Your "Program" Stopped Working Years Ago - Follow These 7.5 Steps Instead

This week’s newsletter is a bare knuckled, straight to the point, “do this, not that” set of instructions you can start today.

What I’m about to share with you is based on 2+ years of working with Men over 50.

The Men who joined came in all shapes and sizes. Some were in great shape already and others had a lot of work to do.

What they shared was the belief they could improve.

All of the guys are at the point in their career where they are usually giving orders, not taking them.

But when something works and you can prove it, people tend to listen.

These guys listened. And they all leveled up, big time. In fact, one of our member’s experience was chronicled in the news.

So I condensed 2 years worth of learnings into this set of steps. 7.5 of them to be exact.

These steps are based on what has been proven to work for Men over 50.

You may like your program, but is it working? We know ours is because we measure results:

• Men are healthier and biologically younger (as evidenced by semi-annual biological age testing).

• Men are stronger (as evidenced by monthly fitness testing).

• Men are leaner (as evidenced by monthly body composition testing).

And while we can’t measure their mindsets (yet), they are more positive, more confident and more optimistic about their second half of life. They are leveling up as they add years.

Here are 7.5 Steps you can take to upgrade your personal program.

Step 1: Stop BullSh*tting Yourself And Tell The Truth

No matter who you are, you more than likely have more fat on your frame than you should and you are weaker than you were 5 years ago.

And if you are over 50, you aren’t performing at the same level you were 5 years ago.

You are telling yourself some kind of story, maybe a story like one of these:

“I’m in better shape than most guys I know”

“It’s part of aging, there’s not much I can do about it”

“I know I need to change, I’m planning on starting after things settle down”

These are all BS stories and deep down you know it. You just don’t know where or how to start.

And if you know where to start and aren’t taking action, then you really don’t know. Knowledge without action is useless.

One of the best ways to know the truth is to get your body composition measured (we favor the InBody scan for its wide availability, low price, and ease of use.).

If you are over 20% body fat, you are overweight.

If you are over 25% body fat, you are obese.

This isn’t a judgement, it’s just a number. Don’t assign any more meaning to it than that.

And now that you have your starting point, you can start the journey to improve your health. You leave behind the past and start letting a bigger future pull you forward.

We target 15% body fat. We’ve had many Men start at 20%+ body fat on day 1 and within 6-10 months have achieved 15% body fat. We overestimate what we can achieve in the short term but underestimate what we an achieve in the long term. Your life can dramatically improve over the course of 12 months.

You change the stories you tell yourself. You can perform better, you can get stronger, you can drop fat. You can have the best health of your life.

All progress starts by telling the truth and the InBody scan gives you that truth. The scan provides not only your weight but also body fat mass and skeletal muscle mass in lbs, body fat %, intra and extracellular water and depending on the model of InBody you use, visceral fat (the bad fat that packs around your organs that is a ticking time bomb on your life).

No one likes their first InBody scan and that includes Men who come in at 10% (awesome) or 30%+ (red alert). But that first scan quickly becomes the starting point from which you measure your gains.

The good news is that now you have information you can use to drive changes in your habits and behaviors. We have Men test every month so they can make course corrections and stay on track to reach their goals.

Use the link above to find an InBody scan near you and get tested ASAP. The cost is usually $25-$30 a scan and many places sell discounted bundled packages.

Step 2: Waterboard Yourself

Being waterboarded is how some guys feel when they follow our hydration guidance: drink ½ your bodyweight in ounces of water everyday.

If you struggle to drink this much water (ex. 200 lb man drinks at least 100 ounces per day) my guess is you also have dark yellow urine. When you are fully hydrated your urine is a light straw color.

Liquid check: this does not include drinks like Coffee, Coke, Diet Dr. Pepper, Monster drinks or the like. We are talking pure H2O. For extra credit, add a pinch of Celtic or Himalayan sea salt to your drink.

Studies indicate that 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated which creates a number of health issues.

Start the day by drinking at least 16 ounces of water upon waking. To make it easy to remember, put a glass of water on your bedside when you go to bed. Drink this before your morning coffee.

Adjust the guidance above based on activity level and environment (you’ll sweat more in Phoenix than Minneapolis).

Step 3: Get Your Ass Moving

Humans were meant to be in motion and the work from home movement has caused an increase in waist lines and a decrease in steps per day.

The guidance of 10,000 steps per day is pretty solid. Some experts think that 8,000 is enough. Almost every American can benefit from moving more.

But if you really want to move the needle on your InBody scan, you need to add resistance training. Walking, hiking, biking and other cardio activities are important but if you don’t include resistance training, these cardio activities can contribute to muscle loss, a surefire way to accelerate aging. A combination of resistance training and cardio will help you preserve muscle mass and burn fat.

We follow Peter Attia’s 4 Pillars of Fitness for Longevity which includes 4 kinds of training:

• Stability

• Strength

• Zone 2 (aerobic)

• Zone 5 (anaerobic)

After middle age, adults lose 3% of their muscle strength every year, on average. This limits their ability to perform many routine activities. If you aren’t doing the same things today that you did 5 years ago, one of the reasons is your loss of muscle.

