Summary
European obese person with a broken pituitary gets his shit together at 25YO, goes through medically induced puberty, opens the door of a gym and never looks back.
Introduction & background
Hello fellow fitness lovers, I’ve been eager to share this transformation with you guys. This is probably not going to be your typical transformation post, but I really hope you will get something out of it.
It all started just about 6 years ago when I opened the door of a gym for the very first time. I was fat, sick, miserable, and I had no idea that opening that door would mean so much to me.
See I was 25 years old at that time, yet I was trapped in the body of a 13-year-old. Due to complications at birth part of my brain commanding the hormones was damaged and I hadn’t been through puberty yet. My body was a wreck and my mind was a mental prison.
Fitness gave me a purpose and saved my life; it was exactly the tool I needed and that’s what ill focus on in this post.
Starting stats
Age: 25
105KG BF: 35%+
188cm
Stats now
Age: 31
90KG BF: south of 15% (or so I hope )
Before and after picture
Left age 25, right age 31
I started my transformation at 105 kilos but as I had never really taken a shirtless picture for the before/after I’m using my first shirtless selfie just about a year in. Back then I had already lost 20 kilos at the gym and was about to start HRT. When I started my transformation, this was my physique with clothes: https://imgur.com/F1mzqcp
Face gains: https://imgur.com/h9UzUAn
Kept some loose skin unfortunately, nothing I can do about it so I won’t dwell on it: https://imgur.com/k7FxaF5
Full album: https://imgur.com/a/iA5m1iE
Exercise
Situation before
I started out at 105 kg and almost no muscle at all. I couldn’t do a bodyweight squat without hurting my knees and I couldn’t bench the bar. My body was a wreck due to hormonal deficiencies and any exercise would leave me in pain for almost a week after (even hiking). I have to be honest due to being bullied at school I hated sport.
‘If only I knew then what I know now’. Knowledge is power, well when I started out, I didn’t know anything about training, like literally 0, I had to learn everything from scratch. The last time I exercised was in school and I was always last. Other than the owner of my first gym showing me 2-3 things I never had a coach.
At the beginning weight loss was my main concern. I lost 20 kilos doing simple cardio on the elliptical in the gym 3 times per week. I only started lifting after about a year and injured myself quite quickly being an idiot looking at what others were doing. (wrists, shoulders, elbows, knees, fingers, everything that moves has gone through injury)
I won’t go into details but once I started hormonal replacement therapy (I have to replace 5 crucial hormones my body isn’t making) things started clicking for me.
Things I wish I knew before starting out:
- Warming up is crucial
- Spot-reduction is a myth: you can’t just burn fat where you want. Abs are 90% kitchen.
- Don’t listen to ‘Bro science’: You wouldn’t believe all the s*** I heard in the gym over the years
- Mind muscle connection is a thing
- Having a workout plan is essential
- Ego lifting doesn’t get you anything except injuries
- Form, this might be the most important one. Learning how to perform an exercise properly. In the beginning I looked at others in the gym which is utterly idiotic, but I didn’t know better.
- My first research on proper form were Scott Herman’s videos on YouTube. Also watched a lot of form-check posts on this sub and people’s feedback.
- Tracking lifts
- Big – bigger – biggest, no one gives a damn, were all there to work on ourselves and that’s what matters. I was way too self-conscious going to the gym in the beginning
- Under resting: sleep and rest periods are essential
To be honest with you guys I have been the perfect newbie/‘fuckaroundits’ example for a long time, too long. . . I could write books about mistakes I made but let’s focus on what I do now.
What I do now:
I have tried a lot of different workout programs from bodybuilding.com and Reddit. I stuck to “shortcut to size” and “shortcut to shred” from Jim Stoppani for quite some time, but the one I found that suits me the most now is a simple PPL split from Reddit. I do 3 days on, 1 day off. Things started getting better and better since I’m lurking on this sub.
I am training in 3 different gyms every week due to my current lifestyle and I love alternating between dumbbells, barbells and machines for the same movement pattern. Due to going to commercial gyms I often have to change the order of my exercises and improvise. I’m not the kind of guy that waits 15 minutes next to a bench press.
My typical split:
Push day (Chest, shoulders, triceps)
4 sets of bench press with dumbbells, machine or bar
4 sets of incline or decline press (I love the decline)
3 to 4 sets of Fly’s
4 sets of shoulder press or military press
3 sets Lateral raises
3 to 4 sets of triceps pressdown / skullcrushers / triceps machine
Pull day (back & biceps)
4 sets of lateral pulldowns
4 sets of rows (one arm / V-bar/ dumbbell / machine) I would love to master the bent over rows but they always spark lower back pain so I need to work on that
3 to 4 sets of pull ups (mostly on assisted machine even if I don’t use any weight – I’m still scared of making a fool out of myself doing it at the pulley)
3 sets of straight arm pulldowns
4 sets Curls with dumbells / barbell / cable
Leg day (the 2 limbs I can’t maneuver for the rest of the week)
4 sets of squats or 4 to 7 sets of leg press (as I do my legs every 4 days, I like to alternate between starting with squats or leg press)
4 sets of leg extensions
3 to 4 sets of leg curls / seated leg curls depending on gym
4 sets of 20 lunges (usually without any weight)
I really should incorporate straight leg deadlifts for my hamstrings but I always hurt my lower back with this, definitely a point I should work on.
