Why Human Trainers beat AI Workout Robots

There has been a flood of workout apps many of which provide some level of AI support. They tend to have a slick user interface, fancy graphs and sometimes even let you chat with you personal AI.

Using AI is shockingly easy to use and can be surprisingly effective at creating plausible workout programs. I tried this in my favorite AI bot Claude:


3-Day Strength & Fitness Program for 50-Year-Old Beginner | ClaudeDownload

However, I think the main reason people, especially older unfit gym novices, look for a coach is not have a written program but for the motivation and feedback. When I decided to get healthy I made a couple of tries to get a fitness program started. I bought the indoor bike, the dumbbells, dusted of the old Concept2 rower that I bought out of college nostalgia, but I just couldn’t get into it. I tried various apps like Calibre and Hevy and that gave some structure and tracking, but training never became a habit.

After this frustrating experience I decided I needed a human coach to help me teach exercises and “proper form” (i.e. not injure myself) and most importantly enforce accountability. Ultimately I found a great trainer on the Future app and things immediately changed. I started working out consistently 4 times a week at home. In the following months we have bumped that up to 5 times a week (one of them in the gym in my office building).

It’s not even that my trainer gives me a hard time – the pressure to disappoint him is just so much higher than disappointing some AI algorithm..

If you want to make training a habit I strongly recommend enlisting a human to help. Whether you have a friend/relative who is a gym rat or a professional trainer. If you are intimidated by the idea of a public gym (as I was), use one of the online programs. It will make a huge difference.

What Company to Work for before retirement

Petter Attia has introduced the concept of the “marginal decade”, the last ten years of your life, when your health is typically at its worst. All his longevity work is focused on improving the experience during that time.

A similar idea applies to work life. Being in my fifties I have been thinking a lot about how I want to spend the last ten years of my productive work life before retiring.

This profile of Nintendo in Bloomberg shows a lot of aspects of a company that is cool to work for. It draws the picture of a company that has a clear vision and focus and is careful in building up a cash war chest for tougher times. It has clear values and it has execs that don’t frantically react to all news stories or competitors’ announcements. I have worked at companies that were the exact opposite — every day was a frantic panic about changing product plans and marketing strategy — it was exhausting and ultimately not very successful.

Nintendo sounds like company that would be great to do cool work in your marginal decade. Try to find a place like that before retirement.

Xi, Putin and Kim pursuing immortality

According to this Bloomberg article Xi, Putin and Kim had a chat about immortality, repeated organ transplants and people living to 150.

Chinese President Xi Jinping commented on the possibility of people living to 150 during a hot-mic moment with his Russian and North Korean counterparts, a rare glimpse of an unscripted chat between three of the world’s most prominent strongmen.
[…]
A translator then appeared to relay the Russian leader’s remarks, saying in Mandarin: “With the development of biotechnology, human organs can be continuously transplanted, and people can live younger and younger, and even achieve immortality.”

I am excited about interest in (funding even) longevity but these three guys might not be the best proponents. Who knows what happens in their respective labs.

The Guardian has an interesting take in Brainless bodies and pig organs: does science back up Putin and Xi’s longevity claims?

In typical Grauniad fashion they go a little bit of the rails:

Major efforts are afoot to solve the organ shortage problem. One route involves using organs from pigs. The procedure, xenotransplantation, remains experimental but doctors in New York have performed pig kidney and pig lung transplants into brain-dead people to see how they fare.
[…]
“There’s an ick factor,” says Carsten Charlesworth, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University. “For a lot of people, an arm’s fine, a liver’s fine and a kidney’s fine. But when you have everything except a brain, it feels more human-like and people worry.”

I like longevity as much as the next biohacker, but a pig’s brain might be a step too far…

Delicious Post-Workout protein fruit shake

In an effort to keep muscles during a GLP-1 diet, I tried many post workout meal/shakes/supplements. For a while my goto choices were Cutler Nutrition’s Repair and Fairlife Core Power.

However, my favorite is a shake I make at home: A scoop each of Vanilla Ice Cream Whey powder, Cocoa powder, one Oikos Triple Zero greek yogurt and two cups of frozen Triple Berry mix. Throw it all in the nutribullet and it’s ready and delicious in a minute.

The macros are pretty good, too (courtesy of MacroFactor): 42g protein, 15g fibre and 385 calories.

Daily Protein to keep muscles on GLP-1

Daily protein intake is crucial to keep muscles when you are on a GLP-1 enhanced weight loss diet. Both my “weight loss advisor” (who my Insurance makes me talk to to get Zepbound prescribed) and my fitness coach tell me the most important Macronutrient is Protein. Supposedly it helps with avoiding muscle loss when losing weight on GLP-1 agonists.

It seems among scientists and gym bros there is also active debates just how much protein you need per day. There are scientific studies on how much or how little protein you need per day. There are even some folks looking into (making claims, anyway) how much protein humans can absorb in a single meal.

I went with the rough 1g per pound of your target weight. This seems reasonable to keep muscles while on a GLP-1 diet. For me this means 200g/day (I am 6’4″). Everyone seems to say you should try to get it all from “whole foods” — which I guess means mostly meat, fish, tofu or legumes.

Realistically my favorite sources are:

  • Filet Mignon steak. This is very tasty and quick to make. Gives me 31g of protein for 180 calories.
  • Chicken breast: this is the classic body builder food (with rice and broccoli) but I just can’t get into it even though it has a fabulous 25g/130 cal.
  • Ground meat. I have tried beef but prefer turkey. it’s delicious and pairs with many veggies and carbs. 93% lean has 21g/170 cal
  • Frozen meals. When I began counting calories for weight loss I came across the Healthy Choice Cafe Streamer” meals. They are delicious and super convenient. I eat them both at home and in the office. This Mexican-Stlye Street Corn one has 18g/240 calories and costs only 3 bucks.
  • Fairlife protein shakes. These are made from real milk (“ultra-filtered” whatever that means) and is super tasty. My favorite is the strawberry flavor. It comes in two “strengths”: 26g/170 cal and 42g/230 cal
  • Protein bars: I tried a lot of bars. I hate most because of the chewy glop consistency (e.g. the Costco ones). I was excited about the influencer-hyped David bars but they gave me terrible constipation and sulfur burps.. My favorite are the Think! White chocolate bars. 20g/230 cal
  • Protein chips. I used to *love* potato chips but stopped them when I admitted to myself that they made me obese and gave me hypertension. These Pure Protein Popped Crisps, Hickory Barbecue are actually delicious and get me 12g/150 cal with only 330mg of Sodium.
  • Fruit smoothies. Through experimentation I ended up with this recipe: one scoop of Vanilla Ice Cream Whey Protein, a cup of Oikos Triple Zero greek yogurt, 1 scoop of fancy cocoa powder and two cups of frozen triple berry mix. I throw it in a nutribulett and it’s ready in a minute. It’s a delicious way to get 42g/385 cal including 14g of fibre. Perfect after a workout!

Recently many food manufacturers started heavily promoting the high protein level in their offerings. Healthy Choice even started buying a “ON TRACK — GLP-1 Friendly” seal on them. Slightly ridiculous but not wrong.

I track my calories with the Macrofactor app every day and it seems I get reasonably close to my target of 180g but have some work to do.

Maybe there is some truth to the time-tested chicken with rice and broccoli diet 🙁

Amazon links above are affiliate links.

Peptides — the new Wonder Drugs?

There is a lot of buzz about peptides like BPC-157, TB-500, MOTS-C and obviously GLP-1 agonists in the health and fitness world. Every influencer seems to have their favorite “stack” of them that promise energy, endurance, fat burning and general injury healing.

As Matt Kaberlein explains thinking of “peptides” as one thing is silly the same way that talking about “drugs” or “medications” is silly and simplistic.

While I personally have no interest in body building or getting juiced on steroids, I find that many folks in the body building world provide a lot of interesting insights into various treatments and their side effects. The best example are Vigorous Steve who produces fascinating deep dives on various compounds and Chase Irons who does ridiculous self experiments while carefully keeping his bloodwork under control.

From my research (if you can call watching a bunch of YouTube videos and googling things that) it seems the most interesting peptides that are worth exploring are:

– L-Carnitine: helps with endurance and fat metabolism.

– BPC-157/TB-500: often referred to as the Wolverine stack, this combo seems widely regarded as useful in improving soft tissue healing after injury or surgery.

– MOTS-C: considered an energy booster that improves mitochondrial efficiency.

Check your bloodwork (regularly)!

I recently got a pretty comprehensive blood test done (via marekhealth/labcorb). Mostly no big surprises and in line with what I saw in my annual physical. However, I discovered that I had scary low iron saturation.



I don’t really know why. Everyone asked whether I had recently donated blood — I had not. I think Peter Attia states in one of his AMA podcasts that if you have low ferritin levels the default assumption is that you have colon cancer. Luckily I very recently had the routine colonoscopy every PCP makes 50 year olds have — and the result were clean.

