Over 35? Here’s 3 Quick Tips From An Age-Defying Warrior

Aging is the most challenging workout.

It stretches our endurance to the limits, and lays bare both the inner strength and outer fragility of the most courageous soul.

Yet, when it comes to fitness, aging is more of a nuisance than a sandglass-shaped ne’er do-well, assuming you are in relatively good health when you embark on the journey to your ideal you.

I wasn’t so lucky.

At the ripe old age of 32, I suffered the seventeenth physical setback of my young life—panic disorder. I had already overcame near kidney failure in my early youth, cystic acne in my teens (hardly life-threatening, but the experimental medicine I swallowed daily to rid it certainly proved to be), and a near-fatal motorcycle crash in my late teens.

Disease set in when I breeched my twenties, as I beheld my cholesterol skyrocket to 455, my triglycerides soar to over 2,000, and my blood pressure escalate to 200/110. My doctors called me, “The Freak.” They had never seen anything quite like this before, especially from a guy who, from the outside, looked healthy as the proverbial horse.

Inside, however, this horse was quickly turning to glue.

Eventually, I lost most of my pituitary function, and was forced to take exogenous hormones at the age of twenty-seven. My testosterone was a dismal fifty-two—lower than your average eighty-year-old. Thyroid? What thyroid? My T3 levels were almost undetectable. On and on it went—a young man, aging on the inside at an incredible rate, without an explanation in site.

Or so I thought.

A few years later, my chief nemesis took on a moniker other than the expletives I was using to describe it—Metabolic Syndrome, or Syndrome X. I actually like that name, as it sounds a a tad science fiction-esque, a side of the anti-reality fence on which I often boondoggle. Syndrome X gave me a target, along with some supportive research, that eventually led to the authorship of my first book.

However, before that was to occur, I had some more suffering to do. A young, stubborn man can never receive enough pain in exchange for wisdom.

It was only later in my life, after suffering a massive heart attack (did I mention that?) when I put the pieces together. Fitness was no longer driven by the, “I want to look like Frank Zane” inspiration of my twenties, nor the, “Great for meeting girls” mantra of my early thirties.

Fitness, especially nutritive fitness, became my altar. My physical salvation was to be discovered upon that altar, as I learned which foods to sacrifice in order to turn a rapidly aging man into the exact opposite. I was determined to overcome my Darwinian lot in life, taking out as many of these disease states as possible before they delivered on their purpose to do the same.

So far, I’m winning the battles, while fully acknowledging that the war itself subsists.

Still, the lessons have been invaluable. From this experience, I can comfortably say that I now understand the specific needs of the aging male or female when it comes to achieving a leaner, more muscular, and, above all, healthier body.

Here are three tips I recommend for anyone over the age of thirty-five who wants to lower bodyfat and decrease the risk of metabolic syndrome, heart disease, and obesity-related insulin resistance/Type 2 Diabetes.