The State of My Health: 2023
Carnivore Anniversary Series and Annual Lab Results Check-Up
In years past I’ve published a “carnivore anniversary” or “state of my health” post collecting lab data and reviewing changes and observations throughout the year. This year is something a little different as I’ve attempted to distill and undulate my focus between fitness, nutrition, and other things I’ve deemed (more) important in my life.
Traditionally, I’ve “celebrated” this event in February. Ironically, my carnivore era started on Valentine’s Day 2020. The 2023 celebration was postponed because I wanted to wait until after summer when things like Vitamin D and testosterone would theoretically be optimized — in contrast to the “worst case scenario” coming right out of winter.
Yet again, I’ve had another change of heart. I’m somewhat relieved to see adjacent sentiments around the web. After all, the nutrition space is noisy, if not nauseating.
Previously, I’ve used Merek Health to get my labs checked at a very reasonable price with an optional physician consultation. That is still a viable option if one is certain that a specific test is needed — or would prove helpful.
The battery of tests I’ve tracked in the past includes:
A1C (lab, blood sugar)
Fasting Insulin (lab, insulin resistance)
HOMA-IR (computed from insulin and A1C)
T3 / T4 / Ratio (lab, thyroid)
Vitamin D (lab, immune and hormone)
Cholesterol: HDL-TRIG ratio (lab)
Testosterone: free and total (lab)
HS-CRP: oxidative stress (lab)
Subcutaneous Fat (home skin fold test)
Visceral Body Fat (height-waist ratio)
Average Heart Rate (from smart watch)
Average Blood Pressure (from manual log)
Average Hours of Sleep (from smart watch)
I certainly don’t want to discourage the democratization of health, but I would like people to think critically and also see the bigger picture of their “health” beyond lab/blood work. “Blood never lies”, but it certainly doesn’t always tell the whole story.
On one hand, I could provide the above lab results and you may or may not be able to understand them. Honestly, I’d have to look back at my own notes for reference ranges and interpretation.
On the other hand, everyone can understand, once their feet hit the floor at least, the following achievements I’ve notched in 2023:
PR: 158 calories in 10 minutes on assault bike (180 lbs.)
Dramatically improved technical proficiency in back squat
Ran my first “marathon” (6-hour Space Race)
Ran an unofficial 10k trail run with 40 lb. vest
Ran an official 5k (under 9’ pace)
Earned my black belt in BJJ
Started learning Olympic Lifts
This brings my curiosity back to more holistic measurements. Obviously, the benchmarks outlined above were fitness-related, which as I’ve discussed before, isn’t necessarily the same as health.
From Shawn Baker’s recommendation, let’s start with:
Lean body mass (or inversely body fat mass)
“Functionality” of that lean body mass (see fitness achievements above)
Cardio-respiratory fitness (see fitness achievements, and add a few at-home measures and annual averages)
Lean Body Mass:
In addition to other fitness achievements — hence the “functional” part of lean mass — I also made a foray into “bodybuilder” territory. In August I tipped the scales at 164 lbs. and measured 5.5% body fat (ref.). Obviously, I don’t stay in that condition year round, but it was an experiment to find and define a limit.
At the time of writing, three months after the above photo, I’m at about 170 lbs and 7-8% body fat (6.9 by JP4, 8.3 by Navy). Since it’s easy to measure, my height-waist ratio (a measure of visceral body fat) is about 0.46 and the typical target range is below 0.5 (ref.). This is down slightly from 0.47 in March of 2022.
Cardiovascular Measures:
My average blood pressure from the past 6 months (N = 19) was 138 / 80 which is elevated compared to the reference range of 120 / 80. However, the criteria for metabolic syndrome is 130 / 80 (ref.), so I’m pretty close.
138 / 80 makes my Mean Arterial Pressure (MAP) 94, which is down from 105 in March of 2022. Additionally, my average heart rate for the same past 6 months (N > 90) is 58 BPM, down from 62 BPM in March of 2022.
From there, some other non-laboratory results can be important markers of “health” as well:
Sleep (affects virtually every aspect of our lives).
Relationship satisfaction
Career satisfaction
Overall happiness/life satisfaction
Other Measures:
Sleep:
Over the past 6 months, I’ve averaged a little over 8 hours of sleep/night (8:02) measured by my smart watch. The same watch measures my deep sleep percentage at about 34% (over the past 2 months). However, smart watches, apps, and other devices are notoriously inconsistent if not altogether inaccurate with regard to sleep.
Over the same two-month period, my subjective sleep quality measure was 3.1 / 5 — a little above average.
Relationships:
Despite what the tech overlords would have you believe, there isn’t a way to quantify this — “friends/followers”, likes, shares, engagement rate, etc. But we can look at the quality of a few main categories:
Social / Friends
Partner / Family
Work / Professional
I can simply ask myself, for each category, A) are things better than 1 year ago, and B) are they better than 5 years ago?
Social / Friends
1 Year Ago: Better
5 Years Ago: Significantly Better
Partner / Family
1 Year Ago: Partner (a little worse), Family (significantly better)
5 Years Ago: Partner (about the same), Family (better)
Work / Professional (relationships)
1 Year Ago: a little worse
5 Years Ago: significantly better
Overall:
1 Year Ago: better
5 Years Ago: moderately better
Career:
This is where we can use some more objective measures — credentials, promotions, prestige, notoriety, mentorship, etc. We can complicate this in a lot of ways, but a simple aggregate of how you feel “progress and performance” are going, again at 1 and 5-year intervals, can offer a lot of perspective.
For myself, my career has definitely taken some turns over the past 1 year, and the past 5 years have been a circus — certainly not always the good kind. Overall, credentials and performance have significantly improved from 5 years ago for many more reasons than I can explain here.
Compared to 1 year ago, I would say that I’ve maintained a high level of performance and while there haven’t been significant changes in status or credentials, the breadth of my role and the incumbent skill set required has grown (check improved).
Overall Happiness:
The whiteboard outside my office reads “The Mind is Secondary”, with a hand-drawn picture of a heart underneath. The short explanation as to why, is that “if you can’t, or won’t, do something with heart, why fucking bother.”
Whether it’s your career, your marriage, your health, or an arbitrary fitness metric — why bother? We ask trite questions as coaches like, “what is/know your why.” The truth runs much deeper than that — some smarter coaches suggest going “5 whys deep.”
Even that misses the point, which is that “why” isn’t something you can write. It’s something you have to feel viscerally through every cell in your body. Using the same 1 and 5-year metrics as the career and relationship scales, I don’t need a horoscope, doctor, therapist, or Instagram influencer to tell me if I’m more or less satisfied with my life, health, happiness, and performance overall.
1 Year: More Satisfied
5 Years: Significantly More Satisfied
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