Podcast Transcription: Unstoppable in 2025: Part 5 – The Health Optimization Blueprint for Men Over 40 to Maximize Energy, Longevity, and Fat Loss

Ted Ryce: Welcome back to the new year, new you 2025 series. I'm your host, Ted Rice, really excited to have you back because today we're going to be talking about what is health, how to optimize it. And so this is the fifth episode of the new year, new you series. And we're going to be talking about why health isn't what you think it is. 

So what do I mean by that? Well, I'm going to get into that in a second, but before I do, if you haven't listened to episode one, I talk about mindset and that's really where you want to start with this whole journey. If you want 2025 to be your best year ever in terms of your health, or at least the best year ever in recent memory in the past decade or two, you. 

With your health. You want to listen to that first. The second one is all about exercise, how to approach it. So if you've been on and off with your exercise program or you're injuring yourself or you feel like you take on too much, then end up quitting. You want to listen to that second episode on exercise. 

If you've been struggling with losing fat, you want to listen to episode three, which is nutrition. Because I give you a step by step process in there to follow to start losing fat this week. If you follow what I share with you there, you will lose fat this week. Okay? And you'll do it without doing anything strict. 

No fad diets necessary. Yes, I know it's hard to believe. Go ahead and test it and then talk to me afterward. And then episode number four is sleep and stress. So if you've been dieting and exercising, but you haven't gotten the results that you feel like you should with all your hard work, and of course, you've gone through the process of going through each episode and implementing what I've shared. 

And, um, the exercise and the nutrition episodes of this series, that's where you want to go because I'll explain to you how poor sleep or chronic stress can crush your results from all your hard work with your diet, with exercise. And today we're going to be talking about health optimization. And I want to bring this, I want to start this off by sharing a few exchanges that I've had with people. 

So I remember I was talking to a client and he said, yeah, but I feel pretty good and I'm pretty healthy. And what we ended up doing was we ran, I said, okay, cool. I never argue with people. Because arguing tends to put people on the defensive. So what I do instead is I'm like, okay, cool. So you feel pretty good. 

Uh, let's do this. Let's do some testing. Since you feel like you're pretty healthy and you're feeling pretty good, let's do some testing. And then we can use the data to better assess your health using data instead of just how you feel, but it's great to feel good. So what ended up happening is this. They looked healthy on the outside. 

Actually, they didn't, but they felt healthy, but they discovered through advanced testing that they had high visceral fat. They had pre diabetic blood sugar levels. And they had some issues with nutrients. And so by optimizing their health metrics, they not only looked better, but felt better. And another thing is that sometimes diet and exercise doesn't cover everything. 

And so two things here, we can do advanced testing to get a better handle on how you're doing. So you can get a report card on your health now. And then we can make specific changes based on that because some supplements help. Like if we see a little bit of fatty liver or what we think might be fatty liver, well, there's supplements to help with that, that go beyond just diet and exercise. 

Yes. Diet, exercise, sleep and stress management are the foundation, but you can do things with supplements, targeted supplementation that can help so much. Okay. And the other thing is this. With the type of client that I typically deal with, they're already very numbers oriented, very data driven. So what help health optimization is all about is using data to drive your decision making, provide the foundation for your assessment about your health and also drive decision making about. 

What you need to do. So let's jump in. And the first thing I got to say is awareness is the first step. So some common misconceptions that people have about their health is that they rely on how they look or how they feel as sole indicators of health. But there's a reason that they call stress, the silent killer or heart disease also is like a silent killer because a lot of people find out that they have heart disease because they have a heart attack and so you can't use how you feel as a A metric, because there's a couple of reasons for this. 

You may feel actually quite bad compared to how you felt 20 years ago, but you're just you're you're mentally tough and you're used to pushing through Feeling bad or maybe some things are going well in your life and you're pretty excited about how your business is Your kids are crushing it. You know, you have a good relationship with your wife But if you have some issues, like, for example, I have a client. 

He has a high calcium score. Now he got that. And if you don't know what a calcium score is, it's a measurement of calcified plaque in your cardiovascular system. So he's younger than 50. He's in his forties and has a high calcium score. So it doesn't matter how he feels. He has heart disease starting to progress at a much faster rate because your calcium score in your forties should be zero. 

I'm 47 minus zero. Another thing, and I'll share this personal story. I felt pretty good in 2021, but then I had my first colonoscopy and I had to have a giant pre cancerous polyp removed from my colon. And if I had waited, I don't know how much longer, six months, a year, two years, I have no idea. And I'm not sure they can even determine how fast a polyp is growing. 

