{"id":16616,"date":"2024-10-01T07:58:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-01T15:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/?p=16616"},"modified":"2025-11-13T14:02:51","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T22:02:51","slug":"foundations-fitness-day-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scotthyoung.com\/blog\/2024\/10\/01\/foundations-fitness-day-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Fitness: Day One"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fitness is the first foundation<\/a> I\u2019m addressing in my year-long project to improve those things that are essential to thriving as a human being.<\/p>\n

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Exercise isn\u2019t something we evolved to do. We\u2019re hardwired to avoid unnecessary effort. For the vast majority of our species\u2019 existence, simply living was exertion enough to keep our bodies functioning well. Today, though, my livelihood doesn\u2019t depend on hunting gazelle or tilling a field. I make my living typing on a computer most of the day.<\/p>\n

As a result, I need to exercise.<\/p>\n

The benefits of exercise are overwhelming. It boosts your mood, mind and mobility. It reduces the risk of dying from heart disease, diabetes, cancer and dementia. It increases your energy levels and provides a foundation for a vigorous life.<\/p>\n

Current guidelines recommend a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity<\/strong> or 75 minutes of vigorous activity, combined with at least two resistance training sessions every week<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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Unfortunately, it\u2019s a target most of us don\u2019t hit.<\/p>\n

Today, I\u2019d like to share my fitness history, the goals I\u2019ve set for the month ahead, and what I\u2019m doing to solidify this essential foundation in my life.<\/p>\n

Does Becoming a Father Require a Dad Bod?<\/h2>\n

I\u2019ve never been an athlete. I swam as a kid but never posted great times. I ran in high-school but was never fast enough to win races. I was awkward at tennis and lousy at basketball. It\u2019s a clich\u00e9 to say it, but I was a bookish kid who was lousy at sports.<\/p>\n

As a teenager, I finally found the first kind of physical activity I liked\u2014lifting weights. Perhaps my interest was because I was naturally scrawny and thus drawn to the promise of getting more muscular. Or perhaps it was because lifting heavy objects didn\u2019t require great dexterity.<\/p>\n

Throughout my teens and twenties, going to the gym and lifting weights became my main source of exercise. A fast metabolism and relatively low-protein diet (I was vegetarian for most of my twenties, pescatarian today) meant I never got particularly big, but I can at least say there were some periods when my muscular fitness was pretty good\u2014at one point I could even do twenty-five pull-ups in a row without stopping.<\/p>\n

Things changed after thirty. Shortly after my wife and I welcomed our son, Thomas, into the world, COVID-19 happened, and suddenly all the gyms were closed. While the lockdown didn\u2019t last forever, every trip to the gym required irritating sign-up sheets that meant racing to book my slot online in advance. I resorted to climbing the stairs at our apartment\u2014climbing up and down in the concrete cocoon of the fire escape.<\/p>\n

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At the same time, the era of my youthful inability to gain weight was finally over. I was getting flabbier\u2014mostly from overeating, but also from the pressures of the pandemic and parenthood, making it harder for me to stick to a regular gym routine.<\/p>\n

The pandemic went away, but my solid gym habits never quite returned. Sure, I\u2019d go to the gym once or twice a week and use the stair machine (a holdover from my pandemic-era exercise solution). My fitness level was \u201cokay.\u201d But if I\u2019m honest, I probably wasn\u2019t hitting the recommended minimums for exercise most weeks. And I wasn\u2019t lifting weights at all anymore.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to exaggerate my story for dramatic impact. In many ways, I think I\u2019m pretty much the default case: someone who tries to exercise, does so at least some of the time, but not with the consistency that I think I should.<\/p>\n

My Goals for the Month<\/h2>\n

I have two main goals for the month:<\/p>\n