Finding the Right Balance Between Food and Exercise

If you've been trying to get back in shape, you've probably realized that figuring out the exact ratio of eating to exercising can feel like a moving target.

Here at Get Fit Over 40, I see guys spinning their wheels all the time. They train hard but eat too much, or they starve themselves, have zero energy for the gym, and eventually crash. To build a sustainable, healthy lifestyle, you have to understand the fundamental relationship between what goes on your plate and what you do in the gym.

Here is how to find the right balance between food and exercise so you can finally see the results you are working toward.

The Golden Rule: Calories In vs. Calories Out

Let’s cut right to the chase and get the absolute truth out of the way first: no matter what you do, what diet you follow, or what supplements you take, you will need to eat less food than you burn to lose weight.

There is simply no way around this biological fact. Your body needs a reason to tap into its stored energy (body fat), and that only happens when you are in a caloric deficit. Depending on your ultimate goal, you have to set realistic calorie intake targets and then offset those calories with your physical activity.

The Great Trade-Off

Finding your balance comes down to understanding the trade-offs you are willing to make on a daily basis. It’s a sliding scale, and you are the one in control of the sliders.

• If you want to eat more food: You are going to have to exercise more. It’s that simple. If you love having larger meals or you don't want to drastically change your eating habits, you have to commit to a higher volume and intensity of exercise to ensure you are still hitting that daily calorie deficit.

• If you want to lose weight faster: You are going to have to attack the problem from both ends. You will need to reduce the calories you consume as much as safely possible, while simultaneously increasing your exercise output as much as you can recover from.

The 3 Questions You Need to Answer

Because we all have different bodies, schedules, and preferences, there is no one-size-fits-all formula. To figure out the right balance for your unique situation, you need to sit down and honestly answer these three questions:

1. How much weight do you want to lose each week? Are you looking for a slow, steady, and easily manageable half-pound a week? Or are you trying to be more aggressive to hit a specific near-term goal? Your timeline dictates how drastic your deficit needs to be.

2. How much time do you actually have each week for exercise? Be completely realistic here. If you only have three hours a week to dedicate to the gym because of family and work commitments, you cannot rely entirely on exercise to burn off excess weight. Your diet is going to have to do the heavy lifting.

3. How much are you willing to restrict your diet? Are you okay with tightly measuring your macros, skipping the late-night snacks, and cutting out the liquid calories? Or do you need more dietary freedom to stay sane? If you want dietary freedom, refer back to the trade-off: you better be ready to put in the work sweating it out.

Your Unique Path

The answers to these questions are going to be completely different for every single person based on your specific goals and lifestyle limitations. What works for a guy with a flexible schedule and a home gym might completely fail for a busy executive traveling three days a week.

Figure out the lifestyle you can actually sustain, do the math on your calories, and put in the work.

Ready to stop guessing and start seeing real results? Watch my Get Fit Now Training Videos Here

Ditching the "Bro Split" - Why Training Smarter is the Key to Building Muscle After 40

If you’ve spent any time in a gym over the last couple of decades, you are probably intimately familiar with the classic "bro split." It’s the routine most of us grew up reading about in fitness magazines, and it’s the default setting for almost anyone deciding it’s time to get serious about lifting.

You know the schedule: Monday is chest day, Tuesday is back, Wednesday is shoulders, Thursday is legs, and Friday is arms. You dedicate five or six days a week to completely destroying one specific muscle group per session, and every week looks exactly the same.

When you’re in your twenties, you can get away with almost any training style because your body is a highly efficient recovery machine. But as we age, our approach to building and maintaining muscle has to evolve. If you're over 40 and still running a strict bro split, you aren't just working harder than you need to, you are leaving a massive amount of growth on the table.

Here is why the traditional one-muscle-a-day split might be holding you back, and what you should be doing instead.

The Missed Growth Window

To understand why the bro split is inefficient, we have to look at the reality of muscle recovery and muscle protein synthesis (the biological process of building new muscle).

When you train a muscle hard, you trigger a growth response. However, that window of elevated muscle building doesn't last all week; it typically peaks and returns to baseline within 48 to 72 hours. This means you only need about two to three days for that muscle to recover, repair, and grow.

Think about the math of a typical bro split: if you train your chest on Monday, you are resting it for six whole days before you hit it again the following Monday. That means for three to four days, you are doing absolutely nothing to stimulate that muscle. You're completely missing out on the biological opportunity to trigger growth.

When we optimize our programming, we should be looking to hit each muscle group two, or even three times a week. Frequent, high-quality stimulation is the key to signaling your body to hold onto and build muscle tissue as you age.

The Volume Trap and the Pacing Dilemma

The other major flaw with dedicating an entire day to just one muscle group is what I call the "volume trap."

If you're forcing yourself to do four, five, or even six different exercises for the exact same muscle, you run into a serious pacing dilemma. Let’s say it’s leg day. Are you going to go all-out on heavy barbell squats for your first exercise, completely fry your central nervous system, and have absolutely nothing left in the tank for the lunges, leg presses, and extensions that follow?

