Jacob Thomas · Melbourne, Australia
Strong at 75
I began structured strength training at seventy-five, but the training was only one part of a much larger change in my life. Strong at 75 grew out of that change, and out of the questions I began asking about food, strength, ageing and the health advice I had accepted for most of my life.
Why I began asking questions
I have spent decades as a Chartered Accountant, and the habits of that profession never quite leave you. A figure is not accepted simply because someone important has signed off on it; the question is always what evidence supports it.
I was slow to bring that habit to my own health. For most of my adult life I moved from one diet to the next, accepted advice largely on trust and assumed that the people giving it had checked the numbers. In my seventies, after some very difficult years, I began checking them myself: reading the research, keeping careful records, asking more of my doctors and testing changes on myself.
Some of what I found confirmed the advice I had been given. Some of it rested on far weaker evidence than I had assumed, and a few questions turned out to be genuinely unsettled.
Strong at 75 is where I set out what I have learnt — and, just as honestly, what I still do not know.
What I explore
Four threads run through the book and this website
Strength, muscle and ageing
What happens when a man starts structured strength training in his mid-seventies, and what research says about muscle and independence in later life.
Nutrition and metabolic health
Ketogenic and carnivore eating, fasting, food addiction, insulin and blood glucose, and how the dietary advice most of us grew up with came to be.
Blood tests and personal health
Reading your own results, understanding reference ranges, and the questions worth asking before accepting that a figure is “within range”.
Research, evidence and open questions
How to read a study and weigh an expert’s opinion, from the cholesterol debate to the limits of nutrition research — and where the honest answer is that nobody yet knows.
How I handle evidence
Five things I try never to confuse
- My own experienceWhat I did, what I measured and what happened to me: an experiment on one person, not a recommendation.
- Expert opinionThe view or clinical experience of a named doctor or researcher, reported as theirs.
- Mechanism or hypothesisA biological explanation that may be plausible but has not been settled by evidence.
- Established evidenceFindings supported by well-conducted research.
- Open questionsAreas where the evidence is genuinely uncertain or contested.
Where I change my mind, I intend to say so, and where I simply do not know, I intend to say that too.
The book
A memoir first
Strong at 75 is the book behind this website: the story of how I reached my seventies, what had happened to my health along the way, and what I did about it. The research is there to explain my experience, not to replace it. The manuscript is now under revision.
Correspondence welcome
I am glad to hear from readers, doctors, researchers, authors and anyone interested in the work behind Strong at 75.