Background

I have a journal of all the travels I did when I was in my 20s, and sometimes it is enjoyable to re-read the various journeys that I went on. In those entries I could see my writing change, both in voice and theme, as I gained more life experience.

Recently I wrote about my health journey in 2024, and I have a goal to write a quarterly entry. This is the first entry of what I hope to be many entries.

Now that I have returned from some travels in India I have been able to focus more on my health. I have returned to a diet lower in saturated fat, and been able to generally increase the amount of exercise that I have been doing.

Experiments / Focus Areas

This quarter I had a few experiments.

1. Train more by getting up to 60-70km/week running, and get in the gym 3-4 times per week. I should see my Vo2Max increase, and RHR decrease. The goals here are to build muscle, bone mineral density, general cardio protection, and sleep better.
2. Sleep better by meditating before bed, starting wind down by 8pm, and increasing glycine consumption before bed.

Train More

Here is what my ‘intensity minutes’ look like for the previous 12 months, and you can clearly see the impact of travelling in Dec/Jan:

And then the previous 3 months in intervals.icu. My goal is to get to 80 Fitness and stick there for the rest of the season.

My target fitness routine remains the following:

Monday

• Easy Run (~8km)
• Resistance Training (upper)

Tuesday

• Hard Run (Vo2Max 4x4)
• Resistance Training (lower)

Wednesday

• Easy Run (~8km or longer)
• Resistance Training (core)

Thursday

• Hard Run (Nx1000, or a beach tempo run)
• Resistance Training (lower)

Friday

• Easy Run (~8km or longer)
• Resistance Training (upper)

Saturday

• Long Run

Sunday

• Play Day (swimming or a hike or walk somewhere)

Many weeks I only achieve about 90% compliance, e.g. today I had a DEXA scan so couldn’t do my morning run, and then had blood work so skipped the gym. I’ll likely still walk home to make sure I get my 10,000 steps in.

Sleep better

In addition to increasing my glycine consumption I’ve started reducing the amount of liquids I drink after dinner, to good results of needing to wake up and go pee. I also purchased a pee jug as a further experiment.

One observation I made is that for two evenings I played a computer game until close to bed time, so missing wind down, and I think it severely impacted the quality of my sleep. I didn’t go to bed any later, but I think all the light impacted my circadian rhythm. I have purchased some clip on blue/green light blocking glasses to see if that helps, although I’ll be avoiding playing any games for a long time (it is about a once/year type of escape). Interestingly, my HRV started dropping after that, too, but perhaps that’s just a byproduct of sleeping slightly worse.

Speaking of circadian rhythm, given it is soon winter here in Sydney, I wanted to get a light to trigger cortisol production first thing in the morning. Given it is an experiment I purchased some LED lights in the right wavelength from AliExpress, taped it in a metal mixing bowel, and put a plastic bag over it. I had the 12v PSU already. I think it is helping, and I start getting pretty tired by 9pm, and I’m often lights out by 9:30pm. I usually wake up around 5:30am, but sometimes when my “body battery” is full at 5am or earlier I’m wide awake and ready to go.

This Quarter’s Supplement Stack

Some principles that I try to follow:

• Avoid bill burden
• Wait until a supplement is on the ITP supported interventions page
• Have a biomarker in mind that a certain supplement will change.

And here’s what is currently in my stack:

My Nutty Pudding also has TMG, Creatine, Pea Protein, Taurine, and HCP.

Results

• Increase weight ❌
• Increase muscle ❌
• Increase BMD ✅
• Improve sleep quality ✅
• Improve Vo2Max ✅
• Decrease RHR ✅
• Improve LDL ✅

Weight/Muscle: Unfortunately, I had mixed results. My DEXA scan results showed that while my body fat % decreased from 18.5% to 17.7%, my lean mass also decreased. This is a bit puzzling given my weight has remained stable and I’m strength seems to have increased since a year ago, but perhaps this is all neuromuscular. My main takeaway from the DEXA is that I need to eat more, which is hard, because I feel like I’m already always eating. This will be a goal for the next quarter.

BMD: Increased from 1.116g/cm^2 to 1.130. I’m not certain the machine’s variance in accuracy, but I’ll count this as a win.

Sleep: Usually I wake up with a 100 “body battery” according to Garmin, which might be a better indicator than my sleep score. My average sleep score since coming back from travelling was 87, but the best indicator is that my sleep scores are relative stable and only dipping below 75 4 times since returning.

Vo2Max/RHR: My average resting heart rate was 49. My Vo2Max according to Garmin is now slightly above 52.

LDL: After the sudden increase while travelling my LDL has dropped back down to normal levels. I’d like to get it down below 2 mmol/L.

Focus For Next Quarter

I think the main focus for next quarter will be relatively similar to this one. I am unlikely to change my supplements that much, and I think my main goal should remain to add muscle. One other potential area of exploration might be to look at stress levels, and see if I can correlate Garmin’s stress score with other events. For example, here is my stress graph for today, where I wasn’t able to run or go to the gym. My average “stress score” is 26", which is higher than my quarterly average of 21.

