I Turned 42 Today. Here's What 56 Days of Discipline Actually Looks Like.

April 26, 2026 | Ben Nelson, Founder of ShredCoach

Today is my birthday. I'm 42. And I'm writing this at 200.0 lbs, down from 221.7 lbs eight weeks ago.

But the scale doesn't tell the real story.

My InBody scan this morning showed 20.9% body fat, down from 29.8%. That's 24 lbs of pure fat lost and 2 lbs of muscle gained. The scale says I lost 21 lbs. My body actually lost 24 lbs of fat and added 2 lbs of lean tissue. That's body recomposition, and it doesn't happen by accident.

Here's everything I did. No gatekeeping. No fluff. Just what worked.

Two Years of Trying Everything. Nothing Worked.

Before I tell you what worked, let me tell you what didn't.

For the last two years, I worked with a personal trainer one to three times a week. I was always active. I was never a junk food person. I ate organic everything. I got on the grass-fed beef kick from Paul Saladino's animal-based diet. I was eating "clean" by every definition the fitness industry uses.

And I was gaining weight the entire time.

My doctor prescribed sermorelin for muscle growth and weight loss. No results. I was prescribed retatrutide. Still no results. I tried intermittent fasting for two months. Nothing. I did a 72-hour fast, dropped 6 lbs, and gained every pound back within a week.

A previous trainer told me to "just eat beef and sweet potatoes twice a day, you'll be fine." No portions. No calorie targets. No macro breakdown. Just vibes.

The doctor I'd been working with for blood work over the last six months recommended a Mediterranean diet. Great advice in theory. But they said nothing about how many calories I should be eating. A Mediterranean diet with olive oil, nuts, whole grains, and fish can easily run 2,800 to 3,200 calories a day if you're not measuring. I would have been gaining weight on a "doctor-recommended" diet without ever knowing why.

Here's what I learned in the last 56 days that nobody told me in two years: I was eating over my maintenance calories. That's it. That's the whole problem.

It didn't matter that the food was organic. It didn't matter that the beef was grass-fed. It didn't matter that I was fasting or training or taking peptides. I was consuming more calories than I was burning, and no amount of clean eating fixes a caloric surplus.

The carnivore diet is a perfect example. Beef is one of the most calorie-dense proteins you can eat. An 8 oz ribeye is 640 calories for 38g of protein. Compare that to 8 oz of chicken breast: 376 calories for 70g of protein. I was eating pounds of beef every day thinking I was being healthy, and I was running a surplus the entire time without knowing it.

Nobody sat me down and said, "Ben, your resting metabolic rate is 1,850 calories. With activity, you burn about 2,500. You're eating 3,200. It doesn't matter how clean it is. You need a 1,100 to 1,200 calorie deficit to actually lose fat." No trainer said it. No doctor said it. No peptide protocol fixed it.

The breakthrough came when I put my entire diet in front of an AI and said, "Tell me what's wrong." And it did. It counted every calorie, checked every label, verified every protein number, and told me the truth: I was overeating by 700+ calories a day on "healthy" food.

That's why I built ShredCoach. Not because the world needs another meal plan app. Because the world needs something that tells you the truth about your numbers, even when the truth is that your organic grass-fed ribeye is the reason you're gaining weight.

The Foundation: 20-Hour Fasting, Every Day

I ran a 20:4 intermittent fasting protocol for all 56 days. Eating window from 2 PM to 6 PM on weekdays, with a wider 16:8 window on Saturdays for my refeed.

This is aggressive. I won't sugarcoat that. The first two weeks were hard. After that, it became automatic. My body adapted. My hunger signals shifted. I stopped thinking about food in the morning entirely.

The key to making 20:4 sustainable is front-loading protein. Two protein shakes (split, never combined into one mega-shake) gave me 60g of protein before dinner even started. Dinner was a single, high-protein meal that had to deliver another 109g. That meant cooking with real, measured ingredients and knowing exactly what was going into every meal.

The Honest Truth About Retatrutide

Two weeks into the fast, I started a microdose of retatrutide. One milligram per week. That's it.

