My Story

I originally wrote my story with greyed out details and only parts of the truth, because I was actually embarrassed about elements of my past. I was also fairly cautious about how I worded things In order to avoid making a bad impression. I’ve made a few breakthroughs lately, however, and I've decided to re-write my story without fear of what others may think – just the full and honest truth. My desire to help others is sincere and I shouldn’t have to hide anything.

I’m 25 years old at the time of writing, but 23 of those years have been spent drifting along in a state of “numbness”. Throughout school I was definitely one of the ugly kids. I had a pot belly, bad acne and I was very self-conscious. I remember multiple occasions in which people would just randomly comment on how ugly they thought I was, like it was just some casual thing you bring up in conversation. I didn't have the most pleasant experiences and suffice to say my self-esteem took a beating. Now I don't know whether I was genetically predisposed to depression, if depression came as a result of my experiences or both. Nevertheless, I got very low and I just couldn't see any point to life. There didn't seem to be a light at the end of the tunnel and although I never attempted suicide, I wrestled with the idea frequently.

Because of my independent nature, I never sought help or confided in anybody about my situation. I guess in my mind, asking for help would solidify my problems as ACTUAL problems. I kept things to myself and thought “there’s people going through far worse, what right do I have to feel like this?… Man the f*ck up and stop feeling sorry for yourself!” However, that doesn't help with depression, it's kind of like trying to heal an open wound by punching it.

So I continued to drift through life in an aimless unconscious haze, I didn’t want to feel anything. I wanted to protect myself from potential pain so I pushed everybody away or kept a safe emotional distance from anybody and everybody.

After leaving school I tried to change myself for college, I struggled desperately to think of myself as a different person. I even cut contact with anybody from my past because they reminded me of who I used to be. I wanted to be alone until I could re-invent myself; to become a socially acceptable person that was attractive, confident and outgoing. This worked to a small extent, but I hadn’t really dealt with my issues I'd merely swept them under a rug. This is when I first started getting into exercise, to help with my self confidence and improve my appearance. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, I just joined a gym and trained erratically.

I graduated college and drifted into a string of minimum wage jobs, my exercise habits dropped off with the “no-time excuse”. I continued to drift until I ended up in an office job. It seemed like a blessing at the time because it was the ultimate comfort zone job, which came with the perfect mind-numbing environment to zone out from life. After two/three years of sitting around in an office, I'd let myself go and reached an impressive 35% body fat. On reflection, I’d say this was my wake-up call from the haze I’d been in for so long. I remember the epiphany I had like it was yesterday "What the f**k am I doing here, there's got to be more to life than this!" So I decided to turn things around.

My first goal was to drop the body fat and get in shape, so I began searching tirelessly for training and nutrition information. I read every forum, article and book I could get my hands on. I had a strong desire to get in shape and nothing was going to stop me. I went to the gym with a huge surge of motivation, I trained my ass off and achieved leaps in progress quickly. Nevertheless, no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t seem to stay consistent with any approach for longer than a few weeks or months at a time.

I always got off to a great start, yet there was always something to halt my progress such as injuries, sickness, holidays, social events, people offering me junk food and so forth. From that point, I would feel like I'd blown all of my progress and start over. I couldn't understand what was wrong with me or why I kept sabotaging my hard work. It seemed like no matter how far I got, I would always spring back to exactly where I started.

After more than a year of zigzagging back and forth. That's what frustrated me more than anything, I had learnt so much but I couldn't stay consistent with what I'd learnt!

At the time, I assumed my problems were a lack of will power, motivation or knowledge regarding training and nutrition. In hindsight, I found that it had nothing to do with any of those things!

So after another fruitless quest to find yet more diet and training info online, I came across a chap named Tom Venuto. I liked his articles and decided to get his book "Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle". After reading the book, I realised that if I wanted to transform my body, I had to transform my mindset first. So I put the recommend changes into action. I set a goal and began yet another attempt to transform my body. This time, however, I was armed with a well defined goal, a new mindset, and an understanding of how to apply my knowledge consistently.

I kept things slow and steady this time around, no jumping into insane routines or diets – just small manageable changes. So my initial progress wasn't as fast as it had been in previous attempts.

I managed to go from this (November 2011).

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To this. Managing to drop 10 inches off my waist (June 2012).

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To some this may be impressive, to others, you may be thinking how I managed to take so damn long. To me, It brought tears to my eyes when I finally broke that cycle of self-sabotage. It reinforced the belief that I could achieve my ultimate goal, and that if I could break one barrier I could break any barrier. It was a series of mental breakthroughs more than anything else.

I remember being so excited when I finally passed the point i'd usually sabotage my progress, it almost didn't feel real because of the amount of time I'd spent going going around in circles. At the time, I actually felt like I was destined to stay the same no matter what I did. After reaching my first goal in (June 2012), I continued applying the principles I'd learnt and continued to make progress (September 2012).

Now I know i'm not going to win any body building competitions, but i'm continuing to progress and accelerate my results with everything I've learnt.

Now that I understand how to break the frustrating cycle of self sabotage, I've made it my personal mission to help others overcome the same problem. I no longer suffer from depression, I feel great. I’ve faced many of my greatest fears throughout this journey, even posting this story and having others criticise it used to be a fear of mine. However, I no longer let fear hold me back from achieving what I want in life, or from using what I've learnt to help others. I’m only just getting started with many of my goals, but I’m excited by the road ahead. I hope you enjoyed my story and I hope it’s given you greater insight into why I’m doing what I’m doing.

If you’re currently in a similar position to how I used to be, please feel free to contact me and I’ll help in any way I can. Don't keep things to yourself like I used to, it's not healthy to deal with EVERYTHING on your own and I'm genuinely more than happy to help where I can (I wouldn't put this here if I wasn't!)

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