I have been asked to expand upon a comment I made in another thread about:
''"For me it was overcoming most of my self-hate through dietary and lifestyle changes."''
So here we go...
Since about the age of 14, up to the age of about 20, i suffered varying degrees of depression, tightly linked to self-image. I was always extremely active, doing sports, games and activities all the time as a kid, but since the age of about 7, my knees dislocated regularly, and it got so bad that in my late teens i had to have 3 operations, and had to stop almost all sports (apart from gym) - meaning that I was always a bit overweight, always lagging behind other people. To top that I had my pubescent growth spurt late and generally my self-perception was so screwed up that I thought I was the ugliest person in the world.
Showing anybody myself without my shirt off was a big no no, even on holiday or to parents. Whats weird was that I wasn't THAT fat, I was maybe a stone or 2 overweight, with a fair amount of muscle because of my activities.
I really got into training from the age of 17, but didn't know the nutrition science that I needed to get the results that I wanted. This meant that although I got stronger, I remained 'podgy' and felt totally unattractive to girls and myself. This, coupled with the operations and constant disability sent my depression even lower and I'm really only seeing the up-side to it now !
What has changed has been 3 main things:
- Starting to let myself be open with my feeling and not bottle them up, and to love myself for my good points
- Educate myself on diet and nutrition, as well as training techniques, and put 110% effort into training
- Help others, and in doing so realise that I can actually make quite a big difference to quite a lot of people's lives by sharing my experiences and expertise and being only 22 years, realising that I do have a solid place in the world!
Sorry if any of the above sounds a bit tenuous but its my story and hope others can find inspiration from it.
Nick
