The Rhino-Jacked Road

Growing up I never really considered my weight an issue.

Yes, I knew I was overweight. From my first day in school I was bigger than most of my other classmates. I would get teased occasionally, like any fat kid. But it never really bothered me; at least it didn’t bother me enough to really do much about it.

I wanted to be thinner. I tried diets. I tried exercising. But nothing really worked. Or at least, I couldn’t stick with it long enough for it to work.

I thought sports would change that. I thought maybe as I got into middle school and high school, starting lifting and playing sports, that I would lean out and get more muscular.

But that didn’t happen either. In fact, sports made me hate exercise even more. So I further resisted; distanced myself from any sort of fitness activity or lifestyle.

Deep, deep down I knew that the path I was on wasn’t healthy. I knew I was setting myself for problems down the road. But instead of acknowledging this fact, I suppressed it. Instead of trying to find a method that worked for me, that I could enjoy and stick with, I simply accepted who I was. I wanted to lose weight but I figured I was just one of those people who couldn’t. Ironically, it was probably this acceptance that allowed me to develop a personality. I felt like people judged me because of my weight, and that if I wanted them to like me I needed to be the “funny guy” or someone people turned to for advice.

I went years without stepping on the scale. Maybe subconsciously I was scared of what I would see. It wasn’t until sometime after college that I got the courage to finally weigh myself.

280lbs.

Now I’d like to say it was seeing this number that got me motivated to work out, but it wasn’t.

No, the reason I started working out was the same reason that a man does almost anything…for a woman.

Yes there was this woman I was interested in at the time. But looking at myself in the mirror I thought that there was no way she could be interested in me. So what did I think I had to do to get her attention? Work out, lose weight, and get sexy, obviously.

So I jumped into it headfirst! I hit the gym almost every day for a few hours and worked my but off. But since I had no background in fitness, I was just doing what everyone else was doing: cardio for an hour, and some rudimentary resistance training program. And despite these hamster-wheel cardio and aimless weightlifting sessions, after a few months I saw some results. I stepped on the scale again, and I found myself down to 265lbs.

This got me excited!

And while these results didn’t get me the girl, they were still the best I had ever seen from working out. So I started digging deeper into the fitness realm.

The thing that really took me over the edge was the morning I stumbled upon John Romaniello’s article on Intermittent Fasting. This opened me up to a whole new fitness world. I started searching Roman’s network and read everything by everyone he was connected to. This lead me to the blogs and websites of countless other fitness professionals. I was officially down the rabbit hole!

Fast-forward a few years. After experimenting with different programs and using all the knowledge I had accrued, I was down another 55lbs.

But more importantly, I’d developed a passion for fitness.

It was also about that time that I hit the first real crossroads in my life. I was let go from my job; a job that I loved.

I had never experienced any sort of disappointment or heartbreak like this in my life. For a while, I wasn’t sure what to do

But I knew I had a decision to make: either find another job doing what I had been doing for the last several year, or take this new passion I had for fitness and make a career out of it.

I chose fitness.

I realized that while I enjoyed my previous job, I had no passion for it.

But I did for fitness. I loved talking about it. I loved reading about it.

Fitness had done so much for me over the last few years. It helped me change my body; but more so than that, it changed my life.

Fitness made me more confident in myself and my abilities.

It made me realize that I was capable of anything and that I could accomplish anything I wanted.

It made me more outgoing, changed how I approached life, and most importantly, made me a better person.

And it was for all of these reasons that I wanted to make fitness my career. I wanted to help people not only achieve their goals, but realize the strength they had inside them.

Help them realize what they were capable of.

Most people view fitness as a way to get in shape; to live healthier lives. And this is true.

But it’s much more than that. Fitness has the potential to improve every aspect of your life, not just how you look.

Fitness transforms your mind as well as your body. And helping people realize this and seeing it happen is why I decided on this career path.

Fitness has given me so much. Now it’s time for me to give back.

Jorden Pagel