This becomes obvious when compared to my score from a few days ago, when I did 4x4s in the morning and a hard(ish) leg day at lunch.

I need to figure out how to better overlay my daily activities before I can solve this one, so I might explore this over the next quarter.

OG

It has now been quite some time since I’ve been making Blueprint’s Nutty Pudding. For future reference, in case the Blueprint site stops showing recipes, here is the OG:

• 50-100 mL Macadamia Nut Milk
• 3 tbsp ground macadamia nuts
• 2 tsp of ground walnuts
• 2 tbsp chia seeds
• 1 tsp of ground flaxseed (seed that is ground into flour)
• 1/4 brazil nut
• 6 grams of Blueprint cocoa
• 1 tsp sunflower lecithin
• 1/2 tsp ceylon cinnamon
• 1/2 cup blueberries/raspberries/strawberries (your choice)
• 3 cherries
• 2 oz pomegranate juice

My Tweaks

Some of these items are a little hard to get in Australia, or have (in my opinion) below average value-to-benefit ratios, and I’ve decided to swap them out. Instead, this is the recipe I am currently (19-03-2025) using:

Powders / Base

• 30g whole macadamia nuts
• 15g whole walnuts
• 2 tbsp chia seeds
• 1 tsp whole linseed/flaxseed
• 1/4 brazil nut
• 1 tbsp cacao powder (that’s CACAO, not COCOA)
• 1 tsp sunflower or soy lecithin granules
• 1/2 tsp ceylon cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp mustard seeds
• 500mg TMG powder
• 1/2 tsp taurine
• 1 tbsp HCP
• 1 scoop (25g) pea protein powder
• 2 tbsp wheat germ
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1 tsp of creatine

Liquids / Add Consumption

• 1 cup frozen mixed berries
• 1-2 cups of frozen spinach
• Water

Almost all of this is just from Woolies or Coles, but I did buy the TMG from iHerb, the Creatine from Bulk Nutrients, and the cacao powder and ceylon cinnamon from Amazon. Here is my justification for the adjustments.

1. I’ve used whole nuts instead of ground, as my blender (Vitamix) does a perfectly adequate job of grinding everything up. Anecdotally, I believe that ground nuts spoil more quickly than whole nutes.
2. I’ve swapped out cocoa powder for cacao powder, and it is less processed. It should have higher antioxidants, more nutrients, and fewer additives.
3. I’m experimenting swapping out the sunflower lecithin with soy lecithin granules. It is my understanding that there are two reasons for including lecithin in Nutty Pudding: firstly, because it adds choline, and secondly, because it improves the texture. Choline probably isn’t a challenge for people consuming a lot of meat or dairy, but consider I tend to avoid both, there is the chance that I need more. Of course, choline combined with meat consumption can be problematic, apparently. So, why soy lecithin? Simply because it is easier to get in Australia, cheaper, and has a higher amount of choline.
4. I’ve taken out the pomegranate juice because it is expensive, and the research seemed limited when it came to benefits.
5. I’ve added mustard seeds to boost sulforaphane, which is an antioxidant. Given I cook almost all my vegetables, it is my understanding that this diminishes the sulforaphane content of them. This is from How Not To Age.
6. I’ve added TMG to help with methylation and reduce homocysteine.
7. I’ve added taurine because it is apparently harder to get from a whole foods plant based diet.
8. Wheat germ is for spermidine, which is a compound linked to autophagy. This is from How Not To Age.
9. Turmeric is for it’s active component curcumin, which is anti-inflammatory. This is from How Not To Age.
10. Creatine is to increase ATP production and hopefully allow me to build muscle faster. Apparently there are also some studies indicating it may be helpful to push back Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
11. Removed Macadamia Nut Milk, as I just use water. Macadamia Nut Milk is expensive in Australia.
12. HCP for skin health, muscle recovery (glycine) and joint/bone support. I’m on the fence if there is enough evidence to show efficacy here, and then there is the fear of contamination during the manufacturing process.
13. Pea Protein Powder to slightly up my protein intake. I’m currently 77kg and aim for around 125g per day, but don’t track macros anymore. As we know, protein is a double edged sword: on one side we build muscle to fend off sarcopenia, an on the other side we activate MTOR which inhibits autophagy.

Prep and Storage

I prepare about 15 days worth of dry powders ahead of time. I typically add some water in the blender and put the dry powders in, and then go on a run. My hypothesis here is that this helps with bioavailability, even though the blender chops things up perfectly fine. After my run I dump the frozen mixed berries in, and have a shower. After my shower I finally blend it all up, and enjoy!

Consumption

I make mine rather liquid-y, and use a metal boba straw to drink it. These are large peanut butter jars that I’ve stocked up on and re-use.

