How I found 2 extra hours in a day

Happy New Year!

It all started about year ago in 2020. Being stuck at home was depressing enough but I also was quickly approaching 50 and had to do something with my life. So when I heard of Oculus Quest VR that could be used stand-alone while playing fitness games, I quickly got on board. It is a cool concept and they certainly were able to gamify exercises with the games like Supernatural and Beat Saber. Unfortunately, I quickly realized that in order to take full advantage of it you need the following:

1. Space
2. High Ceilings
3. House void of people bumping into to you or calling you to do something urgent in the middle of the action

Gym

I had none of those so my experience had  a lot to be desired. I still tried to use it once in a while but THEN my dear wife gave me a membership to a gym for my birthday. Knowing me, she wanted to be sure that I actually go there,  so she added a couple of months of personal training sessions. With the stakes this high, I had no choice but just start going there.

The question that quickly came up was how do I find time to do it? While we all worked from home at a time, going there after work seemed too daunting and going there on a weekend – too selfish.

So I settled for 7am sessions. The gym was 20 min away and waking up at 6am once a week seemed doable. I need to say that at the end of the first session, I got really dizzy and thought I am going to faint. With times it got better, I stopped trying to impress my instructor l, paced myself and did not forget to bring water anymore 🙂

It worked for a while but did not lasts long. When sessions were over, I lost all the motivations to go there in the mornings. While the whole experience was nice, it did not really changed my physic. On a good side, I was not afraid of free weights anymore and It did put me on a path of self- improvement!

Running

With summer approaching, I started running outside. It was easier just to get out of the house than driving to the gym and back. That was totally new experience for me. I was never a runner and while I did run on a treadmill once in a while, idea of running, let alone running outside was completely alien to me.

Being complete nube, I needed some pointers. How do I know if I am doing it correctly or improving? Fortunately, I already owned Apple Watch and there was a plethora of apps that helped me to track my progress. Bluetooth headphones were also indispensable. And not just for music. My gym membership came with the free app that had guided runs. Boy, that was a game changer. No longer I was alone. A coach would guide me in my runs, pushing me harder and harder. I also learn that I don’t need to run all the time. I can change pace from run and walk and it is ok too.

What is also important is that Apple Watch shows your heart rate while you exercise. In order to get max benefits, It is important to stay in the range where you don’t over-exhaust yourself while still doing cardio, aka orange zone.

The figures are averages, so use them as a general guide.

Age	Target HR Zone 50-85%	Average Maximum Heart Rate, 100%
20 years	100-170 beats per minute (bpm)	200 bpm
30 years	95-162 bpm	190 bpm
35 years	93-157 bpm	185 bpm
40 years	90-153 bpm	180 bpm
45 years	88-149 bpm	175 bpm
50 years	85-145 bpm	170 bpm
55 years	83-140 bpm	165 bpm
60 years	80-136 bpm	160 bpm
65 years	78-132 bpm	155 bpm

The watch also tracks your max and average speed, time and distance which gets recorded into the phone so you can see the history and your progress over time.

I found handy free app that I like called Zones for Training that allows to visualize this data for you in real time, it displays your heart rate data in in your watch in different colors based on the zone you are in. That’s a lot easier that reading small numbers on the watch while running. Watch vibrates once it goes from one zone into another.

The app on the phone is also able to tap into your Health data (If you allow it) and visualizes your prior workouts which is pretty cool

Orange Theory Fitness(OTF) Gyms operate on exactly same idea but they make you to buy their HR monitors, instead.

Now that I was able to quantify my runs and exercises,  it got a lot more interesting. I stopped going to the gym all together and also got Fitness AI app on my phone and started doing actual workouts in the make shift gym in the basement . The app was not free this time but  It was very close to the experience I got with the instructors in the gym for a fraction of the cost.

My equipment consisted of only a bench and and Bowflex dumbbells that collected dust for years.

One interesting outcome of it is that I realized that at least to me, all this exercise did almost nothing to my weight but my fat % went down a little.

I know, because I also had a smart scale that allows to calculate and track 13 different body composition metrics on your phone (Body Weight, BMI, Body Fat%, Water %, Skeletal Muscle, Fat-free Body Weight, Muscle Mass, Bone Mass, Protein, BMR, Subcutaneous Fat, Visceral Fat, and Metabolic Age.). Having this instant feedback keeps you motivated more to work towards your goal.

Dieting

But when I tried Noom program, while continuing exercising, results became visible right away. That just proved the theory that exercising alone just gets you so far. I quickly lost 5lb in a month or so. Fat % also dropped visibly. The system is not new (they made you record everything you eat and tell you once you reach your daily calories) WeightWatcher program did it for years. But with Noom, they also integrated your activity from your phone or watch and thus made it more flexible. In short, you can eat more if you move more. There are also a lot of educational clips about the nutrition which makes you more aware of what you should eat and how often. By the way, you can eat pretty much anything as long as you stay within caloric range and food groups which is good. Unfortunately it is oriented to millennials and the material is very much dumb down, which quickly gets annoying. But I digress.

Once the summer was over and I went back commuting to the office,  I started skipping the exercises and soon thereafter stopped doing them altogether. I was back at square one.

New approach

Lack of time was the main reason or at least that’s how I explained it to myself. I was also struggling to have any time for myself between working, cooking and shopping and entertaining an energetic 8 year old. Where do I find time for anything else? And then I remembered 5 AM Club book that I have read a while ago. The book was interesting but the concept of waking up at 5 o’clock in the morning sounded crazy. I honestly took it as an allegory. How can one achieve that? Why would you do it for yourself? How do you go to bed early when there is so much to do?

But now crunched for time, I decided to give it a shot. Conveniently, with number of Omicron cases rising, i went back to working from home. That made things a bit simpler.

Interesting thing started to happen.

Instead of shrugging off the idea of waking up early, I feel bad when I don’t do it. The house is so quiet at this hour that I can actually get my thoughts together and plan the day without interruptions, catch up on emails, go the gym, listen to a book on Scribd (which I recommend wholeheartedly, by the way. It allows unlimited access to ebooks, audio books and magazines for the whole family and books are also available in foreign languages including Russian and Hindu) Amazon Unlimited is a similar concept but Scribd has a way better selection.

After a workout, I can come back, have a shower and still have time for breakfast with the family. Even if my day does not go as planned, I still have 2 hours that I got for myself.

And falling a sleep by 11pm just happens naturally, in the end.

What also helps is a couple of nootropics

Panax Red Ginseng

Ashwagandha

Ginseng gives an extra boost of energy and helps to focus. Ashwagandha is an adaptogen that helps to deal with daily stress among a lot of other benefits.

Last Advice

I quickly learned that setting an alarm clock is a bad idea. Instead, use a smartwatch that would gently vibrate on your wrist and not wake up everyone around. Also putting your sport clothes next to the bed a night before, makes it easier to sneak away quietly.

This year I am also going try something new. I am going to try to make my exercise routine as consistent as possible and keeping at least 30min of cardio a day without trying to hit any other numbers like speed or distance and see where it gets me.

Join me on Strava!

Cheers!

My Equipment