HEALTHY LIFESTYLE
7 Tough Lessons Over-40s Need to Learn About Health & Fitness
#2 Hardcore programs are like dating a nymphomaniac
I wish I’d appreciated more how my body worked like clockwork in my 20s, but you take it all for granted right?
And now after 40 when we’ve 101 plates to spin and a body that seems to argue with you more and more, it is harder to get in shape.
But it’s not impossible.
We can avoid spinning our wheels and getting nowhere with our attempts to look and feel great if we can just learn a few harsh-but-true lessons.
#1 Nothing Good Gets Eaten After 9 pm
Most folks eat healthy dinners these days, it’s what comes later that causes the damage.
Because absolutely no one feels peckish for broccoli and water at 9 p.m.
Instead, we want a wee bit of… sumthin’:
“entertain me, delight me, give me the food equivalent of a back rub, I’ve had a tough day, and watching Netflix without cookies, toast, chips, or generally something salty and processed or sweet feels wrong”.
But if you’re trying to lose weight it’s a counterproductive time to eat those things, especially as we get older and we struggle to rip through calories like we did in our 20s.
Your stomach could have been empty overnight, so you would have burned a little body fat while lying in bed. But now you’ve got Cheetos as fuel (and probably indigestion stopping you from getting into a nice deep sleep too).
No calories after dinner is the way forward for fat loss.
#2 Hardcore Programs Are Like Dating a Nymphomaniac
If you were sex deprived, then dating a nympho may seem great in theory.
And maybe for the first while it would be fantastic. But pretty quickly most of us would find the level of effort required to keep up is unsustainable. We’d be sore and tired, the novelty would wear off, and you’d end the relationship and go back to leading a sexless existence.
So too with hardcore training and diet programs.
Despite the attraction of making progress fast, after a couple of weeks of living on chicken and broccoli, working out for 2 hours a day 6 days a week, you’ve had enough — you’re sore, tired, and go back to your inactive, unhealthy existence.
Just like having sex a couple of times a week is plenty for most people over 40 (somebody will boast in the comments to the contrary I’ll bet!), so is the dull-but-effective strategy of:
- committing long-term to work out 2–3 times a week, and
- restricting calories just a little bit most days (with some wiggle room for wine/beer and junk at the weekends).
Ignore the hardcore nympho, stick with the solid, dependable guy/girl ;-)
#3 Life Is Too Short For Painful Sh*t
After any form of upright pulling motion (cleans, jerks, upright rows) in my late 30s, I’d get a shoulder impingement and have to scale back training for a while.
And as a coach, I’ve trained plenty of folks who love road running… It’s just their knees, ankles, and hips that don’t love it so much.
What’s the answer then? Live with the pain because these are still the ‘right’ exercises to do? Nope.
- I no longer do any upright pulling exercises and my shoulders have been great for years.
- Clients switch to cycling, running on grass (or a treadmill with some ‘give’ impact-wise), or some other form of cardio.
There are no Must-Do exercises. If your body hates it, don’t do it, find another option. Life is too short to deal with joint pain day in and day out.
#4 Screw Supplements — Just Go To Bed
Supplements for:
- metabolism
- hormone balance
- energy
- stress
- exercise recovery
- mood…
I count myself among those folks who have leaned on supplements to fix the problems their lifestyle habits have created!
And with clients, I’ve had guys considering TRT to fix their low testosterone, and women self-medicating with anti-depressants before considering the power of a simple lifestyle ‘hack’: Sleep.
Sleep fixes everything for folks over 40 — it balances hormones for men and women, lowers stress, boosts metabolism, gives your body time to recover from exercise, it lifts your mood.
Train yourself to get 8 hours of sleep a night by just getting to bed early enough, and ensuring neither your brain nor stomach has been over-stimulated beforehand.
This simple habit will help get your body working properly again on multiple fronts, so it can respond the way you want to your workouts and healthier eating.
#5 No Family Buy-in = No Progress
It’s all very well YOU wanting to get in shape, but you need to factor in the power that everyone else who lives in your house has to mess things up for you:
- I never buy candy or chips for myself but they’re still in the cupboard, whispering sweet nothings to me since my wife and kids buy them.
- I may want to work out at 8 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday… but that’ll only work if I’m not needed for pick-ups, drop-offs, and errands.
- I may want to get to bed at 10 pm, but my very persuasive wife wants to watch more Yellowstone…
Long story short, you need to explain to those you live with what habits you’re trying to build so they don’t get in the way.
Yes, you may have to compromise a little on what your initial Big Plans were.
But believe me, a compromise is better than your plans being foiled at every turn by a family member wanting something that stops you from eating better, working out, or looking after yourself.
#6 Why You Don’t Need a Face Workout
You’d think from the sheer number of machines in the gym that target the inner thighs, glutes, and abdominals that you can magically force the fat to melt away by isolating those areas through exercise.
That’s not how fat loss works though.
If I gain weight it goes around my midsection, when my wife gains weight it goes on her hips.
Do I need to do lots of abs work while she pummels her lower body?
Nope. We both need to exercise our whole bodies and get into a calorie deficit and the weight will come off where it needs to come off.
Ask yourself this — when you lost weight from your face in the past, what kind of targeted Face Workout did you do to manage that? Exactly ;-)
#7 You Won’t Die From a Few Stomach Rumbles
“I tried to lose weight but I was hungry so I just couldn’t stick with it for long”.
Somewhere along the way, hunger has become a source of panic. But to lose body fat you need to end most days having burned more calories than you consumed (with or without the help of exercise).
That calorie deficit causes some hunger. Some rumbles in the tummy.
Yes, you can mitigate the hunger by getting enough protein and fat (more filling than carbs) but learning to suck up a little hunger, instead of panicking and grabbing a snack (healthy or not) is one of the best things to learn to do to lose the weight you want.
As humans we can deal with a couple of hours of hunger, don’t worry. We’d have died out as a species long ago if that weren’t the case. You’ll live!
It’s Less Complex Than You Think
You have more wiggle room than you think once you commit to the basic tenets of:
- working out a few times a week and making things a little harder each time;
- sucking up a little hunger to lose weight while eating as healthily as you can;
- prioritizing your sleep and lowering stress so your body runs properly.
But the approach you take has to work for YOU and YOUR life if you’re going to stick with this for long enough to make progress.
If we can just learn these 7 lessons sooner rather than later, we can get (and stay) in shape in our 40s, 50s, and beyond, happy and pain-free, without having to give up the finer things in life that we’ve earned the damn right to have by now!
