Clinically Obese And Prediabetic Bro Reverses His Flailing Health By Lifting Weights, Is Now Friggin’ SHREDDED

Redditor babygainz was not always the shredded bodybuilder he is today. At one point, the 5’10” Bro weighed in at 240 lbs., landing him firmly in the “obese” category on the BMI scale. After being diagnosed as prediabetic and realizing that his quality of life was almost guaranteed to decline if he continued down this path, babygainz decided it was time to start losing weight and tracking his macros.

80 pounds later, babygainz was left with a lot of loose skin that had to be surgically removed. “After the skin was gone, I decided I could finally get over my fear of taking my shirt off in public, so I entered a bodybuilding competition,” he explains in a post to r/fitness. As you can see from the below photo, he managed to completely transform his body despite starting out with such a high body fat percentage:

He didn’t stop there though. “After the competition, I decided I wanted to add size and get stronger, so I started eating in a way that would increase my bodyweight and in turn also increase my strength and size. This is called bulking.”

His first bulk got a bit out of hand though…

…and when he dieted away all the body fat, he found that hadn’t grown much in size:

“As a formerly obese person, I have tried or been prescribed just about every diet out there,” he writes. “What I have found to be most effective is the idea of energy balance. If your goal is to gain weight, you must eat more than your body requires. This is a caloric surplus. If you want to lose weight, you need to eat less than your body requires. This is a caloric deficit. If you want to maintain your bodyweight, you must eat around the amount your body expends in a day. This is called maintenance.”

Babygainz’s cutting macros are 250g carbohydrates, 190g protein and 60g of fat, whereas when he bulks he lists them as 450g carbohydrates, 190g protein and 75g fat. And while you may think that lifting heavy things and putting them back down is the most important part of your fitness routine, babygainz has got some harsh truth for you:

Diet is the most important aspect of fitness. The way we look, feel and perform comes down to diet above all else. In order to control this aspect, it is important to be able to track it accurately. For me, this took a lot of practice. A behavior of mine that contributed to my obesity and still hinders my diet sometimes is unconscious eating. I stand in front of the fridge or a cupboard and shovel food into my mouth without even recognizing it.

By tracking everything that enters my mouth I am able to recognize unconscious eating and stop myself before I start. Tracking my diet, body weight, pictures and the weights I lift also gives me the ability to view progress and analyze variables. Being able to manipulate these variables is essential to achieving my goals.

Judging from his before and after photos, babygainz achieved his goals and THEN some:

[Via Reddit]