READ THIS FIRST !

Dear reader. If you are a man over 40 (or there abouts) you have landed on a site that can change your life.

My name is Ruben and i would love to tell you that i have invented a system for loosing weight and adding muscle mass for men like us over 40. But i have not. The system has always been known. But in the middle of new-age hype, green tea, icebaths, juice of half a lemon every morning and what have you… this knowledge has become almost lost.

When i say that you can have a healthy life what do you then think of ?

Maybe some of this??

Yeah – right ? I used to think that this is how fat loss looks. But i am here to tell you that this is complete and utter bullshit. Fat loss does not look like this. Fat loss is not sitting in the sofa doing toe raises or rolling on a piked foam cushing on the floor, or doing pushups while balancing on your wifes god damn pilates ball.

Fat loss is not drinking smoothies, green tea, lemon water and decaf coffee while having infrared beams sucking down blended cucumber!

Lets get one thing straight. We are MEN. Not boys, not women, we are the male gender of the species. And our physiology is well documented and it is no mystery what our bodies need to be the best damn version of themselves.

FACTS

This blog is based on facts, not bro-science, not gossip the wife heard in the mall about “Carla that lost 9kg in 3 months by eating nothing but dry leaves”. (OMG).

The male body especially over 40 is actually an amazing mechanism. Biologically you have just peaked. This means that from 40 to 50 you are biologically a better version of yourself than your where between 18 and 25!

Why? Well even though you may have a fat% that is way to high and a unhealthy lifestyle especially if you have had physical work in the years since your youth you have:

1. Muscle maturity & Myofibrillar Density (more force per pound of muscle)

2. Bone density is higher (because you are fully grown and sat)

3. Neuromuscular effeciency is on max (your central nervous system is 100% wired to your muscle tissue)

4. Cardiorespiratory adaptation (you sustain effort and recovery better)

5. Tendon and joint adaptation (your tendons are the strongest they will ever get)

This means that an average man aged 45 can outlift any average 22 year old man.

Kohrt et al., “Maintaining Skeletal Health in Older Adults” – Sports Medicine, 2004
Enoka & Duchateau, “Muscle fatigue: what, why and how it influences function” – J Physiol, 2008
Lepers & Stapley, “Master Athletes Are Extending the Limits of Human Endurance” – Front Physiol, 2016
Kjaer M. et al., “From mechanical loading to collagen synthesis: role of IGF-1” – J Appl Physiol, 2009
Kraemer & Ratamess, “Fundamentals of Resistance Training: Progression and Exercise Prescription” – NSCA

What i am trying to tell you is that your body is not what you think it is if you are in your 40s or even 50s. You body is actually in many ways stronger, more adapt, and could be in better shape than you have ever been in your life.

So how do you get there?

You need 3 things to make this work. First is your mindset. Discipline. This word is not strange to you if you grew up in the 70s and 80s like me. So you know what i am talking about. You do something even though you dont feel like. And trust me there will be days where you dont feel like.
Second you need to start lifting weights. No cardio, no fucking pilates crap. You need to lift weights like you where training to the next Mr. Olympia. Third you need to fuel your body right. You are going to need ALOT of food and the right food too. Heavy emphasis on protein sources (meats, fish), clean carbohydrates (potato, rice, full grain bread), and quite substantial amounts of fat (!) (like peanutbutter, olive oil, coconot butter).

But that cant be all?

And no you are right. This is where it gets technical and where i cracked the code about 1 year into my transformation.
You need to be in a calory deficit. Meaning you need to use more kalories daily than you eat to loose fat. If its the other way around your body stores that extra kalories as fat. This is what you have been doing the last 10-20 years – basically eating more than you consume.

Your body has something called Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). The BMR is how much kalories your body is burning every day if you where in a coma, or sleeping all day. Lets say for the sake of argument your BMR is 2400kcal per day.

Your first thought would be to only eat 2000kcal and then loose weight doing nothing right ? WRONG! The body is a very very adaptable piece of biology and any change is registered by your body and quite fast too. If you reduce your intake to anything lower than your BMR you will get grumpy, you will get tired, and basically what will happen is that your body will reduce your BMR to something lower than the 2000kcal you are now eating.

Ever done a salad diet ? Did it feel good ? No you feel like shit – and the reason is that you are only getting maybe 500kcal a day and your body is desperately trying to find energy to compensate. The way your body does this is by shedding water and fluids and to start eating your muscles (and later your organs).

What you should aim for instead is to have a diet that is very close to your current BMR. And preferably 100-200kcal over. This is because it also works the other way around. You can actually increase your BMR quite alot if you add muscle to your body.

Then you start in the gym. You start lifting weights – not the small pink 3kg dumbbells that smell like rosewater because all the instagirls use them for their goblet squats. No you pick up something where you can do max 10-12 repetitions. And then you start to work.

Yours truly giving it all he got at the preacher curl machine.. You need to work like you life depends on it…because it does!

This gym session will burn calories (lets say for arguments sake 500kcal). If your diet was your BMR + 200kcal (2000kcal + 200kcal over) you are now in a 300kcal deficit.
But it gets better. When you go to the gym and lift weights something else happens in your body. You get DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness). This usually sets in after 12-72 hours after using a specific muscle and its caused by micro tears in the muscle you used. Its natural and it gets better with time but never really goes away if you train hard. This is very interesting because this is directly coupled to something called REE (Resting Energy Expendature). During the recovery of the muscles you just used you body uses energy to repair micro tears, rebuild proteins (muscle protein synthesis), reduce inflammation and remove cellular waste. That means that after a workout your BMR is elevated for 24-72 hours after hard training. STudies show an increase of up to 10% in up to 2-3 days.
Which means your BMR is now 10% higher (2000kcal + 10% = 2200kcal).
Your total deficit is not no longer 300kcal but 500kcal.
And the beatiful part is that you go to the gym the next day and do something else. So this never stops.

So what will a 500kcal deficit give you. It will give you a tremendous fat loss is what.

1 kg of human bodyfat requires that you spend 7000 kalories. Theoretically this means that you will loose 2 kg of pure bodyfat every month and it will never stop as long as you stick to the program.

But we are not done. It gets even better. A high protein diet will aid the kalorie burn as well. As your hormonal levels starts to normalize your BMR goes even higher. And as your muscle start to grow your BMR also elevates again.

This is why your BMR should be monitored every 1-2 months and your diet should be adjusted with it. Never go under – always keep it a little bit over. If you do that and you kick ass in the gym – you will loose fat and gain muscle which is what is called body recomposition.

So how do you get your BMR. This is easy. You get a bodyscan – tanita, withings, Dexa if thats available where you live. They are often free or cost very little – so once you have that you are ready to change your life.

Look. I see alot of guys in their 40s or 50s that looks like they have maybe 5-10 years left. I used to be one of them. I used to weigh 160kg and i almost had to ask for help to get my socks on in the morning. Putting on underwear after a shower could be a challenge and i would usually emerge red as a strawberry in my face.
This is NOT healthy. But it can be turned around. Be a MAN for yourself, for your wife, for your kids. Stop making excuses – who the hell is in charge in your house if its not you. You have plenty of time – most gyms open at 5. am and close at 11pm. Dont tell me you can´t get up 1 hour earlier and go to the gym.
Remember how discipline used to work ? Give yourself a double dose and move your ass 😉👍