Jun 10 to Sep 6 · Melbourne winter
Contents
The surge that started Jun 1 has a known mechanism: the game with Chelsea, the nightly sauna ritual, and a shared 22:00 bedtime. Your history says restarts like this usually die. Nine previous restarts since 2022: median lifespan 21 to 34 days, only 3 of 9 passed eight weeks. Seven of nine deaths started with a weekend day under 2,000 steps followed by a skipped Monday. Three died at exactly day 19 to 21. Every winter restart that survived to week three died between Jul 20 and Aug 11.
This surge is the strongest on record: dual lever from day one (8.9k steps and 4 sessions a week), the first ever with zero weekend days under 3k, and the only profile matching your 84-day record from May 2023.
The bet
Nothing in this plan depends on the version of you who isn't there. Slumps, sickness, travel and hungover Sundays all have pre-authorised, named responses instead of reading as moral failures.
Every claim here is either named research or your own data. Cohort findings are associations, not guarantees, and trial effects are averages. Projections assume the named behaviour actually holds; that is the deal.
Evidence: the Finnish cohort (Laukkanen, JAMA Internal Medicine 2015, 2,315 men over 20 years) found 4 to 7 sauna sessions a week associated with roughly half the cardiovascular mortality of once-a-week users. Mechanistically, repeated passive heat expands plasma volume and lowers resting heart rate, which is why post-exercise heat protocols improve endurance markers within 2 weeks in trials. Separately, a meta-analysis of pre-bed passive warming (Haghayegh 2019) found heating 1 to 2 hours before bed cuts sleep-onset time by roughly a third. Your 75C far infrared is a milder dose than Finnish dry sauna, so treat the cohort numbers as direction, not destination.
Your data: the sauna arrived Jun 2 and the same week printed your best overnight HRV on record (83ms) and your earliest sustained bedtimes in 4.5 years. Confounded with the game, granted. The 20:30 slot is exactly the timing the pre-bed-warming literature rewards.
Projection if nightly holds: 2 to 3bpm of resting heart rate improvement attributable to heat alone by mid-July, faster sleep onset on sauna nights, and the scorecard will be able to separate the sauna's contribution from training by August.
Evidence: cohort meta-analyses consistently show each additional ~1,000 steps a day associated with 6 to 15% lower all-cause mortality in the 4k to 9k range, the exact band you are moving through. Three thousand extra steps is also ~130 to 160 kcal a day of energy out. The midday outdoor component doubles as light therapy: outdoor light is 1,000+ lux even overcast, against the ~17 to 34 min/day of daylight your watch logged in past winters, and bright-light protocols are the best-evidenced non-drug intervention for seasonal mood.
Your data: real baseline 5.3k/day, surge running 9.3k. Your weight has been flat for 17 months at the LOW activity level, which means restored steps come straight off the energy balance rather than being eaten by appetite they never triggered before.
Projection if 7,500+ holds: ~150+ kcal/day of additional expenditure, a measurable fat-mass downtrend on the eufy scale starting roughly August (0.3 to 0.7kg/month, visible through noise by spring), and the July mood floor defended by the daylight dose.
Evidence: the strongest evidence here is you. Your resting heart rate fell 63 to 50 across nine months in 2023 on the exact dose this plan rebuilds: ~3 sessions a week at working HR 117 to 123 plus 7 to 8k steps. Retraining is also faster than training: muscle retains the nuclei built in previous adaptation, and your recovery capacity (HRV 73ms, zero measured next-night cost from current sessions) is the best launch position in your data. The ACTN3 TT / AMPD1 CC genotype favours exactly the volume-first, easy-run build the plan uses.
Your data: RHR 56 to 57 now against a 48 to 50 personal baseline. The gap is the engine, not the nervous system, and that is the recoverable kind.
Projection if 2 hard days/wk land from August: RHR 53 to 55 by Sep 6, low 50s by late spring, 48 to 50 territory by autumn 2027 (your own lag history says the floor arrives 9 to 12 months after the dose). Watch VO2max estimates with suspicion; trust the RHR trend and how the hard sessions feel.
Evidence: your own week six. Onset moved from a 4.5-year median of 23:48 to 22:32-23:31, and average sleep jumped from ~7.4 to 8.5 hours. An earlier onset with a fixed wake time adds whole sleep cycles, and REM concentrates in the final morning cycles, so the extra hour is disproportionately REM.
Projection if it holds 5+ nights a week: ~45 to 60 extra minutes of sleep a night, roughly 6 extra hours a week of recovery, the single largest absolute change in the whole plan. This is also the one behaviour with a 4.5-year failure history, which is why it stays an experiment with a mechanism rather than a rule.
Evidence: your 8 worst recovery nights on record (overnight HRV crushed to 34 to 46ms against your 75 average, efficiency 90% vs 96%) cluster on late weekend nights, and 7 of your 9 restart deaths started with a weekend step cliff. Alcohol is the single most plausible driver of both.
Projection while it holds: the bad tail of your recovery distribution simply disappears, weekend mornings stop being rescue scenarios, and the weekend-cliff death mechanism loses its trigger. This is the highest effect-size-per-effort item in the system.
