“START NOW”: The origin of the mantra that transformed my health and body
So, let me start now by telling you about my story:
In late June 2021, I decided to lose weight and began dedicating my life to fitness by learning calisthenics and yoga. It was almost a comical decision because if anyone has seen what calisthenics athletes and yoga practitioners can do and look like, the last person that you would imagine doing those amazing things would be me. It’s basically because, well, initially I looked like this:
The whole story began after I saw a video post on Instagram of some random dude doing a front lever. If you don’t know what a front lever is, well here you go:
I thought to myself, “Wow. Now that’s f-kin cool.”
But, it wasn’t until another Instagram video post that really ignited the path for me to begin my calisthenics/yoga journey. The video was shared by a calisthenics and yoga expert named Gabo Saturno showing himself performing a beautiful calisthenics movement in front of a harbour backdrop.
I said to myself, “That’s it. That’s the purest form of a body exercise”.
Ironically, the video caption started with “It begins with a choice”.
So, the first choice that I decided to make was to understand what calisthenics was all about. In general definition, calisthenics is a type of sports where you are mostly relying on your body weight to perform exercises such as push ups, dips, pull ups, planche, front lever, and etc. In fact, some calisthenics exercises were also used in the military and police academy to measure the fitness of new recruit.
Anyway, the second decision that I made was to lose weight. This was a no-brainer because I was quite obese and if I wanted to hang from a pull up bar and gym rings safely, obviously losing a significant amount of weight is the only way to go.
More importantly, I started to understand that the quality of exercise being performed is more important than the number of reps — when I went to the local park here in my hometown called Kuching, Malaysia, I noticed how some of the people there who attempted to do push ups don’t know how to perform a proper push ups. Honestly, it’s kind of embarrassing to watch.
This is the point where I remembered back when I was attempting to become fit years before the pandemic hits. During those years, my exercises were full of ego lifting and because of that, I was not able to progress beyond lifting a couple of 15kg dumbbells.
With calisthenics however, I carefully practiced and made sure that I’m performing simple exercises like push ups with full range of motion while hitting the right muscle groups along the way. Ego lifting was simply not allowed.
Also, my nutrition and eating habits were abysmal. This clearly needed to change. From that point on, I finally understood why people said that fitness is a lifestyle. So, I accepted the new lifestyle and changed my ways ever since. That was the final choice.
My home gym equipment in the beginning were very minimal. In fact, one of them was a chair:
But after awhile, I decided to invest in equipment such as pull up bar and gym rings because those are like the essentials of calisthenics basically.
Since cardio is equally important in my fitness journey, I have incorporated HIIT training into my workouts as well as walking more often (that includes parking my car a little further away from the destination so I can walk more).
“What about yoga, Kenny? Where does it fit in?”
Well, yoga complements my calisthenics training such as improving my flexibility, mobility, strength and overall health. I know there are guys out there who hated yoga but let me tell you — yoga has showed me that my flexibility was in a very, very sad state.
Also, I needed yoga because I know that my hips and joints will thank me one day when I’ve finally reached my 50s and onward.
So anyway, let me show you the transformation. In my previous picture, I weighted about 83–84kg (183–185 lbs).
Now, I weight 70kg (154 lbs) and it took me about 5 MONTHS and for your information, this is all HOME WORKOUTS (because the local gyms during that time were closed due to the pandemic):
I was also able to do the crow pose:
Crazy, right?
But I’m not gonna lie, throughout the journey there were some setbacks —
My weight started to plateau before it even hit normal weight. There were also some minor injuries that have held me back a few times. Then, my sister who suffered from cancer for many years had passed away in September 2021, literally just a few days after my birthday…
Despite all of that, I just kept on going:
When my weight plateaued, I went back to the drawing board and improved my nutrition and started intermittent fasting. After that, my weight started to go down again.
As for my minor injuries, I’ve adjusted my workouts, reduced my reps and sets and eventually my body healed. Most important out of this is that I learned how to be more patient with my progression.
My sister? Well, I have accepted it and had moved on since…Rest in peace, Corina Ann.
So one day, I shared the story of my transformation and tagged Jordan Yeoh whose YouTube channel and workouts have inspired me throughout the course of my fitness journey. He responded with a clapped hands emoji and promptly shared my story to his thousands of followers saying,
“WOW GREAT TRANSFORMATON!”
All of a sudden, random strangers started sending me DMs telling me that I did a great job and were inspired by my transformation. Some of them even decided to ask for fitness advice from me (which I declined to give because I’m a novice still). I was flattered but I was also amused by the situation. But still, I appreciated it and thanked all of them for their genuine support.
Finally, a few months later, that’s when I started bumping into one of Neeramitra Reddy’s articles. Neeramitra is one of the most prolific writers on Medium right now writing about fitness and lifestyle advice, so I highly suggest you go check him out. I wished I could go through his articles and find which one that says “Start now” — I’m just too lazy to look it up lol.
But, those two words got me thinking:
Had I not started to get serious with my fitness journey, those chain of events wouldn’t have happened.
Had I not started, I wouldn’t have become more resilient and disciplined as I needed to be.
Had I not started, I would’ve died one day not being able to see my fitness potential and also my final form (aka my very lean body in its prime state).
If I had not started anything, it won’t be anything.
I said to myself, “Start now.”
It started to click in my head.
I chanted, “Start now. Start now. Start now.”
In this new chapter in my life along with a new upgraded body and a new mindset, I decided to apply the mantra “Start Now” to other endeavours, including writing on Medium.
So here were are. This is me attempting to write on Medium in 2022 every single week. Starting now. Wish me luck!
Hope you’ve enjoyed this article.
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