Rick Valentine

My doctor said I was fine. I was 213 lbs and couldn't figure out why.

At 44, I was riding 100+ miles a week, eating in a deficit, and still getting softer. My labs came back "normal." Nobody had ever checked my thyroid or my testosterone. When someone finally did, both were off.

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36 → 33waist size

29 lbsof fat off

8 lbsof muscle on

10 → 4visceral fat, the fat around your organs. 10 is where the scanner flags danger.

The scale only moved 15 lbs. Fat and muscle are from my InBody scans, November 2021 and September 2026. Muscle means skeletal muscle.

Rick Valentine before and after — Before, and after. Same guy.

2021

I wasn't lazy. The work had stopped paying off.

In 2021 I was 44, 213 lbs, and 25% body fat. My visceral fat score was a 10. That's the danger line.

I wasn't sitting on the couch. I was riding over 100 miles a week and eating less than I burned. I lifted when I wasn't hurt, and I kept getting hurt on basic movements I'd done a thousand times. I kept getting a little softer anyway.

I bought black shirts to hide my body. I avoided cameras. When a photo was unavoidable, I worked the angle.

For about 3 years I thought this was just how it was going to be from now on. Wanting it was never what I was short of. The work had stopped paying off, and nothing I tried explained why.

Then my doctor ran my labs. Everything came back within normal range.

Rick Valentine in 2021 at 213 lbs — 202144 · 213 lbs · 25% body fat

What normal missed

"Not sick" and "working right" are two different tests.

A standard physical is built to answer one question: are you sick? I wasn't. But nobody had asked the other question: is your body actually working the way it should?

I run my business on data. Every problem gets a diagnostic before it gets a solution. I'd been running my own body on feel and guesswork for over 40 years.

So I kept looking. I got comprehensive labs and worked with a specialized doctor who could read them. I was hypothyroid. Your thyroid sets how fast your body burns energy at rest, and mine was running slow. My testosterone was lower than it should have been, and in my case it was hitting my fat, my recovery, my libido and my mood.

Neither one had ever been tested. Not once in 44 years.

Once I fixed those and paired it with lifting and a good diet, my body started responding again. I felt much better within a month. Within 6 weeks, a scan showed fat coming off, even though the scale went up. Within 2 months, my body composition had changed significantly.

The labs didn't do the work. They told me what work I needed to do.

Step 1 · 2021 to 2025

In the first 6 weeks, the scale went up. That was the best thing that happened to me.

Here's what my InBody scans showed in the first 6 weeks, November 24, 2021 to January 4, 2022, the same weeks I started treatment:

+5.4 lbs

Scale

−5.7 lbs

Fat

+5.7 lbs

Muscle

The fat and the muscle cancel out. The 5.4 lbs the scale reported was water and other lean tissue.

If I'd only been watching a bathroom scale, I would have quit in week 6. Right in the middle of the thing that was working.

November 2021 to June 2025

Fat20 lbs off

Muscle3 lbs on

Scaledown 17 lbs

Visceral fat10 down to 6

Weight

213.5

Nov 2021

196.8

Jun 2025

198.5

Sep 2026

Fat mass

52.8

Nov 2021

32.6

Jun 2025

23.7

Sep 2026

The scale reports one number for two different changes. You can't manage what you can't see.

Step 2 · 2025 to 2026

Then I learned there was a second step.

In 2025 I learned about the next piece: peptides. I added them on top of a body that had already been fixed, and I kept training.

Between my June 2025 and September 2026 scans:

Fat9 lbs off

Muscle5 lbs on

Scaleup 2 lbs

Visceral fat6 down to 4

The rest of the difference is water and other lean tissue, not fat.

My June 2025 scan was taken 2 weeks after I started peptides. This step is peptides and training together, so I don't credit either one alone. This was my own decision, and it isn't a recommendation.

How I actually live

I didn't give up my life to get here.

I was told what it would take. Stop drinking. Get up at 4. Meal prep on Sundays. No more dinners out.

I kept the drinks and the dinners out.

I drink 2 to 3 nights a week. A bottle of wine with my wife at dinner. A few beers with the guys and a game on. I haven't gone 10 days without a drink in 5 years, and I let loose on vacation.

At 28 I drank the same way and stayed lean. The drinking was the one thing that hadn't changed. So it wasn't why my body did.

To be straight about it: not drinking is better for your health. If you want to go that way, you'll probably get there faster. It just isn't the reason my weight changed.

What I don't skip is training. At least 5 days a week. That's the deal I made, and I keep it.

"My goal is to live a great life and feel and look good doing it. Not to prove to strangers how disciplined I can be."

The 4 years

It took me 4 years to figure out what to do, and in what order. You don't have to spend 4 years finding it.

I found step 1 in 2021. I didn't learn about step 2 until 2025.

Those 4 years weren't my biology. They were me not knowing what to look for, who to ask, or what order to do it in.

That's the part I can shorten for someone else. Not the work. The work is still yours. But the searching, the guessing, and the years of trying harder at the wrong thing? Nobody else has to repeat those.

Measure.

Find out what's actually going on inside your body, not just what the scale says.

Understand.

Get a clear explanation of what the numbers mean and what's working against you.

Intervene.

Fix what's off, in the right order, and measure again.

The decline is visible. What's contributing to it may not be.

What I'm building

Arxus is what I built so other men can get their answers faster than I got mine.

It starts with comprehensive labs, the kind I never had until I went looking. Then a licensed clinician walks you through what your results mean and what will help correct anything that's off.

I'm not a doctor, and I don't give medical advice. I'm the guy who went through it, and the operator who built the system around it. Licensed clinicians handle the medicine.

Take the assessment

It Shouldn't Be This Hard. 16 questions, free. At the end you get a written Readout: where the decline is showing up and what's still unanswered. If it looks like a fit, you can book a 20-minute call with me.

Who I am

Husband. Father. Operator.

2023business sold

5 daysa week, training

5 yearsof scans

I've spent my career building businesses, and I built and sold one in 2023. I also worked inside a men's health clinic, where I saw how the industry works, and how it doesn't.

I'm not a fitness guru. I'm an entrepreneur. I know the early mornings, the client dinners, and the days that fall apart before 9am. I know what it's like to have the business, the family, and your health all pulling on the same 24 hours.

I turn 50 in December 2026. I carry more muscle than I did in my early 40s, and I walk into a room differently than I used to. I love being in photos with my kids now. Men I haven't seen in years stop me and ask what changed.

This site is my answer.

I share what I learned, as I learn it.

Scan data, what I got wrong, and what actually moved the numbers.

You already know what to do. The question is why it stopped working.

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