Most people who take retatrutide ramp up to 4, 6, even 8 milligrams to get the appetite suppression effect. I never went above one. I wasn't using it for appetite suppression. I was using it for focus.

Here's what nobody talks about: when you're fasting 20 hours a day and running a 1,000+ calorie deficit, your brain fog is real. Decision fatigue hits harder. You're a CEO running a company, and you need to be sharp from 8 AM to 6 PM while your body is burning through stored fat for fuel.

The microdose kept me locked in. And because of that focus, the last 56 days were the most productive stretch of my career. I accomplished more in building new applications, launching ShredCoach, and growing my business than I had in the previous year. Not an exaggeration.

I tapered to half a milligram last week and I'm coming off it completely now. It was a tool, not a crutch. And I'm transparent about it because I think the fitness industry's obsession with pretending supplements and peptides don't exist is dishonest.

The Recovery Stack That Made Everything Else Possible

You can't outwork bad recovery. I learned that the hard way in week one when I was running a massive deficit, training hard, and sleeping terribly. So I built a recovery protocol and stuck to it religiously.

Infrared Sauna: Every Night Starting Week 3

Thirty minutes, high intensity, every single night. This became the anchor of my evening routine. Sauna at 7:45 PM, cool shower at 8:15, magnesium at 8:30, asleep by 9:00. The consistency mattered more than the duration. It became the signal to my body that the day was over and it was time to recover.

Cold Plunge: Once a Week

I know the biohacking world says daily cold plunge. For me, once a week was the sweet spot during an aggressive cut. Your body is already under stress from the deficit. Adding daily cold exposure on top of that was too much. Once a week gave me the dopamine spike and anti-inflammatory benefits without overtaxing recovery.

BPC-157 for Pain Management

I had rotator cuff issues in both shoulders from a tennis session mid-cut. Instead of popping ibuprofen and pushing through, I used BPC-157 (prescribed, not self-administered) to support healing. Combined with physical therapy every other week, my shoulders went from painful to functional in about three weeks.

Massage Therapy

Four sessions over 56 days. Not a luxury. When you're training hard in a deficit, your fascia and connective tissue take a beating. Deep tissue work kept me mobile and prevented the small aches from becoming injuries that would have derailed the entire program.

The Supplement Stack

I wasn't messing around with supplements. Every single one served a purpose.

Vitamin D3 at 100,000 IU per day (two 50,000 IU prescription pills). That's a therapeutic megadose, not something you grab off the shelf at Walgreens. My blood work showed my levels were low, and Vitamin D is directly tied to testosterone production, immune function, and mood. At a 1,000+ calorie daily deficit, your immune system takes a hit. High-dose D3 kept me from getting run down.

Creatine monohydrate, 5g daily, blended into my first protein shake. Creatine isn't just for muscle. It supports cognitive function, which matters when you're fasting 20 hours and need to think clearly. It also helps retain muscle during a deficit.

Magnesium glycinate, 400mg before bed. This was part of the sleep protocol. Sauna, cool shower, magnesium, lights out. Magnesium calms the nervous system and improves sleep quality, which is when your body does its actual recovery and fat burning.

Zinc, 30mg daily. Another testosterone support mineral. Taken with dinner, not at the same time as magnesium (they compete for absorption).

B-complex with my second meal. Energy metabolism support. When you're running on limited fuel, your B vitamins get depleted faster.

Testosterone Optimization: The Part Nobody Wants to Talk About

My blood work before the cut showed total testosterone at 559 (low-normal for a 41-year-old), free testosterone at 59.8 (critically low), and estradiol at 49 (high and climbing). High body fat drives an enzyme called aromatase that converts testosterone into estrogen. So the fatter you are, the lower your testosterone, and the lower your testosterone, the harder it is to lose fat. It's a vicious cycle.

Beyond the supplements, I added medical-grade red light therapy targeted at the testicles. This isn't the red light panel you hang on your wall for skin health. This is targeted photobiomodulation designed to stimulate Leydig cell function and support natural testosterone production. Combined with the high-dose D3, zinc, and the fat loss itself (which reduces aromatase activity), the goal was to give my body every tool to produce its own testosterone naturally.

