The feeling of being an outsider is stronger than ever. That’s definitely the main theme of this week. Let’s start with milk.
Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer.
– Arnold Schwarzenegger
Rye bread and milk have been shoved down our throats in this country for as long as I can remember. It’s all because we happen to ”produce” them here. The more I think about it, the more ridiculous it seems.
Plain quark is a perfect example. I’ve been eating the stuff for fifteen years because some meathead forum swore it was the greatest thing ever. Ehrmann plain quark. This morning it was Ingman plain quark. Same stuff, different package. I only buy whichever one comes in a 500-gram tub and happens to sit somewhere in the middle of the price range. Same crap.
Let’s throw some more milk on the fire. Not just quark but also whey protein.
Star Nutrition Whey Protein Concentrate, 80%. Snickerdoodle flavor: Whey protein concentrate (milk), emulsifier (sunflower lecithin), flavoring, cinnamon, sweeteners (sucralose, acesulfame K).
The ingredient list tells you everything. All the flavors are basically the same thing. This one contains cinnamon, so apparently that’s enough to transform it into dessert.
It’s already a strong contender for Worst Crap of the Week.
Nothing more to say. Quit and move on.
Fat loss is stubborn this time around. Much harder than ever before. Then again, I don’t remember ever being this fat. Twenty-two percent body fat used to be elite territory. The situation escalated when Tiny Arm Syndrome struck again while looking in the mirror. I’ve suffered from it my entire life. The difference this time is that the reckless bulk left me with more than just fat.
At the gym I still see plenty of people who think they’re muscular and athletic when they’re really just carrying extra body fat. The arms are usually the giveaway. Well, the stomach too, but they can’t exactly see that themselves.
Big arms made of fat don’t look impressive. No separation. No shoulder definition. No bicep veins. Nothing. The slow-motion gym walk is still alive and well too. What causes that behavior anyway? It’s like watching a bird puff out its feathers to look bigger. ROFL would fit here perfectly. Invisible Lat Syndrome is another one. I first heard that term from Sam Sulek.
The neck is another dead giveaway. You can usually tell whether somebody actually trains or just spends time digging for treasure in their nose. These are the same people who spend their weekends at local rock concerts and wear high-visibility work clothes everywhere because they’re ”practical.”
The fat is still hanging on, though. As you may have noticed, I’m natural. I even stopped taking creatine because my face seems perfectly capable of retaining water on its own. I want my 225 pound bench press without supplements anyway. Food contains everything I need. Steroids were never an option. Partly because I’d spend the rest of my life waiting for the next health scare. A friend of mine died from breast cancer after years of using gear. We all die eventually, sure, but still. I couldn’t do it. The second reason is simpler. I genuinely enjoy pushing my body and seeing what it can do.
I didn’t even step into a gym until I was thirty years old. The third reason is appearance. Most enhanced lifters end up looking like a strange combination of a wrinkled raisin and an angry body part. Was the rigid, oversized physique really worth it? And the internal organs usually look worse than the exterior.
This might be a very Finnish observation because guys like Sam Sulek and Cbum actually look pretty good, all things considered.
One more thing about arm growth. My arms finally started growing during Clarence Kennedy’s 14 Week Powerlifting Program. The science-based crowd would immediately tell me that can’t possibly work because the intensity and frequency aren’t optimal for hypertrophy. Then somebody would quote Schoenfeld. As tradition demands.
People-watching has become one of my favorite hobbies. The other day I had front-row seats watching a personal trainer squat with a client. Seventy kilos on the bar. Sets of seven.
Later that same day I watched an old man in Prisma lick his fingers before opening a fruit bag. The contrast was magnificent.
Free Weights or Die
Would you rather sit in a machine designed by an engineer and pull handles because the instructions tell you to? Or step into a rack and put a barbell on your back? To me, the answer seems obvious. Gym machines get far more attention than they deserve. If your goal is genuine strength, they should play a supporting role at most.
Bodybuilders are a different story. Enhanced athletes can get away with chasing a pump because the chemistry set does a lot of the heavy lifting.
It’s Sunday as I write this. Yesterday was June 6th, 2026. The sixth day of the sixth month. Nothing satanic seems to have happened. I’ve decided to start my weeks the American way from now on. Sunday is Day One.
I’m also seriously considering abandoning Finnish altogether outside of work.
We spent the weekend at Repovesi National Park with the family and had a great time. I also realized my beard desperately needs trimming. Maybe one in a thousand Finnish men can actually grow a decent beard, and even then it usually turns into an untamed wilderness project. Looking at recent photos, it’s time to go back to what it looked like a year ago. Tomorrow will do. Mañana, as they say in Spanish.
The hair stays, though.
Every bald head I see only strengthens my commitment to keeping this thick, dark Spanish mane alive. Training is brutal. Then again, it was brutal when I was fourteen years old running stadium stairs as a junior football player until somebody threw up. Some things never change.
I don’t drink.
I don’t use nicotine.
I don’t read the news.
I heard about developments in the Ukraine war from my wife.
