The phenomenon of a celebrity midlife crisis is a sight to behold, and this year, Sacha Baron Cohen’s has undeniably taken center stage. With its unpredictable twists, his journey has captivated many in 2025.

The saga began earlier this year with the collapse of his marriage in April. Like many before him, Cohen soon found solace in the vibrant nightlife, becoming a regular at trendy clubs. Reports quickly emerged of the 54-year-old father of three enjoying the company of much younger women, many of whom are social media influencers, with one notably from the platform OnlyFans.

Amidst the whirlwind of headlines, one standout moment occurred on July 24. On this day, Baron Cohen appeared on the cover of Men’s Fitness magazine, offering a glimpse of something positive amidst the chaos.

The cover image was striking. The actor stood topless, holding dumbbells, his skin glistening as if coated in baby oil. It showcased an impressive physical transformation that left many in awe.

You may recall the picture. Topless, clutching dumbbells, and seemingly covered in baby oil, the Hollywood actor was showing off an extraordinary physical transformation.

Gone was the pigeon chest and pasty skin of his mankini-wearing alter-ego Borat. In its place stood a sort of bronzed Adonis, complete with bulging biceps, shimmering pecs, and that holy grail of masculine self-regard, a walnut-cracking six pack.

When a man does this sort of thing, he’s sending a signal. One that can be summed up in a single sentence: I’ve not lost it!

Every midlife beefcake is a walking, talking symbol of defiance. Proof that, while no chap can entirely avoid the indignities of middle age (from receding hairlines to dodgy backs and knees, to failing teeth and eyesight), a certain amount of dedication can help us mitigate them.

I say this with some confidence because I am about to tread in Sacha Baron Cohen’s manly footsteps. On Wednesday, a different middle-aged father-of-three will grace the hallowed front page of Men’s Fitness. And that pouting model will be… me.

My journey from couch potato to shirtless cover star dates back to mid-September when, feeling lardy after an indulgent summer, I decided to begin a vigorous wellness regime. For ten weeks I pumped iron, avoided carbohydrates, ran up hills and gorged myself silly on supplements.

You can see the results for yourself here. According to the Men’s Fitness headline writers, I can officially now claim, at the grand old age of 47, to be ‘seriously ripped’.

It has been a fascinating, and in some ways life-changing journey, which has been followed with mild amusement (and the occasional ‘phwoar!’) by my wife Katie.

Along the way I have clocked up several big losses – 5kg (11lb) in weight, 2in (5cm) off my waist, and about 6in (15cm) from my belly – and some notable physical gains, including 2in (5cm) on each bicep and thigh. My mind now feels as sharp as a knife, and my sleep patterns are better than at any time since I had newborn children to contend with.

As we approach that time in the calendar when thoughts turn to self-improvement, this journey has also taught me priceless lessons about the male body and how we can either enhance or abuse it. The simple truth, I have discovered, is that any middle-­aged bloke – and I really do mean any – can regain the chiselled torso of their youth.

With a bit of effort, you might even be able to make yourself look – and feel – fitter than ever.

There is no great sacrifice required. Instead, the difference between owning a ‘dad bod’ and being a ‘gym god’ boils down to a handful of small choices we all make every single day.

Making the right call, on these fronts, of course, requires a little bit of discipline and plenty of motivation. But it’s nowhere near as difficult as you think, and at times can be rather enjoyable.

In fact, despite the old saying about needing pain to achieve a gain, the only real agony I experienced during the entire process came in its final days, when I was required to undergo a pre-photoshoot chest wax at a London beauty clinic. It drew blood and left me looking, in Katie’s assessment, like a newly plucked chicken.

So how can every middle-aged man acquire a cover-star torso?

The answer, I can reveal, is simple: to place yourself on this physical pedestal you must follow three interlinked regimes. One involves vigorous exercise; the other, a careful diet; the third, a daily dose of supplements.

My ten-week journey began, inevitably, by acquiring an exercise guru. Having reached out to Men’s Fitness, which kindly offered to oversee the process (and promised to put me on its cover if I made the grade), I was introduced to Jason Smith, the founder of an organisation called Fit In Midlife, which is devoted to whipping middle-aged fatties into shape.

Jason is a ‘personal trainer, life coach and black belt’.  And like many in the wellness industry, he boasts an inspiring personal story. 

For most of his adult life, he earned a shilling as a consultant, schlepping daily into London from his home near Horsham, West Sussex, to support a young family.

By the time he hit 50, he was overweight, unfulfilled and, according to his doctor, pre-diabetic. In a ‘before’ photo he showed me he looked pale and puffy.

‘I had a sort of crisis of confidence,’ he says. ‘I thought, I’ve already lived more than half of the years I am going to live, and if I don’t buck up I might not actually last many more. That’s why I started going to the gym. I found it life-changing, so I decided to chuck in my commuter job and become a personal trainer.’    

Jason is now a bona fide muscleman, with forearms like Popeye. Yet his former career as a consultant in London helps him understand the competing demands on a middle-aged man’s time in a way that other, younger trainers don’t always comprehend. 

I therefore avoided the hassle (and expense) of having to attend his studio. Instead, he paid a single visit to a gym near the Daily Mail’s HQ in West London, checked out the equipment available, then came up with a regime of basic exercises I could follow. These were then communicated daily to me via a nifty phone app.

Since my family home is in South Wales (I commute to London for a few nights each week), Jason also instructed me to acquire a small set of dumbbells I could use in my bedroom at weekends. Again, tailored sessions, based on simple routines such as bicep curls, shoulder presses and press-ups, were sent to my device.

So I began lifting weights four days each week. On two days I did cardio work (either running or on a bike) plus some abdominal routines. On the seventh day, usually a Tuesday, I was allowed to rest.

