2922: 5 Things Nobody Tells Men About Losing Fat After 40

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1:12Poshmark makes it easy to find what you actually want to wear at prices that feel like a quiet win. Download the Poshmark app today and use code PODCAST10 when you sign up to get$10 off your first purchase. If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, There's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews.

1:37Adam Schafer:All right, we're going to talk about five things nobody tells men about losing fat after 40. You're going to love this episode. By the way, when you listen to the episode, we're going to be referring to a couple workout programs. Right now, if you buy one of them, you get the other one for free. It's MAPS 40+. You buy that, you get MAPS PowerLift for free. So it's six months of workout programming planned out for you, and it's perfect for men in their 40s. If you're interested, you go to mapsbogo.com. Now, this episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Ketone IQ. So what is Ketone IQ? These are exogenous ketones.

2:16Adam Schafer:That's what's that, right? What is where exogenous ketones? Well, let me explain. When you go on a ketogenic diet, this is a zero-carb diet. Many people experience increased sharpness. They say their energy is more stable. They think better. They've got these nice, consistent energy all day long. It's not a stimulant because you get better sleep, but you just feel really good and really awake. Now, the challenge with that is you have to go on a ketogenic diet. You gotta eat zero carbohydrates. That sucks. It's not great for athletic performance or building muscle. It's also not sustainable. Well, enter Ketone IQ.

2:50Adam Schafer:You can eat a normal diet. You can eat your normal carbohydrates, your rice, your potato, whatever. Stick to your whole foods diet. you're doing great. Then you take ketone IQ and guess what? You have elevated levels of ketones in your blood within 30 minutes. Now your brain is using ketones and you get those same effects as if you're on a ketogenic diet. I take ketone IQ before I podcast every single day for increased sharpness, verbal fluency, better memory recall. Try it for yourself. Go to ketone.com slash mindpump. That's K-E-T-O-N-E dot com slash mindpump. That link will get you 30 % off your subscription order.

3:29Adam Schafer:Plus you can get a free gift with your second shipment. All right, real quick. If you love us, like we love you, why not show it by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at mindpumpstore.com. I'm talking right now, hit pause, head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. Men over 40, you may be finding that losing body fat is more difficult than it used to be. Is it in your imagination? It is not. It is more challenging, but there are things that nobody tells you about losing fat after 40. We're going to break it down for you. We're going to give you the solution.

4:07Adam Schafer:It can happen. It will happen. You just got to do what we say. Justin Phil's attacked. Let's go. We're all over 40. I'm already looking for more fuzzies all over me, dude. It's got me all self-conscious. It is. First of all, we're all over 40. The vast majority of our clients were in this age group, I would say, when we were trainers. Yeah. And the truth is, it is more difficult to improve your fitness and burn body fat or lose body fat after 40. Here's the big challenge, and this is what you might be experiencing, is that you might have lost weight in the past. You might've done it successfully a few times.

4:45Adam Schafer:You're attempting it again. And what you did before, which used to work, suddenly doesn't work. It's not working. What's going on? It's very frustrating. I had this formula. I followed the formula and my body doesn't seem to be responding or I don't feel as good or I feel burnt out. What's going on? By the way, I do want to add this, that the way that we as coaches, okay, Those of us who coach and train people for a living, the way we define if something worked isn't whether or not you got to your goal result. The way we define did it work is if you kept it. If you got the result that you were looking for and you maintained it.

5:29Adam Schafer:So I do want to add that because although you may think what worked before, I'm going to try that again because it worked before. It actually didn't work before. It worked halfway. It got you to lose weight, but then you gained it back. So even if it did work like it used to, what would end up happening is what always happens, which is you end up gaining the weight back. Nonetheless, nonetheless, I want to speak to this. It feels different. Something doesn't feel the same. What's going on? Why is it different? Is it just my age or am I losing my mind? What's happening? Let me just talk about that.

