Episode #1005
Most guys think getting healthy means grinding harder at the gym or forcing themselves into a strict diet. But in this conversation, we go deeper. Doug sits down with Kate Abate—performance coach, former pro bodybuilder, and gerontologist—for a raw, eye-opening look at what real wellness actually looks like for men today.
Kate works closely with men in The Powerful Man movement, and she’s seen firsthand how physical transformation is just the tip of the iceberg. From emotional eating and decision fatigue to the pressure of always being the provider, Kate breaks down what’s really holding guys back—and how to start shifting it.
This isn’t about doing more. It’s about understanding the patterns, the expectations, and the unspoken weight most men carry—and learning how to make space for yourself again.
If you’ve ever found yourself thinking, “I know what to do, I just don’t do it,” this episode will hit home.
👉 If you’re feeling stuck or know something needs to shift, start by figuring out what’s actually off. Head over to https://fixmarriage.thepowerfulman.com/scales to watch a free training that breaks it all down—what’s not working, why, and how to turn things around with clarity and direction.
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Transcription
Kate 0:00
I’m a huge imperfectionist. No perfect days. You know, it’s an asymptote we’re reaching for excellence here. We’re just trying to do the best that we can. And no, we just count wins. We just count wins all day long instead of, you know, “oh well, this could have been better.”
Doug Holt 0:32
Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the powerful man show. Today, we have a very special guest for you guys. We have Kate Abate with us. Now, guys, Kate has worked with a lot of our men in the powerful man movement. She’s not only transformed their physiques, but also transformed their lifestyles.
Today, we’re not only going to talk about the ways that Kate has helped these men and how you can possibly help yourself but Kate has a very interesting journey herself, as well as insight into these guys that she sees enter into a program like the powerful man and the transformations they get, not only with their physical selves and their confidence, but also in other areas of their life. Kate, thanks for being here.
Kate 1:19
Doug, it is such a sincere pleasure. Thank you so much. It’s an honor. It’s an honor to do this work. It’s an honor to share space with you. And I’m a huge supporter of what you’re doing. It’s part of my mission. And so it’s just been a really great journey to be able to start to be a fly on the wall with some of these terrific men that you have.
Doug Holt 1:42
Oh, thank you. I mean, we had such a great call offline when you and I connected. I think you and I decided or at least I did that we could probably be talking for about eight hours or so. We’ll try to keep it a little more condensed for today. But there’s so much. There’s just so much here for us to discuss.
You know, I made the mistake of thinking we would just talk about physical transformation. But in learning about your background, your story, and what you’ve done with these men, there are so many avenues we can take. One of the things I’d love to start with, Kate if you don’t mind sharing is just a little bit of background on you.
Kate 2:26
I hail from New York, Westchester. Growing up, I was always engaged in sports and music and academics and all the things. And as a single child, my father really took me as his son, if you will. So I was the only girl on the soccer team, the only girl in the drum squad, and sometimes on other teams and that was natural for me. I really kind of enjoyed that.
At the same time, I also went to an all-girls high school and all-girls summer camp where I did heavy backpacking trips up in the coast of Maine. And I actually went to a women’s college as well. So I think men and women have always been very neutral and sacred relationships for me.
With that context after playing lacrosse in college and really enjoying athletics when the finances exploded in 2008, I said, “Hmm, law school doesn’t seem like the path it was going to be.” And also, I wasn’t really tied to the golden handcuff idea. I was like, “That’s a lot of time at a desk. Those papers are pretty thick.”
As much as I love reading, I dove into yoga and thought, “Let’s do this until we figure out something next.” A friend once challenged me to a yoga class, and I was like, “Okay.” And then I couldn’t do it. It was so hard. Downward dog was so hard. If you’ve never done downward dog, it’s really difficult.
So I went full throttle into yoga and philosophy, really embracing that idea that your feet are the foundation of how you connect with the Earth. All the joints stack above the feet. And when you look at Chinese medicine, the meridians studied at the bottom of the feet go through the body. There’s just so much depth to Vedic philosophy that really spoke to me as someone who always loved philosophy in general, but especially the weaving of mind, body, and soul.
One of my most favorite quotes is, “If you’re not in your body, you’re not having a spiritual experience.” You have to be in your body to really feel things that’s why we have them, and that’s how we flow through life.
