I have been extremely consistent for about 11 months, however no ever looks at me and says ‘Oh he probably goes to the gym’

Several reasons

1)Poor starting point

Had a lot of fat and almost no muscle, overweight

2)Trash program

The coach in the gym directly put me on machines without squat bench etc, 20sets per muscle group

  1. (Probably) poor genetics

Barely saw any ‘rapid’ progression on my lifts in the start, took me weeks to increase weight

4)Obsessed with losing fat/fatigue from cut

Ended up cutting way too long, I wanted to get ‘lean’, but since I had no muscle, never lost my gut, just looked even worse ‘skinny fat’

However I seem to have fixed all the issues on my end, and am seeing slow but steady increase in reps and weights, it’s still kinda demotivating when my friends say that they can’t see progress but ofc they don’t know how bad I fucked up and ngl I am actually getting a little excited with everything coming together, and was wondering how long did it take y’all to start looking good

  • Fushuan [he/him]English
    3·
    3 months ago

    To summarise, musculature won’t hide fat because the fat layer of the belly is on top of the abs, fat hides abs.

    I’ve been a rower in the past and some of my colleagues were able to show abs easily. Others like me, literally had to follow a very harsh routine for a 17 yo kid to even be able to. I was plenty healthy, I just wanted to get abs because of course a 17yo wants to.

    The issue? Genetics. Some people accumulate fat in the belly first, so it will be the literal last place where it will go away. This means that even though I was the strongest of the club, with best times on competitions, I had a (very minimal) fat layer on top of the abs I obviously had given the competition results, and it covered the abs themselves.

    Now, this is an extreme example, but I think that it shows why sometimes we must accept that “taking out the belly” is a marathon, not a sprint. And it does not really matter which part of your body you exercise in regards to weight loss, since your body moves fat around to compensate for it. Yeah, you will build muscle and volume in the places you exercise, sure, but that won’t make belly fat go away by itself.

    For example, I recently started exercising and dieting and went down from 128kg to 114kg, aiming to be back at 95ish. My belly has reduced a lot, fat too, all around my body. All I did was some intense static bike and dieting, no lifting until a while because I felt embarrassed with my body. In any case, it worked, literally anything works IF you keep up with both diet and exercise.

    • fastandcurious@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      3 months ago

      Thanks a lot! I think maybe not just abs but just generally having bigger muscles will still make your belly look better, you see dudes with a high amount of body fat but they still have some abs poking through and in general look way better than your average fat guy

      Anyways, good luck on your journey!

      • Fushuan [he/him]English
        2·
        3 months ago

        Thank you too! About the feel you have that you “wasted” your time, don’t think like that, you created a habit of exercising and conscious eating, in the long run that’s the hardest part. As others have said, maintaining those habits and slowly increasing the intensity as you feel comfortable with it will always yield results, albeit slowly. For faster results you should go to trainers for sure though. Best wishes with your journey!