Looking Better Than 99% of People Over 40 is About One Thing

Not specific workouts, diets, supplements, or ‘hacks’. Once you nail this there’s no stopping you.

Chris Davidson
In Fitness And In Health
6 min readApr 17, 2023

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I tried every program possible to get in shape in my 30s, and I still looked like sh*t.

I constantly had ‘projects’. Big Plans.

Keto for 6 weeks. Powerlifting for 3 months. Cold showers for… well I didn’t last long with that one, to be honest. Brrrr.

But this kind of short-termism is fine for folks in their 20s and 30s — they have time to mess up and learn.

After 40 your body starts arguing with you a little, and the clock is ticking. Things don’t work as well as they once did, so you need to avoid wasting time on dumb stuff if you want to:

  • get in shape
  • lose weight
  • look and feel younger than your age

Look around you and you won’t see many folks over 40 in great shape and full of energy. Because 99% of people struggle to do something that can’t be found in their social media feeds and Google searches.

It’s consistently turning up and doing the Minimum Effective Dose.

What is M.E.D.?

Doing the Minimum Effective Dose means doing just enough to move the needle and improve your health, fitness, and body shape as you get older.

And then not trying to do any more than this because it’s unsustainable.

For folks over 40, it is better to nail this MED week-in week-out than to only manage to do something much higher maintenance for 6 weeks, while hating life, being desperate to stop, and eventually giving up and doing nothing for months.

Think about it.

From a purely mathematical perspective, it’s better to do:

2 workouts per week for 52 weeks (104 Workouts)

than

5 workouts per week for 6 weeks, 3 times a year (90 Workouts).

Similarly, it’s better to:

lose on average 1lb/0.5kg per week for 52 weeks (52lbs/26kg

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Chris Davidson
In Fitness And In Health

Lifestyle Coach for fed-up, out-of-shape Over-40s • Dad of 3 • Irishman • Trainer • Writer • Reset Your Body & Mind in 7 Days: https://www.offacoach.com/reset