But my doctor told me it's like, you're, this was one step away from cancer. So I was feeling pretty good though, so we can't rely on how we're feeling. I almost, uh, I think a good analogy is this, and of course this may not be the best analogy. If you don't fly, fly planes, but you can't get into a plane and then expect to go in the right direction. 

You have to rely on the instruments. In fact, a lot of accidents happen during flying because people aren't relying on the instruments. So you have to rely on the data that the various You know, meters and, and instruments are in the airplane to tell you, like, where are you in relation to the ground? 

Right? Because human beings aren't, we are, our senses aren't, let's say, evolved or designed to be able to tell us where we are when we're flying. Okay. It's totally unnatural for us. So we need instruments to tell us. Where we are in relation to the ground. So we don't crash or go the wrong direction. And likewise, being focused on health way that we're, we are, and trying to prevent these chronic diseases that have become much more common due to our modern lifestyle, we can't rely on how we feel we need data. 

So metrics. reveal what's happening internally long before symptoms appear. Okay. I'm going to say that again, health data or health metrics reveal what's happening internally long before symptoms appear. And so tracking your progress provides a clear roadmap for where to focus your efforts. And it shows, are you getting worse over time? 

Are you getting better over time? So let's talk about key metrics, metrics to track. And the first one is body composition. So why does body composition matter? Well, the scale alone doesn't tell the full story. And just to be clear here, if you don't know what I mean by body composition, it means how much fat you have and how much muscle you have. 

Now, going back to this idea, someone may say, why weigh a certain amount and that's a good weight. Well, that's nice. But if you want to, again, use better metrics, there's nothing wrong with the scale. I think people make a big deal about it and say, Oh, BMI doesn't matter. The scale way it doesn't matter. 

It's really about body fat. Yeah. Okay, cool. But it's a bit more complicated to get, to get a body fat test, meaning it's something you should do. And we'll talk about it in a second. But. You know, scale is, is, is a good metric. You just need to know how to interpret the data correctly. So two people can weigh the same, but have vastly different body compositions. 

They can be the same height, the same weight, but body composition is very different. And why this matters too is because visceral fat, the fat around your midsection, for example, if you have a belly, then high chance that you have more visceral fat than what is healthy. Visceral fat is a major risk factor for chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease. 

Okay, great. So how do we track it? Well, DEXA scans are my go to. They're the gold standard for body composition. It provides data on how much fat you have. So your body fat percentage, it provides how much muscle mass you have and not all DEXA scans, but you'll have to ask the place where you get it. They also assess your visceral fat. 

Another thing that we use in my program are progress photos. Because visual changes tell a better story than just your weight too, right? Weight is good and you can weigh yourself daily. And that's what I recommend. That's what I have my clients do in my body transformation program. But we still need to use other data like progress photos. 

So take consistent photos under the same conditions, meaning same distance from the camera and the same outfit. And of course, BMI or weight. Is a good trend, but it just has its limitations. However, DEXA scans, it's something that you're going to do every once a month or once every three months or once every two months, it's not something you're going to do every week. 

And that's why we need weight. That's why we need your weight in your progress photos. So the other, the next thing that you should track is your fitness level. Well, why does that matter? Well, fitness, Is a better predictor of long term health than weight alone. So weight is important. Body fat's important. 

Muscle mass is important. However, if we're talking about what is the number one thing that's connected to you having a longer life, that is disease free. Well, that's a higher VO2 max. It's linked to lower risk of cardiovascular disease, longer lifespan, and it's arguably more important than everything else that we can even talk about. 

Your cholesterol levels, your, you know, how much body fat you have, high VO2 max is linked with a lower risk of cardio disease. Other diseases and a longer lifespan. So how do you track your VO two max? Well, you go get it done in a lab if you are serious about it. However, if you have a Garmin, you can do the, it can estimate your VO two max based on that, which if you have a Garmin, you probably already know that. 

Don't use an Apple watch or other wearables. They're just not even close. The Garmin is the best based on the research done on wearables and then comparing a Garmin to, you know, the gold standard, which is laboratory VO two max testing. And you can also use the Cooper test, the 12 minute run. It's called the Cooper test. 

You can Google it. So get a handle on what your VO two max is. Best, again, to do it in a lab or to do Google the Cooper Cooper test, sorry, and do that. Another thing that's good is resting heart rate. So a low resting heart rate indicates good cardiovascular fitness generally. So what you want is for 60 beats per minute or lower. 

