By: Michael Beiter

My client, Aaron (36), has worked with me since 2019. He took a slight break in 2020, but we've been banging away at his health for a few years now.

He's lost 43 pounds of fat and ten and 3/4 inches from his waist.

We finished his 2023 year review, and his numbers were stellar. So much so that in 2024, his goal is to run it back, not do more. When discussing goal setting, my clients are constantly surprised by their want for more. Once they reach a bodyweight or fitness level they thought would make them happy, they enjoy it for a quick second before setting their sights higher. In this way, they never experience the happiness they anticipated and create the hamster wheel of doom standard in our culture—always striving, never arriving.

Aaron is no different. I had to tell him NOT to raise his expectations of himself by aiming to do more next year.

Furthermore, we discovered his least sexy, most significant improvement has been in his sleep.

Counting how many abs you can see and reps you can do is all good, but the most influential metric we can all track for our health is how much time we spend unconscious.

The National Institute of Health reports the average American sleeps less than seven hours per night in 2023. In his book 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep, John Carey writes the average American slept nearly 10 hours per night in 1901. A century later, Americans have cut off a third of their daily sleep time, and the consequences are easily seen everywhere you look.

Aaron averaged around 7 hours of sleep per night when we first started in 2019.

In 2021, his average climbed over the eight-hour mark.

Since 2022, he's added another hour to sleep our pre-20th century numbers and is as healthy as ever.

Over the back half of 2023, he crossed the 10-hour sleep average!

I know many of you are shaking your heads, thinking that would not be possible. However, I beg to differ. Aaron is living in the same chaotic, modern world as the rest of us, and he's making it happen. He has all the same responsibilities that so many clients use as excuses for failing to care for themselves. He refuses to let his health slip, regardless of his challenges, which, I promise you, are just as big and scary as yours.