6:02Sal Di Stefano:I actually think this is almost every client that I trained because rarely ever did you get a client that came to you at their first attempt at getting in shape.

6:13Adam Schafer:Yeah.

6:14Sal Di Stefano:Like that was rare. I can't think of a case.

6:16Adam Schafer:People typically try on their own first.

6:18Sal Di Stefano:Oh, yeah. I mean, before they, and they've tried several times and normally what's happened is exactly this. They've gotten a little bit older. There was a season in their life when they were playing sports, when they were getting ready for that marathon, or just young when they were in their 20s working out, where a modality of training or a method that they followed or a diet they did worked really well for them, or they could get in shape pretty quick.

6:50Adam Schafer:That's like their go-to method.

6:51Sal Di Stefano:Yeah, and so they have already attempted this and applied this probably once or two or three times already, and it's just not working. And then they come to me and they go like, hey, here's the deal. I've been in shape before and this is what's worked for me in the past, but I can't seem to lose weight anymore. What's going on with me? How do you help me?

7:12Adam Schafer:Yeah, and a big part of this or a big part of the reason why this isn't working anymore is it's not that you're older. And yes, age plays a role, but it plays less of a role than we think. we tend to place all of the blame on our age. And yeah, it is true that as you get older, your body, your potential, like your ultimate potential starts to decrease in terms of athletic performance, fat loss and that kind of stuff. But a 45-year-old man has got pretty high potential even when he compares himself to when he was 35 or 25. Age by itself doesn't start to play a major role until once you start to get your 50s and 60s, Then it starts to play a much bigger role.

7:55Adam Schafer:So what the heck's going on then? It's your behavioral patterns, man. I mean, your whole lifestyle is different. That's right. At this point. That's right. I think it's like, I mean, you fondly look back at like when you got in shape and that, you know, you just applied this one method that was like this intense form of training and, you know, sleep was, you know, okay, but like you could pretty much rebound pretty easy. And like, I mean, the real difference for me that I've seen now I can actually relate. Like before I was like, my clients would come in and they'd say these things and you kind of roll your eyes and be like, ah, you know, you're just not sticking with it or consistent enough or whatever it is.

8:32But really it's like at this point now you understand that it's, you have to be a lot more intentional. You have these like smaller windows, you have more, more stress that accumulates the recovery process, a little bit more challenging to really like, you know, implement that. And there's a lot more kind of factors that you got to consider like more intensively.

8:53Sal Di Stefano:You hit the big one that I think that age plays a big role is just the accumulation of stress. That's it. And on the podcast, we talk a lot about that in the context of like a fat loss journey and exercise programming and diet and sleep in the context of say like a three-month window of trying to get in shape. Yeah. but i think the the part that like we don't consider a lot too is like that there is that right like if uh if i have a stress bucket and uh last night i didn't get very good sleep i filled a lot of that bucket up and if i got in an argument with my wife before i went to work i just added a little bit more to that on top of that and then i also am underfed because i just didn't have time to make any of my meals so now i'm getting any higher and then i go to the gym and I just hammer myself.

9:40Sal Di Stefano:And then now I'm over. So there's that accumulation of stress in the immediate. And then there's the accumulation of stress over years and decades. That that's what I think is the real differentiating thing between 40 years old and 20 years old. At 20 years old, we tend to be able to almost be able to dump that bucket out and start over so much faster. And because you've only done it so many times because you're only 20 years old, uh you maybe it's not as bad whereas when you've had these behaviors to your point for decades of it builds burning the candle at both ends yes it builds or another way to say that stress bucket shrinks yeah right like maybe when you were younger you can't tolerate quite exactly your your stress bucket was bigger you dumped it out faster where now that stress bucket seems to have shrunk in a sense and your tolerance for all those things in in in addition to bigger life

10:37Adam Schafer:stresses on top it's okay to put it uh plainly right um the the reason why exercise triggers changes in your body the reason why you get stronger or you build more stamina is because exercise is a stress it's actually a stress in fact if we if we were to examine you and take blood tests and hook you up to machines and see what's happening during exercise. All the machines would register elevated stress. You'd see elevated stress hormones. You'd see inflammatory markers go up. In fact, if we just looked at that, we would never have anybody exercise because we'd be like, this is terrible for you.

