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Real men share the simple but challenging keys to 'winning' your 40s

Your body may not be at its peak anymore, but your life can be.

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One thing almost all of us have in common is a fear of getting older. Besides the obvious reckoning with our own mortality that comes along with aging, we're also forced to deal with unavoidable realities like a changing physical appearance (rarely for the better), mental decline, a body that can't do what it used to, and more. Fun stuff!

40 seems to be the magic number where people really begin to seriously reckon with getting older, a la a midlife crisis. The idea of a midlife crisis is usually played as a joke — middle-aged men buying flaming red sports cars — but can be a significant milestone in most people's lives where they really reflect on what matters and what their priorities will be for the remainder of their lives.

In fact, this time of reflection (and a bit of freaking out!) can actually be a good thing. Studies show that people overall tend to get happier and more satisfied as they get older, even into and beyond your 30s, 40s, and 50s. (Things tend to get a bit bumpy around your 70s, I'm sorry to say.)

So if you're on a collision course with your 40s, don't fret. You may not be able to avoid wrinkles and a creaky back, but your 40s can be the best decade of your life. If you know how to approach them.


40s man standing on beach during daytime Photo by Rana Sawalha on Unsplash

A recent Reddit thread on AskMenOver30 went viral and was chock full of incredible advice for "winning" your 40s. The advice was written for and by men, but could just as easily be applied to anyone.

The original poster, broccolisubstantial2, wrote:

"I turned 40 a few years back, and let me tell you—this decade hit differently. It's like life sends you an email marked 'URGENT,' and suddenly, you’re questioning your health, career, relationships, and whether or not you should actually start flossing.

"But here’s the thing: the 30s and 40s aren’t a crisis—they’re an upgrade. Here’s how I’ve approached it, and I’d love to hear your thoughts, wins, and struggles too."

Prioritize physical health, within reason

Started lifting regularly—not to look like Thor (though that’d be cool), but to future-proof my body. I eat better, but still smash the occasional burger because life is short. Sleep? Non-negotiable. 7 hours minimum. Don’t let the 20-year-olds shame you for it. - broccolisubstantial2

Exercise...walk, hike, bike, swim, lift whatever. It makes a huge odds. I'm mid 50s and have been exercising regularly for 25 years. It's only now I can really see the benefit. Mates who have not looked after themselves are getting ill e.g. diabetes (3 in past year), heart disease and heart attack (1 in past year), obesity (too many). This is only going to get worse. - assistantbitter2205

One big thing: skin care. I get monthly facials with the detail work (lady lurkers will know what I’m talking about) and they have made a massive difference. My skin is healthy and I look as though I just turned 40 rather than staring at 48. So gentlemen—facials. Get them, get the details, and prepare to experience exquisite pain getting your blackheads cleared out of your nose once a month. But the payoff is worth it. - mnemnosine

Doctors agree that sleep, exercise, and avoiding too much drugs and alcohol are the best things you can do for your body's longevity. Oh, and go to the doctor, for crying out loud! Looking at you, men.

Career? Less is more

I stopped chasing "success" and started chasing satisfaction. Learned to say “no” at work. If you’re not being paid for 24/7 availability, don’t give it. Investing in skills, not just a job. ... Now I work smart, not endlessly. - broccolisubstantial2

Actually pursuing becoming a full time landscape artist. Work smarter not endlessly is gold. - drvanostranmd

Dude it legitimately changed my life when at 25 I realized that my go on life is not to succeed but to be content with the life I have. ... Am I successful in my job? No but I'm making enough money to live, save up some, and buy myself nice things when I want all while my job doesn't take up too much of my time. - ninjabladeJr

Wellness Camille Styles says settings boundaries with work is huge at this age. Volunteering for every extra project and saying Yes to everything to get ahead is a game for your 20s and maybe 30s. Your 40s are the moment to begin respecting your own time.