I generally work in the 8-12 range but like to change things up or down from time to time. I drop set on the last set of a muscle group.
Some numbers
Bench-press: 4 sets of 10x40kg with dumbbells. Started with 12kg hurting my shoulders thanks to bad form.
Leg-press: up to 6 plates on each side, depends on the machine. Different from gym to gym. Started with empty machine.
Squat: 4 sets of 14x100kg. I didn’t do squats or proper leg days until 3 years ago. Started with the bar.
Overhead press:
Deadlift: got arrogant at 140kg and injured my lower back a while ago so for now I’m not deadlifting and I have to say I don’t miss it at all.
I know my numbers are weak, but I came from not being able to walk on this earth pain-free. I had DOMS from carrying a grocery bag home. If somebody had told me that someday I would hold a 40kg dumbbell over my chest or 100kg on my back I would never have believed it.
I do not test 1RM because I’m scared of injury. Perhaps that is a mistake? You tell me.
Diet
Situation before
I was an overweight person with very little food know-how at the time. I never really ate that bad, but because I had a completely under working thyroid and I wasn’t exercising at all the weight kept piling on. I always skipped breakfast and mostly ate a sandwich at lunch and the biggest meal of the day in the evening.
I gained a lot of weight in my twenties as I was drinking my problems away, which I’m not proud of..
When I started fitness, I didn’t know how to fuel my body properly; in other words, I knew jack shit about nutrition. At the beginning I was the perfect moron eating salads and spending my time on the elliptical.
Things I wish I knew before starting out:
- My first year of cardio only I was severely under-eating
- Not tracking my calories: once I did, I notice that my estimation was wrong by 1000 calories.
- Overeating while bulking: there is absolutely no point in gaining 30 pounds in a couple of months of which 5 are probably muscle and the rest fat. A mistake I seem to repeat every time I bulk. Check out some befores and afters: https://imgur.com/zonII1f
- Eating fat is necessary to live
- Salt isn’t the enemy, neither are carbs
What I do now:
I track everything in Myfitnesspal. When bulking I’ll eat about 3500 calories (380C 100F 235P). Cutting I’ll drop to 2300-2500 calories, mostly dropping carbs while maintaining high protein.
What I eat? Mostly my staple consists of oats, eggs, chicken & fish, pasta (pasta is life for me), Greek yogurt, olive oil, avocadoes, nuts, fresh fruit, vegetables and last but not least popcorn (thanks Greg).
My food is pretty much tasteless and boring, but it works. Once a week I take my girl out to eat something good or we cook something special at home where I’m not counting.
Here is a sample of what a day of eating looks like for me (maintaining now): https://imgur.com/5ylTiWx
Boring yes, but it works.
Supplements? Whey isolate, creatine only when bulking, BCAA’s only during leg days for that placebo effect, animal cuts at the end of a cut and vitamins all year round. PWO on push & pull days.
Injury
I’ll keep it short, one advice I can give anyone: do not get sloppy at the gym and re-rack your weights between sets if you don’t use them anymore. I learned this the hard way and almost lost a finger when I reached muscle-failure bench-pressing with dumbbells. I dropped the dumbbell right on top of another one next to my bench and my middle finger was at the wrong place at the wrong time:
It took time but I recovered quite well, still can’t use that finger for everything though ..
Bonus: check out my workout gear during lockdown: https://imgur.com/26gI9FV
I was one of the lucky ones as I had a garden at my disposal with a wooden bench, some sandbags and flower pots. Yes, flower pots, with some bricks in there and my creative/moron spirit I was able to do a lot.
Doesn’t look like much, but trust me when you’re grieving and you’re not allowed to leave the house, getting that garden pump under your neighbor’s eyes feels like heaven. I’ll never stop lifting no matter what, it became like therapy for me and it’s a necessity for my mental and physical health.
Final word
I forged someone I never thought would see daylight in the gym. Amidst the chaos of life, it has been my ally and I know for a lot of you out there it’s the same.
Thank you for reading this and remember, it’s you versus you, you are the hero of your own story in there.
As I said at the beginning, this transformation was partly possible thanks to hormonal replacement therapy (not blasting!) Should someone want to know more about my HRT journey, I have a detailed post on r/testosterone: https://www.reddit.com/r/Testosterone/comments/go46w6/5_year_trt_transformation_thanks_to_this_sub/
TY
[link] [comments]
* This article was originally published here
No comments:
Post a Comment