It's Fucking Impossible to Stay Healthy
withentropy.com
withentropy.com
Are you sure you need that job? You’re suggesting 11-12 hours at the office every day, plus whatever your commute is. And apparently this job insists on you being continuously deskbound during that time.
Your upper middle class peers may be doing the same thing, and you may feel obliged to that job because of some fantasies about where it might lead, but on the facts themselves it is grossly unhealthy to sit for 12+ hours in a row.
You’re making an explicit choice to be an ambitious young urban professional (for an exploitative employer) rather than a healthy person. Maybe double-check that choice and make sure it’s the one you want to be making.
More explicitly, you only have room for so much in your life. You're letting your job take all of it, then complaining that you don't have room for what you need to do to stay healthy. Choose a less exploitative job, then choose to put time for you (including your health) in the space that's freed up.
That may mean making less money. But "What will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?" (Yeah, Jesus was explicitly talking about spiritual things, not physical. But what does it profit you, if you make tons of money but drop dead at 50 because you had no time for your own health?)
This is one reason I am a huge advocate for working from home. Yes, in office has its positives, but getting 2 hours back in my day lets me fit in walking my dog, going to the gym, cooking dinner...
After that morning workout is done, I feel incredibly energized for the day. More importantly, I find that it usually delays when I start to feel hungry by an additional 2-3 hours compared to days where I don't work out, which in turn helps with intermittent fasting. But most importantly, it prevents you from skipping workouts because you're too tired after work, or you have to work late due to an unexpected issue, or there's some other obligation you have to take care of. There's just fewer conflicts and distractions at 5 or 6 AM
It took me half a year to get to a point where I can wake up at 0600 without an alarm. I used to wake up at all sorts of times before, usually 0900-1000.
I had to do CBTi and wake up at 0600 every day, even on weekends, no matter what time I went to bed. It was rough.
Once I got there, staying up and being social past 2200 became challenging. I'm being extremely selective about when I hang out late now, which is fine for me since I don't have many friends, but I can see this not working at all for someone more social than me.
How is this not terrible? It is absolutely terrible. Whoever brainwashed you into thinking this is not terrible needs to be disciplined.
Consider therapy. With so many distracting sources of easy dopamine in the modern world it’s easy to become emotional disconnected from oneself without realizing it.
Read Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke. She explains cravings like these and why they happen.
The idea is to prevent glucose spikes.
if you prevent them your body will do much better. It will release less insulin and that means less damage and less food converted to fat.
And spikes are followed by a crash, which is when energy plummets, attention wanders and cravings kick in.
found this ppt with some of the ideas summarized (not by author):
https://www.believebig.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Glucos...
examples: - eat foods in order: first fiber, then proteins/fats, last carbs
- walk 10 minutes after eating
...
Everyone is mentioning the long work hours, and I'm also not surprised you feel too tired to exercise more than 20 minutes when you spend around 12 hours working + commuting.
But also, are you working out and eating smartly? You mention intense workouts and not having energy, what about doing lower-intensity, longer workouts or a combination of the 2? And the only food you've mentioned is fast food, do you ever cook for yourself?
I'm 37 years old. Last weekend, I found out cooking with and drinking tap water set to hot mode is hella bad for you! Leeches heavy metals, brews bacteria, the works. I've been doing that every day for coffee, tea, pasta etc my whole adult life. Oops?
- if you go to lowes, many of the fittings for hot water pipes are made of lead
- my cold water supply doesn't sit in a big 50+ gallon tub for 1-2 days at a time (I don't think we fully empty it but every other day, on kid bath night)
- old hot water heaters will fill with sediments and other buildup
So like, on a scale of drinking sewage to drinking dew collected from the leaves of Yggdrasil? It's probably about the same as drinking (cold) tap water. But also like, given a choice, I'll probably go for the cold tap.
cold tap water -> filter pitcher --> kettle
`-> drinking glass
Of course, there's the issue that most kettles are made of plastic or at least have some plastic components so how do you keep it microplastics-free?
There's no winning, I guess. :D
@OP - Figure it out now because it gets harder as you get older. Maintenance is easier than progress, if you get fat it's a hard hole to dig yourself out of. Get a standing desk. Do basic calisthenics every morning. Put a pull-up bar in your bedroom doorway and do a couple everytime you walk through it. Run a few times a week. Leave a dumbbell in your kitchen and do an occasional curl when you're cooking. Take a multivitamin. Don't eat garbage. The best diet for me is 99% of calories from meat and veggies, and eat as much as I want. Fat+protien is filling and lasting, carbs and sugar give me strong feelings of hunger a few hours later.
Also - you're working WAY too much. Aim for 8-5, with a long day being 6. You need to average below capacity so there's margin left to add when shit's on fire. That's true of both your time and your energy. If you're fresh when the fire hits, that's your time to shine. If you're burnt out when the fire hits, you burn to death.