November 2026 (Movember)
Friends,
November is Movember, that calendar month the world should and does talks about men’s health. Most of us past forty would rather talk about anything else. That is exactly the problem.
☹ Men tend to skip checkups, shrug off warning signs, and keep the hard stuff to themselves.
This month I’m asking you to do three things:
set a Movember goal,
take on one 30-day challenge, and
book one checkup you’ve been putting off.
Every self-care action is a deposit in your Physical Bank, and those deposits compound.
In this issue you’ll find the Movember goals, a challenge menu built on the 7-Ss, a checkup guide, tips for the November 1 time change, a look at the “dark nutrition” counterculture, a practical guide to glycemic index and load, what the research says about caffeine and performance, our Mineral of the Month, and a cross-training week you can start today. Finally, what are some trendytopics?
Please repeat after your Koach: Motion is Medicine!
Why Movember matters past forty years of age
Movember raises money and awareness for three causes: mental health and suicide prevention, prostate cancer, and testicular cancer. These numbers below our mustachio’ed dude show why men need the nudge (Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar):
- Men die about 5 years earlier than women, on average.
- Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer diagnosis and cause of cancer death in men. About 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed in their lifetime. Early stages often have no symptoms, which is why a screening conversation with your doctor matters.
- Suicide: men die by suicide at about three times the rate of women, and are less likely to ask for help. Right, about 80% of all suicides are men ☹
- This also means that we lose at least 60 men each day, some who might have been saved.
- Testicular cancer is most common in men aged 20 to 40, so share this with the younger men in your life. Caught early, it is very treatable.
The good news: much of this gap is behavioral. Strength, stamina, sleep, and stress are levers you control.
Your Movember goals
Movember offers four ways to take part (Movember). Pick one, sign up, and tell someone. A goal said out loud is a goal you keep.
- My out loud goal is to average 6,000 meters a day on the indoor rower or on the water.
| Way to take part | What it means | The Well Past Forty twist |
| Grow a Mo | Start clean-shaven November 1 and grow a moustache all month | Every time someone asks about it, tell them one men’s health fact |
| Move | Run or walk 60 miles in November, one mile for each man lost to suicide every hour worldwide | Two miles a day gets you there; ruck it with a light pack for a strength bonus |
| Host a Mo-ment | Gather friends and family for a fundraising get-together | Make it active: a group walk, a backyard workout, or a rowing session |
| Mo Your Own Way | Set your own challenge and commit to it | Choose one of the 7-Ss challenges below |
PLEASE set three personal goals for this awareness month:
- Commit: Pick one Movember activity and register it.
- Check: Book one overdue appointment (see Know your numbers).
- Connect: Have one honest conversation with a friend about how he’s really doing.
The 7-Ss Movember Challenge
Choose one challenge for all 30 days, or stack two if you’re feeling bold. Each one builds a different account in your Physical Bank.
The 7-Ss of your Physical Bank · infographic
| 7-S | 30-day challenge | Why it matters for men past forty |
| Strengthspan | 30 squats and 15 push-ups (or wall push-ups) every day | Muscle is your metabolic savings account and your best defense against falls |
| Windspan | 2 miles a day, walking, rucking or rowing: your 60 Movember miles | Heart-lung fitness is one of the strongest predictors of a long life |
| Stretching | 10 minutes of mobility each morning, including the World’s Greatest Stretch | Keeps hips, shoulders and spine moving freely |
| Stability | Brush your teeth standing on one leg, switching legs halfway | Balance fades quietly; daily practice brings it back |
| Sustenance | A fist-sized serving of vegetables at every meal | Anti-inflammatory eating supports the heart and the prostate |
| Sleep | Same bedtime and wake time every day, weekends included | Steady sleep supports testosterone, mood and recovery |
| Stress | One honest check-in call with a friend each week | Connection is suicide prevention |
Track your days on a calendar. Miss one, and simply start again the next day: never miss twice.
Know your numbers: your Movember checkup list
You check your 401(k) balance. Check your body’s balance too. Take this list to your next appointment and ask which apply to you:
- ☐ Blood pressure: checked at least once a year after forty.
