Working Full-Time Is (Probably) Making You Fat and Slow
Why Most People Can’t Optimize Health Until They Achieve FIRE
It’s January 21st, so that means most Americans are abandoning their weight loss resolutions about now. Every one of them really did want to lose weight. They probably went to the gym more in the first two weeks of January than all of November and December combined. What happened? The Standard American Career happened.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Health Advice
Every fitness influencer, health guru, and wellness coach sells the same lie: “Anyone can get healthy with just 30 minutes a day and a little discipline.”
This advice assumes you control your schedule. It assumes you can move your workout when conflicts arise, prepare meals when you have energy, and prioritize sleep without career consequences.
For most employed people, these assumptions are completely false.
I’m not here to tell you that getting healthy while working full-time is impossible. Some people manage it through extreme discipline or exceptional circumstances. But for the majority of Americans working demanding jobs (especially the office workers sitting 8+ hours daily) employment itself is the primary barrier to health optimization.
The proof? Forty percent of American adults have obesity, and more than 10.6 hours of sedentary behavior per day is significantly linked with future heart failure and cardiovascular death. This isn’t a willpower epidemic. It’s a structural problem.
My Pre-FIRE Health Reality: The Always-On Professional
During my consulting career, I convinced myself I was managing health while working. I had free gyms at the hotel. I knew nutrition basics. I had grand plans to grocery shop while traveling.
The reality was pathetic.
I would plan evening workouts, then an “urgent” client email would arrive at 6pm. Workout cancelled. Work wins.
I would wake up in hotel rooms, check my phone, see overnight emails, and immediately start working instead of going to the hotel gym. Work wins again.
I would cancel plans for healthy meals to order room service so I could keep working through dinner, often past midnight, leaving me with four hours of sleep. Every single time, my career systematically defeated my health intentions.
This wasn’t laziness. This was rational prioritization. My job paid well. As a naïve 20-something, my health consequences seemed distant and abstract. The choice was easy: sacrifice long-term health for immediate career advancement.
I spent most of my 20s sitting in conference rooms, airplanes, and hotel rooms for 8-12 hours daily. Research shows that people who sit more than 8 hours per day with minimal physical activity have cardiovascular mortality risk 74% higher than active, less sedentary people. This means I was systematically destroying my cardiovascular system while getting promoted.
The Weight Tells the Story
At college graduation, I weighed 155 pounds.
November 2022: I achieved financial independence at 195 pounds. I started eating better than during my career (home-cooked meals instead of client dinners and airport food), but I was still overweight and completely sedentary.
Two years later, November 2024: Still 190 pounds. Slightly better, but I had complete time freedom for 24 months and had barely improved my fitness. Why?
Because FIRE alone doesn’t automatically fix health. You still need the mental shift to prioritize it. But here’s what changed: I finally had the time sovereignty to implement that shift without my career destroying every attempt.
The Transformation Phase by Phase
Phase 1 - Diet (November 2022): Eating at home for every meal became trivial with no work obligations. Weight slowly declined from 195 to 190 over two years with no real effort on my part.
Phase 2 - Sleep (June 2023): Without early meetings or late-night emails, I could optimize sleep timing. No alarm clocks. No sleep disruption from work stress. Normal and consistent bedtimes.
Phase 3 - Exercise (November 2024): I started tracking metrics seriously. Initial mile time: 18 minutes. I couldn’t even run a full mile without stopping.
Then the compound effect began:
December 2024: 16:26 mile
January 2025: 13:11 mile
February 2025: 9:32 mile
March 2025: 8:07 mile
April 2025: 7:56 mile
May 2025: 7:48 mile
June 2025: 7:37 mile
July 2025: 7:31 mile
August 2025: 7:27 mile
September 2025: 7:22 mile
October 2025: 7:20 mile
January 2026: 7:16 mile
Simultaneously, my weight dropped from 190 pounds to 165 pounds.
Phase 4 - Strength (December 2025): Added systematic strength training to the cardio routine. Push-ups went from 5 in the first week of December to 60 in Mid-January. (It’s shocking how quickly your body can build muscle with proper nutrition, sleep, and training.)
Each phase built on the previous one. Each phase would have been dramatically harder (maybe impossible) while employed full-time.
Why FIRE Enabled This (The Actual Mechanisms)
Schedule Sovereignty
It’s pouring rain at 6am? I move my run to 2pm. This option doesn’t exist when you’re expected at the office or on Zoom calls.
On high-energy days, I run farther. On recovery days, I walk instead. This flexibility allows optimization that rigid work schedules prevent. (Do you have time for 90 minutes of walking before or after work?)
No Competing Urgencies
Health never loses the tiebreaker to “urgent” work emails anymore. There are no urgent emails. There are no client emergencies. There are no boss expectations.
Every day, I wake up and exercise first. Not because I have superhuman discipline, but because nothing interrupts me.
Progressive Implementation
I could phase in changes gradually (diet, then sleep, then exercise, then strength) instead of trying to fix everything simultaneously and burning out. (That said, there is reason to wait as long as I did. You can start fixing all four areas in the same year. I was traveling extensively and prioritized other parts of life.)
