Transcript: Your Past Failures Are Actually Your Fitness Roadmap (Especially After 40)
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Domenic Angelino argues that being over 40 isn't purely a disadvantage because decades of lived experience — knowing what you enjoy and what has failed before — can dramatically increase your odds of sticking with fitness.
Okay, so just do what works for you and stop
doing what doesn't? I mean, that sounds kind
of simple, right? What's up, you guys? Famous
Ashley Grant here. Welcome to More Movement,
Please, the podcast where I hope to inspire you
to move your body more. Today, I have another
awesome voice note to share with you, and this
one comes to us from Dominic Angelino. Here's
what he has to say. So the number one way to
lose weight after 40 is actually sort of simple.
You just have to do what works for you and not
do what doesn't work for you. You know, you have
a lot of lived experience, right? Either pursuing
fitness schools in the past that have worked,
haven't worked, sort of worked, or just living
life and kind of learning what you enjoy. You
can use that knowledge to your advantage. You
might think like, hey, I'm over 40 right now.
I'm kind of disadvantaged when it comes to fitness
compared to people that are younger and have
physiology on their side. Well, that's not necessarily
true entirely, right? Because, well, physiologically,
things may be a little bit harder than they used
to be. You have a lot of lived experience that
you could draw on to increase your odds of success
drastically. So, for example, right, when we
lose weight, the main thing we really are trying
to do is just burn calories. If you burn more
calories than you consume, you're going to lose
weight in some form. And so if you think about
that, right, on the fitness side of things, you
really just want to find activities that cause
you to burn more calories in a sustainable way
that you keep doing. So just think back to things
in your life that you enjoyed. Anything that
you have an interest in or tangentially are curious
about. There's probably some fitness -ified version
of it that exists right now. Like, for example,
if you like music, there are tons of VR, like
virtual reality games. that get you up and moving
your body and just burning a hundred calories
really fast while feeling like you're doing nothing.
Like the game Beat Saber, for example. And there
are plenty of other gamified fitness experiences
and things like that. Just find something that
aligns closely with what you like, then just
do that. And focus on having fun rather than
doing activity to lose weight explicitly. That'll
come as a positive side effect. And the other
thing is that you know what doesn't work for
you, right? Like if you think back to your past
failures, you can pretty much pinpoint the things
that have been triggers for you in the past for
stopping a diet or for just losing motivation,
right? Like an easy trap that some people fall
into is they might eat a lot of low calorie,
low volume foods. Like they might eat like rice
cakes or things like that when they're trying
to lose weight. But that might lead to them feeling
like unsatisfied because they're not really adding
a lot of like absolute volume to their stomach
and they just don't feel full. So they end up
binging and they consume more calories overall
than if they just ate something higher volume
outright. And also then are just going to give
up their diet more short term because they don't
feel satisfied. So you could like learn from
experiences like that because certain nutrition
and fitness approaches work for some people.
And they don't work for others based on their
personality and just what organically makes sense
for them. Look at where you failed in the past.
Look at where you struggled. Identify those things
and find specific solutions to those things in
a personalized way. And you'll drastically increase
Domenic uses the rice cake example to illustrate how past diet failures often reflect a mismatch between strategy and personality, not a lack of willpower, and suggests identifying specific triggers to build a more personalized plan.
your odds of success. Okay, okay. Can we just,
let's just sit with that for a second. Because
everything he just said, it kind of hit me right
in the feels, right in the chest. Let's start
with the part about being over 40 and feeling
like you're at a disadvantage. Because y 'all...
I definitely have said this out loud to myself
and the mirror, all the things, more than I care
to admit. Like, oh, I waited too long, or oh,
it's harder now, or oh, if I'd only started when
I was younger. But you guys, I didn't start when
I was younger. That's kind of the whole problem.
And this is Dominic basically saying, hold on.
