I NT RO D UCTI O N

The Mid-Life U-Turn

A chieve success and happiness will follow. Get a good job,

earn a good living and you’ll be happy. Right? If happiness
does indeed come after success, you would expect mid life to be
the happiest time of most people’s lives, a period traditionally
marked by the pinnacle of achievement and career success, but
here’s the rub: happiness does not necessarily follow success.
In mid life, the alarming fact is that, despite what professional,
material or personal success you may have achieved after years
of effort and dedication, as well as the miracle of kids for many
and/or a wide social network, research shows happiness dips to
a lifetime low. How could this be? No matter if you drive a bus,
run a company, play professional sport or head a Fortune 500
company, the relationship appears to hold true. For how long
does this lull in happiness last? Apparently, the bottom of the
U-shaped bell curve of happiness continues until the age of 48.
(That’s an awfully long time not to feel your happiest.)

It’s Time to Be More, Not Do More

In mid life, it’s easy for the years of hard work, lack of sleep and
emotional and financial strain to erode your once positive and
bright outlook day to day. Happiness levels appear to bottom out
in mid life, with potentially significant and adverse consequences
for your mental and physical health. The opportunity for you
is to see this mid point of your life as a turning point – a good
time to re-evaluate, recalibrate and orient yourself towards what
2 | PEAK 40

you really want in life. An opportunity for you to reboot your

mindset and body to achieve your lifelong goals.
If you’re 40-something and battling weight gain or trying to
lower chronically elevated blood pressure or blood sugar levels,
this book is for you. If you’re 40-something and struggling with
low energy, frustrated by weight-loss plateaus or the idea of fol-
lowing ‘food rules’ for the rest of your life, this book is for you.
If you’re a personal trainer who works with clients in their
mid-30s, 40s and 50s to help them lose weight and improve their
energy levels, this book is for you. If you’re a practitioner helping
people in mid life to improve their health in their mid-30s, 40s
and 50s, this book is for you.

What Does PEAK40 Mean?

PEAK40 is about achieving your best health and conquering
your performance goals in mid life. The challenge is that lack of
sleep, high stress, a demanding schedule and lack of time seem to
keep you stuck in neutral (or sometimes what feels like reverse!).
Weight gain, fatigue, joint pain and the like, seem to creep up on
you and, before you know it, you’re battling just to live pain free.
This downward spiral can also wreak havoc on your mood and
mindset. But it’s not just about weight loss, better energy levels
and achieving performance milestones (although you will get all
that), it’s about re-discovering the best version of YOU!
PEAK40 is about simple, evidence-based and time-efficient
strategies to help you re-ignite your energy and your passion.
Small changes, done consistently over time, yield incredible re-
sults. These improve your blood sugar levels, lower high blood
pressure, help to avoid heart disease and lose weight to ensure
you feel your best today, but also lay the foundations for better
health and longevity down the road. Mid life lets you know very
quickly that you’re no longer indestructible; chronic conditions,
 Introduction | 3

like diabetes, hypertension, heart disease or low mood, also infil-

trate with no remorse. The years add up and the inflammatory
noise in your body begins to drown out the key signals for health
and well-being. And it’s not just your physical health; your men-
tal health also gets heavily tested. No matter what your level of
professional or financial success, science tells us people are al-
ways looking up at ‘what’s next’, rather than appreciating how far
they’ve come. PEAK40 isn’t just about a physical transformation,
but a mindset shift, as well. Re-assess your values, reset expecta-
tions and orient yourself towards your lifelong goals. The right
mindset ignites the journey – I’ll guide you through the process.

The PEAK40 Plan

To get back on track, you first need to shape your path. Do it the
right way and you will develop the habits that will set you up for
long-term success. It likely took you many months, if not many
years, to get to where you are at, so give yourself 6–12 months to
reach your PEAK health and performance.

Your plan to PEAK40 health:

Step 1: Master Your Morning
Step 2: Own Your Night
Step 3: Set Your Protein
Step 4: Turn the Dials on Carbs and Fats

Your plan to PEAK40 performance:

Step 1: Restore Your Aerobic Fitness
Step 2: Rebuild Your Muscular Strength through time-efficient
training plans
Step 3: Upgrade Your Sleep
Step 4: Learn the Right Mindset Skills and Kick-Start Your
Path to Happiness – Mindset is the Keystone to Success
4 | PEAK 40

