I remember when I was a chubby 5th grader, my older sister would tell me that I should exercise.
When I asked her why, she would respond with "so you don't look fat". Me being in 5th grade at the time, I didn't care about looking fat. I knew she didn't want to look fat but at that time I care how I looked.
I wasn't at the age where I was interested in girls yet so I wasn't trying to impress anybody and I wasn't so fat that I was being made fun of at school.
What I was interested in however were how comic book heroes looked with their big, defined muscles. I didn't know at the time, that they also had very little fat...I just thought they had huge muscles!
Had she shown me that I could have built a muscular, athletic body like the comic book superheroes instead of saying "so I don't look fat", I believe I would have been very interested and started working out like she had suggested.
What inspired me
What actually did get to start working out though, is an infomercial...a Tony Little infomercial to be exact.
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| This guy actually inspired me to start working out! |
The thing I remember most about those infomercials was the story about how he got into an accident, then felt sorry for himself and couldn't work out so he gained a lot of weight. They showed a picture of him looking bloated and out of shape.
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| Tony Little after his first accident |
Seeing these before pictures and then seeing Tony as he was on the infomercial, in the great shape that he was, had a huge effect on me as I'm sure it did on many others.
Seeing what he looked like in his before and after made me think that it was possible for me to make a change to my body with exercise!
So after seeing his infomercial multiple times, I started to do some of the exercises Tony showed on his infomercial.
These were just simple exercises that I could do at home like push ups, crunches, leg lifts, and some light lifting with 5 lbs dumbbells.
Changes occur
I didn't start looking like Tony Little, but I did see some changes.
I know the workouts didn't seem like much, but I actually started to see some results even as a 6th grader. I could tell I was getting thinner and actually starting to gain some muscle definition in my arms.
Now I'll never know whether these changes were a result of me working out or me starting to go through puberty. But seeing that infomercial was a great influence on me and impacted the rest of my life.
So this was the start of me exercising but I hadn't learned anything about nutrition yet. I'll write about how I got started learning about nutrition in a future blog post :)
What inspired you to start working out?
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