What Does Bill Perkins Regret Right Now?

Bill Perkins says the part of life he is most dissatisfied with is health adherence. Four years after getting married he was at 8 percent body fat, with VO2 max in the top 1 percent. He puts himself now around 16 or 18 percent body fat, with VO2 barely at the middle for his age. Waking twice a night for a baby, and eating through that stretch, are the stories he tells himself. He calls them excuses for being lazy.

He treats the slide as serious because he says United States averages include about a 40 percent obesity rate, so average is a low bar. His doctor runs what Perkins calls the Centurion Olympics. You pick about 10 activities you still want in the last decade of life. His include wake surfing, picking up a small child, a hike, and hard intervals. On his current path, about 80 percent of the activities he wants in that last decade are already impossible. He says he is overdrawing his future self. He has hired another trainer who can show up, and he is deciding whether that trainer should travel with him, because travel has been the excuse. If he cannot stay accountable, he pays someone else to keep the standard.