The Identity That Kept Me Skinny

I remember constantly eating chocolate chip muffins because an influencer on YouTube said that I needed the calories from the muffins.

It seemed logical at first, but it didn’t take long for me to hate every bite.

I was inflamed, but I continued to ignore it for the sake of putting on weight.

I got heavier, but I still resembled the skinny kid.

Every mirror was reminding me that I was still the skinny kid.

I was embarrassed to take my shirt off knowing that I still looked the same.

I knew I wanted the change badly, but I just had no idea how.

So I took on advice that would either make me or break me.

Being skinny and ballooning up to a heavier weight took its toll on me.

I tried going through various methods of eating and training, some working but a majority of them leading me right back to where I started.

I would dirty bulk by eating blueberry or chocolate chip muffins, creating protein smoothies filled with processed protein powder; frozen fruits, milk, peanut butter and oats.

My obsession with counting calories was causing me unnecessary stress.

All I was looking to do was to put on weight as I was sick of being the skinny kid, but what I didn’t realise was that the foods that I was consuming were doing more harm than good to me.

The thing is I wasn’t even that big, but I felt horrible, kidding myself that what I was doing was correct and that it would work.

Every meal had a lot of weight placed upon it… Failure to improve the numbers on the scales made me think that I was failing.

I was constantly force feeding myself, foods I didn’t enjoy, kidding myself to carry on with what I was doing as long as I was putting on weight.

Every meal left me completely bloated and my stomach would feel tight, but I carried on eating because I was afraid of not putting on the weight.

Eventually I would sit down wishing for the pain to go away and telling myself that I wouldn’t do it again… But then dinner time came around the next day.

If only my younger self knew of the problems that he would face.

Whilst I was battling with food,

I was also battling with comparisons.

I used to avoid the changing rooms and the mirrors.

I felt physically small, whilst others were flexing and expressing their vanity, I would make sure that I avoided the mirrors.

There were brief moments when the changing rooms were completely empty and I would finally look into the mirror without anyone else about and look at my minor improvements.

But I was too cautious about other people seeing me that these moments always felt like life or death to me.

I would look around the gym and see someone who had joined months after me already bigger and adding more weight to the bar than I was.

I knew a lad from school who was roughly around the same weight as me, a few years down the line and he had managed to put on 30-40kg in weight whilst I was still struggling with my skinny identity.

I thought that I was cursed.

I was constantly comparing myself to other people, and what made it worse was the skinny guys joining the gym and becoming bigger and stronger than me.

I would say to myself; “Why me?”

“Will I ever change?”

“How come they’re getting bigger but I’m not?”

It was demoralising.

Constantly comparing myself to others was like a dagger through the heart to the identity that I was trying to build.

However, the attribute that became one of my best weapons ended up being my downfall.

I thought that more volume was the answer.

6 days a week. Push-Pull-Legs split. Repeat.

I thought this was going to be my saving grace.

My diet improved, but I was still eating for the sake of it.

But what I neglected ended up being my downfall.

Recovery.

An injury halted nearly all of my progress.

I tried to train through it but the pain became worse.

My lack of recovery had finally caught up with me.

The 90-minute sessions and lack of carbs hit me.

The goals/numbers I wanted to achieve seemed ever further away.

I felt let down, I wanted to be angry at something else but I could only be angry with myself.

The thought of losing all of the gains was killing me.

This sorrow dragged on for months.

But, this came as a blessing.

As eager as I was to continue, every movement that spiked the pain was telling me to think differently.

The endless months of pain finally revealed something to me that changed my mind and body for good.

I changed my approach from volume to intensity.

I built a system that changed my life.

If I told the skinny kid (the old me), that cutting down to 2-4 sessions a week whilst only completing 3-5 exercises per session with a maximum of 2-3 sets per session would get him the best results, I’m certain that he would say “Alright whatever.”

I finally stopped trying to do everything at once.

I trained fewer movements but with greater effort.

For once I had more time to myself and I was more muscular.

The mirror was no longer my enemy, but it was evidence of the man that I had become.

The younger me would never have imagined himself filling out fitted t-shirts or feeling comfortable wearing shorts to the gym.

None of this would have been possible if I hadn’t remained consistent and devoted myself to my cause.

Ditching the processed foods for whole, nourishing foods was one of the best investments I have ever made to my health.

More volume isn’t always better.

But effort trumps volume every day.

For years, every mirror was reminding me of the skinny kid identity that I thought I couldn’t escape.

Today these mirrors are evidence of what consistency and devotion can build.

I spent years looking for the perfect workout split.

But, what finally brought about the change wasn’t the workout at all.

It was the system that I built.

This is the system that I have installed into the Skinny Guy Protocol.

The protocol I wish I had when I was trying to change my identity whilst avoiding mirrors and obsessing over calorie counting.

The Skinny Guy Protocol

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