At school I was the active one — basketball, rugby union, never a thought about my weight. Then I left, started working, and life took over. No sport, long hours, eating and drinking like none of it had a cost. By my early twenties I was 100 kilos at 6'1". I'd turned into someone I didn't recognise, and it happened so slowly I never saw it arrive.
What turned it around the first time wasn't a program. It was a bet — a mate wagered I couldn't fit into a pair of jeans by a trip we had coming up. That was the trigger. I started eating properly, started training, and got into triathlon. The weight came off — down to 77 kilos — and for five years I raced as an elite age-grouper. I won local races, travelled the world, cycled in France. For a while I was convinced that version of me was permanent.
Then I wrecked my back. Multiple bulging discs, and just like that the training stopped. Going from twice-a-day sessions to nothing is harder than people think. I kept eating like an athlete while doing nothing, and the weight came back. By the time I turned 40 I was 96 kilos.
That was the second trigger, and it came in a stupid, perfect form: I bought a paddleboard and was too heavy to stay on it. Went straight in the water. Forty years old, telling myself a story about who I was that my body flatly disagreed with. So I started again — CrossFit first, then I actually got good on the board. Back down, stronger, rebuilt.
And then it happened a third time. I spent a stretch living out in the country, away from friends and any decent gym, at a desk all day, with a few too many winters in Europe behind me. 93 kilos. The difference at 46 is that I didn't panic. I'd done this at 30 and at 40, and I knew exactly the way back: ten thousand steps a day, an hour's walk each morning, the gym three days a week, protein first. I'm 82 now.
Why OVER35FIT exists
Here's what three rounds of this taught me. The fitness industry is built around people who live in the gym — the buff guys who train for a living and make it look easy because it's their whole life. Most of their advice is useless to the rest of us, because we work, we've got families and commitments, and we can't lift weights all day. After 35 the body changes, food hits differently, and a job keeps you in a chair. The plan has to account for all of that or it falls apart by week three.
I'm not a gym professional. I'm a nine-to-five worker who's been fit at a high level, lost it, and found the way back more than once. The drift happens to almost everyone. So does the comeback — if you've got the right trigger and a plan built for the life you actually live. That plan is what I've put into OVER35FIT. It's the thing I wish someone had handed me at 40.
You don't need motivation. You need a trigger and a plan that survives your actual life.