I lost four and a half stone before I picked up a single weight. And when I finally started, I realised the order I’d done it in was the only reason it worked.
I’d tried the gym first. Years ago. Five sessions a week. The weight didn’t shift — it went up. Same food, more exercise, worse results. I couldn’t understand why at the time.
Here’s what the blood tests eventually told me. In December 2023, my HDL — the so-called good cholesterol — was 1.3 mmol/L. After eleven years on statins. It had been falling consistently since 2016. My cholesterol-to-HDL ratio sat at 6.15, well above the target of 5.0, while I was on two separate cholesterol drugs simultaneously.
By April 2025, fourteen months after changing the fuel and adding resistance training, that ratio was 4.7. Within target for the first time in nearly a decade. My GP asked if I’d gone back on statins. I hadn’t.
The sequence was the thing. Not the exercise itself.
Why the Gym Didn’t Work — and Why That Wasn’t the Gym’s Fault
The conventional advice is reasonable on its face. Move more, burn more, lose more. It’s in every NHS leaflet and most GP conversations about lifestyle change. And for a lot of people, it works fine.
The problem is the subset of people for whom it doesn’t. Not because they’re lazy or not trying hard enough — but because they’re asking exercise to solve a metabolic problem that exercise alone cannot fix.
Professor Stuart Phillips, one of the world’s leading researchers in this area, describes muscle as a metabolic organ in its own right. Not just tissue for lifting things — a biological system that pulls glucose out of the blood, drives insulin sensitivity, and controls how your body handles fuel. The more muscle you have, the more efficiently you manage blood sugar. That’s not a side effect of fitness. It’s a direct mechanism.
When insulin is chronically elevated and your cells aren’t responding properly, exercise is fighting against the metabolic environment rather than working with it. I know that now. What I knew then was just that the gym wasn’t working — and I assumed the failure was mine.
My Blood Tests Before I Changed Anything
The timeline matters here, because the timeline is the point.
By December 2023 I was eighteen stone. That’s 252 pounds. I was on six medications: statins, ezetimibe, allopurinol, asthma inhalers, and allergy tablets. Two different cholesterol drugs at the same time.
My total cholesterol that December was 8.0 mmol/L. That’s the highest it had ever been — higher than before I started medication. The drugs were supposed to bring it down. They hadn’t.
The HDL number tells an even clearer story. In 2012, before any of this, my HDL was 1.6 mmol/L. Over eleven years on statins it fell: 1.51 in 2016, 1.33 in 2020, 1.3 by December 2023. Not a dramatic collapse, but a consistent downward trend across the entire period I was doing what I was told to do.
The cholesterol-to-HDL ratio: 6.15. Target is under 5.0. I was twenty-three percent above it. On medication.
No structured movement at this point. No gym, no weights, occasional walking at best. And the assumption that the drugs were handling the metabolic side of things. The blood tests said otherwise.
What I Changed — and When
Boxing Day 2023 is when I changed everything. But not the exercise. Not yet.
The first change was the fuel. Fasting, non-UPF eating, compressed eating window. I also did a 10-day water fast and then a 17-day water fast in those early months. By mid-February 2024 I stopped all medications. That was my own decision. I kept taking the blood tests and showed my GP the results afterwards.
Movement-wise, I started with walking. Just that. Six thousand steps a day, consistently, from Boxing Day onward. No gym, no weights. Just walking, every day.
January 2025 is when I introduced resistance training. And I want to be specific about what that looked like, because it wasn’t complicated. Weighted squats with a rucksack. Some dumbbell work. Three sessions a week. Nothing heroic, no programme, no coach.
The reason for the sequence was simple, even if I only understood it fully in retrospect. The metabolic repair had to come first. Fasting and real food lowered insulin and improved blood sugar. Walking kept me moving without stressing a system already under pressure. Resistance training came in once the foundation was in place — when the body was actually in a position to respond to the signal rather than resist it.
What the Blood Tests Showed Fourteen Months Later
April 2025. Fourteen months after stopping statins. Three months into the resistance training.
HDL: 1.5 mmol/L. Up from 1.3 in December 2023. A fifteen percent increase. After eleven years of it falling consistently, it moved in the right direction for the first time.
