Reading time: approx: 7 minutes

LenDentonThrive Letter #17

Food First

If you’re an Over-50 Guy who struggles or has failed to lose weight, then this issue of the LenDentonThrive Letter is for you!

But first, here’s a quick preview of what’s in the LenDentonThrive Letter #17:

• The Big Idea - This week, we’ll explore the Food-First approach to weight loss and why it’s better for Over-50 Guys than the various traditional Exercise-First approaches.

• Tip of the Week - A quick tip or strategy to help you improve your health, fitness, and life.

• News You Can Use - I’ll share two or three useful items from my reading stack for you to check out later.

I’m glad that you’re here! We have a lot to cover in eight minutes or less, so let’s get started!

1. The Big Idea - Food-First

Weight Loss is Harder Than It Needs To Be

Losing weight is difficult, especially for Over-50 Guys like you and me. As we age, we start to lose muscle mass. With less muscle mass, we burn fewer calories. And, increasing the amount of exercise we do can’t completely compensate, because exercise only accounts for up to 10-15% of our daily calorie burn. Those extra unburned calories end up being stored in our bodies as fat.

What this means is that while exercise is a great way to build strength and stamina, it's a less-than-ideal way to lose weight. A wise man once said: “You lose weight in the kitchen and you build strength in the gym.”

The problem is that almost all conventional wisdom with regard to fitness tells guys to get into an exercise-first approach to lose weight and get fit. If you only need to lose a few pounds (10 pounds or so), that will probably work out well over time.

But, if you need to lose a substantial amount of weight (20+ pounds), that’s probably not the best advice for you to follow. See Figure 1 below to see why.

We all know that we need a calorie deficit in order to lose weight. This simply means that we are burning more calories than we consume. Here’s a quick illustration of the calorie deficit equation:

Calorie Deficit = Calories Consumed - Calories Burned

Figure 1 shows the three controls that we all have to affect our calorie deficit, which then controls our weight loss. These are:

1. Our food choices (what we choose to eat)

2. Food amount (how much we choose to eat)

3. Exercise

The combination of our food choices and the amounts we eat constitutes our diet. This also represents the Calories Consumed portion of the Calorie Deficit equation. Exercise represents the Calories Burned part of the equation.

Note that our diet accounts for 80% of the control we can exert over our weight loss, while exercise exerts up to only around 20%. This means that we have a much better opportunity to affect our weight loss through our diet than through our exercise.

The problem is that much of the fitness and weight loss world is telling us to jump into stringent workouts (exercise) in order to meet our fitness goals. This is bad advice for those of us who need to lose substantial amounts of weight (20 pounds or more). Making exercise the primary focus ignores the amplified benefits of starting with correcting your diet. This is the primary reason that most guys fail to lose weight. They focus on the 20% opportunity while ignoring the 80% opportunity.

Remember - it's impossible to outwork a bad diet. This ultimately leads to frustration and then failure.

Food First - A Better Way

Focusing on your diet first is a better way to tackle your weight loss goals. ThriveAge, the framework I created to build my ThriveLife, is a food-first approach to fitness. I think of it as a fitness approach for food lovers.

Focusing on my diet first allowed me to lose 70 pounds in 7 months back in 2014. I did that without following any crazy diets. Hunger wasn’t a problem for me. There were no protein shakes or kale smoothies. No magic pills. Just good food, and plenty of it.

I call this eating smarter. It’s smarter because it puts food to work for me instead of working against me. And, I have kept that weight off for almost 10 years by simply continuing to eat smarter.

You can do the same thing that I did.

You start by examining your current diet to find the foods that are working against you. Then, you replace them with better selections.

I’m not talking about eating less. I’m talking about eating smarter. Instead of reducing calories (which triggers deprivation defenses in our brains), you replace bad calories with better ones. This is how you put food to work for you.

Start by eliminating these six Red Zone foods:

• Sugar

• White flour

• White rice

• White potatoes

• Corn

• High-Fructose Corn Syrup

These Red Zone foods metabolize quickly into compounds that cause your blood glucose to spike and result in things like excess fat storage, Type-2 diabetes, and heart disease.

