Tiny Steps to Enormous Progress: How I Revived My Fitness at 35 and Made a Lifechanging Transformation
Take the guesswork out and apply these simple hacks that turn a regular beer-drinking, chocolate-loving writer into a fitness fanatic.
My fitness journey is not something i’ve shared here on substack, but it does tell the story about my background and struggles you might relate with. If it helps someone, just one person, I’ll be happy.
When you get into your mid-30s or early 40s, your metabolism mysteriously throws an anchor overboard and says no way, José.
It’s as if every greasy cheeseburger, beer, and Galaxy dairy milk chocolate you devour is more challenging to shift than a tenant who stopped paying the rent.
What’s even worse, and a double whammy to your self-esteem, is the guilt tax from eating food you enjoy. It feels f**king awful. It’s a cycle I thought I’d never be able to get out of.
Growing up in South Africa and spending every other weekend on my dad’s Ostrich farm meant life was outdoors.
Staying inside to play video games was only appropriate if you wanted the other kid’s parents to think you were a loser “frying your brain”.
As a family, when I was 12, we immigrated to England, where you were stuck indoors for long periods because of the unreliable weather. It slowly shaped your daily routine.
Instead of heading outside to play, my friends would all agree to meet at a house and have the four of us huddled around the T.V. for a stint on Goldeneye on the N64.
I’m amazed at how those same habits trickle into your adult life. You lose that sporty side of yourself because life responsibilities take over, like earning money to pay bills.
For me, I was constantly behind the eight ball.
I’d get up at the very last minute, so I’d have just enough time to get to work, which meant I hadn’t organised a packed lunch. It usually resulted in a day of snacking out of the vending machine.
And because I went out the evening before for some beers to break up the week, I hadn’t bought any groceries, so I went for the easy takeaway option.
It would’ve been fine as a one-off, except I’d repeat this pattern two or three nights in a row and then each week like a stuck record.
There’s nothing crazy here in anything that I did, and you could be reading this thinking my downward spiral has a lot in common with almost everyone else trying to lose weight.
I turned everything around. Starting with my limiting view that fitness and losing weight had to be this painful experience of eating rabbit food and running marathons.
What changed was a series of simple things I wish someone had told me sooner. They are as obvious as a punch in the face, but they re-wired my backwards thinking.
Ready?
Let’s dive in.
Start small, somewhere trivial and mundane.
I used to sit at my office desk, grabbing my belly fat, staring at my screen, having already talked my way out of going to the gym later that evening.
The dopamine hit of stuffing my face with a chicken chow meine would cancel any idea of exercising that evening because it would be a wasted session, so what the heck was the point?
I realised my inaction and mindset towards my health resulted from intimidation. I was thinking about the Everest I’d have to climb, losing weight and eating healthy every day with a jam-packed gym routine, which, from where I was, was entirely unrealistic.
If anything, it piled on more pressure and made me avoid action altogether. It was a backward mindset. I didn’t value the small, mundane things I could consistently commit to.
Each time I faced two options, I’d opt for the easy route, skip the gym and order a takeaway.
Starting with a small idea you take action on is how you turn an ocean liner around that’s hurtling at full speed in the opposite direction.
Reducing intimidation by doing the most seemingly trivial thing was my aha moment, not the kamikaze wholesale changes I thought I needed to make.
When I heard clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson’s advice on why tidying your room is essential, and when you can’t do that, organise your chest of draws. If that’s too intimidating, then aim for managing a sock draw.
It was the perfect metaphor for your health.
It might seem like nothing, but you’ll start the momentum process if you fix some small things.
Jordan Peterson — Source
“If something announces itself to you as in need of repair that you could repair, then, hey, fix it. If you fix 100 things like that, your life would be a lot different. I tell people to fix the things they repeat every day because people tend to think of those as trivial.
You get up; you brush your teeth. You have your breakfast. You have your routine. Well, those probably constitute 50% of your life. People think they’re mundane and don’t need to pay attention to them.
No, no, that’s exactly wrong. The small things you do every day are the most important things you do. Hands-down. You have to ask yourself how I will make this place (your room) better.”
Like I say, it’s the perfect metaphor for your health. My starting point in all this was zero exercise and a diet of a drunken sailor.
As a product of lockdowns, my anxiety was sky-high, which, in a weird twist, ironically got me into walking each day after work.
Because I enjoyed going for a walk and in no way related it to exercise, just a way to get fresh air, I also went during my lunch hour; then, some mornings, when I decided not to push the snooze button, I’d take a stroll before work.
I was craving more hydration than a desert dune and would be spending more time at the water station at work. I also swapped out my daily can of full-fat Coca-Cola for the sugar-free option, which I can tell you, being a fizzy can snob, was hard.
As each week went by, it felt like I was adding another spoke to the bicycle tire and gathering momentum. What started with walking because of cabin fever resulted in a $ 30-a-month gym membership and three one-hour weight sessions in my weekly routine.
The weight was flying off quicker than a hot knife through butter, and it never felt like I had made any significant changes to my lifestyle.
It was clear when I took a moment to put my flag in the ground and look back that I was on a different course and liked it.
I weighed myself daily for six months, and you could see a consistent downward trend that added to my motivation to keep going.
Tracking your actions is like a compass that Keeps you on course.
