 Everyone knows that being 40 years old or over means being over the hill. In other words, your prime years are behind you. Maybe you've come to this conclusion yourself. You have some nagging joint pain. You don't recover from hard workouts like you used to. You seem to gain body fat easier than ever and building any strength or muscle feels impossible. I guess you should just give it up, right? Wrong. Look, here's the truth that every good fitness trainer and coach knows about training people who are over 40. They have more life responsibilities. Look, you have a career, you pay rent or mortgage and you have a family to care for. You also have had the time to accumulate injuries over the years. All of this poses new challenges, but it does not mean your body is all of a sudden not capable of incredible physical change. It simply means you need to change your strategy. How do I know this? Well, I've trained people just like you for over two decades. I'm also familiar with the data on strength, fat loss and physical performance. And the truth is, you can get in some of the best shape of your life so long as you approach your training lifestyle the right way. This is why we created Maps 40+. We understand how to program workouts to take into consideration life stressors that can affect hormone levels and recovery. We know what exercises and what kind of workout programming takes common joint pain into consideration. We know what gets the over 40 year old crowd into amazing shape. Maps 40+, was designed to maximize recovery, muscle building and fat loss. You will work with your body and not feel like you're battling against it. With Maps 40+, you will see and feel strength, performance and muscle gains like never before. You'll also speed up your metabolism, making fat loss easier and more sustainable. This program isn't just a workout. It also includes lifestyle habits that will balance hormones and turn back to clock. By the way, I've personally been working out since I was a teenager. And now that I'm deep into my 40s, I also use the principles in this program. And I feel and look as good as I did in my 20s. Maps 40+, is what your body needs to feel strong, healthy and vibrant. By the way, Maps 40+, also comes with a 30 day money back guarantee. So you can sign up, follow the program for a full month. And if it doesn't deliver, if it doesn't blow your mind, if you don't feel younger, stronger and healthier, return it for a full refund. So there's nothing to wait for. Get started now. Click on the link to do this. All right, we're launching a brand new program. It's called Maps 40+. We actually wrote a program specifically for people over the age of 40. This is also the first workout program that includes lifestyle programming, so not just your workout, but lifestyle programming. And we also include dietary and supplement guidelines. And so that's what we're going to talk about in today's episode, special considerations when you turn over 40, exercises, workouts, you know, what kinds of things you do in the morning and the evening to help bring back those youthful level of hormones. Now, because it's a brand new program and it's a brand new launch, it's going to be on sale. Okay. So if you are interested, you go to Maps 40+, dot com 40 is the number 40. So Maps the number 40 and then PLUS.com and use the code 40 launch. We'll get you $80 off and you'll get two ebooks that are included. One of them is the health babes guide to balancing hormones. And the other one is the four phase histamine reset plan. These are both incredible, incredible books from Dr. Becky Campbell and her team. By the way, this sale and this offer ends Sunday, December 24th. So if you're interested in the $80 off and the free ebooks, you got to get this program before the 24th. Today's giveaway is the super bundle. That's a lot of free programs. Here's how you can win it. Leave a comment below this video on the first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comments section. They call turning 40 over the hill. I guess that's because after you turn 40, everything goes downhill. You're not as strong. You're getting body fat a lot easier. It's harder to build muscle. You just don't feel the same. Now when I was younger, I used to scoff at that. That's not true. I think it's just because you're not living the way you used to. But then I turned 40 and I did notice some differences myself. So in today's episode, we're going to talk about the unique challenges that are posed to people who turn 40, why they may be in those challenges, why it's harder to build muscle. Fine joint pain, more common hormone changes. Should they work out like everyone else? That's what we're going to talk about in today's episode. So this particular topic is funny because I've been training people for a long time. I started training people as a kid and I would always hear people, clients say to me, you just wait. You just wait to get older. Just wait and see. You'll see what I'm talking about. Just going to catch up. And now to be honest, a lot of that had to do with their lifestyle. So that's for sure. There's definitely, well, I don't think I need to make the argument, but your lifestyle, how you exercise, sleep, eat, I mean, has a massive impact on how you feel your performance, body fat, muscle, that whole thing. But age also plays a role for sure when all those things are equal. And I experienced this myself. Right around, I would say, as it got to like 37, 38, it did start noticing a few things. And so this became a lot more personal. So you know, having, talking about this and creating a program specifically for people in this age group, interesting, it was a lot of fun because I don't think I would have done this or been able to do this, you know, 15 years ago. Well, yeah, you couldn't. You wouldn't have the experience. Yeah. Wrong perspective going in. Do you still, I mean, I still think it has very little to do with the number and the age and still a lot to