The Weight Never Changes: Why I Went Back to the Gym at 38

I had extra time, a lot of frustration, and two choices about what I was going to do with both.

I didn’t discover fitness at 38.

I’d lifted weights in my mid-20s. I knew what a bench press was. I knew what it felt like to get stronger. I knew the satisfaction of adding weight to the bar and watching your body slowly change because of something you were actually doing.

Then life happened.

Kids came along.

Responsibilities piled up.

Time disappeared.

Training became less important. Eating whatever was convenient became easier. And over the years, I got fat.

There’s really no inspirational way to say that.

I got fucking fat.

It wasn’t some dramatic event where I woke up one morning, looked in the mirror and suddenly didn’t recognize myself. It happened the way it happens to a lot of people.

Slowly.

You skip the gym because you’re busy.

Then you skip it because you’re tired.

Then you haven’t been there in months.

You eat whatever is convenient because you’ve got kids, work and a hundred other things demanding your attention.

Eventually becomes next month.

Next month becomes next year.

And one day you realize the guy who used to work out in his twenties has been gone for a pretty long fucking time.

Then I Turned 38

At 38, my life changed.

I became a co-parent.

And suddenly there were stretches of time when my kids weren’t with me.

That’s a strange adjustment when you’re used to being Dad all the time.

For the first time in years, I had something parents constantly complain they don’t have enough of:

Time.

But there’s something nobody tells you about suddenly having more time.

You still have to decide what the fuck you’re going to do with it.

I had two options.

I could sit around feeling sorry for myself.

I could drink.

I could order pizza.

I could replay everything that pissed me off about life.

I could let anger, anxiety, frustration and stress eat up those empty hours.

And if I did that long enough, I’d probably end up even more miserable than when I started.

Or…

I could go back to the gym.

So I went back to the gym.

I Wasn’t Starting a Wellness Journey

Let’s get something straight.

There wasn’t some cinematic moment where I stood on top of a mountain at sunrise and decided it was finally time to become the best version of myself.

Fuck that.

I was pissed off.

I had frustration from life.

I had anxiety.

I had anger.

I had stress from work.

I had the emotional fallout that comes with realizing your life isn’t going exactly the way you once pictured it.

And I needed somewhere to put all of it.

The gym gave me somewhere.

Instead of drinking about it, I could lift.

Instead of sitting around angry, I could train.

Instead of staring at the ceiling thinking about shit I couldn’t control, I could focus on something I could.

And that’s when I rediscovered something about weights that I’d forgotten.

The Weight Never Changes

Life moves the fucking goalposts constantly.

Relationships change.

Careers change.

People change.

Plans change.

Some days everything seems to be working.

Other days you wonder who the fuck is writing the script and whether they’ve been drinking.

But forty-five pounds is always forty-five pounds.

Twenty kilograms is always twenty kilograms.

The bar doesn’t care if you’re angry.

It doesn’t care if you’re anxious.

It doesn’t care whether work sucked.

It doesn’t care whether somebody pissed you off.

It doesn’t know if you’re having the greatest year of your life or one you’d rather forget.

It doesn’t judge you.

It doesn’t argue with you.

It doesn’t lie to you.

It just waits for you to pick it up.

And progress is beautifully simple.

Pounds.

Kilograms.

Reps.

Sets.

Time.

Last month I could lift this.

Today I can lift more.

Last month I could do eight reps.

Today I did ten.

Yesterday sucked.

Today I still trained.

There was something incredibly satisfying about having one part of my life where the rules didn’t randomly fucking change.

The Gym Didn’t Fix My Problems

This is where fitness content sometimes turns into bullshit.

You’ll hear people talk about the gym like touching a barbell somehow solves every problem in your life.

It doesn’t.

The gym didn’t make difficult situations disappear.

It didn’t eliminate stress.

It didn’t remove anxiety from my life.

It didn’t make co-parenting effortless.

It didn’t magically solve relationships, work problems or anything else waiting for me outside those doors.

The problems were still there when the workout ended.

What changed was what I did with the energy they created.

Anger could become another rep.

Frustration could become another set.

Stress could become another five pounds.

A shitty day could become a great workout.

Instead of letting everything happening around me dictate what happened to me, I had somewhere productive to put it.

That distinction mattered.

A lot.

Then Something Else Happened

I started changing.

At first, that’s what you’d expect.

Weight started coming off.

Muscle started coming back.

Strength improved.

Clothes started fitting differently.

I started looking more like someone who trained and less like someone who remembered training sometime during the previous presidential administration.

And yeah, that felt fucking good.

I’m not going to give you the standard fitness-influencer speech about how appearance doesn’t matter.

Of course it matters.

I like having muscle.

I like being stronger.

I like looking better.

I like looking good naked.

There. I said it.

Most people who start exercising aren’t secretly dreaming about optimizing mitochondrial function.

They want to lose the gut.

They want bigger arms.

They want their clothes to fit better.

They want to walk past a mirror naked without immediately thinking,

Jesus Christ, what the fuck happened?

Those are perfectly legitimate reasons to train.

They just weren’t the only reasons anymore.