I'm not a doctor and I'm not prescribing this to anyone. But I am being honest about what I did, because I think the conversation around men's hormonal health needs to be more open. If your testosterone is low and you're carrying extra body fat, losing the fat is step one. Supporting your body's natural production is step two. And getting blood work done so you actually know your numbers is step zero.

The Setback: Two Weeks Sick From My Own Protein Powder

Week two, I got sick. Sinus congestion, inflammation, feeling like garbage for about seven days. I couldn't figure out why. I was eating clean, fasting properly, training hard. Nothing made sense.

Turns out, my protein powder was the problem. I was using Lineage AB Complete, which I thought was clean. But buried in the ingredient list was colostrum. Colostrum is cow dairy. And I have a cow dairy allergy.

By the time I figured it out and switched to Kono Beef Protein Blend (confirmed dairy-free, 110 cal and 22g protein per scoop), the symptoms cleared within days. But then my Colorado road trip started right after, so between the sickness and 8 days on the road, I was out of my home gym for about two weeks total. I brought a 35 lb kettlebell with me and hit the hotel gym when I could, so I wasn't completely off training. But it wasn't D1 Fitness with my trainer either.

The lesson: read every single ingredient on every single label, even products you trust. Especially protein powders, which love to sneak in whey, casein, colostrum, and other dairy derivatives under names you might not recognize.

This is exactly why ShredCoach has a barcode scanner and label reader built into the AI coach. Snap a photo of the ingredient list, and it checks for your specific allergens before you buy it. I built that feature because I lived this problem.

Training: Not What You'd Expect

I worked with a personal trainer at D1 Fitness three days a week. But we weren't doing the typical "let's max out your bench" program. The workouts were designed specifically for fat loss while preserving muscle. High intensity, active recovery between sets, compound movements that kept my heart rate elevated.

Then on Saturdays, I went in on my own and ran an upper body session focused on hypertrophy. The goal was simple: the three trainer days burned fat, and the Saturday session told my body to keep the muscle. That combination, plus the high protein intake, is why I gained 2 lbs of lean mass while losing 24 lbs of fat.

The Last Push: Weeks 7 and 8

The final four pounds and the last 4% body fat came off when I added serious cardio in the last two weeks. I started hitting 10,000 steps a day (up from 5,000) and riding the Echo Bike at home at night. The combination of the extra cardio with the existing deficit created the final push that got me under 21% body fat and to 200.0 lbs on my birthday morning.

Timing matters. I didn't start with 10,000 steps and heavy cardio. I layered it in at the end when my body needed a new stimulus to keep dropping. If I had started there, I would have had nowhere to go when the plateau hit.

The Colorado Road Trip: When the Plan Met Reality

Week 3, I took an 8-day road trip from Meridian, Idaho to Denver, Colorado with my two dogs. I prepped like a maniac. Slow cooker chicken portioned into containers. Burrito filling pre-made. Bone broth rice. Meatball bowls. Everything labeled, frozen, and loaded into a truck freezer with a full snack schedule mapped out by the hour.

I ate maybe two of those prepped meals the entire trip.

Real life happened. Long drives, exploring Ouray, hot springs, altitude changes, unpredictable schedules. The meal prep plan that looked perfect on paper fell apart by Day 2 of the road.

But here's what saved the cut: my two protein shakes. Every single day, no matter where I was, I made my two shakes. Shaker bottle, Kono protein, water from a gas station. That's 60g of protein guaranteed before I even thought about real food. Some days that was 80% of my protein intake.

This is the lesson I'd give anyone starting a cut: build a floor you can't fall through. For me, the floor was two protein shakes. Everything above that was a bonus. The prepped meals were ideal. The shakes were the minimum. And on the road, the minimum kept me in a deficit and kept me losing fat for 8 straight days when "normal" people would have hit a drive-through and written the week off.

I came home lighter than I left. Not because the plan was perfect. Because the floor was high enough.