do with the behaviors or lack of habits that we had in our early years. So like, even though we would all consider ourselves healthy, 20, 30 year olds, like we exercised, we lifted weights, you know, hit your protein intake. For the most part, we probably had relatively good diets. But I think there's a lot of things that we probably did chronically that was not good for us as far as addressing sleep, mobility, recovery. You know, there's plenty of times when I did, you know, abuse, alcohol and substances and times where I did binge and overeat or stuff myself to gain weight. So, you know, I still would make the argument that most of it has to do with just behavior, behaviors or poor choices that have accumulated over time. That's a big part now affected because I'm all like those things. I don't think I thought were affecting me because at that time in my life when I'm 25 and I made that decision, your body was so resilient, you bounce back. And I just think that over years and years and years, it's compiled. And now in the forties, I feel all the physiological changes that my body has happened. And now a lot of the things that I ignored or I didn't think were that important have now become very important. Yeah, I think too, and even from my own perspective, but also a lot of the clients I trained, it was a lot of the mentality of sprinting. Like we could we could tackle a lot of this at once and sort of resolve some of these things we knew that were probably weren't benefiting us very often or we fell off a bit of the training or the nutrition got a little bit out of hand. But you know what, I'll just kind of tackle that before summer or you know, I'll try and get everything kind of back in order. And each time you do that, like year after year gets harder, harder, more difficult. And it just wasn't like a repeated lifestyle habit of I'm continuously making the right decisions, making the right behaviors. It was more of a I'm going to make up for this when it's beneficial to me. Look, look, OK, in a nutshell, every decade, things do change with how your body responds, your hormones, how your body recuperates and adapts. And there's a reason why people talk about the age of 40 being over the hill, right, that term, because that's when things, especially if you don't do the right things, that's when you really start to notice. Now, I notice with my peers, right? So, you know, I've been, all of us have been working out for years and years and years, and there was a difference between myself and my peers who didn't do those things. I could see a difference, I could feel a difference. But man, when we hit 30, the difference got bigger. When we hit 40, the difference now looks massive. Like my 40 year old peers that don't do the things that I do, there's such a vast massive difference between our health and our function, not to mention just how we look, but all the other important stuff. So, in a nutshell, here's really what this is. Yes, your body's different when you're 40 and older. Yes. But here's the other part to it. There's a lot of stuff you can do that'll counteract a lot of these negative things that you'll notice right around that age. And we've talked about this on the show many times. Your workout, your diet, your lifestyle. You should mold it around the context of your life, and that includes your age. In other words, what is going to keep you healthy and fit at 20 is not the same as what's going to keep you healthy and fit when you're 40. And that's not going to be the same as when you're 70 or 80, okay? Now, the general guidelines are the same. What does that mean? Well, you want to move, right? You don't want to overeat. You want to make sure you get good sleep and you're adequately hydrated. You don't have nutrient deficiencies. Like that's all generally true, but when you boil it down, there's some big differences in the considerations that you have. And so all of our programs really are designed for specific avatars. Some are more for beginners. Others more for advanced, some are for power lifters. You know, some are more for athletes. And then you can modify them and individualize them based off of your goals and how you feel and that stuff. But this is really the first time that we've really tackled the age thing. Like, what are the considerations that we generally see with people that are 40 years old and older? One of them are, and we'll start, well, let's talk about some of these, right? One of them is hormones. If you take a man or woman who lives a regular life and you test their hormones, their testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, their thyroid, their growth hormone, their cortisol. If you were to look at them at 20 and then you looked at them again at 40, all things being equal, you'll see differences. You will see some differences. Women tend to have a larger change right around that time. But men do as well. I don't know, man's testosterone levels start to decline, especially if they don't do anything to offset it. Now, here's the good news is that when you modify your lifestyle, your diet and your exercise, you can maintain, I mean, near youthful levels of hormones through your lifestyle. But if you don't, right? If you don't use the tools at your disposal, then your hormone levels start to change quite a bit. Now, what does this feel like? Well, it feels like, here's a big one that people notice as they get older. Well, OK, we'll get to the obvious ones because you named one low energy. Obviously, here's an interesting one. How about the way you store body fat? OK, if you're listening or watching this podcast, you may notice this, that when I gained 10 pounds now versus 15 years ago, it doesn't seem to go to the same places. If you're a woman, you may notice more belly fat, whereas before it used to go to your hips and thighs. If you're a man, you may notice more body fat in your upper body, up in your chest area, in your neck area. What's that? You know, when I used to