Maximum Fitness: The Best Benefit Of FIRE

You can have all of the money in the world, but it means nothing if you don’t have your health. Warren Buffett drove this point home at the first Berkshire Hathaway meeting I attended over 10 years ago. A young audience member asked a question about book recommendations. Buffett rambled on and changed the topic, eventually landing on this:

I’d give you all of my wealth to trade bodies.

It’s easy for a 90 year old to appreciate youth. Not so easy for those of us farther away from death. And that’s a problem because health is cumulative. How we maintain our bodies when we’re young influences how well we’ll age.

Table of Contents

My Fitness Journey

I’m fortunate genetically. As a kid, I remember four of my great-grandparents. They lived to be in their late 80s or early 90s and were independent almost until the end. No dementia and very little cancer in my family.

I consider how they lived. They:

were active and fit.
had jobs where they performed manual labor. No sitting at a desk!
had social connection. Lots of family in close proximity.

While these family members are now long gone, they continue to light a fire under my ass. I don’t want to botch a potentially high quality, long life by neglecting my health.

Where I Stand Today

Since leaving work back in 2017, I’ve been paying more attention to my health. I’ve had hydrostatic body composition tests done sporadically. Here are all of my results:

I’m surprised at what I’ve been able to accomplish. Since my first test back in 2017:

Overall weight reduction: 6 pounds
Increase of lean body mass (muscle!): 8.8 pounds
Reduction of fat mass: 14.8 pounds

And the proof is in the pudding. Or lack of it because that pudding used to be my voluminous gut.

Taking photos is a great idea because you don’t notice changes when you see yourself every day. However, when you go back and compare old photos, the changes are startling. I took the photos on the left in July of 2024. The ones on the right were taken this week. Here’s my front and side:

And these look even better:

I feel great. Earlier this week, I went to Rocky Mountain National Park and explored a trail with large boulders. I felt more nimble than I ever had, jumping between rocks. I’m no Mr. Universe or even Mr. Longmont, but riding into old age with a little extra muscle will help me age well.

How I Got Here

Strength Training

Here is my 4 day routine:

Day 1: 5 sets of each: pullups, pushups, tricep push-downs, preacher curls, dips

I take long rest breaks in-between, up to 5 minutes. I do laps around the track to burn the time. I walk 3-4 miles over the course of this workout.
Every set is near failure. I don’t hold back for any set. So my first should always my biggest.
My shoulders had been screwy, so I cut out exercising them. Now that I found the cause (curls!), I may add a shoulder exercise back in.

Day 2. Legs: squats and deadlifts

Day 3. Arms: tricep push-downs, preacher curls

Day 4. 4×3 workout on the stair machine for VO2 max training

Walking

I do a lot of brisk walking in zone 2. My goal is 8,000,000 steps this year or about 22,000 per day. As of this writing (August 6), I’m well ahead:

It took me a long time to figure out a fitness routine that worked for me. What works for you is probably different. Half of the fun is experimenting.

Observations

I am constantly tweaking my diet, exercise routines and habits. Some random observations:

I wouldn’t be in this shape if I had a job. There are two main reasons for this:

I spend 3 hours every day working on fitness. My Day 1 strength routine take 2 hours alone. Walking also consumes a lot of time. If I had a job, there is no way I’d have time for it.
Humans only have so much willpower and stress destroys it. There’s no way I could maintain my workouts and diet with job stress.

From a diet perspective, eliminating bad carbs is the most important thing I’ve done. I have very strong cravings for sugar. I also love bread. I’m an all-or-nothing type of person, so the answer is to not have this food in the house. If it’s not there, I can’t eat it. Problem solved. Vegetables and lean protein are the answer.

I wish I could disconnect from food completely. My sugar cravings never go away. I’ve had people tell me if you avoid sugar for a month, the cravings will diminish. Not the case with me. The siren call of a chocolate chip cookie is overpowering.

I have my diet dialed in, with the unexpected help of drugs. I’ve been following semaglutides (Ozempic is the most popular example) for a while and the potential side effects are fascinating:

Semaglutide, beyond its well-known benefits for weight loss and blood sugar control in type 2 diabetes, offers several other potential advantages. These include improved cardiovascular health, reduced inflammation, potential cognitive benefits, and even positive impacts on addiction management.

I was discussing these drugs with my doctor and she asked me if I’d be interested in experimenting with a microdosing regimen:

Sure!

Because I was microdosing, I didn’t expect any weight loss benefit. But for the first 2 weeks of the experiment, the drug wiped out my hunger completely. It’s strange, startling, and amazing to disconnect from food. When you have no interest in eating, you have to force it down your throat. The result of this for me is that I ate a lot of broccoli, salads, and chicken breast. The weight poured off.

The more important outcome is that I now have a better relationship with food. I understand exactly what I have to consume to maintain my body. I’m now off the drug and the hunger has come back. (I’m ALWAYS hungry. Always have been.) But now I’m in a better place and my resistance is stronger. Not eating until noon every day works well for me.

It’s completely amazing to put on pants that were tight 6 months ago and have them now fall off. Back in January, size 32 pants were beginning to feel tight. Now I’m down to 28. Costco stops at 30, so I have to find a new place to buy clothes.

Building muscle is very difficult for me and always has been. I was listening to a podcast recently and one of the hosts mentioned that genetics are the most important determination of muscle building potential. I believe it. I remember working out with a friend in my 20s. We both worked out hard, ate the same things, and pushed each other. He had twice the success in 3 months than I had in 12.

When I work out, I get close to failure for all of my sets. It is mentally very difficult to push through. I’ve been doing this for a year and it will take me at least another year to where I really want to be. And that’s if I don’t injure myself.

It’s impossible to cut fat without cutting some muscle too. For a while, I thought that I could do this. And maybe I could, but it doesn’t work well. You don’t progress quickly with the losses or gains. I think it’s better to focus on one or the other.

The Hevy app is amazing. I go to the gym alone, so I have no one to push me. Hevy takes the place of a workout partner. I record every workout and try to do a little more with the next one.

Most people look at the wrong numbers. I know plenty of aspiring FI friends who say things like this:

I don’t like my job, but I’m going to stay one more year just to make a little more money.

I don’t believe the 4% Rule. I’m going to shoot for 3.4%.

I know I thought I could retire with $1,500,000, but I’ve decided to go for $1,800,000.

These aren’t the most important numbers. Instead, what is your:

blood pressure?
hours of sleep per night?
resting heart rate?
average glucose?

Of course money is important. But it won’t do you much good if you’re dead.

Next?

For the past 3 months, I’ve been focusing on losing body fat over gaining strength. Soon, I’ll pivot back to trying to gain some good weight. For most of the rest of August, I’ll be on a huge road trip. More on that in the next post.

I’ll try to keep up my routine as best I can on the road, but it isn’t easy. So I’ll regroup at the start of September and post about this again at the end of November.

Life is Good

I’m so thankful for my FI-life. I didn’t know what to expect when I quit work because I had no expectations. I was running away from a job that stressed me out and didn’t ponder what life would look like on the other side.

It took me a while to get it dialed in, but I’m really enjoying the rhythm of my life now. The backbone of my life and daily routine is fitness. I exercise first thing in the morning in a fasted state when I have the most energy. For the rest of the day, I’m:

spending time with my kids (especially during breaks)
wrapping up home projects
working on Spanish
practicing piano or guitar
hanging out with friends

And for me, life is most rewarding when I take on some big projects. My big one at the moment is screwing around with the guitar. I’m learning a couple songs for the HQ holiday music party.