Somewhere Along the Way, My Goals Changed

I started paying more attention to what was happening inside my body, not just what I could see in the mirror.

And the older I got, the more important that became.

At 25, I cared mostly about what I looked like and how much weight I could move.

At 43, I still care about those things.

But now I also care about blood pressure.

Blood glucose.

Cholesterol.

Cardiovascular fitness.

Sleep.

Recovery.

Nutrition.

Hormones.

Potential nutrient deficiencies.

Maintaining muscle as I get older.

Being strong enough to keep doing the shit I enjoy doing.

Being healthy enough to enjoy the life I’m working so hard to build.

And that’s where my relationship with fitness really started changing.

Looking fit and being healthy overlap.

But they’re not necessarily the same thing.

A set of abs doesn’t show you someone’s bloodwork.

Big arms don’t tell you what their blood pressure is.

An impressive bench press doesn’t tell you whether they can walk up three flights of stairs without feeling like they’re negotiating with God.

And a carefully lit Instagram picture sure as hell doesn’t tell you the entire story.

That’s What This Section Is Going to Be About

I’m not a doctor.

I’m not a dietitian.

And I’m definitely not a 22-year-old fitness influencer whose full-time occupation appears to be screaming at a camera about the ONE FOOD DESTROYING YOUR TESTOSTERONE before spending 19 minutes telling you it’s fucking Oreos.

I’m a 43-year-old dad who started lifting in his twenties, stopped taking care of himself, got fat, came back to training at 38 and has spent the years since learning more about his body, health and fitness along the way.

And I’ve got the pictures to prove it.

[PHOTO — AROUND AGE 38 / STARTING OVER]

This wasn’t Day One of some carefully planned transformation. This was simply where I was when I decided I was done going in the wrong direction.

[PHOTO — PROGRESS]

Consistency isn’t particularly exciting. It just happens to fucking work.

[PHOTO — CURRENT / AGE 43]

Five years later. Still learning. Still training. And thinking considerably more about health than I did when this started.

I’m not showing you those pictures because I think I’ve discovered the secret to fitness.

I haven’t.

There isn’t one.

I’m showing them because when I talk about starting over, I’ve started over.

When I talk about getting fat, I’ve been fat.

When I talk about losing weight, building muscle, becoming stronger and trying to improve my health in my forties, I’m talking about something I’ve actually been doing.

That’s the perspective I’m bringing here.

Personal experience when personal experience is useful.

Actual research when we’re talking about things that require actual research.

And a very clear distinction between the two.

We’re Going to Talk About the Shit You Can’t See

In the articles that follow this one, we’re going deeper.

We’ll talk about what health markers may be worth discussing with your healthcare provider and why establishing a baseline can be useful.

We’ll talk about blood glucose and insulin sensitivity.

We’ll talk about why skeletal muscle is useful for considerably more than filling out a T-shirt.

We’ll talk about cardiovascular fitness—even though some lifters behave as if twenty minutes of cardio will cause their biceps to immediately fall off.

We’ll talk about nutrition.

Protein.

Sleep.

Recovery.

Supplements.

Hormones.

Deficiencies.

Getting older.

And the tremendous amount of bullshit that gets sold to people who simply want to feel better and look good naked.

Because most people don’t need fitness to become their entire personality.

They don’t need to become bodybuilders.

They don’t need six meals packed into Tupperware containers.

They don’t need to spend two hours in the gym six days a week.

And they probably don’t need whatever revolutionary supplement some shredded asshole on Instagram happens to be selling this week.

Most people want something much simpler.

Feel better.

Look better.

Get stronger.

Be healthier.

And still have time to live their fucking life.

That’s the lane we’re staying in.

I’m 43. I’m Not Finished.

That’s probably the most important part of this whole thing.

This isn’t a before-and-after story.

There’s no final picture.

I’m still training.

Still learning.

Still making adjustments.

Still figuring out what works for me.

Still making mistakes.

Still getting older, whether I particularly fucking appreciate that fact or not.

And my goals will probably continue changing.

Maybe yours will too.

You might start because you hate how you look in a picture.

That’s fine.

You might start because your doctor told you something you didn’t particularly enjoy hearing.

You might start because you can’t keep up with your kids.

You might start after a divorce.

A breakup.

A health scare.

A birthday.

Or because one random Tuesday you looked in the mirror and decided,

Enough.

It doesn’t really matter what gets you through the door.

What matters is what you do once you’re there.

I went back because I had anger, anxiety, frustration and time I needed to do something productive with.

I stayed because training became something considerably bigger.

Five years later, life still changes.

Work still changes.

Relationships still change.

Plans still change.

Kids grow up.

Priorities move.

Some things get easier.

Some get harder.

But there’s still something strangely comforting waiting for me in the gym.

A plate that says 45 LB today will say 45 LB tomorrow.

The weight doesn’t care what’s happening in my life.

It doesn’t move the goalposts.

It doesn’t make excuses.

And neither can I.

The weight never changes.

The question is whether I do.

⭐⭐⭐⭐☆

Five stars require cardio.

The program matters less than finding a training split you can live with long enough to make it count.