I'm here to help you make your life easier

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with me, my name is John Craven, and I'm here to help you make your life easier.  Let me explain, I promise I'll try and keep it short. 

 EVERYBODY and their mother wants to look better (moms wanna be bangin, too) and more physically attractive, or if you're anything like me, you'd like to "acquire aesthetics". 


 With that said, there's been a major fitness revolution in the past few years, and accompanying this revolution has been a barrage of training and nutritional misinformation, aptly coined as "Broscience" and the internet has only perpetuated this toxic wasteland of nonsensical nutrition and training gurus. 

This isn't exactly a new revelation, this kind of thing has been happening as long as there's a dude training and another dude willing to listen to whatever bigger dude says, but the power of the internet to propagate and share scientifically wrong information has been a major pitfall in the health and fitness realm. 

And when I say wrong information, i mean straight WRONG. 

Now, i'm not a trainer. I'm not a nutritionist. Actually, I'm glad i'm neither of those, because while most of them mean well, they're the ones who are the most misinformed spreading the wrong kind of information to their clients. I'm not a doctor. I'm not even a biochemist or physicist,
 I'm actually just a mechanical engineer.  

 So who cares, right? I know what you're thinking, "What's engineering have to do with making people healthy, and more important, why should we listen to you??" 

I'll tell you a lil' sumthin right now folks: deciding to become an engineer was the second best decision of my life as it's provided me with an ability to learn about classical mechanics (believe it or not, your body is a highly advanced mechanical machine with hundreds of different bio-mechanical systems) and how to approach any problem and not stop until problem is solved, or at the very least, a solution is proposed.  I've also had a somewhat misplaced passion for writing, so I felt that sharing a lot of my knowledge through a web log would be pretty fun to try out.  I had a 3rd grade teacher that once said to me, "John, just because you're skilled in math and sciences is NO EXCUSE for poor writing skills." While I may not have the best math and science skills (and this guys an engineer??), I do strive to make the most of my writing skills both in my academic and person life.

Now for the first best decision of my life: lifting weights. 

 I'll save my cliche background "started from the bottom now we here" story for another time, but lifting weights changed my life. It gave it purpose. It made me want to strive for something and taught me valuable life lessons, ALL of which crossover into making you a successful person outside of the weight room. Weight training also led me to meet some pretty extraordinary people, many of which I've built life-long friendships with.  I'll be more than happy to ruminate on this and related subjects later, but i digress.

 Here's the bottom line of what I've done and what i'm here to do: I have a passion for training, a passion that rages like a teenage kid with a camel-bak full of everclear at a house party.


 All this desire to improve my physique led me to use "conventional" (not optimal by my standards now) bodybuilding methods to increase my body mass and strength. I ate "clean" for years, with nothing but brown rice, boiled chicken breasts, and maybe some brocolli being my daily meal 6 to 7 times a day, FOR YEARS. 

Sure, i'd get a lil saucy and mix it up with a  it up with a can of tuna, or if i was feeling wild maybe some flavored oatmeal.

 Now you're thinking, "you got pretty jacked and tan, right?" 

Na.

 I got fat. and sloppy. Eating "healthy". Can you believe it?

 Sure, i got big and strong, but by no means did it look glamorous, and all it did was make me frustrated. Years of training and missing out on delicious food, and more importantly, missing out on life experiences. Opting out of hanging out with friends so i could shove brown rice and chicken down my throat, or skipping out on a few beers because i thought for sure it would kill my day's progress in the gym that day.  

That's no way to live, and i don't wish that lifestyle on anyone, yet I see so many guys (and a lot of young ladies) following this dogmatic formula for being "fit and healthy."  

Let me tell you, fit and healthy, are relative terms, and cannot be applied towards ANY food or workout. Everything has shades of gray, has various circumstances, and lots of room for MAYBE, and IT DEPENDS.  

Now, at the opposite end of the spectrum are the ones who are overweight and would love to make a lifestyle change, but might not have the drive or know-how because "working" out and "eating clean" is hard or time consuming.  Yeah, it is, but it doesn't have to be, and it's not for me anymore. 


I don't work any harder than whats minimal and optimal, and I definitely don't stress about "eating clean" (check out my write up on Flexible Dieting) when I'm going about my business everyday.  


You can change your life as well. For the best.

That's what i'm here to do.  I've changed my life, done countless hours or reading and research, and I'm going to share it here with you.

From 210 lbs (not even my largest) to making the change to 165 lbs last summer.

  I'm going to build this site one article at a time, not unlike the way I aquired the knowledge and applied it to myself. 


 Most of these articles are from guys in the industry with phenomenal credentials, and they're passionate about overhauling the current state of affairs (which are appauling to say the least) in the industry. Articles and excerpts from Dr. Layne Norton, John Keifer, Marin Berkhan, Jason Maxwell, John Meadows, and Mark Bell, just to name a few, and a lot of commentary and posts by me. 


 If you haven't heard of these guys and you "lift, bro", then you haven't delved much into the actual scientific realm of health and fitness.  Be sure to check out all of their sites and phenomenal other sources under the INFORMATIVE RESOURCES tab at the top of the page.

Oh, and in case I forgot to mention, everything I'm going to share really does work, and I practice what I preach. It's worked, and continues to work for me, making my days more about MY LIFE and less about  "dieting" and the exercise.  

Enjoy, Ladies and Gentlemen.