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Health and fitness have always been a wild roller coaster that I just continued to go around and around on. However, at the start of 2019, I decided it was time to get off that roller coaster and go on a journey. I’ve achieved a lot since then and I’m quite proud of myself for doing so but before we go more into where I’m at now, seven months into my journey, I feel it’s important to talk about where I’ve been before now so you can see what has lead me to this. So here we go!
2013
I struggled with weight pretty much from day 1 but I didn’t really start caring about it at all until I was about 16 and had decided I wanted to join the Army National Guard. I planned to join when I turned 17 so I could go to basic training during the summer between my junior and senior year and then go to AIT (Advanced Individual Training) the summer before I started college.
However, I found out that the military has weights you have to meet before you could join and I was well over that. I don’t remember how much over I was but if I recall, I was around 50lbs over. This threw out the option of joining at 17 but I was still determined to join. So I went to work starting to eat better and take fitness more seriously. I was very much so into soccer and softball so the fitness part wasn’t a huge problem but I had a lot of work to do in the nutrition department.
2014
I had done pretty well to start off with losing weight but I slowly stopped making it a priority once my senior year started. I still lost weight but quite slowly and eventually just maintaining the current weight I was at. I believe by the time I graduated, I still had about 20lbs to lose. I didn’t have a job so once I graduated, I went back full force on losing weight. I started doing some of the Insanity workouts a couple of times a week but mostly, I lost the majority of that weight by biking. I would spend all day biking around town, occasionally stopping at a small lake to relax and read for a couple of hours before hopping back on the bike.
By June 20, 2014, I managed to be able to join the guard. It was really close, had I been just a hair shorter, I would have still been a couple of pounds over the limit. But I did it and I was proud of that. I shipped off to basic on July 14, 2014 and went to AIT immediately after that. I didn’t come home until December and let myself have a break once I got back. Probably too much of a break but I had planned on getting back into the swing of things once I got to college.
2015
My first semester of college was the spring of 2015 at Texas Christian University. It’s a beautiful campus but I soon found out it was not the place for me. I didn’t feel like I fit in anywhere and it took a huge toll on me. My plans to get back into working out and eating right quickly went out the window. I spent pretty much all of my time there either in my room, in class, or in the dining hall. I went to the gym once or twice but I didn’t know what to do in there and felt pretty intimidated by being in there. Instead of sucking it up and learning more about things I could do, I ended up just completely avoiding it. I gained the Freshman 15 in one semester.
I quickly started applying for other colleges and ended up choosing to go to Iowa State University for my next semester. When I came home for the summer, I quickly realized my weight was becoming a problem and started getting back into biking. I lost a little bit of weight but didn’t really have much success because I didn’t care about what I ate and was putting a bunch of junk into my body.
About halfway into my first semester at ISU, I found a CrossFit box near me and joined their entry program which they called boot camp at the time. I absolutely loved the environment and the program as a whole. I was starting to lose weight but more importantly, I took a bigger focus on nutrition. They had us doing a version of the Paleo diet but not completely, it was essentially a kick-starter to the diet.
This was also the year that I began to really began to learn more about myself and my gender. I played around with gender for a little bit through the summer and by the end of the year, I started identifying as transmasculine which an identity that falls under the transgender umbrella and is a more encompassing term for those who were born a female and identify more on the masculine side of the spectrum and hold many other terms.
2016
The year started off strong, I decided to do a second round of the boot camp program before going into regular classes. However, shortly after switching to regular classes, my fitness started falling down my list of priorities. My dysphoria started to get the better of me and I switched to putting my transition as my number one priority. While I should have still kept fitness high on the list, I didn’t. I started eating like trash and the most exercise I got in the week was walking from class to class.
I was able to get my first shot of testosterone on July 12, 2016 and it gave me back some motivation for fitness. On top of that, I went to the first Fitness For Life Annual Training(FFLAT) that the Nebraska Guard put on. It was a two week period in which we worked out twice a day, every day, learning more about different ways we could work out, nutrition, and a variety of other things. It was a great experience and it gave me so much motivation to keep going. I don’t remember how much I lost during those two weeks but what I do remember is that I was able to drop about 4 minutes off of my 2-mile run.
