Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2922: 5 Things Nobody Tells Men About Losing Fat After 40

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

MAPS BOGO: https://mapsbogo.com Buy one get one free — mix and match any of the top 10 most popular programs (Anabolic, Aesthetic, Performance, 15 Minutes, Anywhere, Symmetry, Starter, Muscle Mommy, Powerlift, 40+) for $157.vRecommended combo for this episode: MAPS 40 Plus + MAPS Powerlift    In this episode the guys break down 5 things nobody tells men about losing fat after 40. They cover why it genuinely is harder and why the old methods stopped working, why accumulated stress is the real culprit (not just age), why building muscle is the single thing that changes everything for men in this category, and exactly what to do — get strong at basic compound lifts, eat only whole foods, prioritize very high protein in every meal, meal prep once or twice a week, and prep for sleep like it's a sport. Sal shares his own Sunday meal prep routine, Adam walks through why sleep habits have to be built one at a time, and the guys make the case that for most men over 40 doing this correctly, body fat will naturally settle in the mid-teens without counting a single calorie. SPONSORS Ketone IQ: https://ketone.com/MINDPUMP 30% off subscription orders plus a free gift with your second shipment. Also available at Target stores nationwide. Exogenous ketones — elevated blood ketone levels within 30 minutes without going on a ketogenic diet.   LINKS Mind Pump Store: https://mindpumpstore.com Maps Fitness Products: https://mapsfitnessproducts.com Instagram: @mindpumpmedia   0:00 - Intro 2:27 - 5 things nobody tells men about losing fat after 40 3:31 - Why what worked before stopped working — and why it never actually worked long term 6:04 - The real reason it's harder — accumulated stress, not age 8:35 - The stress bucket shrinks with age — why your body holds fat when life gets heavy 12:31 - Accumulated movement pattern issues after 40 — knees, hips and lower back 15:38 - Time is the enemy — why efficiency matters more than ever 17:22 - The one thing that makes the biggest difference — building muscle 19:18 - Step 1: Get strong at basic compound lifts — bench, deadlift, squat, overhead press and rows 21:28 - Step 2: Eat only whole foods — the one rule that handles everything else 24:45 - Step 3: Very high protein — 40-50g per meal, eat it first 26:33 - Step 4: Meal prep — the one habit that makes whole foods actually possible 29:46 - Step 5: Prep for sleep — the single biggest lever for resilience and recovery 33:32 - MAPS 40 Plus + MAPS Powerlift — the recommended 6-month combo for this approach

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump. Mind pop with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. 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 plus. You buy that, you get Maps power lift 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. That's, what's that, right? What is, we're exogenous ketones. Well, let me explain. When you go on a ketogenic diet, this is a zero-carb diet, that 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've got to eat zero carbohydrates. That sucks. It's not great for athletic performance or building muscle. It's also not sustainable.

We'll enter ketone IQ. You can eat a normal diet. You can eat your normal carbohydrate. It's your rice or 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 mind pump. That's Keton. dot com slash mind pump that link will get you 30% off your subscription order 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 up by rocking one of our shirts hats mugs or training gear over at mindpump store.com I'm talking right now

hit pause head on over to mindpump store.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.

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 have done it successfully a few times. 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 those of us who coach and train people for living

the way we define if something worked isn't whether or not you got your to your goal result. The way we define did it work is if you kept it, right? If you got the result that you were looking for and you maintain it. 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?

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 to getting in shape. Yeah. Like that was, that was rare. I can't think of a case. People typically try on their own first. 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 they can get in shape pretty quick that's like their go-to method yeah and so they've 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 I'm seeing I can't seem to lose weight anymore what's going on with me how do you help me? 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. So what the heck's going on then? It's your behavioral patterns, man. I mean, your whole lifestyle is different 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, And, 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. But 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. You hit the big one that I think that age plays a big role is just the accumulation of stress. That's it. And we talk 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 a, say like a three-month window of a training, trying to get in shape.

Yeah. But I think the part that like we don't consider a lot too is like that there is that, right? Like if I have a stress bucket and 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'd just add 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 milk. now I'm getting higher.