(You can read more about the ThriveAge food zones here.)

Once you eliminate these foods from your daily diet, you’ll begin to lose weight, and you’ll see an improvement in your energy levels. You can continue to improve your diet as time goes by by adding healthy choices such as lean meats, fish, and vegetables.

I’m an Over-50 Guy who had a serious weight problem. Following this approach allowed me to lose weight and get fit back in 2014. It worked for me then. It’s still working for me today. And it can work for you, too.

Food First is the best path to help you lose weight, get fit, and stay fit for life. That’s the ThriveLife!

Want to Go Deeper?

Do you want to dive deeper into ThriveAge and what it can do in your life? If that sounds like a smart move for you, then consider subscribing to the LenDentonThrive Letter. It’s totally free!

As a bonus, new subscribers will receive a free .pdf version of Chapter 1 of my upcoming new book, The ThriveAge Way (The Over-50 Way To Lose Weight, Get Fit & Stay Fit For Life).

ThriveAge is the roadmap to your custom-built ThriveLife!

2. Tip of the Week: Comparisons

We all have a tendency to compare ourselves to others. Your neighbor has a cool new truck that you wonder how he can afford. Your brother has killer six-pack abs. Your best friend just bought a vacation house in your favorite resort town.

We all do it. When we compare ourselves to others, we often come out on the short end of the comparison. And, whenever we do, we do it with a lack of information. You don’t know that your neighbor’s truck is a business write-off. Your brother spends 10 hours a week in the gym. And, who knows how your friend got that vacation house?

It’s always counter-productive to compare ourselves to others. So, here’s a suggestion:

Never compare yourself to others. Instead, compare yourself to who you were 30 days ago.

Success is steady progress toward a worthy goal.

Are you making progress?

If you are, then carry on. If you aren’t, then figure out why and fix it.

Enjoy the journey!

3. News You Can Use

Here is some “news you can use” from my research:

1. Want to know how healthy you’ll be in your 70s and 80s? Then, look at your relationships in your 50s and 60s. This 80-year-long Harvard study offers a surprising look at how our relationships predict how healthy we’ll be in our old age.

   https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-80-years-harvard-study-has-been-showing-how-to-live-a-healthy-and-happy-life/

2. This article describes why diets fail. The average time men spend on their diets is only about 6 weeks! This article shows that most diets don’t work. So, let’s not diet. Let’s eat smarter, starting today!

   https://www.greatgreenwall.org/supplements/diet-failure-statistics/

Follow me on the socials for daily tips and strategies for living your ThriveLife:

I’m Writing A Book!

I’m a busy Over-50 Guy who has spent the past ten years building a practice of personal health and fitness that relies on real food and smart exercise instead of crazy diets and killer workouts. This process, called ThriveAge, helped me to lose 70 pounds and keep it off for going on ten years. Now, I want to share what I have learned with other Over-50 Guys. So, I wrote the book!

In The ThriveAge Way (The Over-50 Way To Lose Weight, Get Fit & Stay Fit For Life), I share everything I’ve learned about the principles and practices necessary to create and sustain a healthy lifestyle. I call it my ThriveLife.

New subscribers to the LenDentonThrive Letter will receive Chapter 1 of my new book for free. To get your free copy of Chapter 1, just subscribe to the LenDentonThrive Letter.

Thanks for your time and attention. Have a great weekend. See you next Saturday!

Thrive & Prosper,

Len

Hey, Before You Go…

First, are you a subscriber to the LenDentonThrive Letter? Please share this with someone you know who might benefit from it. I’d appreciate that! And, I bet the guy you forward it to will too!

Second, did someone forward you this copy of the LenDentonThrive Letter?

You can get your own free copy by subscribing today. And, I’ll throw in Chapter 1 of my upcoming new book as a bonus.

Thanks for visiting!

See you next Saturday!