Caring for the body in different ways was very appealing to me, especially because at the same time I was experiencing health issues. Growing up, I always had a lot of digestive discomfort, but I kind of just sucked it up. In college, things got pretty serious.
I went to school in California away from everything I knew because I wanted to see another part of the world. California seemed like a great place to go. But after a full mental health and physical health breakdown, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and celiac disease. And also anxiety, ADHD all of these things together.
I had to step back and realize, “Okay, this structure I’ve been forcing myself into is not working.” It’s one thing to know you have the capacity to handle things and I think all of your men have that capacity. That’s why they’re in the powerful man group. But there’s also another way.
You can redesign your life. Assess your needs, identify them, and then ask: “How do I want to live? How do I want to walk this Earth?”
I can’t say at 21 I was awakened enough to fully plan a new life. But I did realize after months of conventional prescriptions and horrible quality of life, that there had to be another way.
Through my 20s, I got really involved in physical fitness. It was always a beautiful outlet for me to express myself, to channel emotions. If I was angry, I’d go to the gym, take it out on the weights, and be useful. Anger isn’t the enemy aggression is. There’s a way to be generous and loving with yourself when you’re going through hard times.
Physical fitness became that expression. Then a friend challenged me to bodybuilding. I saw her and asked, “What are you doing?” She said, “I’m a bodybuilder.” I was intrigued. She said, “You should try it.” Another person dared me: “You don’t have the discipline to do that.” And I thought, “Okay, let’s go.”
I got into bodybuilding. I told myself, “I’ll do this until it’s not fun anymore.” Because I’m not competitive with other people I’m competitive with myself. I kept going with it.
I turned pro relatively quickly. I was astounded to even turn pro. I was working at Gold’s Gym, enjoying being a bodybuilder, and then I trained for my first pro show. To my surprise, I won my pro debut. That was 100% unexpected and mind-blowing. Suddenly, I was straight off to the Olympia.
As soon as I got off stage, my nerves hit: “Oh my goodness, now I have to be ready for the Olympia. Now I have to tee it up with the big ponies.” That ride was an honor and privilege. It taught me what it means to be a professional: to be prepared, to make no excuses, to understand that it’s not a sacrifice it’s a choice.
That experience started me on this journey. I did it for a while, and it was terrific. Then I pivoted back to school. I thought psychology would be my path, but during my first marriage, I experienced some
Kate 11:00
I was caregiving to someone with firsthand early cognitive decline, and that was what we call in gerontology non–age normative. It was a non–age normative event that was really difficult to deal with and really surprising as well. It alerted me that these paths are converging the need to recreate life so that we are doing things that bring us joy, that we want to be doing, that also align with our goals, while also having an eye to the future.
How do we take care of ourselves as we get older? What does that mean? What are the possibilities? Does it have to be the way it’s always been, or can the next 50 really be the best 50? As I later learned, that’s true most people have far more joy in the second half of their lives than in the first. That’s a common misconception.
So I continued with my education and became a credentialed gerontologist. My key variable of study is age how does everything intersect with this concept of age? What is aging, and how does it interact with wellness? What does it mean to live a well-lived life? What does longevity mean?
Pivoting a few years later, I ended up asking, “What’s this thing about community?” Because I’m pretty sure that community is really at the foundation of longevity. As a gerontologist, one career path is working with older adults, but I’ve been fascinated with the way we organize as communities.
I grew up with my dad being the mayor of my town, and I actually grew up in the boardroom making community decisions like which garbage cans are we going to have on the street, and all of those minutiae. But it’s grassroots that really grow and develop a community. So I got involved with building communities.
Now we’ve just built a community here in New York on the campus of Purchase College. It’s an intergenerational, university-based retirement community. It blends philosophies older adults engaging in lifelong learning, interwoven with students, embracing engagement, connection, social wellness, and well-being. It’s a dynamic and robust environment.
So that’s the long story short of where I am now. By day there’s a community focus, and bigger picture, I ask: how do we as individuals move through life, and what does that look like?
I’m honored to work with mostly men, because to me it seems we really need to look at what leadership looks like as we get older. There are so many beautiful men who are ready to step into that role, looking for support to help redefine it so they can be strong fathers, raise strong children, and teach younger generations how to live a well-lived life.
Doug Holt 14:52
I love it, Kate. There are so many nuances in there, as we talked about before. I’m curious from your perspective obviously all of us know that when we look better and feel better about ourselves, that gives us confidence and we’re able to do more.
