Here’s what pisses me off about 90% of fitness advice aimed at executives:

It assumes you’re an idiot who’s been eating McDonald’s for breakfast and hasn’t seen the inside of a gym since college.

That’s not you.

You’re already making decent food choices. You get enough protein. You eat vegetables. You try to make smart decisions when you’re traveling.

The fitness influencers telling you to throw everything out and start from scratch? They’ve never sat through a 3-hour client dinner in their lives.

The Real Problem Isn’t What You Think

I’ve worked with enough successful execs to know the truth: Your overall approach isn’t broken. Your execution in specific moments is bleeding you dry.

It’s not the grilled salmon and vegetables you ordered at dinner last Tuesday. It’s the 400-calorie “healthy” trail mix you grabbed at the airport because you were starving and it had the word “organic” on it.

It’s not your meal choices at business dinners. It’s understanding that the “small” Caesar salad as an appetizer just added 600 calories before your actual meal even arrived.

It’s not your commitment to eating well. It’s not knowing that the smoothie you think is helping you is delivering 80+ grams of sugar and leaving you hungry again in two hours.

You don’t need a new diet. You need better real-time decision-making skills.

What Actually Needs to Change

1. Airport and Travel Food Intelligence

Stop thinking in terms of “healthy vs. unhealthy.” Start thinking in terms of “will this keep me satisfied for the next 4 hours without a crash?”

Skip: "Organic" trail mix, “healthy” muffins

Choose: Protein box with hard-boiled eggs and cheese. Even a basic turkey sandwich over the stuff disguised as health food.

The rule: Protein + fiber + minimal added sugar = stable energy. Everything else is marketing.

2. Business Dinner Strategy That Actually Works

You’re not going to be the guy ordering plain chicken breast while everyone else enjoys the meal. Here’s what smart executives do:

• Appetizer intelligence: If you’re getting one, skip the bread basket entirely. Think shrimp cocktail or chicken skewers.
• Main course freedom: Get a meal with separate ingredients (e.g. steak, asparagus, and potatoes, NOT spaghetti or lasagna).
• Alcohol calculation: Each drink is roughly 150 calories. Budget accordingly and alternate with water.

The mindset shift: You’re not on a diet at business dinners. You’re making strategic choices that keep you lean and energized energized for the next day.

3. Office Snacking Without the Crash

Most “healthy” office snacks are carb bombs that leave you hungrier than when you started.

Your new default: Greek yogurt and berries, or an apple with Fairlife shake. Protein + fiber. That’s it.

The test: If it doesn’t have meaningful protein or fiber, it’s not a snack - it’s candy with good marketing.

Now Let’s Talk About What’s Really Broken: Your Training

Your nutrition instincts are decent. Your training approach? It’s a fucking disaster.

And I say that with love, because I’ve seen it all.

The CrossFit Problem

CrossFit was designed for 25-year-olds who have 90 minutes a day to train and recover. You’re not that person anymore.

Doing box jumps and burpees until you puke isn’t “functional fitness” when you’re 45. It’s a recipe for tweaked backs, cranky knees, and missing the next three workouts because you’re too sore to move.

What’s good about it? The community, the intensity, the compound movements. What’s not so good about it? The complete disregard for age-appropriate progression, recovery needs, and the reality that you have a real job.

The HIIT Trap

HIIT workouts feel productive because they make you sweat and get your heart rate up. But here’s the thing nobody tells you: sweating isn’t an indicator of effectiveness.

If your HIIT workouts aren’t built around progressive overload - getting measurably stronger over time - you’re just doing expensive cardio that’s eating into your muscle mass.

The Program-Hopping Cycle

You start a 6-week program, get excited for 10 days, life gets in the way, you miss a week, then you’re “behind” so you quit and look for something easier.

Sound familiar?

The problem isn’t your discipline. The problem is you’re choosing programs designed for people whose full-time job is fitness.

Training in Your 40s: The Smart Approach

Here’s what actually works when you’re juggling board meetings, travel schedules, and family obligations:

1. Energy Management Over Time Management

Stop trying to cram hour-long workouts into 30-minute windows. Instead, design 30-minute workouts that actually accomplish something meaningful.

The framework: 3-4 exercises maximum. Focus on getting stronger at STABLE compound movements. Track your progress in weight and reps.

2. Simplicity and Stability Over Complexity

Your workout shouldn’t require a engineering degree to understand. Pick 6-8 exercises you can do consistently and get really fucking good at them.

The core six: Squat variation (e.g. leg press), hinge variation (e.g. RDL), horizontal and vertical press, horizontal and vertical pull.

Master these. Get stronger at these. Everything else is just just noise for now.

3. Strategic Intensity

Yes, you need intensity to build muscle and strength. But you need to build up your work capacity.

Three 30-40 min sessions per week will leave you energized, not destroyed.

The goal: Show up to your Thursday presentation feeling stronger than you did on Monday, not like you’ve been hit by a truck.

4. Recovery That Fits Your Life

You’re not going to do 20 minutes of yoga every morning. But you can do 5 minutes of targeted mobility work while your coffee brews.

You’re not going to meditate for an hour. But you can take three deep breaths between meetings.

The principle: Small, consistent actions compound. Perfect routines you can’t stick to are worthless.

The Mental Shift That Changes Everything

Stop thinking like someone who needs to completely reinvent themselves.

Start thinking like someone who needs to optimize what’s already working.

You’re not a fitness transformation case study. You’re a successful executive who wants to stay lean, strong, and energetic for the next 20 years without sacrificing the life you’ve built.

That requires precision, not perfection. Strategy, not sacrifice.

What This Actually Looks Like in Practice

One of my clients, a partner at a major consulting firm, put it perfectly after his first month:

He’s down 18 pounds, hit a personal best deadlift last week, and hasn’t missed a single client dinner or business trip. He didn’t overhaul his life - he optimized the gaps.

That’s the difference between sustainable transformation and another failed attempt.

The executives who succeed with me don’t become fitness fanatics. They become strategically fit - lean, strong, and energetic without their entire life revolving around macros and meal prep.

Here’s Your Next Move

If this resonates and you’re tired of the all-or-nothing approaches that never stick, I want to show you exactly how three of my clients optimized their specific situations - the Dubai-based CFO who travels 2 weeks out of a month, the VP who hits weekend sports events with his son, the entrepreneur who travels the country in an RV with his family and changes the gym every 2 weeks (and a few others).

​[Watch their 5-minute video interviews here] - they’ll tell you exactly what worked, what didn’t, and how they made it sustainable.

Because here’s the thing: You don’t need to become someone else to get the results you want. You just need to become a better version of who you already are.

P.S. - If this isn’t for you, no hard feelings at all. But if you’re nodding along thinking “finally, someone who gets it,” then we should probably talk. The application is [here] for when you’re ready to stop spinning your wheels and start optimizing what actually matters.

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