Transforming my Body, Transforming my Life: My Experience with Fitness

I think we are all self-conscious about our bodies, especially when we are not happy with them. When I was 18 years old I was at a healthy weight, I was in shape, but there were certainly dudes in better shape than me. I am lucky enough to have good genetics and I’ve played football all my life so I was in pretty good shape (skinny muscular) at 18 years old but I was nowhere near how I wanted to look like.

I had never been interested in getting bigger and strong but one day this random thing happened – On some random day the YouTube algorithm decided to put a video of a bodybuilder on my feed. It was the typical thumbnail with a guy in his mid twenties showing off his physique. It’s fair to say it got my attention, I clicked on it without any expectations. I looked at these bodybuilders and their physiques fascinated me, people like David Laid, Connor Murphy, MattDoesFitness – these guys got my attention – I mean, they have pretty remarkable physiques, anyone recognizes how hard it is to have a body like that. As an 18 year old, I looked at these guys and wanted to be like them. I wanted confidence, I wanted to feel good about my body, so I asked myself- how did these guys got these Greek-God-like bodies? Then I went a little deeper and I watched a few body transformation videos or random people on the internet who followed the programs of these guys and I watched enough of them to realize that having a body I was proud of was only a matter of studying them. So I did.

Consuming the Right Content

I started consuming bodybuilding content every day. I mean I wanted to know everything! I wanted to hear them speak about it, I wanted to see what they ate, where they got their inspiration from. Luckily, the vlog era was strong in 2018/2019 so I could literally see what these people were doing. How could I pass on that? If they have what I want then I should probably see what they are doing and evaluate if my desire for the thing is enough to make me do what they were doing. Luckily for me, they filmed everything – their gym sessions, their workout plans, their meal preps, what supplements they took, everything. I spent hours watching these videos until it got repetitive enough that I recognized the pattern. I learned all these new terms like endomorph, mesomorph, ectomorph, PRs, controlled range of motion, drop sets, super sets, it sounds commons sense now, but everything was new to me then, and I loved the process of learning. I mean these guys had the body I wanted! I had to be humble enough to listen to them. 

After a lot of hours I realized these guys weren’t going anything that I wasn’t willing to do – 90% of their results were coming from working our + eating right. That’s “The Secret”. I went on a rabbit hole about the best workout splits, I watched dozens of “how to do a bench press” videos to make sure I had every detail nailed down, and I just kept learning as I went. I didn’t wait until I had everything memorized, I had to make use of the momentum – so I just started by going to the gym and copying what I saw from the videos.

Transformation Takes Time

My body took some time to change, I didn’t see any results in the first 3/4 months, but I believed in the process. I knew it was a matter of time. I had seen loads of transformation videos, I knew what to expect. It was all part of the process. 

This started my journey in the gym. Now, it has become a part of my identity and I have never looked back. I don’t consume much content on bodybuilding nowadays, I’ve been doing it for 5 years now and I have my own standards and goals. I don’t want to become a professional bodybuilder, so I think got enough knowledge to keep striving at my physique goals. I am prouder of my body now than I was 5 years ago, I am much more confident and I keep going to the gym to maintain and improve my physique. Like I said, I don’t want to be a professional bodybuilder, body image is important to me but I don’t want to be in the top 1%, I’m extremely satisfied being in the top 15%.

Wrapping Up 

Studying these guys was the foundation of my journey. I found someone who had something that I wanted, I studied them, I learned from them, and I copied as much as I could until I got proof of concept. I studied the people who tried copying them. That’s an important insight, that allowed me to know what to expect, I could learn from their mistakes. 

A lot of people try to do body transformations, some fail and some succeed and that balance people showed me that a body transformation was possible, those people showed me how much was possible, and how fast I could get results. They set the bar, I had an estimate in my mind of how long it was going to take. If those people hadn’t uploaded their journeys online I wouldn’t know if 2 weeks in the gym was enough. I needed volume. I needed loads of people, I needed to gather all of their experiences and make an average on my mind to see what the common results were. As soon as I understood what it took to get the body I wanted I realized the power of trusting the process. I knew it was a matter of time before I physique got better.

I hope you found this post valuable! Stay curious, keep learning, and take responsibility for your life.

Best wishes,

Martim