Most people subconsciously solve this by pacing themselves. If you know you have to survive an hour of chest exercises, you hold back on the bench press so you can make it through the incline flyes. But if you aren't really pushing hard on those primary exercises, you're just pacing yourself to the finish line. You end up accumulating "junk volume", reps that make you tired and sore, but don't actually stimulate new muscle growth.

Furthermore, hammering a single joint and muscle group with 20 sets in a single day is a recipe for severe inflammation and excessive soreness, which can be incredibly hard on older joints and tendons.

The Solution: A Smarter Split for Longevity and Growth

Instead of mass-hitting one muscle to the point of severe overtraining and then waiting a week to do it again, a much better option is a split that targets one to two muscle groups per day with less overall volume per session.

The benefits of a higher-frequency, moderate-volume approach:

• Maximum Effort, Zero Pacing: When you only have to do two exercises for your back instead of five, you can give those two exercises 100% of your effort. You don't have to pace yourself to survive a bloated workout.

• Better Joint Health: Spreading your weekly volume across multiple days prevents you from overloading your joints and connective tissues in a single, punishing session.

• More Growth Opportunities: By training a muscle, giving it a couple of days to recover, and hitting it again, you are maximizing the muscle protein synthesis window all week long.

Effective Alternatives to the Bro Split:

• Upper/Lower Split (4 days a week): Monday and Thursday focus on the upper body; Tuesday and Friday focus on the lower body. Every muscle gets hit twice a week with adequate rest in between.

• Push/Pull/Legs (3-6 days a week): Grouping muscles by their function (Pushing muscles like chest/shoulders/triceps, Pulling muscles like back/biceps, and Legs).

• Full Body (3 days a week): Highly effective for older lifters who want maximum frequency and have limited days to get to the gym.

• My Personal Favorite (6 Days per week): Day 1 - Chest & Back, Day 2 - Sholuders & Arms, Day 3 - Legs, with Calves and Abs/Core at the end of each workout. I do that twice a week.

The Bottom Line

Building a great physique later in life is entirely possible, but it requires strategy. You don't have to kill yourself in the gym to get results. Work smarter, push harder on fewer movements per session, and stop waiting a full week to train a muscle again. Give your body the frequent stimulus it needs to grow, and the adequate recovery it needs to thrive.

Best Overall Workout Split and Program For Muscle Gains and Strength

First of all, thanks to all those that gave me their feedback about what video content they would like to see from me in terms of Health and Fitness Videos!

There where some really good recommendations for sure. One reoccurring idea was "Workout Program Suggestions". Things like Workout Splits, Sets and Rep Ranges, Types of Exercises, Workout Frequency... These are just some of the questions that if I could sum them all up into one Video would be a video talking about how to best use your time in the gym to get the most out of your strength training workout.

Now we all have very different goals in terms of why we strength train. For some people that will be for powerlifting, or maybe bodybuilding, or perhaps to help build strength for a sport you may be a part of. I think in general most people strength train or weight train simply to build muscle and get stronger so not only do they look better, but also feel better and be able to do more physically in real life.

No matter what your reasoning is, the goal when going to the gym should be to get the most out of your valuable time. I would say most people I see at the gym are not seeing their full benefits usually because they are going through the motions basically doing the same workout over and over again, and not pushing that little extra bit it takes to take things to the next level. So essentially they are at best maintaining what they have.

If you are happy with the results you are currently getting from your weight training, then don't change a thing until those results are no longer happening. If you are not happy with your current results, than you will have to change what you are doing to see positive results again. That usually means a program change that involves either more weight being lifted, more reps or more sets. So more volume of weight total being lifted during the entire workout. This usually will require that you track your workouts so you can compare past workout efforts to current workout efforts.

In this video I also talk a lot about how best to optimise your workout program in terms of my favorite workout body part splits, how often to hit each muscle per week, and how many days per week to weight train for best results.

How to get the Most Out of Your Workout Split

There are many ways to program how you weight train, some people like to hit each muscle super hard once per week usually splitting each workout focussing on one to two muscle groups per workout but hitting each muscle group really hard with multiple exercises.

Then there is the other extreme where you hit every body part each workout but only doing one quick exercise per body part, this can be a bit of a marathon for sure…

I have tried both and both do work but which one is best or perhaps is there something in the middle which will get the absolute most out of each weight training session.

Personally I believe volume at the end of the day is the most important factor. What I mean is if you add up all the sets and all the reps you did for the week and totaled the weight you lifted. Then more is better. This is also assuming you spend the same amount time in the gym each week weight training.

One other factor we need to make sure we consider is recovery time. How much do you really need? Most people would say at least 24 hours but 48 hours is a good rule of thumb especially if you trained a muscle pretty hard with multiple exercises, sets and reps. I would even go so far as to say that in some cases three days may be required for a muscle to fully recover, especially a large muscle group like your legs after a full leg training day with squats, deadlifts and accessory work. But let’s stick with 48 hours in most situations.

