Weight loss and body image can be a very touchy subject for many people. This was especially the case for me a little over two years ago.

Would you do whatever it took to get your "dream body?"

I tried to attain this body a couple of years ago. I have always been considered the bigger guy, all throughout my life. I played along with it. I had been a football player up until college, so I fit the bill - the larger guy, always eating a lot, lifting weights, and not really caring about my physical appearance because I just thought of myself as "the football player."

After graduating from high school, I was planning on playing in college, but I wasn't able to follow through with it. This left me looking for something to occupy my time with. Due to no longer playing any sports, I stopped working out. Even though I stopped exercising, it never occurred to me that the amount of food I was eating was still aligning with that of someone working out hard for five to six days a week, just because it was part of my routine.

I graduated high school weighing around 245lbs, and due to my habits and lack of self-control, I ended up gaining a tremendous amount of weight heading into college. By Christmas time following my first semester of college, I decided that I was tired of looking the way I did, I was tired of gaining weight. I was upset that I had lost control of myself the way that I did. So I stepped up on the scale. I could not believe what the scale read back to me: 270.

So I decided to take control, and that was exactly what I did.

For the following month, I ate nothing but grilled chicken, vegetables, rice, egg whites, and oatmeal. I lifted weights six days a week. It was great seeing the changes in my body, but I did not enjoy eating like a machine, but I definitely did enjoy the consistency of what came with it. The first month I lost around 20lbs. After sticking with this diet for a bit longer and losing a bit more weight, I decided to control my food consumption even more. I started not only counting my calories, but I would count the exact number of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins I would consume every single day. It was definitely obsessive but I loved it. And of course, to keep myself sane, I would allow for one cheat day every two weeks.

I kept this diet up for months, adjusting my calories slightly as I felt needed, up until around June. I was finally pleased with the way I looked, I was comfortable enough to take my shirt off at the beach. I started to increase the number of cheat days I had from one every two weeks to one a week to two a week. For me, it was the perfect amount of moderation. I worked my ass off for eight months straight to get to where I was and I was as happy as a pig in shit. I still worked out daily, I was comfortable in the gym, comfortable having a couple cheat days a week when I could indulge. At this point, I weighed around 210lbs. I hadn't been that light since I was 14 or 15 years old.

Everything changed for me once I started meeting other people who were social media influencers in the fitness industry. They were very intrigued by my weight loss, and there was a good amount of people motivating me to keep going in my "weight loss journey." All of this made me want to start advertising myself as someone who could help others lose weight and potentially become a figure within the fitness social media scene.