From 225 to 170.
I never needed to think about how much movement I was getting, because movement was just a part of life. I didn't have to think about what I was eating, either. Somewhere along the way it stopped being that.
Before I knew it, I was a round mass of fat. I came to hate movement, I'd sit at my desk all day at work, then want nothing more than to keep sitting when I got home. By 2024 I was 225 pounds at 5'8". I'd avoid the pool when my daughters wanted to swim, because I was too self-conscious to take my shirt off. Every time I caught my reflection, the person looking back was a stranger.
My first attempt was a routine I wrote myself. Fifteen negative pull-ups (didn't make it close), ten bodyweight squats, ten dips (didn't finish those either), ten lying knee raises. It didn't stick.
Then I found a calisthenics circuit from Minus The Gym on YouTube and gave that a shot. Four circuits of four exercises, burning out pull first, then legs, then push, and finally hinge. About six minutes of rest between each circuit. It wasn't just weight movement, it had a strong cardio aspect to it as well, which I think ended up benefiting me a lot more than I realized at the time. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I followed that routine for the first nine months of my fitness journey, just slightly harder progressions or a couple more reps each week. The only diet change at first was no seconds at dinner. That was the whole strategy.
Nine months later I was 190 pounds and could feel real muscle under everything else. That was the moment I knew I needed to get serious about fat loss.
January 1, 2025 I started a twelve-week cut. By the end of March I'd dropped another twenty pounds, and this time I looked good. Actually good. For the first time in my life I had a six pack. (Every year I'd jokingly put "get a six pack" on my New Year's resolutions list. This was the year it stopped being a joke.) The energy was a different category. The things I could do with my body were unrecognizable to the version of me from twelve months earlier.
That summer I lived in my new body. Six pack at 36, finding excuses to take my shirt off.
Later that year I picked up barefoot running, and I was immediately pretty good at it, the conditioning I'd built from all those circuits (and the superset training I've been doing since) had stacked up more than I knew.
