Hungry For: Adam PT

Conversations on health, nourishment, beauty, and what we’re hungry for

Hungry For is an ongoing conversation series exploring health, nourishment, beauty, and what we’re hungry for.

Dearest Reader,

I first connected with Adam PT because we’re both sober. While our paths are different, I saw parts of myself in his courageous, honest account of addiction, homelessness, hospitalization, and rehab.

And yet, similar to Adam, I see quitting alcohol—or any other unhelpful substance or pattern—as one part of a much larger story. I also see how much life and wholeness and freedom come from bringing close attention to our essential needs and daily choices.

This means taking responsibility for what’s within our control. It means tending to the fundamentals consistently, from food to movement to connection to purpose. And it means remembering how much agency we have to alter the course of things.

In Adam’s words (which apply to far more than just sobriety from alcohol):

“The path forward is to take back what modern life has stripped away: our awareness, our agency, and our rightful duty to create our own well-being.”

You can find Adam’s writing and how to work with him one-on-one as a sober coach at Rehabitus. Below, I’m so excited to share how Adam embodies this way of living.

What does health feel like to you?

Health feels like being dialled in: vital, oxygenated, holistically well. For me, it means being physically capable, mentally clear, and alive in the parts of myself I couldn’t quite define as either physical or mental.

I prefer to feel strong and able, yet calm and balanced. The image that comes to mind is the proverbial warrior in the garden: like I’ve earned my moment’s peace, but I’m able to fight again in an instant.

There’s a large overlap of health and happiness on my Venn diagram. I can’t imagine living a genuinely happy life that doesn’t involve daily health practices.

And I doubly appreciate health now because I’ve intimately known its opposite. In a time gone by, my body, mind, and spirit were wrecked, and now I’m abundantly healthy in all three, and that contrast has made it impossible for me to take my health for granted.

When I feel healthy, I have the physical and psychological security to say yes to challenge and to serve other people. This opens up a sense of meaningfulness that I feel cannot be unlocked without it. When the security of health is removed, everything above it crumbles down too, which I know all too well.

Therefore, health feels foundational, and perhaps that makes it my priority. But that doesn’t mean I’m obsessed with it, and it certainly doesn’t feel like a chore. My health practices are disciplined but not regimented: organic extensions of who I am, rather than rules imposed upon me. There’s nothing special or novel about them either: it’s all just the basics. Nutritious food, restorative sleep, and daily movement are doing most of the work in terms of being physically and mentally healthy.

What’s nourishing your body, mind, and spirit these days?

My body is being nourished by food, exercise, and rest.

I eat about five meals per day and cook at home, often batch-cooking simple food-as-fuel meals such as chicken or beef with barley, rice, or potatoes, with a few herbs and spices thrown in for vibes. That said, on the odd occasion when someone offers me a slice of pizza or two, I’d take it…because I can. The pizza is the anomaly, and my otherwise stable way of living can accommodate it.

Breakfast is always a goliath bowl of fermented oats, topped with raw milk or yoghurt and bits of whatever else I have, like nuts or berries. This is a trial-and-error discovery: nothing else leaves me feeling as optimally fed or stable. I buy organic oats in 25 kg bags because I’m frugal, but also because I seem to have found the perfect breakfast and need to make sure I never run out.

Apart from the cupboard staples, I shop fresh almost every day. And despite having studied biochemistry, I use very little scientific knowledge when deciding what to eat. I mostly choose basic, single-ingredient food, and the basics tend to be both healthy and cheap: meat, eggs, potatoes, some dairy, some fruit, maybe vegetables. I can actually knock up pretty bougie meals from only a few peasant ingredients.

I’m not a massive fan of vegetables because some don’t agree with me. I also don’t believe in superfoods, I don’t drink expensive smoothies, and I do not believe that I, as a Briton, am biologically required to eat avocados. However, I might change my story when they’re beautifully ripe and on the reduced-price shelf.

I attend the gym every day, but I alternate hard and easy days, with a flat-out best effort circuit thrown into a hard day about once per week. Hard days develop strength and work capacity; easy days are for mobility and rehabilitation.

I arrived at this gym rhythm, also, through trial and error. Too much hard effort can send me into a hole for a week, while doing nothing brings back old aches and pains. Going every day with different effort levels solves both problems. It also removes any inner conflict about whether or not to go: I just go and adjust when I get there.

In 2023, a shoulder surgeon warned me I have about two years until my shoulders need replacing. Now, they cause me virtually no problems. I believe restoring proper strength and movement, along with dead-hanging every day, has helped this considerably.

I had spinal and hip problems too, and now I don’t feel pain there either. I believe this improvement has come from moving my body in the ways it is designed to move. I use loaded three-dimensional movements through the sagittal, frontal, and transverse planes instead of just lifting static gym equipment up and down. I also make sure I spend time in a deep squat every day. These practices have massively improved my overall ability, and I can now lift weights like I’m 25 again.