gain body fat when I was a guy, you know, younger, it was kind of just in my belly. Now I'm gaining it in kind of these different areas. Well, that we know through studies is related to changes in hormones. That's a very unique and interesting one. Now, you mentioned, of course, energy levels. That's a big one. Labido. Labido is another massive one. You can have a very youthful labido, but oftentimes people in the stage group notice they don't. And it's a, now there's a lot of things that go into labido. Or worse, sometimes they think they're normal or there's nothing wrong because they've been that way for decades now. Right. I mean, more often than not, when I have trained somebody that's over 40 and I ask questions around their labido or drive or their testosterone level. And if they haven't tested, many times they'll be like, I'm fine. I'm good. And then we go and we get their testing done and they're like in the floor and then we get it corrected and they go, oh my God, I feel amazing. They just didn't know. Well, what's that old saying? You like you put a boil, you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, it'll jump right out. But if you put it in warm or cool water and slowly boil it, it'll die. It won't jump out because it took time to get to that point. What you're talking about, Adam, is not this drastic because you would know, right? If you went from like youthful hormone levels one day and then in two days you went to this like really bad hormone problem, you know, like, oh my God, something's wrong with me. You go to the doctor. But if it's like a gradual, slow change. A little worse, a little worse. Yeah. And you're throwing band-aids on top of it. A little more coffee in the morning. You know, okay, here's some sedatives at night. Oh, I need an anti-anxiety medication. Oh, here's throwing SSRI on top of that. Here, let's do this thing. Let's do that thing. Not realizing that your hormones went from what are called considered optimal to terrible because it was this step approach that probably started right around your early to mid 30s and you didn't start to like really notice until you get to your mid 40s and something's off. Oh man, and it's funny because sleep is one of those things hormone-wise that, you know, if you're getting really good sleep, your ability to, you know, keep things somewhat balanced is so much greater than when you get older, you notice when you don't get good sleep, you don't just bounce back. Like these are things that like my entire day, sometimes my week is affected by like a couple nights of poor sleep or it becomes your new default. It becomes I only get four hours of sleep just because my body just wants to get up. And then now I'm just making this a routine. And so it just kind of, it's one of those things that gets away from you and then now, you know, trying to correct it makes it even crazier. There's a silver lining in that point. And probably the part that I think excited me the most about putting together this program because we attacked lifestyle and it was first time ever like an age group is that all those things that you now notice, so the negative things that you notice that you've gotten older, the silver lining in that is when you make these adjustments, right? When you actually decide to put together a sleep routine, when you finally decide to do things to optimize your hormone levels, when you start tweaking these things, you actually really feel it. Dramatically. Dramatically, where I felt like in my 20s, if you messed with some of these, you turned some of these knobs, I would give you the like, yeah, maybe kind of feel it. We're with clients now that are over 40, if I get someone to dial in their hormones or dial in their sleep, dial in some of these things, holy crap. What did you know? So I'll bring up an interesting study I read years ago on this. Now, this is within healthy ranges that I'm referring to, okay? So if you're outside of this, then this might not make a big difference. But for men, what they found with healthy men, so healthy active men, healthy active men will have testosterone levels that are healthy, right? So the hormones reflect your health typically. So if they're healthy, testosterone levels are gonna be pretty good. But what they found when they compared like men in their 20s to men in their 30s, 40s and 50s was even though they were healthy, there still was a little bit of a difference in testosterone. It was still a little less as the men got older, not a lot less, but a little less. Here's what they found though, that the healthy active older man had a more concentrated amount of androgen receptors. They had better androgen receptor density, okay? So for people that don't know what that means, the androgen receptors are what testosterone attached to, okay? The more receptors you have, the more active or powerful whatever amount of testosterone you have is. So as men get older, if they're healthy and they do the right things, even if testosterone does start to decline a little bit, your androgen receptor density gets better. You know what that means? That means it doesn't matter, your testosterone went down a little bit. In fact, there's other studies that show that within a healthy, optimal range, right? So we're not talking about extremes here. So I wanna be clear. Within a range that's considered healthy and yet somewhat optimal, it was not the testosterone levels that dictated how much muscle the men built. It was the androgen receptors, how dense they were. So this is a silver lining if you're a man listening right now and that if we can, you know, and we'll talk about some of the stuff that we put together, but as you start to work with your body and get your hormones to look more youthful, right? Or to get to those youthful profiles, you'll probably respond better than if you were in your 20s and you were doing some of this stuff. Now I don't know of any studies on women in this particular case, but I would surmise