Heya.
I was lurking around this sub for years and found these long-form progress posts helpful so here's one.
Started out somewhere around 125kg or so, at around age 28, male, ~182 cm. I stopped doing most sports when I was 15 (swimming/water polo was the main one, but I was very bad at both), and basically all activity when I got to college. At that point I was still very able (during high school we hiked a lot, went on biking trips, canoeing, practiced dancing, etc, just skinny fat even then). By the end of college most of that was gone. Worked my way into a really cool firm where my career skyrocketed, and I was still there when I did the heavy lifting parts of this journey - can't imagine putting in this much effort if I hadn't been comfortable and competent in my job at the time. I didn't notice the mirror getting that much worse, and I have no family to tell me.
On a sudden 'I've done had enough of this' I started going to the swimming pool every single morning and mainlining veggies, cutting out processed carbs and sides. I did that for over two months during the summer, and clocked in at 110kgs. It was a borderline crash diet that worked but was not sustainable or healthy. I was still learning how to do all this. A 4-week trip followed where I was very afraid of (re)gaining weight. I decided to skip lunch most days, or just keep it very light. I also decided to take 3 weeks off where I focused on being active, mostly through hiking.
Coming home from this trip was the first 'hooooly shit' moment from friends. I showed up to a casual dinner thinking nothing of it. I didn't think much of the mirror-changes, and I wore the same clothes as before, even though they felt a bit baggy. Well, my friends told me the clothes are falling off of me and I need to go shopping, by the way what am I doing?
That felt good.
Swimming was still a thing but it was more casual, around 2-3 times a week. I restarted riding my bike for commutes. Because of the reception I guess I thought what they were saying is that I look outright good or something, I was just not used to getting commented on my looks at all. Sure, keep things going but I'm good you know? Well, I went on another trip abroad and met a bunch of new people. They weren't impressed. This pissed me off so much that I signed up for a neighborhood crossfit class that started basically the day after my return. Perfect.
I was around 100kgs (I think, probably a bit above) when I started going. 3 times a week, for 3 months, zero sessions skipped. It worked very well - I have no idea how my weight changed but I became much slimmer and in general felt much more able. But crossfit is as dangerous as crossfit is, even while there I was very critical about the end of session burpee mania that my gym had, and right at the 3 months mark I ended up injuring myself doing them. Went down and the left knee just snapped. A piece of cartilege sheared off and lodged itself inside the joint. It took me about 2 months to get to surgery during which time I couldn't fully extend my leg. At the operating table they noticed my ACL is also gone, so yeah, great session overall.
(they couldn't fix my ACL then and there, and it still isn't fixed. I did a ton of work to make my leg, and knee in particular, strong and stable and it is. planning to get it fixed this winter.)
(also note that I didn't yet comprehend at this time what it means to have scoliosis. I have it, it's a very mild version, but it's enough to matter a great deal. I shouldn't have been doing burpees basically, they are probably fine if you're healthy. That said, none of the 4 orthopedic surgeons I saw for my shoulder and knee had any nice words about crossfit.)
I had to be really careful after surgery, for 2-3 weeks I wasn't allowed to take the stairs (I tried, but really felt bad). That locked me inside my first floor apartment, and that was an instant recipe for depression. Coming out of this whole ordeal was when the wheels came off the wagon: I tried going back to crossfit but couldn't handle how unchanged the whole place was. I started swimming again, started an at-home kettlebell practice, started to pay a lot of attention to how my body felt during workouts and went to have my shoulder (which had major issues due to a sitting profession, and scoliosis to a lesser degree) fixed. My left knee took seriously forever to get back to normal-ish, and my gait specifically needed fixing because of how used I got to hobbling around. I developed a bit of an injury in the big toe joints on both sides due to bad gait. Thankfully it isn't too bad, but I feel it when I do something stupid. Swings and Turkish getups helped a lot, as did barefoot shoes. I expanded my biking by going on my first larger biking trip as an adult, about 700kms in 6 days. Easy terrain. My bodyweight hovered around the 90-95 mark for over a year which was incredibly frustrating, and I basically saw no changes. I was getting desperate.
Part of the problem for a long time was that I was unable to judge muscle mass by looking. 'Ok yeah I think I look a bit different maybe possibly, but I'm still like 10kgs away from the top of a healthy BMI range, I can't be that strong?' I wasn't, but I should've paid attention to changes in muscle mass regardless, at several points I just lost months of muscle gains to some crazy effort to just lose more weight.
At a few points I dipped down to 85-ish with unsustainable diets or just a shit ton of exercise, but it wouldn't stick. One of these dips came at the end of a 6-week remote working session, during Covid, where a bunch of us rented a place near a mountain. There was a path with 650m elevation over 4kms that started right at our door, I made that climb over 20 times. We also went on bigger climbs on the weekends. I didn't have my kettlebells so I tried doing bodyweight stuff and it shocked me how badly I did: I could do 20-odd pushups, and only a few table (horizontal) pullups. Huh. I could pretty much do this much before weight loss, maybe even more. Apparently years of constant dieting doesn't work well with focusless exercise. I promised myself I'd start training with weight when I got back home, regardless of how I feel about the gym environment overall.
That worked - I joined an incredibly skilled group of powerlifters, they taught me the big 3 (4 with military press) lifts, gave me a schedule, and I worked on it for about 1.5 years. Consistency waxed and waned, usually 2-3 months on, then missing a bunch of sessions. The guys were great and all but I felt such an outsider, impostor, idiot turd that going there was usually the hardest thing I did that day. Some of this may be the side effect of learning from guys who win nationals (again: they never made me feel weak, they were great), but more likely just my solid 30-ish years of never going to the gym and never knowing anyone who went that wasn't an outright buff either. I felt way more at home on my first day at a boulder place than after all that time there. The lifting moves went well thankfully, and by this point I had enough body awareness to pay attention to the knee, mind my scoliosis, and there were zero injuries. The most important skill they taught me was judging how hard is hard enough, I now know when to stop. My numbers were very 'mortal' as they say, but they put me firmly above the average guy on the street. Friends were surprised when I helped them move.