Relationships matter more than ever

man sitting beside two woman on gray surface Photo by Omar Lopez on Unsplash

Friendships: They shrink, but that’s fine. Quality over quantity, lads. Dating/Marriage: Communicate like your life depends on it. It probably does. Family: Yeah, call your mum. - broccolisubstantial2

The biggest priority is to continue to like my wife even though we're mostly just co-parents right now and sometimes friends. If we can make it to the youngest being out of the little stage then I think I'll have a great marriage to look forward to in my 40s. - htom_sirvoux

Stop wilfully interacting with people who are energy vampires. Used to have a buddy who was a chronic yes man, and would say whatever he thought you wanted to hear. I don’t have the energy to try and figure out whether you’re being honest or not. See ya. This has also furthered my resolve to say what I mean and mean what I say. Which is difficult, as I used to really enjoy biting sarcasm. - stockuser42

You may find your 40s is a time you have to push yourself outside of your comfort zone to make new friends. If you've lost touch with many and found your social circle too whittled down, don't be afraid to join a new club, take a class, or volunteer to strike up some new bonds.

Investing in mental health will keep you young

Therapy is not a weakness. It's like squats for your brain. Journaling once a week helped me declutter my thoughts. - broccolisubstantial2

Another life hack for someone of any age: mindfulness and being present. This is essentially a social super power that makes everyone involved feel awesome. So many things are vying for our attention these days. Someone who will calmly listen, marinate in your words, and respond in an appropriate and salient way is extremely rare. It really does not take much effort. Just imagine the person you’re talking to has something of value, and that that moment is currently the most important thing in your life. - mrrabblerouser

Experts agree that presence and mindfulness are huge for feeling happy and satisfied in your 40s and beyond. If you haven't already, now would be a great time to try meditation or journaling to help you with gratitude for each day.

Do whatever makes you happy, and do more of it

Picked up hobbies I abandoned in my 20s (any other late-night painters here?). Said yes to things I thought I was “too old” for (running at 39? Why not?). Prioritised experiences over "stuff." A trip with friends beats a new phone any day. - broccolisubstantial2

I’m 43. Last week I saw a Lego set I wanted in 1986 at a vintage toy store, complete in box. I hesitated, but eventually circled back and bought it. It brought me a certain nostalgic joy that I haven’t experienced in a very long time. Men, nurture your inner child! - rjove

Experts say the key to happiness as you get older is freeing yourself from other people's expectations when it comes to things you enjoy. The more you can distance yourself from what other people think of you, the better off you'll be. Just do what you want more often and get better at saying No to things you don't want to do.

The thread OP admitted he had a midlife crisis around the time he turned 40 and did all the wrong things: Bought the stereotypical sports car, had an affair, poured himself into work, relied too much on substances. He worried so much about his life coming to an end that he almost destroyed it way too early when, predictably, none of those things actually worked.

That's why the crisis is sometimes necessary. Being afraid of aging can be a good thing when it helps us focus and reprioritize on what's really important, like our relationships, our health, and doing things we love.

Pretty simple when you get right down to it, right?

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Health

Longevity test: If you can hang from a bar this long, you’re likely to live longer

Hang time is a great measurement of overall health.

via Ketut Subiyanto/Pexels and Dinielle De Veyra/Pexels

A man and a woman doing dead hangs.

Would you really want to know how long you have to live? On one hand, it’d probably inspire you to go out and complete your bucket list. On the other, it may be depressing to know just how many days you have left. Well, science has yet to discover a way to determine the average person's life expectancy. However, some indicators can show whether someone is in danger of having their life cut short by deteriorating health.

A study published by Clinical Interventions in Aging in 2019 determined that handgrip strength can be a reliable proxy for how long one has to live. One of the best ways to judge handgrip strength is to time how long you can hang from a bar. To test your grip strength, find yourself a pull-up bar, whether at a gym or local park, take a deep breath and start hanging.

The study found that 30 seconds is a good target for women and 60 is an excellent goal for men. Therefore, if you go longer than the goal, you’re looking at a long life. But if you can’t quite get there, your life may be shorter than you’d like.



Dr. Peter Attia believes that grip strength is a great way to determine one’s overall health.

“It's just a great proxy for overall body strength and muscle mass, but I think it's also a very functional form of strength,” he said on “The Drive” podcast. “Basically, everything in your upper body is mediated through your hands. And if your grip is weak, everything Downstream of that is weak. When you watch someone, who's got a weak grip deadlifting. It's very difficult for them to deadlift correctly because they don't create a proper wedge.

