Changing Life One Step at a Time: The Big Picture
This is the high-level story and the exact steps I took to add at least ten happy years to my life — assuming I don’t end up in an accident like falling out of a window.
I’m an almost 40-year-old engineer. In some ways that’s “a little old,” and I felt older. I had good moments and felt alive at times, but tiredness and creeping bad health were starting to dominate.
When I Noticed Things Slipping
It happened gradually. I slept too much and still woke up exhausted. Sometimes coffee made me crash. I began gaining weight, and my brain felt slow. I did have some healthy habits — berries and vegetables — but looking back, they were small pieces of a bigger puzzle.
Hitting a Hard Reset
I knew I had to change but felt stuck. So I made a plan and hit a hard reset: I quit the 9-to-5, wrote my resignation, and created space to reflect on who I was, where I was going, and which beliefs I was stubbornly holding without really understanding the science. I started watching health videos and podcasts — doctors explaining visceral fat, sugar, and nutrients — and I let myself sleep as much as I needed. Leaving work felt awful at first; the first couple of months were rough.
What I Changed
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Cutting daily sugar With more sleep (and maybe the summer light), my cravings dropped. Learning why sugary foods hurt health made it easier to quit the daily cakes, candy, cookies, and ice cream.
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Moving more I increased running and added short walks — morning and during the day, even for errands. My weight has been trending down for months, little by little: from 93 kg to 81 kg as I write this. I’m closing in on a normal weight for my size.
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Small fasting before sleep No eating for 4 hours before sleep. It takes some time for the body to burn all the energy from food and start burning fat. If you withhold from eating your body starts to use what it can from the surroundings. According to the videos I watched people can fast for many weeks. Think of storage that never gets emptied. In some corner there are some really old food that went bad.
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Nutrition and supplements I learned about nutrients and cross-checked claims — many people sell products, so I verified the basics before trying anything. I targeted morning tiredness and oversleeping with:
- Fish oil capsules and a multivitamin
- Vitamin D and a product with four types of magnesium (different absorption)
- Infrared light for winter and dark days
- Minerals (salts/electrolytes)
Food: more animal products — fish twice a week (no change), beef twice, chicken twice, bacon twice, eggs almost daily; fermented foods like cheese as snacks (plus some salty biscuits). I switched from cold-pressed rapeseed (rypsiöljy) oil to extra-virgin olive oil.
Results
I rarely feel tired when I wake up. I sleep roughly half as much as before, so I have more time and steadier motivation. Before, I came home from work exhausted and just wanted to sleep. I still drink coffee — maybe too much — but not like before.
Why I Think It Worked (Short Version)
- Sun gives vitamin D and infrared light; supplements can cover vitamin D, but not sunlight’s infrared, which is scarce here in the north, especially for indoor workers.
- Magnesium supports mitochondrial energy production, and vitamin D uses magnesium and fat to be absorbed.
- More movement improves blood flow, helping nutrients get where they need to go.
- Less sugar and less visceral fat mean less inflammation — and that tends to make everything feel better.
That’s my life change — and I’m not going back.