What You’ll Find in This Book

In Section One: The Downward Spiral, you’ll learn how mindset
shifts in mid life and how happiness levels can naturally ebb.
You’ll see the ripple effects this has on other areas of your life
– your activity levels, your food choices and your attitude – and
how this also erodes your positive outlook, preventing you from
disengaging from negative thoughts and making you more
prone to more emotional outbursts. You’ll learn how gradual (or
not so gradual) accumulation of weight gain over the years can
steamroll in mid life into more significant concerns, increasing
your risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, metabolic condi-
tions like Type 2 diabetes and certain cancers. Weight gain and
obesity don’t just have wide-ranging adverse physical effects,
but mental effects as well.¹ When your blood glucose levels are
chronically elevated, you are at much greater risk of low mood
and depression, stoking the fires of chronic inflammation that
wreak havoc on health and mental well-being. Inflammation is
a protective mechanism to help the body repair. However, poor
health leads to an over-active chronic inflammatory response
that exacerbates the problem (rather than solving it).
In Section Two: Nutrition: Shape the Path, you’ll learn how
changing your behaviour around nutrition is far more powerful
than following a specific dietary plan. You’ll navigate all the
noise around intermittent fasting, time-restricted eating (TRE)
and whether skipping breakfast is better than eating it regularly.
You’ll learn about the new science to do with late-night eating,
how more than 40 per cent of all the calories we consume today
come after 6pm and simple tips to curb late-night eating. From
there, you’ll learn why protein intake really is so crucial to mid-
life health and performance, before shifting the focus to how
you can effectively manage the rest of your diet – carbohydrates
and fats. Building habits is fundamental to reversing poor health
 Introduction | 5

or weight gain in mid life. It also sets you up for success in the
long-term because you no longer have to make ‘food decisions’
at every turn; you just do what you do.
In Section Three: Rebuild and Recover, you’ll learn how to be
more efficient with your exercise in mid life. For some, physi-
cal activity in mid life grinds to a halt, due to chronic pain and
discomfort. For others, lack of time suffocates your attempt to
get active. Before you know it, your days are largely sedentary
and it starts to show through more aches and pains, deep fatigue,
poor sleep, lower libido and mood, just to name a few. It doesn’t
have to be that way, though. You were born to walk, run, squat,
sprint and laugh along the way. Movement is supposed to be fun,
not another item on your to-do list. I’ll show you how to achieve
maximum benefit with the minimum-effective dose and share
with you why sleep and recovery strategies, like cold plunges and
hot tubs, can catapult you over fitness and weight-loss plateaus.
In Section Four: Unlock Your Potential, you’ll learn how the
biggest hurdle to achieving your goals is the six inches between
your ears. The challenges of mid life can create a more negative,
anxious and pessimistic mindset. You’ve misplaced the youthful
awe and adventure that kept you effervescent. Taking the time
to reflect – about who you are, what your values are and whether
your daily actions are in alignment with those targets – is a
fundamental part of the process. Knowing yourself becomes a
crucial piece of the behaviour-change puzzle. After all, if you can
attach a value to why you’re making a behaviour change, it’s far
more likely to stick. Sadly though, in the fast lane of mid life,
few people make the time to do it. This is where the mindset
skills, like improving your ability to maintain attention, positive
self-talk and optimism, are crucial because they allow you the
space to reflect, reset and orient yourself in the right direction.
Ultimately, if you want to take your nutrition and exercise game
6 | PEAK 40

to the next level and achieve PEAK40 health and performance, a

new mindset will ignite the process.

Peak Strategies for Long-Term Success

The issues facing us today, like climate change and chronic
health conditions, such as the obesity epidemic, are increasingly
complex and solving such complex problems requires a broader,
more holistic view compared to traditional thinking.
The ability to combine solutions from diverse fields – like
sleep, medicine, nutrition, training, recovery and mindset – is
critical for generating innovative, long-term solutions to
‘wicked’ problems.²
Professor Sidney Dekker, PhD, an expert in complexity and
systems thinking, says, ‘You cannot reduce a complex system to
one of its parts, because if you do, you will tragically and dra-
matically oversimplify things.’ The outcome of a system is never
produced by one single part; rather, the outcome is produced via
the interactions of all the parts. There is no magic bullet, secret
recipe or switch to flip in order to achieve your goals in mid life.
There is only effort, consistency and following an evidence-
based plan. The path to the finish line is not linear, but if you
commit to the process (and not the outcome) and to developing
the right habits (not fast-tracking), you’ll reach PEAK40 health
and performance.

Kind vs. Wicked Learning

Reclaiming your health, body and performance in mid life is not
a ‘kind’ process. A kind learning environment is one in which the
outcome is immediate. It provides you with the instant feedback
you need to find the correct solution. Golf may not seem like a
‘kind’ learning environment, but it is. After you hit a shot, the
result is right there in front of you. If you understand the golf
 Introduction | 7

swing, you can correct the error instantly. In ‘kind’ learning en-
vironments, you can choose a strategy first, then evaluate. It’s a
very linear process; computers excel in ‘kind’ environments with
less uncertainty and ambiguity.
‘Wicked’ learning environments have far greater complexity,
greater ambiguity and greater uncertainty. ‘Wicked’ environ-
ments require you to evaluate (extensively) first, then choose a
strategy. Most challenging of all, the feedback is not immediate.
You often don’t realize you’re learning or making progress
until days, weeks or months down the road. Managing chronic
diseases like hypertension, diabetes and heart disease are all
examples of ‘wicked’ environments. Weight loss is another great
example; results are not immediate and the path is not clear. In
mid life, the problems you’re attempting to solve are ‘wicked’
– they’re complex, they’re uncertain and they’re ambiguous. It
will take time and you may not know, feel or realize you’re on
the right path until much further down the road. This is known
as deep learning.