I will say that I tried climbing mountains with strength people and they just straight up died on what I considered a casual walk. I like endurance-type stuff as well and strength doesn't get you everything.
I was often depressed during this time and dieting was hard, ie. I just didn't. I went back to 90-ish kgs while building a solid base of muscle. Then just kept adding muscle while hovering around 90kgs. After 1.5 years of lifting I started climbing and soon dropped the very structured lifting. That was 1.5 years ago. My bodyweight is again/still 85-87-ish, but now I'm at a point where love handles are gone and I just look pretty muscular and am very capable.
There's a lot of side stories in all this. In my entire life I've hated running and found it hard and didn't get it. After getting my knees strong and building up endurance through cycling I tried running and it went pretty well. Practiced it almost daily for a summer on trails. Practiced more on and off since. Now I can just go for a 8-10k run at any time, somewhere between 4:50-5:20/km. I couldn't do a pull up all my life, the muscles just weren't there, and my shoulder hurt during the attempts. I now have zero pain and can do 5x10. I'm a much better cook, and my eating habits have changed such that even a 'bad day of bingeing on shit' (yep, happens) is not that bad. I had to learn about muscle knots and muscle balance and massages and the ways sitting and scoliosis messes up your body, now I can suggest great stretches and help others with muscle release. Learned to create tension around the abs to stabilize the lower back and have taught it to others. I'm at PT/massage person #4, kept moving on when I exhaust one (they sometimes get attached to an idea of what's wrong and refuse to move on even if their fix doesn't work). I still go on a major bike trip once a year, but graduated from nice easy terrain to climbing the highest Alpine passes, covering 1500-2000m elevation for several days in a row while carrying all my camping gear. Went on canoeing trips a few times. I climb 6a-6b on rock and it was really the missing link of upper body-heavy outdoor piece for me. Used to have long-standing issues with blood pressure and uric acid levels, had the beginnings of a fatty liver, would predictibly get a cold a year, all gone. I stopped drinking alcohol. I became a much better swimmer since I built up upper body strength, especially climbing (lats and shoulders) has been relevant.
Although I didn't highlight it kettlebell work has helped a great deal with my posture and strength (which I then lost through silly eating), and I still swing a few sets most mornings. Had to unlearn a lot of bad muscle activation patterns.
Tom Merrick (youtube) is easily the one who taught me the most about stretching, including all the PTs mentioned above, and his follow alongs are simply fantastic. I need more variety though and so: yoga. The formerly Downdog Yoga app (I think now it's just Yoga?) is really great. Even with all that stretching is a chore no matter how much I love and need its effects.
If you have any doubts about your knees go try the basic stuff from the Kneesovertoesguy, worked wonders for me.
Loose skin blocked me from seeing progress for a while and my experience is that it requires exercise targeting the specific area to get better. To get better sloooowly. I had the biggest problem around my thighs and cycling helped a lot. There's still a little, I'm aware of it, others don't notice. It's also a thing on my stomach, my face a tiny bit, and was a thing around my arms. I've a few friends going through the same journey and some of them paused because they were afraid of having excess skin on the stomach. I didn't stop, and my skin now looks much better than theirs. I have used retionol in bursts and felt that was helpful, but it might as well have been the exercise or more fat loss, etc.
For the record I still don't see myself as slim. Some of my T-shirts are size S so I may be objectively close to being slim. I don't think I'll be personally satisfied until I have abs at least once in my life, but there's great pride and joy in having all these abilities that being fit gives me. It really wasn't easy overall. Strength people may look at this story and say 'see, all you needed was good ol' gym work!' but the time I took to get there was very important and jumping the gun would 100% have not worked. I needed the every day swims, climing mountains, learning about my body, the injury (nah really could've skipped that one), and in the beginning I needed the intense effort that got those first 10-15kgs off. I cannot, to this day, maintain strict diets for more than a few weeks in a row and the amount of control involved in something like '350 kcal deficit a day' just sounds like a terrible life to me. Nothing wrong with it, but so far removed from my personality that it'd be silly to force. I did learn to count calories and that helped my food choices. These days I'm more active in the summer and that's when I lose fat. It's enough at this point.
Started about 7 years ago, and at around year 6 was when my weight stabilized at this 85-87 range and I started feeling great about it. It's true that your entire world (perception of others and self, perception of surroundings, confidence, options-possibilities, desires, um wardrobe :)) changes during this process.
If there's one advice I'd give to those starting out, really focus on the workouts. If you have no experience in any sport, train with someone who does. There's a lot of dumbfuckery on youtube, etc. that you can get tricked by without experience. The major positive inflection points in my progress were aligned to switching up sports and to quitting alcohol.
Some of my friends went to see personal trainers that totally overworked them every session, to the point where taking the stairs was painful etc, and they didn't become strong and hate the idea of 'training' that this implanted in them. They lost weight, but there are other ways that are more enjoyable and long-term better.
Anyways, I got a lot of help during the harder times from reading everyone's stories on reddit so thanks! Sorry for no pictures :) I wanted to write all this out because 1) I'm done and wanted to make that official, 2) I'm frustrated at still-fat people around me who won't listen. This won't get them to listen, but at least I've shouted into the world so that it might get to others. G'luck!
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