- ☐ Cholesterol and blood sugar: part of your heart-risk picture; ask how often you need them.
- ☐ Colon cancer screening: recommended for adults 45 to 75 (USPSTF). There are several test options, including some you can do at home.
- ☐ Prostate: ask your doctor whether a PSA test makes sense for you. It’s a personal decision based on your age, family history and preferences.
- ☐ Testicular self-check: once a month, after a warm shower. Know what’s normal for you and report any change.
- ☐ Mood check: tell your doctor honestly how you’re sleeping, coping and feeling. Depression in men often looks like irritability, anger or withdrawal.
Screening guidelines change, so let your doctor tailor this list to you.
Time change: fall back without falling behind
Daylight saving time ended Sunday, November 1, at 2 a.m., when clocks fell back one hour (FOX 29).
The extra hour of possible sleep might sound like a gift. Yet for many of us past forty it means waking at 4:30 instead of 5:30, and darker evenings that drag down mood and motivation. Furtrher, the even deadlier time change next spring is not a fair payback for natural time. Protect your Sleep and Stress accounts:
- Shift gradually: move bedtime 15 minutes later on each of the three nights before November 1.
- Get morning light: step outside within an hour of waking, even on cloudy days. Morning light is the strongest signal for your body clock.
- Move outdoors before dark: shift your walk or ruck to lunchtime so you still log your Windspan miles in daylight.
- Keep your wake time steady: the same alarm seven days a week anchors everything else.
- Watch the evening slump: darker evenings invite snacking and screens, so close the kitchen a few hours before bed.
Dark Diets: a Koach’s take on “dark nutrition”
The New York Times Magazine recently took readers inside what writer Sophie Haigney calls “dark nutrition”: a counterculture of eaters who believe nearly everything we’ve been told about food is wrong (Genetic Literacy Project repost of the NYT Magazine story). The menu can include raw organ meats, raw brains, bull testicles, all-meat carnivore plans, swearing off vegetables or seed oils, and megadoses of supplements (Newser).
Why it appeals. Many followers came to it after chronic illness or pain that conventional care didn’t fix. They distrust food companies and health officials, and they argue that the standard American diet, full of additives and junk, is the truly strange way to eat. Their guiding idea is to be your own experiment, an “n of one.”
What’s worth keeping. Skepticism of ultra-processed food is healthy. So is paying close attention to how your own body responds to what you eat.
Where it goes wrong. Mainstream science doesn’t back these diets, and raw meat carries a real risk of dangerous bacteria. Megadosing supplements can backfire too: remember from our Mineral of the Month that even too much zinc lowers immunity. Even one supplement enthusiast in the story admitted some people really hurt themselves.
The Well Past Forty bottom line. Stanford nutrition researcher Christopher Gardner put it simply in the piece: the basics are clear.
- Eat more vegetables and fruit, eat less junk, and choose better-quality food. That’s the real counterculture in a drive-through nation. Run your “n of one” experiments inside those guardrails, and bring your doctor in before any big change.
Glycemic index and glycemic load: a practical guide
Past forty, steady blood sugar matters more every year. It helps protect your heart, your waistline and your energy. Two tools help: the glycemic index and the glycemic load (sometimes called glycemic density).
Glycemic index (GI) ranks how fast a carbohydrate food raises blood sugar compared with pure glucose, which scores 100. Glycemic load (GL) goes a step further and accounts for how much carbohydrate is in the portion you actually eat (VA Whole Health). GL is the more practical number.
GL = (grams of carbohydrate in your serving × GI) ÷ 100
| Low | Medium | High | |
| Glycemic index | 55 or less | 56 to 69 | 70 or more |
| Glycemic load (per serving) | 10 or less | 11 to 19 | 20 or more |
Cutoffs from University of Georgia Extension.
Why load beats index: the watermelon example. Watermelon has a high GI of 76, which sounds bad. But a cup of diced watermelon holds only about 11 grams of carbohydrate, so its load is about 11 × 76 ÷ 100 ≈ 8: low. A high-GI food in a small dose can be fine, while a big plate of a medium-GI food can add up.