11:14Adam Schafer:But obviously it's not. The reason why it's not is because your body, if you do it right, that stress triggers a cascade of things that happens in the body, which starts with recovery and then moves into adaptation. And the reason why your body adapts is it's trying to become more resilient to that stress. So if I lift heavy things, the way that my body becomes more resilient to lifting heavy things is it becomes stronger, okay? If I challenge my stamina, the way that my body becomes more resilient is it increases my capacity so I have more stamina. So it is a stress, but what we don't realize, so a lot of us don't realize exercise is stress, it is.

11:53Adam Schafer:We also don't realize that lots of things are a stress. You're in your 40s now. You probably have bills. You probably have a mortgage or rent and kids to take care of. When you were 25, you didn't have any of those things. And although now you're used to it, so if you ask the typical 40-something-year-old about their stress, unless something big is going on, they're like, I'm fine. But the reality is there's a lot of things on your plate. And by the way, you can see this in the data. When you look at how much men earn, when men become married and have children, their earning goes through the roof.

12:26Adam Schafer:Is it because all of a sudden they become smarter and more capable? No, they got more things to take care of and more things to worry about. And so you have in your 40s more stress on you, more worries, more responsibilities. And your body has a limited capacity to recover from and adapt to stress. So when you have all these other things happening and then you throw exercise on top of it, you better be judicious and precise with how you apply your workout programming and the kind of workout programming you apply. Now, when you're 25, you could have the worst, you could have programming that is excessive with stress, but because you don't have other things in your life and other responsibilities and you can sleep in on the weekends and you can hang out with your buddies and you don't need to take care of your kids.

13:09Adam Schafer:You better have a mortgage. You're going to school right now. you got maybe a part-time job like it's not a big deal you can handle it you can recover from bad programming in fact you get in shape in spite of your crappy workout program but now you apply that same crappy methodology on yourself in your 40s with all this other stuff that's going on and you're like why am i burnt why am i not responding why do i feel tired uh and why is my body not losing body fat one of the reasons why your body's not losing body fat is too much stress on your body tells your body to hold on to body fat. Now, why would it want to hold on to body fat?

13:44Adam Schafer:Body fat is insurance against famine. One of the major stressors of all of humanity for most of the time, not now, right? Now we live in modern societies, not an issue, but our bodies have already, or they're designed this way. When you get stressed, it tries to hold on to body fat. It's no different than, it's like your bank account. When things get stressful in the world, You're not sure if you're going to lose your job. Maybe, you know, they're cutting back. You're like, honey, we got to cut back on our expenses and we got to save this money just in case. This is what your body does with body fat.

14:15Adam Schafer:So one of the main reasons why this is so much more challenging for men has nothing to do with somehow the aging processes changing your body has much more to do with the fact that you've just got more stuff that you're dealing with. and if you don't have proper precise workout programming the stress you're applying is either

14:35Sal Di Stefano:wasted or too much and your body won't respond i mean i would add to that uh it becomes even more challenging sometimes when people don't realize all the things that you just like a lot you said like you know people that are like why am i so tired why is this why sometimes and i see this a lot where our bodies they're so resilient and they do such a good job of adapting people adapt to all that and they survive and they think they're okay and normal. This is their normal. Yeah. And so they think, I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with somebody who's struggling with a body composition change and they feel like they're doing a lot of the right things.

