FormerlyMe is an online movement to motivate and inspire people to become the best version of themselves by showing them my journey and experience in trying a new workout and lifestyle regime every 30 days. Every post, update, and video is ‘formerly me’ as I endeavor to become the best version of myself and become FormerlyMe. Each month CP Magazine will showcase a part of my journey to becoming the best version of myself. I hope that in turn this inspires and motivates you to start your own journey as well. For this month’s story we will focus on the “Desert Sauna Suit Challenge” days of my journey.

Two years ago I completed several hours in Death Valley, CA in a sauna suit and that day it reached a high of 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 Celsius). I would go on to spend several sessions in sauna pods in a year and repeat the feat at Death Valley over a year later for over 9 hours at 78 degrees Fahrenheit (25 degrees Celsius). I wanted to test myself in the heat of the desert in the Middle East. What better place to do this than Kuwait? Kuwait has an average August temperature of 107 degrees Fahrenheit (84 Celsius). On this day it reached a high of 117 degrees Fahrenheit (47 Celsius).

I started my day driving across the Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah Causeway across Kuwait Bay and tried driving north towards the Iraq border at Highway 801. After running into some dead ends and roads that ran into sand dunes, I had to adjust my route and take the Highway of Death (Highway 80) and got to within 10km of the Iraq border.

At 117 degrees this was pretty hot and I took several precautions before I began the challenge. I must emphasize that this is NOT to be tried without necessary precautions and under supervision. Most professionals will warn against wearing a sauna suit for more than 20-25 minutes. Again this is not something to try without proper preparation and supervision. With adequate preparation and supervision I stepped out the car wearing an all black sauna suit and began my challenge.

I lasted only 16 minutes. It didn’t take long before I felt my skin burning (I didn’t wear sunscreen). I decided to wrap up my Desert Sauna Suit Challenge and call it a day. I was able to capture this on the YouTube channel as I did for my two Death Valley Sauna Suit videos. It felt good to be able to travel to the Middle East and take on such a challenge and see how far I could push my body extreme temperature wise. With that completed I can close the door on extreme heat challenges, and now look into extreme cold challenges which I will explore in Europe this winter.