LET'S GET THIS MEATLOAF - Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know About This Absurd Phrase

*To be noted, this is an old post from Summer 2019!

First of all, let me just take a brief moment to introduce myself.

My name’s Morgan. I’m going to be a junior at UC Berkeley this fall, although I’m trying not to remind myself of this heinous fact. I’m studying Sociology and Media Studies, so yes, it would be appropriate to say I don’t know what the butt I’m doing with my life.

I began working out consistently, roughly five to six times a week about a year ago. However, the intensity of my fitness picked up around six months ago when I was experiencing a minor onset of depression.

This just so happened to be around the time all those "let’s get this bread" Snapchat filters started emerging. I remember seeing this phrase one day and being all ?????? But, as pop culture usually goes, after about thirty seconds I stopped questioning the logic of it and like the rest of my generation, adopted it into my vocabulary.

I usually send my designated snapchat of the day at the gym, merely because I am always looking for a way to distract myself from the pain of extensive cardio. Consequently, at this time my snapchats were often accompanied by the "let’s get this bread" filter.

That is, until one day. I decided there’s got to be a better food choice than bread. Now don’t get me wrong, I LOVE bread. But something about it never seemed quite right, at least in the context of the gym. Instantly, the word meatloaf came to mind. I couldn’t tell you why, but as soon as I sent that first "let’s get this meatloaf" snapchat, I knew it was fitting.

[ASIDE] As I was brainstorming this post, I was thinking about why it may have been meatloaf that my subconscious gravitated toward and I’ve come up with a potential hypothesis. Read only if you wish to waste thirty seconds of your life.

"Let’s get this bread" always seemed off putting to me in a gym environment because bread is so fluffy, airy, and light—the exact opposite of what I associate with the gym. The last thing trying to lift heavy a$$ weight reminds me of is mm soft, luscious, warm bread. No. Big weights = BIG MEAT. And while pork tenderloin, flank steak, and roasted chicken are all juicy (and let us not forget, DELICIOUS… sorry vegans), they are far too clean to represent the sweat of the gym. It needed to be something meaty, and more importantly, messy.

Now that you have that overly ambitious, philosophical insight, let us continue to the actual ~meat~ of this post.

Inevitably, as I continued to send gym snaps with interchangeable captions along the lines of "making meatloaf," "getting the meatloaf," "fetching the meatloaf," etc., people latched on to its meaning. And to confirm, no "making the meatloaf" is not making steamy bowels, Joey.

Why I Love Meatloaf

I’m not going to lie—at first, going to the gym was motivated purely by my desire to have abs. Although, this didn’t last long. As I’m sure most of you have come to discover, when projects are driven by the pursuit of a particular image, they get really old, really fast. As soon as that physical expectation is not met, or on the contrary, once it is met, there becomes no real incentive to continue the project at hand. Luckily for me, my strict gym regiment became so routine that I didn’t want to skip—not to mention, I was still trying to pursue the abs I never got... but moot point, right?

This leads me to my first tip when it comes to making your meatloaf:

1. Make sure you have quality ingredients.

Nothing tastes quite as good with crappy ingredients. In other words, don’t opt out of buying organic because it’s forty cents more. Think of it as a long-term investment into your internal well-being, health, and quality of life. To this same effect, while you can reach your fitness goals using short-term, surface level goals, you shouldn't. Yes, I know it’s not as fun to workout for mental health and stress relief as it is for a thigh gap and six pack, but the latter are motives that will dissolve quickly, leaving you with nothing to sustain your fitness. Look inside yourself for quality reasons to work out. And if they don’t exist right now, make them up—they will develop to be true in time. In the meantime, your fitness lies will only bolster your bullshitting skills, something you will need to survive sooner or later.

One thing that always motivated me to have more concrete, long-term goals was the fact that you lose your progress twice as fast as you gain it. Put simply, the muscle you build in one month will be lost in two weeks. Talk about discouraging… you’re telling me I could spend A YEAR working out as hard as possible only to injure myself and lose all that muscle in the recovery time of six months??? Yes, precisely. In fact, I myself am experiencing this exact frustration as we speak. However, I wouldn’t dwell on this fact, but rather use it as encouragement to show up EVERYDAY (minus your rest day of course), even if it’s only for five minutes.

2. Make your meatloaf everyday.

Habits are the byproducts of practiced discipline. That is, an act of discipline becomes a habit when it is no longer an active decision, but an assumed task of your everyday life.

I’m always amazed at the excuses people make not to workout. You’re telling me you can find five hours in your day to browse Facebook and watch Netflix, but not fifteen minutes to show up at the gym?! Let’s be clear here, I never said you had to workout, I just said you had to show up. So if that means relocating your Facebook browsing and binge watching at the gym, so be it. Lay on the floor when you get there for all I care, all I’m requiring you to do is show up.