Background

A few years ago, probably in late 2022, I was doing some self-reflection and was pondering what the next constraint was for improving my health. Depending on whom you ask, there are generally several areas of focus when it comes to health:

1. Exercise
2. Nutrition
3. Metabolic health
4. Sleep
5. Testing or screenings
6. Supplementation or pharmacological interventions

The conclusion I reached after some reflection was that nutrition was the next area for me to focus on. My approach has typically been to deep dive on reading books, and since then I’ve read the following books related to nutrition and longevity:

• Longevity Diet
• Outlive
• How Not To Age
• Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy
• The Art of Lifting
• The Science of Lifting
• And I’m currently reading the Longevity Leap.

In addition to books I also found a few channels on YouTube that I generally thought were evidence based and produced well, with Plant Chompers / Viva Longevity! and Physionic being some of my favourite.

Fast forward to this morning, when I was outside eating breakfast (sunshine exposure!) and I thought it might be worthwhile to do a yearly reflection of each year. Perhaps this is just me being influenced by reading No More Gold Stars!

Without further delay, let’s get going on my inaugural State of Health series!

Exercise

My main form of cardio is running, so let’s start there. You can clearly see when I went on holiday (December), as it was really challenging to be able to find time / fresh air to run.

My total distance for 2024 was 2759km over 417 hours, which is about 8 hours of cardio on average per week. This seems to be under the threshold limit of the “cardio j-curve of CVD” that I read about a number of years ago.

I did less hiking in 2024 than in 2023, which I hope to rectify in 2025.

In addition to cardio I’ve been trying to increase the amount of time I spend resistance training, so that became more of a focus after both my first DEXA scan as well as reading the Science of Lifting.

I think I will continue with adopting an approach of progressive overload and focussing on total volume, with a mixture of intensities focussing on both hypertrophy and strength.

Nutrition

My diet continues to be whole foods plant based, but with exceptions when travelling; if needed I’ll have some chicken, fish, or eggs.

Super Veggie

Fishbowl (when I need to eat out)

Nutty Pudding

How do we track how well nutrition is working? For now, let’s just look at my weight.

I was previously using a Withings scale, and apparently it didn’t sync correctly, but the new Garmin one does. From what I can tell my weight has been fairly consistent for the H2 of the year, but with a drop in December due to travel. My typical meal looks like this:

Breakfast (about 6am): thins with ABC nut butter and banana and cinnamon

Snack (about 8am): Nutty Pudding, but with mustard seeds and turmeric.

Lunch: Super Veggie, w/Kimchee

Dinner: Something from The How Not To Die Cookbook

The DEXA scan I did in the beginning of 2024 had me at 18.5% body fat, so it will be interesting to see what I’m at in my next scan. 

Sleep

Sleep became much more of a focus in 2024 after reading Why We Sleep in Sep 2023.

However, my sleep in in 2024 was less consistent than in 2023, unfortunately. My average “Sleep Score” was an 82 in both 2023 and 2024, yet 2023 saw a Standard Deviation of 3.0 while 2024 saw 5.2. This is quite ironic, as I was much more aware of my sleep in 2024, but I believe due almost entirely due to work related stress.

In 2023 my average duration was 7hr 33m, and in 2024 it was 7hr 28m.  However, my average bed time decreased from 10:25PM to 10:10PM.

I continue to wear ear plugs when I sleep, and try to sleep in a separate bed from anyone whenever possible. For 2025 this will be a focus, and it would be ideal if I could routinely get in the 90+ sleep score space.

Supplementation

While many people are comfortable taking 100s of supplements, I have been trying to stick to what is on the ITP website for supported interventions. For most of 2024 I took the following supplements:

• Collagen 15g 
• Trimethylglycine (TMG) 500mg
• Niacin 50mg
• Vitamin K2 MK-7 90µg
• Zinc 8.25mg
• Creatine 5g
• Omega 3

I also tried taking Boron to lower my SHBP levels, but I believe it negatively impacts my sleep.

Results

Here is a snapshot of my biomarkers.

I also track my biomarkers in Carrot Care, and the main areas of focus for 2025 will be:

• Continuing to lower my LDL
• Keeping my ApoB low
• Re-testing IGF-1
• Re-testing my progesterone levels (potentially low due to stress at time of previous test)
• Exploring if I should lower my SHBG

Unfortunately I don’t think there’s much I can do about Lp(a).

Let’s look at Stress.

2024 was certainly more stressful than 2023, which was itself generally more stressful than 2022 - all due to changing roles at work. My stress levels in June/July were elevated due to work, in September due to running a marathon and then immediately catching Covid, and finally in December due to several overnight flights and some work deadlines that required significant overtime.

I would like to aim to get routinely under 25 if possible.

My resting heart rate hovered around 50-51 for the year, and ultimately I would like to try and get this below 50.

Experiments

• Convert garmin’s intensity minutes to MET, so can compare to papers
• TBC