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
- (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
My personal experience:
I just took a look at my “Before & After” pictures that span May-Nov 2019. I lost 57Kg of fat and put on about 13Kg of muscle. It was interesting to look back at the slideshow just now!
Although it is difficult to distinguish the muscles growing vs. the fat shrinking, it looks to me like my increase in muscle mass started to be noticeable from around the 3 month point. By “noticeable” I mean that the “definition lines” started to be visible although major increase in mass isn’t apparent.
The increase in mass looks like it started around the 4-5 month point, at which point I had progressed past the “do my best” beginner workouts, and had established the required strength, endurance and range of motion to take the next steps, so to speak.
So I first noticed my strength, endurance, range, and muscular definition increasing, and later noticed the size increase.
I would like to encourage you to keep at it, and don’t chase results. Do what you’re doing with the goal of being happier, having fewer health complications and pains, a little bit of vanity which is totally fine, and let the rest take care of itself.
One of the things that can be very defeating is to assume you will have reached an arbitrary goal by an arbitrary time-frame. Try to shift your perspective to realize that you’re doing all the right things, perhaps there’s some efficiency tweaks but that’s another story. Keep going and don’t measure your progress against anybody else but you!
(I want to acknowledge that my story is not normal. Nobody should ever lose 10Kg+ a month. I’m one of these a__holes that has to do 50% of what most people need to get the same results though and that’s a blessing. I also have digestive and nutrient-absorption issues but I’m not sure how much that plays in.)