Larry Fleet Is Sober, Healthy and Ready to Appreciate All the 'Things I Take for Granted' (Exclusive)

Larry Fleet is getting fit.

“I got a little home gym downstairs, and so I go down there and sweat a little bit,” Fleet, 38, tells PEOPLE in a recent interview from his home in White Bluff, Tennessee. “And I’m going for a bike ride this afternoon.”

It’s a new regimen that Fleet says is really nothing new. He just has never loved it as much as he does now.

“I used to hate it,” the country music singer/songwriter recalls with a laugh. “I played football for years and they used to make us work out, and so I just despised it really.”

It was just last year that Fleet says he had the home gym built in the home he shares with wife Phebe and their children – 4-year-old Waylon and 2-year-old Stella. But over the winter months, the “Where I Find God”  hitmaker admits that he started slacking a bit in the ‘working out’ department.

“I’m getting back in gear now,” says Fleet. “The way I get motivated is I buy something for the gym and then I'm like, ‘Oh, I got to go use this.’ And that gets me back in there. I need somebody to help keep me accountable. If not, I eat Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs." He laughs. "It’s a journey.”

Granted, Fleet won’t have much time in his home gym for a while, as he continues on his Earned It headlining tour. But he does work hard to keep his fitness journey going, even when he’s on the road.

“I have ropes on my bus,” says Fleet, who often shares videos of his various workouts on his social media channels. “If you've got a battle rope, you can pretty much do anything. You can do tons of workouts with that thing. The good thing about it is it gets your heart rate up and then it literally burns your shoulders and your arms. It's a really great tool for 70 bucks.”

In addition to making the decision to get fit, Fleet also made the decision to get sober a couple years back. 

“I didn’t want my kids seeing me drunk,” he says quietly. “I used to get wild and throw down all the time. I'd say things and regret it the next day. So, I just got tired of that. I didn't want to be embarrassed. I wanted to be completely cognitive of what I was doing at all times."

And as much as he did it for himself, he also did it for his kids.

“I wanted to set a good example for them,” Fleet explains. “Since I've quit drinking, I feel so much better. It was a thing that I needed to get out of my life, and so I did. I just completely quit and haven't even wanted to drink. There are things that matter more to me than the party or hanging out or whatever. I'd rather spend my time here drinking sweet tea and cutting the grass with my boy."

It's a sweet place for Fleet as he currently finds himself releasing the first single off his third studio album Earned It, titled "Things I Take for Granted," as it’s a song that has already begun to be a standout track on his tour setlist.

“Usually when I play ‘Where I Find God,’ people light the place up,” he says of his live show reaction to his 2021 hit. “Now the arenas are lighting up for ‘Things I Take for Granted.’ Once I saw that happening, I knew we were on to something. I’m getting to see it work in real time.”

Surprisingly, the song with the deep lyrics began to take root in a parking lot.

“We were talking about how it’s the little things like playing ball with my boy or tucking the kids in that you take for granted,” Fleet says of the lyrical backbone of the song he wrote alongside Rocky Block, Jordan Dozzi and Brett Tyler. “It was a great title. We wrote it and we had a demo the next day. It was a very honest song for me.”

And it was a simple one, in a world where nothing seems to be simple anymore.

“We confuse everything,” explains Fleet, who will also head out on the Billy Currington tour this spring. “We make everything way more complicated. As a songwriter, we always say, ‘Man, we're going to songwriter the hell out of this one’ and make it so poetic. But there's a time and place for that. For me, most of the time I just want to get to the point. I’ve found that works. Say what you got to say and make it the most honest you can.”