Interview with Mark Lewis on being “above average”

Hey Mark,

Thank you for spending the time on the interview today.

For anyone not familiar with your YouTube channel or social media, you’re a health and fitness YouTuber that has been documenting your journey from being overweight to being an athletic dad in his thirties.

Your content is down to earth without the BS and hype seen elsewhere, with a good few jokes thrown in. Being a fellow Brit I certainly appreciate the humor!

So, Mark, I am keen to know your story and how you not only get fit but established yourself as a YouTuber and dare I say it, an influencer.

It would be great to get a little background information from where you were born to where you live today. What’s your backstory?

That’s a long period of time to condense into a couple of paragraphs!

I was born in Reading, a town an hour away from London, in the UK. I still live close to there now – It’s a perfect mix of being able to get into central London for a night out or get out into the countryside for some cycling, running, or walking.

Jumping some early years that are too long ago to remember, I had my first child when I was 21 and working as a lifeguard. It became quickly apparent that you can’t raise a child on lifeguard pay so I quit and went into financial services. This was the mid to late 90s when you could just walk in with no qualifications and make ok money. It wasn’t quite Wolf of Wall Street…but it wasn’t far off!

Jump forward 15 years and I was mid 30’s, my 4 children, making a good living but terribly out of shape and unmotivated.

I wanted to do something different with my life but needed to keep earning what I was making in the only job I was really qualified to do. So I tried all sorts of hobbies to see if I could get excited about something – anything!

The only two I really enjoyed were stand-up comedy and running.

The stand-up had to go as it didn’t suit the lifestyle of a family man with a full-time job, even though I loved it.

The running was a lifesaver though, I just went full Forrest Gump and ran around for 10 years losing over 100lbs in weight and getting to a point where I was not too bad at running around.

Then I started YouTube.

At first, it was just a joke between me and my kids to see if I could even make one video. Then it became me making videos about my hobbies that a few hundred people would watch. That coincided with my getting an indoor exercise bike at the start of the covid lockdown and making videos about that, which did quite well.

Suddenly, a few thousand people were watching.

Very organically, it just grew into where it is now – a channel just covering what I do to stay in shape.

Not an elite athlete shape, just someone better than most as a result of putting in a bit of effort. It’s designed to do nothing more than motivate and entertain. If people get more from it, that’s cool.

Congrats on recently hitting the 100k YouTube subscribers. So, are you now a full-time YouTuber / content creator?

Yes, I am currently in the process of selling my financial services business to do YouTube full-time.

So right now, I’m doing two jobs!

By August, it should be YouTube only which will mean I can double my output of content overnight.

What really resonated with me is your tagline of “be above average”. In this social media world of pushing to “be the best”, I found this to be incredibly refreshing.

People seem to like that. It came about because I was describing my running and really good runners would say I wasn’t really that quick, while regular runners would say I was an unrealistic target for them because I was too quick!

So I started to explain how I was simply above average and that was what I trained to be and what I valued.

The simple idea is that if 100 people turn up at a race, I’ll beat 50 of them. I don't believe, for most people, that getting to a place where you are better than most is that hard – yet it’s incredibly rewarding.

Going home from a fun run knowing you were in the top half, even if only just, is a great feeling. If you want to go beyond that and be the best, that’s great, but you require an exponential increase in an effort to achieve just small improvements past a certain point. If you have family, kids, pets, or a job, for most people, that’s not worth it or necessary.

And yes, social media is full of people describing how to be the best.

In the fitness world, they are often people with an advantage that most won’t have. That could be their genetics, their access to training resources, their wealth, the fact it’s their job to be on Instagram, and, obviously, lots of performance-enhancing drugs. People often ask “why would they take PEDs” – the more sensible question is why WOULDN’T they! They are cheap, easy to get, and work, and the health issues are less than that caused by eating a standard western diet.

In simple terms, copying what someone that looks amazing on social media does is as useful as copying Usain Bolt run training to enter your local 10-mile fun run.

It’s clear that you are in great shape, and certainly “above average”. What are your fitness goals going forward and will you need to change your tagline? 😉

My goals are really fluid. I just do what I want based on what looks fun. This year I have a paddle board race with my dog, a 100km ultra marathon, some Spartan OCR races, and a bunch of smaller events. If it looks like a laugh and seems like a challenge, I’ll have a bash at it.