I did fairly well after FFLAT, for the most part, I kept working out and continued to pay more attention to what I was eating. I didn’t do the best I probably could have but I was still putting for the effort. Until classes started back up again that is. That’s when I started to fall back off again and started to slowly gain the weight I had lost back.
2017
During the spring 2017 semester, I had switched degrees from mechanical engineering to physical education. I knew I didn’t want to do mechanical engineering any more but I didn’t really know what I wanted to do because I had wanted to do ME since I was in middle school. Physical education sounded like something I would enjoy so I tried my hand at that.
I loved it at first but then I started having to do physical activity during class which I would have normally loved. However, I hadn’t had top surgery yet which meant that while I normally wore a binder, a tight article of clothing that compresses the chest to give a flatter appearance, I couldn’t do this during physical activity because it can be very harmful to you. This meant I was stuck just wearing a sports bra in front of all these people who I was trying to convince that I was a male. It messed with my head a lot, so much so that I slowly started just not going to that class which trickled into me not going to any classes.
During this time, I had no motivation to do anything except everything that I could possibly do to get top surgery as soon as possible. Once I finally got all the letters I needed, I was able to schedule my surgery for July 31, 2017. Up until the day I was able to schedule the surgery, fitness and nutrition weren’t even a thought in my mind. Having a date gave me more motivation to start caring again so I slowly started getting back into eating better and doing at least a little bit more exercise than I had been doing previously.
I didn’t make a whole lot of progress before surgery came around but I made a little. However, the recovery process was a long one and I wasn’t really able to do anything during it. Along with that, I let eating healthy go down the drain as well so I slowly started gaining weight throughout recovery and it continued to be the case after as well.
2018
2018 was by far the most roller coaster year I’ve had, there were more ups and downs in terms of fitness than I can even count. The lowest I weight throughout the year was 225 and the highest was 247, my fastest 2-mile run was 25:42 and my slowest was 30:18. While the weight doesn’t sound like a huge difference, there were multiple times where I was close to both weights during the year. I would make good progress and then I would turn right back around to where I started.
Having looked back on the year, I think the two biggest things that cause this were my lack of drive and motivation as well as my lack of trying to find ways to keep myself accountable. Which, honestly, has been a problem since the start of my journey. A problem in which I’m still trying to solve.
2019
I knew something had to be done. I had gotten so far off track and it was going to quickly start affecting my future. First and foremost, I set my goals, but only a couple of them. I think that was one of my big problems in the past, I set so many different goals that I had so much to do and it just slowly started to drain my motivation. I decided to dedicate 2019 to getting to 160lb or 32% body fat(by Army taping standards), passing the Army Physical Fitness Test(APFT), and a not fitness goal of paying off all my student loans.
Once I had my goals set, I took a step back and looked at the whys. I really dug into each of these things to figure out why they were important to me, what would happen if I achieved these goals, and what would happen if I didn’t achieve these goals. This is the most important thing I have done in my journey. Not only did it give real value to the goals, it clearly laid out what would happen if I got off track again. This has helped me tremendously, so much more than I thought it could have. Here is the post in which I discuss how I went about this process.
To show you how far I’ve come thus far this year, here are some numbers and a before and after picture:
- January 6, 2019
- Weight: 247lb
- APFT: 17 push-ups, 40 sit-ups, 33:12 2-mile run
- March 21, 2019
- Weight: 233lb
- Body Fat: 44%
- APFT: 17 push-ups, 55 sit-ups, 27:55 2-mile run
- June 15, 2019
- Weight: 208lb
- APFT: 17 push-ups, 53 sit-ups, 22:30 2-mile run
- June 23, 2019
- Weight: 208lb
- Body Fat: 40%
- APFT: 17 push-ups, 50 sit-ups, 19:19 2-mile run
- I passed the APFT for female standards which is what I currently follow! Next up, passing the male standards!
- July 7, 2019
- Weight: 211lb
- I’m down 36lbs, I’ve dropped 13:53 on my 2-mile, and I’ve already achieved one of my goals!
- For those of you curious about my student loans goal
- I’ve paid off $8,375 and I have $8,246 left to go.
