Meet the Friendly Lifter

If this is the first post of mine you've read, welcome!  And thanks for visiting--it's an honor!

Where I’m Coming From

For the first 40 years of my life, I was the Fat Kid.  I used to be 300 pounds of solid fat.  Over the last 6 years I’ve lost more than 100 pounds of that fat, and significantly improved my strength and muscle.  I'm also a teacher by trade, and I really like to help people learn stuff.  Over the years, I have seen many beginners have the same questions, and see them face the same frustrations as lots and lots of other people.  I'd like to give them a kind, non-judgmental push in the right direction.

I’m NOT here to sell you something, or get you to sign up for something, or convince you that if you do what I tell you, you’ll melt away that fat or build yourself into a god or goddess.  Instead, I’m here to give you a bit of tough love and a lot of encouraging hugs.  If you’re a guy they can be fist bumps, I’m okay with that too.

The Tough Love Part

The sad truth is, getting fit is hard—especially at first.  And in this day and age where you can learn endless amounts of information with a few clicks of the keyboard, a teaspoon of helpful information is typically buried in a truckload of worthless crap.  That’s mostly because people want your money.  They will tell you literally anything to get your money, and they know exactly what you want to hear.  Just buy the magazine or membership or bizarre machine and you will look like these models in no time!

They.  Are.  Lying.

Lasting fitness never works that way, ever.  Ever.  Certainly, it’s possible to lose a large amount of fat or gain a lot of muscle in a short period of time, but I guarantee it will be insanely difficult, expensive, and/or fraught with dangers to your overall health.  And after all that, your body will naturally try to reverse such drastic changes to its status quo, meaning that keeping that fat off or that muscle on will require a great deal more difficulty, and probably more expense and risk.  (The one exception here might be weight loss surgery, although I would say “expensive” still applies, and the entire process does still take time.)
It is absolutely normal to dream of having a lean, athletic body instantly.  Just about everyone does.  But please don’t throw your money at the shysters.  And please don’t set yourself up for disappointment.

You can’t buy a First-Class ticket for this journey.  This is going to take both time and effort.  If you can accept that, you’re ready for the encouragement.

The Right Track

Will Rogers said, “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”  Lots of us have started down the right track, then stalled.  Then a train came and shoved us back to where we started, or worse.  Here’s the one bit of advice I’d like to offer that you might not have heard before: There’s more than one track.

Don’t get me wrong, they all go uphill, so it’s going to take effort.  But there are hundreds of tracks that lead to fitness, and for you, some of them will be better choices than others.  My wish for you is that you find a track that doesn’t just lead to fitness, but also takes you on a journey you’ll enjoy.

In school, my P.E. teachers, were mostly well-meaning and honestly wanted to see me be healthy and fit.  But they only introduced me to team sports (I choke under pressure), running around tracks (boring and miserable for an asthma sufferer), and calisthenics (gotta love jumping up and down with all that fat on your frame).  I grew up believing that I was just not an athletic person, and that I was destined to be fat all my life.

It wasn’t until decades later that I discovered my right track: weight training.  It was a perfect fit for my temperament because there’s no pressure to score one for the team, and there’s no split-second decisions—everything is carefully planned out.  I’m not competitive against others, but I love the feeling of victory when I’m able to lift more repetitions or more weight than I did last week.  And I love that for the time I’m in the weight room, I can focus on the weights and nothing else.  My point isn’t that you must try weight training; it’s that I had never thought of myself as a weight lifter.  The best track to fitness for you might go in a direction you totally didn’t expect, so consider all the possibilities.

So keep your mind open to the possibilities!  In my next post, I'll talk about ways to explore those possibilities.

Best wishes,
The Friendly Lifter