At 50, I lost three stone and cured my high blood pressure

Steve Bennett, 60, is the founder of the wellness app, Clubwell. He lives in Warwickshire with his wife, Sarah, and their five children. Here, he tells Victoria Young how he turned his obesity around at 50.

Last week, I celebrated my 60th birthday by learning to kite surf. Today, I started the day with a game of tennis, then went to the gym. And pretty much every day, I find myself counting my blessings that nothing in my body hurts.

It’s all a far cry from my life 10 years ago, when I was extremely overweight with a very unhealthy diet and lifestyle, and various other health issues. As the CEO of several companies, I went to frequent business dinners, which included a lot of carb-heavy foods with sticky sauces. I drank too much beer and was working so hard that I just did not have time to look after my health. I knew I was slowly putting on weight but I honestly thought that was an inevitable part of the ageing process. Even when I hit 15 stone and was told by a nurse that I was clinically obese, it didn’t occur to me to do anything about it. I thought I was doing OK because I went running and went to my medical check-up every year.

Part of the problem was that I thought I was living a healthy life. Growing up, I was very sporty and in my late teens was the British champion in dinghy sailing. After that, I got into running and went jogging every morning. I wasn’t lazy; even though I was obese, I ran three marathons. I’d get up at 5am for a run, then go home and drink lots of orange juice, which is nothing but sugar, but I thought it was healthy. I’d have a jacket potato and baked beans for lunch, not realising that the starch would immediately turn into glucose. I’d eat low-fat food like yoghurt, thinking that fat was the enemy, then have a Chinese takeaway for dinner, thinking that rice was the healthy option. I didn’t understand why I was putting all the weight on.

I had numerous other health issues. When I was 30, I had such severe chest pains I called 999 twice, petrified I was dying of a heart attack. Doctors found nothing wrong and I can now see it was stress from working so hard. I was also always tired, had frequent migraines and high blood pressure; all things that I know now are linked to being overweight.

I started my own company, called Software Warehouse, at the age of 24 and built it up, working all the time, then sold it to Argos 10 years later. After dropping out of school at 15, I was very focused on trying to prove myself to my dad – something I think I achieved when I sold the business – but I have ADHD, which manifests in never being satisfied and I am very competitive, so I went on to build quite a few companies from scratch, all of which demanded a lot of my attention. I had my first child at 25, and in my 30s and 40s, my priority was work and family, rather than understanding or looking after my health.

My transformation was sparked when I was 50 and doing some charity work, building a library in Kenya. I went running one morning, and later that day, the Maasai people I was living with cooked a goat. Before I ate it, I took the fat off and this Maasai guy called Philip said to me: “You go running and then you take the fat off my goat – why?” I said because I wanted to be lean and muscular – like him. He said, “But it’s not working.” I realised he had a point!

When I got home from the trip, I found out I was going to be a dad again for the seventh time, which was a total shock and a lovely surprise. I immediately knew I wanted to be able to do active things with my child, like skiing. At the same time, my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and both parents were diagnosed with diabetes. The coincidence of events was the wake-up call to make me take my health seriously.

I was fortunate in that, having worked so hard, I had enough money to take a step back from work – although my wife, Sarah, didn’t believe me at first. But over the next year, I worked closely with a doctor, a nutritionist and a personal trainer to really learn about my health. My trainer, Ollie, told me to avoid carbs and eat full-fat cheese, yoghurt and milk for a month. The idea that the body turns bread, potatoes and rice into sugar was a revelation to me but I cut them out and started strength training, and running less and the weight started dropping off within days. I lost three stone in about four months. The chest pains, tiredness, and migraines all stopped, too – and my blood pressure finally dropped to normal.

When I first made the changes, I wrote up what I was learning, firstly for my own recall but gradually realised there was enough for a book. It became the start of a mission: I’m passionate about helping prevent and reverse the UK’s obesity and type 2 diabetes crisis, and educating people about ultra-processed foods. I collaborate with the Food, Diet, and Obesity Committee at The House of Lords to introduce tougher regulations on food labeling and marketing and I have just published my seventh book, The Insulin Problem, which is based on the work I have done with doctors who specialise in cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s and who explain that insulin is linked to virtually every kind of disease you can imagine.

These days, I start every day with a five-minute ice bath, then 10 minutes of red light therapy, which stimulates collagen production but also fixes so many things in the body at the mitochondrial level. Then I go to the gym for 20 minutes of strength training. I play tennis two or three times a week and also go rucking – walking with a weighted jacket – with friends, which works up the same level of sweat and raises the heart rate as jogging, but is better for the knees.

I follow a low-carb diet and prioritise good-quality protein and fibre for a healthy gut microbiome. Generally, I follow the one meal a day (OMAD) principle with an evening meal of 120g of protein, which might be something like steak and eggs and some fibre noodles with leafy greens, cauliflower rice and celeriac. I also love sardines because they are so rich in omega-3. If I am peckish, I’ll have a pack of pork scratchings but I try to stay in ketogenesis 80 per cent of the time – which is when the liver converts fatty acids into ketone bodies to be used as an alternative energy source – because there is so much evidence that being in ketosis as much as you can helps with cancer and Alzheimer’s. I like the odd glass of wine and probably drink it a bit too often, but red wine knocks you straight out of ketosis.

On holidays, I’m much more relaxed. Rice and bread don’t interest me any more, but I will just eat more food and have too many drinks. I’m not perfect, and over the years I have sometimes put on weight, but I’ve never gone back to anywhere near where I was. I can honestly say that I am 100 per cent happier now than when I was overweight – but that could be down to many things, including my state of mind. My current mantra is: “You are never old; you are only older. And you only become old when your brain is occupied more by the past than the future.”