Change 1 sneaky diet mistake if you don’t want to be fat over 40
I put on a little weight recently, though it wasn’t totally my fault.
After slipping a disc in my back, I was all but sedentary for about two weeks, and then somewhat activity-limited for two weeks after that.
If you’ve ever had the great misfortune of developing disc problems, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
The pain when it goes out is excruciating, and the recovery time is frustrating as hell.
All told, I added about 7–8 pounds before things started moving back in the right direction.
But the truth is, I’d already set my weight gain in motion months before.
I used to be extremely disciplined about working out every single day.
But my entrepreneurial pursuits continue to sneakily eat up my time and energy.
I still run a bit. I still do yoga to stay loose.
But a real key contributor to my fitness — the gym, and the resistance exercise that comes with it — has fallen completely by the wayside.
Yes, it sucks.
But it could be worse.
Much, much worse.
Had I gone through this hiccup making the same diet mistake that plagued me for years in the past, I probably would have added 20 pounds or more.
Allow me to explain.
The easiest way to trash your gym gains
Recently, I did some traveling with a group of people who love to drink.
A lot.
As I watched them wash down their calorie-laden restaurant food with a seemingly endless supply of booze, I couldn’t help but think of where I’d be had I not made a different choice almost two years ago now.
As you’ll know if you’ve followed me for any amount of time, I quit drinking then.
I ditched alcohol for a whole whack of reasons, but the main one was this: I was tired of disappointing myself.
After years and years of pissing away my free hours numbed out on the couch and with my dream of starting a business almost extinguished, I finally got so disgusted with myself that I decided enough was enough.
So, primarily the decision was for my mental health.
But the side benefit is that, as I enter my mid-40s, as my metabolism slows, and as my exercise becomes necessarily lower-impact, I’m still a pretty thin guy.
I eat relatively well, but I would venture to say that no diet decision has affected my overall health and fitness more than quitting alcohol.
Here’s why.
Why you’ll never look fit if you drink
Alcohol weight just looks different, doesn’t it?
After I quit drinking, I noticed it on myself and on others all the time.
You get puffy and paunchy in all the worst places.
You always look tired and soft.
And then you wonder why all the exercise and disciplined eating hasn’t turned you into an Adonis.
Well, I’ll tell you why.
An average, a moderately active man should ideally ingest around 2,600 calories per day.
At the peak of my drinking, I was having about 5-6 tallboy cans of beer every single day.
So 6 tallboys x 195 calories per = 1,170 extra, destructive, completely unnecessary calories per day.
Put another way, about 45% of my daily recommended calories were coming from alcohol.
So yeah, eating well and exercising simply won’t make up the difference.
My case may seem extreme to you, but even if you’re just having a couple drinks a day, that effectively eats up the calories burned by a moderate exercise session.
And most people don’t exercise every day.
It gets worse.
I’ve written a lot about super fit older folks, and they pretty much all say the same thing: after a certain age, you can’t outrun your diet.
1 final sneaky trap
As disciplined as I was exercise-wise in the past, I was probably miles below what I could have accomplished had I avoided booze altogether.
That’s because alcohol completely torches your body’s recovery during sleep, which in turn makes you more susceptible to skipping the gym (bad) or getting injured (worse).
Recently, I wrote a piece detailing the 3 reasons your fitness will always be trash if you drink alcohol.
It talked about research by fitness tracker Whoop that showed:
“…of all the behaviors available to record in the WHOOP Journal, drinking alcohol is the one with the single greatest negative impact on next-day recovery,” the company wrote in a blog post.
“On average, WHOOP members’ recovery is 8% lower when they log consuming alcohol the day before (again, this includes everything ranging from one drink to several).”
That’s because alcohol causes your HRV to drop and your resting heart rate to rise. Neither of those is good.
It gets worse.
In a study of college athletes in 2016, Whoop found alcohol could have a negative impact on recovery for 4–5 days.
Why you’re still fat over 40
So if you’re in your 40s and 50s and can’t make any fitness progress despite eating right and exercising, make sure you aren’t doing the one stupid thing that will sabotage everything else.
There’s a little demon in the liquor cabinet that would love nothing more than to keep you sad, overweight, and docile over 40.
Take it from someone who spent far too long in booze’s little physical and psychological jail cell: it isn’t worth it.
Did you quit alcohol and experience the incredible fitness benefits?
Have you thought about quitting but haven’t yet? What’s holding you back?
Let me know in the comments!
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