Welcome To Harder To Kill!

Welcome to the first newsletter from Argent Alpha. Our sole focus is making Men Over 50 Harder To Kill.

Each weekend I'm going to send 1 tip that, if implemented, will make you Harder To Kill. If you implement each of these tips, over the course of the year you will transform your health, fitness, mindset and overall performance. The result: you become Harder To Kill.

For the first newsletter, let's get some of the low hanging fruit out of the way. Avoiding the items on the list below automatically make you harder to kill:

• Texting and driving

• Drinking and driving

• Smoking

• Drinking beyond moderation

• Drugs

You get the point. We've all heard this advice and we don't cover these behaviors. They are self evident but if any apply to you, start there.

So let's get to the first tip.

Start the process of reducing your body fat to less than 20%.

Today, 77% of Men over 50 are overweight or obese. And this number is rising. This leads to a litany of health issues, metabolic syndrome being a huge threat.

According to the Mayo Clinic, metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions that occur together, increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes. These conditions include increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels.

For the 23% of Men over 50 who aren't in this group, you are losing 1% of your muscle mass every year. If you are over 60, this number can jump to 3% per year. This involuntary loss of muscle mass and strength is called sarcopenia.

Note: that muscle loss stat also applies to the 77%. Double whammy.

Where do you start?

As Dan Sullivan (founder of Strategic Coach) says, "All progress starts by telling the truth." At Argent Alpha, the truth starts with our members getting their body composition measured every month (until they achieve their body composition goals, then they have the option of measuring every 3 months) using the InBody Technology.

The InBody scan is inexpensive (usually $30 or less or potentially free through your gym), fast (less than 15 minutes), convenient (locations nationwide) and accurate (98% as accurate as a DEXA scan which is considered the gold standard but is $100+, harder to access and you are exposed to radiation).

The two main drivers (there are other contributing factors) for reducing body fat and maintaining / increasing muscle are:

• Nutrition - food quantity, quality and timing all impact body fat. More specifically, hitting a daily protein target and a total calorie target are key.

• Fitness - Resistance training (lifting weights) builds muscle and burns fat. Cardiovascular exercise is fine as a supplemental exercise but you won't retain or build muscle with cardiovascular exercise at the core of your training program.

Next Steps

Once you know your body composition, you have a baseline which you can use to measure progress.

Next, establish a daily protein target. A good place to start is to determine your ideal body weight and then target that number in grams of protein a day.

For example, if you are a 235 lb man and you believe your ideal body weight is 205 lbs, target 205 grams of protein a day. For many Men, this is initially a challenge. To make it more manageable, start with 70% of this number. In this example, let's call it 140 grams of protein per day. Each week, bump that number up a bit until you are consistently hitting your ideal body weight in grams of protein. And yes, it is okay to go over that amount (but not necessary).

You could start here and not pay attention to your total calories. The calorie discussion deserves its own newsletter so stay tuned. In the meantime, this is a great resource for you to review.

The next step: start a strength training program. This topic also deserves its own newsletter so do some research, hire a personal trainer, dust off your P90X DVD's, or start doing a body-weight workout. Something > Nothing! Track your workouts and each week, increase the amount of work you do (repetitions, weights, sets, etc.).If you do these two things, you are on the right path to improving your metabolic health, torching body fat, increasing strength and also becoming Harder To Kill!We oversubscribed our Q4 program called The Argent Alpha Upgrade. If you want to join our waitlist, drop me an email at [email protected].

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share this with 3 Men over 50 who you think might be interested in becoming Harder To Kill. And follow me on LinkedIn to get more in-depth content to make you Harder To Kill...click on the icons below. Thank you for your support!