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Health & Fitness

Move to live.

I am not an athlete. For most of my life I tried, on and off, to stay fit, and it never really stuck. Then something changed. Here is where I am now, the shift that got me here, and a short reflection to help you find your own. For me, health is a lifestyle for the decades ahead, not a performance.

My weekly activities

25kmrun per week
3×strength sessions a week

Current milestones achieved post 40 years old

2.4kmSub-10 min
5kmSub-25 min
10km~50 min

Not to impress. To show what consistency can do for an ordinary person.

I don't even like running.

Not going to lie, running is tough. I don't even enjoy it. But I know I have to do it.

For most of my life I tried, on and off, to stay consistent. I read all the science. The Norwegian 4x4. How running fires up a part of the brain called the anterior mid-cingulate cortex. How it lowers all-cause mortality. It was all intellectual. And it never stuck.

The change only came when I attached meaning to it. I closed my eyes and imagined my life at 50, 60, 70, 80, all the way to the day I die. How did I want to move? What energy did I want with the people closest to me? What would my return on health be?

The answer was clear. The time was now. The pain of a future I could have shaped, but didn't, would be unbearable once I was living it.

So I changed. Overnight. From zero to 100km in a month. I stopped caring how fast I ran, how tired I was, or how early I had to wake. I just did it. I took on a new identity. A dad who is fit and healthy, living well for my children.

The running was never really the point. Adopting a new identity was the key to real change.

I do not train to compete. I move to live. Health is the one asset that quietly compounds, or quietly erodes, depending on what you do with the ordinary days.

The same shift changed how I eat. I lost 10kg, not through a crash diet, but by changing my habits day after day until they became normal. Slow, unglamorous, and lasting.

What I am really investing in is the version of me at 70 who can still carry his own bags, keep up with his children, and age with grace rather than manage decline. That is the return I am after.

You do not need to love it. You just need a reason strong enough to keep showing up.

So, what is your identity now? Is it where you want to be?

Reflection

Interactive

Return on Health

This is the exercise that changed everything for me. Picture your future self at each age. Not the number on a scale, but the life you want your body to carry you through. Write freely. There are no wrong answers.

The time to invest is always now. The future self you just pictured is built in the ordinary days between here and there.

Want help finding your switch?

Change rarely fails for lack of information. It fails for lack of meaning. In a coaching conversation, we look for the why that finally makes it stick.

Get in touch