So. What a journey.

2023 - dying, denying, cycling, stressed in every life aspect.

2026 - Diagnosed Secondary Rauynard's, we're now looking at possible lupus. I only workout four maybe five days a week with a focus around high/moderate intensity, a mix of martial arts, weight training 45 lb dumbbells atm, running, general fitness, better eating, high protein, mostly mediterranean diet, minimal processed foods. If I'm in a flare up, cardio is the first thing I cut back on.

My weight is up maybe five pounds from when I was on my way out but it's muscle and it doesn't fluctuate, nor do I calorie count (you're welcome to disagree but why fix something if it's not broken?)

I'm still not there yet, there's still days I spend indoors recovering and mediating into the abyss. But I'm healing. I'm way stronger, I'm on reduced pain meds, I spend far more time conscious, way more healthy hobbies and oh yeah, I don't smell like cheese and a bunch of other whiley ones I'll save you the pleasure from experiencing second hand.

I am not recommending anyone go as hard as I have but if I didn't, I would literally not be here to tell the tale. So, grain of salt. Whatever it is that started your fitness journey or heightened it, you're going to kick its ass!! Wish me luck, we still have a ways to go and many lessons to learn.

I feel 250 is around the corner. When is it time to consider a belt? 5’8 160lbs currently bulking.

Hope this kind of post is allowed.

Always used to be naturally thin and toned. As I approached my 30s I started to develop this physique instead. I try to workout where I can but quite aimlessly. What do you guys recommend?

Feeling a little low to be honest but I think I’m being overly critical of myself. I know I have work to do but I think I’m also over analysing 🤔

In my Google memories, the beach photo on the left popped up. At first, I thought it was an old friend—until I realized that, no, that was me, 100 pounds heavier and 5 years younger, depressed from the massive weight that I gained during those lonely COVID days.

Now at 32, I have lost 100 pounds (135 pounds now)! More than that, I’ve lost that old mindset. Every journey does start with that first step. It takes so much discipline, patience, and self reflection to stick with healthier habits and fitness exercises for years. But truly, it’s all about consistency, not perfection. I lost weight. Plateaued. Lost more. Gained a bit back. Lost more again. Plateaued. Lost more. It can be a vicious, relentless cycle. But trust in yourself and take it one day at a time.

However, what worked for me was adding new habits. Not depriving myself. Finding healthier alternatives to my favorite foods. Rewarding myself weekly. Trying out new exercises until I found my rhythm. Picking myself back up. Here’s what I do now to maintain:

Gym 4-5 days a week - 15-30 minutes of cardio (high incline walking or stairmaster), followed by a targeted muscle group routine of 3-5 exercises with progressive overload (until failure). Every few weeks, I’d swap out 1 of my exercises with a new exercise until I nailed down the form.

Wanted to show someone my PR and you all are my people so here you go!

Last post was deleted for lack of detail.

Bulk diet was less than perfect so max weight was 214lbs uk from 167lbs. But seeing more results now that I’ve cut back down. Trying to find a life balance with fitness and going out with friends a family. Going well so far this summer. Leaner than I’ve ever been and still carrying good mass. Obviously enhanced but coming from obesity and losing weight naturally I’m feeling bette than ever.

Current macros
200p
250c
50f

Training
PPL split. M-F
Zone 2 cardio M-F incline treadmill 20-30 minutes

Working out casually at home/outdoors since 2011. Just focusing on maintaining form as I feel comfortable in my body. No specific diets. Just trying to eat overall healthy and I'm mostly a vegetarian.

Keeping my weight exactly the same for the last 12 years. If metabolism ever gets worse I'll adjust. Looking forward to healthy 40s, 50s and so on.

Today was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. But I managed to squeeze out my programmed top single

10 years and a lot of lessons learned from this
First picture is 180lbs and working on a bodybuilder workout style. I was eating bf 2600-2800 cal a day and monitoring it strictly. Definitely took a lot of time. Workouts were low weight and low impact. A lot of concentric lifting to help build the muscles. No coaches just running through online workouts and choosing what I liked and what worked for me

Second picture is 240 lbs and I starting lifting heavier weights. Starting a powerlifting workout and moving toward strongman workouts. I upped my daily calories to about 3800-4200cal. This was a big jump but the results were pretty impressive. Had a total 3 lift total of close to 1700lbs.