And then I go to the gym and I just hammer myself. And then now I'm over. So there's that accumulation of stress in the immediate. And then there's 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,

maybe it's not as bad. Whereas when you've had these behaviors to your point for decades of burning the candle at both ends, yes, it builds. Or another way to say that stress bucket shrinks. Right? Like maybe when you were younger, all those still. Exactly. 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 addition to bigger life stresses on top of that. Okay, to put it plainly, right, 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 you 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 it's terrible for you. 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. 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. 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 your kids. You really 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? 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? 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 society is not an issue. But our bodies have already, 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. So one of the main reasons why this is so much more challenging for men has nothing to do with somehow the aging process is 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 wasted or too much and your body won't respond. I mean, I would add to that, it becomes even more challenging sometimes when people don't realize all the things that you just like. Like 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 body composition change and they feel like they're doing a lot of the right things.

Like, I'm doing this. I'm doing that. My body isn't changed. 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. 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 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 when, guess what time he has to work out in the morning? 4.30. because he goes to work, he's got a 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, 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 can work out, you know, four days a week.

I'm like, oh, cool, what time? 430? I'm like, well, what time are you going to bed? You better be going to bed at 830 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 your life. 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. This is 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 on earth for more.

Or not moving. Or not moving. Great example. This is your engineer or somebody who's been sitting at a computer desk for 20-plus years. Locked in positions. Yeah, total challenge. And so what you sometimes hear is, well, I work out with my shoulder hurts. Yeah.

Or I squat and I can't squat 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 do 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 get all the time in the world to work out. I 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 working out for two and a half hours. They're hanging out. They're working out and are hanging out. 40-something-year-old dude doesn't got two hours to go spend in the gym. 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 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. 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 man 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 us. You don't need to do a lot of crazy workouts to build strength. Now, building endurance and stamina, it takes a lot more time. But here's a deal. If you're listening to this, you're like, look, look, look, look, 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. 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 their life into an extreme diet to cut, to lose, also just adds exponentially more. Build into it. Build into a fat-burning machine and stop trying it. Much better strategy for this person when it comes to hormones, sleep, all other things.

Energy. By the way, and I'm just going to communicate this, if you're listening right now and you've tried this, You're like, man, I don't have the energy to do these workouts and work and do all this other stuff. If you do this properly, if you follow workout programming that's designed for someone like you, it won't take energy away. It'll add. Yes. What you'll find is you have more energy for work, more energy for your family.

You're going to feel better day one, not, you know, three months later. You'll actually feel better. That in itself is such a new mentality for people to address their workout and fitness in general of life. like something that's going to actually like increase their energy when they leave. That's right. So here's number one, okay? Get strong at basic lifts. Okay?

Basic lifts and practice them often. One of the mistakes people make when they work out is they think they need to do different stuff all the time. This actually takes away from your body's ability to adapt in ways that build muscle. There's, there's an adaptation process that happens with strength training. Some of it, and there's a lot of crossover. So it's not like it just goes from one to the other. A lot of it is kind of muddy, but that's what it looks like.

Initially, when you first start an exercise, the initial adaptations are all central nervous system. Okay. So when I first, I'm getting back into the gym, I'm practicing an overhead press, the strength gains I get initially are really just my central nervous system organizing better, organizing my muscles better, providing more stability because it's what controls the muscles. It's basically making me better at the overhead press. So I get strength gains right out the gates from that.

Once those central nervous systems adapt to it, you know, it's a lot of the air. a certain point, then the adaptation looks like bigger muscles. Okay. But if I change exercises all the time and do a bunch of weird stuff, I'm never really giving my body the opportunity to do this. So number one with your strength training is get strong at the basic lifts, basic lifts. Fundamentals. The fundamentals.

Your bench presses, your dead lifts, your squats, your overhead presses, your rows. Don't mix it up a ton. Stick to the basics and get strong at those. And that'll give you the most carry-a-up. Well, this is so important when we're talking about this, this avatar specifically because time you are, you made is one of the major issues. And this is the greatest ROI you can get on on track. 100%. Like going in the, and there's, there's nothing wrong with, you know, easy curl, you know, bar.

