In August of 2016, just a few weeks before my 48th birthday, I lost my job.


That same week, my doctor told me I was pre-diabetic. “Most men over 45 are,” he added, but that didn’t make me feel any better about it. My cholesterol numbers were “concerning.” For at least a year prior, my own snoring would wake me in the middle of the night. My toes tingled, or my fingers. Some nights, my calves would cramp so hard I nearly kicked myself out of bed.


I weighed 240 pounds, which no one in 21st-century America considers “fat.” After all, there are plenty of 40-something Americans lumbering through life at over 300 pounds (it’s estimated that half of American adults will be obese by 2030), and there are people twice that weight who have their own TV shows.

So, how overweight is 240? I looked up “ideal weight” for a male my height (6’3”), and the numbers shocked me: 176-216 lbs.


No. Way.


The high end, 216, looked doable, maybe. But 176? Impossible. I had no memory of not weighing 240 as an adult. I may have weighed 235 one year, or 245 the next, but ever since college, I had always been “big.” Being big is fine…when you’re in your twenties. When you’re pushing fifty, however, big starts to become a problem.


Maybe you’ve experienced similar things — the cramps, the sleep apnea, the tingling and numbness. You’re probably pre-diabetic. Maybe you’ve accepted these as just part of aging. Maybe you swap stories of your aches and pains with your buddies, agree that “gettin’ old ain’t for sissies,” and order another beer.


Been there, done that.


But back to the story. I was a college instructor for close to twenty years. There were cutbacks, and I was laid off. I could have found another teaching gig somewhere, but I was over it. If I had to go back to the bottom of the ladder, it was going to be my ladder. I was 47 years old, my body was beginning to rebel against me, and now, I was unemployed.


Then an old grad-school buddy offered me a place to land if I wanted to move to Helena, Montana. I knew nothing about Helena, or Montana for that matter. But rip-cords don’t come dangling out of the sky that often in life, and the older you get, the rarer they are. So I sold or gave away everything that wouldn’t fit in my car and headed west, sight unseen, with no job prospects, tingling toes, and a cramp that lasted the better part of 1500 miles. Three days later, I woke up on a half-inflated air mattress on my friend’s kitchen floor — more than a little hung over, I must confess — everything I owned in the back of a Ford Edge.


I had to change my life.


Fast forward two years. As I write this, I am 50 years old, a certified personal trainer, and best of all, more than 70 pounds lighter. A few pounds a month of fat-loss is hardly a barn-burning pace, and any bodybuilder or physique competitor would scoff at that. But I am not a bodybuilder or physique competitor, and I wasn’t trying to win a race. Fitness is a marathon, not a sprint. And besides, how many years had I spent packing on those extra pounds? Twenty? Twenty-five? Even if it had taken me three years to lose it, I’d still call it a bargain.

And guess what? I still can’t see my lower abs in the mirror. I mention this to stress a very important point: do not underestimate the amount of fat you’re carrying around. If you think you have ten to lose, it’s probably twenty. If you think it’s twenty, assume it’s forty. I never thought I could get near that lower end of my ideal weight range because I didn’t think I had that much to lose. I carried my fat more or less evenly over my whole body rather than all in the belly, and that can be deceptive. Every time I dropped another ten pounds, I went to the mirror expecting to see abs and “cuts.” It wasn’t until I got down to 200 pounds that I truly realized how much fat I had packed on over the years.


It’s estimated that obesity — or even just being overweight — can shave 8-10 years off your life, and the last 11-20 years of the remainder will likely be spent with a host of preventable health problems. The current life expectancy for a male in America is 72. You can do the math. If you’re over 40 and overweight, the time to do something about it is right now.


In Fit by 50, I detail what I did over those two years in Montana — what I ate and how I trained — to lose the fat and keep it lost. But the book is not just a diet and exercise program. It’s also an attitude, a mindset. Because without the right attitude, all the meal-plans and exercise routines and sets-and-reps — to be perfectly blunt — aren’t worth shit. I cover the nuts and bolts of eating and exercising, of course, but I also show you how to change your relationship with food, expose a few myths about fat-loss, and in my personal favorite chapter, tell you the truth about beer (SPOILER ALERT: you don’t have to give it up). I have no patented formulas, no supplements to sell, no “weird fat-loss secrets.” There may be some information in Fit by 50 you’ve never heard, but it’s not like I stole it from Area 51.


Oh, I almost forgot…the tingling toes, the cramping, the interrupted sleep, and yes, even the pre-diabetes — gone — and all without meds. If a middle-aged English teacher can do it, even without getting a degree in the subject or hiring a trainer, so can you.

So, are you ready to change your life?

[Note on the photos: The first photo is how I looked for 20 years — the puffy face, gut hanging over the belt — never again! The second photo is at the top of Mt. Ascension in Helena, MT, 2018. The woman in both photos is Mom. She hasn’t changed a bit!]