The last time I drank alcohol was December 4th, 2018. Best decision I’ve ever made. People should read more books. Thankfully I never really got sucked into social media. Instagram came closest, but most of it is just old ideas being recycled and presented as groundbreaking discoveries. Same old crap. Everyone needs something when the evening arrives.
Beer.
Ice cream.
Doomscrolling.
Something to take the edge off the day.
I don’t anymore.
These days my natural high comes from being at home with my family. While we were at Repovesi, my younger son asked: ”Dad, what would you do if you were a millionaire?” I told him my life wouldn’t change much at all. I’d still go to the gym every morning. I’d still eat the same foods. I’m already working my dream job. The only thing I’d change is buying a bigger refrigerator. I don’t meal prep because I’m trying to get rid of the microwave altogether, but a larger fridge would make life easier. Especially when ten eggs disappear in a single sitting.
Lunes | Monday
Monday
Crap of the Week, Round One
The first award of the week goes to sourdough.
Why the hell does every industrial bread roll now have to advertise that it’s made with sourdough? What even is sourdough? And more importantly, why am I supposed to care?
The Repovesi trip ended up being a 13,500-step adventure and I fell asleep in the car on the way home. I wasn’t driving, thankfully. I don’t drive much these days anyway.
Partly because of my central serous retinopathy (CSR), which means I limit driving to situations where it’s actually necessary.
The other reason is simpler: I just don’t enjoy driving. Cycling is a pleasure. Cars are metal boxes. The road noise alone is enough to annoy me.
My legs felt heavy and sluggish this morning, so my first thought was:
Rest day.
Two lungos later, everything looked different. Then I saw the sunrise. Deal sealed. We’re going to the gym. The schedule is running a little later than usual, but I’m hoping to get out before the regular crowd arrives.
We’ll see.
A public restroom visit was unavoidable before setting off. Dry toilet. Matching smell. These situations become more difficult every year.
Once you’ve noticed that people don’t wash their hands even in reasonably clean shopping mall bathrooms, you start seeing things you can’t unsee. The same people lick their fingers to open produce bags. The same people pick their noses at the gym. Probably other locations too.
Unfortunately I notice all of it.
This is one of the reasons I don’t eat at buffet-style lunch places. You all use the same serving utensils. Those utensils touch your hands. Those hands touch everything else. By the time the process is complete, it feels like we’re all eating with the same set of teeth.
Post-Workout
Turns out dragging myself to the gym was worth it after all. Snatch Grip Deadlifts are absolutely fantastic. Finished the session with plenty of clean reps on 40-inch box jumps and seven rounds of farmer’s carries. Before I finally kicked Instagram out of my life, I kept seeing what was apparently the latest fitness trend:
How to spend less time in the gym.
Seriously.
People are actively looking for ways to train as little as possible. That alone deserves a nomination for Worst Crap of the Week. What if you actually want to spend time in the gym? Isn’t progress built on doing enough work, recovering from it, and then doing it again? Adaptation, for crying out loud. Please stop optimizing every last ounce of enjoyment out of training, coaches and influencers.
As usual, I’ll keep watching from the sidelines under the brim of my cap. I’m the ”I told you so” guy who never actually says I told you so. I don’t give advice. I don’t interfere. It’s much more entertaining to observe the chaos from a safe distance.
Besides, at forty-six years old I cleared a box jump of over one meter on my very first attempt. That’s not exactly an everyday achievement.
YouTube, Squats and Discount Chicken
If you’re making YouTube Shorts, changing the thumbnail isn’t exactly straightforward. You need the mobile app, and even then it’s a hassle.
Whatever.
Like so many Google products these days, it’s unnecessarily annoying. I did throw together a clip of my latest squats, though. The next squat videos will probably have to wait until the diet is over sometime in the fall and I can start training properly again. Training while dieting feels a bit like maintaining a classic car.
You keep it running, polish it occasionally, and make sure nothing falls apart, but you’re not really pushing it to its limits. The upside is that I don’t have that hesitation before getting under the bar. There’s also plenty of time to observe what everyone else is doing while pretending to listen to music. Best part of the whole thing.
Strength has held up surprisingly well despite the large calorie deficit.
I’m lifting the same weights I used during the peak week of the previous training cycle. On bench press day I was scheduled for S-M-R-T and chose to add one kilogram to the bar instead of chasing an extra rep. If you’re not a lifter, you probably don’t realize how big a difference that can be.
Yesterday’s menu included grilled sausage, ice cream, and pick-and-mix candy.
As expected, I slept like a baby afterward. This morning I kept breakfast light so I could get back to tracking properly. Unfortunately that meant finishing an open tub of quark and some of my trusty gas-producing whey protein. I wasn’t about to throw away perfectly edible food. It tasted awful. As always.
After training I stopped by Prisma and received what I can only interpret as a sign from the universe that giving up dairy is the correct path.
I found BBQ-seasoned chicken fillets with a 30% discount sticker.
All I had to do was politely ask the employee to apply the markdown. Two packages. Expiration date: June 10th. I’ll go back tomorrow and buy more if there’s any left.
