop asking yourself if you're "on" or "off" this weekend.

That question doesn't have a good answer. From now on...

You're always on.

The only question that matters: what percentage on am I right now, and what would move that number up 10%?

Torrey Pines was roughly 50%.

Breckenridge, same four drinks spread across a full day instead of one dinner, plus a ton of physical activity and fresh mountain air, had me closer to 70%.

Most of my weekends and trips land closer to 80 or 90% when I stay active, train, and follow my rules even if I eat a bit more or drink.

Sometimes I need a reminder. Torrey Pines was it.

Same goes for whatever's in front of you tonight. It doesn't need a "cheat" label attached before you're allowed to enjoy it.

It just needs you. Still on. Never off.

Still married to your goals even when nobody's checking.

You don't need a switch. You need a dial, and the discipline to nudge it in the right direction more often than not.