10 years of Severe Obstructive Sleep Apnea & 2 hours of sleep
A young Chetan - he says he doesn’t take picture anymore so this is all we get!
I believe a vast majority of the population does understand the importance of sleep in their health & well being, it is our superpower. Yet, that’s where we comprise, adjust and ignore. We human beings tend to undervalue things that come easy or free.
Well, it doesn’t come easy to most.
While in Singapore for his undergrad 10 years ago, Chetan had a personal experience that led to him developing severe chronic insomnia. Over the years this led to severe sleep deprivation, exhaustion, Severe Obstructive Sleep apnea, memory loss and list goes on.
Imagine sleeping 2-4 hours after hours of struggle most days and 4-6hours on good days. Doesn’t seem to come easy now does it?
They say sleep is nature’s best attempt yet at immortality. It’s important for recovery, cognition, physical performance, weight management, injury management, disease management, motivation/drive, work capacity, focus and the list goes on. Think of anything you do daily and sleep affects it.
And now, the one superpower we have as humans, you have the kryptonite. This was the situation Chetan was in.
Over the years, he gained a lot fo weight (150kgs) from being this fit, extremely athletic individual. Developed a lot of substance dependencies and was just miserable as you can imagine.
Chetan and I started working together 2 months ago. At that point he weighed around 126kgs, had been working on his health over the last 3 years and had consumed as much information you can find on the internet around sleep, training, nutrition, psychology, hormones. You name it.
He now jokes about the time when he decided to work with me he expected a “brash, rough around the edges military style trainer who would yell at me and tell me to get my fat ass off the chair and run till I drop.”
The first week was just a lot of conversation which he recalls as me “having no judgements, no preconceived notions, no presumptions and no assertions, justifiable as they may have been and found a soft spoken, polite, affable, kind, intelligent guy who struck me as being everything but a quintessential trainer.”
Over the last two months:
Getting good quality 5-6 hours sleep most nights
Lost 13kgs (113kgs now)
Lost 5inches from waist
Shirts/tshirts that never fit are fitting now
Quit smoking from a pack a day (mostly credited to external doctors) - we just managed cravings, mindset, recovery
Prioritise recovery over everything as the biggest tool to recover was unavailable
In order to recover better we:
Substituted strength training 3x/week for his daily 3 hours of intense cardio
Reduced 16hour fasting to 12 hours and had more nourishing meals to reduce or sympathetic nervous system response
Stopped keto diet and reintroduced few carbs from being carbs aversive
Introduced more veggies & protein in the diet
But above all this, what Chetan said worked for him was “ spending hours discussing the philosophy, psychology and science of weight loss with me to tailor the most suitable regimen for me which he was willing to constantly amend, edit and augment basis my feedback. He didn't get irritated at any of my mannerisms, quirks, and issues. If he were any more zen i would have figured him for a Buddhist monk.“ and says that his biggest issue now is that his AC isn’t working!
