Coming In Hot
I feel pretty amazing coming into 2026.
I was ill for the first couple of weeks of December, which was really getting me down. My Oura ring was like a constant demon on my shoulder, telling me to take it easy. I tried! I skipped the gym for essentially three weeks - the longest period that I can remember since I was in my teens - and focused on getting sleep. But nothing seemed to work.
Following that with a couple of weeks of rest over Christmas is definitely a recipe for feeling much better coming into January. But it feels like there's something else, too, and I don't know what it is. Even my Oura ring is showing 'readiness' scores above my pre-illness baseline. Something's going on.
The candidates:
- Alcohol: I'm doing Dry January for the first time ever. But I'm only 10 days in, and I didn't drink that often, so I'm sceptical I could be seeing this level of benefit so soon. At least, I hope not - I want to drink again from the start of February onwards!
- Sleep: My wife and I have been getting into bed pretty insanely early - like 8:30-9:00pm early - and then reading/watching an episode of TV in bed. I think we're both so sleep deprived from having a young daughter that it's just become our habit. Is it this?
- Nutrition: I'm usually pretty disciplined on the nutrition side, but the excesses of December have led me to be even more so in January. New additions including turmeric and ginger shots in the morning, more probiotics (e.g. kimchi, yoghurt) and pretty much zero added sugar.
- Sauna: As I wrote about last week, I'm trying a new protocol of getting in the sauna post-workout at least a few times a week. But again, it's so early in the journey there that I find it hard to believe I'm seeing such benefits already.
Maybe it's a co-incidence, or something else altogether. And I'm certainly not complaining. But I'll watch carefully for any changes that lead to a drop!