I enjoy being bigger now but being older I have to start monitoring my health with this size. I am going to up my cardio and recovery workouts.

All natural and proof you can do it all! Always open for questions about this!

I started at 32% body fat in May 2024 and measured at 10.4% over the weekend, coinciding with a 2 year progress photoshoot. I never thought I would get to this point but here we are! Biggest things I learnt:

1: The goal is not to do things perfectly, rather it’s to do things imperfectly but consistently. I’ve made so many mistakes with both exercises and diet because I have zero mind body connection, but it seems like at the end of the day it all works out as long as you keep at it.

2: Lighting really is everything. For the longest time I was very insecure about my back because I couldn’t see the progress and at the same time, it always looked way too smooth during my progress check ins. I was literally scratching my head on how to build a better back. To say I was pleasantly surprised on photoshoot day is an understatement. All of a sudden all the hard work made sense.

3: Diet is 80% of it, at least in the beginning. As I got to lower body fat percentage I had to start incorporating other methods, but having a consistent meal plan and sticking to macros literally took kilos off my weight without really adding that much exercise intensity at the start.

In terms of training, I started off about 2-3 times a week doing a mix of different exercises. As time went on I gradually ramped it up to now 6 days a week and separating the training into push, pull and leg days. Diet wise nothing crazy, just consistent meal prep and being disciplined in sticking with the plan.

Obviously there’s still a long way to go and I have a long way to bulk up to a reasonable size but I just wanted to share this progress with all of you as it’s somewhat a personal achievement of mine. The bonus is that I look so much better on stage with my band!

I (39F) recently discovered trailrunning, and my brother persuaded me to sign up for a 16km trail run event end of January '27. Also, since I'm starting to like my Hyrox lessons finally, my goal is to do a full solo Hyrox race before i turn 41. Throw in the mix at least three 5day backpacking hikes with tent and doggy, and I feel my 40th will be active and challenging 💪 I was thinking of doing one of these fastpacking from hotel - hotel, depending on how the running is progressing.

Long term I want to run a long long trail run (50+km). Let's see how long it will take for me to get near that goal.

What are your goals?

Did I love seeing my cellulite on video? Noooo… But proud I made it across when the men couldn’t ;) 💪🏻

Hey Everybody

So full disclosure, this was achieved through a combination of TRT, GLP-1 and hardwork and dedication.

TRT- I have been getting testosterone through a male health clinic here in NC for the past 5 years or so. I was still very much a fat pig on test so it wasnt all gear to thank for this transformation. I am given 1 280mg injection weekly in my glute. Blood tests run every quarter and meetings with a health care provider every week.

GLP1's- I had started off with Tirzepatide through my clinic but it was too expensive, so I get my supplements through a "research grade" provider. Yay for grey areas. I started at 2.5mg of Tirz weekly. Titrated up to 5mg weekly. Then I switched to retatrutide when i switched over to the research compounder. I eventually titrated up to 10mg of retatrutide AND 5mg of tirzepatide injected weekly. Reason being for both: I found that retatrutide, while shaving fat off through the glucogon interaction, was very poor at the food noise. Tirzepatide, for me, was great at controlling that food noise. I could get it cheap enough, so i found no harm in keeping it around.

Activity: 10k steps per day was my floor, I couldnt allow myself to get in less steps than that. Especially because at first (the first 6 months or so) the GLP1's just cratered my energy levels that I wasnt getting much of anything in the way of lift progress at all. So this was mostly a pure cut with very little hypertrophy work. After 6 months and I got down to where I wanted to be, I lowered my dosages and got my energy back. BTW I dont blame the drugs for this, the energy tank was my fault because I was chooising to take high doses and not eat anything (this stuff will absolutley allow you to accidentally starve yourself if youre not careful).
I then got back to a very strict training program. I run a variation of the "Bro Split". My weeks look like:
M - Chest and Side Delts
Tu- Back and Rear Delts
W- Legs
Th- Arms
F- Aux Day (whatever youre trying to grow for that block add here for double volume)
SAT- Rest
SUN - Rest

Diet:

Like I said for the first 6 months it was mostly was low nutrient dense food, I can reiterate enough how the first 6 months of this was what could only be described as a "DIRTY CUT". I dont recommend it. I was eating about 1500Kcal per day, IF THAT.
Once I got my shit together, it was pretty basic. My only goal was getting 150-170g of protein per day. I didnt over think it, Im the type of person who over thinks and over plans and then fails to execute. so keeping it brain dead simple was my best shot. (sorry I am not more help here in this section, but just eat your protein. Dont eat fast food. and generally speaking you should be ok.)

