THE CORE MISSION
“Health and fitness are a fundamental part of my life now. I am not in the best of shape. I am still overweight, but I am in much better shape than I was when I started.”
Health and a practical fitness routine are a fundamental part of my life now. I am not in the best of shape. I am still overweight, but I am in much better shape than I was when I started. I am stronger, and most importantly, I have adhered to a routine. The health and fitness section of daymonh.com is where I’d like to talk a little bit about that. It serves as a sounding board and a place to keep track of my fitness goals for whoever deems it worthy to follow along. We’ll be talking about things like fuel and macros, my journey, metrics tracking, and functional fitness.
FUEL & MACROS
“Nutrition is at the core of health and fitness. You may have heard the phrase, ‘You can’t outrun a bad diet,’ and it’s 100% true.”
Nutrition is at the core of health and fitness. You may have heard the phrase, “You can’t outrun a bad diet,” and it’s 100% true. Nutrition in fitness is a hack. This is something I’ve learned over time. It is literally swapping the garbage food you eat for food that fits your goals, while still eating food you enjoy. That process of finding things can be a bit tricky.
If you’re losing weight, you need to track calories. If you are bulking, you need to track calories and protein. If you are doing a recomposition, like I’m currently doing, you have to do both: tracking calories and tracking your protein. It’s also good to track other macros like carbohydrates, especially for weight loss, and I like to track fiber. That is what the fuel and macros section of this site will be focused on.
JOURNEY & METRICS
“Another fundamental part of health and fitness is tracking and the journey. Where did you start? Where are you at now? How did you get here?”
Another fundamental part of health and fitness is tracking and the journey. Where did you start? Where are you at now? How did you get here? Where are you going? What’s happened along the way? What trends can you see? Personally, I weigh myself on a digital scale almost every single day. It’s not 100% perfect, but I’d say at least 98% of the time. I take a screenshot, and it’s saved to the cloud. I have all that data.
I use AI to track my calories because I’ve found that traditional calorie counting, excuse my French, sucks. Typing it into an AI or using your microphone to log a meal, letting the AI track the macros, calories, protein, and carbs, is a lot faster. In terms of weight loss, recomposition, and bulking, it’s easy to get discouraged along the way. Sometimes you hit plateaus. Sometimes your body gets way out of whack, and you don’t really know what’s going on.
If you’re not tracking the progress and can’t see the trends, that discouragement may lead to quitting. If I have a week where, instead of dropping a pound or a half a pound, I went up two pounds, I can look at what I’ve been doing because I’ve tracked everything along the way. More importantly, I can go back a month or even a year and see my overall trend. My trend line is still going down, even though this week or this month it looks like a stock market chart. Having that data lets me know I’m still going in the right direction. I just need a little bit of a course correction. The body adapts as you’re changing it. It processes things differently. Sometimes you just have to change your routine, and you won’t know what to do unless you track those metrics. That is just part of the journey.
My personal journey started around November 2025. I decided I needed a gym membership since my newer home is too small to hold all the gym equipment I had in my older home. Yes, I basically had a full gym in my previous home, but it didn’t do me much good because my habits were off. I’ll get into that in another article. Getting back on point, I didn’t have room for all that equipment. I barely fit a treadmill in. I did some research on gyms and decided to go with Anytime Fitness.
One of the things they offered on top of the membership was a personal trainer. I decided to get the personal trainer so I could learn things I hadn’t already picked up from YouTube, fitness websites, and other resources. Sometimes you just have to consult an expert, so that’s what I did. I was locked into a contract, which is probably what kept me going in the beginning. I wasn’t willing to sacrifice that money—for me, it’s expensive—just to pay off the contract. I was going to get something out of it, come hell or high water, and that has kept me consistent.
To date, I’ve gained about a pound and a half of muscle and dropped 30 pounds. That means I’ve literally lost 30 pounds of pure fat while actually gaining a little bit of muscle. I’m at the halfway point. I still have 30 pounds to lose to reach my 185-pound goal. I hit a target of 185 grams of protein a day and maintain a caloric limit that jumps between 2,100 and 2,300 calories, which creates a 1,000-calorie-a-day deficit.
It is a rigid routine. I have a full-time job and still make it to the gym for strength training at least twice a week. I was doing three days for a while, but for reasons I’ll discuss in a different post, I cut down to two. I also work in one day of Zone 2 cardio. I have other things going on in life in general. I take supplements, and I have routines. It took a while for me to get all of those puzzle pieces to fit in a way that worked with my lifestyle and schedule. That is just part of the process.
FUNCTIONAL FITNESS
“Functional fitness has more to do with what that fitness is going to do for your body, your future, and your everyday life.”
Functional fitness has more to do with what that fitness is going to do for your body, your future, and your everyday life. While it really has nothing to do with vanity, I can’t lie: it feels good to be thinner, and I am certainly looking forward to hitting my goal and just looking great. But when we get down to functionality, a stronger body means you move better, get out of bed easier, and have more energy to do what you need to do on a daily basis.
For me, the idea is that if I strengthen my body now, I can maintain a good quality of life. That applies to right now, 15 years from now when I retire from the manufacturing floor, and well into my 70s or 80s, if I live that long. I had a neighbor in my old house who died suddenly one day. This isn’t a sad story; it’s just something that made a light bulb go off in my head. He was in his 90s, still drove a car, and lived right next door. He was a veteran of the Korean War, so he must have been in good shape in his younger years, and he was still in good shape before he passed away.
Other than family checking on him once in a while, he lived by himself up into his 90s. His 90s. Let that sink in. He simply went to take a nap one day after taking his meds and eating lunch, and he didn’t wake up. When I came home from work and pulled into my garage, his son came over to tell me the news. While I felt bad for his son, I couldn’t help but think in the back of my mind: that’s how I want to go.
I know a lot of that comes down to genetics, but we have a bit of control. We have a choice to take care of ourselves and live a better life while we’re living, possibly live longer, and be more independent throughout those later years. Functional fitness directly affects your daily life and your future. Those are the kinds of things I’ll be discussing in this section.
THE BIGGER PICTURE
“The most important takeaway here is that I’m not an expert. I’ve learned a lot, but I wouldn’t consider myself an expert, and I’m not going to pretend to be one.”
Health and fitness is just one part of the whole. While this section deals specifically with the health and fitness pillars I’ve outlined above, just about anything on this website is going to tie into it. You will see other category topics, like audiobook notes and life after 50, sprinkled into this section and probably other sections, too.
I will document what I have learned and what I am currently learning. The most important takeaway here is that I’m not an expert. I’ve learned a lot, but I wouldn’t consider myself an expert, and I’m not going to pretend to be one. I am a participant documenting his journey, and you are invited to follow along and participate as well.