If your resting heart rate is higher than 60, it's something that you want to work on. It's kind of like the weight versus body fat testing. You're not going to do a VO2 max test all the time. You should do it maybe once a year, maybe more frequently. If you're really trying to make changes to your VO2 max, but you're resting heart rate again. 

It's like weighing yourself. You can weigh yourself every day and it's easy to do the same thing with resting heart rate. If you have a wearable, you can take your resting heart rate. It probably already gives it to you and you can see what your resting heart rate is and how it trends over time. And again, don't compare yourself to other people, but generally speaking, we're looking to have a resting heart rate of 60 beats per minute or lower, and we want to make sure it. 

stays that way for as long as we can keep it that way. The next thing is blood work. So why does it matter? Well, nutritional deficiencies, inflammation, hormone imbalances, metabolic, metabolic issues, metabolic dysfunction, it can all be revealed Through your blood work, so advanced panels can again, it can start to show insulin resistance even before insulin resistance starts to show up in your fasting glucose or hemoglobin A1c thyroid dysfunction, high Apo B, high LP, little a, which is, uh, independent marker of heart disease. 

Risk, which is separate from cholesterol or apolipoprotein B. So, by the way, when it comes to blood work, your doctor isn't running a big panel. Um, and there's a lot of reasons why they don't do this. But the main tends to be that the way medicine is is done the way I understand it. I don't pretend to be a doctor like I tell all my clients. 

I'm not pretending to be a doctor. I just want to see what your health is. And what things change. And if there's any evidence based protocols or practices we can do to help you change some of the numbers on your blood test, but why I'm saying this is because We run blood tests. I have doctors as clients. 

We run blood tests. And I had a doctor client of mine say, Oh, man, this blood test that you want run, it would be four or 5, 000 if you did it through network. And, uh, we use, what is it called? Ultalabs. So we run like a 500 panel for our clients and it tells us so much and it's things that your doctor isn't going to run. 

But unless you're paying 4, 000 for your tests, you're not having a, uh, you're not having a comprehensive blood test. So, so basic panels again, there's nothing wrong with going to your doctor and getting whatever panel they run. But I'll tell you, I have so many clients that when they went to their doctors, the doctors didn't test so many metrics. 

And then when we ran are more comprehensive metrics. Then we started to see problems. So a basic blood panel will include things like glucose. So include fasting glucose. It'll hopefully include hemoglobin A1c, which is what is considered to be the gold standard of diabetes diagnosis. Uh, it'll, you know, you'll have a full lipid panel, you'll have a complete blood count, but where our panel really starts to differ is we add markers like fasting insulin, vitamin D, omega 3 index in markers of inflammation like CRP. 

We, um, you know, we test these things. We, we, uh, do see peptide. We really want to see like, how healthy are you metabolically? And can we catch insulin resistance before it even shows up in things like your fasting glucose and hemoglobin A1C. We also do hormones like testosterone, free and total, estrogen, cortisol, thyroid function. 

Those are things that it can really provide a more comprehensive snapshot of how your health is. And here's the thing, again, I want to emphasize, we don't play doctor here, but If something is really off now, you can take the panel that we did with you and you can even take it to a doctor. If something is there that looks really wonky. 

Now you can take it to your doctor and they have a reason to get insurance to pay for additional testing. And then you can do it through network and doctors are great at really figuring out complicated issues that, you know, it wouldn't be, I don't have the training or, you know, it's not my thing to do that. 

I'm really trying to figure out what can I use light? What are the evidence based? nutrition, exercise, lifestyle and supplementation protocols or practices that would help optimize a person's or client's blood work. So again, uh, what's the next thing to do is advanced Imaging and tests. It is crazy how many high performers I talk to and they haven't, they're in their forties, there's a, or maybe even fifties and there's a history of heart disease and they haven't had a calcium score yet. 

I mean, that's crazy. Do you want to figure out that you were in a bad place once you have a heart attack? Hopefully not. Right. So, detecting issues early can save your life. Like again, identifying calcification that's building up in your arteries. So, some things that are important or like me, right? The colonoscopy. 

So, CT angiograms. I had a CT angiogram recently and it was completely clear. By the way, if you don't know the difference, A CAC score is a measure of hard plaque in your arteries. And it's less invasive. I had the CT angiogram where they inject contrast, uh, they injected dye into your veins so that they can take a picture of the circulation of this contrast. 

And then it shows up in the imaging and you get to see like, okay, how good is your circulation? You can also get ultrasound measurements of your carotid arteries. Again, to make sure there's no calcification there. Colonoscopy, very important, essential for detecting colon cancer, especially after age 50. 

