In July 2023, I decided to lose some weight.
That was the ambition. A weight-loss journey. Something to work on for the rest of the year. I even made a logo: Mark’s 2023 Weight Loss Challenge. It had a date built into it because, at the time, that seemed to cover what I was doing. I had no idea that more than three years later, I would still be writing the story. Or that losing weight would lead me into gyms, personal training, running, friendships and a life I hadn’t imagined for myself.
But it began with a decision, two orders for meal-replacement shakes and a friend who kept telling me:
“You’ve got this.”
The morning I decided to change
I had been talking to my friend Ken about fitness for a few days. We discussed food, weight and things I could do differently, but I wasn’t really thinking of those conversations as the beginning of anything.
Then I woke up on Thursday 20 July 2023 knowing that something had to change. There wasn’t a carefully prepared launch date. I just knew I needed to do it. My first practical step was to order some Huel shakes. In my head, these were going to become the starting point for changing how I ate.
Then Ken suggested Protein Works. He had tried both and preferred the carb profile and taste of Protein Works, so I placed another order. On Friday lunchtime, the Protein Works delivery arrived first.
That was 21 July 2023 - Day 1.
My starting weight was 109.9kg.
I stuck with the shakes that arrived. My Huel order remained unopened. It seems a small, almost accidental detail now: two orders, one delivery arriving before the other.
But that Friday lunchtime became the beginning of a routine, and that routine became the beginning of a different life.
A picture of who I wanted to become
The character in my original weight-loss logo came from my Xbox profile. I had created him a few years earlier, and friends had told me:
“It looks nothing like you.”
Perhaps that was the point.
By July 2023, he represented something I wanted to become. Even his vest and shorts were a departure from how I usually dressed back then. He wasn’t a picture of where I was starting. He was an idea of where I might go.
Looking back at that little logo now, I can see both the modest ambition I began with and a possibility I hadn’t yet learned to take seriously. I wanted to lose weight. I hadn’t yet imagined everything that might come with it.
Coach Ken
Ken helped turn that initial decision into something I could understand and follow. He explained maintenance calories, eating at a calorie deficit and the role of protein, carbohydrates and fats. He built a spreadsheet to calculate my targets and introduced me to tracking my food with Nutracheck.
Instead of guessing what I was eating, I began recording it. I could see how the choices I made fitted into the targets we had worked out. We talked on WhatsApp every day while he was away at sea on container ships. Wherever his work took him, those conversations continued.
He became “Coach Ken”.
There was practical advice, encouragement and, when I needed it, a nudge towards something I would otherwise have avoided. After a few weeks, while I was converting my garage into a small home gym, he told me I needed to join a gym.
I didn’t want to.
I had never been inside one in my life. It was unfamiliar, intimidating and somewhere I couldn’t picture myself belonging. Ken’s response was straightforward:
“Just get over it.”
I still said no. Then I slept on it. Eventually, I committed to joining at the beginning of September. That gave me a few more weeks to lose some weight and get used to the idea.
“The alternative will not be my future”
Something was already changing beyond the number on the scales.
In August, before I had joined the gym, I sent Ken this message:
These past few days seem like they have been turbocharged with all that we’ve talked about. I can’t remember being as excited about anything in the past. I can’t wait to see what I can achieve. I am wanting to achieve a lot but I feel, for the first time in my life, that I really can achieve this. And whilst it’s my brain making these decisions, coming to these conclusions, I really do know that (whilst it may not seem much to you) it has been life changing for me. A recurring message that comes through from you is “You’ve got this” and you know what… I know I have because the alternative will not be my future.
That message still matters to me.
I hadn’t yet met Matty. I hadn’t joined JD. I hadn’t signed up for the Great North Run. But I was beginning to believe I could achieve something. In the same message to Ken I had also set a list of goals, but more about those later.
On Day 31 (21 August 2023) I reached my first stone lost. The results were giving me confidence, and the conversations with Ken were helping me look further ahead.
I was excited. I was also still frightened of joining the gym.
Both things could be true.
Getting over it
By the beginning of September, I had lost around a stone and a half. I was healthier than I had been six weeks earlier, but I still didn’t feel ready.
On 4 September, I admitted as much in my journal:
“Do I feel ready now? No!”
I had, however, bought the kit. New white shorts. New Nike Air Max trainers. Apparently, I was preparing to enter what I called “the World of the Gym Bunnies”. I had, after all, eaten a lot of salad recently. The humour helped, but the nerves were real. I had spent my life walking past gyms without knowing what happened behind their darkened windows. As I wrote at the time, they were rather like betting shops in that respect.
