The following is the draft preface of Vigorous: 3 Foundational Habits of Exceptional Health, one of two books I plan to publish this year. This book should be available in the spring of 2023, with a second book, Sisu, becoming available in the summer.



Four glasses of water, three glasses of diet soda, two slices of turkey, and one slice of dry wheat toast filled my cafeteria tray. This was breakfast. I carried a brown bag to school for lunch. It included a sandwich, some vegetables, fruit, and a cookie. I ate the meat from the sandwich and the vegetables. Dinner was back at the cafeteria, where I ate a bit of lean protein, salad, and a slice of bread and drank lots of diet soda and water. The water and diet soda helped curb my hunger pangs. I tried to keep my calories as close to 600 per day as possible, although once per week, I allowed myself a cheat meal, usually on a Friday evening. I’d walk across the street from my dorm to a convenience store. After walking up and down each aisle, salivating at the thought of eating a Snickers bar, a pint of ice cream, or a frozen pizza, I inevitably settled on a loaf of bread and a bottle of salsa. After returning to my dorm room, I ate two salsa sandwiches. Then, I gave the rest of the loaf to someone else or tossed it in the trash.



I was 16 years old and lived on the Northern Michigan University campus with a small group of ski jumpers at the Olympic Training Center, and took my junior year classes at Marquette High School. Living on the NMU campus, we ate meals in the same cafeteria as the other college students living on campus.



When the school year began, I weighed 157 pounds. At 5’9”, I wasn’t fat. Not like I had been when I was a pre-teen. But I was still too heavy to be a competitive ski jumper. My coach had pulled me aside early in the school year to reinforce this reality. He said something like, “Tom, if you’re going to be serious about the sport, you need to lose weight. You’re just too heavy for your height.” He was right. At 5’9”, 157 pounds was too heavy. At the same height, a heavier ski jumper doesn’t fly as far as one with the same body type who weighs less. Back then, I often heard that anorexia was more common in ski jumping than in any other Olympic sport, including gymnastics. It got so bad that the International Ski Federation eventually made rules about the minimum weight a ski jumper had to weigh at any given height. If they weighed less, they’d be penalized by having to use shorter skis. Since the skis act as wings in flight, this would be a significant handicap for a jumper.



So, my coach, responsible for my success in the sport, was right to remind me I needed to lose weight, though he had no role in how I did that. I knew a little bit about calories, so I decided to eat as close to 600 calories per day as possible. By the time the ski jumping season began that winter, I’d dropped to 137 pounds. I had to cinch my 28” waist jeans with a belt to keep them from falling off. Somehow, while eating only 600 calories and training for two to three hours a day, which often involved miles of running, plyometrics, sprints, and gymnastics if we weren’t ski jumping, I maintained a GPA of around 3.8. Thinking back on it today, I understand why my mom was mortified the first time she saw my emaciated face at one of the ski jumping tournaments.



As for my ski jumping performance that season, it was…inconsistent. In some tournaments, I did well; in others, I was beyond disappointed. By the season’s end, I realized my ambition to be a world-class ski jumper was over. I knew I’d return home to Ely, Minnesota, for my senior year. And though I knew I’d ski jump the following year for one final season, I knew that after that, I’d hang up my gear and go on to college.



With my mind made up and two months left in the school year, I decided to try something new for my workouts. NMU had a very nice gym, and up to that point,