At this stage you may be wondering how anyone with a full-time job plus a family and a vaguely functional social life has space to pump iron almost every day. But the clever thing about Jason’s workouts is that none of them last more than 45 minutes.

This is a game-changer. Visit any gym, and you’ll realise that most users waste half their time fiddling with phones, hanging around the water cooler or walking very slowly on a treadmill.

I had been as guilty of this as anyone else. Over the past few years, I’ve managed more-or-less weekly trips to the gym to sharpen myself up for village cricket fixtures or club tennis matches. 

Rather than following a workout plan, I would fiddle around on whatever piece of equipment happened to be free, spend 20 minutes on an exercise bike, then call it a day.

Jason’s app, by contrast, makes visits to the gym short, sharp and invigorating. It bossily counts down the exact number of seconds you are allowed to rest between lifting particular weights.

A typical session might involve ten to 12 exercises, each performed three times, with no more than 45 seconds in between.

It was entirely idiot-proof. I quickly began lifting weights so heavy that I had to purchase one of those fat leather belts you see contestants on TV strongman shows wearing, to avoid putting out my back. Quickly, my personal bests improved. 

Back in September, I struggled to bench press more than 60kg. Within a couple of months, I was lifting a whopping 80kg – more or less my own bodyweight.

Once each week, I’d send Jason a selfie, sans T-shirt, so he could track my progress.

So much for exercise. The second area where relatively small adjustments could make a huge difference was, of course, diet.

For this piece of the jigsaw, Men’s Fitness placed me in the capable hands of Chris Baber, a former 800m runner and male model in his 30s, who achieved fame a few years back by winning a BBC cookery show called Yes Chef. Now a healthy eating guru, with a cookbook under his belt, he was previously a consultant for M&S.

Having looked at a diary of the food and drink I consumed on a typical week (involving rather too many restaurant lunches), Chris told me there were four things he wanted me to completely cut out: all deep-fried food, fizzy drinks (I was putting away a full-fat can of Coke each lunchtime), anything processed and takeaways.

Aside from that, my diet was judged to be OK. Though he insisted on a few other tweaks, mostly designed to replace carbohydrates with protein.

At mealtimes, I was told to cut down on stuff like potatoes and pasta, in favour of extra portions of green vegetables.

When I fancied a snack, which was pretty much every tea-time, chocolate bars were traded for sourdough toast covered in peanut butter.

Breakfast was, whenever possible, to be Skyr, a high-protein variety of yogurt, mixed with fruit, plus a few spoons of chia seeds. Sugar, and most puddings, were to be generally avoided.

His instructions arrived as I was sitting down for dinner in a West London steakhouse.

I somewhat dolefully traded in my frites for a portion of spinach, and shook my head when the waiter asked if I wanted dessert.

But it was surprising how soon these sacrifices became routine, not to mention how little I really missed the empty calories of such old staples as chips and chicken wings, and my regular cocktail hour packet of salt and vinegar crisps.

On the alcohol front, meanwhile, I negotiated a compromise.

Chris wanted me to give it up completely (my food diary revealed I was getting through between 20 and 30 units per week). I agreed, instead, to limit booze to just a couple of nights each week.

On paper, this felt like a big step. But in practice it proved weirdly easy. Once I began working out daily, my appetite for grog seemed to decline. Evenings where I’d have historically ploughed through a couple of pints, before washing dinner down with wine, were instead revolving around a single beer.

My preferred nightcap – single malt whisky – was traded in for mint tea.

In my first week on this new diet, I dropped 3.5kg (7.7lb), from 92kg (14st 5lb) to 88.5kg (13st 9lb).

Over the next nine weeks, my weight fell a further 1.5kg (3lb), despite gym routines adding significant bulk to my chest and shoulders.

My belt was eventually tightened two notches, shirts no longer fit properly, and I have, on occasion, been forced to contend with jeans slipping down my hips.

As Jason’s app intensified workouts, I started feeling a touch sore.

At this point, roughly three weeks into my fitness odyssey, it became clear that I needed to explore the world of fitness supplements.

There’s a lot of nonsense, not to mention a multi-billion-dollar industry, devoted to exotic powders and pills that supposedly transform your physical performance. 

To cut through the noise, Men’s Fitness packed me off to high-street chain Holland & Barrett. One of its in-house nutritionists (you can get advice for free online) recommended four relatively cheap products – one to be taken before exercise, one during and two afterwards.

The most interesting was creatine, a powder that I mixed with water and drank each morning.

First discovered by weightlifters, it helps your muscles perform more repetitions of a weight before collapsing, and is also purported to aid cognitive function.

During workouts, I was told to take electrolyte pills, which prevent dehydration.

And immediately after leaving the gym, I began quaffing chocolate-flavoured whey, a high-protein dairy product which allegedly helps muscles bulk up, plus a post workout powder containing amino acids that stop you feeling sore.

What did this regime achieve? As with all supplements, there’s doubtless at least some placebo effect. But the tape measure and weighing scales don’t lie, so I kept quaffing them.

A final bit of artificial help came 24 hours before the Men’s Fitness photoshoot, when I was packed off for a spray tan, administered by celebrity make-up guru James Read.

This involved standing in my underpants in a sort of tent, while he covered my body in a layer of chocolate-coloured paint.

Two days after the photos on this page were taken, I returned from a sweaty gym session to discover my T-shirt was stained Donald Trump orange. Streaky white lines had appeared on my mahogany torso. I looked like a sort of grubby zebra.

Did I care? Absolutely not. As Sacha Baron Cohen has so neatly demonstrated, every proper midlife crisis involves at least one loss of dignity. It’s a small price to pay for showing the world that we haven’t lost it.