Doctors Eve M. Glazier and Elizabeth Ko at UCLA Health say poor grip strength is connected to numerous diseases. “Research continues to link a decline in grip strength to a range of adverse health issues, including heart disease, arthritis, osteoporosis, Type 2 diabetes and certain cancers. It has also been found to be a predictor of the likelihood of post-surgical complications, post-surgical recovery time and mortality,” they wrote on the UCLA Health blog.

Weight can also significantly affect how long a person can hang from a bar. So don’t lighter people have an unfair advantage advantage than those on the heavier side? Well, weight is also an important indicator of longevity. A study published in Aging Cell found a direct correlation between increased body mass and decreased longevity.



The good news for people who didn’t quite make their hang time goal is that you can improve it by practicing dead hangs.

How to perform a dead hang (according to Healthline):

  • Use a secure overhead bar. Use a step or bench to reach the bar with your arms easily. You don’t want to jump straight into a dead hang.
  • Grip the bar with an overhand grip (palms facing away from you). Aim to keep your arms shoulder-width apart.
  • Move your feet off the step or bench so you’re hanging on to the bar.
  • Keep your arms straight and stay relaxed.
  • If you’re new to the exercise, hang for 10 seconds. Then, work your way up to 45 seconds to 1 minute at a time.
  • Slowly step back onto the step or bench before releasing your arms. Repeat up to 3 times if you wish.
This article originally appeared in August.



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Wellness

Doctor explains how to do a simple physical test that can predict your longevity

People who fail are more likely to die in six years.

via Pexels

A woman sitting cross-legged on a yoga mat

Everyone wants to know how long they will live and there are many indicators that can show whether someone is thriving or on the decline. But people have yet to develop a magic formula to determine exactly how long someone should expect to live.

However, a doctor recently featured on the "Today" show says a straightforward test can reveal the likelihood that someone aged 51 to 80 will die in the near future. NBC News medical contributor Dr. Natalie Azar was on the "Today" show on March 8 and demonstrated how to perform the simple “sit to stand test” (aka sit-rising test or SRT) that can help determine the longevity of someone between 51 to 80.

The test is pretty simple. Go from standing to sitting cross-legged, and then go back to standing without using any parts of your body besides your legs and core to help you get up and down. The test measures multiple longevity factors, including heart health, balance, agility, core and leg strength and flexibility.

You begin the test with a score of 10 and subtract points on your way up and down for doing the following:

Hand used for support: -1 point

Knee used for support: -1 point

Forearm used for support: -1 point

One hand on knee or thigh: -1 point

Side of leg used for support: -1 point

A 2012 study published by the European Society of Cardiology found a correlation between the SRT score and how long people live. The study was conducted on 2002 people, 68% of whom were men, who performed the SRT test and were followed by researchers in the coming years. The study found that “Musculoskeletal fitness, as assessed by SRT, was a significant predictor of mortality in 51–80-year-old subjects.”

Those who scored in the lowest range, 0 to 3, had up to a 6 times greater chance of dying than those in the highest scores (8 to 10). About 40% of those in the 0 to 3 range died within 11 years of the study.

Azar distilled the study on "Today," saying: "The study found that the lower the score, you were seven times more likely to die in the next six years.”

"Eight points or higher is what you want," Azar said. "As we get older, we spend time talking cardiovascular health and aerobic fitness, but balance, flexibility and agility are also really important," she stressed.

One should note that the people who scored lowest on the test were the oldest, giving them an elevated risk of death.

Dr. Greg Hartley, Board Certified Geriatric Clinical Specialist and associate professor at the University of Miami, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that we should take the study with a grain of salt. “Frailty, strength, muscle mass, physical performance—those things are all correlated to mortality, but I would caution everybody that correlation doesn’t mean causation,” he said.

And of course, the test doesn't take into account injuries or disabilities that may make doing the test impossible. But one of the study's authors says that the study is a call to take our mobility seriously.

“The more active we are the better we can accommodate stressors, the more likely we are to handle something bad that happens down the road,” Dr. Claudio Gil Araujo, told USA Today.


This article originally appeared a year ago.