The scoreboard, projected to Sep 6
Conditional on the named behaviours holding, with floor weeks allowed:
Metric Now Sep 6, realistic Credit Resting HR 56 to 57 53 to 55 Intensity + steps + sauna Overnight HRV 73ms avg holds 75+, fewer bad-night crashes Alcohol zero + sleep + sauna Sleep 7.4h, onset 23:48 era 7.8 to 8.3h, onset near 22:30 Bedtime mechanism + sauna timing Steps 5.3k baseline 7.5 to 8k held as the new normal Lunch walk + weekend fixture Fat mass 13.3kg (18.5%) 12.5 to 13.0kg, downtrend visible Engine restored at stable intake Winter mood first post-SSRI winter weekly mood 3+ maintained Daylight + EPA + saffron + the game The honest footnote: fat moves last and slowest, RHR lags dose by months, and HRV is noisy week to week. The behaviours are the scoreboard; these numbers are what the behaviours have historically bought you.
| Day | What happens |
|---|---|
| Mon | Class (any format). Missed morning = same-day evening session, a proven pattern: 27 of 143 peak-era sessions started 16:00 to 19:00. |
| Tue | Basketball (Just Play Rockets). Gym skipped by design. Late night pre-authorised, no sauna after the game. |
| Wed + Fri | Class. If a HIIT or ENDURE format lands on a day you are going anyway, book it over SCULPT or STRENGTH. Game target is 5 classes a week, so Thu and a weekend class are the usual extras; at 5 plus basketball, the warm-up runs six days a week and one class stays genuinely easy. |
| Every weekday | Lunch walk after eating, 15 min minimum, rain version counts. 3 of 5 days now, 5 of 5 from Jul 13. |
| Sat | Walk with Chelsea, coffee run as the cue. Steps, daylight, connection. No targets. |
| Sun | Yoga, Pilates or a long walk. Verify the week's bookings. Scorecard arrives 18:00. |
Every class day starts with the 10-minute warm-up. Not optional (COL5A1).
One new variable per fortnight. Nothing stacks.
Now to Jun 18: ride the game
The game owns accountability. One addition: prefer HIIT or ENDURE formats when they fit days you already attend. Book the first post-NZ class before you fly. Your day 19 to 21 kill zone lands Jun 16 to 18; the defence is owing almost nothing new.
Jun 19 to 25: NZ week
Not a floor week, not a failure. No gym, no sauna. What travels: 8k steps, 2 mat circuits (15 to 20 min bodyweight), reading, journalling, bedtime intent. Wear the watch. Keep Tailscale on or the whole week reads as watch-dark. Phase clock pauses.
Jun 26 to Jul 12: the handover
The most dangerous stretch: trip re-entry, then the game ends Jun 30. From Jul 1 the Sunday scorecard carries the five core rules in verified form. Weekly shape: aim the game target of 5 classes plus basketball; the scorecard's held bar stays at 3+, the level your 12-month record says survives bad weeks. A 4-class week is a good week. Plus 1 cardio-format class when it fits, lunch walk 3 of 5.
Jul 13 to Aug 9: graveyard, defended
Hold the spec, add nothing. All three winter survivors died in this window, and July is the daylight floor (17 min/day in 2024) in your first post-SSRI winter. Lunch walk goes to 5 of 5: it is the daylight protocol. Calf raises 2x a week start now. One floor week is pre-authorised in this half.
Aug 10 to Sep 6: intensity
Only now, after the historical death dates: one easy run a week, 15 to 20 min, ramped at most 10% a week, flat routes, no sprinting. Hard days target 2 a week: basketball plus one verified hard stimulus (cardio-format class or run). Mat HIIT 15 min is the wet-weather substitute. Volume stays 130 to 160 min a week; volume is already at your RHR-50 dose, intensity is the lever.
Exit criteria, behaviour only: 3+ sessions a week held outside floor, sick and travel weeks; 4-week step average 7,500+; 2 hard days a week landing by late August; floor weeks 2 or fewer; review answered 10 of 12 Sundays. RHR exits as a direction, not a number.
The minimum viable week
A 10-minute outdoor walk on at least 3 of 7 days. Cold water on your face first if the spiral is on. Nothing else is owed. Stretch goal, not requirement: one class, any format, morning or evening, or Pilates.
No slump week in your recorded history passed even this. That is the point: it sits below every slump on record, so it is reachable from inside one.
Two floor weeks are pre-authorised, one per half. You can also declare one proactively on feel alone by texting the bot. Not a failure, a planned state. After a floor week, the interrupted week repeats; nothing restarts from zero.