Yeah, things may be a little harder physically,
physiologically. But you also know yourself now
in a way that your 25 -year -old self absolutely
did not. And honestly, this reframe, it kind
of stopped me in my tracks. Because think about
it. I know now that if I'm not having fun, I'm
not going to show up. It's just the facts. I
know this about myself. That's why I couldn't
do pickleball. That's why I didn't enjoy. you
know, doing racquetball. I'm not a sports girly.
I am a group fitness girly. It's exactly why
I chose Zumba as my thing. I love dancing. And
I wasn't a thousand percent sure about that just
10 years ago. I was out here thinking I just
needed to white knuckle my way through some treadmill
sessions and eat less bread and cut out all the
things that I love. And guess what? You guys,
that did not work. Shocking. I know. And the
stuff he said about food, well, oh my gosh, the
rice cake example. I felt that deeply because
there was a season of my life where I was eating
unsatisfying diet foods, like the most crappy
crap you could possibly imagine. And I bet you
can guess it. I was miserable. And truth be told,
when you're dieting, you give up. Because eventually,
if you're like me, you just want to blow the
whole thing up because you're so hungry and you're
so done with it. And oh my God, was that me?
Ashley responds personally to Domenic's reframe, sharing that she now knows she needs fun to show up — which is why she chose Zumba over pickleball or treadmill sessions — and that her 25-year-old self had no such self-knowledge.
I thought I just had no willpower. But Dominic's
point is so important. It's not a willpower problem.
It's a wrong strategy for my personality problem.
And that is such a different conversation, isn't
it, you guys? And I really wish someone had said
that to me a long, long time ago whenever I had
first started my fitness journey. Because, yeah,
I only got serious about this like seven months
ago. Yeah, I did join the gym two years ago,
but the truth is, two years ago wasn't when I
tried going to the gym. I haven't really talked
about this much, but after I did all the shots
and pills and I gained all that weight back,
I actually did join a gym down in Tampa. I tried
doing some other stuff. It didn't work, and now
I kind of know why. I really want you to hear
this. When he talked about looking back at your
past, And thinking about the failures, not as
shame, but as data. Oh, you guys, doesn't that
just sound so much better to think of your past
as a roadmap to where you quit and what triggered
it and what made it feel impossible? Because
Ashley connects Domenic's rice cake example to her own experience eating miserable diet foods, eventually blowing up her plan out of hunger, and reframes that as a wrong-strategy problem rather than a willpower problem.
if you can identify those patterns, you can actually
build a plan that works around them instead of
just hoping this time will be different. Because
you guys, when you're just hoping and wishing
and praying that things will get better, it's
the very definition of insanity. We're doing
the same things over and over again, praying
for a different result. And I'll be honest with
you guys. I used to avoid thinking about my past
failed attempts at getting healthy because it
just made me feel bad. And the more I'm on this
journey, the more I finally see that all of those
failures were actually teaching me what I needed
to know. I needed group fitness. I needed music,
really good music. I needed people in the room
with me. And I needed to actually enjoy what
I was doing. And I had to fail at a bunch of
other stuff just to figure that out. So if you're
listening to this and you're in your 40s, or
honestly, if you're listening to this at any
age and you feel like you've tried it all and
you failed it at all and you just don't know
what to do, I want you to take Dominic's advice
to heart. You're not starting from zero, y 'all.
You're starting from a whole lifetime of experience.
So use it. That's what I've got for you today.
If you want to leave a voice note for me for
a future episode, whether you're a fitness pro
with tips to share or just someone who's just
like me on a journey and wants to tell their
story, I would love to hear from y 'all. Head
over to famousashleygrant .com backslash fitness.
I would love to hear from you. Onwards and upwards,
my friends. Have you worked out today?
Ashley reflects on how she used to avoid thinking about past failed attempts because they made her feel bad, but now sees them as teaching her what she actually needed: group fitness, good music, people in the room, and genuine enjoyment.
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Ashley wraps up by encouraging listeners of any age who feel like they've failed at everything to treat their history as a lifetime of experience rather than a blank slate, and invites voice notes for future episodes.
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