Why do middle aged married men often give up on staying fit?

Exercise is seen as a chore and isn’t an established habit, like it has been for you.

Have you ever tried running in your 50's, well? Let us know how much fun it is when you get that age...

Rookies Sheesh~~~~~~~~~~~

Look, I can get a terminal illness or get severely injured but why would I not run in my 50s? I strength train 2-3x a week and have been running from high school until now. I doubt I’d quit just because I hit 50. I’d cut volume before quitting.

I'm assuming you don't have kids...have a couple of kids and hit 40 for starters and you may understand a bit more. The rest of your life becomes not just busy but quite stressful. Marriage becomes a lot more work, your free time disappears, and usually your career gets more involved.

Some people just give up as a result and drink more and eat more garbage without working out as a psychological cope

because life is hell

Yes except I’ve seen this in people who were as athletic as me. Two people I know who were D1 football and basketball already regularly stopped exercising in their 30s.

I don’t have kids but how many athletes have kids? Doesn’t stop them. I’m not going to take a job that overtakes my life, too. Why would I put a job before my mental and physical well being?

Job + kids + family time + household chores + exercise + personal leisure + sleep

If you don't like exercising or have a good routine it's easy to let it slip. Most people feel like they're making a genuine tradeoff

Then when you get out of shape it's self-reinforcing. Working out sucks when you're out of shape.

Usually women end up getting fat, so there is no need for the man to stay in shape to look good for his wife. Further, it's hard to find the time to work out when you have to work overtime to pay for your wife's food.

What makes you think they ever cared about staying fit? People tend to maintain whatever habits they have always had. Most likely they never tried staying fit. It just take years for it to catch up and make them look worse than before.

In a way you have to find a spouse that respects that exercise is important to you. If I have a kid we would both give each other time to go exercise. Even if you can’t run the same volume what stops someone from exercising in their living room? You can get a decent workout with push ups, pull ups, dips, etc.

Yes, I think this is a key agreement for many couples. Even 45 min 3x a week is a good start.

In my experience intrinsic motivation varies a ton. There are guys who would run 120 MPW no problem when they had organized practices and a team. Same guys struggle to get out the door once a week when it's just themselves.

Other people will come home from an exhausting day and immediately turn around for a 60 min run.

If you're the latter, be thankful you've got that mindset.

Sorry it’s not fair maybe but unless you give birth to your child you can’t compare the two. It’s not the same thing. Also men don’t have the same societal pressure as women. Men can age women get ostracized for normal biological things.

The reasons to give up something that takes time and is uncomfortable even under the best of circumstances are many, and not so hard to guess.

Given that, one might wonder why some middle aged married men not give up on staying fit.

Surely, we all know a few tweaks and necessary mindsets to keep up the regimine, and I find that is best to not overthink it too much, but to just go with what is working.

When you get into your 40s and 50s, food or booze often becomes one of your few rewards. You spend most of your time either at work, doing family things or chores around the house. So, chowing down on some bbq or drinking a few beers or eating some donuts for breakfast ends up being your treat for the day. When your metabolism slows, those treats easily translate into weight gain. At the same time, your ability to lose weight with exercise also declines in your 40s and especially 50s. So, you end up in a loop where you eat too much when you go out for a nice dinner, put on 2-3 lbs, can't burn it off and put on another 2-3 lbs because you were on the road for work and ate out a lot. An extra 10 lbs turns into 20 and then 30. Exercise gets more difficult as the weight piles on. Then, people just reach a point where they realize that they just can't drop the weight and give up on their body. And it helps that most of their friends are in the same boat (or look like a boat).

I am about 25 lbs heavier than I was when I was training for marathons. If I eat out too much, I will put on 5-10 lbs and then really feel the weight. That usually gets me to snap back in line and drop some weight. But I also see saw back and forth between getting in some good running and lifting and sleeping in and eating and drinking too much. When you spend most of your day pushing a giant rock up a hill and come back the next day to find the rock at the bottom of the hill again, you are going to want beer and pizza for dinner instead of tofu and brown rice.

Yes but why quit something because it’s uncomfortable. That’s a baby mindset. Lots of things I do make me uncomfortable. Taking care of my hygiene could be a pain but you still do it. Why would you give up on your spouse?

I'm sorry but I don't think being pregnant is an excuse for getting fat. This is what is wrong with America today. Too many excuses. When my wife was pregnant with our child, I set a goal for her to only gain the weight of what the child weighed. So in essence, her body weight stayed the same, save some breast milk weight. She came really close to meeting the goal. But in the end it was all for nothing, because some years later she ended up getting fat anyway.

There's your mistake.