I recently realized that the amount of “energy” I have available to do things has decreased dramatically over the past few years. I don’t particularly like the term “energy” as it’s a bit esoteric. I am mostly referring to being able to do activities throughout the day for more time and doing them faster, so a combination of time that I am awake enough to do things and concentration.
## Background
I am in my late 30s now. The thing I noticed the most is that a couple of years ago I was able to work on personal projects (household, maintenance, finances, programming projects or just gaming) both before and after work, in addition I worked longer hours. So I was maybe active for 14 hours a day.
The past few years have been hard, I switched to 90% home office, sometimes I don’t go outside for a couple of days, although I am now trying to force myself to. I am too sedentary, sitting on my desk most of the time. I can hardly finish my 8 hours of work (luckily nobody pays too much attention to what I am doing), however after work nowadays I am finished. Furthermore, I started detailed fitness tracking last year and found out that I do much less (less than half) than in earlier years (cycling, walking, hiking, swimming).
At first I did not realize this, tasks just started to pile up, and I thought that’s just life, I will approach them at some point. However more tracking made me realize that I don’t really spend a lot of time doing my tasks.
Realizing all this I have set the goal to restore some energy. It’s really important to me – I want to do more things, work on my dreams, have time and energy to take care of future kids, and much more. However, how do I do this? Have any of you done this?
## Situation
So I read a bit about regaining energy and I think I am doing good in most areas:
– Diet: good, trying to reduce carbs and increase protein a bit, I drink enough and I don’t live on caffein.
– Medical: blood test shows not deficient in anything
– Sleep: mostly good, no issues (8hrs+)
– Distractions: yeah, social media bad, but working on it
– Fitness: BMI stable at around 24, probably due to good diet, but not doing a lot of physical activity…
Therefore I think the fitness / cardio area is the one I need to approach first.
## Next steps
Everyone says, you need to get fit to have more energy – but what does that mean? How much do I need to do for a positive effect? It’s already hard to do additional activities for me, so I need to set goals.
Most YouTubers are young and their advice sounds too easy… “I just started going to the gym for 10 hours a week and then after two weeks I was more fit”… yeah, that sounds fine if you have no obligations and live in a 20 year old body. I could neither find the time, nor the energy, nor the physical fitness to do that.
The WHO recommendation is 2.5-5 hours of moderate aerobic activity or 2.5 hours of vigorous aerobic activity – whatever that means exactly.
## The question
What are your experiences with energy? Have any of you managed to increase your energy as men over 30? What have you done?
2 comments
Sleep, Diet, activity level, going outdoor.
I know, you dont have energy to do sports or be more activ, but you may lack energy because you dont do sports and go out more.
Staying indoors a couple days? That sounds really bad.
If you work from home, you dont need to commute, which is amazing, you shouldnt just be inside your house all day.
Take a walk before work. Maybe also in your lunch break.
You dont have energy because you sit around all day! Atleast this would be my guess, it may be wrong and you have a medical problem, but i would try to solve this with more activity, before ich see a doctor about it.
Try semen retention. I’m not joking. Gives you a lot of energy and somehow solved some of the digestive problems I was having.