You can get your best body at any age. Easier said than done? Yes, but hear us out

As a connoisseur of wellness literature, you’re no doubt familiar with the clichés and tropes pedalled by celebrity trainers to achieve a superstar body – meals prepared by personal chefs, hours sculpting in private gyms and millions spent on longevity protocols. Oh, and squats. Lots and lots of squats.

Unfortunately, we don’t all have Paltrow-vian budgets to create at-home day spas, or our own hyperbaric oxygen chambers like the Knowles-Carters. Even the eye-wateringly expensive smoothies and ultra-filtered waters of celebrity fitness routines seem increasingly out of reach (hi, cozzie livs).

However, as we continue to bear witness to the rise of the super-fit, over-50 celeb (we’re looking at you, Halle Berry, Jennifer Aniston and Hugh Jackman), there must be a common link connecting us mere mortals with the ‘Fit-fty Club’.

As it turns out, it’s that exact sense of optimism that is key to a celebrity rig, according to Jay Cardiello, author, trainer and sculptor of a few highly familiar faces (and bodies).

“I’m not a celebrity. I’m not a celebrity trainer. I’m just a person who loves life, and I want to give other people the same opportunity.”

So far, so good.

So far, no squats.

The four pillars of fitness

With the New York skyline visible over his shoulder, Cardiello’s face beams through Zoom – and not just in the technological sense. He is quite literally radiating with passion for health and fitness, a craft he has dedicated almost 30 years to refining. “I get very passionate, and I may even cry because I just love what I do,” he enthuses.

Cardiello’s is an illustrious career and, despite his protestations, he certainly has the Rolodex to count himself among the most sought-after and expert celebrity trainers on the globe, if not by title, then by reputation. His clients have included Jennifer Lopez, Sofia Vergara, Kendall Jenner and 50 Cent, to name only a few.

With a clientele of such varying ages, genders and goals, I wonder aloud how he possibly finds an approach that can cater to them all. Please don’t say “squats”. A knowing smile crosses Cardiello’s age-defying face as he talks me through his four pillars of fitness: sleep, stress, nutrition and physicality. In that order.

“Physicality is the least important when it comes to wellness,” explains Cardiello, perhaps sensing my shock. “People often say, ‘What? Are you crazy? You’re a fitness expert. Why are you saying fitness is the least important pillar?’ It’s simple. If you get poor sleep, you’re stressing your body. When your body is stressed, your nutritional choices are poor. When your nutritional choices are poor, I don’t care how hard you work out, the results won’t come and then you regress back to the point of one. Then you’re just disrupting your sleep and you’re getting in a negative mindset, and then you get into this cycle and then it’s all over.”

Correcting that negative mindset is where Cardiello starts with all his clients, no matter their level of fame. His programming is based on behavioural change, working with clients to identify their goals, removing emotional roadblocks and creating pathways to success.

“This is not just a weight-loss journey. This is a lifestyle change. There’s a difference.”

The magic of mindset

Cardiello’s own experiences have been crucial in informing his approach to fitness, and have underpinned the ongoing success he has with his clients. “I went through the worst of times to give people the best of times,” he muses.

At university, Cardiello was part of the national championship track-and-field team while initially studying law in the mid-’90s. During a long jump attempt gone awry, he broke his spine. After spending six months in a body cast, he turned his attention to coaching, having fallen in love with the athlete life prior to his injury.

The next 10 years saw him working with NFL teams, baseball leagues and professional boxers, all for minimum wage – a fulfilling yet stressful time. Cardiello continually credits his success to his rapport with his clients, and while certainly true, it seems to be a modest assessment. His connection goes beyond rapport, verging on a deep, empathetic understanding of the unique challenges and setbacks they face.

Cardiello then turned his sights towards the stars, moving to New York City with the intention of building a celeb client base. “I wanted to be a celebrity trainer. That’s what I wanted to do. I became friends with Gunnar Peterson [trainer to the Kardashians] who sent me Kendall Jenner, and then a mutual friend introduced me to 50 Cent and we hit it off.”

While Cardiello’s career appeared to be climbing to new heights, major life disruptions threatened to derail his progress. “I got divorced, I went bankrupt and then I was homeless. I started dealing with heavy depression, and my friend took me to a therapist,” he recalls. After therapy, Cardiello made the conscious decision to use his experiences to further himself in the mission of helping others overcome their own obstacles to a healthy life.

