Changing your life is possible even after 40. I’ll tell you how I did it and how I motivated myself to regain lost health. But first we need to talk about my weight and habits timeline.
All my life I was the skinniest kid on the block. But even in my teens, when I was likely underweight, I never was fit.
The only sport that interested me early in life was skateboarding. But it was an on-and-off-affair. I skated for a year, then let it go for three.
I came back to it more seriously after I turned 40 and with all the other life choices I’m much, much better at it now than I ever was.
This post-soviet kid in 1994 had no idea that 30 years later he’ll be heelflipping at Times Square in New York City! What a ride!
The only thing I was truly consistent at was playing video games.
156 grams of sugar
I loved fast food and sodas. When I was a foreign exchange student in the US in 1999, I remember drinking 3-4 cans of coke a day.
Every single day.
That’s 156 grams of pure sugar ingested at 17 years old.
Then I discovered alcohol. Became a huge fan of beer, eventually progressing up the ladder to craft beer. I remember feeling all smug drinking my pine-cone flavored IPA. Like I was doing something great for not drinking a corporate lager.
I was going to Mikkeller and feeling special. Ten years later I went again and had a non-alcoholic beer just to take this photo:
Sure, the ingredients were better, but it led to the same underlying problem. I got fat.
At 35 I was nearly 100kg, which in my case is 20kg overweight.
I especially love how there’s a sign pointing to a wine bar in one of the photos from that era. Pudgy, puffy face and barely able to catch my breath walking up some stairs.
Regular pizza and beer. Burgers. Gas station hotdogs.
Sounds familiar?
You can’t outrun a bad diet
It was early 2014 and I decided it’s time for a change. Right around that time my fiancé found a niche health blog that captured our attention.
It talked about correlation between food quality and mood. Something I never thought about.
It also introduced us to our first supplements, thinking Spirulina will solve all problems. Hint: It didn’t. But it wasn’t bad either.
I reintroduced more green vegetables to my diet, which at that stage was primarily vegetarian. Eggs and cheese, but no meat.
Then I started running and weight began to shed. At first slowly, then more rapidly. By 2017 I was 88kgs, down almost 12 in 2 years.
I was sporadically skateboarding and running at least twice a week. Mostly 10km, sometimes 5. I slowly started running more and more. My runs weren’t really getting fast, but I was able to do long distances. And in 2021 ran my first 12 half marathons (one each month) and my first 1000 km in a year.
Bad sleep and excuses
I started freelancing in 2009 and that led to my first experiences of the grind. Working practically 24/7. I remember replying to client emails on a Saturday evening. At a movie theatre. Doing a date with my now wife.
I was obsessed with growing the company at any cost and yeah… my health suffered.
I slept for an average of 5-6 hours per night, mostly after a few beers. I felt like I deserved a beer or two after a hard day of work.
That reward mechanism led to the initial weight gain. Later I kept it in check with running regularly, but still drinking.
You don’t need to be a longevity scientist to predict that it will end up in a plateau.
I stayed a much healthier weight, but I was far from healthy.]
First step: quit alcohol
It was 2019 and I went out to dinner with a group of friends. They invited some new people and one of them said he stopped drinking five years ago.
It got me curious. I asked him a lot of questions about social pressure, stress relief and other stuff. I even tried to convince him that studies show red wine can be healthy.
Those studies are like saying drinking cyanide with vitamin C is healthy. Because it boosts your vit C levels you know.
But right then I decided to quit drinking for a month. It was June of 2019, right at the start of the tourist season in my hometown of Sopot.
The summers in Sopot, which is a beachside resort, are all about partying. Drinking at the beach. At the countless bars. All social interaction revolves around alcohol.
I lasted two weeks
Not drinking was surprisingly easy. At least until I went out with some other friend two weeks later.
I came up to the bar initially wanting to get some sparkling water for myself. And then heard myself saying “six beers for that table there, and some shots!”
Yeah, bad habits die hard.
The next day I woke up rested, no hangover or anything. But I realised I couldn’t even keep a promise to myself.
Let’s restart this challenge!
I decided to stop drinking again. For a month. But this time to make it till the end.
And when I finally did I thought to myself: well I lasted a month. How about 6 weeks then?
Six weeks turned to two months. And after two months I realised I barely miss drinking at all.
I noticed a couple of other changes though. I felt infinitely better. Both physically and mentally.
My business was booming. As if I had more mental energy to perform better.
Moving the needle
I decided to quit drinking completely. No idea when exactly that happened. It was a series of connected realisations.
If everything works better now, why would I go back to how it was before?
As an avid gamer for most of my life, it all connected with a video game metaphor.
Life is, in a way, like a video game. And when you’re playing a game you sometimes have an option to drink a bottle of booze.
In most games it gives you blurred vision and worse aim. It lowers your character stats.
When playing a game, people want to win. They want a high score.
So when they encounter alcohol, they chuckle at the idea but then throw it away. Why impair ourselves?
Alcohol’s out, but other things were still bad
Quitting alcohol turned out to be pretty easy. I’ve been completely sober since July of 2019 – almost 6 years now. I have absolutely zero need to drink. It doesn’t even cross my mind.
My overall health improved, but there were other areas to still fix. Stress. Sleep. Food.
I’ve been on a quest ever since, trying to improve myself. Started measuring my sleep around 2023. Started regular sauna and cold exposure around the same time. Added strength training 3 times per week.
I went to the Wim Hof method retreat in 2022 as well. Climbed the Snezka mountain at -20°C wearing just shorts. Swam with the icebergs in Iceland. Ran 12 half marathons per year. 1000km’s of overall runs yearly.
And gradually I’m becoming a person I always wanted to be, but managed to find excuses to delay that.
This website is dedicated to that push. That final straw that makes you become consistent. And I will outline everything I now do for this to work.
I’m 42 years old Today. I’m in the best shape of my life. I’m the strongest I’ve ever been. Most serene. Happy.
Life’s good when the choices are good. But for that you need to deliberately defy the bad ones.
So here we are!