The Thing That Was Always Sending Me Back to Square One

The 90-day challenge. The clean eating. The early mornings. The gym sessions where I actually showed up and pushed hard and felt like a different person. I’ve been in great shape, or close to it, more than once in my adult life.

And then I’d stop.

Not all at once. It was never dramatic. Just a gradual drift back to old habits, a few extra drinks on the weekend that turned into a few extra drinks on Tuesday, and before long the morning workouts were gone and the scale was creeping back up and I was telling myself I’d get back on track next month.

I’m 56 years old. I’ve been doing that cycle for a good part of my adult life.

For my first 35 years or so, staying in shape wasn’t something I had to think much about. I was active at work, in the gym regularly, and my body responded the way young bodies do. Then life changed. I got married, had kids, and the habits that had kept me in good shape quietly fell apart. No blame in that. It’s just what happened. But the scale started going up and down about 20 years ago and I never really got a handle on it after that.

The thing I always told myself was that I lacked consistency. That I needed a better program, a better diet, more motivation, a stronger why. And those things matter, don’t get me wrong. But they were never really the problem.

The problem, for ME, was alcohol.

Not in a dramatic way. I never hit a wall. Never lost a job or a relationship over it. I was a steady, functional drinker, the kind that’s so normal in our culture that it doesn’t register as a problem until you look at it clearly. A few beers most nights. More on weekends. It was just part of life.

But it was quietly wrecking every attempt I made at getting into real shape and staying there. Poor sleep. Inflammation. Slower recovery. Extra calories I wasn’t counting. And maybe most importantly, it was eroding the discipline that every other good habit depends on. When you’re drinking regularly, the version of yourself who gets up early and eats well and trains hard is always fighting uphill.

I started seeing a psychiatrist about seven months ago, mostly for anxiety. We started talking about drinking too and he recommended Naltrexone, a medication that reduces alcohol cravings by blocking the reward response in the brain. I’d heard of it before but only vaguely. After talking it through, I understood it a lot better and decided to try it. I started taking it on January 1st.

I was still drinking a bit at first. But on February 9th I started another 90-day challenge and I haven’t had a drink since. It’s now May 28th, 108 days later. And here’s the thing that surprises me most: I have zero desire to drink. Not white-knuckling it. Not counting days. Just done with it, at least for now.

The difference this time isn’t the workout program. It’s not the diet. It’s that I finally removed the thing that was always sending me back to square one.

Since February 9th I’ve gone from close to 200 pounds down to 172. I’m up around 6am most mornings and get 3,000 to 6,000 steps in before I sit down to work. I’m eating better without being obsessive about it. I feel clear in a way I haven’t in years.

I’m not a personal trainer. I’m not a nutritionist or a physiologist. I don’t have a program to sell you. What I have is a lifelong love of fitness, a hard-won understanding of why knowing what to do isn’t enough, and a story that I think a lot of men in their 50s will recognize.

That’s what Reset at 50 is. It’s not about finding the perfect workout or the perfect diet. It’s about figuring out what’s actually in the way and dealing with that first.

If you’re in the second half and you keep ending up back at square one, you’re in the right place.

Let’s figure it out.

Tom