that it's similar. Women also have androgen receptors. Believe it or not, a lot of people don't, you know, think that testosterone is the male hormone. Testosterone is extremely important for women as well. Just as important as it is for men. The difference is the ratios. When a woman has low testosterone, she has the same side effects or effects that a man will. So I would surmise that it would be something very similar. And also just to kind of point in this direction, when you look at top-level strength sports like powerlifting and you look at the records that people set in their 20s, 30s and 40s, many world records are set when people are in their late 30s or early 40s, okay? So these are world records, okay? So what's my point with what I'm saying is that although age does play a role, if you know how to change your lifestyle and work out and diet accordingly, then it's not gonna play a huge role. It plays a huge role because your lifestyle hasn't changed even though your age has changed. So what does that look like, right? So think about this, right? You take your 28-year-old versus let's say your 45-year-old. So we'll have an age gap there. Typically, who has more responsibilities, right? The 45-year-old is gonna have more responsibilities. You're probably dealing with kids, a career. Fully in your career. You got way more to lose, like all of us, the three of us are all entrepreneurs, okay? We all have wives and children now. Changing your business and starting a new business, it's a lot scarier now than it was before you had kids and you were younger, nobody's dependent. So you've got that on top of you. You're also, your time has spread out a little bit differently. Because of those responsibilities, I got things to do that have nothing to do with what I wanna do just for me. I gotta do things for other people. I gotta do things for my kids. I gotta do things for my business. I have responsibilities. I do things for my wife. So I don't just have the time to just go waste in the gym. Which, when you're a kid, you kinda do. You go do a lot of stuff in the gym. I could go spend two and a half hours, doesn't matter what I'm doing in there. You know, most people over 40, just even if they wanted to, they couldn't. Even if we put together the perfect workout that was two and a half hours long, they'd laugh because they were like, well who's got two and a half hours? Right, right. So that's another big challenge that we need to, you have to tackle. Another one is joint issues. Now, there's this myth out there that your joints just go bad as you get older. Like, that doesn't, you don't start to notice age-related joint issues that have specifically to do with your age until you're much older. Typically what it is after 40s and 50s is that if you've been moving in ways that are suboptimally, you've just been doing it for longer. So if you're 25 and you've been running not great or you've been squatting not the best or you've been sitting down for a long time, in your 45, you've just been doing it for 20 more years. Now it's gonna start to show up. And so the workout has to consider that. You can't just throw the same workout at somebody who's 45 and 25 without considering that. You know, the silver lining in this again is forcing you to make better choices around your exercise selection, the amount of time that you spend on the working out, the intensity level that you train at. It has to be balanced with stress though. All these things that I think initially when you start to age, you start thinking as like, these are all these negative things. These are all, oh my joints now or oh I only have this much time or oh I've got all this other stress. But really what it ends up doing is it forces you to really nail down what is ideal for me and how does that compliment the rest of my life which ultimately leads you to this like better way of living anyways. Give you more efficient and more effective with everything you do. It just takes more attention. And I think that's the biggest takeaway I've found about like, you know, getting older is just like, again, yeah, you have more responsibility, you have less time to just really burn. And so I wanna only stick with things that are actually gonna move things forward for me the most. And two, along with age comes wisdom. And so you go through a lot of that process. Hopefully you get to a point where you realize, okay, this really works well with my body and this is what I need to stick with and create that consistency. That's why this is my favorite part about being 40 plus and going through all this and figuring this out is like, I've cut out all the fat. I've cut out all the other. I mean, I used to spend two hours plus in the gym. And I wasn't in- Because what else were you in? I wasn't in better shape than what I am today. Like I was literally spinning my wheels most of the time. And a lot of stuff was overtraining and overdoing stuff and way more than I need to or doing a lot of things that were way less effective than other things or neglecting the stuff that was gonna move the needle more with my overall health. Where now if piece that together where it's like, man, the stuff that I do in the gym now is way less but elicits a lot more results for me and compliments my life. And I think that's the silver lining in all of this stuff that, oh, these are all these challenges that we have as we get older. But really all it's done is forced me to focus on, okay, what are the big rocks that in my lifestyle and in my training and in my nutrition that I need to hone in on. And I feel like that's probably the funnest part about putting this all together was piecing that together on the same way that we would with a client. Well, obviously, we'll start with workout. We talk about that all the time on the show. Now, all exercises have value, okay? Some are more valuable for some things and others more valuable for other things. But ultimately the best exercise for you is gonna be the