Hello steemians,

Today I decided to share my personal story when it comes to body composition, special what I learned from it, the mistakes that I did, and happy place that I'm now!

Let me start for saying, sorry for the click bait image, but the first one had to make a really impact. So let's start from the beginning, during my childhood I was always a skinny kid, very active, with low appetite. When the teenager years arrived, nothing changed! Between football (soccer) and swimming and a really low appetite I was really skinny.

Around the time I was twenty years old, started working full time and my weight went up, this also coincide with the fact that I was eating more and doing less sports. Back then I was starting to play paintball and had really few events per year, so for the first time in my life I found myself carrying some weight.

Me at the age of 23

This lasted for a couple of years, the body composition stayed the same, and around 2007 (me with 27 years old) I found myself in huge emotional depression and my body weight sky rocketed during a year time. I was feeling extremely unhappy with my body for the first time on my life. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of me back then, when we are depressed we really avoid taking photos.

In 2008, I had a epiphany and decided to grab my life by the balls and chase my happiness, so I decided to go to the gym, without any sort of knowledge or training advice, I started working out everyday. I went to the gym three times per week around two hours each time, and jogged around one hour on the other days. Besides that, I was doing an extremely high Protein diet and really low on carbs and fats. So I lost a ton of weight in a very unhealthy way. I was extremely skinny and used to hate see me on photos also, mostly because I wanted to carry more muscle, and couldn't understand why I wasn't building muscle with all the protein I was taking (Brain washed by supplement company's!).

I started wasting more and more money on supplements and after three years of gym and supposedly a healthy clean diet I was looking like this.

Photo taken on the day I turned thirty years old.

About this time, frustrated with all the time and money invested I stopped going to the gym. All my desires for fatty foods said "Hello" and in about six months time i gained about 12 kilos.

You can clearly see my unhealthy skin and round face.

So once again, unhappy with my body I went back to the gym to loose weight. I did lost weight at a good pace, but I found myself being brain washed about "bro gym science - eat you're proteins" and fitness industry, so once again in attempt to gain some muscle is tarted eating excessively and poorly, and I found myself over weighted again.

I decided to hire an online fitness coach, to help me with the knowledge when it comes to diet and training. And let me tell you this, they know nothing. Most of them, relay on steroids to have the body's that they carry, and they're nutrition plans was has bad as mine without any knowledge. But I did lost weight and putted some muscle.

During the follow two years, I spent monthly around 250 euros/dollars between paying a coach and supplements. And after two years, this was probably the best shape that I got.

Frustrated with the lack of results, I quit the coach services and went seeking knowledge for myself. I found the IIFYM system (If it fit your macros) basically makes a you a food freak since you log every single piece of food that you had and count their calories and nutrients (food disorder 101), after putting some muscle with this system I decided to make the famous "cut" period. And let me tell you what happened, I basically f**ked up my sexual desire. I was in a state of starvation and poorly nourished. I had days when I binge eated like a maniac, ingesting like 3000 calories in less then one hour. But the results did came with this huge high price.

Me at the beginning of the cut and also the click bait photo

Me at my lowest body fat ever

A few months later from this photo above, I went vegan, and for the following months I found out that a vegan diet high on carbs, was helping me with my strengths gains. A little bit later, I quit the gym until the present day. I started to see it has an extremely boring activity. I maintained my high carb vegan diet.

Two years later, my relationship with my bodyweight is perfect, my weight didn't went up like before. Avoiding animal fats/products, avoiding oils and not worrying about protein intake made me lean and healthy without any effort. I have a better relationship with food also now, because I listen to my body and I eat whatever amount of food I desire at that moment. No more binge eating.

My body right now at the age of 37.

So I really hope that you guys may learn a bit from my mistakes, about all the brain washing products and diets. That loosing sexual desire when you're dating an extremely hot girl is no fun. That binge eating is a serious disorder. And by the way I never took any sort of steroid or performance enhancing drugs.

Let me know down below if you struggle with your body composition. If it affects you and what sort of crazy stuff have you done or are doing to yourself.

Vegan Tales