Why I built The Fit Protocol

I’m 37. I played sports regularly until I was 18, then law school began, and between that and a couple of injuries, I stopped training for good. Ever since, my weight has been swinging up and down. I only went to the gym here and there, a month or two at a time. Usually I’d take up running once there was already way too much fat on me. At 88 kg I felt genuinely awful — everything felt heavy.

So I’d run for 2–3 months, every day or every other day, diet a little (chicken, rice), get down to around 78–79 kg, feel good, quit both the training and the diet, and the whole thing would start over. Carb-heavy food, everything you can imagine.

My genetics are terrible in this respect too

I can easily gain 4–5 kg in about a month just by eating like a normal person. My mom is about 152 cm and 110 kg, even though she eats nothing different from any other retiree. That’s what a low calorie requirement does: mine is simply lower than most people’s.

Sure, a lot of people deny this exists, but look at your own friends. I have a friend who’s 193 cm, not muscular because he never trains, but very lean, and every single one of his meals would count as a “cheat meal.” I go on vacation, let myself go, and I’m 4 kg heavier after two weeks. He comes back 2 kg lighter, even though we ate the same things.

That’s just how it is, and there’s nothing you can do about your genetics. You have to put the energy into your diet and your training, and if the goal is losing fat, you have to be in a calorie deficit. That’s the one thing that works. And if the goal is building muscle, then depending on your genetics, you need a slight calorie surplus, while paying attention to your body’s signals.

It took me 2 years to build my nutrition and training consciously

Around COVID I’d already been working for about 6 years, usually overweight, occasionally repeating the running or gym phases above, losing weight, then starting all over again. Then long-term home office was ordered, and I worked from home for 3–4 months. The gyms closed, I ordered weights, started doing cardio, and began counting calories. It took me 2 years to get to the point where I consciously built up my nutrition and my training. There were weeks when I went to the gym 6–7 times, pushing everything else aside, but it paid off: I lost 18 kg, the scale showed 70 kg, and I was lean and muscular.

That’s when I decided I never wanted to get fat again, which meant I had to build a sustainable model, one that doesn’t require training six times a week. In the meantime I went from in-house counsel to senior attorney, so that schedule didn’t fit into my life at all anymore. Of course, 70 kg wasn’t sustainable with my build, so I had to let some of it go, but by then I knew exactly what works and what doesn’t. I settled at 74 kg, and today I can control my body any time: when I want to gain, and also when I want to get leaner for summer and, say, relax on the beach at 70 kg.

For that, I needed a model I could run efficiently alongside work, wife, kid, and free time. I can’t get to the gym 6 times a week anymore, I’m happy if 3 sessions happen, so I had to go all in on efficiency. The same goes for my meals: I can’t spend hours in the kitchen, and to be honest, I don’t want to either. So I had to develop an efficient method for that as well, one that gets it done with the least possible time investment.

That’s how The Fit Protocol was born

In it, you can learn and follow the knowledge I built up over about 5–6 years, knowledge that makes my life significantly easier and, I hope, healthier too. I’m not a fitness influencer. You’ll find my real photos here and in the blog posts, so you can see what kind of shape is sustainable and what can be achieved.

Sustainability is partly a question of build, of course. Some people can easily maintain the 70 kg form year-round, that’s an individual thing. But by following the method, anyone can fit training and nutrition into a busy life, and if you stick with it, your life can take a more athletic direction. Give it a try.