Food: I Refuse to Eat Chicken and Rice Every Day

Everyone says "just eat chicken and rice." I've heard it a thousand times. And I understand the logic. Same meals, fewer decisions, consistent macros.

But I need variety. And I think most people do too, which is why most people quit their diet after two weeks of boiled chicken and plain rice.

Here's what I actually ate: ground chicken burritos in Siete tortillas, chicken fried rice with coconut aminos and sesame oil, beef and sweet potato bowls, teriyaki chicken rice bowls, air fryer chicken nuggets with fries and bone broth rice, and slow cooker chicken bone broth stew. Saturday refeed was a real dinner out. Sausage board, ribeye, baked potato. A real meal at a real restaurant.

Every single one of those meals hit 169g+ protein. Every single one stayed within my calorie target. Variety and discipline are not mutually exclusive. You just need a system.

That's exactly what ShredCoach is built to do: give you variety that still hits your numbers.

The Saturday Refeed

Every Saturday, I ate more. On purpose. Structured. Not a "cheat day" where I ate whatever I wanted with no plan. A refeed where I intentionally increased calories to 2,500+ with a wider eating window, higher carbs, and a restaurant meal I looked forward to all week.

The refeed serves two purposes. First, it resets leptin, the hormone that tells your brain whether you're starving. After six days of deficit, leptin crashes. One high-calorie day brings it back up enough to keep your metabolism from adapting to the low intake. Second, it keeps you sane. Knowing Saturday dinner is coming makes Wednesday's 1,400-calorie rest day feel manageable.

What I'd Tell Someone Starting This Journey

The fitness industry wants you to believe transformation requires perfect genetics, expensive supplements, and hours in the gym. It doesn't.

It requires a plan you'll actually follow, protein targets you actually hit (not ones that look good on paper but fall apart when you check the real numbers), recovery you take as seriously as training, and enough self-awareness to adjust when something isn't working.

I tracked every calorie. I scanned every label. I checked every restaurant menu before I ordered. When my protein numbers didn't add up, I fixed them instead of pretending they were fine. When my shoulders hurt, I went to a PT instead of training through the pain. When the scale stalled, I added cardio instead of slashing calories below what my body could sustain.

56 days. 24 lbs of fat. 2 lbs of muscle gained. 200.0 on the scale. 20.9% body fat. And the most productive two months of my professional life.

So what's next? I'm not stopping.

The original plan was to take a maintenance break here. Eat more, recover my hormones, and start a second cut in June. That's the textbook approach and it's smart.

But I'm at 200 lbs with momentum, my appetite is manageable, and I'm not burnt out. So I'm extending to 90 days. Same discipline, slightly softer deficit. Calories go up 200 per day (1,800 on lift days, 1,600 on rest days), fasting window widens from 20:4 to 18:6, and everything else stays the same. Training at D1 three days a week. Echo Bike and 10,000 steps. Sauna every night. Cold plunge. The full protocol.

The projection: ~194 lbs at ~17-18% body fat by Day 90 (May 30). If I hit that, I'll have accomplished in one continuous 90-day cut what the original roadmap spread across three separate cuts over 18 months.

There's a safety net built in. Blood work at Day 75. If my testosterone has crashed or estradiol has spiked, I stop immediately and go to maintenance. No negotiating with hormones. But if the numbers are clean, I finish the job.

I built ShredCoach because I wanted an AI coach that could do everything I just described: track real macros, read labels, analyze menus, adjust plans on the fly, and never lie to you about your numbers. When my protein powder was making me sick, I needed a tool that would have caught the hidden dairy before I spent two weeks feeling terrible. When I sat down at a restaurant, I needed something that could read the menu and tell me which items had hidden tomato sauce or cow dairy. When my meal plan claimed 170g of protein but the actual foods only produced 125g, I needed a coach that would call it out instead of letting me lose muscle.

That's what ShredCoach is. Not a calorie counter. Not a generic meal plan generator. An AI coach that knows your allergies, your macros, your schedule, your goals, and your actual food. One that's honest with your numbers even when the truth is inconvenient.

The cut continues. Day 57 starts tomorrow.

Happy birthday to me.