I have done this before, but here I am, starting again at 44.
I have lifted consistently. I have fallen off. I have told myself I would get serious again “next week.” If you are over 40, you probably know how that cycle works.
At 44, after a few health wake up calls that tend to rearrange your priorities, I decided to stop negotiating with myself. A cancer diagnosis will do that. It has a way of making time feel less theoretical.
This is not a dramatic comeback story. I am not reinventing myself. I am starting again.
That means lifting weights because I want to. Walking on a treadmill because I have to. Tracking progress without pretending it is linear. Paying attention to lab results. Taking recovery seriously. Thinking long term instead of assuming I have endless time to fix it later.
This site exists to document the work.
Some posts will be simple training logs. Some will be reflections. Some will be honest conversations about health and recovery. None of it will be polished. None of it will wait until it looks impressive.
If you are also restarting, same. If this is your third, fifth, or fifteenth attempt to get consistent, welcome. I am not ahead of you. I am just doing it too.
This is what starting again looks like.
Where I’m Starting
In January 2025, I weighed 361 pounds.
At the end of that month I got hit with a virus that flattened me. I dropped 20 pounds in a week. Not exactly the recommended weight loss strategy.
A few weeks later I decided to treat it as a forced jumpstart and went back to the gym.
I also have diabetes. At the time, I was on a prescription that was not working well for me. In the spring of 2025 I finally saw an endocrinologist who prescribed Mounjaro. That turned out to be the right call. My A1C dropped into normal ranges, and the weight started moving in the right direction.
Today I am 256 pounds. Still a long way to go. But not where I started.
Strength wise, here is what it looked like in March 2025 when I was still well over 300 pounds:
Bench Press – 185 for 5 reps
Squat – 200 plus for 5 or more reps
Deadlift – 225 plus for 5 reps
Barbell Row – 185 for 5 reps
Then over the summer I developed pretty bad tendinitis in my right elbow and stopped going to the gym for four or five months. The weight kept coming down, but so did a lot of muscle.
Right now, at 256 pounds, the numbers are different. This is what starting again at 44 looks like:
Bench Press – 135 for 3 reps
Squats – restarting
Deadlifts – restarting
Barbell rows – replaced with machine or cable rows, and the number of reps depends on how the elbow feels that day
I have not lost weight in about five weeks. But I have lost inches.
In January 2025 my pants were a 50 waist. Now I am comfortably in a 40. Shirts were 4XL or 5XL. Now I am in 3XL, and 2XL fits most of the time.
This is the baseline.
Not a highlight reel. Not a transformation photo. Just the numbers and the reality of starting again at 44.
I am also documenting some of this on TikTok. Same philosophy. Show up. Do the work. Do not wait until it looks impressive.
If writing is the long form version, video is the raw one.
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