one that you can perform with the best technique and the best form that allows you to accomplish the goal that you're trying to accomplish. With that in mind, you have to consider when I'm training somebody or working with somebody that's over 40, I have to consider certain things. A couple of things that are quite common are core stability, hip movement and mobility, shoulder mobility and then knee and ankle type stuff, but knee being the big one. I said ankle because oftentimes it comes from the ankles but they don't typically complain about their ankles, they typically will complain about their knees. Now, person comes to me is like, I wanna build muscle burn body fat and if I consider those things, there's a selection of exercises that I can choose from that are gonna be more effective, okay? Period end of story because they're more appropriate. There's just gonna be exercises that are gonna be more effective when you consider those things. I'll use a silly example but this is a tool that I used as a trainer, which I used more of as a trainer that I personally discovered the value of by using it on myself. Just one silly example which is a sled. The rate of injury and how it moves the joints is so much friendlier than any other lower body exercise that would be in the same category of muscle building, strength building and fat burning. There's a lot of safe, there's a lot of, I don't wanna say safe because all exercises are safe if you do them right, but there's a lot of lower risk, lower body exercises but the trade off is always this. It's not gonna build muscle as much. It's not gonna be as effective for fat burning but hey, your hip bothers you, you won't hurt your back, so why don't you do this one? The sled is interesting because the sled is a high performance producing, if you do it right and you program it right tool that's up there with the barbell squat, barbell lunges, Bulgarian squat, that kind of stuff. It's up there but it's also, it's one of the few exercises or I should say tools that's simultaneously in the same category as safe, correctional type exercises, okay? It's rare to find by anybody who's a very rare, if you're a trainer or a coach, strength coach, you know this, you got your categories of exercises. If you tell a strength coach and you say, pick, give me the top four lower body muscle building, power building, fat burning exercises and also pick me the top four correctional exercise, safest, lowest risk of injury and pain exercises, none of them are gonna match except for the ones you can do with the sled, okay? That's what's so rare about it but there are other movements like that for the rest of the body and there are ways that you can program them so when creating a workout for someone who's over 40, this is a very strong consideration. What exercises are we gonna use that kind of fit both categories? Because what I hate is this, this is what I hate, I hate this, I hate, and I won't settle for none of us will. We will not settle for trading results, like okay, you're gonna get less results but you know, you're older so you have to do this thing over here and I know that there's cases where that's true but the whole point here was, can we do this with both? Can we do both? Can we make this feel good on your body but also kick-ass results? Yeah, you still want the results. But considering some of those other factors of higher risk in terms of joint impact and there are exercises that will require a bit more of that joint stability and strength and if we're already in a position where we have a little bit of joint dysfunction, we're addressing it with mobility practices, we're trying to kind of reintegrate that and make sure that all that is in order, meanwhile I wanna build strength and I wanna keep my muscles built and developed, we can incorporate things like the sled to accomplish that very effectively and also too, it's just one of those things that it carries over and translates towards functional activity. So things around the house, being active, being strong, active and energetic in your everyday life is gonna benefit your interactions with other people, your family, your work, all these other things to consider. So it's just adding all that up and assessing what has the most value now in terms of efficiency and effectiveness from each exercise is something to consider. I really thought of it like this or think of it like this. You know, when we wrote Maps and Aboled, Maps Performance, Maps Aesthetic, when you add all those up there, it's about nine months worth of programming so there's still like three months left. If I've got a client that I'm training that's over 40, I feel like this is something that comes in annually every year. So every year, and then say they love those programs, right? Anapolik's been great for them. They saw great results, performance, they love the love aesthetic, they love training that way. And this is somebody who's over 40. I'm cycling this in as their fourth program. It just makes total sense that we always have this to balance them out and to keep them feeling good forever. I see it like that. Yeah, well, look, just to give another example of what I'm talking about. Okay, if you listen to the show for longer than a week, you've heard us talk about the value of the barbell squat. Phenomenal exercise, one of the best movements you can do, one of the best muscle builders, if you perform it right, it's gonna improve the health of every joint that's involved, which is pretty much most of the body. It's extremely functional. There's a lot of carryover. It's just, they call it the king of all exercises for a reason, but it is a high-skill exercise in comparison to others when you have to have good mobility, good control, good stability, because if you don't do it right, then it can become something that can cause pain and injury. Okay, so you could take a barbell squat and you could change one little thing about it that pretty much doesn't take away any of