Getting Mighty Stacked

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What I Was Thinking

I had a moment in February where things had to change, so I started back on a journey to look like this:

Well, not exactly like that. To date I have yet to go full on Code Green, and I will never be as cool or talented as Tatiana Maslany, the ludicrously gifted actor who brought the Attorney At Law to life. But being stacked and fit and impossibly strong? Yep, I'll have all of that, thanks.

How It Started

For around 14 weeks, I've been working with Coach Sophia (https://www.instagram.com/sophiahenleyfitness) at Henley Fitness (sign up here: https://www.henleyfitness.com/) and despite my first protestations, I have begun to notice some things. By the way, if you want a taste of Team Henley's coaching style, it's this and it's amazing:

To begin with, I had the same fitness capability of a new born asthmatic sloth. Working my way through my sessions in the gym felt like a gargantuan chore and the imposter syndrome was rife with an inner monologue screaming "this is not the place for you, fat lass," or variations on that theme.

To say I was cruel to myself is an understatement. I mentally battered and berated myself for not making enough progress, for not seeing the scale drop, for not completing all ten to fifteen reps of a set, for not leaving the gym in a liquid state from overexertion. All of this in the front 4-5 weeks and Sophia got the rough end of that rubbish attitude.

I have to sing her praises here because without her relentless cheerleading and zero tolerance policy for self-destructive thinking, I would have dropped this at the end of month two.

My basic stats when I began:

• Starting weight: 107.6kg

• Cardiac fitness: rock bottom

• Muscular strength: ropey, most of my starting weights were single digits

How It's Going Now

New stats:

• Today's weigh in: 104kg - that's 3.6kg off

• Cardiac fitness: I no longer wish for death when doing the HIIT session each week. At least, not right away

• Muscular strength: a lot better, had PBs most weeks and it's only getting better

• Physique: well, I'm still chunky, but my goodness are my arms and legs getting a lot more shredded

These are wins for me personally. I went in knowing it was going to be a damn long journey and have no illusions that it'll be at least a solid year of consistent training before my body shape changes entirely.

Seems so simple, doesn't it? It isn't. At all. Dragging my carcass to the gym five days a week is hard. Keeping my calories to under 1600 a day is hard. The planning around everything else in life is hard. All the videos on YouTube with "the lazy way to lose weight" in the title are wildly misleading. Changing my body from 'Expert Cuddler and Difficult to Kidnap' to completely stacked and muscular is a tough journey because I have to show up, I have to put the effort in. Guess what? It's bloody difficult.

What I've Learned So Far

I should point out this is my second round with Henley Fitness, I worked with them in 2024 as well, also with Sophia, and bailed around May/June 2025 because the results I was seeing weren't fast enough or big enough and my lizard brain decided that it wasn't worth progressing. After regaining 6kg and getting right into the weeds of S.A.D. last year, I signed back up and Sophia jumped at the chance to boss me around the machines again.

What was obvious was that I couldn't wait for my brain to think "now I'm motivated, let's go" because I'd be waiting forever. So far as I can tell, 'motivation' doesn't exist for me. The big hitter for me was that I realised I wasn't living well, wasn't taking care of myself, and worse I was impacting my wife, so it had to change and off my application for 1:1 coaching went.

The biggest lessons so far are blindingly obvious to me now, but bear repeating:

• Perfection is a myth

• It takes a lot longer than you realise to make meaningful change

• If the main reason you take on this kind of challenge isn't something you actually want, you'll get nowhere

Why Do I Do This?

Last time I worked with Sophia I had a very specific goal in mind: drop my BMI enough that I could get pregnant through IUI. Even going private I had to get under a BMI of 35 and I was comfortably at a 38. Disregarding the fact that BMI has been proven time and again that it's complete nonsense (multiple Olympic athletes in the best shape of their lives have been told they're clinically obese), it's still the marker for 'health'. According to Doctor Internet and my actual GP, I'm supposed to weigh in at around 60kg. That's never going to happen.

I did not succeed in bringing my BMI down and I didn't get pregnant. Turns out, that wasn't the right reason why for me. Since then, my wife and I have reconsidered what we want in our family and a tiny human is not the thing, so my 'why', my reason for sticking with Sophia and Team Henley, is completely different.

It is the same for everything: figure out your reason and a plan is much easier to create and stick to. It could be a job you want, a degree you're interested in, or a new exercise regimen, whatever is tickling the back of your head. You get the rationale right and you'll be sailing.

After All Of That...

If you want a PM based analogy for this little brag, then you can view me as a scope of work. Deliverables include:

• Reduction in given metrics (weight)

• Increase in given metrics (muscle mass)

• Improvement in existing service (fitness and strength)

The best bit is there is no timeline, so the Tolerance is massive, but the Quality of the end product needs to be very high, so that Tolerance is incredibly small.

This is a long work in progress and I'll provide updates on how it affects my life. Ultimately, I am a project of continuous improvement. There is no 'end' per se, I strongly suspect I'll be working with Team Henley for a very long time and now, after a few months, that no longer seems overwhelmingly daunting.

By the way, I don't get any clout or cash for promoting Sophia and Team Henley. I tell you about them because they are a small business doing massive things and have worked for me. This is something I'm proud of doing, and I'm lucky to have access to the team to keep me as accountable as possible.