When you’re working with these men, what are some of the things you notice that come up for them? Where are they when they start with you versus after months? I’ve seen the physical transformations as well as the emotional ones. Can you give us an idea of where you think most of these guys start off?
Kate 15:29
First of all, I think it’s about identifying support who are your champions? Then, what else is going on? Because your men, it’s not an IQ problem. You can Google any plan to make it work, or chat GPT or whatever, to have the business side of what could create an architected plan.
But it’s life that gets in the way, right? What are the other things going on? What are your obligations with your children? Where are there strings that are not well tied? And also, at the end of the day it’s 10 p.m., you had a meeting that ran late, you forgot your lunch, you’re starving, you come home, you open the fridge. What happens?
Doug Holt 16:30
Well, I know what happens for me I grab the first and most convenient thing.
Kate 16:35
First and most convenient thing. And depending on your stress level, you know there’s a quarter tub of Häagen-Dazs stuck in the back of the freezer, even though you promised no chocolate. And then you eat it, because our brains are designed to go for that. This isn’t a human failing. It’s a brilliant chemical engineering process.
So let’s remove the fault from that impulse. Instead of trying to make the impulse go away, let’s honor what sets you up to have the impulse. Then let’s give you something so that when you have it, you reach for it and it actually nourishes you.
Because what I notice is we think about nutrition as, “I shouldn’t have these things.” But I don’t believe in that. Language is a beautiful tool to reframe our relationship with food. Everything about longevity and lifestyle is about relationship. You have a relationship with food, a relationship with shame, a relationship with your concept of discipline.
You also have a relationship with what you think you should be able to do, without valuing the deficits in your life. For example, you’re a newly divorced dad with three young kids, and you’re also the life of the party at the office the guy everyone leans on. That’s a lot that’s being asked of you. That’s a lot of nourishment you’re giving other people.
At the same time, it fuels you, but it drains you too. That’s nourishment you need to receive back. I think a lot of the men I work with don’t value how much nourishment they give others, and how much they need to refill themselves to balance what they’re focused on as “nutrition/wellness/fitness.”
Doug Holt 19:04
All guys can pick up a work, you know, come chat GBT and come for the workout, right? That’s easy to do. And I’m guilty of doing that sometimes as well.
Do you see a difference in the men that you work with? Because you’re seeing them at all stages of their development, as we work with them on different sides. Most men come into one of our programs for two different reasons. One is we have a program that helps men get unstuck and get clear on life like, what’s the next step? Right? “I worked my butt off, I was supposed to be happy. What happened?”
And the other one is the relationship guys the men who woke up next to a stranger. Them and their spouse became, you know, what we call a roommate with a ring. We’re all used to that analogy of just drifting apart.
Do you notice a difference in the men that you work with and the stages of their development, and how that helps them reach their physical peak or what they consider their physical peak? I’m just curious if you notice a difference between a man who has done the inner work, like going through a program like The Powerful Man (doesn’t have to be that, but a program like it), versus other men you’ve worked with who haven’t done their own development.
Kate 20:20
Oh, yes. I mean, I think that’s why I am so drawn to working with men from The Powerful Man group because it is the work. The work is so integrated that it’s so much harder otherwise.
The men I receive from your group they’re not just aware, but I consider them aware and awake. And when you’re awake, it’s like the lotus flower. I’m big on lotus, right? The lotus flower for me, that’s the undertone of my brand. Everything is in eight, because there are eight leaves, eight domains of wellness, eight steps. It’s a very spiritual number as well, meaning infinity.
And the lotus is open. The flower is open with The Powerful Man. He is ready and willing to receive in certain lanes that other people are not. With others, there are still boundaries, they’re still protective, they’re still speaking from the wound and not from the scar.
And so I think that’s really when I can speak fluently to a Powerful Man. When I say nourishment, I can say, “Hey, you’re borrowing from this bucket over here when you’re showing up in this amazing way for your family, for this, for that. And that’s what’s contributing to the deficit over here and that’s why you’re reaching for [food].”
That level of validation understanding why it’s so difficult. Because I think there’s so much shame around, “This should be the simplest thing in the world for me to stick to this diet. Why can’t I just not do this thing?”
Your men are so powerful that it’s like they’re gaslighting themselves. They’re thinking, “I can build skyscrapers, I can build billions, and yet I can’t avoid this chocolate bar?”
