After!

Before?

This is the Handsome Husband Project

Welclome to the Handsome Husband Project

You are all invited to join me on my journey to rediscover a better me. A happier healthier, more confident version of myself.

This time though I want you guys to come with me. I’ll be sharing details of my journey, with tips, advice and details for anyone that wants to try with me.

Learn about my food plan,  with loads of helpful hints and tips to create your own

 

Details of my exercise plan and advice to fit exercise into your own lifestyle

Progress Updates including my weight, body measurements and (Hideous) Photos. Maybe even some fancy graphs.

But thats not all!

The main point of all this is to hopefully inspire someone out there who has struggled in the past to hit their body goals what ever they may be.

I’ll aim to make regular posts that I hope will simplify the process for others, share my thoughts on what to expect and how to navigate some pitfalls and hopefully have some fun on the way!

If anyone reads this ill be glad to be on hand to answer questions and generally be as supportive as I can, either directly or through my regular posts.

 

A bit about me

(OK that’s actually my dog Belle, also a heavy drinker)

OK so you read that intro and you thought, alright I’m interested enough to read on,  but who is this guy and why should he know any better than anyone else? That’s what this bit is. I certainly don’t know more than anyone else but as someone who’s successfully achieved what he wanted (health wise) and gone through the process, faced all the challenges tried all (clearly not all) the diets and exercise plans I’m hoping that sharing some of what I learned will simplify the process for others aiming to do the same thing. At the time of writing I am a (very happily) married man, 47 years old, I have two kids 17 and 14 and one (mad) dog and one (stealth ninja) cat.  I have been a project manager for pretty much my whole career and I’m not going to lie, Its been pretty stressful. When I was 40 I went through what was a pretty painful divorce with the mother of my two kids. By this point in my life I gamed too much, worked too much and sure as hell drank too much, I’d gone from being someone who could carry a fair bit of extra weight and be able to hide it (blessed with wide shoulders) to some one who just looked unhealthy and overweight and I felt it. At my peak I was about 102kg, (Im 5’10). I managed to lose a bit weight myself through just cutting back,  i started going to the gym and dabbling with weights and I started a bit of jogging, When I met my wife Nicky (who im hoping to introduce you all to later as she’s really the brains behind this) I had got down to about 90kg maybe over the course of a year. Nicky (40) who also works a full time super stressful job has been exercising and dieting since she can remember with variable levels of success, when I met her she was very food conscious and did a lot of running. I still recoil at the portion sizes when she first cooked for me! How can anyone survive on this! I’d never eaten so much veg in my life and the courgette which is Nicky’s weapon of choice was very much my food nemesis but if wanted to eat I was going to have to get over this.. I started to run more with Nicky and even trained to do the loch ness marathon. Sadly I was unable to do the actual marathon due to a death in my family. I was going to the weights room at the office I worked at and making up my own training plans with a friend who was basically the strongest guy I’ve ever met (hey Jason. If you’re reading this). So I was slowly getting my weight down and at about 88kg felt that if could get to 80kg I would basically look like Zac Ephron, as long as I ate a protein bar every other day (which I would normally steal from Jason). When I hit around 82 kg I hit a wall and still didn’t look how thought i would or how I wanted to, to me I was flabby. Clothes on I felt better than I had in years but I wanted what you might call beach confidence. Nicky was on the same journey and through the gym she went to and her friends there had been trying various mentors and personal trainers and programs but none were really hitting the mark, too complex or too hard to follow or too strict or simply bollocks.. Then she started with Harry Ranson the guy who changed everything for us both and if looking buff is your goal stop reading and go sign up with Harry! When I started with harry I was 82 kg and looked like this… In about 16 weeks I was 71kg and I looked like this. I had developed a love for food and nutrition and health and fitness. Through Nicky I had been introduced to industry names who’s advice felt different and much more trustworthy, James  smith PT, Ben Coomber, Jamie Alderton, Ross Edgley, Mike Matthews to name a few. Now lets be honest Nicky did all the heavy lifting in the listening to podcast front but I was hooked. Fast forward 4 years… now in my flattering pic above I felt great and looked how I wanted to look but its really hard to stay looking like that and it kind of turns your social life to slush unless you’re the sort of person who can go on a night out and make good choices food drinks wise. I am not one of those people.. I kept my weight between 73 and 75kg and lived a life that worked for me including meals and nights out and training and working.. I had hit my life goal. Then Fucking covid. The gyms closed, everything closed I was working from home and if I’m honest the whole thing stressed me out and upset my balance, I had a new job which I was really struggling to get a grip with, my anxiety came back big time I stopped sleeping properly and started drinking too much again, something that crept in over the last 18 month. I was doing NO exercise, while my wife kept going with home workouts and using the very small selection of weights we have at home she was still jogging, doing pole dancing classes and basically smashing it. My food choices started to erode and my cheeky Tesco sausage from the hot counter in bun became more habitual and I even rekindled a fondness for microwave burgers (so bad they’re good). The degradation was fairly slow all in all as my portion sizes have changed forever I basically retained  good food habits for breakfast, lunch and dinner and I don’t snack on things like donuts, cookies or crisps like I did back in the day, but the damage was done. Today im starting the project  rediscover the handsome husband for my beautiful wife and for myself. I’m 82 kg, I’ve been back at the gym for about 6 weeks, I’ve lost about roughly 50% of strength which really took me aback . So I have not been following a regime just trying to regain my confidence in the gym, and up until this week, still drinking far too much. I was recently made redundant, from a job I was struggling with, my mental health is at a major low I don’t sleep well, my skin is awful (dry and spotty) and I cant imagine ever taking my top off in public again! So the project beings today 17th July. (well I actually I kind of started on Wednesday  but that’s a particularly weird day to start a project in my view.. So the project starts TODAY)