It started with walking.
A work colleague I’d speak to asked, “How many steps did you do today, Jay?”. Because now I was worse than a vegan activist, everyone knew I was on a health kick.
Counting steps is something I’d never considered. It felt like I was getting good mileage into my legs, so what difference did it make?
Your Apple iPhone has a health app that tracks your steps if you keep your phone on you. For me, this was a game changer. It was like pulling the acorn out of the river wall, setting off an avalanche of momentum.
I went tracking mad, which gave me a clearer picture of where I was with everything. I tracked every meal. Every litre of water. Every calorie. Every macro and every step.
This makes me sound like some self-professed hero when I just scanned the bar code on everything I ate, and My Fitness Pal did the rest for me. The results showed I was in a calorie surplus daily, and seeing how far this ocean liner was off course was bloody sobering.
It’s simple: If you eat more calories than you consume, you will not lose weight. I don’t care how much coconut oil you cook with or how fast or slow you think your metabolism is: calories in vs. calories out.
To lose weight, you need to be in a calorie deficit.
You need to eat less food than your body consumes in energy, and for you to nail this out of the park, you have to track what you put in your mouth.
A cascade of studies including this research paper submitted by the Cardiometabolic Research Institute said, “The prevailing concept of caloric restriction, often called the “calories in, calories out”, remains a fundamental principle in obesity management. Energy balance, which involves the relationship between calorie intake and expenditure, is crucial in obesity”.
You must know your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate); without getting overly technical, your BMR is the maintenance calories you need to survive, that’s without doing any extra exercise.
When I started this journey at 35, my maintenance calories were 2400 daily, but without even realizing it, I consumed 3000 plus daily, so it’s no wonder I felt like there was no escaping the dadbod.
I recommend working out what your BMR is. You can use a calculator like this online. Or I recommend speaking to your General practitioner or a health expert.
The punch line is if you don’t know this, you’re guessing.
I now limit myself to 2,000 calories every day. I use them wisely, a piggy bank where you have limited resources and where you spend it on the things that give you the most satisfaction.
If I know I’ll be out on the weekend eating/spending like an American Central Bank, I’ll cut back, say, 2 or 3 days leading up to it and drop to 1500 calories.
It gives me some extra wiggle room on the weekends I intend to enjoy myself.
Cheat days are a myth to me. I eat food I enjoy and ensure it’s in moderation, which has been the key to success. To know what moderation is, you need to track everything.
Unlock the secret to unwavering consistency.
Those motivational quotes online make me cringe, but they go insanely viral because there’s a seed of truth behind some of them.
Here’s one you can take to the bank; “You must surround yourself with people on the same mission as you.”
Consistency is hard, but when you achieve it, the results are as magical as Harry Potter casting a spell at Hogwarts.
The greatest unlock for me was putting myself in a position where I couldn’t disappoint others. I was happy to let myself down, but it would bother me for days if I let others down.
I also needed someone to impress and that dopamine hit of praise and encouragement when I made progress. If this feels like you, then use it as a strategy. Find a friend who’s into fitness, buddy up with someone at the gym or work.
Tim Ferris, one of the world’s leading productivity gurus, tells an interesting story on the effects of being accountable to someone else.
Tim Ferris — Source
“Doing anything with a friend, even if it’s virtual, holding each other accountable in some fashion is important. You can put some money on the line, even if it’s a dollar or 10 dollars.
I know a Google engineer who once told a friend that they agreed to pay each other a dollar if they missed a workout together, but even those minimal stakes helped increase compliance tremendously.”
For me, I took it one step further.
I wanted to make myself accountable to someone I couldn’t lie my arse off to like I did to myself in the mirror for seven years.
So, I hired an online trainer. I wanted to work on a plan devised by an expert without having to second guess if what I was doing was correct and trust the process.
I was frustrated with my inconsistency, and I also knew deep down I wouldn’t let the person down.
I still have an online trainer in place today, which keeps me accountable. Each week, I have a training plan to follow.
I track my food, which we both see. My calories and steps are tracked. I add progress pics regularly. And I weigh myself daily.
It works unlike anything I’ve ever done before. It’s a big reason for my consistency and success at something I’ve never considered a strength.
People will inevitably ask the question, so you know I use Chris James, who is a family man and formally a cricketer (you see my selection criteria) and a firefighter — not an affiliate link.
Final Thoughts
Your life is for living and enjoying yourself.
Many people will add their two cents about specific diets and a whole host of things to consider that may be valid. These are the things that underpin it all for me.
Start small.
Track everything.
Be accountable to others.
When I was working that office job, I wish someone had just said, Hey, do these small changes, and it’ll lead to significant results.
Better late to the party than never.
I still drink like a fish and eat chocolate like a crack addict.
But just like one or two gym sessions won’t turn you into Hercules, one or two days of indulging won’t send you down Lombard Street without a set of brakes.
Unless you let it.
As Jordan Peterson says, it’s the things you do consistently every day, and they’re not trivial. They might be mundane, but they make the most significant difference when you put disciplined effort into them.
You’ll look forward to letting your hair down when you’re on track, occasionally and without the guilt tax.
I love talking about health and fitness. Regardless of where you are, share your journey in the comments.
I’ll be reading them.
I feel like i wrote this🙏
Thank you, Jayden.