Men’s Health For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Living healthier doesn’t have to mean overhauling your entire life overnight. Small, smart choices add up — and guys can stack the odds in their favor with a few easy strategies. You can set realistic goals that keep new eating and exercise habits on track, naturally boost GLP-1 hormones that help control appetite and blood sugar, and cut back on salt to protect your heart and lower blood pressure. Even dining out can work in your favor if you know how to navigate the menu. This Cheat Sheet focuses on progress, not perfection — simple steps that can add years and energy to your life.

Setting goals to build habits like a boss

Adopting a new diet, exercising regularly, and avoiding smoking are all habits that reduce your risks of dying before you’ve perfected your golf game but may not be easy to adopt for most guys. Enter goal setting. When establishing goals, make sure they’re achievable; you know they are if they check these boxes:

• Your goals feel important to you. Your goals don’t have to be huge in scope or meaning. Maybe you want to lose 20 pounds or add 30 minutes of physical activity to your week.

• Your goals are specific and measurable. Losing 20 pounds is more specific (and, therefore, achievable) than a goal of “losing weight.” Walking an extra day per week is a better goal than “exercising more.”

• Your goals have a timetable. Losing 20 pounds in 10 weeks is a better goal than losing 10 pounds someday. Taking a 30-minute walk on Saturday mornings at 8:30 works better than just saying you’ll fertilize and mow.

• Your goals are attainable. There’s nothing wrong with one or two very long-term goals. But it’s important to break them down into segments that can be attained within a shorter time span. For example, “I’d like to reduce my risk of heart disease by 50 percent” is great, but setting goals along the way creates stepping stones to help you achieve that goal.  

When setting goals, it’s also useful to keep in mind a few key principles:

• Reduce your focus on competition with others. Achieving goals is about increasing your sense of competence and confidence in yourself. It’s not about beating someone else. It’s about moving forward on your own, personal path to resilience.

• Avoid perfectionism. Perfection as a goal won’t work because no one’s perfect all the time. Stressing perfection leads to frustration and inevitable loss of confidence.

• Embrace mistakes. Mistakes have a lot to offer. You can learn valuable lessons from mistakes. And making mistakes means you were brave enough to try something new. Let the mistakes teach you!

• Push back on procrastination. The number-one reason people fail to reach their goals is they chronically put off efforts to get there. Combating procrastination requires making a goal as specific as possible and as small as needed to feel achievable.  

Nature’s Ozempic: Boosting GLP-1 with foods

Carrying too much weight is a risk factor for many diseases that lead to men’s premature death, including heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Sometimes a guy needs a little help; enter weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic (semaglutide), which work by mimicking a hormone called GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) that helps regulate blood sugar, slow digestion, and reduce appetite.  

Get some weight-loss benefits and avoid the prescription side effects by taking a natural approach to support GLP-1 production and enhance insulin sensitivity:  

• Eat GLP-1-boosting foods: Incorporate more fermented foods (like kimchi), leafy greens, and healthy fats (such as olive oil), which can naturally help regulate GLP-1 levels.

• Add GLP-1-boosting herbs and spices: Cinnamon is well-known for stabilizing blood sugar and boosting GLP-1 secretion. Other options include turmeric, with its anti-inflammatory properties, and ginger, which improves insulin sensitivity and stimulates GLP-1. Fenugreek seeds, cayenne pepper, garlic, and bitter melon are other great additions to a diet aimed at improving GLP-1 function.

• Eat more protein: A study found that individuals following a diet with 30 percent protein, featuring meals such as chicken, tuna salad, and meat with rice, experienced reduced hunger and a 50 percent increase in GLP-1, keeping you feeling satiated. For plant-based sources, options such as lentils, chickpeas, quinoa, tofu, tempeh, and edamame are excellent protein-rich alternatives.  

• Drink apple cider vinegar (ACV) before meals: Studies show that ACV can help reduce post-meal blood sugar spikes by improving insulin sensitivity and promoting a feeling of fullness. One approach is to drink 1 to 2 tablespoons of ACV diluted in water before meals. You can also incorporate it into your diet by using it as a salad dressing.

• Walk after meals: A 15- to 20-minute walk after meals has been shown to lower blood sugar and improve insulin sensitivity, which aligns with the traditional Indian philosophy of taking 100 steps after eating to aid digestion.

Trimming back salt to lower your blood pressure

One of the easiest ways to bring down your blood pressure is to decrease your intake of sodium. Don’t worry that you won’t get enough — you need only 500 milligrams of sodium a day, which you can get if you eat only natural foods. Most Americans consume 5,000 milligrams per day, so aiming for 1,500 milligrams per day is a more realistic goal that’ll still reap rewards.

Here are some straightforward ways to cut down the salt you eat:

• Cut back on the number of prepared foods you buy (for example, prepared soups and crackers).

• Consult the Nutrition Facts label on each item to check the amount of sodium in each portion. Even if the sodium content appears low, eating too many portions can put your sodium level over the top, so make sure you’re counting the number of portions you’re eating as you do your calculations.

• Cut back on chips and crackers. Substitute low-salt chips or, even better, fresh fruits or raw vegetables for snacks high in salt.

• Try keeping the salt shaker off the table — out of sight, out of mind. After a few days, you’ll be surprised how much better food tastes when it isn’t blunted by salt.  

• If you’re using canned vegetables, wash them with plain water to remove most of the salt, and then add herbs and spices.

• When dining out, look at the menu ahead of time to see if they offer low-sodium items. If they don’t, or if one of the regular items looks delicious, ask if your food could be prepared with little or no salt.

Enjoying dinner out without going off the rails

Dining out is a great way to explore new foods, enjoy times with family and friends, and skip cooking and clean-up at home. But a guy trying to stick to a moderately healthy diet can struggle despite best intentions. Here are a few ways to make it easier to make healthy choices when grabbing a bite at your favorite restaurant: