I don’t do moderation.
Never really have.
If I’m in, I’m all in. If I’m out, I’m gone.
For the past two years, I was gone.
Not once in the gym.
I went from five days a week — structured, disciplined, consistent — to nothing at all. No tapering off. No “I’ll just keep it ticking over.” Just stopped.
The move home. The disruption. The reset. I let the routine break.
And when I let something break, I tend not to half-break it.
The weight came on.
A lot of it.
I’m not proud of that. But I understand it. This is how I operate. When the switch is off, it’s off.
Now I’m back.
There’s a gym in the building in Blackrock. No commute. No excuse. So it’s five days a week again. Sometimes six.
First week back, I tried to lift like I’d never left.
Bad idea.
Two years off is two years off. The bar doesn’t care about your past discipline. The lungs don’t care about your former pace.
My trainer just shakes his head. He knows the pattern.
He knows I’ll show up.
He also knows I’ll try to compress two years into two months if he doesn’t rein me in.
Here’s the thing about being all or nothing.
It builds things.
It built my career. It drove the long hours. The travel. The standards. The refusal to drift. When I committed, I committed completely. That intensity creates momentum. It creates results.
It also means that when I step away, I don’t step back gradually. I drop it.
There isn’t much middle ground in me.
I’ve tried to manufacture it before. “Balance.” “Moderation.” It sounds sensible. It sounds healthy.
It’s not natural to me.
What is natural is commitment.
Right now, the switch is on again.
Five days.
Sometimes six.
Sore most mornings.
Trainer still shaking his head.
Not because I’ve found equilibrium.
Because I’ve chosen direction.
There’s risk in being wired this way. You can burn too hot. You can disappear entirely when the focus shifts.
But there’s power in it too.
All or nothing isn’t always wise.
But it’s honest.
And at this stage of my life, I’d rather work with the wiring than pretend I’m built differently.