My Continual Health & Wellness Journey In Semi-Retirement
If you’re new and not familiar with my story I semi-retired to 20 hours a week at my main job in 2017 after reaching financial independence years before. Since then life has been so much better and I’m constantly tinkering with all aspects of life to be happier, healthier, and just a better person. Working only 20 hours a week at my job gives me ample time to do that.
At this point in my life I’m a health nut, full stop. No bones about it. I grew up obese, turned into a functional alcoholic, and somehow escaped all that mess to become pretty darn fit in my 40’s and early 50’s. It was hard, a real struggle.
Much of my life now is consumed with my health because the healthier I am, the better I show up for the folks I love. That’s important to me because I owe it to them.
I’ve written quite a bit about my journey, from my diet to my cycling races. And just a few months ago I wrote a post titled “Lose The Job, Lose The Weight“. In that post I offered to help anyone who is struggling with their weight to reach out to me, and I expected crickets.
To my surprise a few readers did, and I even did a video call with one reader. It’s tremendously meaningful to me and why you are now looking at this admittedly quite long post.
I’ve made some tweaks to my routines and lifestyle since some of those older posts above, so I wanted to detail where I’m at in my journey in hopes that it might help others.
Food
Before I move on I want to be clear that nothing I write about should be taken as advice as to what you should do to get healthier. Some things will probably work for everyone and should be considered health 101, but others might not. Before making any big changes to your diet or supplements talk to your doctor. My legal team made me insert that 🙂
Let’s talk diet. The post I linked to above about my diet is almost 3 years old now and much of that resulted from my experiments during covid when I had time to try things out and cook. In an nutshell I shifted to a very low carbohydrate diet (by American standards) and just kept feeling better and better. When vaccines rolled out in 2021 and races came back I had my best year on the bike up till then, by far. I was killing it.
Over the last three years I have brought back carbs a little more but only on hard training days or race days. I proved I could successfully convert my body to burning fat on hard races and rides with carb restriction, but the science shows that carbs will allow you to go faster for longer, and performance matters to me. So before a big riding day I’ll now go back to oatmeal in the morning and a bit of carb loading, but only on heavy ride or running days. On other days it’s still all protein and fat in the morning, with one of my specialty omelettes.
I still eat at least 4 or 5 hours before going to bed, and still strive for a 16-8 time restricted eating routine. But I’m not religious about it and have no issues doing a 12-12 when needed.
I have scaled back my red meat consumption a bit since 2021, but still eat it. The science on red meat consumption is a big pile of crap – thousands of papers worth – with no consensus and full of special interest funding and bad-faith “scientists” with biases etc. I follow things closely nevertheless, and my general thinking at this point is to not give up red meat but keep it to once a week or perhaps even a bit less. Who knows. I feel great though.
Lastly I started eating way more fermented foods in the past three years such as sauerkraut, kimchi, kefer, greek yogurt, and miso. The current science shows they help support a healthy and balanced gut microbiome which increasingly seems to be the key to overall health in general.
And oh yeah, I haven’t had an alcoholic drink in over 14 months, not that I’m counting.
Supplements
I’ve upped my supplement game, a lot. In theory we humans should be getting everything we need from our diets and lifestyle. But life in 2024 bears no resemblance to how we evolved, so we have to supplement. I take:
- Vitamin D3 (5,000 IUs) – daily
- Magnesium Citrate 100mg – daily
- Zinc 50mg – daily
- Apigenin 50mg – – most days
- Magnesium Threonate 1500mg – most days
- Fish Oil – only on days when I don’t eat fish or seafood which is only 2 – 3 days a week. Usually 800 – 1000mg Omega-3
- Beet Root juice – this is purely to perform better in endurance sports, the science is pretty solid and most pro cyclists use it (it’s legal 🙂 )
- Sodium Bicarbonate – another cycling/running performance enhancer. Yes this is also called “baking soda” and is dirt cheap. Has pretty sound science behind it. It’s also legal, haha. I use this rarely, only when I want to beat one of my rivals in a race or training ride. I probably sound like an ultra-competitive jerk at this point but I’m told that I’m a nice guy.
That’s it. I plan to start using creatine this year but will wait until my spring training ramps up in April.
I’ll repeat, please don’t start taking anything without talking to your doctor, especially if you’re on any pharmaceuticals.
Sleep
Sleep gets it’s own category because it’s that important. I sleep extremely well these days, the best I have in my adult life actually. Two of the supplements above (Apigenin and Magnesium Threonate) were recommended by Andrew Huberman and he showed the science behind them.
I stopped taking melatonin and started on those two and I feel they work well. I’m concerned that supplementing with melatonin – something that our bodies produce naturally – could interfere with my bodies natural production. It’s a contested topic in science, like most. I’d rather play it safe.
