Although it’s not the category I write about most, the articles and posts that tackle weight loss and nutrition are probably my most important.

“Reprogram Your Metabolism” (Men’s Health, March 2012) looks at metabolic flexibility and other reasons why it’s difficult to lose weight in our current food-rich environment.

“The New Science of Weight Loss” (Men’s Health, January-February 2004) was among my first attempts to explain why almost everything we think we know about weight control is probably wrong.

“The All-Star Diet” (Men’s Health, October 2010) is a much more straightforward look at sports nutrition, focusing on the things we know that are pretty clearly correct.

“13 Ways to Maintain Your Weight Loss” (Men’s Health, May 2011) is one of my all-time-favorite short magazine articles. It focuses on the issue of weight-loss maintenance, which involves a different approach from whatever you did to lose the weight originally.

These somewhat recent blog posts were popular with readers and got some interesting responses:

“Running for Weight Loss: Does It Ever Work?”

“Weight Loss in the Age of Magic”

“Nutrition: What Do We Know, and How Do We Know It?”

“Weight Loss, Part 1: Flab Management Made Easy”

“Weight Loss, Part 2: When the Weight Is There for a Reason”

“Weight Loss, Part 3: You Can’t Always Be Closing“

I describe myself as a health and fitness journalist, but the overwhelming majority of my published work — books and articles — is about strength training. That said, my most successful article is actually about the dark side of endurance exercise.

“Death by Exercise” (Men’s Health, July-August 2003) was part of a package of articles that won the 2004 National Magazine Award in the Personal Service category.

“How to Reach Your Max” (Men’s Health, September 2011) looks at the brutal process of pushing your body as far as it can go. After “Death by Exercise,” it’s probably my second-favorite fitness article in nearly 20 years of writing about the subject.

“True Core Fitness” (mensfitness.com, January 18, 2012) explains how core-stability training helps build total-body strength, even in movement patterns you don’t actually employ in your workouts.

“The New Rules for Sculpting Abs” (The Santa Clarita Signal, January 20, 2011) is a profile of my coauthor, Alwyn Cosgrove, for his local newspaper. And, of course, it’s a blatant plug for NROL for Abs, which had just been published. I include it here because, even though I started out in newspapers, I can’t remember the last time I actually published an article in one.

Many of my blog posts cover training issues; there are far too many to list here. But I’ve always been proud of two articles I wrote early in my tenure at Men’s Health that don’t fit neatly into any particular category.

“Seeing Is Believing” (Men’s Health, November 1998) is the story of my LASIK eye surgery, which allowed me to see without glasses for the first time since third grade.

“A New Fix for Old Injuries” (Men’s Health, November 1999) is the less dramatic story of getting ART treatment on a bum shoulder that I originally injured playing high school football back in 1972. (It was the first tackle I ever made.) At the time, just being able to use my shoulder again without fear of it dislocating felt like a miracle.

My history as a sportswriter was short and unhappy. I had a single part-time job covering high school sports for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in the early 1980s. I got fired. Lesson learned. But I still follow sports, and write about them when the opportunity arises.

“The Secret to the Tigers’ Surprising Turnaround” (Menshealth.com, February 13, 2012) looks at The Program — a business run by former Marine Force Recon major Eric Kapitulik that helps teams reach their full potential — and explains how it helped the struggling basketball program at the University of Missouri become one of the top teams in the country.

“The Juice Is Loose” (Men’s Fitness, March 2005) jumped off from Barry Bonds’ desecration of baseball’s record book, and offered some harsh truth about the influence of PEDs in professional sports.

“The Amazing Transformation of Tim Collins” (Menshealth.com, April 4, 2011) is the antithesis of the Bonds story. It’s about a little guy who worked his way to the top, defying expectations every step of the way.

Some blog posts I enjoyed writing:

“How to Fix Baseball” offers one man’s solutions to some of the nagging problems of his favorite sport. The big one: use the DH in both leagues. As a lifelong National League fan, it took me a long time to come around to this view.