There's nothing wrong with some triset pushdowns. Those are all cool exercises. They have their benefits. But when time is the issue and you are trying to make major changes as fast as you can, as efficiently as you can, the basis. the basic big lifts are the things that are going to give you the greatest ROI. 100%. Now let's talk about diet a little bit. We're going to spend a little bit of time here because diet is the hardest thing.

So getting into the gym, you know, two days a week, three days a week, that could be difficult alone to be consistent. But I'd be lying if I said that would be the most difficult thing you'd have to deal with. Easily, by far, diet is far harder. There's nothing harder than diet when it comes to your health. exercise being consistent a couple days in a week difficult but I could almost always make that work with my clients the diet part was a big one so here's what we're going to do we're going to give you like a few things to do and these the reason why we're only going to give you a few things is there's two

reasons one these are things you can stick to but two these are the ones that make the big difference okay so there's like there's a lot of things you can do with your diet to make it work better for you but if you just did the the couple things that we're going to mention right now most guys listening to this. Most guys in their 40s listening to this who exercise properly, and we'll get to that, who follow good workout programming for them, if they follow these next pieces of advice for diet and they were just consistent with this, the average 40-something-year-old man's body fat percentage would fall somewhere in the mid-teens. Now, give or take, right? Some guys can be a little leaner, some guys a little heavier, but most guys over time, without having to do

anything else, without having to count things and track things and cut things or whatever, will somewhere around 13 to 18% body fat is where you'll end up falling for most people. Here's number one. This is one rule. That's it. Eat only whole foods. That's it. Stay away from things in boxes or wrapper.

Stay away from fast food. Stay away from candy. Eat whole natural foods. Now notice I'm not saying eat less. Notice I'm not saying, you know, this many grams of carbs. Just stick to whole foods. This will naturally bring your caloric intake down. down to where it needs to be.

The studies on nutrition on whole foods versus heavily processed foods are remarkable. They're the best studies there are. The best part about this, too, is it keeps it so simple, especially for somebody who is busy and got so much going on. It's just like, if you're hungry, eat. Just eat whole foods. You don't have to overthink this. And your body will.

It'll fall right where it needs to be. Where this gets difficult is when, you know, 50% is whole foods and the other 50% this process. Then this gets confusing. Then this gets challenging. Then that throws it off. And then this is where people overeat. Because every time I tell somebody this, knows, but what about how much carbs and how much fat and how many calories? It's like, just hit the protein intake and hit eat whole foods. And that is, that'll take care of the rest. Yes. And so here's why. And I'll briefly cover this. We've had whole episodes on this. But processed foods are designed in a way that makes you overeat. If you eat whole natural foods,

your natural satiety actually is quite remarkable at maintaining an appropriate caloric intake. There's this weird belief that if we're just eat as much as we want, that we're all going to be 350 pounds. That's only true with heavily processed foods. With whole foods, if you ate until you were satisfied, barring any, you know, eating disorder issues, barring anything crazy like that, right? If you just ate when you were hungry, your calories will naturally fall in this place that allows you to burn body fat and build muscle.

That's just where it goes. You'll actually be satisfied. In fact, here's the challenge with eating whole foods. There's a couple challenges. We'll cover the second one here in a second. But the first challenge I found with whole foods is my clients will eat just whole foods. And then they'll say, but I'm craving. And I'll say, eat a whole food meal.

Yeah, but I'm craving the whatever. And they know if they eat the whole food, it's actually like, that doesn't actually don't want to eat that. It's because you're not hungry. You have a craving. And processed foods will do that. So stick to just whole foods. And then the second part, what Adam said, make it very high protein.

