The Fit Over 40 Project
Starting with the Physical Foundations
As part of my Fit Over 40 project, I’m diving into the essentials of physical well-being, starting with what I know (and don’t know) about movement, food, sleep, and relaxation. It’s all about figuring things out.
Today I share with you the first part of my journey—or planned journey, really. The first part is the physical part. Why physical well-being? I thought I had figured that out already for myself, but as I said, I feel like crap more than I’d like to. So, I think this will be a good starting point. On the one hand, I want to check if my assumptions were wrong. Maybe I only think I work out enough and eat healthy. I want to investigate if my assumptions are true or not. Also there's the New Year's resolution part. Getting fit is the most common New Year's resolution, so why not jump into that vibe?
On the other hand, maybe there’s more to it. In fact, I know my workouts aren’t complete enough. I really love strength training, but I’m not a fan of conditioning. To me, it feels rather pointless to just run or step on a rowing machine or treadmill. Also, I never focus on things like flexibility. I think there’s something to be gained here. This will be a part of what I’m going to research. The same can be said about nutrition. I think I’m going to need to be honest about what I actually eat.
Of course, I’ve already explored the subject a little further and identified four different components of physical well-being:
Movement
Food
Sleep
Relaxation
These are the components I’m diving into over the next three months. So, let’s look into each one of these a little deeper.
Movement
Movement is the ability to move around. It’s about strength, conditioning, flexibility, and agility. When you have these in order, I think you’re doing pretty good. Strength training has all kinds of positive effects: As you age, you lose strength, so strength training to keep that strength up is a good idea. It’s good for bone density and, of course, it makes you look better.
This training part, I think I have in check right now. I work out four times a week, using an upper-lower body split, which looks like this:
Monday: upper-body workout 1
Tuesday: lower-body workout 1
Wednesday: rest
Thursday: upper-body workout 2
Friday: lower-body workout 2
As I mentioned before, I don’t like cardio workouts—at least not the standard ones like running or cycling. They just seem rather pointless to me, so I think I’m going to have to explore other options. I’m thinking about things like high-intensity interval training.
Flexibility: I never thought I would need this, but as you get older, you begin to have issues with flexibility. Or is it just me that has issues with this? Anyway, what I’m going to do is find a stretch routine to do before sleep and one to do when I wake up. Hopefully, this will make me more flexible, of course. Also, in my strength workouts, I’ll focus partially on exercises that challenge my flexibility: for instance, I use Cossack-squats for some lower body flexibility.
Agility: What is that exactly? I think it’s about being able to move around obstacles you might encounter—stairs, ladders, jumping over fences, that sort of thing. To look into what it actually entails, my idea is to incorporate some of this into my strength workouts. This could mean doing exercises that require you to be on one leg, for instance. I’ll have to look into that a little deeper to come up with a workable plan for this.
To recap:
Strength training is in order, so I’ll continue to work out as I do, with a few extra additions, like incorporating more unilateral exercises, that are more challenging for balance
Looking into different ways to train my conditioning, focusing on activities I enjoy
Incorporating stretching into my daily routine
Putting more focus on my ability to move around in my different workouts
This leads me to the following goals:
Food
I like to think my eating habits are healthy. But are they? Well, to be honest, I do like junk food. I could go for a burger now and then, some takeout Chinese food, fries, and I’m a big fan of mayonnaise. So, I think there’s something to be gained here. I don’t want to overcomplicate things. I don’t want to cut out all the junk food, but I do want to eat mostly healthy food—food that “rots” if you leave it on the counter for too long. That means mostly fresh vegetables, and that’s what I’ll aim for.
Besides that, I really want to try intermittent fasting. This is more about HOW you eat, but I think this can help. Also, I like the claimed added benefits of intermittent fasting, like not thinking about food all the time, mental sharpness, and so on. There’s many different ways of intermittent fasting. To name a few that have my interest:
16-8. You fast for 16 hours, and eat during 8. This seems very doable to me.
20-4. 20 hours of fasting, 4 hours of eating. With a little adjustment period, this seems doable as well.
OMAD. Which stands for One Meal A Day. Not sure about this one. My aim is not losing weight, so the One Meal would have to be big. Haven’t decided if I’ll give this one a try.
I plan to do some more research into fasting, the different ways to go about it, focussing on what it does and why it works. Of course, I will share what I find here in an article.
Recap:
Intermittent fasting: I first want to try the 16-8. After that, the 20-4 method. Might have a go at OMAD, but not sure.
Focusing mostly on healthy foods that “rot” when left on the counter for too long.
Sleep
I know I’m a light sleeper. I’ve always had trouble sleeping. I used to have a really hard time falling asleep and would wake up multiple times a night. My sleep has improved much lately. Since I discovered the use of earplugs for sleeping, I no longer wake up all the time from every sound I hear. I want to discover more about what good sleep actually is and what you need to get it. I’m not an expert on sleep, so I’ll need to dig deeper into the subject. Of course, when I do, I’ll write about it.
Recap:
I plan to monitor my sleep to start with. I will use a daily (tiny) sleep report to learn how my sleep actually is most of the time. After that, I will look for tweaks.
So, that leads to the following goals:
Relaxation
What do you do to relax? Seems like a simple question, but to be honest, I’m not sure of the answer. Yes, I do love to go out in nature for a nice hike, as this relaxes me. But that’s about it. In the past, I’ve done things that aim at relaxation. I like to go to the spa, but the chatter from people around me didn’t relax me. I’ve tried meditation, which does relax me too, but sometimes I just don’t want to do it. So, I guess I’m going to have to do a lot of research on relaxation and, specifically, what relaxes me.
Recap:
I have to do some more exploring first. I’m using a form of journaling to first make myself more aware of my level of relaxation.
Overall Recap
Writing this article seems to be a good start. For the movement and food sections, I can easily come up with what I will do, but for sleep and relaxation, I’m kind of clueless. I think that’s a good signal of where to focus most of my attention in this research. It feels like I’ve got a better touch on the movement and food sections, where I can just enhance what I’m already doing. While the sleep and relaxation sections need a more thorough approach.
I’d love to hear what you’re focusing on for your own physical well-being this year. Are you tackling flexibility, sleep, or something else? Let me know in the comments or on social media!