I Was Skinny My Whole Life: What Changed When I Stopped Being That Guy

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For most of my life, I was the skinny, tall guy. Not skinny in a problematic way, I never had any eating disorder or medical underweight issue, I was just always slim, the kind of build people sometimes describe as a stick. It never really bothered me, but it left something behind that still sits in my head today, even though my body stopped looking the way it used to a long time ago.

When I started swimming as a kid, it gave me the first shape I ever had. My stomach started to look like a six pack, which honestly comes pretty easily to someone skinny, but my arms and chest still looked the same as before, basically without any trace of muscle. Swimming had a completely different purpose back then. I just had a lot of energy as a kid and needed somewhere to put it, and the physique was just a side effect.

The back pain that started ringing a bell

The first moment I started thinking I might need to change something had nothing to do with how I looked. I worked a lot on the side, in restaurants and clubs, carrying and lifting things, and at eighteen my lower back started giving me trouble from time to time. It was nothing dramatic, it happened maybe once every two nights, occasionally bad enough that it was hard to fall asleep, but nothing more than that. During one doctor’s visit for something unrelated, I asked in passing what might be causing it. The answer was simple: not enough muscle in the back, regular training would definitely help. I did not run to the gym right away because of that, but it stayed somewhere in the back of my mind.

Training actually came and went in my life for quite a while before I ever took it seriously. There were early attempts with friends after school, a session or two in some studio, and then those plans just dissolved on their own. I trained alone for a while, but that faded too. Then the pandemic hit, the studio closed, and I had no money at the time anyway, so that naturally died down as well. I only came back to it once I started earning more steadily and told myself I was finally going to take this seriously. But even then, there was another moment of neglect, right after I met my girlfriend and started feeling secure in the relationship. That motivation to look good for someone else faded, so I let things slide a bit. It took that beach photo I have already written about to make me realize how it was even possible that I had been training for so long and still looked basically the same. That was the moment that actually changed how I approached things.

Ab workouts before school, a yoga mat borrowed from my parents

Before I ever set foot in a gym, I trained at home. I had a bench and a yoga mat borrowed from my parents, and at first I used some phone app that seemed great until it slowly turned partly paid, then fully paid, so I eventually just stopped using it altogether. I also tried barbell work at home, but honestly, nothing came of it. No visible chest, no difference I could actually see. It just was not for me, at least not under home conditions.

What I trained most consistently was my abs, and that actually showed results I could see. I had school at 7:45, so I would wake up ten or fifteen minutes earlier, with the mat and water already set up, and start right away, on an empty stomach, since that was the only workout that actually worked well without eating first. It was intense, intense enough that when I once did it as a presentation in school, even the athletic guys told me to slow down because it was clearly not for everyone. The difficulty kept increasing over time, and to this day I still consider a lot of those exercises genuinely good for training abs.

It was only at the gym that I felt this was actually mine. It was not just about equipment I did not have at home, it was the atmosphere, leaving the house instead of sweating alone on a mat in my room. The difference was noticeable right away.

The phone that was supposed to take weekly photos

At the start, I had a plan to photograph myself every day, or at least once a week, just to see any kind of difference. I kept that up for about a month, maybe a bit longer, and then simply stopped. The first moment I actually noticed a change did not come from a mirror or a phone, it came from clothes. The sleeves of my shirts started filling out with arms that used to just hang loose inside them. That was the first real confirmation that something was happening.

I have to admit, before that I used to dress around my skinny build. Big hoodies, things that hid how little there actually was underneath. I remember watching one of the Hangover movies, where Bradley Cooper wore a deep V neck top, the kind that only really works on someone with the right build, and thinking it would look a lot worse on me. It was a quiet thought, never said out loud, but it stuck somewhere in my memory.

Even so, I never avoided the gym or the pool because of how I looked. People sometimes called me the skinny one, but never in an aggressive way, more as a description than as an insult. It made me think more than it ever hurt.

Three compliments I still remember

After about a year of consistent training, I started getting compliments. Not many, exactly three over the course of a year, but that is actually a lot for a guy to hear. People noticed that I clearly did sports, that I was working on something. That was the first time someone from the outside confirmed what I was only just starting to feel myself when I looked at my shirt sleeves. And honestly, it worked like fuel. Those compliments genuinely helped me keep training when motivation started to dip.

Around the same time, I started approaching my training a lot more methodically, less by feel and more with an actual understanding of why a given exercise made sense. A bit later I picked up Trainingslehre, a German training theory textbook that helped me make sense of a lot of what I had previously just been doing on instinct. For anyone trying to move from random training to something more deliberate, it is genuinely a solid read, though you do need to know German.

Being tall and naturally skinny, I also struggled for a long time to eat enough to actually build mass. At some point I started using Optimum Nutrition Serious Mass as a weight gainer, just to close the daily calorie surplus more easily without forcing down another full meal. It was not magic, but it genuinely helped in the moments when a plate of food alone was not enough.

The arm that never quite catches up to the leg

What is most interesting is what happens now when I just look at myself, no mirror, straight down from my own perspective. I see that I am still not as massive as I would like to be. Specifically, my arm does not look as big as my thigh, and logically there is simply more muscle in the legs, so that part actually makes sense. The problem is somewhere else. All it takes is seeing some strongmen whose arms are bigger than some people’s legs, and that image stays in your head as a reference point. So I look at my own arm, compare it to my own leg, and even though that comparison does not really hold up physiologically, the thought still creeps in that I am not built enough yet.

And that is exactly what I want to say honestly at the end. For me, that mindset has not disappeared a hundred percent, even though I have gained weight, even though I feel a lot better in my own body, and even though I objectively look different than I used to. Maybe for someone else it fades completely, that is obviously personal. But for me, that skinny mindset still sits somewhere in the background, and it pops up in unexpected moments. I am not writing this to discourage anyone, because my confidence really has grown, a lot, just to put it down honestly rather than as a promise that once you gain the weight, the old version of yourself simply disappears from your head. Sometimes it stays, it just loses its grip.

If you used to be the skinny one and you are working on changing that now, I already wrote about how I started tracking protein to gain ten kilos, and about how I finally stopped quitting the gym after a few weeks every time. And the full story of that specific beach photo that actually triggered this change for good is in the first post on this blog.

This post describes my personal experience and is not medical or nutritional advice. If you have questions about your health, body weight, or training, please consult a doctor or qualified professional.