So if we use 48 hours as a baseline for muscle recovery then that means you could workout each body part 3 times per week based on a two day split meaning you hit half your body one day and then the other half the next day repeating daily with one day off per week.

If that seems like too much time in the gym for some people with busy schedules then you could do a two day split four days per week and train each body part two times per week. Still good!

The real question is, would it be better to do a two day split and hit each body part two to three times per week or would it be better to do what is commonly called the Bro-Split and train each body part once per week but hit it crazy hard with three to four exercises per weight training session?

There is one more factor we need to consider before going into this further and that is muscle atrophy. Muscle atrophy is when a muscle does not get stimulation and essentially starts to lose size and strength because of lack of use. But how long does it take before noticeable muscle atrophy begins? Most people will say even after a week it can start to happen but I would say two to three weeks is when it really become more noticeable. Does that mean muscle atrophy is not happening on a more micro scale during the week if you are not using a muscle for say three to four days post recovery? I believe it happening on a small micro scale but even if I am wrong and you are not training a muscle for several days post recovery then you are at a bare minimum not utilizing potential training opportunities with that muscle group. So in the example of the Bro-Split hitting a muscle on only once per week, you may be experiencing a micro amount of muscle atrophy since that muscle group is not being stimulated much for at least four to five days at a time between workout session.

Getting back to training volume which again I feel is the measuring stick for workout efficiency which at the end of the day should get you the best results. To me it is pretty obvious that training a muscle with one exercise to failure and then moving on to a new muscle will yield the most weight moved in a workout or weight training session and for the week. Using the example of three exercises per week for a muscle group, If you hit a muscle with multiple exercises in a session then you either have to pace yourself the entire time or go all out on the first exercise with each follow up exercise having less and less strength available, so moving less and less weight. If you where to split the three exercises up into three separate weigth training sessions (Monday, Wednesday, Friday), then you will have full available strength for each exercise session.

The key is to be smart about how you break down your two day split as to not overlap already worked muscles. I find it best to hit Chest, Back and Shoulders with Calves and Core on day one and then I hit Legs and Arms with Core on day two. I also make sure to only do one press exercise on upper body day. For example if I start with a chest press then I would do back between chest and shoulders followed by something like shoulder raises so as not to hit my already weekend triceps doing a shoulder press. And similarly if I started with a shoulder press I would do something like Flies for Chest. The key is to really mix up your workouts and always be doing a different exercise for each muscle group. Here is an example of what I mean… Shoulders Day One - DB Shoulder Press, Shoulders Day two - Raises with DB or Cables, Shoulders Day three - Upright Row or Machine Shoulder Press.

Now what works for me may not work for you and some people just like to workout a certain way because that is what they are use to and at the end of the day being motivated to get into the gym consistently is really the most important factor. Of course you have to do the work when you are at the gym but if you are hitting the gym often and training hard you will see results no matter what workout program you use. You can give my methods a try and see if it works for you or not?

Workout Routines - What to Workout and How Often

It's very important how you breakup your workouts throughout the week, much of it depends on how much time you have to workout and how often you can get a workout in. If you can only workout a couple of days per week then over training will most likely not be a problem and you will even be able to do your entire body each workout with plenty of recovery time between workouts. If you're like me on the other hand, and get some sort of a workout in most days of the week, then you need more of a strategy so as not to overwork muscles or become run down.

The first thing to remember is to listen to your body, if muscles are soar then leave them alone, they have not recovered yet. Generally a muscle that has been trained to failure will take at least 48 hours to recover in a healthy and somewhat younger person, with older age it can take even longer. If you normally have lots of energy and your body is saying it just wants to take it easy then again it probably needs a break for a day or two. Getting a good sleep and eating healthy foods/supplements is also very important for recovery.

It also depends on the intensity of your workouts. Are you training a body part or muscle group to failure or are you doing a workout that works a muscle more for speed and endurance? Workouts that are short, explosive and focused will strain muscles more and require some rest days between hitting them again, while workouts that are longer and more paced out will tire the muscle but in most cases the muscle will be ready to go again in a much shorter period of time.

For me I plan my workouts day by day because I just never know what to expect since I go to a CrossFit Gym and I find out the workouts for the day when I get there. I have no set routines and I like it this way because my body is always guessing and my workouts never become boring. I take a look at what body parts I did the previous days, what muscles are sore and then I work what ever muscles are ready to go and perhaps have not been trained too much the previous days. I try to do at least one upper body muscle and one lower body muscle each workout but this is not a rule I stick to all the time. Also keep in mind that your genetics play a role in how you need to hit each muscle, you may be OK hitting a genetically strong muscle once a week while other weaker areas need several higher intensity workouts to gain strength and body balance in them.

Make sure to watch my YouTube Video on this subject as I cover other areas related to Workout Routines and regularity: