How to Stay Looking and Feeling 10 Years Younger: A Book Helping Men Stay Young

By Eric Amstutz

When he published this book, Eric Amstutz was about to turn 40 years old and often heard that he looked at least a decade younger. He didn't come from a long line of models, tan Greek Gods, or movie stars. He's an average, middle class, pasty white guy who, despite serving in the harsh environments of the US military for nearly 20 years, hacked his life to create a more youthful appearance.
"How to Stay Looking and Feeling 10 Years Younger" is a book geared towards men (although most of its content applies to women as well) who are looking for simple yet thorough step-by-step lifestyle hacks, tricks, principles, and mindsets that are obtainable by all. Whether you are in tip top shape, just beginning your fitness journey, or in your dad-bod phase, this book is designed using the 80/20 principal to help you look and feel 10 years younger. How you look is how you feel, and when your confidence is high, you can move mountains.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jul 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350902440

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

At the time of writing this book, I was 39 years old and about 200 days away from turning 40. For most people, 40 is a scary number. It represents that dreaded middle age that I heard my parents talk about once upon a time, and now that is my age. I remember growing up thinking 40 was so old, but it came so fast.

But what I have learned is 40 doesn’t have to be scary if you still look and feel 30. I often find myself out and about, whether it is dating, at a bar, working, or just around town, with people telling me that I look like I’m 28 to 32 years old. For a long time, I just took it as words and said thank you. I thought nothing of it, but now I feel like I should help others get that same compliment and, most importantly, that confidence.

I think it’s important to understand why I should not be the writer of this book and also understand how I ended up here. For nearly 20 years, I served my country at full throttle in the Army, jumping out of planes, surviving on little to no sleep, consuming way too much alcohol, drinking energy drinks to stay awake in unnecessary 11:00 pm meetings, and inhaling likely toxic chemicals in Iraq.

During my 19th year of service (yes, 19, not 20), I determined it was time for me to leave the Army. This apophony came to me one day when I came out of my third Command leading America’s finest men and women. I was walking down the hall, looking at photos of the senior leadership for the state of Texas, and most of them, if not all, were in their late 40s or early 50s. It looked as if they were pushing 60 or even 70. I made an unconscious decision then and there that that would not be me, no matter what the cost.

For those of you not versed in how military retirement works, 20 years is the magic number, not 19. I was in the Army National Guard for most of my career, meaning I worked a full-time job while I was in the Army. For the military to be obligated to provide me with benefits such as retirement pay, health care, etc., I had to hit 20 years of good service time, but I left it all on the table.

While you might think that is crazy, it is the reason why I’m writing this book. We get one shot at life, and your happiness, health, goals, dreams, and ambitions are the most important things. I served 19 years and hopefully helped countless people create a better life for themselves, but I reached a point where I needed to do more for myself.

You see, just two years prior to me leaving the Army, my partner of five years filed for divorce and just like that, I lost eight years of my life. While I believe the divorce was the right call for our situation, it is likely that if I had been more intentional about my overall health and wellness, the marriage would have survived.

This book was written to help men and maybe even women out there who are looking to create a better life for themselves. How you look is how you feel, and when your confidence is high in your overall appearance, you can move mountains. I believe that I have created a pattern of habits and behaviors that have led to my success in staying and feeling young even as I approach 40.

Everything in this book is real, with no gimmick and no bullshit to sell you something. I’m just a real guy who has figured out a way to stay looking young and confident, and I found a better path towards overall happiness. My hope is that I can help at least one of you out there!

CHAPTER 1

WHY WE AGE

There are thousands of scientific articles and elaborate explanations about why we age. This book won’t dig into all of that because it’s not that detailed. Simply put, we age because it’s our body’s natural process, but many of you are accelerating the process.

The challenge with age is that there is no magic pill, silver bullet, or simple fix despite the thousands and thousands of ads, articles, and products being pushed into this industry. It is true that some of the stuff does work, but you can build a badass car, and without a fuel source (there are electric vehicles today), the car wouldn’t move.

Today more than ever, we are being stimulated with so much at our fingertips, including social media, Netflix, Amazon, Google, and working from home. While it enhances our life greatly, it is likely causing us to age rapidly.