I was actually listening to a podcast with a professional athletic trainer the other day and he said something which I thought was hilarious. He remarked that people always say showing up is half the battle, when in fact it isn’t part of the battle at all. There’s no battle if you don’t show up!!! It’s not optional!!! So march your booty down to the gym everyday (or rather five or six days a week—rest is important—we’ll get to that later), all it means is a change of scenery for your Netflix viewing.

Being the cheap ass I am, not wanting to waste money started as my motivation to show up at the gym everyday. Last summer I had purchased my first ever gym membership (before that, it was either recreational sports or the free gym my school offered). I got a thirty-day day pass for thirty dollars, but I was leaving to go back to school before those thirty days would be up. Because of this, I reasoned that in order to maximize these thirty dollars worth, I needed to go to the gym everyday (for you econ majors, this is what we call economies of scale). So for once, I’m glad I’m a cheap ass, because it made me have a better ass.

3. Block out your meatloaf making time.

It’s easier to create a habit when you do it at the same time everyday. It provides peace of mind knowing that a specific part of your day is already blocked out and virtually untouchable.

Some of you may be groaning and rolling your eyes here. Oh, great! An hour of cruel and unusual punishment locked into my day!!!! First of all, that’s politically incorrect and insulting to those that suffer from actual cruel and unusual punishment. Shame on you. And second, yes. Nothing says cruel and unusual punishment like self-improvement, I know.

I actually used to (and still sometimes do) use this idea to help motivate myself. If I start trying to convince myself that I’m tired at the start of my workout, I remind myself that working out is not an obligation, but a freedom I am lucky enough to enjoy. Think of all those who would kill to move freely just as you can. Maybe this is an unhealthy mindset to have, but as with many things, I think recontextualizing your so called problems guilts you into working harder.

Think of working out as just another opportunity to capitalize on. You should take advantage of everyday your body offers you the ability to move—that is not something to be taken for granted. Exercise offers you the promise of emotional release, stress relief, mental and physical strength, improved health, and disease prevention—and all for free!!!!! Do you understand me? FREE and GUARANTEED. How many things in this world can you say are free and guaranteed? Other than Costco samples, I can’t name many. We pay money everyday for supplements and products which promise these same things, so why can’t we pay a little time for the same?

4. Start with laying out your ingredients.

If you waltz into a recipe without reading it, laying out your ingredients, or preparing whatsoever, chances are you’re going to make mediocre food at best. This often happens to people in their everyday pursuits. They don’t take the time for proper preparation, and as a result, they suffer consequences.

I, for one, can attest to the rush you get when you are excited about an idea or project—all you want to do is get started. You dive head first into the deep end before you’ve learned how to swim, and suddenly, you’ve drowned. By this definition, I’ve drowned probably a few hundred times.

The point of all this is to say that you need to start small. Force yourself to get to the gym everyday, even if it means sitting on the exercise bike stagnant. Once you do that for a week, pedal for five minutes; after that week’s over, increase the intensity of your five minute ride. The next week, try doing five minutes of intense biking along with a five minute brisk treadmill walk. Use lateral increases of time or intensity to build resistance and strength, both physically and mentally. Fitness is a mental game as much as it is a physical game.

I am quite prone to injury, particularly because I don’t use lateral increases to improve my stamina—I do too much at once. Not only does this inhibit change, but creates new problems and setbacks, ultimately halting and reversing progress. However, because I'm so stubborn, it wasn’t until my frustration with injury overtook my likeness for instant gratification that I finally learned this myself. Learn from me, it’ll save you time in the long run.

5. Make sure you also block out clean up time. Nobody likes a messy kitchen.

As with any meal, there is always clean up—at least to some degree—and your meatloaf is no exception. Take proper time to stretch after your workouts (I’m guilty of not doing this, and it has bit me in the butt many times). And not only that, block in time for relaxation and recovery. Your muscles cannot grow stronger if you do not allow them the rest they need. No one wants a weak noodle, so don’t run yourself thin. Almost everyone experiences burnout at some point or another, but you can lessen its frequency by pacing yourself.

6. Don’t be afraid to experiment with your meatloaf.

This being said, don’t use the excuse of overdoing it to back out of workouts. I think we both know when something poses a learning challenge and when something poses potential physical harm, but I’ll leave you to be the judge of that. Again, speaking from experience, I know when I’ve used "but I can’t do that" as an excuse to do something scary or outside my comfort zone. I also know when I’ve used this as a precaution against my own ego—in case you forgot, I’m good at getting injured.