And I think it’s really helpful to understand why, and then build some support around it. Actually tactically and logistically improving access to things that are fueling, removing barriers from things that could be helpful, and adding barriers to things that are going to be temptations or seductive the ones you don’t want.
And I think there’s something powerful about choice versus decision. I believe in choice, not decision. There’s something powerful about choosing to create your life in this way, and that is reinforcing.
Because we know that motivation is seasonal, if you will.
Doug Holt
Oh, 100%.Doug Holt 23:57
Yeah, the analogy I always use we were talking earlier, I was laughing because I’ve had that conversation with myself. “You know what? Geez, I can do so many things. I have no problem working out. But when I’m tired and stressed, I feel like I want sugar.”
I’ll find myself just standing in the pantry going, How’d I get here?
And the analogy I use when I’m talking to men about something like this in a different category it’s like going to the bowling alley, and for the kids, they put the little bumpers up so the ball doesn’t go into the gutter. I think of that for me like, I lay my workout clothes out the night before so I have to almost trip over them. Yeah, you know, to limit the excuses.
Kate 24:11
And it’s not just limiting excuses because it is that but it’s also decision fatigue, right? It’s cognitive load.
That’s something I really work with our men on. Men whether they embrace it or not are usually born into the provider mantra. With that, you always have living in the back of your brain: the buck stops here, it’s me on the line.
So there are so many choices being made constantly, constantly, constantly. And the cognitive reserve to make any additional choices like which socks do I want to wear runs out.
One of my clients makes fun of me for this, but I have a spreadsheet I line up on Sundays, sometimes Saturdays, with my outfits my gym outfits listed. Because I will get lost in my closet when I’m tired of making decisions at the end of the day. I’ll waste 20 minutes that I could be using for something else.
So it’s about creating structures. Now that’s what works for me, but that’s why this work is beautiful because I get to learn what lands for each man. Everyone has different slices. For you, it may be easy to decide what you’ll wear, but when it comes to choosing what to eat for lunch the next three days game over.
Doug Holt 25:55
That’s why we think about Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs always wearing the same clothes so they’d have more capacity for decision-making elsewhere.
And it’s the same thing. Are you also having the men do meal prep so they have their meals prepared ahead of time?
Kate 26:13
Yes but it’s built around what works for them. So, for example, if you work a job where you’re out of the office three days a week, traveling around lunchtime, but you’re in the office Mondays and Fridays everyone’s situation is different.
It’s about getting very tactical. I have people track their behavior, track their food, and then we study it together. It’s an iterative process it’s not what Kate says. Because I had to live differently myself due to my own health issues, I had to learn to speak up for my needs. That’s what I now help these men do.
There are barriers like the client who wines and dines clients. What are you going to do when you’re essentially performing? Are you going to drink? How many drinks? Can you feel comfortable voicing what you need to eat in that moment to stick to your goals?
Or when you’re making lunch for the kids you’re last on the list. Are you just eating the rest of the peanut butter and calling it a day? It’s about getting tactical appreciating how to get ahead of these moments.
Doug Holt 28:01
Hey guys, I just want to share something with you. I’m sure we can both agree that in order to fix something, you need to know what’s broken. And not only that, but a step-by-step methodology on how you can fix it. That’s the easiest way, right? Otherwise, you’re going to be toiling with things. That’s why I created a free training not only showing you how you got to where you are, where your relationship is missing that love, respect, admiration, even intimacy it used to have but also how to get it back.
How do you retain that? Where your wife’s looking at you the same way she used to look at you when she said “I do.” I don’t know about you, but for me, when my wife looks at me like I’m her man, I feel like I can conquer the world. And I want that for you.
Simply go over to thepowerfulman.com/scales that’s thepowerfulman.com/scales and I have a free video training for you. You can just click play and see if this resonates for you. Now, back to the podcast.
Kate 29:04
I’m a huge imperfectionist. No perfect days it’s an asymptote, right? We’re reaching for excellence here, just trying to do the best we can. We just count wins. We just count wins all day long, instead of, “Oh, well, this could have been better.”
Doug Holt 29:25
I love that. You know, here at the TPM ranch as you know we have 12 men next door in the house going through one of our events we call The Alpha Reset. It’s one of our flagship transformational experiences.
It’s always interesting to see the men walk through the door. We try to feed them healthy food as much as possible. And a lot of guys have visceral reactions when they don’t have the chips and candy they’re used to reaching for emotionally. I catch myself as an emotional eater.
