After 15 years in health and fitness, Dr. Joey's four biggest mistakes were following restrictive named fad diets, being purely outcome-oriented instead of enjoying the process, neglecting sleep and alcohol's impact on his results, and training with an inefficient bro split instead of hitting each muscle group twice a week.
Dr. Joey has been doing this health and fitness thing for over 15 years now, and along the way, he's made plenty of mistakes. Here are the four biggest ones, straight from someone who's lived through all of them, so you don't have to repeat them.
Mistake One: Following Every Named Fad Diet
Over the years, Dr. Joey tried keto, intermittent fasting, and even a diet called GOMAD, which involves drinking a gallon of milk a day to build muscle. His takeaway now: if a diet has a specific name and comes with rigid good-food, bad-food messaging, it's usually unsustainable long term.
A healthy, sustainable diet should meet your nutritional needs, help regulate hunger and satiety, and be enjoyable. Restrictive named diets tend to fail on at least one of these, whether that's keto creating B vitamin and fiber deficiencies, carnivore risking broader deficiencies, or vegan diets often falling short on iron.
Mistake Two: Being Outcome-Obsessed Instead of Enjoying the Process
In college, Dr. Joey saw jacked fitness influencers on YouTube and assumed he'd look like that within a year or two of hard training. Fifteen years later, he still isn't "there," and that's exactly the point.
I used to spend so much time and energy hyperfixating on the way my body looked. It was miserable. I would miss out on life events and never develop internal enjoyment of the process.
Shifting from being purely outcome-driven to valuing training and nutrition because of how they make him feel, and how they make him a better dad, changed everything about how sustainable the whole process became. He stopped spiraling into weeks-long breaks after a disappointing bulk or a missed PR, because the goalpost was no longer just how he looked.
Mistake Three: Ignoring How Lifestyle Affects Body Composition
During college, Dr. Joey trained hard but was also drinking three or four times a week and sleeping poorly as a result. Poor sleep and regular alcohol intake both increase how much muscle you lose relative to fat during a deficit, compared to someone doing identical training and nutrition who sleeps well and drinks less.
Drinking 3-4x a week, poor sleep, high stress, no structure around meals or schedule. Training hard didn't overcome this.
Rarely drinks, prioritizes consistent sleep, structured meals and schedule. Same effort, dramatically different results.
Alcohol also displaces nutrition, since calories spent on drinking are calories not spent on food that actually supports your goals, and it impacts sleep and recovery for two to three days afterward. It's not just about the calories in the drink itself.
Mistake Four: Training With a Bro Split
Like most people starting out, Dr. Joey trained with a classic bro split, one muscle group per day: chest Monday, back Tuesday, and so on. The problem is doing 15 to 20 sets for one muscle group in a single session means the later sets, once that muscle is already fatigued, are performed at noticeably lower quality than the same sets done fresh.
A more evidence-based approach trains each muscle group at least twice a week, spreading volume across more frequent sessions so more of your total sets are performed with better form and heavier weight, rather than crammed into one exhausting session followed by a full week of no direct work.
- Restrictive, named fad diets tend to create nutritional deficiencies and burn people out over time.
- Being purely outcome-oriented about your physique makes the process miserable and inconsistent.
- Sleep quality and alcohol intake significantly affect how much muscle versus fat you lose during a deficit.
- Training each muscle group once a week with high volume produces lower-quality later sets than spreading volume across the week.
- Reflecting honestly on habits that don't serve your goals is often more valuable than any single training or diet tweak.
None of these mistakes are unique. Most people go through some version of all four before finding an approach that actually sticks. The goal isn't avoiding every mistake, it's recognizing these patterns sooner than 15 years in.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do named fad diets tend to fail long term?
Diets built around strict good-food, bad-food rules and named restriction, like keto, carnivore, or GOMAD, tend to create nutritional deficiencies and feel unsustainable, which eventually leads to burnout even when they produce short-term results.
What does it mean to be outcome-oriented instead of process-oriented in fitness?
Outcome-oriented means measuring your fitness purely by how your body looks or a specific physique goal. Process-oriented means valuing the training and habits themselves for how they make you feel and function, which tends to produce more consistency and less frustration.
Is a bro split, training one muscle group per day, a bad way to train?
It's suboptimal compared to training each muscle group at least twice a week. Doing 15-20 sets for one muscle in a single session means later sets are performed at reduced quality due to fatigue, producing less efficient results than spreading that volume across more frequent sessions.
How much does alcohol and sleep actually affect body composition?
Significantly. Poor sleep and regular alcohol intake both increase the amount of muscle lost relative to fat during a deficit, compared to someone with the same training and nutrition who sleeps well and drinks less.
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