Two audible alarms only. Everything else is silent and feeds the Sunday review.
| Alarm | Fires when | Response |
|---|---|---|
| Watch dark | No overnight watch data 2 nights running. The exact signal that preceded the May crash. | Charge it before the sauna tonight, wear it to bed, book a class for tomorrow. |
| Weekend rescue | Under 3,000 steps at 3pm Sat or Sun. 7 of 9 dead restarts started with a weekend like this. | 25-minute walk before dark. Verify Monday's booking. |
Silent checks: 3 days without a session (book tomorrow, any class, Pilates counts), sleep onset past 00:30 twice running (phone in the other room at 23:00 for 3 nights), 7-day RHR more than 3bpm over the sauna-era baseline (with 2+ sessions that week it means overreach, cut the hard day and keep attendance; with 0 or 1 sessions it is a slump signal), and the death line: 7-day steps under 6,000 with under 2 sessions auto-declares the floor week. Bedroom CO2 trending over 800ppm: 10-minute room flush at 21:30, door ajar.
Self-cues the machines cannot see: afternoon scrolling means cold water plus a 10-minute walk now and sauna tonight. A drinking night means the countermeasure is the Sunday daytime walk with Chelsea plus the Monday evening fallback booked Sunday night, never Monday-morning willpower. A guilt spiral starting means the proactive floor week exists. Use it.
The pipeline reads the watch data, Home Assistant and the workout log on the homelab. It messages you on Telegram; you can text it back anytime:
4 or 3 dSunday 18:00 brings the verified scorecard: deduplicated steps, sessions with the two hardest by heart rate, sleep and median onset, RHR and HRV against the sauna-era baseline, lunch walks, CO2 nights. Verdict is GREEN, AMBER or RED with the one fix. Unanswered reviews get one Monday 09:00 re-ping. Two low-mood replies in a row trigger protective posture: hold the phase, daylight first, nothing advances.
Kiva Rise 1-person far infrared, max 75C, 1600W. Already nightly with breathwork and journalling inside it: the best habit bundle in the system. Guardrails only:
Full detail and rationale: vault, 03-Areas/Health/Supplement-Stack-2026-06. The daily rhythm:
| When | What |
|---|---|
| Before breakfast | B12 spray under the tongue, daily not ad hoc (FUT2 GG, last reading 344 vs 400+ target). |
| With the smoothie | Fish oil 2 caps daily (FADS1 CT: chia cannot cover it, and EPA is the stack's strongest mood support this winter). D3+K2 spray. Calcium citrate 1.5g, restarted (DNA says 2000mg/day, diet alone gives ~half, and running starts in August). Greens caps. Saffron daily through winter. Full-fat yogurt in the smoothie carries the fat-soluble absorption. |
| The smoothie | Bananas, blueberries, Greek yogurt, milk, whey, collagen, creatine 5g, bee pollen, beetroot, lion's mane or cordyceps, chia. 55 to 65g protein as-is. |
| Lunch | 25 to 30g protein plus fat plus fiber: the 3pm-crash rule, unchanged. |
| Dinner | ~30g protein. With the smoothie that lands the 115g day. The game's 80g is a floor. |
| Post-sauna | 500 to 750ml water with 500 to 700mg sodium: the DIY electrolyte mix (quarter tsp salt). Magnesium does not replace sodium. |
| Night | Taurine, magnesium glycinate, glycine 3g, apigenin, sometimes theanine. Second calcium 1.5g rides along (split beats one bolus). |
Watch list: no iron until ferritin is retested (TMPRSS6 GG, was 62 targeting 100+). Zinc stays ad hoc, never daily (no copper source since the liver caps went). Paracetamol only, never casual ibuprofen (CYP2C9, and apigenin adds to it). Bloods: ACL Brunswick, no appointment, Sat mornings work; winter vitamin D, ferritin and B12 are the reads that gate August.
22:00 is the game's rule and the first mechanism ever attached to it: sauna at 20:30, wind-down inside it, bed by 10. For 4.5 years your onset median sat at 23:48 through every intention; the first game week bent it to 22:32 to 23:31. The plan measures it weekly and never punishes it. Friday and Saturday run to 23:00, Tuesday basketball is exempt.
Sits above the floor and never counts as failure. Text sick to the bot: the calendar slides right, no tripwire counts, sick-day RHR is excluded. Fever or below-neck symptoms: no class, no sauna, walks optional. Above-neck only: walks plus one easy class, no hard day, sauna 10 minutes max. Resume when symptoms clear and 7-day RHR is within about 2bpm of pre-illness baseline.
Pain that changes mechanics or persists past 72 hours: drop the offending pattern, keep walks and the floor. Pain in 3 consecutive sessions: book a physio, attendance does not override it. Paracetamol is the permitted analgesic; the casual-ibuprofen ban stands (CYP2C9, and apigenin adds to it).
The honest version: it might not, and it is built so partial failure is not total failure. Past restarts died at day 19 to 21 under piles of fresh obligations; this plan adds almost nothing before Jun 18. Every winter survivor died in late July under ambition; this July is maintenance with mercy rules. The May crash was invisible because detection lived in the person who disappears; now the loudest alarm is watch-darkness itself, and the review reads itself to you. The floor sits below every slump on record. What it does not promise is an RHR number by September. The bet is narrower: the mechanism that produced the best 10 days in your data since 2024 can survive three seams, because each one has a plan instead of a hope.