My journey from 120KG/264 pounds summer of 16 to 91KG/200 pounds summer of 17!

So, this is Robin in the summer of 2016: 

Weighing in at 120KG. To be quite honest, I'm not sure how I let it go that far. I was just out of a three year relationship, and perhaps eating was my way to move ahead and cope with reality. Food has always been my best friend (still is), but there is a difference between enjoying food and over-eating. 

And this is me at my favorite festival of the year, our local Palmesus in Kristiansand, Norway. (2016). It's a bad photo, zoomed in to keep my friend's privacy, but you get the picture. It wasn't a good time in my life, and I remember myself even getting to the point where I was trying to convince myself that I was comfortable being that unhealthy. I told myself that: "Yeah, I'm fine. I mean we can't be fit all the time", and that is to a certain extent true, but little did I know about how great it feels to be in more control over your own body and being able to do whatever you want without getting exhausted right away. 

So, what happened after the summer?

Well, I went back to Uni, to finish my third and final year of my Bachelor's degree in IT and Information systems (finally got it now, but returning for a Masters degree!). The eating didn't improve a lot, but one thing that happened is that I was stressed, a lot. Probably a bit more than what is normally healthy, but some students are that way. I'm the kind of student who does a lot of hard work, but still has a bad conscience about not doing more. And as a result, I beat myself up (even though I'm a stable A and B student, which I'm comfortable with). It's just an evil circle. 

The stress made me lose some weight, the initial 5-10 KG, over the course of a semester. I was somewhat active with my friends as well, but I often compensated for that with drinking and/or excessive eating. But the scale was moving a bit down. 

The turning point

To be honest, most of the change has been the last couple of months. What happened was that during this past semester (since January actually), I've been growing more and more sick of not feeling well with myself. I felt that I had to tolerate what I was looking at in the mirror, and I slowly realized that this was not a way to life my life anymore. I, like everyone else in this world, deserve to feel good about myself. And that was the starting point to get things around. 

I also had a great opportunity in which that I was going to work in the capital of Norway; Oslo, for the summer, with Blockchain technology. (More about that in later posts, this one is about the lifestyle change). This meant that I had two months where I could either bring with me my bad habits and lazy attitude, or take it as a personal challenge to improve myself. I chose the latter.

It started simple, I tried to smoke a few less cigarettes per day (yeah, a 23 year old smoking, some bad decisions somewhere) as well as eat the occasional apple in stead of a hot dog. At this point, the stress had actually gotten me down to 100 KG, so I wasn't far away from my current physique in form of weight, but considering the mentality, attitude and unhealthy lifestyle, I was still miles away. 

In addition, my workplace has an "exercise on the clock" arrangement where we can use up to two hours a week of our work-time exercising (with pay). Gotta love internships at the government!

This led to me being more active, working out a couple of days a week and really feeling the change. After a few days, I realized that there was no point in even smoking anymore. I got advice from a close relative who has quit smoking who said: "Think about it, it doesn't do anything for you. You THINK it gives you pleasure, but it's in your head. It's really destroying you, and when you've smoked a cigarette, you always feel bad afterwards because you realize that it actually did nothing to improve your life at that moment". It's kind of harsh, but also true. And with that mentality, I was able to quit and I am now almost one month without cigarettes (since 21st of June).

All of these parts got together and formed a snow-ball effect, it made me want to do more and work harder, but at my job and regarding my eating, training and general well-being.

And, this is Robin in the summer of 2017: 

This is me at a photo shoot at my job! They are promoting us as "Summer students" to get more young people to join the ranks. 

This is me on top of some climbing contraption in Kristiansand, Norway during a trip there. As you can see, my happiness has improved with the ability to climb and feel free!

My first ever 10KM run, thats 10 000 meters in one run. For me, that's pretty awesome. 

And lastly, the most awkward photo, but I believe it deserves to be here. I am proud of the results of my training. 

The result/ TL;DR

After a year of self-loathing and slowly realizing that changes had to be made, I used the late spring and early summer of 17 to make a turn in my life. I am proud of it, and I haven't felt this good about myself since I was about 16-17 years old and a gym-fanatic.