As middle age men we all need to be concerned with our health.
Here are just a few things you need to know get on the right track.
1. Choose the Right Stimulus
You are probably thinking, "Choose the right stimulus? What stimulus?"
Good question. Everything is a stimulus for your body.
How you train, eat, sleep, drink, think, etc. all send signals to your brain and body on how it should start to adapt.
Jogging for example tells your body that you need to run from point A to point B more efficiently. That means by using less energy, not more.
This is why runners hit weight loss and fat loss plateaus faster than most other exercise enthusiasts.
Start running from a starting point of doing absolutely nothing and what do you know, you improve.
Keep running and expect to keep improving, and what happens?
You keep losing muscle, gaining fat, and increasing inflammation.
If fat loss and health are your goals, choose the appropriate stimulus that will trigger both of them at the same time.
2. As Men, We are Lucky from an Evolutionary Perspective
It is not that hard for guys to lose fat and get healthier.
For women, that is a different story. But for us, we have testosterone on our side.
And if we keep doing the things that maintain our levels, we succeed.
Keep doing the things that decrease it, like long endurance training, cutting back on sleep, eating crappy foods, getting drunk more often than you should, and watch what happens to those numbers.
Most men that I work with just have to make small subtle tweaks to their current lifestyle and they thrive.
You don’t have to live like a monk to look like a god. Trust me.
You just have to tweak the right things in your life.
3. Light Beer is Not Better Than Dark Beer in the Long Run
Most guys switch to light beer and sacrifice their drink of choice thinking that this is actually better.
It isn’t.
I have not had one client yet that just switched his beer from actual beer to alcoholic yellow water (because that is what light beer really is) and improve their health markers or their body fat levels.
You would be smarter to switch up your diet and add more steak and less potato than you would be to drink light beer.
A real beer every now and then is a treat. Choose that over dessert. But switching from dark to light and acting like that is going to help you in the long run is craziness.
Pure, unadulterated nonsense!
4. Your Muscle Is Your Youth and Longevity
“But I don’t want to look like a body-builder.”
If this is what you are telling yourself, go ahead and hang this one out to dry.
I haven’t seen one client accidentally look like a body builder.
That just doesn’t happen.
But what I have seen is guys who hang up their running shoes and lift some weights a few times per week and dramatically change up their body fat percentages and overall energy.
If you are a research guy, look at it in regards to how often muscle is related to longevity and healthier aging. As long as the muscle was gained naturally of course. Abusing steroids leads to heart failure.
And I’m no doctor, but I know one thing is for sure: heart failure is NOT healthy.
5. Visceral Fat vs. Subcutaneous Fat
What’s the difference?
Do me a favor: look straight down at your feet. Can you see them?
Is your gut obstructing the view of something else that is important down there?
Yea... so that’s more of a problem than you think.
Visceral fat is the fat that accumulates around your organs and protrudes out as the infamous beer gut. When compared to subcutaneous fat (you know, the other fat that resides under your skin every where else on your body), the visceral fat is way more indicative of chronic disease and inflammation.
Start chipping away at that boulder under your chest and your arteries and your wife will thank you.