Contents
The Why
I’ve been going to the gym consistently now for around a year and a half. I never used to go to the gym at all. I tried a few times in my first few years at uni but never stuck to it for more than a month or so. I never came into it with a plan or a goal that I actually cared about. Back in the day my goal was just to go to the gym because I wanted to be healthy and the gym was what I associated with being healthy. But when you’re 55kg, skinny and just over 6ft the last thing you need to be doing is jogging on a treadmill.
So, in September of 2021 I started going to my local PureGym more out of necessity than anything else. I’d recently become single and so had alot of free time on my hands and a bit of a hit to the self confidence. So within probably a week of being single I made my first gym trip and focused on strength training. Armed with 0 experience and all of my information acquired from YouTube videos. At this point it was more about turning up than worrying about doing it right. It’s suprisingly easy to build the habit of going to the gym when you’ve got nothing better to be doing.
So early days, lifting completely wrong and still learning the very basics. Here’s a couple of pictures of me at my original 55kg which was the weight I was basically glued to for most of my life from age 18 onwards.
So that is definitely what qualifies as skinny. I wasn’t even what some people would call skinny-fat, where I was small in terms of muscle but had a slightly high body fat percentage, I was just plain skinny. The smart scales I have measured me at around 6% body fat, which was ridiculously low. Of course take that with a pinch of salt because those scales are notoriously innacurate but I think it gives you a pretty good idea of the level of skinny I was at. Through most of my life I’d been called twig arms and to be fair they were and still kind of are. This had never really bothered me as it’s just what I’d always been used to and I didn’t think there was a way to change it.
The Development
My initial workouts weren’t terrible in terms of exercise choice. I wasn’t doing influencer style overcomplicated exercises with plates and kettlebells swinging at all angles. I stuck to the basics but hadn’t quite grasped the concept of progressive overload and what the different training styles did in terms of hypertrophy (muscle growth), and strength. I was sometimes doing 4 or 5 sets of 12 reps with the same weight for every single set meaning I never got up to heavier weights but fatigued my muscles hugely. I eventually fixed this when I started going to the gym for a while with one of my mates from work. I started pyramiding my way up the weights, usually sticking to just 3 or 4 sets and sticking to around 8-10 reps. This was far more effective than what I had been doing and I started seeing significant changes.
The main areas I noticed improvements in my physique were my shoulders which had started to get a bit wider and rounder, and my legs which now had a bit less of a thigh gap and had some more noticeable definition on the quads (still not blessed with glorious calves like my dad though). These physical changes were all the motivation I needed. Seeing such visible changes in my physique made me realise that I could train my body into whatever shape I wanted and that I didn’t have to be skinny all my life. Of course with my skeletal frame I’m not going to be able to built like a tank like some of the world class bodybuilders out there but I can certainly push for my body to be at it’s peak physical limit.
Here’s some images of me around halfway through my year and a half of training:
The Setback
The one big hit I took during this year and a half was a period where I was getting ill quite regularly which absolutely killed my appetite. I was getting bloated and crampy feelings in my stomach almost every day and I started losing all the progress I had made. I had no idea what was causing it and was worried I was never going to be able to get back on the horse and start making improvements again. I started trying to narrow down possible causes of my stomach problems and after working my way through various possibilities I had finally realised, I had developed a lactose intolerance. This was a huge suprise to me as I had been drinking lactose products completely fine for years and years and now suddenly my body seemed to just refuse to process it properly. The main thing that had been wrecking my stomach was the weight gainer shakes that I purchased from MyProtein. Turns out they were like 80% lactose and had been wrecking my insides. So I cut them out for a few weeks along with other lactose products like milk and cheese (which it turns out should have virtually no lactose in it, yay). And finally my stomach felt like it was recovering. I still think it’s a bit sensitive, and it occasionaly gives me bother, but some of my family are cursed with IBS and so I’ll take this mild version over their crippling version anyday.
So no more weight gainer shakes was a bit of a problem as I think they were the only thing getting me over my calorie target for the day as well as being loaded with protein, so the diet had to be improved. This is something I’m still struggling with. I don’t really like cooking and I certainly don’t like eating mountains of food, so i’m finding meals that have the lowest volume possible and the most calories. I’ve found high fat mince to be a very good choice and pesto pasta is another staple of my diet. But finding time to eat large meals like this whilst working strange shift patterns at my work and being out of the house with my girlfriend is difficult and I think is currently the biggest limiting factor in my progress.
The Results
So where am I at now. After a year and a halfish of going to the gym consistently and eating in a caloric surplus (for the most part) I’ve made adequate progress I think. To be quite honest the hardest part of the whole thing has been eating enough. Going to the gym for an hour a day is the easy part but having three plus large meals a day is such a pain to maintain when you’ve got a metabolism like mine. Missing just one meal can have me losing about 3 days of progress and weight gain. I’m currently sitting at around 63kg (185cm tall-ish) and am still going to the gym 6 times a week following a push-pull-legs split. Honestly I’m so glad I started the gym as it’s given me so much more pride in my body and appearance. Not that I wasn’t confident in my body to begin with but I used to just simply not care. Now I look in the mirror and am proud of the work I’ve put in and how much I push myself. I push myself to my limits as much as I can in the gym and once I figure out a solution to getting my diet perfect I think I’ll have the perfect gym habit.
Here’s some pictures of me now compared to me right at the start of my journey. Hopefully you can see the progress I’ve made and even if you can’t, I can and that’s all that matters.
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