When I'm not on the road, I try to intake about 300 grams of

Host: The gym lights buzzed faintly, flickering off the mirrors that lined the walls like pale, artificial sunlight. It was late — the kind of hour when the air feels dense with exhaustion, when machines hum like ghosts remembering motion. The faint scent of iron, sweat, and rubber mats filled the room.

Jack stood near a weight rack, his hands chalked, his grey T-shirt clinging to his shoulders. Jeeny sat cross-legged on a bench, a bottle of water in hand, her hair pulled back, her eyes sharp but calm.

Outside, the city was asleep. Inside, two people wrestled not with dumbbells, but with the meaning of discipline, obsession, and the strange poetry of the human body.

Jeeny: “Albert Hammond Jr. once said, ‘When I’m not on the road, I try to intake about 300 grams of protein a day… it’s methodical.’”
She smiled faintly, shaking her head. “Three hundred grams. That’s... a religion, not a diet.”

Jack: “It’s called commitment, Jeeny. You push your body like that, it starts pushing back — in a good way. You feel sharper, stronger, focused. It’s not madness. It’s control.”

Host: His voice was low, firm, laced with a quiet pride. The echo of a dropped barbell rang out somewhere behind them, a metallic clang that punctuated the moment like a drumbeat.

Jeeny: “Control?” She raised an eyebrow. “You think control is the same as understanding your body?”

Jack: “No. It’s the foundation of it. You don’t get to understand anything until you’ve pushed it past comfort.”

Jeeny: “That’s what worries me — how easily that kind of drive becomes worship. You talk about protein like it’s salvation. Like food stopped being nourishment and turned into math.”

Jack: “Because it is math. Ratios. Timing. Precision. The human body is an equation — and if you solve it right, it rewards you. Hammond understood that. He called it methodical because it’s science, not superstition.”

Host: Jeeny leaned back, her gaze sweeping the empty gym — the neat rows of weights, the mirrors reflecting repetition, not faces. Her voice softened, carrying a note of melancholy.

Jeeny: “But that’s the tragedy, Jack. We’ve turned our bodies into laboratories — tracking, measuring, counting. We’ve forgotten that eating was once sensual, joyful. Now it’s strategy. Now it’s guilt or pride.”

Jack: “You make it sound wrong to care about how you feel. Isn’t it worse to ignore it?”

Jeeny: “Caring is one thing. Controlling every bite, every gram, every breath — that’s another. It’s like you’ve built a cage and called it freedom.”

Jack: “No, Jeeny. It’s liberation. You don’t understand what it’s like to wake up and feel everything working. To know your body’s not betraying you. To look in the mirror and see proof of discipline.”

Host: The silence stretched between them, taut as the string of a bow. Jeeny’s eyes darkened — not with anger, but sorrow.

Jeeny: “But at what cost, Jack? What happens when the mirror becomes the only thing that tells you who you are?”

Jack: “Then at least it’s honest.”

Host: His words were sharp, but his voice cracked slightly on the edge of them. The kind of crack that comes from weariness disguised as certainty.

Jeeny: “Honest? Or cruel?”
She stood, moving closer, her reflection joining his in the glass. “You say it’s science, but I think it’s fear. Fear of decay. Fear of not being perfect. You’re fighting time like it’s your enemy.”

Jack: “Isn’t it? Every day you lose something. Muscle. Energy. Memory. You have to fight back somehow.”

Jeeny: “Fighting isn’t the same as living. You can’t eat your way out of mortality.”

Host: The clock on the wall ticked softly, relentless. The air-conditioning hummed. Sweat glistened on Jack’s temple as he stared at her, caught between defiance and exhaustion.

Jack: “You think I do this to live forever? No. I do it because I’ve been weak before — and I hated it. This... this is proof that I can still shape my life. My body is the only thing I can control when everything else slips.”

Jeeny: “But that’s exactly it, Jack. You’ve turned your body into a barricade. You feed it precision, and it feeds you illusion. You think control will save you, but it’s still hunger — just dressed in discipline.”

Host: Her voice trembled, but it carried the weight of truth. Jack looked away, breathing heavily, as though every word had landed like a blow.

Jack: “You talk like comfort’s a virtue. It’s not. People get soft — in mind, in will — when they stop pushing. Look at history. The Spartans, the samurai, even monks — they understood discipline as art.”

Jeeny: “They also understood moderation. You think they counted protein grams? They lived by balance. You call it control — I call it obsession.”

Host: Jeeny walked toward the window, looking out at the faint neon glow of the city. Her reflection overlapped with the streetlights beyond — two worlds of rhythm and noise.

Jeeny: “I read once that athletes used to train by listening to their bodies. Rest wasn’t weakness; it was wisdom. But now everything’s quantified — your worth measured by a number on a scale or a macro tracker. You’re not living, Jack. You’re auditing.”

Jack: “And yet, I feel better than I ever did.”

Jeeny: “For now.”

Host: The words landed like a whisper, but they lingered. Jack turned back to the mirror, his reflection stoic, the veins on his forearms pulsing beneath his skin. He looked like a statue — perfect, but unbreathing.

Jack: “You don’t understand what it’s like — to see progress, to finally feel mastery after years of chaos.”

Jeeny: “I understand wanting mastery. But there’s a difference between building strength and fearing stillness.”

Host: Her eyes softened as she watched him — the tremor in his hand as he reached for his shaker bottle, the fatigue buried under layers of willpower.

Jeeny: “Tell me something, Jack. When was the last time you ate because you were hungry — not because your spreadsheet told you to?”

Jack: (quietly) “I don’t remember.”

Jeeny: “That’s what I thought.”

Host: The gym fell silent except for the sound of the rain beginning outside — a soft, steady rhythm, like the pulse of something more organic than all this machinery.

Jeeny: “You’re chasing control, Jack. But control isn’t peace. Peace is knowing you don’t need it all the time.”

Jack: “You think peace makes you better? I think it makes you slower.”

Jeeny: “No — it makes you human.”

Host: He looked at her, the fight fading from his eyes, leaving behind something raw, something vulnerable.

Jack: “Maybe I don’t know how to be that anymore.”

Jeeny: “Then start small. Eat something without measuring it. Let it remind you what satisfaction feels like — not efficiency, not fuel, but life.”

Host: She reached into her bag and handed him a banana, its yellow skin bright under the cold gym lights — a simple offering, absurdly ordinary.

Jack stared at it for a moment, then laughed — a quiet, surprised sound.

Jack: “You’re serious?”

Jeeny: “Completely.”

Host: He peeled it slowly, as though rediscovering a ritual he’d forgotten. The first bite made him pause — a flicker of realization crossing his face.

Jack: “It’s sweet.”

Jeeny: “Yes,” she said softly. “That’s what unmeasured life tastes like.”

Host: The lights dimmed as they sat together, the hum of the machines fading into the soft percussion of rain. Outside, the city still moved too fast — but here, for a heartbeat, time slowed.

And in that silence, between hunger and healing, control and surrender, something in Jack — taut, mechanical — began to loosen.

Host: The scene closes on the two of them —
the trainer and the dreamer,
the man who counted every gram,
and the woman who reminded him why food was ever worth tasting at all.

And somewhere in that quiet gym, the truth pulsed — gentle, undeniable:

that to feed the body without feeding the soul
is to build muscle around emptiness,
and call it strength.