How often do you find yourself on your devices late at night? Instead of sleeping, you are scrolling through your 11th reel, watching a dog dressed up doing the cha cha slide. Though it is cute, we have gone down a rabbit hole, and we are losing, on average, an extra one to two hours of sleep a night.

Take just an average of 1.5 hours of lost sleep per night, and let’s assume you are around 30 years. This means over the next ten years (up to age 40), you would lose 5,475 hours of sleep. If we assume that the average person should sleep 8 hours (debatable) a night, then you are losing 1.8 years of necessary sleep because we are streaming, scrolling, and addicted to a stimulus.

We will get more into sleep in the coming chapters, but that is just one example of why we are aging rapidly today. We are aging today for so many reasons, though. Most men, as they get into their 30s, start to settle down, get married, have kids, and do all the societal norms that were taught when we were young. This is great, as I’m not opposed to living the dream, but along the way, our priorities shifted, and this ages us.

Most 30-and-above-year-old men and maybe even women focus more on their career, their kids, and their spouse/partners and focus less on their self which slowly has an impact on the aging process.

Dad bods are in, right? We have created a social norm of accepting excessive body fat as a good and attractive thing. I believe that appearance is in the eye of the beholder, and not everyone needs to be a fitness model, but carrying a spare tire is causing you to age rapidly, no doubt about it.

Today we sit at our work-from-home desks for eight hours a day without moving, peeing, eating, and even sometimes blinking. Our body is hunched over, shoulders are caved in, hip flexors are stiff as a board, lower back issues, and we constantly strain our eyes from excessive screen time.

So, we buy things like a stand-up desk to combat that issue or braces to support our shoulders, but the novelty of these products wears off, and soon we find ourselves using that product once a week until not at all.

Because we are so tired from lack of sleep or screens beating our eyes into oblivion, we now stop drinking the necessary amount of water daily and rather replace that with four cups of coffee. Worst case scenario, the coffee no longer has the impact we desire, so we turn to three energy drinks or a healthier version Celsius as the crutch.

This dries our skin out like the Sahara Desert, taxing the hell out of our skin and internal organs as they are begging for proper hydration. When you go to the bathroom, you look down at the swirling toilet, and it looks like Shrek’s piss —neon green and far from clear.

Not only are we sleep-deprived, but we are also dehydrated. Our bodies are twisted into knots, and the extra fat we are carrying is reducing our testosterone. This leads to inconsistent eating or worse; we are eating but dumping quickly and easily available (fast foods) into our bodies.

With the busy lifestyles that most of us live today, it’s easy to work for six to eight hours and later realize that you haven’t eaten a thing. At that point, most of us run to Subway or Chick-fil-a to grab a sandwich with chips or fries. Because you haven’t eaten much that day, your body is starving for food, so it does everything it can to retain anything you give it to protect itself from you starving it again in the future. So, your body slaps it right on that dad bod, just in case. This cycle repeats itself over and over, and before you know it, you are carrying a few extra points.

The lack of water, proper nutrition, and sleep now plays a significant factor in our overall appearance, including our skin. Have you ever seen someone that just has a glow about them? Their skin seems perfect, with little to no wrinkles, and is vibrant. That is not accidental. While there are enhancements and injectables, which I will talk about, there are still daily steps that a person can take to achieve that glow. Barry Bonds likely took all the steroids, human growth hormones, and supplements money could buy, but he was still a top-level athlete before he enhanced anything. We should treat our bodies the same.

We haven’t even gotten to fitness! Every year, the gyms, health clubs, and Pelton sales all sore at the start of the year. Everyone sets their new year’s resolutions, signup, and away they go. Well, 50% of gym memberships taken out after January 1st are canceled or not used by February 1st. We slip right back into the comfortable habits and routines we created.

Fitness is not a suggestion; it is a must to remain young. There are a handful of people that defy the odds by not working out and still looking amazing. Hats off to those of you that fit that profile, as that is not the case for most of us. But what we must realize is fitness isn’t just for the exterior, but it’s to keep the internal parts and pieces operating. A Ferrari