I’m Fat…And I Need Help

If you have ever struggled to find the comfort to go to the gym because you have felt self conscious about your weight or body, then this is a video you are going to definitely want to watch. All too often, people are too intimated to start the very activity that they know holds the long term soluti

Can you imagine being considerably overweight and  realizing that your health, your well-being and your longevity, even on this planet, hinge on  doing something about it, yet feeling too fat for the gym? That the anxiety that you have  on either how little you know about training or just what others are going to think of you  when you step into that gym is literally enough to prevent you from doing anything about the  very problem you know that you need to solve. What’s up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, Athleanx. com.

Nothing pains me more than to hear when somebody knows they have to do something about their  health and can’t do it. Mostly because of their perceptions of what others are going  to think about them and the pursuit of their own health. And it s especially sad to me when  it comes in the form of someone who’s younger. As we get older, maybe we are more responsible  for the decisions we’ve made and accumulated over the years. We put ourselves in that spot.

It’s  no less tragic when it doesn’t work out right, but again, we put ourselves there. But when you’re a kid, especially these days, you’re susceptible to a lot of shit through  social media and everything else. The pressures of being a kid are a lot harder, I  think, today than they have ever been. Well, today I want to share somewhat of an Ax-Jeff,  question. This is an unsolicited one, though, because nobody ever axed me this question, this  came from Reddit.

The title was, How can a fat dude go to the gym, without being embarrassed? He says, I’m 20 years old and I’m 100 kg, (220 pounds if my math is correct). I really need  to go to the gym, both because of my physical and mental health. But I can’t stop thinking about the  fact that everyone’s going to be looking at me. I also have no experience, so that’s another issue  as a whole.

Imagine again, knowing you have to do something not just even for your physical health,  but to make you mentally happier and still finding it difficult to start because he’s concerned  about what others are going to think. Thankfully, the Reddit community stepped  up and basically gave this kid all the encouragement that he needed. They gave him a lot  of support, and I want to do the same thing here, and I want you guys to be able to do the same  thing because I think we all could relate. Remember the first time you were at the gym, you  tried to bench press, right? How’d that bar move?

Did it move straight up and down as it should,  or did it kind of wobble in all directions? Even if it had nothing on the on the bar, no weight. Or  the first time you tried to do a pushup? You know, that might have been a long time ago when you were  a kid, but did you think you executed it perfectly or was your ass way up in the air and your  arms sort of tilted? We don’t really have the built-in proprioception to be able to nail  these gym related movements so perfectly.

And machines are there to save us in some cases. And that’s why a lot of newbies will run to the machines because it’s a little bit harder to  screw them up. But at the same time, we all start from somewhere. What’s really happening in  the gym, and this is what I hope he’s watching, is that nobody’s actually looking at you  negatively. And if they are, they’re a dick, okay?

There’s a dick in every gym. But I bet you there’s  far fewer today than there’s ever been before because we can all appreciate the journey. The first time you ever step in a gym. We all wish there was somebody out there that could have come  over to us and said, Hey, let me help you with that. Or that we had the courage to ask somebody  instead of feeling like we’re too self-conscious to even interact with anybody.

I wish I had  that courage. The very first time I stepped into World Gym as a kid, I basically went in and signed  up and the guy said to me before I even had my signature on the line of the contract, he said,  You should eat for peanut butter sandwiches a day. The reality was he did something that I now  appreciate that I didn’t at the moment. He said, But listen, don’t keep looking at all those  really big guys. You know, there’s two ways to look really good.

You can either be really  big or you can be ripped. And I think what he was doing was he knew it wasn’t in the cards  for me to ever be one of the biggest guys in the gym. But he was giving me the encouragement,  But you could look really good ripped. And that kind of became my goal. And I  decided to sort of pursue that end goal, and I was able to do so pretty successfully.

Now, could I have gotten bigger? Maybe. But I never would have been stepping on the stage of a  Mr. Olympia. But at least he gave me some hope.

We all have hope when we’re in the gym. Some  of the suggestions that were provided to this kid were, you know what, just walk in there for  the very first time and look around. Don’t even do anything. Just familiarize yourself with the  place. Get comfortable walking around the gym and then leave and go home and come back the next time  and maybe just jump on a bike.

And while you’re on the bike, you know, look a little bit, look around  and just see what people are doing. Look and see the progression of exercises that people use. Look and see how they’re performing the exercises. Look and see if they ask other people for  spots, how they interact. It’s like you’re learning the culture of the gym, and let’s  face it, there is some sort of a gym culture, right?

And I think that not knowing what it  is, we start to feel a little bit intimidated. But don’t be. You know, then maybe the next time  he does jump on a machine, or he goes to a machine where someone else is using it that looks friendly  or it looks like they already taught somebody else how to do something. Or maybe it’s one of  the trainers at the gym. Find your allies and then go sort of buddy up to them and sort of use  them as your way of getting more comfortable.

Again, when I was back in the gym dealing with  an entirely set of different issues here, again, not as damaging to my health, being super skinny  but pretty mentally harmful. I had the best gym on campus at UConn, was in McMahon, which is  directly across from where my quad was. So, people would come from all across the campus, and UConn’s  a large campus to come use that gym because it was the biggest, it was the newest, it had the most  equipment, it had the latest equipment. But it also had the most amount of people. And because  of that, one very reason I didn’t want to go.

It was right across the street from my gym,  but I wanted to pick times that I could go when people wouldn’t be there. The less crowded the gym would be, the better I would feel about starting my  workout. Mostly because I didn’t want the eyes. You know what I m talking about? The eyes,  you know, you think everyone’s looking at you?

Well, I had a scenario where the eyes that were  on me were actually the friends of my sister. A bunch of guys that used to work out at the gym  and they would always be looking over at me and smiling and kind of looking and smiling. I was convinced that they were making fun of me. Convinced that they thought I was so  painfully skinny, and they were laughing at me when in reality they went to her and  they were like, How does your brother get so ripped? I can’t believe it, man.

Like, we’re  over here now. They were way bigger than me, but they were looking at me going, How does he get  so ripped? So, what we always imagine is usually a lot worse than what the reality is. Even Jesse  himself deadlifting recently in a public gym here, he’s got guys looking over his shoulder. That  guy ri