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Comment by danthewireman | Hacker News Reader

I'm 45 and have tried a number of different things. Here's what's made the most difference for me:

- Sitting desk but use TimeOut to remind myself to stand every 30 minutes. I tried standing and treadmill desks but they didn't work for me.

- Paleo/keto diet. I have much more energy and my bloodwork's improved.

- 5x5 Strong Lifts

- 16/8 intermittent fasting

- Get enough sleep. This and diet are ridiculously important.

- Fun hobby! I get up at 4:30am to write and I love it (most mornings).

Try things and see what works for you. Experiment. It always sucks in the beginning, but it's hugely worth the effort.

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Going meta from your conclusion, cultivate the desire for new.

I'll second feeling the benefits of physical activity. The 7 minute workout is a great things to try for people that were never into sport. I was a runner for long time and never tried upper body / core training[1], and it's incredibly valuable. I really popped out of bed after that.

[1] crunches, dips, pushups, eagle, squats. Slowly but surely, especially the last two ones because they strengthened and opened hips and shoulders, and for a reason you just feel better after that.

What's 16/8?

And how can you get up at 4:30 and also "get enough sleep"?

Intermittent fasting means that you limit the hours of the day that you eat -- in this case he's fasting for 16 hours of the day and allowing food intake for 8 hours.

I presume this means he has two meals -- a late dinner and an early breakfast.

There are other models too, for example 20/4.

And why is that good?

Human growth hormone seems to be raised considerably after fasting for 16-24h which in turn supports strength training right after this period as the muscles grow naturally faster without any kind of "funny" supplements intake. Basically a body hack.

16/8 is eating as much as you usually would, but cramming it into an 8-hour period. I generally do all my eating from 11am - 7pm. It helps a little, and I'll take all the help I can get.

As for the sleeping, I'm usually zonked out by 9:30-10.

You can go to sleep earlier. I go to bed at 9pm (except Friday+Saturday) and don't set an alarm. Moving my side project work to first thing in the morning instead of late at night has more than doubled my productivity.

I strongly recommend Keto. I started Keto 4 months ago and a couple of my coworkers have joined in as well. Not a lot of research has been done, but you can find some interesting information over at http://www.reddit.com/r/ketoscience

Current research being done with the Keto diet: ALS, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's, and just about anything else that involves the brain like brain cancer. It's been proven to help type 1 & 2 diabetics, certain types of seizures and it's a great weight loss diet for most people.

Counterpoint: I've heard from a lot of people that ketogenic diets have made their LDL and apo B shoot through the roof. This is how you get atherosclerosis (aka clogged arteries) and eventually heart disease/heart attack/stroke. A lot of these people look great and say that they feel great.

Thanks for bringing up this important point. Getting blood work done before & after is important when doing a diet change. Rob Rhinehart from soylent fame gets his blood drawn fairly regularly if I remember correctly. The community over on /r/keto is pretty good with helping out, see http://www.reddit.com/r/keto/comments/1j5yi8/help_me_rketo_h.... Due to genetics keto can be a bad idea for certain people.

You may be putting the cart before the horse there. Cholesterol is a complex subject, and mainstream wisdom is under threat [1]. The lipid hypothesis holds that cholesterol promotes heart disease, but cholesterol could also be something the body uses to combat atherosclerosis caused by infection say.

Regarding LDL elevation on keto diets, this is true but not necessarily a reason to abandon the diet [2]. I recall listening to a podcast interview with keto researcher Dominic D'Agostino (I can't find it anymore) in which he expressed the following opinion on this: so many biomarkers improve on these diets, so if LDL gets elevated don't sweat it, because cholesterol is so poorly understood anyway.

[1] http://wapo.st/1vh4cc3 [2] http://bit.ly/1IAPAyz

LDL numbers themselves are meaningless unless you do fractioning, which your doctor doesn't do (mostly for cost purposes).

Quite a bit of research has been done, check out Phinney and Volek's "The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living".

> I get up at 4:30am

Are you single by chance?

I'm not and I wake up early. More to the point plenty of people with much weirder sleeping patterns like shift work etc are in happy relationships.

In fact a lot of people in my office work 7am-3pm.

It's quite interesting hearing from people with experiences and life habits very different from mine. Thanks for sharing.

About to try intermittent 3 day fasts as the science seems promising.

http://www.cell.com/cell-stem-cell/abstract/S1934-5909(14)00...

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