Skinny to Beast Mode: Fitness Transformation After Thirty

I used to be the butt of every “skinny” joke you can think of. Literally, there is not a single insult you can tell me today that I haven’t heard before. The most memorable one was when one of my high school classmates compared me to the skeleton in my 10th grade biology class. At 5’9” tall, I graduated at about 110 lb, so I was very, very skinny.

Whether it was from friends or family, I got enough flak from people about my appetite, or lack thereof, that the act of eating around other people gave me terrible anxiety. I was extraordinarily self-conscious about my body. I didn’t like to wear shorts in public. When I was invited to pool parties I wouldn’t get in the water because I didn’t want to take my shirt off in front of other people. It’s safe to say that my self-image and confidence was in the basement during my childhood.

A Product of Environment

Coming from the southern US where food, booze, and fun is deeply entrenched in the culture, I really had no concept of healthy eating or healthy living. I’d go as far as to say that in my experiences there even was a slight passively aggressive and condescending attitude towards anyone who lived a health-conscious lifestyle.

I should also point out that with almost 40% of the population living with obesity, my home state of Louisiana is among the fattest states in the US. This is in addition to me living square in the center of “cancer alley”, a region in Louisiana with over 200 petrochemical plants that pollute the air causing about 50% higher rates of cancer than the national average. Furthermore, Louisiana has ranked #1 in the World Population Review’s 2023 list of unhealthiest states, with one of the highest rates of mental illness along with one of the highest percentages of the population who report no exercise, along with one of the lowest life expectancies, in the US.

So this should give some light as to how little of a priority health and fitness was to me during my younger years and well into my 20s. I didn’t know any better. In fact, throughout my 20s, I ran a nightclub promotion company so I was out late basically every weekend. I was drinking a lot, I ate restaurant food every day, I participated in no form of mindfulness or meditation, and I certainly didn’t work out.

I was always naturally skinny during this time, but I did notice as I approached my late 20s that I was starting to develop a “skinny fat” appearance. I also consistently experienced anxiety, depression, lethargy, and various mystery illnesses. I think that it was only because I was in my 20s, and still relatively young, that I didn’t completely fall of the deep end, but I was certainly heading in that direction, and on my path to becoming one of the statistics that I just mentioned above.

Fitness Journey Phase 1: Changing Life Circumstances

In the spring of 2016, at 29 yrs old, I had been accepted into University of Michigan’s MBA program. So I knew I’d be moving away from New Orleans, and taking a major step in leveling up my education and career, as well as broadening my network. I decided that if there would be any opportune time in my life to also level up my physique and my fitness habits then this would be the time.

I didn’t really know anything about working out. I had lifted weights a few times back in high school but never really educated myself on the ins and outs. I started going to the gym after work 3 days a week, and I ran a couple of miles in the park twice a week with a couple of rest days scattered in between.

I really had no idea what I was doing in the gym. I just did things that made intuitive sense but my workouts included a lot of trial and error. Gymtimidation was real at first, but I quickly realized that really no one in the gym cares all that much about you, so I simply brushed off my insecurities and kept at it. But no matter what, I got a sense of satisfaction that I was doing something good for myself. I didn’t quite understand the science behind the mood-boosting benefits of exercise, but anecdotally I felt good knowing that both physically, and psychologically, I was practicing a form of maintenance and self-care that I had never really done before.

By August of 2016, just after I had moved away and started my masters degree, I really gotten into a groove but then I injured my shoulder while using poor form during a workout. This killed my momentum, and I went back to being sedentary throughout the first semester of school.

But that wouldn’t last for too long...

Fitness Journey Phase 2: Re-Committing

The first semester of my Master’s program was immensely stressful. I drank more alcohol than I should have, I slept much less than I should have, and I stressed out way more than necessary during this time. The stress of classes, networking, traveling, and high-pressure job interviews, took a toll on my mental health. So after that first semester ended, I doubled down and recommitted to working out. However, instead of approaching it with a “new life, new me” mindset, this time my fitness motivation came from a place of real desperation and a desire to be in a better place mentally, in addition to wanting to continue to improve my overall aesthetic and confidence.

