Podcast Transcription: Your 2026 Body Blueprint — Part 2: The Biggest Weight Loss Mistake Men Over 40 Make (And Why GLP-1 Isn’t Enough)

Ted Ryce: Raise your hand if you wanna live to a hundred. Now, most of the rooms that I speak in, when I ask that question, maybe half the hands go up, sometimes fewer, and I get it because when most people think about living to a hundred, they don't picture themselves hiking, traveling the world, laughing with friends, playing with their grandkids. 

They think about what happened to their parents. Or their grandparents, people who started off in life strong, capable, mentally sharp, and then fell apart. And that image is so powerful that a lot of people think if that's what aging looks like, why would I want more of it? And let me tell you, I felt this up close. 

I felt it most when my father passed away in October of 2020, in that last year of his life. During one of the deeper conversations when we both knew that he was near the end, he said something I'll never forget. He said, Ted, I don't wake up thinking I'm alive another day. I wake up thinking, oh no, I'm alive another day. 

And we, we both kind of laughed in that dark humor way that my dad had. But that was his reality and it broke my heart. And it also got me thinking like, am I on this same path? And maybe you relate to that with your own experiences with your parents and grandparents and relatives. But here's the thing, it's not just my dad. 

The United States spends more money on healthcare than any country in the world, and yet American men are only living to around 76 on average while men in other developed countries are pushing into the eighties. Why? Because we don't have a healthcare system. We have a sick care system. Now look, I don't want to throw all the incredible progress that we've made. 

With healthcare or sick care, rather under the bus. I mean, we're excellent at emergency medicine. If I break my arm, I'm going to the hospital. If I have an infection and need antibiotics, I'm going to the hospital. But we're terrible at prevention and we're even worse at helping people stay strong, sharp, and independent as they age. 

And that's where I want to begin this series. This is really a longevity masterclass disguised as a new year new you series because most people believe aging is decline is inevitable. Decline that it's genetics, biology, you can't stop it. But here's what I've learned. A lot of what we think of as aging is really neglect, confusion, outdated science, or simply not knowing what to do. 

In fact, I read a paper not too long ago that said. Only 7% of how well you age is down to genetics. The other 93% comes down to lifestyle. And look, I want to be really clear. When I say lifestyle, I'm not talking about how many green juices you drink or. Cold plunges or the supplement stack. You're right, you're currently taking those things can help a little bit. 

But I'm talking about the big levers that change how well your metabolism works, how your cells age, how your brain functions, and how long you stay active, resilient, and independent. So this series. It's not just about lifespan, it's about health span. And if you've never heard the difference between the two lifespan is just how long you live Health span is, how long you live well. 

Strong, mobile, energized, mentally sharp on the fewest medications possible and able to do the things that give your life meaning. And look, this isn't just theoretical for me. I'm 48 now, and I've been in fitness for over 26 years. When I first started lifting as a teenager, I just wanted women to think I was attractive, right? 

I wanted to meet girls. And later when I started training clients in 1999 in Miami Beach. The focus was still mostly on aesthetics. Now, eventually, I got a health coaching certification in my early twenties as well, and it shifted things for me. But today I think about health and fitness, the way most people think about their retirement plan. 

Something you build now, so future you can enjoy the benefits later. You've probably known someone who's done everything right financially. Saved. Invested, maybe even sold their company and their health collapsed right when they were finally ready to go on all the trips and adventures they've been putting off for decades. 

And so this is what this series is here to help prevent. Because here's the reality, we know more about aging and how to stop it, reverse it in some cases, and how to slow it down than any other point in human history. And what we've learned is that a lot of what we accept is just getting older. Is really lifestyle. 

Finally catching up with biology and think about this. When I interviewed Dr. Bill Andrews one of the most prominent longevity scientists in the world whose mission is literally to cure aging. We talk about something called the hay flick limit. And the hay flick limit basically says human cells are only able to divide a certain number of times, and when you do the math, it puts the theoretical maximum human lifespan somewhere around 120 years. 

So if you've ever heard anyone in the longevity space. Say, oh, I wanna live to 120 or 125. Now you know why it's that number? It's because of this cellular limit. What really important is that nobody's ever gotten there. There's nobody who's lived to that theoretical limit. Not because our biology can't do it, but because our habits stop us long before we ever get there. 

And for most people, lifestyle collapses way faster. Before biology really has to now biology again, it'll, it'll catch up. But most of us we're aging much faster than we could or perhaps should. And I want to be very clear about something here. Again, I'm not talking about trying to stay alive as long as possible just to avoid death. 

We're not trying to white knuck our way to 120 in a nursing home. What we're really focused on here in this series is maximizing your health span. So whatever your actual lifespan ends up being, you spend as many of those years as possible, strong clearheaded and fully alive, doing the things that you love, the things that make you feel like this, life is worth living. 

So here's what we're gonna do in this series. We're gonna cut through the confusion. We're gonna focus on the things that actually move the needle for your health span. I'm gonna simplify things for you, and each episode will teach you one of the core levers for slowing aging, reversing decline, and building a body that can carry you through the next 20, 30, or even 40 years with strength and confidence. 