Don’t overcomplicate this. You can start with a basic bodyweight program, join a gym that offers resistance training, or hire a trainer. But follow a program that incorporates the concepts of progressive overload - a type of strength training that gradually increases the intensity of workouts to avoid a plateau in muscle mass and strength.

Step 4: Eat This Way, Not That Way

Nutrition, food, diet, macros, calories, Paleo, vegan, Mediterranean diet…so much confusion and complexity.

But we do know this: what you eat in private you wear in public.

If we could translate this statement into an image, what image would you rather see:

• you wearing an Egg McMuffin, Monster energy cans, pizzas, fries, a loaded Chipotle burrito, cookies and bags of junk food?

• you wearing lean cuts of meat, salmon, colorful salads, vegetables, bright juicy fruit and glasses of crystal clear water?

Yes, that’s a crazy image to conjure but which image would you rather have associated with your personal brand?

The simplest way to clean up your nutrition is to eat real food, not processed foods.

So, how do you tell the difference?

If it was picked from a garden, a tree or bush, eat it. Vegetables and fruit in their original form. Fresh or frozen. Not juice, not applesauce, not canned, not mixed with sauces.

If it walked, swam or flew, eat it. Beef, chicken, turkey, salmon, halibut, duck, pheasant. The less processed the better. Eggs would have turned into something that walked or flew so include them.

A bagel, slice of bread, cupcake, ice cream or pancake do not fit this criteria. There is no bagel plant or pancake animal. Bags of salted snacks do not appear in nature.

For fats, olive oil, avocado oil, ghee, and coconut oil will do the trick. Throw out our canola oil and other seed oils. They are making you fat and unhealthy.

And as you build your plate, put protein at the center of it. Men should be eating 6-8 ounces of meat or fish at every meal to give their bodies enough protein to preserve and build lean muscle mass. When they eat less protein than this, they usually eat too many carbs (usually in the forms of processed foods like bread, pasta, chips and the like) and they add fat while losing muscle.

If you follow these guidelines 80% of the time, you’re on the right track.

Eat junk, you’ll look and feel like junk.

Eat like a champion, you’ll look and feel like a champion.

Step 5: Sleep Strategically

Most men don’t have a sleep strategy. Inconsistent sleep and wake times, eating before bed time, too much caffeine, and a number of other controllable factors negatively impact sleep. When your sleep sucks, nothing else in your life can optimize.

Read this issue of Harder To Kill to help create your sleep strategy. And if you want to go to the next level, read this issue about how tech can help improve your sleep.

You weren’t born with a CPAP machine. I understand why Men might need them as a tool to improve sleep. But if you are over 20% body fat, I’ll bet you a grass fed ribeye dinner that when you get your body fat % to 15% you won’t need a CPAP. Why? Because there is a linear correlation between obesity and obstructive sleep apnea.

The link between being overweight or obese and poor sleep is pretty clear. Reduce your body fat, improve your sleep.

Step 6: Own Everything & Ditch Your Excuses

Travel, RFP’s, client dinners, buddies in town, family gatherings, a saboteur spouse…there are a lot of obstacles in our lives that are designed to take us off our game.

But when you own everything in your world, the obstacles are just events. How you respond is the key to success.

Tim Knight calls this “The R Factor” - Event + Response = Outcome.

According to Knight, “Every day you choose how to respond to the events you experience. The outcome you get is determined by the responses you choose.”

We have the ability to choose our response. Roll that one around on your tongue for a moment.

You must own everything in your world. There is no one to blame. Reframe the blame and start prioritizing your health.

Step 7: Use GPS To Course Correct

Back to the InBody scan. When you do a scan every month, it becomes your GPS on what course corrections to make.

Examples:

• Lost 3 lbs of fat this month and added a ½ lb of muscle? Keep going on your current route, you are on course.

• Lost 3 lbs of weight but 2 lbs was fat and 1 was muscle? Course correction required, more than likely by increasing protein and doing resistance training 3x a week.

• Added 3 lbs of weight and 2 of the lbs were fat and 1 lb was muscle? Keep up the great work on protein and resistance training but dial back the calories.

The InBody scan is your GPS system and can help you make early course corrections so you arrive at your goals within a reasonable amount of time.

The person who gives you your InBody scan can provide assistance on interpreting your results and what changes to make.

Step 7.5 Draft Your Team

Taking action on all of the previous 7 steps becomes much more sustainable and achievable when you do it with a band of brothers. One buddy will do but you don’t have a backup plan with just the two of you. When you have a minimum of 3 guys, you have some built in redundancy to keep all 3 of you on track.

And when you are part of a larger group like Argent Alpha, you get guidance, thought leadership, peer support, subject matter experts as guest speakers, and an active community of like-minded Men who want to perform their best.

If you want sustainability, results and accountability, draft your team.

Take Action

There are 3 ways to take action:

1. Email this newsletter to at least 2 friends and in the subject line write “Let’s do this together”. In the body of the email, all you need to write is “Read this newsletter and let’s start this today by making the decision to do it.” Then let the process take off from there.

2. Apply to Argent Alpha. We have 5 slots to fill by December 31, 2023 before we temporarily put applicants on a wait list.

3. Change nothing. If your program is working and you are getting results, keep going.