I’ve been training since I was 16. That’s nearly 25 years. And for the first 16 of those years, I hadn’t got a clue what I was eating.

In your 20s that doesn’t matter much. Staying in shape in your 20s is easy. You can get away with murder. My idea of a fitness diet back then was an eat-all-you-can Chinese buffet after a heavy weights session, or ploughing calories in from packets of tortellini, cheese and pesto. It was awful. And if I’m honest, my physique showed it.

I was a big guy. Strong. But I was far from lean, and far from healthy. I just didn’t understand nutrition. I’d never studied it, never made any real effort to learn it. I thought training hard was enough.

It isn’t.

It wasn’t until I was 32 that everything changed. I hired a nutrition coach, someone to help me lean down a bit, and within a few months I had lost nearly all the body fat I’d been carrying for years. At 32 years old I was in by far the best shape of my entire life. Better than my 20s. Better than when I was competing. A turning point I genuinely wasn’t expecting.

Since then my goals have shifted. It’s not just about looking a certain way anymore. I run 45 plus miles a week now and the challenge that comes with that is a completely different one. Fuelling performance whilst not just eating the world and getting heavy is harder than most people think. But whether your goal is losing fat, building muscle, running marathons or just feeling human, the same thing is at the root of all of it.

Nutrition.

Get it right and you feel great, you look great and you perform well. Get it wrong and you can train as hard as you like, it will only get you so far.

One size does not fit all. Stop pretending it does.

Before I go any further I want to get something out of the way. We are all different. Different diets work for different people in different ways and the sooner you understand that, the better.

A good example from my own life: I can eat Greek yogurt morning and night, and at times I have. I put someone close to me on a similar diet and it made her feel terrible because she is clearly more sensitive to lactose than I am. Same food. Completely different response.

It’s the same with the fats versus carbs debate the internet loves to have. Both are just energy sources. Some people feel great on higher fats, others perform better on higher carbs. I’m in the carb camp, to a point, but I’ve met plenty of people who thrive on the opposite. Neither is wrong. You need to experiment, pay attention to how you feel, and find what works for you.

Try things quietly as well. Don’t announce your new diet to everyone you know, because if it doesn’t work out you can change approach without the awkwardness. I’ve seen it too many times, someone goes vegan, tells the world, feels great for a few months then starts to feel like something is missing but is too embarrassed to admit it. Just try things, be honest with yourself, and adjust.

Start with protein. Everything else comes after.

If there is one thing I would tell anyone who wants to get their nutrition right, it’s this: get your protein right first, then work backwards from there.

A high protein diet will leave you fuller, better recovered, and healthier. It is the foundation. Once that’s in place you can start thinking about everything else.

I look at carbs like jet fuel. Too much and you end up too heavy and slow. Not enough and performing at any decent level becomes a real struggle. Yes, some people can perform well on higher fats and I’m not dismissing that, but in my experience if you need to go hard, carbs will nearly always be the answer.

Fats I look at more like diesel. Slower to digest, but they will sustain you for a long time. For me personally, carrying a fair amount of muscle, going high fat and low carb makes me feel flat and slow. But that’s me. You might be completely different.

The part most people miss is that your energy output isn’t the same every day, so why would you eat the same every day? On days I’m running big miles my carbs might go up to 500 or 600 grams. On rest days, or right now when I’m carrying an injury and not running as much, they drop to somewhere between 100 and 200 grams with slightly more fats to make up for it. Carb cycling is one of the best tools I’ve come across, not just for weight management but for how you feel day to day. Match your fuel to your output. It sounds obvious but most people never do it.

Calories do matter. Sorry.

I know the influencers make a good living telling you otherwise, but calories in versus calories out is how you will manage your weight, your performance and how you feel. That’s just the truth.

There are plenty of calculators online that will give you a starting point for how many calories you should be eating. Use one, try it, then adjust based on how you feel and how you’re performing. It’s not gospel, it’s a starting point.

Food quality is the part most people skip.

Here’s where I think the real difference is made and it’s the part the macro-tracking crowd often miss.

In my bodybuilder days I was eating bags of bagels and cereal. When I dieted down I leaned on a lot of diet food. Neither, in my opinion, is optimal. There’s a time and a place for all of it, yes, but the majority of what you put in your body should come from whole, high nutrient foods. That over everything.

Source the best meat you can afford. Eat plenty of fruit and vegetables. Get the bulk of your calories from real food. If it’s bright colours, comes in a packet, and the ingredients list reads like a chemistry experiment, minimise it. If the 5-year-old version of you wouldn’t know what an ingredient is, eat less of that food. Not because every sweetener is going to kill you, that’s Instagram nonsense, but because real food genuinely makes you feel better.

My simple rule: I try to eat like my grandparents did. My grandad lived to 98. He had bacon, sausage and eggs every morning and cake every day at 4 in the afternoon. Not the healthiest diet you might say, but the bacon was from the local butcher, the sausages came from local pigs, and the cake was homemade for most of his life. That’s the difference. Real food, made properly.

I follow an 80/20 rule. 80% of the time I eat like my grandad did. The other 20% I use what’s available as fuel or I enjoy a pastry or an ice cream with my wife. Balance, not obsession, is always the answer.

A couple of practical things worth knowing.

On caffeine: it works, it helps performance and focus, but it stays in your system for a long time. Try to cut it off around 8 hours before bed. I say that as someone who drinks far too much coffee and could do with listening to his own advice.

On experimenting: try something new for 6 weeks and actually give it a proper go. If it works, brilliant. If it doesn’t, change it. Try things properly, give them enough time to work, then be honest about how you feel.

On diet food and quick fixes: if you’re significantly overweight, use whatever gets the weight moving first, then switch to better food quality once you’ve built some momentum. Don’t make it complicated before it needs to be.

The bottom line.

I wasted 16 years training hard and eating badly. The moment I started taking nutrition seriously, everything changed. My body changed, my energy changed, the way I felt every single day changed.

You don’t need to be perfect. You don’t need to follow the loudest voice on social media or the most extreme diet you can find. You need to understand the basics, experiment to find what works for you, eat mostly real food, and match your fuel to what you’re actually doing each day.

Do that, and I promise you, almost everything else gets easier.