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Health

How Japan's '80%' philosophy of eating may help us all be healthier

It's not about losing weight, though that may be a byproduct.

Photo credit: Canva

Japanese food tends to be healthy, but there's more to healthy eating than the food itself.

Many Americans were told to "clean your plate" growing up, meaning to eat everything you were served at mealtime. To leave food on your plate was considered rude, ungrateful or otherwise undesirable behavior, and the habit of eating everything in front of you became ingrained.

Kids raised in Japan may have been brought up with an entirely different philosophy, one that tells them to stop eating before they are full. It's called hara hachi bu (or sometimes hara hachi bun me).

Stop eating when you're 80% full

Hara hachi bu literally translates to "belly 80% full" and on it's face that's literally what it means—stop eating when your stomach feels 80% full. Asako Miyashita, RDN, a New York-based dietitian who grew up in Japan, told Women's Health that the phrase comes from a 300-year-old book by Japanese philosopher and botanist Ekiken Kaibara, "Yojokun: Life Lessons From A Samurai." The book is about listening to your body, and its author lived to 83, which was a remarkably long life at a time when the life expectancy in Japan was 50.

Fast forward to today, and the people of Okinawa, Japan, where hara hachi bu is a popular phrase, have some of the longest life expectancies on Earth. But can eating only until you're 80% full actually help you live longer?

It's possible. One reason may be calorie restriction. According to longevity researcher Dan Buettner, Okinawans eat about 1,900 calories per day on average. Compare that to Americans who eat over 3,500 calories per day on average. Caloric restriction has been shown to increase the lifespan of multiple animal species and has also been shown to slow the aging process in healthy human adults, so simply not pushing our caloric intake by filling our bellies all the way full may be something to consider if we're looking to live a long life.

Hara hachi bu encouraged mindful eating

Another benefit of the 80% full idea is that it forces you to be mindful about how your body's feeling while you're eating, which may contribute to better physical health. According to Harvard University, mindless or distracted eating—the opposite of mindful eating—is associated with anxiety, overeating, and weight gain.

"Hara hachi bu is not a diet, but a lifestyle that can help promote a sustainable approach to eating," dietician Kouka Webb, RN, told Women's Health. "It encourages mindful eating and portion control without the need for strict calorie counting or eliminating certain food groups."

family eating dinner in JapanA family eats dinner in Japan.Photo credit: Canva

Harvard shares that a literature review of 68 intervention and observational studies found that mindfulness and mindful eating slowed down the pace of people's eating and improved people's recognition of when they were full. Mindful eating also reduced binge eating and emotional eating.

Overeating can lead to weight gain, of course, but it can also disrupt your hunger regulation, increase your risk for certain types of disease, cause stomach issues like nausea, gas and bloating, and can even impair your brain function. If you stop eating when you're 80% full means you're far less likely to overeat.

But does that mean you're always left 20% hungry? Not necessarily. According to the Cleveland Clinic, it takes up to 30 minutes for your brain to actually process that your stomach is full, so if you stop when you feel 80% full, you'll most likely feel 100% full just a short while later.

Eat until you're not hungry, not until you're full

“There’s a huge gap between being physically satisfied and realizing in your mind that you’re full,” psychologist Susan Albers, PsyD. tells the Cleveland Clinic. “The connection between them is more like old-school dialup speed than instantaneous WiFi.”

Eating to 80% full is probably closer to the "eat until you're no longer hungry" advice that she gives her patients to feel satiated without actually feeling "full."

“When we think about the word ‘full,’ it’s often like filling up a cup or occupying every inch of a space,” Dr. Albers says. “But the fullness that we can feel and perceive in our stomachs is often being overly full. ‘Satiated’ is different, though. Satiated is meeting a need.”

As Buettner writes, "There is a significant calorie gap between when an American says, ‘I’m full’ and an Okinawan says, ‘I’m no longer hungry.’"

Of course, the traditional Japanese diet also tends to be quite healthy in terms of what they eat, but mindful eating, paying attention to how your stomach feels and stopping before getting full, is worth applying no matter what cuisine you're eating. Next time you sit down for a meal, give hara hachi bu a try and see how you feel. It definitely can't hurt.

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