my fitness journey

Let’s be honest. In the early stages of my life, I wasn’t very athletic. I preferred drawing and reading to football and soccer. I would always run around with my friends, of course, but I wasn’t a part of any sports team. I did a PE class from ages six to nine, which I enjoyed, but that was only once a week. So I still wasn’t getting very much exercise. My parents signed me up for a swim team and then tennis, but nothing really stuck. I wasn’t a very overweight child, but I did tend to be on the thicker side of things.

I was also always very tall, taller than all of my friends, even ones who were older than me. My doctor said I was in the top 1% of boys my age. Even though I was tall, I always struggled a bit with having a good body image. I thought I was fat, even though I wasn’t, and my mom preferred I not use that term. And having friends with literally 0% bodyfat—or so it seemed—never really helped things. 

In the summer of 2022, me and my dad wanted to get into weightlifting. I’m not exactly sure why, but we bought our first set of dumbbells to start training at home. We found a kinda bad training split online and started trying to workout 4 times a week. I think in the first months or even year, we only ever worked out all 4 days of the program like once. We were kinda committed, but not completely, and we didn’t really know what we were doing. 

Around March of 2024, however, we saw a big change. I learned a lot more about fitness and having my dad to motivate me really helped. Soon I got self-motivated and committed. I found a better workout plan and even edited it a little bit to fully work for me and my goals. My dad and I started working out every day, eating our protein, counting our calories—for the most part—and doing our cardio—kind of. It’s not perfect, nothing ever is, but I’ve been working harder than ever to achieve my goals.

Slowly, but surely, my body image has improved, both from a more healthy view of my body in general as well as from working out. I hope this can be your motivation. It is possible to have a body you’re proud of, but the first step is being proud of your body no matter what it looks like. Then you grind to achieve the physique of your dreams which for most of us takes discipline and hard work, no matter what.

~DJWako