Chapter One: Why I'm Trying to Reach 10% Body Fat by 60

This Is Where I Start

There are 41 years between these two photographs.

       

One is me at 18 years old—I was a competitive athlete, an ocean lifeguard, and somehow thought posing soaking wet for a calendar was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

The other is me today.

I'm 59.

And I'm about to find out how much of that guy is still in me.

I call him the Ghost.

Not because I want to be 18 again. I don't.

I want to know what the 59-year-old version of me is still capable of.

And I have until my 60th birthday to find out.

Why am I doing this?

That's a question I've been asking myself.

I've been an athlete for most of my life. Competition was part of my identity.

I played squash professionally. I competed in lifeguard races and triathlons. I trained hard. I pushed myself. I knew what my body could do, and I knew what it felt like to demand more from myself.

Then life happened.

Careers. Family. Responsibilities.

And injuries.

A ruptured Achilles. A damaged meniscus. Various aches and pains accumulated over decades of asking a body to perform.

Most recently, just as I was preparing to begin this challenge, I found myself unable to put weight on my foot.

So much for the perfect start.

But somewhere along the way, something else happened too.

I started accepting things.

A little more body fat. A little less strength. A little less discipline. A little more I'll start tomorrow.

And because it happens gradually, you don't necessarily notice it.

Until one day you do.

So here I am.

I'm not writing this after losing the weight. There isn't a dramatic before-and-after photograph coming at the bottom of this page.

I don't have six steps to getting ripped after 50. And I sure as hell don't have all the answers.

I'm at the before.

That's the point.

I've set myself one very specific physical goal:

10% body fat by my 60th birthday.

I don't know whether I can do it. That's not false modesty — I genuinely don't know.

My body isn't 18 anymore. Recovery is different. Injuries matter. Life doesn't disappear because I've decided to get lean.

And I'm certainly going to screw some things up along the way. I'm probably going to have to change the plan more than once. 

But that's what makes this interesting to me.

I want to find out.

No hiding the starting line

If I'm going to document this journey, I decided there was only one way I could do it.

Honestly.

So I took off my shirt. I stepped in front of the camera. I showed the gut. I took the measurements. I stepped onto the scale.

And I recorded the numbers.

I won't pretend that was comfortable. It wasn't.

It's one thing to look at yourself in the mirror and decide you want to make some changes. It's another thing entirely to say:

Here I am.

And then put it on the internet.

But six months from now, I don't want to tell you where I started.

I want you to have been there.

This isn't a transformation story.

At least not yet.

That's probably the biggest reason I've decided to document this.

Social media is filled with people showing us what they accomplished.

They lost the weight. Built the company. Changed their life. Found the answer.

And now they'll tell you how they did it.

There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, some of those stories are incredibly inspiring.

But that's not this.

You're coming in at the beginning.

There is no "after" picture because I haven't earned one yet.

You get to see the workouts that go well—and the ones that don't. You'll see what I eat, the weigh-ins, the progress and the plateaus.

You'll see the days when I'm completely locked in.

And if I'm going to do this the way I intend to, you'll also see the days when I'm wondering what the hell I got myself into.

There will be wins. There will be setbacks. There will probably be injuries. There will definitely be frustration. There will probably be moments when I question whether this goal is even possible.

That's the journey I want to document.

Not just the result, but the work it takes to find out what the result will be.

And somewhere in all of that, I'm hoping to learn something about the guy I've become.

Do I still have it?

That's really the question underneath all of this.

Yes, I want to reach 10% body fat. I'm competitive enough that putting a number on the board matters to me.

But I'm beginning to realize that the number is giving me an excuse to ask a much bigger question.

Do I still have it?

Not:

Can I still be 18?

I can't. And honestly, I don't want to be.

I want to know what this guy can do.

The 59-year-old.

The guy with 41 more years of experience. The injuries. The responsibilities. The mistakes. The knowledge. The scars.

All of it.

Maybe peak performance at 59 looks completely different than peak performance at 18.

I don't know yet.

And that's one of the things I'm hoping to discover.

Maybe your Ghost isn't physical.

This journey is mine.

I'm not here to tell you what you need to change. I'm not standing at the finish line yelling instructions back at you.

Hell, I haven't even left the starting line yet.

But I do wonder how many of us have our own version of that photograph.

Maybe yours isn't a body.

Maybe it's something you used to do. Someone you used to be. Something you once believed you were capable of.

Maybe it's something you've been saying you're going to start—tomorrow, next Monday, next month, next year.

Or maybe, somewhere along the way, you simply stopped asking yourself what you're still capable of.

I know I did.

And maybe that's why this has become about more than seeing a number on a scale for me.

There's a question I haven't been able to shake:

Is that person still in there?

I can't answer that for anybody else.

I can't even answer it for myself yet.

But I'm going to find out.

Meet the Ghost

He's 18.

He's annoyingly lean.

He's got more hair than I do.

And for the last 41 years, he's been frozen exactly as he was in that photograph.

But I've lived those 41 years.

I've won some things. I've lost some things. I've made mistakes. I've learned. I've gotten hurt. I've recovered. I've gotten older.

And I've accumulated something that kid in the photograph didn't have.

Experience.

So now we're going to find out what matters more.

Youth?

Or experience?

I don't know.

But that's why we're doing this.

This is Day One.

This is where I start.

My 60th birthday is coming whether I do this or not.

So I might as well chase something on the way there.

Let's go find the Ghost.