Cholesterol-to-HDL ratio: 4.7. Down from 6.15. Within target. Not close to target — in it.
When my GP saw that result, he asked if I’d gone back on statins. He knew I hadn’t. It was more of a “that’s not what I expected to see” question. The HDL specifically seemed to catch his attention. HDL doesn’t usually move that much, that quickly, without a pharmaceutical reason.
I want to be honest about the weight picture too, because it’s not a straight line. I hit thirteen stone seven around the middle of 2025 — my lightest since my thirties, four and a half stone down from eighteen. Then Christmas happened, things drifted, the steps dropped below six thousand consistently, the resistance sessions fell off. Right now I’m sitting at thirteen stone twelve. Five pounds up from that low.
The drift coincided exactly with the reduction in movement. The fasting and food stayed broadly right. The movement didn’t. The weight crept back accordingly. That’s the data, framed as what it is — not a failure, but a clear pattern in both directions.
The sessions are back now. The steps are back above six thousand. The direction is right again.
The Rucksack
In October 2025, on day ten of a reset, I loaded a rucksack with twenty-eight kilos and did one hundred weighted squats.
Twenty-eight kilos is four and a half stone. The weight I’d lost. Every rep was carrying the weight my knees used to carry every single day — just from standing up, walking to the car, going up stairs.
I’m not going to make that overly dramatic. But it landed differently than I expected. That weight felt enormous after fifty reps. And it used to just be my body.
Four Things Worth Taking From This
The sequence may matter as much as the intervention. In my case, resistance training when my metabolism was broken produced nothing. The same body, after fourteen months of dietary change and fasting, responded to resistance training with measurable improvements to HDL and body composition that the scale alone doesn’t fully capture. That’s one person’s data, N=1, but the before and after are from the same person, the same GP, the same NHS lab.
The conventional advice isn’t wrong — it’s incomplete. The NHS guidance to move more is right. Walking is right. Resistance training is right. If you’re carrying no meaningful metabolic dysfunction, the gym-first approach probably works fine. What the conventional advice misses is the group for whom exercise isn’t working — not because they’re not trying, but because the metabolic environment isn’t ready to respond to it.
The mechanism shows up before the diagnosis. The way the body responds differently to exercise depending on insulin sensitivity and metabolic state doesn’t start at the point someone gets a clinical label. It builds over years. The gym not working the way it should, body composition not shifting despite the effort, energy low after sessions rather than high — these can reflect the same mechanism at an earlier stage. Worth understanding before the GP conversation, not after.
If you’re on cholesterol medication and want to understand your own numbers: the conversation to have is with your GP, not instead of that conversation but alongside it. I stopped my own medications in February 2024 on my own initiative and told my GP afterwards, with NHS bloods throughout. Don’t change your medication because a bloke on YouTube did. Change it because your GP agrees the data supports it.
🎯 Key Takeaways
- Fix the fuel before adding the exercise: Resistance training works differently once the metabolic foundation is in place — my blood tests show this clearly.
- HDL is the number worth watching: Mine fell consistently for eleven years on statins, then rose fifteen percent in fourteen months off them, with fasting and resistance training added.
- The ratio matters more than total cholesterol: My GP cared about the cholesterol-to-HDL ratio. It went from 6.15 to 4.7 — within target for the first time since 2016.
- Movement reduction has consequences: When my steps and resistance sessions dropped over Christmas, the weight crept back. The pattern works in both directions.
- Walking first, weights second: Six thousand steps a day for twelve months before introducing any resistance training. That order was right for me.
Want to Understand the Metabolic Side of This?
If the sequencing in this post makes sense but you’re not sure where to actually start, the 14-Day Rhythm Reset Guide covers the foundation — fasting windows, what to eat, how to structure your days, and how the metabolic changes tend to show up in the early weeks. That’s the groundwork before the weights come in.
👉 Get the 14-Day Rhythm Reset Guide (free)
💪 Want ongoing support? Join Rhythm Club for £30/month (includes FREE app access, community, and weekly accountability calls)
⚠️ Important: This is educational content based on evidence and personal experience. It is not medical advice. Speak to your GP before making changes to your fasting pattern, diet, or medication.
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