“Youth and Sports: America’s Blind Side?” asks if we put too much emphasis on the games our kids play.

“In Praise of Minor League Baseball” combines two obsessions: baseball and movies about baseball.

“A Not-So-Super Story” tells the story of Steve Little, a placekicker for the NFL Cardinals, back when they were still in St. Louis. The night he got cut from the Cardinals — a big deal, since he had been a first-round draft pick — Little drank with my coworkers and me at a bar downtown. He wrecked his car on the way home and would spend the rest of his short life in a wheelchair. It’s one of my most-read blog posts ever.

“Stupid Elite Athletes” is a two-for-one special: I reveal the secrets of service journalism while also railing on journalists for getting the story of PEDs wrong more often than not.

As a political junky and history nerd, these are some of my favorite articles and posts.

“10 Most Influential Muscleheads” (T-nation, December 20, 2006) was a response to the Atlantic Monthly‘s list of the 100 most influential Americans. It ranked the 10 figures who most influenced the way we train, or the fact that we train at all. The article itself was just my opinion, and in the comments, you’ll see some terrific responses.

“Testosterone Muscle: The 10-year Anniversary” (T-nation, December 2, 2008) is a different kind of history article. I had joined the staff of T-nation a few months before (they changed the name to Testosterone Muscle early in my tenure, before changing it back), and wondered why they hadn’t celebrated 10 years of continuous publication — a rarity for any contemporary magazine, on- or offline. Since I’d been an avid reader since the beginning, I figured I was in good position to explain its influence.

Many of my blog posts over the years have touched on my fascination with history. A few examples:

“Who Was America’s Fittest President?” looks at presidents from Washington to Obama.

“Happy Lupercalia!” goes a bit deeper into history, looking at the origins of Valentine’s Day.

“… and He Has his Father’s Occipital Bun” goes even deeper into history, reflecting my occasional fascination with Neanderthals and the role they did or didn’t play in human evolution.

Like almost every writer I know, I write about my family every chance I get. My biggest problem is that my home life isn’t very interesting to those who don’t live here. Even those who do seem uninterested much of the time.

I like to think that some of my best and most personal work appeared in print in the pre-Internet days, and now gathers mold in the archives. But I’m sure some of my worst work is in those same boxes and file cabinets, and I dig that stuff out at my own peril.

Here are some of my Internet-era magazine articles about my family and me:

“Daddy’s Little Helper” (Men’s Health, April 2001) detailed my discovery that I have ADHD.

“Lost Boys” (Men’s Health, September 2004) looked at the sudden rise in autism, including my son’s diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome. It’s always been one of my favorite articles, mostly because it’s so personal, but also because I was appropriately skeptical about the idea that children’s vaccines cause autism. The autism-vaccine link would soon reach the mainstream media, and even today has currency in some circles. But the research refuting the link has only gotten stronger, and I’m happy to have gotten it right from the beginning.

“Third Time’s a Charmer” (Fit Pregnancy, June-July 2005)  is a Valentine to our third child, Annie, the only person in our household without a diagnosis.

“Not-So-Great Expectations” (Fit Pregnancy, December-January 2007) riffs on my lifelong sports anxiety, and how surprised I was to discover that our middle child, Meredith, was pretty good at them without having any real passion for them.

Some of my favorite posts about family life:

“Lifting While Old” isn’t about my family, but has a fun picture of me with hair.

“Sports, Spelling, and Genes” begins and ends with a story about Meredith at her middle school spelling bee.

“In Praise of Mediocre Parenting” defends our decision not to tiger-mother our kids.

“Coach Your Way to Fitness” is a flimsy excuse to talk about coaching Meredith’s soccer team. “Coachzilla!” covers some of the same territory. This post has yet another look at youth soccer, this time from my perspective as a dad watching from the sideline.

“Things Break,” about an unexpected trip to the emergency room, is among my personal favorites.

“Nuts, Cracked” reveals that the solution to any problem is to watch your daughter dance in The Nutcracker.

Finally, there’s this one, about turning 50 and renewing my vow to not be anything like my father.