Meet Your Guide
Hi, I’m Nick Holt and I’ll be leading you through this journey. If you’re a man 40 or older and you want to move, look, and feel better – you are in the right place my friend!
I left the corporate finance world and moved to Costa Rica where I still live 10 years later. What started out as a personal training business has now evolved into a health coaching business, Nick Holt Fitness.
When I say I get your struggles, I literally get your struggles. I’ve been in your shoes— I understand on a deep level the struggle to stay healthy and fit given the demands of work, family, and a full social calendar. Sometimes it feels like there just isn’t enough time in the day.
While I’m now in the best shape of my life at 42, it wasn’t always the case. For many years I was overweight, stiff and struggled to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
I thought I was doing so many things “right” by doing a bunch of cardio at the gym 5 days a week, starting my day off with a heart-healthy oatmeal, and putting skim milk in my coffee.
But the scale was up 25lbs. I had low energy and relied on copious amounts of coffee to stay alert. I felt stiff like an “old man” getting out of bed every morning. Then one afternoon, a 10-year-old kid asked me why I had man boobs. What the hell. So there I was in my mid-30s, despite being a former athlete, being publicly shamed by a 5th grader. Something was wrong. That was the final straw that kicked off my journey to health, fitness, and vitality. I knew I had to do something. So I did.
I’m here to help you on your journey to a leaner, stronger, and fitter body as you get older.
My goal is to provide a no-B.S. advice to help men over 40 get fit and stay fit. We all have the right to feel good in our bodies and do all the things in life that give us joy without being limited by pain, low energy, or body fat.
I look forward to leading you on this path.
Nick Holt
NASM – CPT, PN-2, FRC(ms)
Best Workouts for Men Over 40
Looking to lose weight and stay fit after 40
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- Daily workouts delivered via a simple online platform
- Simple nutrition habits and daily check-ins
- Personal coaching and detailed progress checking
- Small yet powerful habits to improve everyday life
Reality Check
Before I let you go, let me be real for a second. If you do nothing, getting older will be no fun. But this doesn’t have to be your reality.
You can fight the aging process by focusing on the right things and avoiding common mistakes, so you may be able to do cool shit in your 40s and beyond. It’s 100% possible, but you need to act, build the habits, and find your active passion.
You can get started in less than 30 seconds with my free “Get Back On Track” mini course here. Or if you’re ready to get in the best shape of your life and you want me to put together that program for you and hold you to it, schedule a free consultation here.
NHF Core Principles
“Let thy food be thy medicine.” – Hippocrates
There is no magic bullet. You need to discover and experiment what works for you. Be skeptical. Ask questions. Consider food quality and where it's coming from. If someone is making a bold claim, make sure it’s backed by good science.
Here are a few simple rules:
- Earn your carbs. Carbs are not either good or bad. You need to find the right amount for you and your goals. It will always depend on a number of factors how many carbs you should be consuming on a daily basis.
- Moderate protein with each meal. Easy enough, right? Guys that means about 2 fist sized serving of protein while the ladies should shoot for about 1 fist.
- Large amounts of good fats. Consuming fats are vital to maintaining a good metabolism, keeping you satiated, and optimizing brain function. Regardless of what you have heard, eating fat will not make you fat.
- Focus 80% of your nutrition on real food. If it comes in a box, bag, can, or jar it shouldn't be the core of your nutrition. I’m not saying you can’t have a bag of chips or some cookies from time to time, they won't kill you in small quantities. But you should make vegetables, fruits, meats, nuts, seeds, and eggs 80-90% of what you put in your mouth.
There will certainly be some individual differences of how your body reacts to certain foods. Pay attention to your body. It is giving you signs every single hour. Listen closely!
Try to be more aware of how certain foods affect you. You have to find out what foods cause trouble for you. Although not perfect, a food allergies/intolerance test can provide some valuable insight.
Otherwise, pay attention to your body and discover what foods give you trouble. Start by eliminating the most common offenders–gluten, dairy, and eggs. Remove them from your diet for up to 2 weeks. Then start adding them back in, one at a time and see how you feel.
Movement should be part of everything you do. Focus on non-exercise movement, that is, just moving more often throughout every day. It could be walking up stairs instead of taking the escalator, standing up every time you answer your cell phone, or starting your day with 5 minutes of yoga. It’s the little things that add up in the long run.
If fat loss or muscle growth is your goal, using weights and training hard will be the best and most effective way to get to your goal. You don’t need to hit the gym 5x per week, but you’ll have to carve out at least 1-2 times a week for intense, heavy duty training. At the very least, spending a few hours per week doing something that gets your heart beating fast and breaking a sweat will be necessary.
Ultimately, it’s about finding the pinnacle of fitness: active passion–that activity that you love to do that keeps you motivated to be active.
Clear Mindset
It all starts with a clear mind. Uncovering the “why” behind your goals can be an eye-opening experience. It takes a little work upfront, but it makes things much easier down the road.
Once you become clear with why you are doing something, the excuses aren’t very powerful. The obstacles that life throws at you wont matter. But in order to think clearly, you have to use proper fuel for your brain.
This goes back to part 1 and smart individualized nutrition. Some foods will create havoc on your brain and body.
Some of you will be more tolerant to a higher carbohydrate load, others who are less carb tolerant will have to really be careful and adhere to the post workout period as the primary time to consume carbs.
Stress Management
Constant stress will destroy you. There is no other way to say it. Forget about everything else, if you experience life in a state of chronic stress, your body and mind will slowly start to break down.
You need to include some form of stress management for optimal health. Something as simple as 5 minutes of deep breathing every morning can have a tremendous impact. Practice yoga or try out meditation.
Your occupation and lifestyle will also determine the exact amount of stress management you need. If you sit in traffic often or work in a high stress environment, stress management will be even more vital. At the end of the day, we all need something to find something in our lives to let us unwind, relax and recover.
Most people come to NHF to lose a few pounds or look a little better naked. But what happens is that people transform their lives – they become more aware, they notice little things about their habits around diet and exercise and then are equipped with the tools to make small changes.
These small changes, these little wins along the journey are the fuel that ignites huge transformations. People wake up and charge life with everything they have.