All of your meals, protein-centric. Every single meal you eat, 40, 50 grams in the meal of protein. Steak, chicken, fish, eggs, you know, cottage cheese, whatever. Eat it first, eat the rest of the meal. Your calories will fall where they need to go. High protein builds more muscle and causes more fat loss. And by the way, there's new studies that are coming out on protein intake. On the show, we recommend about one gram per pound of target body weight.

the old data showed a little less. We always rounded it up to one because we always found it worked better. Guess what the data supports, fellows? Higher. One gram. Yeah. The data supports one gram, maybe even a little higher for building muscle. So if you're a guy and you want to weigh about 200 pounds,

aim for 200 grams of protein in four meals. Aim for that. The best part about this, too, is you don't even have to overcomplicate what types of protein. You can really enjoy yourself. You can eat fatier cuts. You can enjoy rib-eye, try-tip. Ground beef. Ground beef.

eating things like this, if you just stick to that rule of whole foods, eat it first, then everything follows. That's right. It'll take care of the rest. And so this idea of like even having to, because I think a lot of times too, people think high protein, they think right away chicken breasts and fish. Like boring.

Yeah. I didn't say high protein low fat. Right. I just said high protein. That's right. Whole foods. That's right. And you can really enjoy good cuts of meat and just eat it first and then let the carbs

and everything else follow a second. That's right. And then here's the part that makes this all possible. if you don't do this, eating only whole foods will be almost impossible. Okay, so here's what you got to do. Meal prep. This is the one thing that made the biggest difference with my male clients over 40. Once a week or twice a week, they would go out and they'd grill a bunch of meat, a bunch of chicken, a bunch of whatever, cook a bunch of ground beef and prep their meals for them because here's what happens.

Yeah. If you're trying to stick to whole foods and you don't have a meal available, it's just not there. It's not there. It's not there. You're screwed. Yeah, the environment just doesn't promote this enough to where you're going to go down to your local store and it's going to be an easy option that's convenient. Never. Nothing's ever convenient within the whole food's realm.

But, you know, you can control that by prepping ahead of time and kind of making these last. Sometimes we really overcomplicate this too. Like a lot of the times the challenge that people have this is just getting out of their way of thinking of like the way they've made dinner their whole lives before. Right. Is this like... Just got to make them bigger. You just got to be way bigger. Like, that's all it is.

It's just like if you made... You can actually meal prep every night within it by just making a huge dinner. That's exactly what I'm saying by overcomplicating this. Because some people are like, man, that means I've got to spend all day Sunday meal prep and all those stuff. It's like, that's one way to do it.

Uh-huh. Or just if you say just two or three nights out of the week, you actually make home food meal. Double up the serving. Just double or triple up the serving. Yep. Like just get used to, instead of making a pound of meat for you and your spouse or family or whatever,

it's four or five pounds. And instead of cooking one or two cups of rice, it's five to six cups of rice. And that gets you for the next two or three days. And then when you do it again, you do it again like that. So here's what I do on Sundays, I meal prep. And I make about five pounds of chicken thighs or sometimes less chicken thighs. And I'll do a big thing of ground beef.

I'll make a big pot of white rice. And then I'll cook a big thing of broccoli or whatever, choose your vegetable. You can make ground beef rice bowls. you can do chicken thighs and rice, whatever. It's all good. I enjoy it. You can choose different cuts. And then in my fridge, I got a bunch of meals ready to go.

By the time Wednesday, Thursday comes around, I typically run out. And that's when my wife will make extra dinner. Yeah. So instead of making one tri-tip, she'll make two. And then I have more meals. And it's just, it's, by the way, fellas, in your 40s, look, this has got a double, there's a double side to this. There's another side to this of value.

You save money. Oh, yeah. Guys, listen. Especially today. You're taking care of your family. You got a job. You want to take some stress off your life. Meal prep.

It saves you money and it gets you lean. It does both of those things. Now you're not eating out. You've got your meals. Two birds. That's pretty much it. Eat whole foods, very high protein, meal prep. Diet part is done.

Diet part is done. Here's the last part, okay? The number one thing that will increase your resilience to stress. Okay? Because there are stresses in your life. And sometimes you'll hear people say this. I used to say this when I was a stupid young kid. And I didn't understand what it was like.

to manage all these things. Sometimes you'll hear people say, well, you got to get rid of certain stresses in your life. Like, oh, what, my mortgage? I got three kids. Like, what am I going to get my job? Like, I can't get rid of these. Yeah, what am I going to get rid of?

