All right Paul, it’s just you and me. This is sincere. Here we go…
OK you’re going to need help with the teeth, and there’s nothing you can do about your age, but there are things you can fix on your own. First of all, there are guys way uglier than you who are in happy relationships. You have a job, you take care of your financial affairs, you’re responsible compared to some people, you aren’t starting from zero. You’re clearly fairly intelligent, stop acting like a little girl and we can fix that. Trust me. And you CAN mitigate the age thing by being better physically than you were even 20 years ago. It’s not too late, we’ll discuss it. Not only that, you don’t need to wait. You can start right now.
Write it down somewhere that your goal is to feel better, look better, and you’re giving yourself a full year to do it. Give yourself some six month goals and some 12 month goals. For your first three months, your goal should only be to start tracking your progress. If you decide to go to the gym three days a week, your goal is to do that, three days a week, for the first three months. Don’t worry about how much weight you’re lifting, don’t worry about what exercises or how much muscle you gain, whether you lose fat or not, just focus on building a habit.
Even if you are doing everything wrong, if you do it with consistency you’re way ahead of 90% of your competition. You could always fix your exercises, work out better, eat better foods, be more efficient, learn the bigger lift, you could always fine-tune what you’re doing but you need to build the habit first. That’s all you’re worried about for the first three months. BECOME consistent.
You don’t look too overweight, so building a little bit of muscle will radically change your body and you’ll actually drop body fat percentage just by weight training, increasing your protein by at least 50 g a day and keeping your calories exactly where they are right now. You have absolutely no need to cut calories. None. You have an advantage over overweight people.
Your metabolism kicks into high gear as you add muscle. A brand new person can get something called newbie gains. Your body will build muscle like a spreading wildfire that first year. You are a little older and you don’t look like you eat a lot of protein, so for you it might be a little slower if you don’t fix the protein problem. Young guys who kill it can gain 2 pounds of muscle per month (on average) their first year. 25 pounds of muscle is an enormous amount of muscle. You’re not 18 years old, you and I are not gonna reach that. BUT! If you reach five or 10 pounds of muscle added to your frame, that’s considerable. You will look radically different.
You have no idea how much 10 pounds of muscle is for somebody your size and just how reachable it is, that’s less than 1 pound a month. Seriously, you will change your life. You’ll sleep better, you’ll look better, you’ll have way more energy, your metabolism will be through the roof compared to where it is now. Trust me Paul. Just try it.
First of all, go to your local rec center and get a membership. It’s a lot less expensive than the fancy gym and will have 90% of what the expensive gyms have. Now, if you want to splurge and get the fancy gym, believe me, you’ll enjoy it.
You’re not gonna look like a supermodel at your age but in a year you will FEEL and LOOK like a different person.
Now about your “look”. The two major things you have control over are your hair and your clothes.
Look, I’m losing my hair at my age too. So I keep it nice and short. I used to have long curly hair and women loved it. Can’t do that anymore. If I were to do what you do with your hair, it would look horrible. So I can’t please everybody, I don’t have enough hair for that, so I go for a “look”.
There are women out there that like men with short tight hair. So do that. Women who love long hair aren’t looking at you anyway. Pick a characteristic and be good at it. Because there are women who will like it. Focus on them and not the ones you’re losing out on.
Now, your clothes. I like to dress pretty sharp, especially when I was younger, because my wife likes that. I get the impression you don’t have a lot of money since you don’t brag about making big money like Pat does. Go for the sophisticated athletic look. Think comfort, think classic, think simple. It’s a lot less expensive to maintain. It’s kind of sporty. Nice quality sweatshirts, quality gym shirts, quality workout pants. Nice training shoes, there are women that like that. It makes the man look busy, it makes him look active, it makes him look younger, and if you carry it with a smile instead of whining all the time, you can pull it off.
Plenty of women don’t like that look. But you don’t really have a “look“ right now except for “stay away from my kids“. Sorry, that’s the way you come across. So pick a look, any luck, and just get good at it. Someone will find it appealing. You are not Brad Pitt. He’s appealing in any look. The rest of us need to pick a look. Pick one you can do.
Get some nice jeans and some zip pull overs, stop trying to look special. Just go for sporty and casual and sharp. Classic, clean lines, no Star Wars shirts, no complicated patterns, simple colors. Problem solved.
At least you’ll have a foot in different “types“ of guys that some women like. Focus on what you can do, not on what you can’t do.
Paul, you can’t just keep whining. If you’re not even going to try, you don’t have the right to complain. There are kids with cancer they don’t complain as much as you do. At least try something, man. You dress like somebody who doesn’t have a look that they’re going for, style your hair like the guy who used to style it that way 20 years ago. Have an actual plan! Shake things up. It’s actually kind of fun. Save up a little bit, go buy yourself a new wardrobe. Cut out some of your bad time wasting habits and bad spending habits, go get a Rec or gym membership and check out YouTube for an endless supply of really good advice on how to get into really good shape at your own age.
But you gotta stop whining, man. It does not attract people. At all."