On 5 September, I finally went inside.
My first choice of gym didn’t work out. I arrived expecting to complete some forms ahead of an induction, only to discover that they didn’t have the fitness trainers I needed. Having someone to guide me mattered, so I left and went straight to JD Gyms in Thornton-Cleveleys. Perhaps everything matters for a reason.
Brandon, one of the managers, greeted me and showed me around: the equipment, studios, changing rooms and facilities. They had personal trainers, too. I just needed to choose one. I signed up then and there! I checked out the PT Board and Brandon passed my details over to two of the trainers.
By the time I wrote about it that evening, the nerves and apprehension had evaporated. The place I had been afraid to enter was somewhere I now wanted to explore.
Meeting Matty
The following evening, 6 September 2023, I met Matty Schmid for our first session.
We spent around 75 minutes talking about what I wanted to achieve, discussing my diet and working through equipment and exercises. Thanks to the changes I had already made with Ken’s help, I wasn’t arriving with absolutely everything still to tackle. Matty was pleased that we didn’t need the usual conversation about sorting out my diet before expecting results.
But in the gym itself, I was a complete beginner.
During those early sessions, he assessed what I could do and began building a programme around it. I needed to learn how to use the equipment, how to move and what I was capable of. I also needed confidence. Matty helped me build that alongside the strength. He understood me, supported me and pushed me. Having someone beside me who knew what they were doing made an unfamiliar place much easier to navigate. Our next session was booked for Monday.
I went back on my own the very next day, my first solo day in a gym, ever!
An hour on the treadmill
Until that first session with Matty, my entire treadmill experience amounted to about six minutes.
On 7 September, I returned with my earbuds and a Spotify playlist, intending to walk for an hour. And I did. There were no speed records. I wasn’t trying to run. I was learning to feel comfortable on the treadmill and in the gym itself, right down to finding my way around the changing rooms, sauna and showers.
An hour of walking might sound unremarkable. For me, it was another small piece of evidence that I could do something I had previously avoided. I could come here on my own. I could spend time here. I could talk to people here! I could belong here.
Then I signed up for a half marathon
On 8 September - just two days after my first session with Matty - I secured a place in the 2024 Great North Run with Bowel Cancer UK.
Friends on JaguarForum had been following my weight loss. Jokes about the London Marathon had become suggestions about the Great North Run. Somehow, I had gone from laughing about it to checking when charity entries would open.
When the link went live, I filled in the form and paid.
I hadn’t run anywhere for anything since 1984, when I was sixteen. Now, at fifty-five, I had committed to a half marathon. There was exactly a year to prepare. The training and the run itself deserve their own part of this story, but that decision belongs here because it shows how quickly my expectations were changing.
A few weeks earlier, joining a gym had seemed a step too far. Now I had a place on the start line of the Great North Run.
Becoming someone who went to the gym
By the end of September, the gym was already finding its way into the rest of my life.
I was away in Burton upon Trent for a Jaguar event at the National Memorial Arboretum. On the Saturday morning, I left at 6:40am and drove twenty minutes from the hotel to JD Gyms in Derby. An hour on the treadmill, a visit to the sauna, a shower, then back to join everyone for breakfast. That nationwide membership was getting used.
Reading that entry now, I think about the man who had needed weeks to prepare himself to walk into a gym. Less than a month later, he was finding one to visit while away for the weekend.
The unfamiliar was becoming routine.
The weight continued to come down, too. On 26 September, I reached two stone lost. A month later, on 27 October, it was three stone. Those milestones mattered. I recorded them, celebrated them and watched the evidence accumulate.
But increasingly, there were things to celebrate that had nothing to do with the scales.
Another “get over it”
Ken had sent me a training plan with something scheduled throughout the week. Saturday appeared to offer a little breathing space - until I read what he had actually written:
“Do the 5KM Walk/Run at ParkRun.”
Naturally, he had added:
“Get over it.”
On 14 October, I went to Stanley Park in Blackpool for my first parkrun.
I arrived with my barcode and emergency-contact wristband, found the gathering crowd and completed the five kilometres. Afterwards, I had my photograph taken with Stanley, the Blackpool Park Run mascot. Ken’s response put it into perspective. That distance was almost a quarter of a half marathon. The time wasn’t the important part. I was building the experience and capacity to keep going.
He was also sending books. The World’s Fittest Book by Ross Edgley had arrived in August. The Art of Resilience followed in October.
