You have started again more times than you can count. Monday morning, new resolve, maybe a new pair of trainers. Three weeks later it has quietly stopped, and you are not sure which day it ended.

If that is familiar, nothing is wrong with you. The pattern is so common among men over 50 that it is practically the default, and almost every time I have looked at it closely, the same four things were going on. None of them is willpower.

1. The plan was built for a younger man

Most programmes assume you recover like a 25-year-old. Six sessions a week, heavy from day one, soreness treated as proof it is working. At 55 or 62 you can do that for a fortnight on enthusiasm alone. Then a knee complains, a night of poor sleep lands on a heavy day, and the plan needs you to be someone you are not.

A plan you can repeat in a normal week beats a harder plan you abandon. Two strength sessions a week, done for twelve weeks, changes how you feel on the stairs. Six sessions a week, done for nine days, changes nothing.

2. Everything was all-or-nothing

Miss Tuesday and the week is "ruined". Eat badly at a wedding and the month is "blown". That thinking is what turns one missed session into a six-month gap, and it is the single most expensive habit in the whole business.

The fix is unglamorous: decide in advance what a bad week looks like. Not zero. A minimum day — one short session and a walk — is what keeps the thread unbroken when work, family or a cold gets in the way. You are not trying to be impressive on those weeks. You are trying to still be going.

3. You were measuring the one thing that moves slowest

The scales are a poor progress report for a man over 50. They move slowly, they bounce with salt and sleep, and they say nothing about the things that actually make life better.

Better questions, all of which change faster than your weight:

• How many times can you stand from a chair in thirty seconds?
• Can you carry the shopping from the car in one trip without setting it down?
• How do the stairs feel at the end of the day?
• What has your waist done in four weeks, measured the same way each time?
• How is your sleep, honestly, compared with a month ago?

Those are capability, and capability is what you are really after. The mirror follows it.

4. You started at the level you used to be

This one is pride, and I have done it myself. You remember what you could lift at 35, so you start there. Your joints and tendons have not read the memo, something twinges in week two, and the whole thing stops while you wait to feel right again.

Start one level easier than your ego suggests. If a full squat is uncomfortable, sit to a chair and stand up again. If a press-up on the floor is beyond you today, put your hands on the kitchen counter. Nobody is watching, and the easier version done twice a week for a month beats the harder version done twice and then dropped.

What to do this week

If you want one concrete starting point rather than a whole new philosophy, do these four things:

• Put two strength sessions in the diary, on separate days, and treat them like appointments.
• Write down your minimum day now, while you feel motivated, for the week when you do not.
• Measure your waist and count your chair rises. Those two numbers, today, on paper.
• Improve one meal, the one you eat most often. Not your whole diet. One meal.

That is a week's work, and it is enough to break the pattern, because none of it depends on motivation lasting.

A note from me

I am 64. I spent years in the start-and-stop loop myself, and what finally changed things was not a harder programme, it was a repeatable one, plus paying attention to what I could do rather than what I weighed. Things did change, but the part I actually value is that I can carry, climb and keep up.

Alex Jordan · Over 50 and Healthy