the results you get from the squat, but does dramatically reduce the potential risk that comes from the squat when your form isn't just right. And that is to eliminate the need to change directions as you're doing the squat itself. In other words, when you're put, let's say you put 100 pounds on your back and you're squatting down, when you change directions to come back up in a split second, you're actually squatting more than 100 pounds. There's momentum is involved, okay? And that's typically when people cause problems, either chronic issues or acute issues. Chronic in the sense that over time they're like, my knee bothers me or whatever or acutely like, yeah, I got to the bottom, tried to come up strain and I got hurt. Well, a box squat. A box squat is literally a squat that gets rid of that changing directions cause you sit down and come back up. There is no, you're squatting 200 pounds, it's 200 pounds the whole time cause you sit on the box and then you come up. So that's just one simple, very simple example of what I'm talking about. Now there's a lot more that goes into programming to work out like sets and reps and when you do lower reps or when you do higher reps and when you combine them and when you include things that are more plyometric, you might think to yourself, what does plyometrics have to do with working out over 40? I'm gonna tell you something right now, if you're over 40 and you're listening right now and I tell you, if you get up and run as fast as you can, do you think you're gonna hurt yourself and you are a little afraid? Jump off a truck. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're gonna be like, if that makes you kind of like, oh yeah, if I tried to take off right now or if I tried to jump off of something like a bench at the gym, I'd probably hurt myself. It's because you've lost that skill cause you stopped practicing it. In this program, we also included ways of redeveloping that skill. Why do you need that skill? Cause life is not controlled. So there's gonna be a moment where you're gonna stop off the curb wrong, your kid's gonna need something, you need to grab something real quick. This is when people tend to hurt themselves, but there's a proper way to program that. Now that's just the workout portion of kind of what we had to put together. The real considerations though, the ones that were, where we really sat down and spent a lot of time was in the lifestyle, this is the first program we've ever created. This is the part I'm most excited about. This is the fun part. This is the first program where we give you lifestyle programming and we have dietary guidelines and advice as well. First program we've ever done that. So this is why I think this will forever become my annual tune up program. And the way, and I'm gonna do this one right now. So the way that I think I'm going to approach this, and you just kind of went over just some basic concepts in the programming of the training, which I'm excited to do, but I'm more excited about the lifestyle stuff because of all the things like we're gonna address the morning stuff, the evening stuff, the diet, all these things and really what I'm looking for in all these lifestyle goals that we have or the things that we set as far as like the hacks and stuff is when I apply them, the things that I notice as far as a return and like where have I been missing big time, right? And so that's why I like it is like this annual reminder. Cause it's not like there's things that I have included in here that we've never talked about before or I've never done before. But the question is like, oh, how consistent have I been with that? And if I am applying those things, which one's giving me the biggest return? And so I love the idea of this program being this annual tune-up on the exercise side and then also like an annual check-in with myself on the lifestyle side. So I think of like exercise tune-up, lifestyle check-in is like the way I'm looking at the way I'm going to approach this. Right, cause if you can ritualize this, like what a benefit that's gonna provide you with everything else you're pursuing especially physically. And two, to get on track with your diet and to get on track with your sleep and all these other factors that we know move the needle so much in terms of overall recovery. So you try any of these other programs too. I love that as like a sort of a check-in to see where we're at and where we can improve. Well, here's the main considerations with the lifestyle guidelines that we included in this program. So number one, we looked at what are things? Well, here are some of the problems we need to deal with. One, insulin resistance starts to become an issue right around now. This is when your body isn't responding to the same amounts of insulin as it used to. And this is a big problem, okay? Insulin resistance is connected to, I don't think you can find a chronic health issue that doesn't have this as a component or as a root cause. I mean, dementia, Alzheimer's is due to insulin resistance, heart disease, cancers, low energy, like, you know, mitochondrial dysfunction, right? These are the, what they would refer to as the powerhouses of cells. So we looked at, okay, how do we, we want to improve insulin sensitivity. Obviously the workout does a lot of that, strength training, one of the best things you could do. But what are the other things that we could do that improve insulin sensitivity? Here's the second one, cortisol. Uh-oh, everybody hears cortisol, they think that's a terrible hormone, stress hormone, get rid of it. No, no, no, cortisol is an essential hormone in the body. If you had no cortisol, you'd be terribly unhealthy, would not be a good thing, okay? So everybody talks about crushing cortisol, lowering cortisol. That's actually not accurate. What really needs to happen is you need to have appropriate cortisol levels in the morning and in the evening. This is the way cortisol's supposed to look. You wake up and