So earlier today, I saw a challenge going around facebook about reposting the first picture you ever posted to Facebook, and a current one to see how much you’ve changed. It just so happened that the first picture I ever posted was one of my “after” pics from a body transformation I had done way back in 2007. I was a man on the mission back then and the mission was get ripped even if I had to be like a Spartan to do it.

It got me thinking about how we change and evolve. You see I’m not as ripped as I was back then, but I’m not that far away either, but I live a lot more freely now. I train for all around strength and to break free from limitations.

And yeah, being a personal trainer and professional performing strongman I am expected to look a certain way and I’m also not going to lie, I enjoy looking good, but not at the expense of living.

For comparison purposes I wanted to scroll back on my phone to find a pic where I’m not wearing a shirt to show you what I currently look like.

As you can probably tell, I’m not far away from that look, without the perfect lighting, fake tan and posing oil. No “dad bod” for this guy, but no living like a monk either. I had pasta earlier, and am sipping some bourbon as I write this article. Tomorrow after my strongman show, I’ll have beer with friends, eating non-organic food that has more grams of fats and carbs than I care to look up.

You see, life and training are all about balance. Let’s pretend that there are two sides of you. The one that wants to eat, drink and be merry, and the one that wants to look like a superhero and is willing to sleep in the gym and eat nothing but boiled chicken and spinach. Think of it as a balancing scale.

If the scale is out of balance, more weight needs to be put where it’s lacking.

Let’s say you’ve gained a ton of weight and you know that losing it will improve your life, by all means, improve it by putting more focus into it.

Diet and exercise can work wonders for improving people’s lives. Diet and exercise has provided way more success stories than any pill, multi-level marketing supplement or body wrap has ever done either…just saying.

However, it can also get out of control too. I’ve seen this happen with a number of people within the fitness industry who God forbid ever ate something non-organic and with high fructose corn syrup. Ironically also today I saw a facebook post by Thomas Plummer, an influencer in the fitness industry who had written about new years resolutions and I just had to steal this, but that’s common place in our industry anyways.

A pint and a laugh with friends are sometimes far more important than another perfect meal in a plastic bowl perfectly keto balanced.

Thomas Plummer

Don’t you mean another perfect meal in a glass bowl perfectly keto balanced so it doesn’t raise your estrogen??? I kid of course.

Because what we do in the personal training studio or what you do in your gym is supposed to make your life better. Everything we seek to achieve in our lives, careers and health should be to enrich and improve quality of living, plain and simple.

And yes, your strength and your health are very important, but equally as important is the fact that life is for living.

But of course what happens next is up to you and if you got value out of this please share it with someone that needs to read it.

Eric Moss is a world record holding professional strongman, author, speaker and personal trainer. In the tradition of the strongmen during the turn of the century, he performs feats of strength such as bending steel and breaking chains as part of a show and speaks on goal achievement for corporations, nonprofits, government as well as for schools and universities. His exclusive personal training studio is in Boonton Township New Jersey with Lewandowski Chiropractic and is close to Mountain Lakes, Denville, and Parsippany New Jersey.