I go to bed 8:30 – 9:30 and get up 4:30 – 5:00. Most Americans will read that sentence and either laugh, feel sorry for me, or both. It’s all good. I’ve written about how I live very differently than most of society and am good with that. I’ve found my sweet spot on sleep and it’s working wonders.
I stopped napping. Yes I wrote a post about coffee naps and I was doing them for quite a while. Well, that wasn’t too smart. Live and learn.
Caffeine has a different half-life in everyone’s body, and short of getting that tested we all have to try to figure it out. I’m pretty sure caffeine stays in my system for 12 hours or possibly more. So I stop my caffeine consumption at 8:30 – 9:00 in the morning, no exceptions. That along with not eating too close to bedtime have helped my sleep tremendously. Most nights I fall asleep about 10 minutes after getting in bed and stay asleep. It’s wonderful.
Training
I won’t get too much into my endurance training as it gets deep in the weeds of cycling and running geekery. In a nutshell I still train hard, usually 8 – 14 hours a week of endurance (running and cycling).
My big change recently has been to add more resistance training in. It’s hard, I hate lifting weights.
But life is hard, and I just have to man up.
Muscle loss accelerates for folks my age unless it’s slowed, and lifting weights slows it. Plain and simple. So far this year I’m off to a good start and have been making a habit of doing 100 – 200 pushups a day and doing more focused 30 – 45 minute lifting sessions, especially on days when the weather isn’t good for outside sports.
Hey Dave You Sound Like One Boring Dude, Live A Little
Trust me, I lived and “partied” more than most in my younger years and while often fun it destroyed me. Bad diet, alcohol, and little sleep – been there done that got the passport stamp. Finito.
If I have to consent to being called boring while feeling the the way I feel now – healthier and more energetic than ever – I’ll take that trade any day of the week.
And I’d like to reiterate that anyone who is struggling with their weight or health and wants to reach out to me I’d gladly discuss my journey and do my best to encourage or even coach you to make the necessary changes to turn the ship around. While I’m not a professional I feel my story and lessons learned have something to offer.
i quit caffeine about 5 years ago but this past year went back to one cup of coffee most weekend days. mrs. smidlap makes good coffee and it’s hard to resist but, like you, that stuff seems to stay active in my system a long time.
i still live a hard lifestyle but cooking real food at home and getting lots of sleep seems to serve me well. we still gotta tackle that 6:00 mile.
Wow quitting caffeine takes discipline, I’ve never done it. One cup a day is so so moderate compared to most and if you keep that cup to first thing in the morn I doubt it’s interfering with your sleep. It’s the afternoon caffeine that gets people, and that includes soda and chocolate too, they all have caffeine. As for the 6:00 mile, man I wanna think it’s possible… I would need a shit-ton of caffeine!
Awesome update. Thank you for continuing to share your journey! Positive Energy your way! #FIREandStillLearning – Brandon
Thanks for reading Brandon!
I want to chime in on the diet part. You and I have gone down similar paths for years on this, and I totally admire your outdoor challenges and experiences that are beyond mine. But I’m climbing Mt. Whitney this summer, as part of a 6 day backpack trip, mule assisted. That will be my first 14er!
Anyhow, on the diet…I’ve gone down the rabbit hole and I want to warn you that I think the PUFA fats are the key to the whole thing. You’ve shared links to mice studies saying that fat in the diet makes them overweight. But you didn’t dig into the study and realize how they fatten those mice. It’s all the fake man-made oils that are everywhere. You’ve sort of eliminated them by going low-carb and doing your own cooking. But shying away from red meat means that you’re eating the most PUFA fake meats. They’ve bred pigs and chickens to be low-fat and the content of their meat is now highly linoleic acid. Yeah, you “need” to supplement Omega 3 because of this. But that’s also PUFA. This is what breaks most people’s metabolism in the first place. Fake oils don’t work on the mitochondria like animal fats that we’ve evolved with and then your brain starts craving sugars and starches for fuel. And that’s when the carbs become a problem. So we’ve gone low-carb, but not peeled that onion back one more layer.
Bring back that red meat. Look at references to Peter from Hyperlipid if you want a PhD in this. Or get the cliff notes version on YouTubes with people who translate him. He is just a curious guy, not selling anything, and blogging because he’s wanted to keep his thoughts for himself as he unravels questions that he has to research.
All I can say is this, and I seem to keep saying it (as a “scientist”): “I believe I am wrong”…
Susan – I’m honored (and surprised) that you still read my slowly dying blog! First off, Mt. Whitney, so so stoked for you! It’s a beautiful place and you will love it. My biggest tip would be to spend quality time on the summit, it’s a massive summit area that can hold tons of people so you can find a spot, sit and eat and enjoy life at 14k.
