As the shift in content of this blog has made abundantly clear, for the last five years I’ve been doing a PhD. I’ve also been working full-time, so that research and study has basically taken up all of my spare time. I would wake up early, sit at my computer until it was time to start work, then change computer, then at the end of the work day switch back to the university-issued computer. I knew this was having an adverse impact on my health. Particularly, I could feel that I had far less stamina. Then I got the wake-up call I needed.
My fitness tracker sent me a notification at the beginning of August that my VO2 max—the measure it uses to gauge cardiorespiratory fitness—had dropped to 28.6. The average value for a man of my age is 38, and 28 is the average value for a man over 60. Low cardio fitness, according to the app, is a predictor of various heart diseases, colon cancer, type 2 diabetes, and even dementia and Alzheimer’s.
I’ve been on holiday for about half of the time since then, but my holidays tend to be active as they involve lots of walking and dancing (I go to festivals). On workdays, I’ve added a ten-minute HIIT workout to my morning, and a half-hour walk at lunchtime. Just those changes has seen the (estimated) cardio value in my tracker go up to 30.2 in three weeks. This is still in the low category—31.0 is the boundary to the “below average” category—but it’s a trend in the right direction.
I’ve always defined my “success” by my intellectual contribution to society. But I need to stay healthy to continue making that contribution, and it got past time to take control of my health.
