Hello hello my darling FB FamBam BlendFriends! I hope you enjoyed yesterday's rhyming goofball of a check-in. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your view), I have run out of rhymes. But I'm still looking for an excuse to talk to you, so let's go for something a little more high brow: Robert Frost! Now what does this have to do with fitness you ask? Hey, I'm quirky enough that I'm gonna try and pull this off, though the brow line may be lowered by the time we get through this.

But first, we need a photographic interlude! This here is a quokka. A what now? A quokka! It's an Australian marsupial that was the result of an experimental cross between a kangaroo and rat gone bad. Trust, me, I'm a biologist. Ok ok quokkas are crepuscular (I love that word) critters that live in the very southwest corner of Australia, and nowadays are mostly limited to a place called Rottnest Island. Science says they are also the cutest lil' things ever, for reals. This photo is kinda old, which you might've guessed because I haven't been to Rottnest Island super recently, but hopefully this is a forgivable offence.

So back to the poetry. Let's review that poem we all (we some?) had to learn in grade school, but almost certainly misunderstood, The Road Not Taken:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Because it is not great

To work the same muscles twice.

So if your quads scream hate

Time to work your glutes mate

Walking uphill on a path in the woods should suffice.

...yep, that's definitely how that poem goes.

Anyway, the way this is usually interpreted (and I'm not exactly innocent here) is as a champion of individualism - take the road less travelled! Go your own way! But if you look at the earlier stanzas, he says the two paths have been travelled equally. That last (well, second to last in this edition) stanza is not about individualism - it is about looking back at your choices in life, and, no matter which road you chose, regretting not having done things differently. A grass would've been greener on the other side moment, so to speak.

I think this is especially relevant at the start of the year, when people are making all sorts of fitness choices. Which program burns the most fat? Which program grows the most muscle? Should I cut carbs? Should I cut fat? Should I this, should I that, which is the right choice, which is the wrong? I've been seeing a number of these sorts of questions here on the forum. And I suppose there might be certain situations or medical conditions where your specific exercise routine and diet will matter.

But for most of us, this black and white thinking isn't usually helpful. It's important to work on various aspects of fitness - strength, endurance, power, flexibility, because that is what will help keep you healthy and feeling good - and not get carried away with which specific sequence of moves will be the most efficient, or get you that 6 pack. And anyway, how much fat you burn and how much muscle you gain is going to depend on a whole host of other factors, like your age, gender, what you eat, starting fitness level, how hard you push yourself, how much you lift, stress levels, sleep, genetics, metabolism - there isn't a simple fork in the road of programs to choose. Likewise, weighing up the pros and cons of the lemon peel diet vs the current celebrity diet vs the leftover pig trotters diet probably isn't going to get you very far. It's important to eat nutritious food and not deprive yourself. You know, eat real food, plenty of plants, eat when you're hungry and not when you're full. No fork in the road of diets to choose from that will make or break how your jeans fit - it's all about looking after yourself in the long term. A piece of cake and a rest week here or there won't derail you from an otherwise healthy lifestyle - neither will an occasional vegetable and walk around the block cure you of chronic lifestyle related diseases. It's all about showing up for yourself in the long-term.

Or maybe you've had some defining fitness moment in the past, such as a medical scare, that absolutely felt like a fork in the road for you. Or perhaps you see fitness as a series of mini forks in the road, with every meal and every day an opportunity to make a healthy choice or unhealthy one. Or you just think I'm off my rocker, in which case I would argue that I never had one in the first place. So tell me: what were your forks in the fitness and nutritional road today, on this long series of forks in the road that is, in fact, so long that it might as well not be considered a fork at all so much as just average lifestyle habits?