I agree PUFAs are good, and I get plenty of them. Between organic butter, walnuts, and salmon and sardines I get plenty of PUFA. So the vegetable and seed oil thing… I addressed that in my post from 3 years ago and since 2020 I have avoided them, almost completely. Of course when you eat out at a restaurant it’s very likely they’re using soybean oil, canola oil, or sunflower/safflower oil, even good restaurants. I don’t eat out much at all. When in the grocery store if I see a seed oil listed on the ingredients I don’t buy it, period. And as you know they put that shit in almost all packed foods. So yes, I don’t buy many packaged foods.
As for “PUFA fake” meats, I don’t eat any pork and eat chicken sparingly. I’m very familiar with the linoleic acid topic – we could get into a whole discussion about omega-3/omega-6 balance which is a huge health issue in America. Much of Americans linoleic acid and omega-6 load comes from seed oils, not just those fake PUFAs.
Bottom line, I’m pretty confident that natural/wild red meat is healthy. But it’s very hard and very very expensive to get. Most folks think when they buy “grass fed” beef they’re getting beef from a cow that’s eaten grass it’s whole life. This is often false. Yes the UDSA definition of “grass fed” means the animal should have not been fed grain, but they do not enforce this rule or barely enforce it. I talked to some farmers at my local farmers market and one told me that most farms are lying and supplement the feed of “grass fed” cattle with corn and grain. It’s just too easy and cheap to do that. It’s best to look for “grass-fed grass-finished”, and even then you’re still trusting what they say. Cows should not be eating corn, as you know. It makes for a very unhealthy and metabolically sick animal. But it also makes a fat animal that grows faster, and that’s what they want. And when a human eats a sick animal that ate something it wasn’t supposed to eat to get fat, the human just goes down the same track.
So getting real meat – meaning meat from a wild animal that hasn’t been bred on junk food – is hard, unless you hunt. I am not opposed to hunting per se, but can’t see me doing it myself. If I had access to real wild game like venison and elk I would eat it a lot as I’m convinced it’s healthy. Yes I know there are services that will deliver that to me, but damn it’s costly. I already pay a good 50% premium across the board to eat healthy, not sure if I’m willing to pay a 200% premium. Maybe that will change one day. That’s my long-winded response to your great comment, and yes we’re all wrong!
I always love your posts, but this one really resonated with me. Thank you for all you do to inform us!
Wow thanks so much Sherrie, I appreciate that!
Dave, that’s pretty amazing. You’re probably in the top 1% health wise. I’m 50 this year and I’m trying to stay healthy. I’m going to the gym again. It’s the only way I can consistently exercise. I’m going 3-4 times per week.
As for diet, I just focus on cooking at home. That’s a lot healthier than eating out. I try to cook at least 2 seafood or vegetarian meals per week.
The meat discussion above is interesting.
Way to go Joe, keep up your gym habit! My advice would be that if you ever start disliking/hating the gym, immediately try to find some workout modality that you do like. Liking a form of exercise is crucial to staying the course. That’s why I mentioned that I hate lifting weights. I’m in search of ways to make lifting more tolerable, and am willing to spend some money to do so. As for food, cooking at home with real/whole food ingredients solves 80 – 90% of problems, as long as you don’t add sugar to everything, haha.
Great story/blog about your journey and especially like your so transparent!
If you’ve got a standard grocery list of food and spices I would appreciate it you would share.
Bed time no later than 9:30 – I totally agree!!!
Regards,
Bill
Hey Bill, most of what I eat is still in the older diet post but to provide a bit more detail…
Salmon (always wild caught)
sardines (in water only)
eggs (usually organic)
shrimp
beef – I strive for grass-fed/grass-finished but often jus get grass-fed labeled, never normal beef
vegetables – I eat everything. Heavy on onions, brussells sprouts, broccoli, radishes, and peppers. But I try to eat as many colors in one day as possible to get the most phytochemicals
organic bone broth
greek yogurt (whole)
kefer (plain, any flavored kefer will have sugar added)
organic oatmeal
organic miso
organic kimchi
nuts (ONLY raw – most nuts are roasted in bad oils and have added crap, get raw)
fruit – i eat bananas and blueberries almost every day. Also eat apples, kiwi, blackberries, golden berries, and sometimes mango as a treat
dried fruit – organic raisins, dates, figs and apricots (these are like candy and you have to be careful)
dark chocolate (85 – 95%)
spices – I use lots but heavy on pepper, garlic, oregano, basil, chives, cilantro, turmeric
That list above is most of what I eat on a regular basis. When I’m on a century ride or big day in the mountains climbing I will add some convenience foods like a Probar or a gel since they pack well. Thanks for reading!