Common foods by glycemic index (glucose = 100; values from the VA guide, based on Atkinson et al., 2008):
| Swap this (higher GI) | GI | For this (lower GI) | GI |
| White rice | 87 | Brown rice | 55 |
| Baked potato | 85 | Sweet potato | 54 |
| White bread | 75 | Chickpeas | 28 |
| Watermelon | 76 | Apple | 36 |
| Pineapple | 66 | Banana | 51 |
| Bagel | 72 | Pasta | 49 |
Other lower-GI staples: carrots (39), cow’s milk (37), and most non-starchy vegetables.
Caveats:
- GI isn’t nutrition. It measures carbohydrate absorption speed only. Ice cream can score lower than a baked potato; yet that doesn’t make it healthier.
- Preparation changes the number. Cooking, processing and ripeness all shift GI. Juice raises blood sugar faster than the whole fruit because the fiber is gone. Al dente pasta and slightly green bananas tend to score lower than soft-cooked pasta and spotty bananas.
- Meals, not foods. Fiber, fat and protein eaten alongside carbohydrates slow absorption. Rice with beans, vegetables and chicken behaves very differently from rice alone.
- You are an n of one. Individual responses vary, and research is mixed on whether choosing foods by GI alone improves long-term blood sugar control.
Five practical moves for adults past forty:
- Build every plate around protein and vegetables, then add carbohydrates.
- Choose intact grains (brown rice, oats, barley) over refined (white bread, instant products).
- Eat the fruit, skip the juice.
- Watch portions of starchy foods; that’s where the glycemic load piles up.
- Take a 10-minute walk after your biggest meal to help your muscles soak up blood sugar.
- As you might have seen in my prior posts, a 10-20 minute stroll after your evening meal is very good for the health of your pelvic floor.
A redundant personal safety reminder: if you have diabetes or prediabetes, work with your doctor or a registered dietitian on your targets.
Ergogenic aids: what elite athletes know about caffeine
An ergogenic aid is anything that boosts performance. Caffeine is the most widely used one in sport, and it has strong research behind it. The International Society of Sports Nutrition reviewed the evidence in its 2021 position stand (Guest et al., JISSN):
- It works: caffeine reliably improves performance at 3 to 6 mg per kilogram of body weight. For a 180-pound (82 kg) man, that’s roughly 250 to 490 mg, or about 2.5 to 5 cups of brewed coffee.
- Less may be enough: benefits may start as low as 2 mg/kg (about 165 mg for that same man).
- More is not better: very high doses, around 9 mg/kg, bring more side effects without more benefit.
- Timing: about 60 minutes before exercise is typical for coffee or capsules.
- Biggest payoff: endurance work like rowing, cycling and running. Smaller gains show up in strength, sprinting and jumping.
- Everyone is different: genetics and your usual intake change how you respond.
The Well Past Forty take: if you enjoy coffee, drinking a cup about an hour before your workout is a legitimate, research-backed edge. But protect your sleep. Caffeine can disturb sleep, bump your systolic blood pressure, and raise anxiety, and its effects can linger well into the evening. Try to keep java to mornings and skip coffee after dinner. Else, you may get that unhealthy 3 am “liver reveille.”, Remember to talk to your doctor first if you have high blood pressure, a heart rhythm problem, or reflux.
Mineral of the Month: Zinc
Zinc is a small mineral with a big job list. Your immune system depends on it, which makes it a timely mineral as cold and flu season arrives. All figures below are from the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements (NIH ODS).
| For adult men | |
| Daily target | 11 mg |
| Upper limit (all sources combined) | 40 mg |
| Top food source | Oysters, by a wide margin |
| Good sources | Red meat, poultry, fish, crab and lobster, fortified cereals |
| Some zinc | Beans, nuts, whole grains, eggs, dairy |
Who runs low: vegetarians and vegans (plant compounds called phytates reduce absorption), men who drink heavily, and anyone with digestive conditions such as Crohn’s disease.
Signs to mention to your doctor: loss of taste or smell; in older adults, slow wound healing and fuzzy thinking or memory.
