Fat, Forty, and Fired. Taking control of my destiny.

Present day.
I weighed myself at the perfect BMI, with 3% body fat separating me from displaying my six-pack. Still, I like how I look in the mirror, it’s the same image I’ve always seen. But the original wasn’t like that.

Rewinding back to cca. 2010.
I’m an over-caffeinated salesman, the loud guy who smokes a lot, parties hard, eats bad, doesn’t exercise, smokes, and is a good twenty kilos overweight. I’m young and energetic, but I look older.

I live fast and on the edge; my wife is stressed out from keeping up with me. I’m either on the road, sleeping who-knows-where, or come home late, drunk, and ready for a fight.
But when I lay to rest, when all was quiet, I knew deep down that I couldn’t go on like this. But it’s easy to push these worries deep down and paint them with what the world recognizes as a success: expensive limousine, travels, cash, career.

There are plenty of stories of guys my sort who hit some sort of addiction-infused rock bottom or contract some preventable lifestyle disease that stops them. I didn’t want to be that kind of a guy.

Fortunately, I always enjoyed learning whenever I could, and TED talks were my favorite pastime when lunching alone. So I stumbled over this guy:

Nigel Marsh. The man who called out to all the people who work long and hard at the jobs they hate to earn money to buy things they don’t need, to impress people they don’t like.
Just for the record — I never saw myself in that category, as I loved my job. But I did buy things that I didn’t need to impress people I didn’t like.

After watching this TED Talk, I purchased Nigel’s Book — Fat, Forty, and Fired. It was a hilarious read, and it changed my life. I decided that I need to change my life before getting forty and fired. I was already fat.

My transformation wasn’t overnight, though. But I started running, and then I quit smoking. Later I stopped eating meat, until eventually going 85% plant-based. I started practicing yoga. And then I put a kibosh on booze. No more alcohol.

In the process I haven’t only lost weight, but I also started looking younger than a decade ago. I had more time for my children, and I improved my marital life. It’s not perfect — it’s still a marriage — but we are happy.
And all this while my career flourished, I rose in rank and pay and still enjoyed an awesome lifestyle. Work/life can’t be balanced, it’s a continuum. And I found myself within this spectrum.

This is one of the reasons why I created this space. I’d love to pass on ideas and the notion that you don’t need to crash first to turn the right turn. And you can earn a great living by working for the Man.

It all starts with designing your life.

Ora et labora.