cortisol goes up. Cortisol produces energy, wakes you up a little bit, gets it moving. Then it starts to taper off and come down in the evening. That's when you're starting to relax and rest and then you want to go to sleep. What happens when people's cortisol levels are all kind of all over the place, is they either, A, get this inverted cortisol pattern where cortisol doesn't want to go up in the morning, so give me big coffee to kind of give me this artificial energy, then because of their body's inability to deal with stress because they're not in good health, because they don't exercise right or they don't eat right or have good sleep or lots of other reasons, the cortisol starts to respond later in the day and then they find themselves, how many times have you heard this from a client like this that we're talking about? We're like, I have no energy all day long and then when it's time to go to bed, I can't sleep. It's like I'm exhausted at lunchtime, we have a meeting at work, I could barely keep my eyes open. I think to myself, I can't wait to go to bed tonight, go home, deal with the kids, do the thing, put the kids down, try to go to sleep. Why am I tossing and turning? What the hell is going on? So that inverted cortisol ratio is what a lot of people are dealing with or you get this cortisol level that's kind of high all the time. By the way, you could start to develop a resistance to most hormones, cortisol being one of them, meaning your body stops responding to it and so your body needs to make more and more cortisol. So now you're in kind of this higher state of stress. High cortisol levels that are inappropriate or high all the time have been connected to things like visceral body fat in the gut. So you may notice like, oh, I'm storing more body fat. Like I gained 10 pounds, I've gained 10 pounds before, but why is it all in my belly now? The hell I never had a belly before could be connected to something like that. We're also looking at optimizing the hormones testosterone, estrogen and progesterone and having them be youthful and appropriate. And then the final one is growth hormone. Growth hormone is the youth hormone. You'll see, you'll hear about celebrities taking human growth hormone to make themselves fully younger and all that kind of stuff. So that was one consideration. The second consideration was what are the things that people can do to make their bodies more resilient to stress? Because you're gonna be more stressed out when you're older just cause you have more responsibilities, okay? If you're 45 years old and you don't have any responsibilities, go find another podcast because you need some help. But most of us at that point you've got some big responsibilities and that's a good thing. But what are the things you could do in your lifestyle to help you deal with those things? And then here's the third consideration with the lifestyle guidelines and programming. Is it gonna give you a big bang for your buck and is it something people can do? Right? So if I read a study that said, you have to swim in salt water at 3 a.m. for 15 minutes and then like, I'm not gonna advertise. Who's gonna do that? No one's gonna do that. Who's gonna follow that? For how long? So what we did is we picked the ones that gave you the most bang for your buck, the ones that help regulate cortisol, the ones that help your body adapt stress. By the way, that means you're gonna build more muscle, burn more body fat, cause those are both adaptations. And the ones that are doable. The ones that are doable, that where you're gonna look at these and you're not gonna say to yourself like, oh, that's great. Now you just added 15 more chores to my day that I'm not gonna be able to apply. And then what we did is we put it together in a way to where the goal is not to be perfect. Nobody's perfect. The goal is to simply move through the phases and get a little better each time. That's what's pretty awesome about the way we set it up. Well, my recommendation would be to actually print off the checklist, right? So there's morning, evening, lifestyle hack and there's like check boxes that I know that we've created within the program. Right, because I'm so glad you said that, Adam, because there are things you can do in the morning to help optimize hormone levels that you want in the morning. And also optimize how you feel because you're about to get your day started. Then there are different things that you do in the evening to help bring cortisol down, to help with insulin sensitivity and then help growth hormone come up when you go to sleep because that's when you want the growth hormone to come up. So there's morning things and evening things. And then we have general health guidelines that we included. But then we also included dietary guidelines which we usually typically don't touch but we wanted to include these in here because you're probably a wiser consumer at this point. And so I said, hey, let's throw in some dietary guidelines because we think this will give them a lot of what they're looking at. We also threw in some supplement guidelines. I don't think, have we ever added supplement guidelines? No, no. I feel like this is like for you too. I feel like you've attracted so many other supplement nuts that want to know what you're taking, why you take it and it's like, okay, let's look at all the common things that people are deficient in, especially things that are more common as we age. What are some basic recommendations around that and things that we would, and again, back to your point of, it's not like we threw the whole gamut of every supplement out there. It was like, what are the ones that are the common offenders? What are the ones that are gonna move the needle the most and which ones would you recommend in that order? And that's what made it to the, made it to the pro. 100% Go ahead. Yeah, no. And the actual lifestyle, like checklist. I mean, we're just trying to like find those things that we know, you stack