More is not better: too much zinc over time lowers immunity, drops your “good” HDL cholesterol and causes copper deficiency. If you take a supplement, count every source, including multivitamins and cold lozenges. Zinc also interacts with some antibiotics and with thiazide diuretics, so check with your pharmacist.
Cold tip: zinc lozenges started at the very first sign of a cold may shorten it.
Cross Training the 7s.fit way
Cross training means mixing different kinds of exercise through the week instead of repeating the same workout. For men past forty it does three things: it trains all seven accounts of your Physical Bank, it spreads the load so no joint takes a beating every day, and it keeps training fresh enough that you stick with it.
Here’s my notional Movember training week. Every Healthitude day touches at least one of the 7-Ss.
| Day | Main session (30 to 45 min) | 7-Ss focus | Daily add-on |
| Monday | Full-body strength: squat, push, pull, carry | Stronghspan | Single-leg balance while brushing teeth |
| Tuesday | Steady walk, ruck or row, conversational pace | Windspan | 10 min morning mobility |
| Wednesday | Mobility flow and core, including the World’s Greatest Stretch | Stretching, Stability | Kitchen closed 3 hours before bed |
| Thursday | Strength circuit: lunges, step-ups, rows, presses | Strongspan, Stability | Check-in call with a friend |
| Friday | Intervals: 6 rounds of 1 min hard, 2 min easy | Windspan | Vegetables at every meal |
| Saturday | Play: hike, bike, paddle or a group Mo-vember walk after meal | Windspan, Stress Mitigation | Outdoors in daylight |
| Sunday | Easy walk and long stretch, plan the week ahead | Sleep, Stress mitigation | Same bedtime as weeknights |
Scale every session to your level and temporary mojo, like if you have a slight head cold: commit to fewer rounds, lighter loads, or shorter walks. Consistency beats intensity, and your full 7s.fit program builds on this comprehensive framework.
Three popular molecules in the Health & Wellness news
- C60,
- Epicatechin, and
- Choline.
My current takes – not to influence your thought and action too heavily:
- I’ll skip the “Buckyball” carbon compound (C60), as human studies aren’t done.
- I will enjoy more organic cacao (85%) and green tea to boost this heart-healthy compound in my anti-inflammatory, lifestyle diet.
- Yes for Choline ingestion– we need it. Be a smart and balanced omnivore, as the premier sources of food choline are organ meats and whole eggs. (The Mediterranean and DASH diets include ~ moderate amounts of choline.)
Coming up and your next Healthitude step
- 7s.fit is coming soon: my online training program built on the 7-Ss, from Strongspan to counter-Stress. Watch your inbox for the launch of this novel online training and education packet.
- Breathe Well Past 65 webinar: I’ll present practical ways to protect your heart and lungs as you age for this GetSetUp.io community.
- Join my Movember team: Grow, move or Mo your own way with the Well Past Forty crew.
Your next step: Please reply to this email with the one Movember goal you’re committing to. I read every reply, and I’ll check in with you at the end of the month.
PLEASE forward this newsgram to a man in your life who needs the nudge. It could be the most important email he opens this month.
Always remember and react to Motion as Medicine!
Koach Dave Frost
KaBoomer Koach, Master Fitness Trainer and Author Well Past Forty LLC · wellpastforty.org ·
Instagram @davidemersonfrost
This newsgram is for practical education, not medical advice.
- Check with your doctor before starting a new exercise, diet or supplement plan.
Mental Health – If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 in the U.S. for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
Sources
- Movember: FAQ and ways to take part
- Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar: Movember clinical pearls
- U.S. Preventive Services Task Force: Colorectal cancer screening (2021)
- FOX 29: When daylight saving time ends in 2026
- Guest et al. (2021): ISSN position stand on caffeine and exercise performance, JISSN
- NIH Office of Dietary Supplements: Zinc fact sheet
- Genetic Literacy Project: repost of Sophie Haigney’s NYT Magazine story on “dark nutrition” (October 2026)
- Newser: Raw Buffalo Brains? Enter the Realm of ‘Dark Nutrition’
- VA Whole Health Library: Glycemic Index (GI values from Atkinson et al., 2008)
- University of Georgia Cooperative Extension: Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load (2025)