Olaf Hansen, M.S. PHC

I had a very active childhood, exploring the woods and fields behind our house in southern Germany, but by the time I entered high school, I had succumbed to the "call of adolescence" and spent most of my time sitting behind a desk, studying and doing homework.

Although I regularly worked out 3 times a week and followed a, by conventional standards, healthy diet since I was 16 years old, I started to notice a few changes in my 30’s:

My blood sugar levels started to go up and down drastically during the day, making me ravenously hungry every 2-3 hours, followed by low energy and tiredness. I developed digestive issues, started gaining weight at around 2 pounds a year and my various aches and pains became worse: Just within a few years, I partially tore a tendon in my foot, developed knee and hip issues and dislocated a shoulder doing every day chores; my foot and sciatic nerve pain became so bad that I had to sit down in the shower and was barely able to make it from my car to the office. At age 39 I was a total wreck and I was about to become a father. 

The doctors I visited always gave me the same explanation: Bad genes, overuse and getting older.

After being offered bone fusion surgery for my foot and micro-fracture surgery for my knee, both with a success rate of around 50% for my cases, I started researching alternative treatments online and came across a fascinating article about health and evolutionary biology: The main idea was that most of our health issues occur because our lifestyle is not aligned with what our genes expect us to do: Our bodies and minds evolved under drastically different circumstances for almost 3 million years and are not (yet) adapted to our post-agriculture and especially post-industrialization way of living. 

I started eliminating modern “inflammatory” foods such as grains, added sugars and seed oils from my diet and switched from muscle-isolating gym-based workouts to whole body-, functional- and  natural movement based sessions as much as I was able to. I also transitioned to going barefoot or using minimalist shoes and spent more time sitting on the floor instead of the sofa or chairs.

It was slow going at first but after a few months my feet and knees became stronger and more mobile, my digestive issues went away and my blood sugar levels normalized to a degree where I could go without eating for 6-8 hours and not get "hangry". I was able to walk for an hour at a time, shower without sitting down and was able to play with my new-born child on the floor without pain.

That was all the proof I needed that this new way of living worked for me and I never looked back: Over the next few years I was able to gain back my strength, mobility and overall fitness and even improve on some aspects of it.

 

As with many crisis moments in life I also started to notice a  shift in my interests and priorities. My job which I liked and enjoyed before became more and more of a source of stress. I felt  stuck at work and just wanted  to spend more time with my family and on things that really interested me, which my job didn't allow to the degree I desired.

I started to look for an "out".

One evening I came across a blog by somebody that retired from his job as a software engineer when he was 30 and has been living off his savings ever since.

His blog intrigued me since his main path to financial independence was by living more frugally, or as he put it "living a slightly less luxurious life", investing the savings properly instead of just letting them sit in a bank account.

It also resonated with me because I noticed a slow but persistent lifestyle creep with ourselves over the last decade: It wasn't only the bigger house and the more expensive cars, it was also the small things like buying clothes we didn't need, subscriptions we never used, eating out 3-5 times week etc. that added up. Another topic of discontent was that our young daughter spent almost 12 hours in daycare every day, making us feel as if we were neglecting our job as parents.

I was never a big saver or investor but after talking it over with my wife, we decided to give this a try: We didn't have to start from scratch since we were both already working for a while and already had some savings, but we started to aggressively cut back our expenses and invest our savings. We didn't become super-frugal minimalists but simply aligned our spending with our values, spending money only on what was important to us.

After cutting our expenses in half and saving more than 50% of our income for the next few years, I decided to retire from the software industry in 2015.

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The first few years I focused on further improving my health and fitness and fine-tuning my "Financial Independence/Early Retirement" (FIRE) strategy, catching up on my reading list and being a stay-home dad, which also included two years of home schooling.

But as my daughter became older and needed me less and less, I decided that I want to share my experiences and knowledge around health, fitness and financial independence to help others live a healthier, fitter and happier live:

"OlafMoves Coaching" was born. The name reminds me daily that being able to move is a privilege and that in order to stay healthy we have to acknowledged our genetic heritage and keep moving, physicality and mentally to the best of our abilities.