The Rider and the Elephant

In their terrific book Switch, Chip and Dan Heath use the meta-
phor of the Rider and the Elephant to describe how people make
decisions.³ The Rider is the analytical, data-driven, thinking part
of your brain located in the cortex; the Elephant is the emotional
brain (the limbic system). Sitting atop the Elephant, the Rider
can certainly steer the animal in a desired direction, but only
for a certain period of time. The reality is that you can’t escape
emotion. Dr Tara Swart, MD, PhD, is quick to point out that all
your thoughts travel through your limbic system, where they’re
bathed in emotion, before they reach your cortex for rational
analysis. You cannot separate the two. The enormous power and
size of the Elephant means that, at any given moment, if it really
8 | PEAK 40

wants to, it can seize control and the Rider is at its mercy. Expert
psychologist Dr John Sullivan, PsyD, with decades of experience
working in elite sport, emphasizes to his clients, ‘Emotions run
the show in sport and in life.’ If you want to change behaviours,
you need to control the Elephant. How can you do it? Chip and
Dan Heath call it ‘shaping the path’.
Creating the right environment shapes the path for the
Elephant. What looks like a people problem is often a situation
problem. You need to nudge the Elephant in the right direction.
To motivate the Elephant and lead it down the desired path,
you need to ‘see’ and ‘feel’ the change you’re looking for. It’s not
enough to know why you should be doing it. You know smoking
is bad. You know exercising more will help you lose weight. You
know eating less junk food or drinking less alcohol will improve
your health. So why do you still do it? You’re relying too heavily
on the Rider, on your analytical brain and sheer willpower to
achieve the desired result. But willpower is a finite resource. You
only have so much discipline, and when you run out (and you
will run out, especially in mid life), you’ll make poor decisions.
Why? Because you’re human. Elite athletes and Olympians
don’t jump out of bed at 5.30am because they’re always inspired,
motivated or even disciplined. If they had to rely on the sparks
of inspiration or motivation or the match light of discipline, they
would never achieve world-class success. So how do they do it?
They repeat behaviours so consistently that the habits become
embedded in their DNA. They don’t even ask themselves ‘if ’
they should get out of bed, it’s automatic; they just do it. I’ll show
you how to start to shape your path.

Signal vs. Noise

The final theme you’ll hear repeated throughout this book is sig-
nal versus noise. Signal versus noise is a measure used in science
 Introduction | 9

and engineering that compares the level of a desired signal to the

level of background noise. For example, try talking to your part-
ner while your child is screaming in the background; the signal
(intended message) cannot be communicated effectively because
the background noise (child screaming) is too loud. What does
this have to do with your health and performance in mid life?
Everything. If you’re overweight, lacking sleep or struggling
with high blood sugar levels, it creates a background level of
chronic inflammatory noise. When poor health drives up the in-
flammatory noise, the body struggles to receive the appropriate
signal. This is a problem because usually inflammation is a signal
for your body to adapt and grow stronger to fight off a cold or
flu, for example, or to grow following exercise. Sometimes, the
best way to get your message across isn’t to shout louder, it’s to
stop the screaming in the background. Reducing processed food
intake, losing weight and improving glucose control will all help
to reduce the inflammatory noise that is scrambling your mental
and physical health in mid life.

A Little about Me
I’m a performance nutritionist, naturopathic doctor, former
strength and conditioning coach, husband and father of three
beautiful little girls, all under the age of seven. (So, I’m right
there with you in the hurricane of mid life!)
In my first book, Peak: The New Science of Athletic Performance
That Is Revolutionizing Sports, I outlined the key fundamentals of
elite athletes and high performers actually working on the front
lines (and not just in an Instagram feed). Why? The gap between
what the best of the best athletes and coaches do and what you
see ‘influencers’ doing online is enormous. Athletes will be train-
ing with a heavy emphasis on the fundamentals (not the fads),
on consistency (not extreme effort) and on the value of patience
10 | PEAK 40

(not rapid transformation). No wonder so many clients struggle

with achieving their goals.
I haven’t written Peak 40 for you to transform your life into
some artificial, unrealistic Instagram-able ideal, but as a practi-
cal guide to navigating mid life so you can thrive in it (and not
just survive).