And I wanna tell you why. This is important to me because one of my earliest memories when I was just four or five years old is hanging off my dad's bicep. He'd flex his arm. That big bicep would pop up, and I'd literally hang from it and swing and laugh. And now look, my dad wasn't shredded or bodybuilder, but to me he was so strong. 

And I remember him taking me to the gym to watch him play racquetball, and I remember him moving with power, confidence, energy. But over the next 40 years, I watched something super disturbing. As he became more successful, he ate more, drank more, sat more, exercised less. His belly grew, he looked completely different. 

And by his forties, he was obese. And shortly after that came his first major wake up call. Colon cancer. And I remember thinking, my dad is gonna die because at that age, cancer just meant death to me. Thankfully, he had the surgery and he survived, but he had to use a colostomy bag for the rest of his life and it changed him. 

And before I go on here, I want you to understand I'm gonna be sharing a bit more about my dad. I'm sharing it not because, because I want to throw him under the bus. I'm sharing this because. Millions of people are on the same path that he's on, and I was even on that path, and thankfully I connected the dots, but almost nobody does until it's way too late. 

So back to my dad's story, after the cancer, things did not get better. His hip started hurting. He had to walk with a cane. I guess nobody told him to do physical therapy, or maybe he didn't want to do it. He certainly didn't exercise at that point in his life, and he wasn't interested in changing his lifestyle. 

His plan was to wait until Medicare kicked in at 65 so he could get his hip replaced, even though he was going on $20,000 vacations with my stepmom going to Africa and all these other exotic destinations, but he didn't feel like it was worth it to take care of his health. Here's where it gets worse. My stepmom, because she didn't, she was in the same boat with him, died from a heart attack in her early sixties, way too young, and because he continued to stay sedentary, he gained more visceral fat, kept losing fitness and walking with the cane. 

His knee actually became worse than his hip. He actually never got. The hip replacement that he needed, he ended up having to get a knee replacement and his health became so bad that he wasn't able to do a health re uh, a health replacement. He wasn't able to do that either, but a hip replacement and. I remember him talking to me about aging and th this is, you know, throughout the years as I got older and he had al always shared his biggest fear was dementia. 

Both his parents had it, even though my grandparents lived for a long time. My, my grandfather lived until his early nineties. My grandmother lived until her, I think her mid, uh, mid eighties. But he never got, my dad never got dementia. It never happened. His mind stayed sharp, but his body fell apart. And because he was mentally aware, he felt every part of that decline. 

And let me tell you, those experiences with him completely changed how I see aging, and it's a huge part of why I do this work today. I don't want you. To go down that road. I don't want your children to have to go through what I went through and what so many of us have gone through, because at the end, my dad's lifespan was extended by modern medicine. 

He took handfuls of pills to lower his blood pressure and manage other issues that were going on in his body. He had no quality of life, and at the end, as I shared earlier, he did not want to be around. He was hoping one day he just wouldn't wake up, and that disconnect didn't just steal away from him. 

It stole from everyone who loved him, me, his friends. He stopped going out, stopped hanging out. He didn't want to talk to me that much because he was in a bad mood because of his poor health. And so that's what drives me. I really, you know, we're gonna talk a lot about physiology and, and what to do, but I want you to keep in mind why this is all important. 

Because you have a story too with your parents or grandparents or perhaps what you're afraid of putting your kids through. And so keep that in mind as we start to move into the science. This is what it's really about. So the first thing that we're gonna talk about here, now that you understand why this is personal to me, let's talk about where most people start to fall apart without realizing it. 

Metabolic health. In the US roughly 40% of the adults are obese and around if, if you want to include overweight, around 74% of people are either overweight or obese. And on top of that, 38 million adults have diabetes and around 98 million adults have pre-diabetes and put all that together. More than half of the of US adults have some degree of blood sugar dysfunction. 

And when you look around and think. Everyone my age is gaining weight, feeling tired, ending up on meds. You're not imagining it. It's the health. The health of the US and other countries like Canada, the uk, Australia. It's continuing to get worse and worse really all around the world, but. I'm gonna mostly focus on the US here because, uh, well that's my country. 

That's what I know most about. And also a lot of research is done in the us And so I want to tell you the real issue isn't just body weight. It's the strain on your metabolism when you constantly oversupply calories because you're eating too much. Fats and sugars build up in your bloodstream. Your fat cells expand to store the extra energy, but at some point they get so full that fat starts spilling over into places it doesn't belong. 

Like your liver, your pancreas, your heart, your muscles, and that's what we refer to as visceral fat. The fat in and around your organs. And we know it doesn't just sit there, ready to be used in case of a famine or you know. It's secreting inflammatory chemicals. So we know visceral fat drives inflammation, insulin resistance, cardiovascular risk, disrupts your hormones and accelerates aging. 

So yes, weight loss matters, especially around your midsection, not only because it looks better in the mirror, but also because it signals that visceral frat is shrinking. And now that we're in the GLP one era, more people are losing weight with medications like Ozempic and Wegovy. But here's what almost no one is telling you. 