Even more important if you have a family history of it like I do. So, these are some of the tasks that if We talked to a client and they haven't had a colonoscopy and there's colon cancer in their family, or they haven't had a CAC score or a CT angiogram, and there's, and there's a history of heart disease. 

It's like, you need to go get that. Right? So we stay on top of our clients. To do that. So this is key. You've got to be on top of the data. Just like you wouldn't say, how well are you doing financially in your life? You wouldn't say, well, I feel pretty good about how I'm doing financially. It's like, oh, you might say that and you might feel pretty good, but. 

What are your numbers? How much money do you have in savings? How much money do you have in investments? What is in your retirement fund, right? How much money are you making each year versus how much you spend? You would look at the metrics and health is no different. You can't say you're healthy. Even if you have healthy practices, you need data to support how you feel. 

So let's talk about that a little bit. So number one is create your baseline. Start with the basics, get a DEXA scan for body composition, track your weight weekly or daily, take progress photos. Monthly, have a VO2 max test, go to a lab and get it done. Or if you're having trouble getting yourself to do that, then go do the Cooper test, do that once to twice a year and track your resting heart rate over time and get blood work to identify red flags before they turn into big problems. 

Again, your doctor is probably going to order a very small panel and that's fine though if that's where you want to start. But if you're more interested, if you're a person who's very data driven and you want to know the whole story, get a more advanced panel. Again, we have our own signature panel that we've created at Ulta Labs. 

You can go there too and order whatever tests that you want as well. Now, after you create your baseline, you're going to do number two, track and adjust. You want to see, you want to use these metrics to guide your approach. For example, if you have high body fat, low muscle mass, you want to focus on that to improve it. 

If you have low VO2 max, then maybe it's better to prioritize cardio first. If it's super low, if you're fasting glucose or hemoglobin A1c or fasting insulin or C peptide is high, then it's going to be about, okay, we really need to work on bringing these numbers down. How do you do that by building muscle and losing fat? 

And also some supplementation can help with that. Let's say that your normal body weight, but you have a DEXA scan and your muscle mass is quite low. Okay. Then it's time to focus on increasing protein intake and resistance training. So you can, by looking at these things, you can make, for one, it's going to help you psychologically to get motivated, to make changes because the story that you're telling yourself that you're feeling okay, the data is telling a different story and the data is more important than how you feel. 

And then. So then you can track and adjust over time. And again, three, make investments in your health. Don't wait for symptoms to appear. Use advanced testing to stay ahead. Getting that CT angiogram may seem unnecessary until you realize that it just helped you, let's say, come to the realization that you were much closer to having a heart attack than you realized. 

Then you make some major changes because then you start to think about your kids growing up without you or everything in your life going away because now you're going to have to, you know, be this heart attack patient and you're going to have to dedicate significant time, money and a part of your life to being focused on this and in psychological health. 

Right. You're going to feel mortality in a way like after I saw the precancerous polyp. I'm like, oh man, I need it. Like health needs to be at the forefront of my mind. Not in a way that creates anxiety, but it's the same thing. You got to make peace with it. We're all going to die, but we don't have to necessarily die at 60 years old or 63 from a heart attack that could have been prevented. 

Or getting our foot cut off because we had diabetes, but we felt okay, but we just didn't want to get tested. So make investments in your health. And number four is long term consistency. Getting metrics aren't a one time thing. You get them over time and you see the trends over time. Okay. And this is really important because Metrics. 

If you want to live a long time, but you're like, well, I exercise and I eat pretty good. And you know, I take my NAD and resveratrol or whatever longevity supplements you're taking. Well, guess what? You're focused on the wrong things. You're not being data driven. It's okay to start there, but then understand there's the role of body composition in longevity. 

Muscle mass is one of the strongest predictors of longevity. And body fat is one of the strongest predictors of whether you're going to come down with a preventable disease like diabetes or not, or insulin resistance leads part of, you know, what leads to diabetes. So higher muscle mass is associated with lower mortality. 

So, and this all, it's so many studies on this, right? It's not even, it's this, this isn't controversial or even arguable stuff here. Uh, also the importance of cardiovascular fitness. I mean, VO two max predicts long term survival. Multiple studies have shown those with high VO two max had significantly lower risk of death. 

They actually, I don't want to bring up COVID during, you know, but to bring up COVID people who had higher VO two max had less severe symptoms and recovered faster and blood markers. Like, uh, low vitamin D, low inflammation, low, or, or let's say managed ApoB, low lipoprotein A. I mean, these are all things that are going to not just put together a better picture of your health now, and not just help you make changes in the short term, but we're talking about adding years of life, right? 

