I’m in the lobby of the Northfield gym interviewing Jay Moir.
The plan was to quiz the 23-year-old Aberdonian, who has cerebral palsy, about how he went from an overweight teenager in a wheelchair to a qualified fitness instructor.
But then he lets slip he has a burgeoning TV and film career. And my plan goes out the window.
“I’ve got an agent and stuff,” Jay says when I insist on details. “It’s always something that I wanted to do.”
It’s early days but he’s already booked some impressive gigs.
In March, he shot an anti-hate-crime ad for the Scottish Government in which he’s hassled at a bus stop by a gang of thugs (“Neds, you might call them,” Jay says, smiling).
He has a shoot for another ad coming up in a few weeks, which should keep him busy.
But there’s more.
“Last year, I auditioned for a thriller on Netflix and got to the final three,” he reveals.
Jay was to play opposite Stephen Graham, a four-time BAFTA winning actor who has shown up in not one but two Martin Scorsese movies (The Departed and The Irishman).
This was big league. Unfortunately for Jay, it was also a lesson in the fickleness of showbiz.
“I didnae get it,” he says, the disappointment still evident.
“I don’t know when it comes out, but I don’t know if I’ll watch it. They rejected me!”
The acting career is just the latest twist in Jay’s already amazing story of overcoming obstacles.
In fact, forget the acting – Jay is worth a Netflix documentary of his own. Plus a spin-off biopic and an animated series.
Because to everyone who knows him or has met him, Jay Moir is already a star.
Jay’s early life with cerebral palsy, and realising he couldn’t play with the other kids
Jay doesn’t know when he first noticed his cerebral palsy. It’s been with him since birth, and he’s never known life without it.
But when he was about nine or ten started seeing people his age on bikes or playing football. An awareness that he wasn’t able to do that slowly crept in.
“They were all running about playing tig and tag and playground games,” he says, “You realise you can’t keep up with them.”
When Jay moved up from primary to Kincorth Academy, other issues emerged.
He was never bullied, but staff were impatient with how slow he went from class to class.
At this point, Jay was using a walker. Under encouragement from the school he switched to a wheelchair so he could get to his lessons on time.
How Jay’s weight ballooned when he was moved into a wheelchair
The unintended consequence of using the chair instead of the walker was that Jay got heavier.
“I was getting no activity,” he says. “I went from a walking frame to my wheelchair, and so I’m sitting there all the time.”
Jay left school, and by the time he was 17 weighed about 16 stones. It was a dark time for the teenager. Unhappy with his weight, he became isolated.
“It was getting to a point where there was a few days when I didn’t bother getting dressed or showered or anything, I just wanted to sit in my room and watch TV,” he explains.
“I’d still speak to people on the phone and stuff but I didn’t want to go outside because I had gone from being in my walking frame and having some quality of life to having piled on all this weight, being stuck in my wheelchair and not having the life I once had.”
He felt stuck in a rut.
“I don’t want to say major things would have happened,” he continues. “You just don’t know. But I wasn’t very happy back then.”
A glance in the mirror, and a decision to change
So Jay fought back.
Going to bed one night he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and decided he’d had enough.
He downloaded MyFitnessPal, the calorie tracker app, and started measuring his food intake.
At the same time he joined the gym at the Aberdeen beach leisure centre.
In that first year, Jay dropped an astonishing six stone.
He calls it the “newbie gains”, the period at the start of an exercise regime when everything moves quickly. He admits now he lost weight too quickly. But he didn’t want to stop.
Plus, he was loving it. The calorie tracker opened his eyes to just how unhealthily he’d been eating.
So he slashed portion sizes, going from a giant bowl of cereal to more regular servings.
He’d still occasionally go for fast food but at McDonald’s he’d eat the small meal rather than the supersized one.
Meanwhile, the gym was a new home – a place he felt comfortable. He hit the weights and started bulking up. Staff at the gym were amazed at his progress, winning him praise which in turn made him feel even better about himself.
“Folk could see that I was a lot happier,” he says.
Jay’s twin brother Ben, who also has cerebral palsy
There was another motivation in Jay’s life – his twin Ben.
The brothers were both born with cerebral palsy, however an incident during birth meant that Ben – born 30 minutes after Jay – was starved of oxygen.
The effect on his brain left him with severe learning difficulties. But as our pictures show, that doesn’t stop him training with Jay.
Ben goes twice a week to Aberdeen Crossfit, which runs special one-on-one adaptive sessions for him.
He lifts weights and trains on rowing machines, ski machines and other cardio equipment, with the focus on keeping it fun and engaging.
Jay says: “Although he’s 23, the same age as me, he’s maybe only got the mental age of a six or seven-year-old. So it’s really important having somebody that understands that and welcomes him and is playful with him and encourages him as they do at CrossFit”.
How Jay became a gym instructor, and a viral sensation
Jay has much to celebrate.
He is now a qualified level two gym instructor with Sport Aberdeen, which manages sport and leisure facilities on behalf of Aberdeen City Council.
He has already hosted online training sessions with people in assisted-living accommodation and is about to take on a brand new post of health and fitness instructor.
On top of all that, he’s a viral sensation. In 2020, the team at LadBible heard about Jay’s story and got him to film a piece to camera. The video has racked up a million views.
He’s still working out at the gym, of course. And not just because he’s on his way to becoming the next Chris Hemsworth or Dwayne Johnson.
“It’s just become a massive part of my life,” Jay says. “I was never this guy before I joined the gym, but now I couldn’t imagine my life without some form of exercise. I mean, it’s become my whole life.”
