So, we all get off on the right foot, let me introduce myself. My name is Joey Jones. I am a 18-year-old dude from Ireland. In this article, I want to share my personal story of how fitness and the gym transformed me, changed my mindset, and also show you all of the hiccup’s in my transformation.
No one is made from stone. Everybody has bad days. Unfortunately, a big part of my early teens was like one very long bad day.
Without going into very much detail, I wasn’t a happy person, I sat around all day, didn’t want to socialize, and had some bad thoughts.
The reason I want to share all of this with you is that no one should have to face that. Thankfully, there was a pretty quick fix for me. Yes, you guessed it, the GYM!
My motivation for a gym transformation?
It’s hard to find a good place to start. So, let’s literally start at the start. I was born into a pretty normal middle-class family. Everything was very normal. I lived in a small town where everyone knew everybody.
Small towns are great, but they are judgmental.
People used to say I was to advance for my age. I never wanted to play sports, or with friends as a kid. I mainly focused on myself and trapped myself in my little world of the internet and fishing.
This was great and all, but it took its toll on my mental health.
Around age 8 I put on a lot of weight. Like I was a big kid. This is part of the story that’s important. In a very small judgemental town surrounded by kids more childish than me, it’s pretty obvious I was picked on. But don’t feel sorry for me, this one one of the best things that ever happened to me. It fuelled me for my gym transformation. However, I didn’t even know what fitness was and didn’t know that it could transform me.
The same effect happened to me that would happen to anybody. I felt pretty hopeless.
The first attempt
One day in particular I remember. I was around 8-9 at the time. I had just finished a mountain of mashed potatoes and sausages at the dinner table. After that, I was it all down by basically chugging down the gravy boat.
Then I remember looking down at my stomach while I was walking upstairs back to my bedroom. I just thought to myself, why did I do that? I wanted to be skinny, but I was just too stupid to actually help myself, more fuel for my gym transformation.
So, from then on, I wasn’t eating as much. I forced myself as a 10-year-old to not eat as much as I wanted and to only eat what I needed to. Sure, I lost a small bit of weight. But compared to other kids I was still like a dump truck. I still didn’t really know what fitness was and still hadn’t transformed.
The real start of my gym transformation
One day when I was around 13 years old, my dad arrived home with one of those multi-use gym machines and a Sunny manual treadmill. It was for my brother. However, we both kind of shared it.
I started to use my home gym for fun. However, after a month I remember looking down at my stomach and thinking, where am I? I had lost around a stone of fat and blubber in a month from just using a home gym and had completed a transformation. Not bad huh.
Then I started to realize this was something that I enjoyed and also benefited from; fitness could really transform me. So, I kicked it into overdrive. I built a short workout routine and always stayed consistent. After a few more months, I was literally unrecognizable.
These short workouts every day continued for around a year.
The transition to a gym bro
Finally, when I was around 14, my Mum offered to drop me of at one of the local gyms for an hour.
I walked through the front door, paid at the front desk, and then obviously tried to squat 150 pounds.
Of course, I failed. But I wanted to do it. So, I started to work for it. After a few months of lifting in my local gym, I did a complete transformation to a gym bro.
I had a good amount of muscle, was toned, and was pretty strong for a kid. Even though fitness had just transformed me, it wasn’t enough.
So, the only choice I had was to bulk up. Within 2 months I had put on 20 pounds of fat and muscle. I was absolutely huge for a kid and had once again done another insane gym transformation.
Then I decided it was time to vanquish any fat that was on my body. So, that’s what I did. I lost all of the weight and kept the muscles!
I was an unbreakable beast.
That just about brings us to today, where I am still an active gym goer and known as the buff guy around my small judgmental town. No one dares to insult the buff guy. Thanks for reading my story, hopefully, it will inspire you to put faith in fitness and let it transform you.