15:14Sal Di Stefano:They're like, I'm doing this, I'm doing that. My body isn't changing. And I'm asking the questions like, well, how's your sleep? And how's your stress? I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. And they think they're okay and they think their energy is okay. And what they don't realize is over the course of decades, it's just adapted lower, lower, lower. And they think they're fine because they don't know what good feels like.

15:36Adam Schafer:I have a great example of this. So I have a buddy of mine. He does, what does he do? He's an electrician. So he's a blue collar worker. He's got four kids. Great guy. Great guy. Otherwise healthy. And he wants to start working out. He wants to start. Guess what time he has to work out in the morning? 4.30. because he goes to work. He's got to drive to work. He's got these jobs. And then he gets off at two or three o 'clock. But then he's going to be with his kids and his wife and have dinner. And then going to bed, he's got a little one. Sometimes, you know, and his wife mainly handles it. But look, if you're a man, your wife gets up with the kid.

16:10Adam Schafer:Like your sleep's also getting broken, even though she's kind of handling it. And that's in his case. And so he's coming to me. He's like, oh, yeah, I could work out, you know, four days a week. I'm like, oh, cool. What time? 4.30? I'm like, well, what time are you going to bed? You better be going to bed at 8.30 at night. He's like, well, I got to go bed at 10 because I'm doing like, listen, that's not going to work, dude. And so he's trying to apply his old methods and he's coming to me and he's like, why am I so tired? I'm like, dude, you're, that's too much for you right now. It needs to be the right amount of stress considering what's going on in your life.

16:40Adam Schafer:And we have a general idea of what this looks like for the average 40 something year old man. There's also accumulated issues with when you're with your movement. okay these are called movement pattern issues and a 45 year old man has a higher likelihood of poor recruitment patterns and potential pain than a 25 year old just because he's been moving uh on earth for more or lack of movement or not moving great example this is your your engineer

17:07Sal Di Stefano:or somebody who's been sitting at a computer desk for 20 plus years locked in position yeah

17:12Adam Schafer:total so you sometimes hear is well i work out but my shoulder hurts yeah or i squat and i can't hurt because I can't squat because of my knee or my hip hurts. And that's because you have this kind of accumulated movement pattern issues, either from sitting all day or from doing the same thing all day or whatever, that you might not have had in your 20s when in your 20s, you're kind of coming out of your teens when you're playing sports and moving all the time. And so you got to consider that as well. And then finally, here's a big one that you need to consider. Big one. Time. You don't got all the time in the world to work out.

17:47Adam Schafer:I see, see guys in their 20s go to the gym and it's usually you know midday or after school and they're in there for like two and a half hours now it's because they're not because they're not working out for two and a half hours they're hanging out they're working out and hanging out 40 something year old dude doesn't got two hours to go spend in the gym uh he's got a family he's got life he's got work so the time that i do spend working out it needs to be really uh effective And I don't have a lot that I can sacrifice. Efficiency is everything. So efficiency is very, very important. Now, here's the one thing that makes the big difference.

18:23Adam Schafer:And we're going to get to kind of what this looks like. But here's the one thing. Building muscle makes all the difference in the world. So when you build muscle, you're leveraging this active tissue in a way to burn more calories for you to improve your hormone profile. So building muscle is great for men for testosterone. It's great for growth hormone. It's great for insulin sensitivity. And here's the good news with building muscle. You don't need to spend a lot of time in the gym. The data supports this. You don't need to do a lot of crazy workouts to build strength. Now, building endurance and stamina takes a lot more time.

18:57Adam Schafer:But here's the deal. If you're listening to this, you're like, look, I just want to get in shape and look better. And I don't have a lot of time. You don't need a lot of time. You actually don't need a lot of time to build muscle if you approach it the right way.

19:07Sal Di Stefano:It also lends itself really well to a calorie maintenance to surplus type of diet too, which also lends itself well to lowering or reducing stress. Putting somebody who has got all kinds of stress, has all this stuff going on in their life into an extreme diet to cut, to lose, also just adds exponentially.