Because of. Preventing the preventable and again, I can't emphasize this enough how I've seen clients change their behavior change. They go from that. I'm thinking about it. Yeah, I should probably do something to my health. Like, oh, man, this is serious. I need to take action now and they find a way to fit it in. 

So if you're struggling with motivation, getting getting an assessment, a data driven assessment, getting data on your health, From the DEXA scans from, you know, getting a VO two max test, tracking, arresting heart rate, getting a blood panel. It just can create a big shift in how you approach your life and how you approach your health. 

So, so that kind of wraps things up again, health is that if you're going to take one thing away from this health is what the data, you're, you're only as healthy as what the data says, health is data driven. It isn't how you feel, although how you feel is important, but you know, there's a lot of things that can make you feel good, but you can still develop heart disease, diabetes. 

Or have a pre cancerous polyp growing in your colon. So again, health is, is determined by data, not by how you feel or at least solely by how you feel. So I want to ask you this. Do you really know what's happening inside your body or are you relying on guesswork? And I know I threw a lot of stuff at you today, but what's one metric you can start tracking today? 

What is one test that you can go and do? Are you really overweight or have a big belly? And you're like, you know what? A DEXA scan that's showing the amount of body fat and in particular visceral fat that I have, I really think I need to. I really think that will help me put my mind at ease and also get me to take more action. 

And if you go to max test, maybe you're lifting weights and you're, you know, let's say under 20 percent body fat. So you don't really have that much body fat. You're not ripped, but you know, you don't have that much body fat. It's not an issue, but you lift weights a lot because it's your thing to do. But you realize as you're getting older, you know, you're starting to become, you know, your forties, your fifties, you're starting to get more. 

Hey, I get out of breath easily, even though I lift weights every week. So maybe if the O2 max test is a better thing to do, get a better handle, a better idea of where you are cardiovascular fitness wise, again, then you can. See, okay, well here you can score yourself, right? Well, it's scored four. You can see how well you're doing in your age group, or do you need to get a blood panel, right? 

Yeah, you're a few. I've had so many clients that have just been too busy to go get a blood panel, like they're a year or two years or three years behind. Like maybe that's the thing that you need to go get, even if it's from your doctor and the panels are not that great, but it's got a few things that can at least provide some insight. 

It's really key because if you're a person who's been living with, you know, Oh gosh, I really needed to hear my health, but I feel okay, but, uh, I'm a little bit concerned and now it's been a few years and I'm afraid to go to the doctor with, you know, because what. That's tests might say, go get it done. 

You might be happily surprised or you might see something that's off, you know, let's say that your fasting glucose is like in the high nineties or, or a low one hundreds. So high nineties would be high normal, not ideal. Or it's in the low 100. So it's like, okay, I've got some insulin resistance building up here, need to take action on it. 

So it's not that it's serious, but it's something that lets you know, I've seen this with so many clients. They're like, Oh, I'm pretty good. And then they realize, Oh, I'm, I'm like pretty close to pre diabetic level. So not diabetic. And not pre diabetic, but close to being pre diabetic. And of course, if you're serious about optimizing your health, consider working with a coach who can help you interpret these metrics and turn them into a plan of action. 

And that's, that's the best thing to do, obviously working with someone like that. What we do for our clients, we start, we, we hook people with fat loss and then we start getting them. Hey, listen, you need to go to the doctor and get this. This is here. Let's get your VO two max. You know, you're lifting weights, but you haven't done cardio in years, not consistently. 

At least these are the things that can just change your energy levels. A lot of what you feel is age is typically, especially in your forties and fifties. It's typically that you're not doing the right things. And if you change some key areas and use metrics to identify them and to come up with the right plan, uh, you can change how you feel. 

And then all of a sudden, you know, you're feeling like you're in your twenties again, that's how I feel right now. The only thing that doesn't feel like it's in my twenties, uh, they're still in their twenties and some of my joint injuries, but otherwise I have the energy. The libido of how I was in my twenties, right? 

So you can have that too. But again, it all starts with getting the data and then taking action on the data to get the best benefits, right? So that is it. That is it for this episode. Again, hope you learned a lot. Hope you're enjoying this series. Hope you're fired up to take your health. To a new level in 2025 and stay tuned for the last episode where we're going to be talking about how to put this all together in a plan of action. 

I'll speak to you then have a great one and talk soon.