Let us remember that we only grow when we step outside our comfort zone. So when the uncomfortable suddenly becomes comfortable, this should be an indication to you that it’s time to switch it up. You’ve maximized your learning capacity here, so now it’s time to move on. Don't be complacent in what you know, and remember that failure breaks complacency when you're feeling discouraged by it.

*My first time ever getting a headstand and reaching one of my 2019 goals.

7. Don’t overthink it.

Overthinking is quite possibly the worst thing we can do for ourselves and yet we, more specifically I, continue to do it everyday—to my earlier point, it’s because I’ve made a habit of it.

Sometimes we agonize over the smallest tasks, even in our everyday lives. I’m talking about those obnoxious, petty to-do items that crowd your schedule, yet in total take no more than two hours. Still, day after day they reappear on the to-do list because we push them off. We make them out to be this big ordeal, we drag our feet and whine about how we "just don’t want to do it" and "why do we have to???" Don’t worry, I’m the biggest culprit of them all. But, just as a friendly reminder, we would all save ourselves some time if we just shut up and got it done. Same goes for working out. Start running before you have time to determine whether or not you should be. Start running at 8.0 miles per hour before you have time to brew over what speed you should be running at. Chances are there would be no thought involved if it were beyond your limits, so just do it. This is the one time in your life no thinking is encouraged. Embrace the airhead the world otherwise forbids you to be.

8. Find someone to cook with, or at least to serve to.

People are your helpers, and not just your friends or family—literally anyone and everyone. While image should not dominate your meatloaf motivation, it can be an asset to your aspirations. A big part of why I prefer working out at a gym to running outside or some other recreational activity is because there are constantly large sums of people suffering and sweating alongside you.

Some people see this as gym intimidation, but I see it as gym motivation. Watching beefy men lifting god only knows how much weight while orgasming at the sight of their own veins bulging in the mirror makes me want to projectile vomit. But more importantly, it makes me want to work harder. That is, to show them that women can lift, too, without getting a boner watching themselves (and not just because they don’t have penises).

However, if you can, getting a personal workout buddy, whether that be a trainer, friend, or family member, is even better. Knowing the person allows you to be held accountable and forces you to be painfully honest with yourself. Let me tell you there’s nothing more satisfying than calling out your friend on their bullshit or having them call you out on yours.

9. No journey is linear.

Whether it’s your meatloaf recipe or workout routine, nothing’s going to be perfect on the first try. Just remind yourself that every step you take backwards is only fueling you for your leaps forward.

I’m currently experiencing this myself. Because I overpronate, I am more susceptible to getting shin splints. I had gotten them in the past, but they had always gone away on their own within a few days of rest from running. However, this summer I really wanted to start pushing myself harder in my workouts and I found the best way to do this was interval training, specifically on the treadmill. I’d do a quick warmup, then interchange between one minute sprints and one minute weight training for 20-30 minutes. However, because my body wasn’t accustomed to this rigor of running, I developed more chronic shin splints, but only on one leg. I backed off high impact cardio for a few weeks while continuing weight training, but as soon as I tried running again, the pain came back. So then I decided to just try and ignore it in hopes that the pain would go away on its own, but of course that didn’t work either. And now, here I am with chronic shin splints, having to take a month off from cardio and lower body altogether, just because I wasn’t patient enough to take more time off initially.

So, don’t be an idiot like me. But, if you find it’s too late to save yourself, use this break as a reminder to listen to your body. I know when the adrenaline kicks in, it’s easy to tune your body out to SuicideBoys blaring in your ears. But every once in awhile, make sure you stop to confirm it’s still SuicideBoys screaming and not your body.

*Likely my "peak fitness level" at the beginning of last semester (August 2019). Coincidentally, when I stopped obsessing over the gym and looking a certain way.

Why I Still Love the Meatloaf

To be honest, I could ramble on about fitness for hours. But, what I want to make a point of saying is this: start showing up for yourself.

Recently I listened to a podcast with Kelsey Wells, a fitness BEAST, where she talked about how when she started blocking out forty-five minutes a day to go to the gym and take care of herself, she began realizing that she was worth being taken care of. I instantly choked up at these words because they hit so close to home for me. If you recall, I began going to the gym because I was insecure: I wanted abs. And although the gym never gave me the abs I so desperately wanted, it gave me something so much greater: it taught me how to love myself.

The gym has become a place of empowerment for me—it has given me a time and a place to work on myself, but also to check in on myself. It may not always be my favorite part of the day going in, but it almost always is coming out. I can’t tell you the amount of times sweat has reversed a bad day or allowed me the necessary clarity to move on. Try it and see for yourself, you have nothing to lose but five minutes.

*Me just a few days ago in Copenhagen failing to be a yogi, once again.