My mind is currently being nourished by becoming a firefighter. As a new recruit, there is an enormous amount to learn: it’s theoretical, practical, physical, and social. There are pieces of equipment to understand, limits to push, and an entire language to interpret. It demands attention, competence, and humility. Fortunately, it’s a damn good laugh too, and I love it all.

My understanding of spiritual nourishment is a secular one. I’m not religious or conventionally spiritual, but I understand the importance of meaning, reverence, service, and connection. I’d like to think some of the things I believe and practise are functionally spiritual.

I notice beauty in the natural world, in trees, rivers, and animals. Sometimes, if I sit and admire a plant for long enough, a piece of ancient wisdom seems to appear in my mind, as if the plant had subtly told me one of its secrets.

I have a ‘contemplation chair’ where I sit early in the morning with a hot drink. For about an hour, I sit in silence, solitude, and appreciation, allowing uninterrupted, organic thoughts, which I’ll observe and perhaps journal on. It’s like a mix of meditation and free-thought brainstorming.

Sometimes I’ll reflect on how I could be better. Sometimes I’ll then read a little on Stoicism for direction, which I guess kind of works like a religion to me, but an inner one, and it helps me examine my judgments and make more rational choices. Afterwards, I’ll walk around the local woods and soak in its peace. I’ve recently joined a small society that takes care of those woods. I have fond childhood memories there, and I expect to spend much time with my son there too, so I’d best help look after it.

My family nourishes me too. We grow and synergise together. Fatherhood gives me purpose beyond myself; it makes self-development a wider responsibility rather than a personal endeavour. And I feel my job as a father is to become living evidence of what a person can endure.

What are you hungry for?

I’ll begin literally: I am hungry for eggs laid by genuinely free-to-roam farm hens who get to wander, scratch, and eat whatever it is they are supposed to eat. Those eggs are the nectar of the gods. They cook better, taste better, they’re more nutritious, and the chickens are living what I imagine is the perfect chicken life. Everybody wins.

I can get hold of them every once in a while, but if I owned my own land, which is another hunger, I could rear those chickens and other animals, and grow crops with my family.

I’m hungry to remain capable and strong for as long as possible. I’ve seen this expressed as strength-span: not just how long a person lives, but how long they remain physically able. My ultra-long-term goal is to enter a centenarian strongman competition in 2084 and take a medal. It sounds like a joke, but it’s not a bad mindset to adopt. It keeps my effort balanced: train hard, but don’t get reckless. Beneath that is a desire to be useful for as long as possible: for my family, my community, and myself.

I am also hungry to learn music properly. I had the idea of arranging guitar lessons for my son as part of his home education, but then I wondered whether it would be cooler to teach him myself. So I need to improve.

On a good day, I could come across as a decent enough rhythm guitarist, but I’ll be honest here: I don’t really understand much beyond the hand movements. I would like to understand theory and read music instead of just remembering where my fingers go.

I think my deeper hunger is for continued becoming.

I genuinely enjoy practices and habits more than outcomes. Doing more than achieving. I enjoy becoming more than having become.

I feel a freedom in living this way because I can enjoy what I’m doing for what it is, rather than pushing for some future point when I might finally feel complete. And the beauty of this mindset is that milestones still get reached, but without the pressure.

What does it mean to live beautifully?

I’d say to live beautifully is to live congruently: to understand yourself, draw your own blueprint, and make your daily life mostly resemble it.

That blueprint, for me, must recognise life’s polarities. It’s almost as though the path to one thing is through its opposite, and the contrast helps one side give meaning to the other.

I want to be competent, so I must have my weaknesses exposed. I want stillness, so I must choose productive hardship to appreciate it. I want to truly belong, so I must risk letting people see who I am. I want to build more confidence, so I must act before I feel ready.

To live beautifully is also to accept what is without having to immediately change it. It is not to live in one continuously stimulating experience, but to be OK with no visible change while trusting that it’s brewing beneath.

It is to notice the small, everyday joys: plants growing outside my window, laughter at the station, or that hour in the same old chair when nobody needs anything from me, which feels wonderfully fresh every time.

Perhaps I’ll change my mind on what it means to live beautifully. I hope I do because that’ll be proof I’ve continued to grow. And to live beautifully includes that growth. But this is who I am now, and I get to live that way, which is beautiful to me.

Adam, thank you so much for sharing your beautiful, intentional life with us. I’m grateful for your way of being in the world, and for the chance to introduce your work to the PERFECT HUNGER community.

If this resonated, a heart ❤️ helps these letters find their way.

Thank you, with love,
Dana

If you’re new here, welcome! PERFECT HUNGER is about living a more beautiful, nourishing life. I’d love to have you here.

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