This approach only works when you have time to experiment and iterate without career consequences for reduced productivity during adjustment periods.
Consistency Compounds
My mile time improved about 60% over 14 months through consistent daily practice. My small daily gains compounded into a dramatic transformation. But “daily” only works when you can actually execute daily without schedule conflicts.
During my career, I would get a week of consistent workouts, then business travel would break the streak. Or a project deadline. Or an early morning meeting. The compound effect never materialized because consistency was impossible.
The “But I Know Healthy Employed People” Objection
Yes, some people optimize health while employed. They exist. I know several.
They tend to have: no children, short commutes, jobs with hard stop times (government, some tech companies), exceptional discipline, or they’re sacrificing something else significant (sleep, relationships, hobbies).
The exception proves the rule. It’s much harder than it should be.
Even people who meet recommended exercise levels face elevated heart disease risk if they sit more than 10 hours daily. Exercise helps but doesn’t eliminate the damage from sedentary employment.
FIRE doesn’t make health transformation possible (clearly some employed people achieve it). FIRE makes it easy. And “easy” is the difference between theoretical possibility and actual execution for most people.
The Sitting Time Bomb
If you work an office job, you’re probably sitting 8-12 hours daily between commuting, desk work, and evening screen time.
The research is sobering:
U.S. adults spend an estimated six to eight hours a day engaged in sedentary behavior
Sedentary behavior exceeding 10.6 hours daily is associated with 40-60% greater risk of heart failure and cardiovascular death
Even meeting exercise guidelines may be insufficient if you’re sitting most of your waking hours
Your body isn’t designed for chairs. Every hour sitting damages your cardiovascular system, metabolic function, and long-term health prospects.
But what’s the alternative when your job requires desk work? You can’t quit sitting without quitting your job.
The American Health Crisis Isn’t a Mystery
Nationally, four in ten American adults have obesity. Nearly three in four adults are now considered overweight or have obesity.
This isn’t because Americans uniquely lack willpower compared to other healthier developed nations. It’s because American work culture is uniquely hostile to health.
Long commutes. Long work hours. Always-on email culture. Jobs that require 8+ hours of sitting. Food deserts near office parks. No time for meal preparation.
The system is designed to make you unhealthy, then sell you medications to manage the resulting chronic diseases.
What This Means for Your FI Journey
Most people calculate their FI number based on current expenses. They might reduce spending categories or plan for travel.
Almost nobody accounts for the health transformation that becomes possible post-FIRE.
The benefits I didn’t anticipate:
Lower healthcare costs: My health insurance is for catastrophes. (Like my August hospital visit!). I spend nothing on recurring healthcare because I’m not developing preventable chronic diseases.
Better body at 40 than at 30: I’m in dramatically better cardiovascular shape now than during my supposedly “prime” working years. FIRE gave me a second chance at physical health.
Compounding health returns: Every month of improved fitness makes the next month easier. This compounds just like investments, but you need consistency to capture the returns. I promise having sore knees after running while overweight is less fun than normal knees while running at a normal weight.
Energy to enjoy freedom: What’s the point of financial independence if you’re too exhausted or unhealthy to use your time well?
If you’re in your 20s or 30s working toward FIRE, understand this: the damage you’re doing to your body through sedentary work isn’t permanent, but it’s real. The sooner you achieve time sovereignty, the sooner you can start reversing it.
The Sad Reality
I’m not telling you to stop trying to be healthy while employed. Do what you can. Walk during lunch. Take the stairs. Meal prep on weekends. Every bit helps.
But I am telling you this: if you’re failing to optimize your health while working full-time, it’s probably not a discipline problem. It’s a structural problem.
Your job is making you fat and slow. Not because you’re weak, but because the system is designed this way.
The best solution isn’t better time management or more motivation. The best solution is time sovereignty, which for most people means financial independence.
FIRE is the ultimate health insurance policy. Not because it prevents catastrophic illness, but because it gives you the time freedom to prevent the slow accumulation of damage that creates preventable chronic disease.
Every year you delay FI is another year of sitting 8+ hours daily, eating worse than you should because you’re tired, sleeping poorly because you’re stressed about work, and skipping exercise because client emails are more urgent than your health.
The mainstream personal finance advice says “save for retirement so you can enjoy your golden years.”
I’m saying: save for financial independence so you have time to build a body capable of enjoying those years.
Your body at 65 is determined by your habits from 25-50. If you spend those 25 years sacrificing health for career advancement, you’ll achieve financial independence just in time to spend it all on managing preventable diseases.
Alternatively, you can accelerate your FI timeline, quit while your body can still recover, and spend your 40s and 50s getting healthier instead of sicker.
The choice is yours, but understand what you’re choosing.
Here’s to escaping employment before it permanently damages your health,
Max
Remember: Financial independence isn’t just about money. It’s about time sovereignty, and time sovereignty is what enables health optimization. The compound returns on fixing your health while you’re young enough to fully recover dwarf the compound returns on any investment portfolio.