My only guess is that my big change to my nutrition somehow affected my iron value. I wish I had historical numbers but I don’t think I ever got a blood test that included iron saturation.

The moral of the story is: please regularly check your blood work! There are labcorp and Quest locations all over the US and Apple Health can automatically import the results so you have historical record. If any values are out of range educate yourself what they mean and then have an informed conversation with your doctor.

Reality hits at annual physical

After years of not getting a physical (out of laziness and the fear “they will just tell me to lose weight and eat broccoli”), I finally got a physical last October.

I knew I had gained a lot of weight but seeing “373lbs” on the scale gave me a profound shock. I had fastidiously avoided weighing myself for years… in that moment I decided something had to change. My doctor (actually a great NP) gave me the usual speech “you should lose some weight” but to her credit she also suggested that a GLP-1 agonist could help.

Being an engineer I started reading everything I could and looking for tools to help me that day. I started counting calories and living at a 500-1000 calorie deficit the next day. I almost immediately started losing weight. Getting the Zepbound subscription took a few more weeks.

For me the calorie deficit and focus on getting lots of protein is the trick. This obviously requires some willpower but that is where Zepbound came in and took away a lot of “food noise”.

It’s really not *that* hard, decide you will stick to what the tracking app tells you (I use MacroFactor), weigh yourself every day and track with a tool like Happy Scale.

For me this has been spectacularly successful but of course the trick will be to keep the weight off.

Welcome to DadStrengthDaily: Building Resilience in Your Prime

Hey there, and welcome to DadStrengthDaily.

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re like me – a dad in your fifties navigating the unique challenges that come with this stage of life. Maybe you’re watching your kids head off to college while simultaneously caring for aging parents. Perhaps you’re crushing it in your career but feeling crushed by the weight of endless responsibilities. Or maybe you’ve looked in the mirror recently and wondered when exactly your body started feeling like it belongs to someone else.

I get it. Because I’ve been there.

Why I Started This Blog

Two years ago, I found myself at a crossroads. My career was demanding more than ever, my kids needed me in ways I hadn’t anticipated, and my body was sending me some pretty clear signals that the “I’ll get to it later” approach to health wasn’t working anymore. I was tired, stressed, and frankly, not the dad or man I wanted to be.

That’s when I realized something important: being a dad in your fifties isn’t about slowing down – it’s about getting smarter about how you show up.

What DadStrengthDaily Is All About

This blog is for men who refuse to accept that turning fifty means turning in your health card. It’s for dads who want to model strength, resilience, and vitality for their families while navigating the very real challenges of midlife.

Here’s what we’ll explore together:

Physical Strength and Fitness
Let’s be honest – your body at fifty isn’t your body at thirty, and that’s actually okay. We’ll dive into realistic, sustainable fitness routines that work around busy schedules, joint concerns, and the reality that recovery takes a bit longer these days. From strength training that protects your back during those weekend projects to cardio that doesn’t destroy your knees, we’ll find what works for real dads with real lives. We’ll look into what really matters for feeling better and longevity of the average man — not the instagram influencer.

Mental Health and Stress Management
The sandwich generation pressure is real. Career demands, financial pressures, family responsibilities – it’s a lot. We’ll talk openly about anxiety, stress, and the mental health challenges that many of us face but rarely discuss. More importantly, we’ll share practical strategies for building mental resilience and finding balance.

Career and Life Balance
You’ve worked hard to get where you are professionally, but at what cost? We’ll explore how to maintain career momentum while actually being present for the moments that matter most with your family.

Practical Dad Hacks
From meal prep strategies that fuel your workouts to time management techniques that create space for self-care, we’ll share real-world solutions for common dad challenges.

My Promise to You

I won’t sugarcoat the challenges or pretend that building strength – physical, mental, or emotional – in your fifties is easy. But I will share what I’ve learned, what’s worked, what hasn’t, and connect you with experts and other dads who are on this same journey.

This isn’t about becoming a fitness influencer or achieving some impossible standard. It’s about becoming the strongest version of yourself so you can show up fully for the people who matter most.

Join the Community

Your fifties can be your strongest decade yet – not despite your responsibilities, but because of how you choose to meet them. Whether you’re just starting to think about your health or you’re already on the path but looking for community and fresh perspectives, you belong here.

Let’s build strength together – one day at a time.

Drop a comment below and tell me: What’s your biggest challenge right now as a dad in your fifties? What brought you here today?

Here’s to showing up strong.

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