these dominoes together, it's gonna get you closer to those natural rhythms and it's about getting your body sort of back in sync with sort of that optimal setup. So we do have that bit of a spike in the morning and then we sort of are able to calm down. And it doesn't just happen, is the point of all of this is like, you just have to be a little bit more intentional, you know, as we go forward in age and this is just one of those things that just helps you to really be intentional with your everyday behaviors. And if you could just do one of them consistently, that's a win. And then now we build off of that. I'll give a couple of examples. I'll give you more than a couple of examples. One we've talked about before, but I like to bring this up because it makes a big difference. This makes a very big difference in your health, your hormones, your, how your body responds to exercise, stuff like that. And we've talked about this before, but this is one of the things that we recommend that you do both in the morning and at night. And that is to go to bed and wake up at the same time every single day. Go to bed, wake up, same time every day. And the reason for this is because we've talked about this before on the show. When you go to bed later on a Friday night, feeling like you're gonna sleep in Saturday and you do that again Saturday night, by the time Monday comes around, it's time to go to work, you've given yourself jet lag. Okay, you've actually changed your circadian rhythm by two or three hours and it takes about two days to readjust. So now Monday sucks, Tuesday and then Wednesday you're back to normal. Now you think to yourself like, well, I could deal with that, drink a little more coffee or whatever. Look at the data on messing up your circadian rhythm even by two or three hours on health. Profound impacts. So it sounds silly, but the reason why we put that one in there is because of the impact that that will have on all the things that we've been talking about. Fat loss, muscle gain, energy, libido. Go to bed, wake up at the same time. All right, here's one that's unique for the morning. And we put on here just kind of some guidelines that kind of walk you through, but you will be using cold water in the morning as part of your shower. Okay, now why would you do that in the morning? What's the big deal with that? Well, we talked about cortisol. We want your cortisol to learn to be higher in the morning. Well, it's gonna help raise that and give you some of that energy. It's also gonna help your body or make your body produce more of what are known as catecholamines, epinephrine, nor epinephrine. These are energy producing chemicals. Why do you want to do that in the morning? Because unless you're gonna wake up and go back to bed, you got stuff to do. This is when you want those things. You don't want those before you go to bed. All right, what about when you go to bed? Well, here's two things that we included in there. There's a lot of things, by the way, that we included in there, but here's two that maybe not so obvious that when you look at the data, we actually have some pretty profound effects on all the stuff that we talked about. One of them is to box-breathe before or when you're in bed. Box-breathing, now what does that do? That kicks your parasympathetic into gear because without realizing, especially if you live in this state, you might not realize that your body is in this sympathetic central nervous system state. So sympathetic fight or flight, parasympathetic, rest and digest. Box-breathing, especially when you schedule it, program it and do it the way that we explain it, kicks in the parasympathetic. Now, why do you want that? Well, you get better sleep. Okay, that's good, I sleep better, but what else does it do? You make more growth hormone. If you're in a stressed state and you go to sleep, even if you force yourself to sleep in a stressed state, you take an Ambien or you take a Benzo or you drink or something to make yourself go to sleep, or you're so exhausted you knock yourself out, you're not producing the same amount of growth hormone or melatonin. Well, doing this before you go to bed will have a positive impact on those things. Another thing, again, this sounds silly, but when you look at the data, and that's what we did, this was a simple thing that has a big impact is to write down a few things that you're grateful for. Oh, that sounds so woo and silly or whatever. No, it has an impact on a person's consistency. For mindset. Yes, on their consistency and their workouts, again on how the rest and digest part happens while they sleep, those are just a few, but there's a lot in there that we've listed that you can work through and build upon along with the program workout, along with the dietary guidelines. And again, it's all specifically for, and like I said, I actually didn't say this on air, I said this before we started recording, the most personal program that we've ever created because it's like, I'm in there, I'm in the mid-40s now, so I didn't just turn 40. This is all the good stuff. I'm in there, so this is all the stuff that I've pieced together, that I used to do with my clients, but that I really see the value in because I do them with myself. By the way, this program we're launching right now, and because we're just launching it, it's gonna be on sale, so it's discounted. We're gonna take $80 off the price, okay? So it's maps 40 plus, so maps40plus.com, use the code 40launch, so that's 40launch, and you'll get $80 off, and there's gonna be some free stuff that we include with that as well. That offer will expire Sunday, December 24th. Also, if you like the show, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out some of our free guides. We have free guides that can help you with many fitness goals. You can also find all of us on social media. Justin can be found on Instagram at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump DeStefano and Adam at Mind Pump Adam.