Who I Am – Entrepreneur Building Health After 40

Why This Longevity Project Exists

At 45, I stopped hoping and started measuring. iGoLong is a public record of my healthspan experiment: improving VO₂ max, increasing HRV, reducing visceral fat, and restoring energy.

The goal is not simply to live longer, but to preserve strength and function over the next 20 to 30 years.

This did not begin because I suddenly became afraid of age. And not because I wanted to “live to one hundred.” You can do that on autopilot too, gradually lowering your standards and accepting limitations as inevitable.

What interests me is preserving capacity: the ability to think clearly, make decisions under pressure, train well, maintain muscle, and stay resilient under stress. Not just to exist longer, but to function well for longer.

Longevity = Lifespan + Healthspan (Living Longer, Staying Healthier)

I genuinely admire long-lived people in Okinawa and Sardinia – calm, smiling, living simply. But my goal is slightly different. I do not want to become a “surprisingly lively old man.” I would like to look and function at 90 more like many people do at 50. That sounds ambitious. Good. That is my standard.

I’m not interested in motivation for the sake of motivation. I’m interested in measurement: VO₂ max, HRV, visceral fat, body composition, blood biomarkers. If something cannot be measured, it is just a beautiful idea.

My aim is sustainability, not biohacking theater. If by 70 I am clearly diminished in what I can do, then somewhere in the strategy, I got it wrong.

This site is not a blog about inspiration. It is a record of an experiment, with numbers, adjustments, and sometimes uncomfortable truth.

Baseline at 45 – Starting Health Metrics

Before changing anything, I documented the starting point. Without that, progress quickly turns into illusion.

At the start of the experiment, I was 45.

• VO2 max: 46 (estimated by Whoop based on heart rate and load)
• HRV: average 51 ms (night-time Whoop readings)
• Resting Heart Rate: 54–57 bpm
• Sleep: inconsistent, with regular drops in recovery
• Weight: 87 kg
• Body composition: 23.8% body fat
• Visceral fat: 20.9%

Body composition method: bioimpedance analysis

My lab work added more detail: low vitamin B12, insufficient vitamin D, elevated cholesterol. Nothing dramatic, but nothing you would call optimal for the long game. I was functioning normally, working, training from time to time, looking “like many men at 45.”

The problem is that “like many” is not a strategy. That was the moment I stopped evaluating myself by feeling and started evaluating myself by data. Not to compete with anyone. To see the trajectory.

In a long game, individual numbers matter less than the direction they move.

What I Track – Operational Metrics

I could measure far more. Modern tools make that easy, from continuous glucose to epigenetic age. For now, I focus on core metrics that reflect functional health and give me a clear signal over time. At the moment, they fall into three groups.

Performance

These metrics show what the body can do.

VO₂ max tells me how strong my engine is under load. I do not see it as just a sports number. I see it as a preview of what my capacity may look like 20 to 30 years from now.

Strength matters because muscle loss is quiet. At 25, you can skip workouts and barely notice it. At 45, that deal is gone. I track strength so decline does not happen invisibly.

Resting Heart Rate is a simple signal of cardiovascular load, fitness, and recovery. A higher number often means more accumulated stress and less adaptation than I would like.

Recovery

HRV gives me a useful signal about recovery and adaptability. When it drops, it often means the body is already tired, even if the mind is still pretending everything is fine.

Sleep consistency matters as much as sleep duration. Eight hours means less if bedtime moves around every night. The body notices that chaos even when we pretend it does not.

Strain is my daily load score from Whoop. It is not perfect, but it helps me avoid overestimating myself. A useful reminder that sometimes I am not a hero – just optimistic with bad timing.

Internal Health

Body composition matters more than body weight alone. Weight can stay stable while muscle quietly leaves and fat quietly moves in. The mirror is not always an honest consultant.

Visceral fat gets special attention because it is tied to metabolic risk. It can look modest from the outside and behave badly on the inside, especially in men.

Blood biomarkers such as vitamin D, B12, lipids, and other repeat markers help me check reality before the body decides to explain it more loudly.

I am not building a cult of numbers. Metrics are not the goal. They are navigation. The list may evolve, but the important thing is simple: the trajectory stays visible.