Sometimes our conversations were about calories or training. Sometimes they were about understanding the work ahead and learning to approach it patiently.
There was always another thing to learn.
Wobbly legs and small victories
Training with Matty gave me plenty of material for the journal.
There were walking lunges, squats, machines and the dreaded sled push. There were sessions that left my legs so unsteady that getting upstairs to the mats became a challenge of its own.
After one particularly memorable leg session in October, I approached the stairs and discovered that lifting my foot high enough to reach the next step required considerably more thought than usual.
I eventually made it upstairs. We also joked about the sweaty outline I left on the exercise mats. One evening, I asked Matty to take a photograph.
“Mark woz ’ere!”. There was a lot of laughter in those sessions.
There was progress, too. In my first week, I could barely hold a bench-press bar steady. Matty worked on my strength and stability before bringing the exercise back into the programme. By November, I was recording working sets and personal bests.
Mark's Bench Press 37.5kg - 23 Nov 2023 · YouTube: gEc9BM4j1iw
Later that month, I filmed a set of eight barbell squats at 40kg. There was still plenty to improve, but I was learning movements that had been completely foreign to me only weeks earlier.
The numbers belonged to a beginner. The achievement belonged to me.
The class I wasn’t going to attend
When I joined JD, I told Ken that gym classes probably weren’t my thing but Matty kept suggesting that I try one of his.
And so, on 17 November, I left home at 6:45am to attend his seven o’clock JD Burn class. SkiErg, dumbbell exercises, sit-ups, step-ups, medicine-ball slams and a wall sit. Forty seconds of work, twenty seconds of rest. My first experience of a gym class. Afterwards, I changed my top and went straight to the treadmill for an hour.
That became my new Friday-morning routine.
I kept finding myself doing things I had confidently said I wouldn’t do.
Then came the back squat
Mark's 40kg Back Squat - 28 Nov 2023 · YouTube: rvJHGFlEaQk
The man in the mirror
5 December 2023 was a normal training day - it was leg day.
As I walked into the locker room and past the full length mirror I caught a glimpse of my reflection. This was the first time I had properly noticed the difference the work had made, physically, over the past few months. I continued to my locker but instead of getting ready for the sauna, I grabbed my phone and walked back to the mirror.
This is the photo I took. It is the first photo of myself that I had liked for a long time! I used to avoid photos at all costs.
There's a phrase “Once you see results, it becomes an addiction” - commonly attributed to Arnold Schwarzenegger - and this was that moment for me. I was already enjoying the 'journey' but this was the proof, and something everyone else had been seeing for weeks, that I was heading in the right direction.
Six months, and a different life
By December, I had lost four stone.
On 19 January 2024, I reached 80kg.(12st 8lb) six months after starting at 109.9kg (17st 4lb), I was approaching five stone lost. My clothes told their own version of the story.
The 44-46-inch jeans had become 32-inch slim-fit jeans. XXL tops had given way to medium, with some small sizes coming into reach. The gym kit I had bought in September had already been replaced.
I had preferred loose clothes in dark colours. Now I was choosing slimmer jeans, fitted tops and lighter colours - even white. That original avatar, dressed in his vest and shorts, was beginning to feel rather less distant.
My food was still being tracked in Nutracheck. I had routines, targets and a much clearer understanding of what I was eating. Ken continued to support me, wherever his work at sea took him. Matty was helping me grow stronger and more confident in the gym. He wrote a nice comment in December 2023:
"Over the past 15 weeks with Mark I have seen an incredible amount of progression. I remember the first time he sat down with me and set out his goals and I knew from then on that it would be a very hard task, however Mark at the age of 55 has absolutely smashed it. From not even thinking about the gym 6 months ago to missing going to the gym over the Christmas period I have been incredibly proud of how it has turned out for him. This is just the start to Marks transformation and I can’t wait to see him smashing the Great North Run! All the best Mark💪🏻”
"...missing going to the gym over the Christmas period", yep that still makes me smile.
Not one to pass on a good opportunity for a quote, Ken had something to say as well:
“Mark is absolutely killing it. He is discovering a better version of himself every single day. That’s a better version physically, mentally, and emotionally. His consistency and determination is absolutely incredible!”
A success story
Shortly after my 56th birthday, I thought it would be a good time to take some updated progress photos.
17 February 2024 and a few photos were taken. I showed them to Matty a couple of days later during our training session. He sent them over to his media team to create some slides for his Active4You Instagram and Facebook accounts to recognise my body transformation to date.
