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 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...
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.
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 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
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.
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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