"I stood naked at the end of the bed and proudly said to my wife...'look what I made for you.'"

Larry Emdur’s weight loss wasn’t really about the magazine cover. It was about the woman he married 20 years ago.

I was only going to 10 push-ups on the bathroom floor. But I thought I’d do 20 instead.

As I pumped, I knew everything was in place, and that my cunning plan was unfolding like a teenage boy’s dream.

The expensive wine bottle downstairs on the kitchen table was nearly empty. The house was dark.

It was time.

Related content: Man up: The photo of Larry Emdur you really shouldn’t send to your husband.

Okay, just five more push ups on the bathroom floor….Okay. Now it was time.

It was mine and Sylvie’s 20th wedding anniversary.

Just over three months before, I’d decided I was going to get fit, really fit.

I wanted to give Sylvie back the young, healthy body she married two decades ago.

When I met Sylvie, I  was surfing everyday, sometimes twice a day. I would run to the beach, surf, run home, run to the gym, run home, run back to the surf.

I could eat and drink whatever I wanted and it made no difference, I was healthy and happy and didn’t ever once think about what I would look like when I was 50. Not once.

But now I WAS 50.

Okay, 10 quick dips on the side of the bath. Now, it was definitely time…

With arms and chest pumped, I walked into the bedroom like a male baboon walks around the zoo enclosure. Although, unlike the baboon, I had no intention of throwing poo to get my lover’s attention.

I was more than aware of the fact that 50-year-old men generally don’t look that good with their shirts off.

Arnold Schwarzenegger shirtless aged 30 looked like a condom full of walnuts, at 40 shirtless he looked like a condom full of jellyfish and aged 50 he looked like a condom full of soup. So if he couldn’t do it, maybe I shouldn’t.

But it was too late, I was committed and I had to do it soon before my party-pump (that’s what the kids going to music festivals wearing mesh singlets call it) deflates and the “calming, warm and fuzzy” ” effects of that expensive wine wears off.

I stood naked at the end of the bed and proudly said to Sylvie…”look what I made for you.”

Now, I don’t know what I expected her to do.

Want more? Try: Australia’s Sexiest Man is 50, married, and not who you might expect.

Actually that’s bullshit. I know exactly what I expected her to do. I expected her to throw her book across the bedroom as she launched herself out from under the doona, pounce on me like a wild animal, roll around the bedroom floor, making crazy, amazing passionate love until the sun came up and/or the, “calming, warm and fuzzy,” effects of the expensive wine wore off… Whichever came first.

It was going to be like 50 Shades of Gray, meets Nine and a half Weeks, meets Cirque du Soleil. Everything was going to be sweaty and in slow-motion and all set to Chikka Wah Wah music….

Instead it went something like this..

Me standing naked at the end of the bed adopting a similar pose to that statue in Rio and confidently saying…,“Look what I made for you.”

Sylvie’s response, without skipping a beat, was “That’s nice, now will you stop using my wax and fake tan?”

This was always going to be the biggest week of my life – on December 3 I had a Men’s Health photo shoot, on December 4 it was our 20th wedding anniversary, and on December 9th I turned 50.

The markings on the calendar were in very, very thick red texta and they were coming around fast.

As anyone around my age who has tried to lose weight, or just get fit, will tell you , it’s hard, bloody hard.

Things take three times longer to shift or build as you get older, so essentially I had to work at least twice or three times harder than I would have 10 or 20 years ago.

I’ve tried it all before, of course, from the juices, to the detoxes, to the acupuncture, to a protein-only diet, but this time I took the long way around and sure enough, after a while it started working.

Read more: Celebrities are now fat-shaming themselves.

There are no real secrets to getting healthy: In fact it’s kind of funny because I’ve known how to do it all along, I had just never committed to it.

I trained hard, I moved a lot and I ate a lot – but I ate better.

Eventually things started to shift and build,  and with each kilo I lost I felt stronger, leaner and just a bit younger.

Here’s Larry’s transformation:

The incentive of competing to be Men’s Health man of the year was significant, the other guys all in their 30’s looked bloody amazing and were permanently ripped, healthy dudes. But my real competition was myself and my real incentive remained Sylvie, and our 20th anniversary.

So, the big night didn’t work out exactly as I’d planned, hoped and prayed, but now my tummy doesn’t wobble when I drive over a speed hump, my kids are really proud of me and now Sylvie get’s to sleep with a Men’s Health cover guy.

So, my advice to the long married amongst us is this: Get your other half to ear right and move more, buy some nice wine and get ready to hear him puffing and panting in the bathroom.

He’s not doing anything dodgy – he’s just preparing to give you a “present” at the end of the bed.

Would you be thrilled if your other half went on a health kick?