Kate 30:07
And that’s another thing to study. The concept of breaking bread eating is a very social, community-driven act. It’s literally nourishment. And it’s not fair to use addiction as a model. With heroin, for example you technically can live without it. You feel like you need it, but you don’t need it to survive. Food you do need to survive.
So it’s a gray area. And if your mantra is “I’m all or nothing” no one is all or nothing. That’s just a great excuse to punt parsing through the gray down the road. This complicated relationship with nourishment is all about the gray. It’s emotionally woven, socially embedded. Temptations are everywhere. We give and receive nourishment in ways that are food, and in ways that are not.
Doug Holt 31:29
Yeah, I find myself at 48 just starting to really learn to cook and do stuff. When I was in the fitness field, I would meal prep, but it would just be a chicken breast the most basic bachelor-type foods possible. And then having kids, I’m always the dad that goes, “Okay, well, I’ll just eat their leftovers.” And that compounds. What I’d love to know what are two or three common mistakes you see a lot of these men making when they first approach you about working with you?
Kate 32:08
I think limitations. So, self-judgments like, “Well, I could never do that. That’s never worked for me in the past, so I can’t do it.” And I’ll say, “Let’s double-click on that. Let’s find out what’s underneath it. Because guess what you can. Doesn’t mean this exact thing will work, but let’s first get past the ‘I can’t do that’ story.” Another one is statements like, “I’m all or nothing. I’m either all in, or I’m not here at all.”
Doug Holt 32:54
Yeah, guilty of that one myself.
Kate 32:56
We all are in certain lanes until it becomes really clear that, “Man, I don’t want to keep making these choices all day, every day. I don’t want to have to keep getting up and starting over again.” So I live by chop wood, carry water. This is a practice. As we say, there are no dress rehearsals and yet everything is a practice. It’s just getting up and doing it again.
And what a beautiful journey if you’re starting in a place with chips and soda and full sugar, and slowly evolving into making better choices that are sustainable. That’s the other big one: “I can’t do this. I can’t sustain this.” And I’ll say, “That’s why we do the work because we’re building processes that are sustainable.”
Doug Holt 34:06
I love this. Listening to you, I’m thinking about myself, but also the thousands of guys we’ve had go through the program. And I wonder if a lot of people believe they should and I know “should” is a bad word but believe they should go all in or all out, because they’re worried that until this becomes a true lifestyle habit, they’ll leave the back door open for themselves to slip and regress.
Kate 34:45
Yeah exactly. Gives themselves an out. But also, they make this pre-assumption that, “This could never be enjoyable. I’ll just be miserable.” Because when they’ve tried in the past, they have been miserable. So they say, “I don’t want to do that again. I don’t want to eat bare chicken and asparagus.” And my response is, “Great because that’s not what we’re suggesting.” So it’s really fear of fear versus just doing.
Doug Holt 35:29
Yeah, I think for me I fall in that category. And I’m finding myself getting out of it with knowledge actually learning to cook. I’ve worked at the Olympia, so I know that environment all too well. The steamed broccoli, sweet potato, chicken breast rinse-and-repeat lifestyle. Egg whites for breakfast. That routine worked for me in my 20s and 30s, but not now as a dad of two kids, running to a baseball game after this. At 48, it feels like I’ve had to break that mold of my own mental construct.
Shoutout to Chef Gregory, one of our guys who’s always pushing me to learn cooking. I’ve actually started and I’m finding all these alternatives. Like, “Wow, okay, this isn’t as hard as I made it out to be.” I had built this mental construct that making healthy food taste good was too difficult, so I had to have this Spartan outlook. Because when I work out, I want to eat better. One begets the other. But then I’d run into, “Crap, I want nachos every once in a while or beers out with the guys.”
Kate 37:01
Exactly and it’s the limiting of things. Especially for your guys it’s like, “I already don’t exist in my own life. I already have zero time for myself. I’m not even driving the car everyone else is making the decisions, and I’m just paying for the gas and buying the hot dog.” So yeah it’s breaking the construct. First, let’s go way back and ask: What does healthy even mean? It’s a super nebulous, loaded, and sometimes toxic term. My version of “healthy” might not be yours.