The Core Metrics Behind My Longevity Experiment

My Key Longevity Metrics ((Last updated: April 2026)	Value	MoM Change (%)	Target	Unit
Age	46	-	-	years
VO₂ Max	57	-1.7%	60–62	ml/kg/min
Heart Rate Variability (HRV)	91	+6.4%	90+	ms
Resting Heart Rate (RHR)	41	-2.4%	38–42	bpm
Body Fat Percentage	19.2	-1%	14–16	%
Visceral Fat Index	10	0	6-8	points
Whoop Sleep Performance	87	+1.1%	92+	%
Non-Activity Stress	1:51	-1%	<1:30	hours
Whoop Biological Age	30,5	-1%	<30	years

These metrics track cardiovascular fitness, recovery, sleep quality, stress load, and body composition, helping make long-term health trends visible over time. Values are updated monthly. If you want to explore how these indicators change over time, you can view the full trends on my Key Metrics dashboard.

The 5 Pillars

Metrics are indicators. They show the condition of the machine, but they do not change it. That is why I work through five practical pillars.

1. Sleep

Sleep is the base layer. This is where recovery happens: tissues repair, hormones regulate, metabolism stabilizes, and the brain resets.

When sleep breaks down, it is not only energy that suffers. Thinking suffers too.

I work on sleep duration, consistency, timing, and recovery quality. In any serious approach to health after 40, these are not optional details.

→ Explore Sleep

2. Fuel

I do not follow extremes. My focus is adequate protein, calorie awareness, micronutrients, and regular lab work.

The first stage was a shock. Once you start tracking food and measuring outcomes, some habits that looked harmless stop looking harmless very quickly.

That phase passed. I found alternatives, rebuilt my nutrition, and realized that most limits are really a creativity problem, not a suffering problem. Right now, I feel better than I did at 35 without living in constant restriction.

→ Explore Fuel

3. Strength + VO₂ max

I was never someone who lived for training. For a long time, workouts were secondary.

Now I do strength training three times a week: basic lifts, fixed working weights, careful progression. No performance theater. No need to prove anything to anyone.

At the same time, I work on VO₂ max through intervals and regular aerobic sessions. Not every day and not to collapse. I train in a way that still makes me want to come back tomorrow.

The goal is sustainable progress: better fitness, better recovery, and more muscle without overload or burnout.

→ Explore Strength + VO₂ max

4.  Mind & Recovery

Stress is not going away. I am an entrepreneur. It comes with the territory.

So the real question is not how to eliminate stress, but how to build more resilience to it.

Breathing, routine, load management, and psychological hygiene matter just as much as training. If you live with pressure for years, this pillar matters more than motivational quotes in minimalist fonts.

→ Explore Mind & Recovery

5. Risk Metrics

A test on its own is not about “am I okay.” It is about risk.

We tend to look at values in the green range and relax. But what matters more is what starts to drift, how trends evolve, and where they are leading. Risk rarely appears suddenly — it builds long before anything crosses a reference range.

I rely in part on the framework of physician Peter Attia and his concept of the “four horsemen of death”: cardiovascular disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and metabolic dysfunction. The logic is simple — do not wait for symptoms; look early for weak points in these areas.

I look at the system through four blocks:

Lab Tests — basic blood work and biochemistry: lipids, glucose, liver markers, inflammation markers, vitamins, iron. This gives numbers, but numbers alone mean very little without context and trend.

Heart Risk — not individual markers, but an overall assessment of cardiovascular risk (how everything combines into one picture).

Metabolic Health — how the body manages energy: glucose, insulin, insulin sensitivity, and overall system stability.

Screening — a deeper look at the body: DEXA (body composition, visceral fat, bone density), ultrasound of internal organs, and other early screening tools when needed. This is no longer about blood values, but the actual state of tissues and structures.

There is also an important point that is often missed: most doctors read lab results as “out of range equals a problem.” But real risk starts earlier — in trends, combinations of markers, and gradual shifts that still look “normal” in isolation.

This structure is not about “checking your health.” It is about seeing where the system begins to break down early — and correcting it before symptoms appear.

→ Explore Risk Metrics

This structure is not carved in stone. It evolves with me. But it gives me a clear view of what is slipping and where attention needs to go. That makes progress less random.