Richie Herrod Facebook ad: “I wrote this listing at half eleven”

About this ad

Meta Ad Library ID

2299041980855638

Platforms

Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, Messenger and Threads

Relaunches

0

How we count

Ad text

I wrote this listing at half eleven at night and then sat looking at the last sentence for about ten minutes. Just don't have the energy for it any more. I'd typed it without thinking. It's the sort of thing you put so nobody messages asking what's wrong with it. And then I read it back. Nothing was wrong with any of it. The bench was fine. The bar was fine. There was a coat hanging on it. I'm forty-six. I do estimating for a building firm outside Derby, twenty-two years in the trade. Married to Claire. Two kids, one at college, one still at school. I bought that lot in the spring of 2021, and I want to tell you why, because it matters. I'd got to a point where I looked at myself and thought, right, I'm not doing this. I'm not going to be a bloke who gets to fifty and can't do anything. So I did what men do, which is spend money on the intention instead of the habit. Bench, bar, plates, a rack, the dumbbells. Cleared half the garage out for it. About nine hundred quid all in. Claire didn't say a word about it, which was its own kind of comment. Two months. Four sessions a week for two months, and then nothing. And here's what I want you to understand — I never decided to stop. I missed a Monday because I was knackered. Missed Wednesday because of work. Went back the week after and it was harder than it had been, so I didn't go Friday. Then it had been a fortnight. Then it had been a year. And then it was the thing in the garage I walked past to get the wheelie bin out. That's how all of it went. Not decisions. Just absences that nobody ever announced. I stopped going to five-a-side the same way. Didn't quit. Missed one, missed a few, somebody else took the spot and I never asked for it back. Stopped walking the dog in the evenings and let Claire do it, and I genuinely could not tell you which month that changed. Stopped going upstairs to say goodnight to my daughter, because by the time she went up I was already asleep in the chair. And every one of those, at the time, was just a Tuesday where I was a bit tired. Individually none of them meant anything. It's only when you're sat at a laptop at half eleven typing don't have the energy about nine hundred quid of gear that you see them all in a line. What I'd been telling myself for about three years, in order: Busy period. Everyone's tired. It's the winter. It's the clocks going back. I'm forty-six, what do I expect. Everyone at work is knackered as well. Claire's tired too. Every one of those is true of somebody. None of them explains a man selling a gym he cleared out half a garage for. I did try things, and I want that on record, because there's a version of this where I sound like a bloke who sat still and moaned about it. Magnesium off Amazon. Took it about half the time. Vitamin D, because someone at work said everyone in this country's short of it. A greens powder I drank about a third of. Four weeks of getting up at half five to walk before work in the dark, which I hated every second of. A month off the beer, done properly, felt a bit better, put it back and forgot the whole thing. There's a tub of ashwagandha in my kitchen cupboard that's been there two years with most of it still in it. Every one of those was a guess. I never once found out what was actually wrong with me. I just threw things at it, and when each one didn't work I put it on the pile and tried the next. I went to the GP as well, and I'd tell anyone to do that first. Full bloods, proper panel. Everything in range. Text message a fortnight later saying no further action needed. He wasn't wrong and he didn't fail me. He was looking for a disease and I haven't got one, and that's genuinely good news. But I came out with the exact problem I went in with, plus a text saying there's nothing to find. Which somehow made it worse — because now it's either in your head or it's just your age, and I'd already decided it was my age about eighteen months earlier. What actually changed it was somebody asking me questions instead of me buying answers. It was a physio I was seeing about a shoulder, of all things. Bloke called Tony. End of a session, ten minutes, and he went through five things in a row. Sleep — not the hours, the quality. Am I waking in the night, or waking up tired after a full eight. What I'm actually drinking in a week. The real number, not the one you'd give a doctor. Whether I'm recovering from my work or just accumulating it. What I eat on a normal Tuesday. Not a good week. A Tuesday. And what I'm already taking, how often I genuinely take it, and what forms it's in. Ten minutes. Two of those were fine. Three of them plainly weren't. And here's what annoys me most — I could have told you which three at any point in three years, if one single person had asked me in that order. Nobody ever does. You get "how are you," you say fine, and that's the whole conversation. Including the one you have with yourself. That last question caught me out completely. Tony asked what form my magnesium was in and I said I didn't know what he meant. Turns out most cheap magnesium is magnesium oxide, which is poorly absorbed. Bisglycinate absorbs far better. Same word on the tub. Not the same thing going into you. Same story with zinc — oxide against picolinate. Same with B6, cheap form against the active one. So I'd spent two years half-taking the wrong versions of the right things, and feeling quite pleased with myself for buying them. Now the honest bit, which is that I did it wrong. I changed three things at once. Drink down to weekends. Started walking the dog myself again, three or four times a week — nothing heroic, just walking. And I cleared out that cupboard and replaced it with one thing I actually take every single day, which for me is Zapply T1. Fourteen things in three capsules, every dose printed on the label with nothing hidden behind a blend, which after the magnesium business was the only reason I'd touch it. Three at once means I can't tell you which one did what. Anyone who tells you they can is selling you something. Nothing happened for a fortnight. Nothing at all — and that's exactly when you give up on things, and I nearly did. Then the two o'clock wall stopped turning up. I noticed on a Thursday at about four, when I clocked that I'd gone through a whole afternoon without going grey in the middle of it. Sat at my desk feeling slightly ridiculous about it. Then I stopped going under in the chair at nine. That's what I've got. I know what I changed and I don't know which bit was which, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. The listing's still up, by the way. Not because I'm making a point. I just haven't taken it down. I've been out in that garage eleven times since June, which is more than the previous three years put together. A bloke messaged offering £350 for the lot and I said no, sorry, changed my mind. Here's what I'd say to you, and then I'll leave it. You've got something in a garage. Or a spare room, or under the bed. A bench. Some dumbbells you shifted twice. A rowing machine with washing hanging on it. A bike. Some expensive thing you bought because you'd decided who you were going to be, and then quietly stopped being. You didn't decide to stop. You just never had the energy on any particular Monday, and there were a lot of Mondays. You can't fix a thing you've never identified. Three years and a cupboard full of guesses is what that lesson cost me. The people I buy from have put Tony's five questions online as a two-minute thing. Age, sleep, drink, movement, food, what you're already taking. At the end it tells you which of them are actually likely to be your problem and which aren't. Free. Two minutes. Doesn't diagnose anything and doesn't pretend to. If it says your sleep, then it's your sleep, and no capsule on earth touches that — go and sort your sleep out. If it says the drink, you already knew and now it's written down. If it says what it said to me, at least you'll know what you're aiming at instead of buying things at random. And go and get properly checked first if you haven't. I mean that seriously. There are real conditions that look exactly like this and none of them are fixed by anything I've described here. But if you've been checked, and you're in range, and there's something in your garage you've been thinking about selling — Don't sell it yet.

Where the ad sends people

tryzapply.com

I wrote this listing at half eleven

Increase testosterone levels naturally - and maintain them: With Zapply T1: Ideal for natural bodybuilding from the age of 30 ✓