Find Your Why Before You Find the Gym

I forgot exactly when I started lifting. It was either 2021 or 2022, sometime around October I believe. These days I look decent with a shirt on, but without one I'm not that impressive. There's a saying that if you look good both with a shirt and without, you're very likely on gear.

After you've been lifting for a while, the idea of taking gear starts to cross your mind, and it becomes tempting. When you're new, you don't even consider it because you want to stay natural. But the gains you'd get in those first six months on gear outweigh everything you built over three or four years naturally. It's ridiculous, though it does come with consequences if you don't do it properly. I'm thinking about hopping on. I'm not too sure yet. But here's the thing I've realized after all this time: whether you go natural or not matters way less than knowing why you walked into the gym in the first place.

Figure Out Your Why

If you want to lift consistently, that why is the whole foundation. If the only reason is to look good and have a nice body, the slow natural progress probably won't satisfy you, and you'll burn out or end up reaching for gear anyway.

For me, the reason was different. I was losing control of myself. I wasn't drinking or doing hard drugs, but I slowly felt myself slipping, chipping away piece by piece. It was rough. Lifting became the thing that gave me back some resolve, and that's what's kept me going to this day.

15-year-old me. Not lifting yet, this was my starting point.

25-year-old me. Roughly four years of lifting, all natural.