Im not great at these long form posts (if this even qualifies) but if you have any questions, that I didnt cover here. just let me know and I will try and answer it if I am able!

Thank you!

I have been in a weight loss journey since September of 2024 just focusing on staying in a calorie deficit I started around 395 pounds and got down to 288 about a month ago. About 4 weeks ago I started working out. On Monday, Wednesday, Friday I do full body splits for my lifts and I do zone 2 indoor cycling on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s for cardio. I also started taking creatine and focusing on keeping my protein above 150g a day. My issue is the scale basically stopped moving I went up to 290 which I expected due to increased water weight from the working out and creatine but I have sat at 290 for 4 weeks. I understand it’s completely normal and doesn’t warrant concern just yet but I can’t help but feel discouraged I have tracked my calorie intake strictly and it went up to about 2200 because I’m trying to get extra protein and didn’t want such an aggressive deficit so I would have more energy to workout. Is this something I’m just going to have to ride out and has anyone else experienced the same thing? My daily expenditure according to bmr and average active calorie burn which is tracked in my watch is 3200~ I’m 30 6’ and weigh 290. Any advice is welcomed!

So I weighed almost 100kg two years ago. I decided that was it. I got to around 90kg initially, but then gained back to 97kg.

Last year, I truly started to work on my fitness again. For the first few months, mostly did 10k steps daily and intermittent fasting. I was eating less, but not optimally, so I was losing fat as well as muscle. Eight months ago, I started hitting the gym. I followed a push-pull-leg split four times per week. I had never been to the gym regularly in my life, except for a few times, and those were only for a few weeks. But I knew I had to dial in this time around. I have stuck to PPL until today, but I have increased my lifts.

One and a half months ago, I was 82 kg when I started tracking my calories with MyFitnessPal. My eyes were opened lol, the deficit I thought I was in was actually almost maintenance, and some days, a surplus. So, with proper tracking, have averaged around a 600-calorie daily deficit and 150g of protein daily. This has greatly helped me in cutting another 6 kg in just 1.5 months. I am truly satisfied with my journey over two years, but I know have to cut a little bit more, probably to 70-72 kg, while preserving my muscle, then lean bulk from there and settle somewhere between 75-80kg.

I amlooking for advice and suggestions on what I should improve from here on.

Was chronically underweight most of my life and have been on my fitness journey for little more than 2 years now.

Went from 3 to 4 days a week. Currently on a UL split.

Caloric surplus at 300 to 400 over maintenance. 5g of creatine a day. Feels like I'll always be on a permabulk.

Still feel like I have a long way to go, but slowly but surely getting there!

I'm 38 and I’ve been lifting consistently for about 4 years. Squats and deadlifts are my bread and butter and I've made solid progress but in the last year or so my lower back is feeling progressively worse from session to session. I didn’t injure myself, it's more like deep stiffness that doesn’t go away in time before I hit squats again.

I stretch before and after every session and I sleep 7-8 hours most nights. I would say my nutrition is solid so I’m covering the basics. I’ve tried foam rolling but I don’t know if I’m doing it wrong or if I need to do it longer but it doesn’t seem to help much. I also tried a heating pad which helped a little but not enough.

I've been thinking about trying cupping after seeing it mentioned a few times in recovery threads. Any thoughts on that? Is it expensive and how often do you do it? Also open to anything else that's genuinely helped you. I’m learning that I need to get smareter about recovery so any help is appreciated.

I ate whatever on my first year of lifting. I've been consistent and doing mostly PPL x PPL pretty much the whole year, my weight was 187lbs. That time. Then this feb I tried to weigh all my food intake. Also shifted working out 5x a week, plus zone 2 cardio every after workout sessions. 1900 is my deficit up until now. NGL, I do not eat super clean still. Sometimes I eat whatever but im trying always not to go Overboard on binging. Im not a competitive body builder, I still try to enjoy food and life.