Cut From Steel

He started lifting at eighty-five and won gold at ninety-five

Charles Eugster was born in London in 1919 and spent his entire working life as a dentist.

He began a fitness programme at 85. His own account of why was not complicated... he looked in the mirror one morning and did not like what he saw.

Eugster took up bodybuilding in his late eighties and competitive sprinting after that. In 2015, at 95, he won gold in both the 100 metres and the 200 metres at the World Masters Athletics Championships in Lyon.

That same year he took gold over 60 and 200 metres at the European Masters Indoor Championships in Torun, and another 60 metre gold at Ancona in 2016. He collected medals at the World Masters rowing regatta as well, and more than a hundred awards across his various sports.

In 2012 he gave a talk in Zurich under a title that says the whole thing. Why bodybuilding at age 93 is a great idea.

Eugster died in 2017, at 97.

None of that happened on a young man's body. He did it on a body in its nineties. That body was still answering when he called it. Yours is younger than that by three decades and it has heard nothing from you in a while.

Older muscle needs more protein, not less

You eat less than you did at 35 and you assume that is sensible, because you move less than you did at 35. The protein came down along with everything else on the plate.

I want to show you where the official number came from and why it does not fit you. The recommended dietary allowance has traditionally been set the same for healthy adults of every age, at 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day.

That figure was never built around a man of 58 trying to hold on to his legs.

It's not age. It's these three.

I will give you three things from the ESPEN expert group's recommendations on protein and ageing muscle.

01 / The Number Moves Up

The expert group states that evidence continues to build in favour of raising the recommendation to 1.0 to 1.2 grams per kilogram of body weight per day for adults older than 65. For a man of 85 kilograms, that means roughly 85 to 100 grams a day rather than the 68 the older figure implies. Most men reading this are eating somewhere well below either number.

02 / Illness Pushes It Higher Again

For older people with acute or chronic illness, or at risk of malnutrition, the same group recommends 1.2 to 1.5 grams per kilogram per day, with more again for severe illness or injury. So the moment a man is least able to eat properly is the moment his requirement goes up. Knowing that before you are in a hospital bed is considerably more useful than learning it afterwards.

03 / Protein On Its Own Does Nothing

The group is explicit that protein nutrition in combination with exercise is considered optimal for maintaining muscle function, and recommends resistance training as part of an overall fitness regimen wherever possible. Eating 100 grams of protein and then sitting down all day builds nothing at all. The food is the material and the training is the instruction.

Take it back today

I owe you the caveat about kidneys, because it is the first objection anybody raises. Higher protein intakes are generally regarded as safe in healthy people, and men with existing kidney disease are a genuine exception who should take medical advice before changing anything at all. Ask if you are not certain which group you are in.

You should also stop trying to do this with one enormous dinner. Whether a per-meal threshold really exists is still debated in the literature, and spreading protein across the day is easier to eat and far easier to sustain than 90 grams at eight in the evening.

I want you to work out your own number this morning. Take your weight in kilograms, multiply it by 1.0 and then by 1.2, and write both figures on paper. Then look honestly at what you ate yesterday and work out which side of them you landed on.

You have been eating like a man winding down, against a number written for somebody half your age. Multiply your weight by 1.2 and find out what you are short of. Sunday is the day to fix the week's shopping.

— Travis

Insider Member's Corner

6 free habits for keeping the muscle you still have:

Sunday money buys the things that make the whole week work.

01 / Iron · A pair of adjustable dumbbells

Five to twenty-five kilograms in each hand, changed with a dial, occupying roughly the footprint of a shoebox. They remove the last honest excuse about the gym being shut or the weather being foul. Rows, presses, goblet squats and carries will cover most of what a man over 45 needs from three sessions a week. Buy the ones with a proper metal mechanism, not the plastic ones.

02 / Watch · Seiko Alpinist SPB121

A green sunburst dial, gold hands, an internal compass bezel turned by a second crown, and a mechanical movement underneath it. It was built for Japanese mountain walkers rather than for divers, which is why it is the right size for an ordinary wrist. Pound for pound it is the best-value proper watch in any shop. Put it on a brown leather strap and leave it there.

03 / Table · A dining table you actually eat at

Solid wood, seats six, heavy enough that moving it is a two-man job. Most households have drifted into eating off laps in front of a screen, and a table is the thing that reverses it. Buy one you would be content to hand on to somebody. Then use it on a Tuesday, not only at Christmas.