He’s keen to point out you don’t need to experience intense hardship (or helm blockbusters) to benefit from his fitness methods. He starts with a different approach – getting all new clients to write a letter directly addressing the past trauma that has become a barrier to their fitness goals.

“You write an un-love letter to trauma – to your drug, to your food, to your parents, boyfriend, girlfriend, spouse, whoever it is who didn’t believe in you, didn’t support you, whatever it was. You’re given 20 minutes to write it.”

From there, his clients are given a different behavioural change modification lesson each week, along with four workouts based on their goals and experience with exercise. Some of these workouts are just one-minute long, such are the levels of fitness (or lack of) that he works with.

“What can you do in a minute? You can stand on your leg while brushing your teeth and develop your core. Telling a person to work out for 20 minutes who’s never worked out, they say, ‘Ah, no.’ Telling a person who’s never worked out to stand on one leg while they’re brushing their teeth, they say, ‘I can do that.’”

Next, Cardiello educates his clients on food, teaching them how to read food labels, avoid marketing traps and how to translate nutritional jargon. They’re then given a personalised anti-inflammatory diet plan that has been developed in consultation with doctors from Mount Sanai hospital in NYC.

The results speak for themselves, and not just on the big screen or the covers of international magazines.

“We just had one guy, he lost [23 kilograms] in 12 weeks. He was working out for a minute per day at first, then got up to 20 minutes a day, four days a week, after five or six weeks in the program. The only thing that he’d really changed was his mind.”

This approach forms the basis of Cardiello’s new 12-week program, developed in conjunction with Australian wellness brand, KAILO. After training with Cardiello on a trip to NYC, the founders of KAILO knew his approach would resonate here and endeavoured to make Cardiello accessible to their customers. As a result, the program will launch locally in October, with Cardiello as the head trainer and mindset coach and Australia’s own Lola Berry heading up the nutrition component.

In the same way you shouldn’t have to return to a great mechanic, Cardiello sees this venture as a way to set users up for success beyond the 12 weeks they spend with the KAILO program by creating sustainable and effective habits.

“By week 13, you’ve got a morning routine, night routine, goals written down. You’re keeping journals, you’re meditating and you’re not taking up major chunks of your day.”

The importance of self-belief

Like his take on fitness, this high-profile trainer’s approach to health is also refreshingly simple: to share practices that his clients and social media followers can begin today that will set them in great stead for goal chasing – starting with a morning routine.

“Consider your morning routine; if you write down your goals, you have a 40 per cent greater chance of accomplishing them,” prescribes Cardiello, with research from Dominican University confirming this exact statistic. “If you say an incantation in the morning, you raise your energy levels,” advice, yet again, confirmed by numerous academic studies, including the National Institutes of Health.

Another key to a successful transformation is to surround yourself with your own personal cheer squad. “You need cheerleaders. You need to be loved unconditionally by people and by yourself. And then you have what we call ‘weeds’, which suppress you. So do some weeding.”

Unsurprisingly, Cardiello’s theories are once again confirmed by various scientific studies. The most recent, an analysis of mindset on the athletic performance of elite Australian sportspeople, published last year in the International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, found that athletes with a positive mindset were more likely to participate at higher levels than their negative-minded peers. Furthermore, the positive thinkers were better at coping with unforeseen disturbances and obstacles.

“Everybody in this world wants to create a food to lose weight, a weightlifting program to lose weight, snacks to lose weight, clothes to hide weight. Why doesn’t anybody ever teach you how to believe in yourself? Why doesn’t anybody try to implement empathy, compassion and love.”

Cardiello’s ‘think yourself better’ methodology lends itself well to inspirational talks and events, of which both KAILO and himself are also acutely aware. As a result, he’ll be bringing his fresh brand of positivity to Brisbane in May 2025, speaking at the KAILO Summit, a wellness event in collaboration with Goop.

Armed with Cardiello’s wisdom, 12-week program and live inspiration, there’s no reason this can’t be the summer to hard launch your own A-list health routine, whether the goal is a Brat summer, looking good “In da Club”, or simply wanting to “Get Right”. And with the squat count remaining at zero, the math is mathing very much in our favour.