Greetings, and welcome to Hokie Doke Fitness! Recently, I’ve been wanting to share my experiences with getting fit to keep me accountable and to hopefully provide some hope to other people like me who have struggled throughout their lives to get healthy. What better way to start is there than by telling you a little bit about myself and where I come from?
At the time where I’m writing this, I’m a 24 year old Masters student at Virginia Tech (Home of the Hokies!), trying to get a masters degree in Electrical Engineering. I know you’re thinking ‘why is an electrical engineer going to start giving out fitness advice?’ So, I didn’t major in nutrition or fitness or some other health related profession. But I believe that anyone can still educate themselves and get healthy. That’s what I’m doing right now, and that’s what you can do too!
Here comes the embarrassing part where I talk about my history with weight issues. I used to be thin and muscular, but in late elementary school, I got into the habit of eating daily snacks and packing on the pounds. This is tough on any kid, and I was no exception. For a while, a majority of my weight was still muscle, but I was overweight from then on out. I struggled with self esteem until my senior year of high school when my curves finally started to balance out and I looked good even though I was overweight.
Then came college. Oh college, you are the bane of my existence sometimes! My freshman year, everything was pretty much fine until my roommate’s sociopathic nature came to a head. I fell into a depression and considered dropping out. But my mom was there for me unlike anyone else, and I talked to her pretty much every day until I got through. I gained about 15 lbs that year.
Sophomore year, I started to hit the 180 lbs mark and attempted to lose the weight. I tried things like Atkins and counting my calories, but I was still new to the fitness game, and fell off the bandwagon. Diet is always where I have struggled, and it was hard to stick to restrictive diets when I wasn’t truly motivated. I gained about 10 lbs that year.
My junior year, I had more roommate problems, so I struggled through that. I lived with two people, and my roommate Jess saved me. Her husband (her fiancé at the time) was a fitness nut, and we started to work out so that she would look great in her wedding dress. This was the first time I realized that I didn’t hate the gym. However, my diet wasn’t being restricted at all, and I gained muscle without losing any fat, which is pretty typical for me. I ended the year at around 190 lbs.
Then I moved in with my great friend Naomi, who has been my best roommate by far. We got along great, and because I was happy where I was living, I didn’t feel the need to control that part of my life much, so I ballooned up to about 210 lbs.
I talked to my workout buddy, Sylvia, and her roommate Sam, because I was unhappy and they struggled with their weight too. We decided to enter a weight loss contest the first semester of my master’s degree. Sylvia and Sam had done weight watchers before, so I gave that a try. Over the course of the contest, I lost about 20 lbs. But at the end of it, I was starting to lose my hold on my control. I was starving all of the time, and my weight loss was plateauing significantly.
That January, Sylvia and I decided to do something more extreme than I had ever done: P90X. Power 90 Extreme (or P90X for short) was developed by Beachbody as a total body transformation system in which you work out 6 days a week for 90 days and transform your body. I’d done one of the workouts with my dad the previous summer and liked it, and Sylvia had a copy she could borrow from her brother, so we started it!
At first, there were about 4 of us doing P90X together, but eventually, it turned out that Sylvia and I were the only ones committed to sticking to the program and doing the work every day. The workouts were hard, but many of them were strength based, which suited muscle kids like Sylvia and I just fine. However, (shocker), I didn’t stick to the diet plan they recommended, and gained 15 lbs (mostly of muscle, I’m sure).
But the most important thing that P90X taught me was that I CAN workout more than 4 times a week and not die. I had never done that before, and completing P90X empowered me to move forward!
Next, Sylvia and I tried to do Insanity by Beachbody, which is more of a cardio based program. Let me tell you what. If you complete Insanity, I have no doubt that you will be transformed. That program is HARD. Sylvia and I did the program every day for 3 weeks, following the diet plan as well. But on the 3rd week, our bodies shut down. We weren’t ready for that kind of hard work. We liked the workouts, but our bodies eventually gave out.
After that came a period of inconsistency. My weight went back up because I wasn’t working out consistently, my diet was poor, and I was going on vacation and starting up school. I tried this diet thing, and that diet thing, and developed an arsenal of things that worked and things that didn’t. During this time, my weight shot up to my maximum: 220.2 lbs.
I thought to myself: this has to change. I was sluggish, always tired. My health was getting poor, and I was starting to have problems that would quickly escalate if I didn’t reign them in. That was when I first thought about getting Focus T25, another Beachbody program designed to get results in 25 minutes a day. And this time, I’m going to succeed.
I’ll talk about my journey through T25 another day! This was a glimpse into my life so that you can see where I’m coming from, and perhaps relate! Tune in next time to hear me talk about my experience through T25 Round 1, and have a great day!
Hokie Doke Fitness 