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
Honestly the best thing you can do for yourself is cooking and eating a ton of protein and veggies. Every period I’ve made significant progress it’s when I’m cooking stir frys for dinner every night and drinking a ton of milk and eggs and regular protein shakes. Once you gain some muscle, it’s pretty easy to just switch to intermittent fasting or something and shed weight since you have so much base muscle burning calories, but eating enough good, nutrition filled, food to gain that muscle in the first place is the hardest part and the biggest limiting factor to overall progress in my experience / I think that’s probably true for most casual lifters.