Dairy is becoming harder and harder to justify. Maybe it’s the taste. Maybe it’s my ongoing campaign to become slightly less Finnish. Though to be fair, plain quark really does taste terrible.
—
Tuesday
Another night on six hours of sleep. What changed? Well, I’m training every day and running a calorie deficit of roughly 700 calories. That might have something to do with it.
Oddly enough, I actually feel energetic today. For the first time in a while, I still had gas left in the tank after training.
I’ve decided it’s time to get rid of dairy products for good. This week will be the test run. After training I stopped by Prisma and bought canned tuna in water. That will become breakfast every other day, with egg whites filling the gaps on the alternate mornings.
Take that, dairy industry.
The only dairy left in my diet has been quark anyway. I won’t miss it. An adult human doesn’t need milk for anything, no matter what the dairy lobby keeps telling us. I’m already tired of talking about it. The whole subject is ridiculous. Moving on.
The gym was unusually quiet today. It reminded me of the old days when you could train in peace. The best gym I’ve ever trained at was Kuntosali K-Rakuuna in Lappeenranta, back around 2010 when my training journey was just getting started. It had everything you needed and a genuinely friendly atmosphere, right up to the owners themselves. Speaking of training, I should finally sit down and calculate what I’d need for a home gym. Without a plan you’ll either miss something important or end up paying for things you don’t need.
My rough estimate so far:
€1,500 delivered to my driveway.
- 157.5 kg of weight plates
- 20 kg Olympic barbell
- Adjustable bench
- Power rack
I’d also need rubber flooring, at least four square meters. With that setup I could train at home, in peace, on my own schedule. And honestly, that’s becoming more appealing every year.
Tuesday Evening
The hunger is almost impossible to describe. Complaining won’t help, though. Tomorrow I’ll be visiting the self-service InBody station at IsoKristiina through Puhti. Excellent. Dinner tonight consists of ten boiled eggs. After that it’s off to bed with some background audio playing softly in the darkness.
Wednesday
There was no way I was finishing ten eggs last night, even though the hunger was biblical. I also tried Puhdas+ Night Time Magnesium Strawberry & Blueberry for the first time. Naturally I went straight for the maximum dose. This is clearly a premium product because the taste is ridiculously good.
Seriously.
How did you people pull this off? My late uncle would have called it excellent work. I managed almost seven hours of sleep, and this is now my third week without caffeine.
Crap of the Day
Today’s award goes to Adult ADHD.
Or more specifically, to the people who seem desperate for a diagnosis because it allows them to avoid every possible challenge life throws at them.
Not all of them, obviously.
Life kicks you in the face from time to time. The goal is to get back up stronger each time. I eventually abandoned my own ADHD investigation because it turned out that most of my symptoms were caused by caffeine. Lol-loti-lol-lol-loo.
Not everything needs an explanation.
Move on.
Live. Laugh. Love.
My enthusiasm level is currently somewhere between excited and mildly possessed. I’m heading to the gym shortly and then straight to the self-service InBody station at IsoKristiina through Puhti. Perfect.
The lower back in this video took quite a beating:
The reason becomes pretty obvious once you look at it from a different angle. Needless to say, I’m not reducing the weight.
InBody Results – June 10, 2026
Best score so far. I received a one-year Puhti membership as a Father’s Day gift and I’ve been making good use of it every Wednesday.
Body Age: 42.2 years
Of course, nobody should lose sleep over body composition scans. The numbers vary significantly between devices and testing conditions. The important thing is consistency. Wear similar clothing. Eat roughly the same way beforehand. Keep the variables under control. That’s enough to track the trend. Honestly, nobody needs to do these scans weekly. Once a month would probably be smarter. The problem is that once a month doesn’t motivate me enough. Patience has never been my strongest quality. And this time the stakes feel different. Because this is the last diet. I’m doing it once and for all.
Thursday
I woke up feeling surprisingly fresh after six hours of sleep. Four lungos yesterday, with the last one at 11 PM. That’s been my cutoff point for three weeks now and it seems to be working. I fall asleep quickly. I ate very few carbohydrates yesterday. I’ll calculate the exact number later because I couldn’t be bothered at the time. Lately I’ve been trying to estimate my food intake more by eye so I can eventually stop tracking everything.
During a diet, though, tracking remains king. Yesterday was my first completely dairy-free day. The day before that I had 25 grams of my beloved gas-producing whey protein, so we’re approaching two full days without dairy. Even in that short time my body already looks a little different. That makes me think the observation I heard from Natural Hypertrophy’s YouTube channel might actually have some truth behind it. Two days isn’t exactly scientific evidence.
Still.
Yesterday’s carbohydrate intake was only 135 grams, which probably explains part of it as well. Electrolytes remain a daily priority, hydration is stable, and my body weight isn’t bouncing around like a bag of candy on sale.
Today’s main event is the maiden voyage of El Labrador, also known as my Cube Editor Pro. I’ll be riding it to Syke for training. The excitement is difficult to describe. It’s the same feeling you get whenever a new piece of equipment finally gets to do what it was built for.