Or I'm taking care of an old parent? Like, what am I going to get rid of? Well, you can increase your resilience to stress. And the number one thing, nothing comes close to this. Nothing touches us. No recovery hack, no supplement. Nothing is better than sleep. Mm-hmm.

And so how do you do this? as a man in your mid-40s, you prep for your sleep. You prep for it. You know what your bedtime is, an hour before you get ready, go to bed at the same time, wake up at the same time every day.

If you do that consistently by itself, it makes, in fact, I had clients, I had more clients than I can count right now. I'm thinking, I can think of many clients I had in this category

where when we nailed down sleep, it was like turbocharged. Nothing else changed. All we do was get their sleep done. Everything else became. 10 times more effective. It was wild. So let's list off something because I've been helping some people with getting better at their sleep.

And one of the things I'm starting to find, it's very similar to the way that we start somebody on a fitness journey is we tend to build one or two good habits and stack on that side of that. And what I'm finding with a lot of people when it comes to sleep, their sleep patterns or sleep habits are so bad that tell them to do all these things is too much at once. And so my advice would be. to, and I'll give you a list of different things that tend, that people tend to do to improve, and don't try and do all of them at once. Find the thing that's most egregious and try and get consistent with that one thing. So it's like screen time, you know, past seven or eight o'clock you see all the time. People on their phones are like, I see that all time. I see late, late night eating. I see doing work and eat work email stuff late at night. There's like these things are,

or drinking like right before, like a bunch of water or fluid, like right before it. There's like a handful of these things that people all tend to do. It's like, pick, if you're doing all of those, pick one and get really good at eliminating it. And then stack another one on it and just and then treat it the same way. Like that's how powerful asleep is that it deserves that much attention to try and get better at it because of the ROI. What I found is going to bed at the same time and waking up at the same time every morning makes the biggest difference. but the challenge is always going to bed at the same time. And the thing that gets in the way from the people that I've worked with oftentimes is tech.

I got Netflix. I got to watch the show. I got whatever. And so if you give yourself a hard and fast rule, 8 o'clock, everything, I'm not going on any electronics. Going to bed is a lot easier because there's nothing to do. Yeah. It's actually a lot easier. No, I agree.

It makes a big difference. You're a way to get bored. It's 100%. Let's go back to the workout. So workout programming is everything. It needs to be appropriate for the avatar of a man in his 40s with responsibilities, with more stress in his life who wants to build muscle and burn body fat. Programming is everything.

There's a couple of things you want to focus on with the programming. We talked about this already, the basics. But some of those basics require a decent amount of skill. A deadlift and a barbell squat, for example, require a decent amount of skill. They're phenomenal exercises. But if you're listening to this, you may be someone that's like, man, when I deadlift, I feel like my back, I'm going to throw up my back. Or when I squat, I'm unsure or I feel at my knee, like, what do I do?

You can replace those two exercises with variations that are a lot safer that have pretty much the same kind of value. For example, instead of a straight bar deadlift, do a trap bar deadlift. Instead of doing a traditional barbell squat, do a box squat. That's just a simple example of things that you can do in your programming to make the workout safer but not reduce any of its effectiveness. So here's what we have. We have a strength training program for people who are over 40, and it's everything that

we just said. It's called Maps 40 plus, okay? We also have a program called Maps Power Lift, which would be a great program to follow up with after 40 plus because both of them are to build strength. Build strength, build muscle, combine it with the nutrition tips that we gave, and you're going to watch yourself have this nice, consistent pattern of getting leaner and building more muscle. And here's what we're doing right now because this episode, if you buy 40 plus, you get power lift for free. It's a buy one, get one free. It's happening right now. Go to Mapsbogo.com,

get 40 plus and get powerlift thrown in for free. You can also find us on Instagram. It's at Mind Pump media. We'll see you. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, Check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes MAPS Anabolic, Maps Performance, and Maps Aesthetic, nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos,

the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own performance. personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now, plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes, and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support, and until next time, this is Mind Pump.