And the tagline won’t change! I go out of my way to take on things that I am not suited to, for example, the 100km ultra is not an ideal event for a 220lb 6ft6 runner like me, I’ll get beaten by LOTS of people and I’ll try to make the top half. As always. If people want to moan that I’m better than “above average” they have too much time on their hands and should spend that improving their own situation, not worrying about the grammatical accuracy of my catchphrase!

When you first started the channel did you intend to document your journey from your corporate life (interesting “suit & tie” combination) to fit?

Not really, but YouTube loves those transitional videos with clickbaity “before and after” photos. What many people do, because of that, is produce cliched nonsense about how they trained like The Rock for a day. As though anything will happen in 24 hours!

I figured, as I had an actual transition to describe, that was of greater relevance to most people than just copying Chris Hemsworth’s diet for a week, I’d make some content around it.

Putting yourself out there on YouTube I imagine means you need a certain amount of “thick skin”. What’s been the most controversial content you have produced and why?

Well, the most controversial is certainly my switch to Vegan but I limit my videos on that subject because I don’t find it that interesting. As such, it doesn't really raise much volume of controversy.

In general, I don't get the sort of negativity some get because I make it very clear the videos are just me doing what I do, and I hope people enjoy watching and have fun doing so They can then go off and do what they like to do.

I never say how people should eat or train, I just show the choices I make.

As a result, there’s not much to disagree with. Even when it comes to the vegan stuff, I’ll get butchers saying they love the video. I don’t ask people to agree with me or copy me, I’m just trying to be entertaining.

Because of that, 99% of the comments and feedback I get are very positive, in fact, hearing how people have been motivated to get after their own goals from watching my stuff is wonderful.

Sure, there are some lunatics that post daft stuff, but you don’t need thick skin for that, you just need to be confident in what you're doing and the value of it. If someone wants to throw abuse at me, why would I need to give it a second thought?

In fact, on a few occasions, I’ve pinned the more ludicrous comments to the top of the comments section so everyone sees them! That normally results in hundreds of people diving in and ripping apart the original comment. I don't have to do anything more than sitting back and chuckle to myself.

There is so much advice out there on how to lose weight and get fit, much of which contradicts each other. What works for you? Do you count calories, follow any particular diet, or do Intermittent fasting?

I count calories because, at its core, that is the only way to control body fat.

If your fuel tank is overflowing on the car you’d be nuts to not monitor how much extra fuel you were adding. You’d also be equally daft to try and cure an overflowing fuel tank by just driving faster…which is what people do when they try to use exercise as the primary solution to being overweight.

However, I'm also a believer in having something more to hang your hat on than just calorie counting alone.

So I do use things like IF because I enjoy the process of planning my diet around that approach, even if, ultimately, it's just another way to limit the day’s food intake. People that say JUST calorie counting should be enough need to realize, for some, that is as silly as saying alcoholics should just limit alcohol. Often, you need more than the basics to plan around and focus on.

Mark Manson talks about the importance of emotion driving the ability to change and follow new habits towards goals. There is a lot of emotional baggage associated with eating, and both weight loss/gain, you talk about this a fair amount on your channel. What’s been your “trick” to stay on track?

Well for a start I don't stay on track! And part of my success has been down to understanding that doesn't matter. I have periods where I will overeat, to ridiculous levels at times.

I don't mean the sort of “I ate 10k calories of fast food” stuff you see on Youtube where people just lie about what they ate for views while flashing their 6-pack abs.

I mean I will have day after day of eating to excess and putting on 10lbs very easily and very quickly. However, over the years I’ve just learned to accept that as part of my journey. It’s like the stock market, it doesn’t always go up but, as long as the trend is upwards, it’s all good.

So now, when I eat badly I just relax, allow that situation to pass, and then get back on with moving forward.

You follow very much a trial and error approach to discover what works for you. What books/podcasts have inspired you or you have learned from?

Born to Run got me into running, and running correctly. More recently, Atomic Habits just confirmed a few approaches to life I had were the right ones. I recommend both.

What can we look forward to next? Are you going to start a blog or focus on video?

A blog is possible but the first objective is to step up the video output to twice weekly. It’s the part I enjoy the most – making little stories and making them fun and entertaining.

I’ve only been making videos for a few years so there’s still plenty to learn about that, and improvements to make!