Although the main goal of going to the gym is a healthier lifestyle, when you've got bodybuilding in mind, the temptation is to say that the end justifies the means. Diets these days are as restrictive or flexible as you need them to be, so if you've found a way to build muscle that isn't also killing you, then do your thing.
But one guy has faced much more criticism and ridicule for his bodybuilding diet than most, and what's worse - he's had his (pretty outrageous) diet plans recorded on video, there for all to see and bring up at any time. But Danny Andrews deserves all the credit he can get, in my opinion - because he's managed to turn it around.
But first, let's take a short trip down Memory Lane to get to Context Boulevard.
This clip is from the BBC documentary Baby Faced Bodybuilders, and it tells us a little bit about the workout diet of a 16-year-old Danny Andrews, and it's repetitive, to say the least.
"Eight o'clock in the morning I'll have fish and a rice cake. At 10 o'clock, I'll have fish. At 12 o'clock, I'll have fish and a rice cake. At two o'clock, I'll have fish. At four o'clock - just before I train - I'll have fish and a rice cake. I'll train, I'll have me fish. I'll come home, have some more fish, with a rice cake, and then have some more fish before I go to bed."
With a camera glaring you in the face, it's not difficult for the pressure to get to anyone not quite used to it, and say something incredibly stupid that'll be repeated to you ad nauseam for as long as you live. Faced with that kind of humiliation, Andrews could have wilted, but he did not shrink. In fact, you could say he did quite the opposite.
13 years after that infamous documentary appearance, Danny Andrews is 29. He's much older and wiser, but crucially, he's a lot bigger too. He admitted that going on Baby Faced Bodybuilders was a mistake that followed him around for a while, and he got quite a bit of stick for it.
Andrews said that fish and rice cakes were not the secret to his success.
In fact, the documentary didn't fairly represent his diet at the time, claiming that the fish and rice cake diet was only for the last two weeks of his regime, but that didn't stop him from appearing to be a dead ringer for "the stereotype of the typical bodybuilder".
"Some people rip me saying I thought fish was brain food, but clearly it's not. People ask if I was sponsored by Captain Birdseye. People have made memes and remixes on YouTube, also Scott Mills used to play it weekly, he even spoke to Jake Gyllenhaal about it."
That can't have been nice to hear, but Andrews is now the muscleman his teenage self dreamed of being.
Although he took some time out of the public eye to set up his own barbershop, he's thinking about returning to bodybuilding soon. He was embarrassed for a while, but he's since embraced the ridicule, and got down to business building the body he truly wanted.