My Journey - Part 1: The Skinny Guy

Right from going through my teen years through to a young adult, I'd always been that small skinny, lanky, coat-hanger looking guy. I struggled mentally with this as I moved into my young 20's with feeling so self-conscious of my size, not to mentioned that paired with my baby-face and pale-ass skin... it was a real shitty feeling and self-body image that I had. It didn't help when friends and co-workers would make indirectly harmless remarks like "you're all skin and bone" or "check out those muscles!". Whilst they were just joking around and having fun (which I knew, of course), deep down, this really did make me feel worse about myself.

On top of this, I had an absolutely terrible diet. My daily food intake consisted of a box of crackers, a couple of chocolate protein milks, a fatty meat-pie for lunch... and occasionally, even a stop through the fast food drive-through on my way home! In my mind I really thought I ate a lot.. I really did! Everyone was always commenting on how much I was eating and how was I able to stay so skinny. Well I was asking myself the same question.. Yeah! you're tellin' me!

I had dabbled in lifting some dumbbells here and there (because all I owned was a pair of 7kg dumbbells) which I would do 1 massive set of 80, terrible-formed reps every morning in the car park early at work before anyone had arrived, foolishly thinking this was going to solve all of my problems. Oh how silly and wrong I was.

This all went on for quite some time until I decided to really have a good go at making things work the way I wanted them to and started doing some research online on muscle building. I was definitely not prepared at all for what I had quickly discovered. My research immediately went from one ideology on how to lift weights, to an entire world of fitness, nutrition, protein synthesis, metabolism, sleep & rest, body adaptions etc. This whole thing got real intense real fast. At least in my mind it did, anyway.

As my research continued and I was confident that I really understood the foundations of what I needed to do to start making a change and long-term transformation, my journey had begun!