Paul Fennessy

YOU MIGHT BE surprised by the most difficult aspect of this 12-week fitness challenge.

It’s not working out six days a week – exhausting as that can be.

Even sticking to a highly restricted diet is tough, but doable, no matter how many eggs I have to eat.

The hardest part is simply finding the time.

I don’t have a consistent work schedule.

Some days I will start at 10am and finish at 6.30pm. Other days, I begin at 2.30pm and finish at 11pm.

I have a three-year-old child who needs plenty of attention, so if I’m not working, I still kind of am working (though it can be more fun and rewarding than most work, to be fair).

So on days when I start work at 2.30pm, I have two choices.

I can begin my workout at 6am or 11pm. I have tried both, and neither are particularly fun.

The workouts generally take around two hours, including a half-hour warm-down at the end and a shower afterwards – there are few better feelings than the satisfaction of finally being able to dispense with a sweat-drenched T-shirt.

So if I begin at 11pm, I’ll be done around 1am and will need to relax for an hour or so before tiredness creeps in and bedtime provides much-needed rest.

Worryingly, some studies have indicated that a late workout can negatively affect your sleep cycle, though it hasn’t impacted mine much so far.

The alternative is getting up before my son at 6am and squeezing the workout in before he rises at 8am.

This feels like a battle against time, but it is preferable to the 1am finish, usually.

I have also, at times, done the dreaded back-to-back evening followed by morning workout, which you don’t need to be a fitness aficionado to realise is not great for recovery.

It should get easier, as the little man started school this week, though he was immediately struck down with a bug, thereby destroying grand plans for somewhat sensible workout hours.

The downside of getting the exercise done super early, though, is knowing that you have a full, potentially exhausting day ahead of you.

One day near the start of this challenge stands out.

A promise I made to myself for this challenge is to rely on transport as little as possible.

So for example, when I was covering the Man United-Leeds friendly in Croke Park last month, I ended up walking to the stadium, both to and from the city centre.

Eventually, I hit 23,653 steps. That factor, coupled with the morning workout, was not easy. By late evening, a general stiffness in most body parts was combined with a wooziness from all that exercise.

A view of Tolka Park. Grace Halton / INPHO Grace Halton / INPHO / INPHO

The next day was hardly easier, as it included a similarly long walk from town to and from Tolka Park for the Shelbourne-Ajax game.

Even finding time for meals can be tricky, particularly when they take effort to make, as opposed to my previous deep-seated habits of grabbing a banana for breakfast or a sandwich for lunch to combat the general busyness of life.

These days, it is not unusual to sit down to my dinner of steak, eggs, asparagus and bagels somewhere between 10 and 11pm. No doubt my neighbours are wondering about the strong smell of inadequately cooked meat emanating from the house at ungodly hours.

But judging by various Reddit threads, I’m not the only one who struggles with this work-life-exercise balance.

I’m also conscious that I am in a relatively privileged position.

Managing this challenge is possible because I often work from home.

It would be infinitely harder to keep up with the additional dilemma of two to three hours of travel time a day.

Working out so early or late in the day is also feasible because it is a 12-week challenge.

Keeping it up long term is unlikely, and certain things will need to be modified if that happens.

And according to 2025 figures cited by the Oireachtas, fitting exercise into the day seems to be a problem for the population at large.

To address growing concerns, the Obesity Policy and Action Plan (OPAP) was launched in September 2016, and since then, the levels of overweight and obese people have stabilised.

Still, according to the Healthy Ireland Survey 2024, the rate of obesity (for all ages from 15 onwards) is 21%, and the rate of overweight people is 35%. 

In other words, just under 60% of the population of people over 15 in Ireland are either overweight or obese.

I have at times fallen into the former category.

But after a couple of weeks of regular exercise and a regimented diet, my weight (as of last weekend) was 169.1lbs.

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Height also matters in determining whether a person counts as overweight.

So, according to the NHS website, my combined height (5’11) and weight leave my body mass index at 23.6, which falls into the healthy weight range.

For context, 18.5 to 24.9 is considered healthy, 25.0 to 29.9 is overweight, and anything beyond that is obese.

Considering I was 175.9lbs when I started a few weeks ago, and my BMI was 24.5, it shows the substantial effect the programme has had after just three weeks.

Yet I can’t help but consider those people who don’t have the luxury of time, however limited it may be, to exercise and diet.

Several studies, meanwhile, have suggested people are working harder than ever.

Per the New Zealand outlet RNZ:

“The technology-driven age of work should be making our lives easier. But instead, work intensification is a growing problem, says American organisational consultant Melissa Swift… She says research has found work is getting harder because people are getting asked to do too much in less time, there are too many people involved in decision-making and work is increasingly emotionally demanding.”

A 2021 BBC article adds:

“Although many of us associate overly ambitious workaholism with the 1980s and the finance industry, the tendency to devote ourselves to work and glamorise long-hours culture remains as pervasive as ever. In fact, it is expanding into more sectors and professions, in slightly different packaging.

“New studies show that workers around the world are putting in an average of 9.2 hours of unpaid overtime per week – up from 7.3 hours just a year ago. Co-working spaces are filled with posters urging us to “rise and grind” or “hustle harder”. Billionaire tech entrepreneurs advocate sacrificing sleep so that people can “change the world”. And since the pandemic hit, our work weeks have got longer; we send emails and Slack messages at midnight as boundaries between our personal and professional lives dissolve.”

So with substantial evidence of growing work intensity, a proliferation of overtime and more being asked of people at all hours, other aspects of life tend to suffer.

Is it any wonder that over half of us are overweight or obese?