Now that was something I was not prepared for. I never imagined that I would be that person.
The weight-loss goal - and life beyond it
By March 2024, I could look back at six months of gym life.
I had recorded 151 visits in 181 days. That wasn’t 151 heavy training sessions. Some visits were lighter sessions, time on the rowing machine or treadmill, or active-rest days. It was the pattern of my life at that point, and a measure of how comfortable I had become in an environment I had once found frightening.
On 20 March, I weighed 70.3kg. I had lost 39.6kg and was just 300 grams away from the target I had set myself.
That day, I headed to Antalya for a week, returning on 27 March.
It felt like my first proper holiday as an adult: comfortable soaking up the sun and enjoying being there. After months of watching my body change, this was an opportunity to experience what those changes meant away from the scales and the gym.
Two days after returning home, on 29 March 2024, I reached 70kg.
Eight months and eight days after starting at 109.9kg, I had lost 39.9kg (88lb), or six stone and four pounds. That was 36.3% of my starting body weight.
I had originally hoped to reach that weight by the end of April. Even Ken had thought that might be optimistic. I reached it a month early.
There is a photograph from that period of me holding a 20kg weight in each hand, and here it is! 🦚
Forty kilograms.
Holding those weights made the change feel very real. That was approximately the amount I had carried around on my body, all the time, before this began.
The scales continued down a little further. On 5 April, I weighed 69.7kg, taking the total loss to 40.2kg.
But reaching the weight-loss target didn’t bring the routine to an end. Training carried on.
By this point, I was training with Matty around four days a week, either at JD Gyms in Thornton-Cleveleys or at Ribby Hall near Preston, where he also worked as a personal trainer.
Be Like Mark
It was at Ribby Hall that Matty recorded a video for his socials to talk about my transformation, a little of how we worked together and that my goals were still ongoing. Another sureal moment. The gym had become part of my normal life. There was always something to work on: an exercise to improve, strength to build, another session to get through. And there was still the Great North Run waiting in September.
"Be Like Mark" Matty's post about Mark's training - April 2024 · YouTube: wH2MCAHZ9fg
Park Run had become an almost weekly fixture. Those five kilometres were helping me prepare for something much bigger, but they also gave me a way to see my progress over a familiar distance. I got my 5km time below thirty minutes.
Back in September, I had been pleased to walk for an hour on a treadmill. Now I was running five kilometres in less than half that time.
The weight-loss target was behind me. There were plenty of other goals ahead.
An anniversary booked seven months ahead
There was one particular date I had already put in the diary.
In December 2023, I booked a tattoo appointment for Saturday 20 July 2024. The exact anniversary of the morning I had decided to change. I had chosen a tribal Jaguar design for my right upper arm. Jaguars were already part of my life. I loved the cars and had been organising meets for a Jaguar car forum since 2022. Choosing a Jaguar felt natural, and I had always liked tribal-style tattoos.
But liking them on other people and being brave enough to have one myself were two different things. Until then, I had never felt brave enough.
This would be my first tattoo. Booking it was a big deal.
I secured the appointment seven months ahead, while I was still losing weight. I hadn’t reached 70kg or completed my first year, but I knew how I wanted to mark the anniversary. In the months between booking and the appointment, the Jaguar connection grew further. In June 2024, I agreed to take over running the Jaguar Breakfast Club.
When I chose the design back in December, I hadn’t known that would happen. By July, Jaguar was becoming an even larger part of my life.
One year on
On 20 July 2023, I had woken up knowing I needed to change.
On 20 July 2024, I marked that decision with the Jaguar tattoo I had spent seven months planning.
Between those dates were the food logs, conversations with Ken, first nervous steps into JD, sessions with Matty, early mornings, parkruns and a succession of clothes that no longer fitted. There were photographs, too. Day 1. The changes along the way. The person looking back at me a year later. Now there was a permanent mark on my right upper arm.
I had always admired tattoos like this. During that year, I had finally become willing to have one myself, just as I had become willing to walk into a gym, work with a personal trainer and turn up at parkrun. Each had felt daunting before I did it.
What began as “Mark’s 2023 Weight Loss Challenge” had carried on well beyond the year printed on the logo.
I had lost over 40kg (37% of my starting body weight), discovered that I enjoyed training and started running. I had found discipline I hadn’t known I possessed, with encouragement and support from people who helped me put it into practice.
There was still more to come. In less than two months, I would be taking on the Great North Run.
But that is another part of the story.
This was the first year: the year I found out how much could change once I began.