For me because of Crohn’s and celiac I had to get creative. I had to learn alternatives. I had to learn how to cook differently at 20. I was told, “You can never have pizza, ice cream, or beer again.” Yesterday, one of my residents asked me because we had an ice cream truck for our community “How long did it take you to mourn that?” And it struck me. Because honestly, I didn’t even realize I was mourning it until a decade later.
That’s where I do have hard lines, but most people don’t. Which is why I’m so driven to create joy in spaces that have been marketed as joyless. And there’s a chance to reset your neurology. Like with Alpha Rise and Shine or other programs when you eat differently for a set number of days, then come back, you can reframe your relationship with food.
So, if you’re at a baseball game I’d say, “Okay, what are the actual options?” Nothing is inherently good or bad. A hot dog in a bun isn’t going to wreck your life. Now, if it’s seven chili-cheese dogs, three sodas, and three bowls of ice cream because you’re trying to numb the pain of not honoring your real needs that’s another story. So it’s about breaking things down and validating why you’re reaching for the things you reach for.
Doug Holt 40:37
I love that you’re getting to the real truth behind it. A lot of the men that come in, they’re looking at us our coaches and what we do is break down what I call unconscious commitments. You’re committed to things consciously or unconsciously if it’s a pattern. What’s the story behind that?
The analogy I use, Kate, is: I have a garden at my house. Super easy to just mow the weeds down. Looks fine but then they grow right back. Instead, you’ve got to get on your hands and knees, dig through, pull out the roots, and figure out what’s really going on in that garden. Same thing goes with belief systems the stories we tell ourselves.
I know I’m preaching to the choir with you, but I also know there’s a guy probably on the treadmill or driving his car right now who’s hearing this for the first time. And something that’s been amazing to me I was in the fitness industry for over 20 years and I agree with you: fitness and health can be two completely separate things. You can look aesthetically pleasing and be dying on the inside.
Kate 41:51
And we see it every year. All the time. I’ve lost personal friends people I worked out next to for years, names you would recognize who no longer walk the planet. And they weren’t old.
Doug Holt 42:11
Exactly. When I worked fitness industry events back in my 20s, I’d never seen anything like it. Even now, in other industries, conventions aren’t that extreme. But in fitness, the after-hours scene was some of the unhealthiest stuff you can imagine. People doing drugs because they make you thinner and don’t add calories. Tequila shots because it’s “less than beer.” You rarely see beer at those events, but shots and ecstasy were common.
Shocking to most people who haven’t been in that scene. And here’s the thing: the men I know that you’ve worked with, their first priority is health and longevity. And Kate, these guys look like cover models and they’re in their 40s and 50s, not just 20-year-olds.
One of them lives near you you know who I’m talking about. I know him well. He went through The Alpha Resett, Alpha Rise and Shine, and the Gentleman’s Introduction. He was also the one who connected us for this conversation. He posts in our community constantly when he’s working out. It’s his own accountability, and it inspires others.
I can’t tell you how many men probably 50, by his count have told him, “Hey, thanks for posting. That got me to the gym when I was tired.” It’s inspiring to watch his transformation. And it’s not just physical I’ve seen his confidence rise in every area of his life.
Kate 44:16
I want to unpack that. Because this is powerful there’s a shift happening. Men are saying, “I’m taking the reins back. This can and should be the most powerful chapter of my life.” And that’s what we need for children to grow up with strong role models, we’ve got to get going. We’re living longer but it’s not just about length, it’s about living well.
In gerontology, we call it compressed morbidity. You want to pack as much joy and vitality as possible into your years. I’m not here to live forever I’m here to live fully, and roll into home plate tattered and torn. That’s the goal. But Doug, I also want to hold up accountability here. There’s a reason why you’re tired at the end of the day, when you’re saying, “I don’t want to.”
Look at all the people you’ve nourished today your golden spirit has fed them. That’s why you’re tired. And that’s okay. But even if it takes you longer to lace up your shoes, if you get on the treadmill for five minutes, you can tell yourself, “I did that thing even when I didn’t want to.” And the truth is you won’t stop at five minutes. You’ll do more, because you valued yourself enough to start.
Doug Holt 46:41
That resonates so much with me. We have, I think, nine coaches in The Powerful Man. Amazing guys. And after every live event, we all gain weight. We’ve had to change the menus we bring in, because we pour so much into the men going through the event.
And I know that might sound like bragging but it’s not.