We’re kindred spirits, Dave. I added weight training to my fitness regime a few years ago and have been impressed with how much better it makes me feel (tho, like you, I don’t really enjoy doing it). After years of being “cardio-focused,” you’re spot on that focusing on muscle strength is critical as we age. Doing all I can to slow the inevitable muscle decay…
Nice going dude, we are kindred spirits. We should start some kind of “I hate lifting lifting club”
Solid work Dave. I’m still thankful for your older fitness related post which turned me onto that “Younger Next Year” book, which led me down a similar rabbit hole to optimize my health for longevity.
I hear you about wanting to do cardio instead of weight training. I was like that for years, but luckily one of my jobs required more strength than I started with, which drove me into powerlifting. Now that I can do whatever I want, my training is an even split between the two domains. I won’t win any competitions in either, but I feel much better.
Some stuff that helped me, listed from actually applicable to me mostly kidding:
1. Time of day-I can knock out a 2 hour cardio thing first thing in the AM and feel great. Does not work with strength stuff; I’m much more motivated to do that in the afternoon, and my numbers reflect this. You’ve probably already tried this, and it’s another reason to be thankful for FIRE since it requires flexibility.
2. Music. I like the stuff you share in your TGIF roundups, but for lifting it’s just too….cultured? Ask yourself what they would listen to on that ‘Jersey Shore’ show. Then pump that. Heavy beat in the background, and the musical complexity of ‘Hot Cross Buns’ is the way to go.
3. Mindset. Every day watch either Predator or Conan the Barbarian (the real one, not the remake with Jason Mimosa (yes I meant to spell his name that way)). If it bleeds, we can kill it. Like our weakness, but with squats or something.
4. Linguistics. How we speak is how we act. Have you tried calling everyone bro yet, bro? Lots of nuance here. Try on ‘brah’, ‘bruh’ and the like, and see which one leads to a PR.
But in all honesty, who really cares? Seems like you’re on the right track already, and even if you only did a few bodyweight things regularly you’ll still be super healthy and have an enjoyable life. Looking forward to hearing what you do next in this domain!
This will go in the AF comment Hall Of Fame! Stoked I got you turned on the YNY, that book is nothing if not a motivator and inspiration. I’ll address your amazing bullets
1. Pretty much with ya. I can do endurance/cardio in the morning but prefer late morning after caffeine has warmed me up. But lifting, I have a much better chance of doing in the early afternoon.
2. So there goes my idea for a “Pump Up to Tracy Chapman” video on YouTube, haha. When lifting I actually dose heavy on ACDC, Sabbath, Judas Priest, Motorhead, and some nice old school 80’s punk. I’m a guitar guy so no digital thump-thump for me!
3. Would Alien vs. Predator work? I’m kinda into the ludicrous stuff
4. I use all forms of bro, or at least strive for that metric. This reminded me of the dude commercial from a long time ago, same 4 letters, just how you accent whatever part it
Thanks for the epic comment brah!
Hi – Great post and discussion.
Thinking about my approach to this I
find my mindset is similar to how I approached financial goals, so perhaps fairly modest overall: I work at this so I can continue to haul gear and supplies around the globe including rotational movement and lifting above my head. I also do it so I can eat what I want, though maybe not all I want 🙂
I have some basic questions:
1) What counts as “warm up”?
2) Any rules of thumb for how hard to push before injury? For instance, I feel the fatigue and burn like I can’t do another rep, and then find I generally don’t hurt the next day which I suppose is better than a setback from injury, but that all makes me question if I am going hard enough!
Not sure abut your question #1… if you mean what counts as a warm up to a workout I’d say that depends on the workout. I’m not a personal trainer, but I think it’s always best to ease into any workout and not go 110% from the gun. As for #2 the goal should be to never get close to injury, I suspect if you’re doing a lifting move until failure and you’re not feeling much fatigue or soreness the next day you might wanna either add some sets or try what’s called “muscle confusion”. You can look that up but in a nutshell it means to vary the specific movement. So for abs you could do crunches, but if you do them too often your abs adjust. Then try doing hanging leg raises and they work your abs hard but have different movement subtleties. My legal team is looking over my shoulder and again is making sure I remind you I’m not a professional 🙂
Oof my bad, didn’t mean to make you a mind-reader. I had the two questions connected as one thought, which is to say “if I haven’t been pushing hard enough, does that mean all I’ve been doing for workouts is one long warm-up sesh? oops.”
Thanks for the suggestions, looking into them!
I’m with you on the “boring” life; it’s just the best. And nearing 50 myself I’ve had to cut caffeine down (I still eat chocolate) and keep adding more weights to my routine. But the adding of weights is slowing down lately. 😉
I hear ya, I’m rarely “adding” any weight to my routine, and I have plenty days when I can’t do nearly as many reps as a week before. But then other days surprise me, the key is to keep showing up. Thanks for the comment!