Losing weight on a drug does not automatically fix the underlying metabolic dysfunction, the stiffening that's happening to your arteries. The shrinking of your heart as you get older, or the muscle loss that often comes with rapid weight loss. That's why in episode two, we're gonna do a deep dive into weight loss and metabolic health in the GLP one error, because you need more than a lower number on the scale. 

You need to be insulin sensitive. You need metabolic flexibility. You need a metabolism that actually works well. And the second part of aging is the loss of muscle strength and power. Most people don't notice this at first because it kind of sneaks up on you, and then one day. You get off the floor and it feels a lot harder, and walking upstairs feels heavier, and you feel a little less steady stepping off a curb underneath the surface. 

Here's what's happening. We know that muscle mass drops about three to 8% per decade after 30 strength declines even faster. Power. Your ability to move quickly is the first and fastest to go. And if you ever watched someone who's older walk and they just don't walk very fast, but they can keep going. 

That's what you're seeing, this loss of power, and that's what makes it harder to catch yourself when you trip. It's what turns a stumble into a fall and a fall into a fracture. So muscle loss is what I is called sarcopenia strength loss, and power loss is called dino. That last part, power is what often steals your independence first. 

So another way to think about it is muscle is metabolic armor. We'll be talking about this in that episode. Strength is like your ability to be physically independent along with power. And in episode three, I'm gonna show you how to build and keep all three. Now let's talk about heart aging because. This part, I feel like people are just starting to catch on to this more is being talked about it, but so many people don't understand. 

For example, VO two max, which is your body's ability to use oxygen, tends to decline about seven to 10% per decade after early adulthood. So even if you keep training, there's still some gradual decline over time. But if you stay active, you start from a much higher baseline and function much like a younger person, someone much younger. 

So strength training helps your heart, yes, but it doesn't fully address what happens to your arteries. The age-related drop in stroke volume, or the decline in VO two max, which is a strong predictor of mortality. So you can be quite strong in the gym and still be cardiovascularly in poor shape. You can also lift very heavy and be strong and be metabolically unfit. 

And there's a lot of cases of this. And in episode four, we're gonna do a deep dive into VO two max and how to reverse heart aging with right kind of cardio. And finally, let's briefly touch on brain aging. When I was growing up, I remember people talking about the mind and body, like they were separate, but now we know your brain is an organ and the health of your brain depends on your metabolic health, your cardiovascular health, your muscle mass, your sleep, your stress levels, and your nutrition. 

And. What we're gonna do is we're gonna connect more of these dots in episode five when we talk about lifestyle, sleep, stress, nutrition, and how it all ties into your brain. And look, I wanna make an argument for you here. You're not actually afraid of getting older. You're afraid of becoming the version of older you've seen around you, weak in pain, moving slowly, terrified of falling, needing help to do basic things, and really watching your world shrink a little more every year. 

And look, I'm not talking down to you here. I'm right there with you. I'm 48. I'm going through this process in real time. I wanna tell you something, I'm not a dad yet. I still have, uh, hopes of being a father, not story for another time. But when that happens, if that happens, I know I'm gonna be an older dad and I still want to be a dad who can get on the floor, play with my kid or kids, travel, hike, play, and still feel sharp enough. 

To guide my future child, and that's why I'm obsessed with this. Understanding the science, testing it on myself, using it with clients, and turning it into something I can share with you. And the good news is this, this is the best time in human history to age well. We know how to improve metabolic health. 

We know how to preserve and build muscle. We know how to raise VO two max, and we know how to protect your brain through the right habits. So you are not powerless here. You just need the right strategies and to put them together in the right way. And that's gonna be the focus of this series. So here's what we're gonna cover. 

The next episode, episode two, is gonna cover weight loss and metabolic health in the GLP one era. Episode three. We'll cover muscle strength and power, which I feel is like your aging insurance policy. Episode four, we'll cover cardio VO two max and reversing heart aging. Episode five is gonna cover nutrition and supplementation. 

Episode six. We'll cover sleep, stress, and lifestyle. And then episode seven will be your 12 month health span blueprint for 2026. So each one will dive into one of the livers that changes how well you age and look, if this feels overwhelming, I'm gonna break it down as best as I can. But I also want you to know this is. 

Why I do what I do with coaching and exactly why I coach people through this. So you don't need to guess. You don't need to piece it together from podcasts like this or from books. You don't need to try to interpret your blood work or VO O2 MAX test or DEXA scans by yourself or using chat GPT. My clients come to me for clarity, structure, and precision. 

If you want 2026 to be the year you finally take control of your health span, there's a link in the description where you can learn more about working with me, or you can go to legendary life podcast.com/apply. Now, my dad's last decade didn't just affect him, it affected everyone who loved him, and a lot of people loved him. 

And I don't want your family to go through what mine went through. We're all headed to the same place eventually. That's part of this journey that we're all on, but how we get there, how long we stay strong, independent, and fully alive. It's one of the greatest gifts that we can give the people we love. 

And that's. What this series is about. I hope you're as excited as I am to share this information with you, and I'll see you in episode two.