Business school can be a competitive environment, and I wasn’t the only one stressing. I noticed that many people around me were also stressing out over one thing or another, and it was usually related to a job, the corporate world, and career trajectories. I noticed how a lot of people put their health on the backburner in the pursuit of a really high salary, and a prestigious job title. I met plenty of people who depended on stimulants, anti-depressants, and anti-anxiety substances to perform, or at least prevent themselves from crashing. I noticed that what I was observing was a microcosm of our broader Western society which values external success markers over peace of mind and well-being, particularly here in America.

This was the moment in my life that I made the conscious decision to make it both mandatory, and a priority to always find time to go to the gym. This was the pivotal moment where I decided that there is no job, no profession, no title, or status that is worth me sacrificing my personal well-being. I decided that my health comes first and foremost because if I lose that, I have nothing else.

Fitness Journey Phase 3: Gym Bro Phase

By the time I graduated with my masters and in the years following, I was well into my fitness journey. I was now in my early 30s, and it was a lifestyle at this point. I spent much of this time trying to pack on more muscle and trying to optimize my fitness. I was experimenting with different workout splits, different rep ranges, different forms of lifting, hitting and then breaking through plateaus, and progressively lifting heavier weights.

I say this was the gym bro phase because my fitness subscribed to much of the generally accepted bro-science out there, so things like “calories in and calories out,” a lb of protein per lb of body mass, and lifting to muscle fatigue guided my diet and training.

I decided on protein shakes primarily on flavor, I ate lots of grain-based carbs to get the calories I needed to meet my weight goals, and I worked out 3 or 4 days a week with active rest days in between, along with the occasional “de-load” week to prevent overtraining.

Through all of this I very slowly, but surely gained muscle mass, I had to start wearing some bigger clothes (moved up to medium shirts, finally!), and got upwards 165 lbs at 15% body fat. Lifting weights had become so integral into my daily life that I actively looked forward to my workouts because it was time to have to myself, to meditate, and momentarily step out of the chaos of the world and focus specifically on developing myself.

After a while, this time in my life became stale. Life in general had become too routine, and I remember telling a few of my friends that I felt like I was going through a bit of a crisis because life had actually gotten too comfortable. I had become a corporate drone, and had no major challenges or ambitions in front of me. By this time I used my workouts as my only escape from a reality that I wasn't too satisfied with. I really depended on that hour or so on most days to be my medicine, although I began to once again suffer from depression, anxiety, and a general lack of well-being.

Fitness Journey Phase 4: Calisthenics

With the onset of the pandemic I, like everyone else, was no longer able to hit the gym for my daily therapy, so this was a problem. I live in the middle of Chicago, and I didn’t know anyone at the time with their own gym at home, so I needed to come up with an alternative. That’s when I started investigating how prisoners work out when they don’t have access to weights, but that eventually led me to discover calisthenics. This is also the time that I started sharing my journey by posting my workout videos online.

Calisthenics really changed the calculus for me since its focus is primarily on skill-building, and because it’s based on bodyweight exercises, you naturally want to be quite lean to perform the skills. So I committed a cardinal sin for people who struggle with gaining weight and putting on mass. I stopped my 5-year continuous bulk, and decided to start eating intuitively, and let my body set at a more natural weight. By eating intuitively, I don’t mean eating whatever I wanted. I still prioritized generally healthier foods. So I naturally wasn’t consuming an excessive amount of empty calories and was still able to be satiated.

This is when I started to lean out. I began losing weight, but I maintained muscle, because the nature of calisthenics requires you to really use your muscles.. a lot. This means that I became lighter with a lower body fat percentage, but I also gained a lot of relative strength which made me become progressively more capable of performing increasingly advanced bodyweight exercises.

However, this period was quite difficult for me, because as I was off to the races with my calisthenics journey, I had also lost my job during this time and was unemployed for 10 months. I also ended a long-term relationship, and re-entered a dating scene that was very different than what I was accustomed to in my 20s. So the beginning of my calisthenics journey came at a very difficult time in life. My depression was off the charts, my anxiety was crippling, and the back-to-back-to-back blows of losing a job during the pandemic, being chronically unemployed, losing a relationship, and struggling with finding myself left me desperately searching for a pathway to not only being physically fit, but also mentally and spiritually strong.