Kate 47:11
I don’t take it that way. I’m the recipient of what you’ve poured into those men. And I get to be a fly on the wall in those rooms. That’s why I’m such a fierce believer in what you’re doing. Because this work is needed. As a gerontologist and a community builder, I appreciate anyone building community. Because community is what keeps us thriving, connected, and loving. But here’s the truth women outlive men. Always have. In my communities, there are far more single women than men.
So I’m fiercely invested in having men live longer, healthier lives so we can have life partners who thrive with us to the very end. Selfishly, I want my own partner by my side until the end too. That’s the magic we’re meant to all be at the table together, not prematurely taken out of the picture.
Doug Holt 48:43
I agree. When men join our program, we go over what we call The Five Territories. Self which you’ve talked about a lot today. Health which is obvious. Wealth which is really abundance, financial or otherwise.
Kate 49:02
It’s all wellness.
Doug Holt 49:08
100%. And then relationships and business. Something I noticed I was the classic guy. When we had our first kid, I gained weight with my wife. I was trying to keep up with her. I’m competitive, so I did it. I remember turning to my wife and going, “I’m sorry.” She said, “What are you talking about?” I said, “You know when we got married, I told you you couldn’t sleep with another man? But then I let myself go. That’s not fair to you.”
Not that it has to be all about aesthetics. Not that it has to be all about looks. But it’s about the commitment you’re giving your partner and the people around you. A lot of men miss that. So, men that come into our program for The Activation Method which is the relationship angle figure out real quick, “Oh crap. I’ve let myself go. I haven’t invested in my own growth, in who I am in relationships, in my spiritual self, or in my physicality.”
The classic American male or in the UK, it’s the same. Go to the pub, have a few beers after work. Which is fine in your 20s, you can get away with it. You can outwork a bad diet to some degree. But as you get older, that compounds. Guys stop growing. They grind it out at work. They become emotionally empty, spiritually empty, and physically drained with no energy to live the life they want.
And what do most men say? “Well, I’m 48. What do you expect?” Or whatever age they are. I’ve heard the same from men in their 30s. And it’s crazy.
Kate 50:54
It’s numbing. And it’s also you know, how you age is how you live. That’s why we have such a rich opportunity. I’m fully devoted to reinventing the paradigm of, “What does a well-lived life look like? What does a powerful man look like? What does wisdom look like?” I think it includes a physique worthy of recognition. Because it shows self-respect.
When we let ourselves go, we’re not just neglecting aesthetics we’re neglecting the commitment to ourselves first and foremost. And with respect to everyone involved attraction and sexuality are at the base of our identity. Being disconnected from sexuality often comes back to nourishment. Where are we getting it?
Doug Holt 52:00
All around. Kate, I’m cognizant of the time. Again, I feel like we could go for eight hours it feels like five minutes talking with you. I’d love to have you back on again. First and foremost, I love what you’re doing. Thank you for the work you do for the men that come through the movement, and for what you represent. It’s a breath of fresh air. If somebody’s watching and wants to find out more about Kate and what you’re doing, where can they go?
Kate 52:35
First of all, Doug, the pleasure is mine. I love each of the guys I’ve worked with. And no secret one of them is mine. It’s a pleasure to build community with you, and it’s an honor to be part of this work. If anyone is interested in continuing the conversation, I have a website: www.advocatelongevity.com. That’s advocate with a K. You can also reach me at advocatelongevity@gmail.com. Pretty simple ways to connect.
Doug Holt 53:30
We’ll make sure to put that in the notes, whether you’re watching on YouTube or listening on a podcast player. Kate, I truly appreciate all you’re doing. I’d love to have you back on to talk about the eight aspects of fitness you mentioned. Guys, this is your opportunity if you want to shoot questions in, if you’re in the community, email vip@thepowerfulman.com and let us know what you’d like to hear from Kate. Kate, thank you again.
Kate 54:10
Thank you, Doug. Likewise.
Doug Holt 54:14
Gentlemen, as I always say in the moment of insight, take massive action. If you’re like me right now, you’re motivated. Maybe you want to drop down and do some push-ups. I’m about to go to my son’s baseball game, and I’ll be moving around. Kate’s message is inspiring it shows us this can fit into our lifestyles. Make a decision now. Kate gave you amazing tips you can apply today.
Set your workout clothes out tonight. In the morning, go do your Alpha Rise and Shine, or hit the gym. Give yourself the love you deserve, starting with your body.
Whatever you do take action. We’ll see you next time on The Powerful Man Show.
