The Over 50 Standard

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Stop drinking your calories

Drinks add calories quickly and do almost nothing to fill you up. Swap one sweet drink a day for water or black coffee and you have made a change most men can keep for good.

Orange juice, an iced coffee drink and a soda next to a glass of water and black coffee

Why drinks are different

Food fills you up. Drinks mostly do not. The calories in a glass of juice or a sweet coffee do not make you eat less at the next meal, so they simply add on top.

Where they hide

A can of regular soda is around 140 calories. A large flavoured coffee with syrup and cream can run to several hundred. A big glass of orange juice is close to a can of soda. Two beers in the evening sit on top of everything else.

None of those feel like a meal, and that is exactly the problem.

One swap a day

Do not try to give everything up. Find the sweet drink you have every single day and replace that one with water, sparkling water, black coffee or tea. One swap you keep for a year beats five you keep for a week.

Alcohol counts too

It carries calories, it loosens the grip on everything else you eat, and it makes sleep worse, which is where most of your recovery happens. Why recovery is slower now.

Do not replace it with nothing

Cutting drinks should not mean drinking less overall. Keep the water up, starting with a glass before the first coffee.

Follow along

Spend the energy here instead.

13 minutes ยท no equipment

Two easy rounds, start to finish.

Six standing moves done twice, forty seconds on and twenty off, with a warm-up first.

  • 01Warm-up march and arm circles
  • 02Six standing moves, 40 seconds on, 20 off
  • 03Round two repeats round one
  • 04Water close by
Watch on YouTube

Where this shows up

The tests this affects.

01The conditioning test 02The loaded carry test 03The hollow hold test

If you want the whole thing

There is a book for this.

No. 05 · 25 pages The 30-Day Reset Not a detox or a crash plan. Thirty days of deliberate practice that rebuilds strength, walking, protein, sleep and recovery. Read about it

Before you ask

Three questions.

Isn't fruit juice healthy?

It carries some vitamins, but it is mostly sugar without the fibre that makes whole fruit filling. Eat the orange, drink the water.

Is diet soda fine?

As a swap away from regular soda, it removes the sugar and the calories. Water is still the better everyday habit, but diet soda is a reasonable stepping stone.

Does milk count as a liquid calorie?

Milk brings real protein, so it is closer to food than to soda. A glass with a meal is fine. It is the sweet coffee drinks built on it that add up.