This period of struggle was a pivotal moment in my life. It was a game changer that inspired the latest phase of my journey.

Fitness Journey Phase 5: Holistic Health

This is where my fitness breakthrough really happened. I unlocked another previously unexplored dimension of what it means to be mentally and physically strong, and how to get there. I consider myself to be a polymath with a heavy interest in reading. So naturally my desire to explore the inner workings of my own brain and body led me to dive really deeply into various books and podcasts on evolutionary biology and psychology, as well as incredible stories of people who lifted themselves out of despair to truly find their callings in life and become wildly successful.

I read a lot of books during this time but a few of the life-changers that stood out include: “Extreme Ownership” by Jocko Willink, “Can’t Hurt Me” by David Goggins, “Limitless" by Jim Kwik, the “Story of the Human Body” by Daniel Lieberman, and “Metabolical” by Robert Lustig.

The information I gathered during this time can be boiled down into 4 main insights:

1. Understanding our evolutionary origins helps us cut through all of the BS out there, and find real solutions to our health and fitness by aligning our minds and bodies more with nature

2. Pain, suffering, and struggle are necessary, and integral components of the complete human experience. The more we try to shelter ourselves from these things, the more incomplete we feel

3. Messaging that we have received about health and wellness have been grossly distorted by both politics and profit motives, and has collectively led us in the direction of accelerating rates of chronic health problems, more reliance on pills and surgery, and more mental disorders

4. Modern conventions around health and fitness are more complicated than they need to be. Taking a few steps backward and simplifying our lifestyles is the key to making us leaner, stronger, smarter, healthier, and more satisfied.
   

These insights dramatically influenced my approach to health. I began to reject the status quo in terms of what we should eat, how we should treat our bodies, and how we should live. I realized that our current views on health are quite limited and one-dimensional, and instead I began incorporating holistic practices that consider health determinants from all angles of life, including environmental factors, behavioral factors, lifestyle factors, social factors, etc...

The result was a new fitness and wellness regimen that incorporated the following:

• Two meals a day

• Barefoot grounding

• Getting lots of sleep

• Regular cold exposure

• Learning a new language

• Hydrating with mineral water

• Nurturing healthy relationships

• 16 hours of fasting at least 5 days a week

• Minimum of 30 minutes of walking every day

• Adding plants and greenery to my interior space

• Getting plenty of sunlight especially in the morning

• A diet of mostly whole foods, or minimally processed foods

• Moderate intensity, high frequency bodyweight resistance training

• More meat, eggs, dairy, fruit, butter, animal fat, olive oil, and salt.. Less sugar, carbs, grains, starchy vegetables, and vegetable oils

I could write many articles on the specific benefits of each of these practices, but in short, the cumulative effect of each of these health practices compounded to have a transformational impact on my life mentally, physically, and spiritually.

The results:

• A leaner physique, between 145 and 150 lbs and 9% body fat year round

• Significantly more physical strength, stamina, and motor skills

• Elimination of chronic depression, anxiety, and self-limiting beliefs

• Greater mental clarity, cognitive functioning, and creativity

• Boosted immune system resulting in fewer and less severe illnesses

• An abundance mindset that has helped me to better endure hardship

So by this point my transformation has become more than just physical. I think when most of us start our fitness journeys, maybe we start off wanting to improve our appearance, then for some of us it becomes sort of medicinal and makes us feel good about ourselves. For me I’d say it has gone a step further and become a journey in reconnecting with my primitive roots; with those aspects of human nature which are deeply embedded in us at the genetic level.

With this new direction of diving deeply into the evolutionary origins of modern man, I’ve crafted a new holistic approach to fitness that tailors my diet, my training, and my lifestyle around core elements of human existence.

And I feel that it is necessary to share my journey with you, because out of the 8 billion people on this planet, I’m sure there is at least one person out there who could benefit from it.

And for those who are ready to take action and level up their fitness, then I have created a body elevation program that mimics the strategy I've laid out above to help you go from average to SAVAGE. Inquire to learn more.