My Story
How I Got Here.
I’ve been a personal trainer and coach now for 10 years. However, my journey into the fitness world actually started 13 years ago.
As a child, I was very active and had a healthy body weight. I played football, hockey, soccer, baseball and would skateboard all summer. 2002 was where this journey really started though. I was eight years old. Yes, you read that right - eight. That summer was the first time I’d ever sought comfort from food. I’d always had an emotional connection to food before then, but this was the first time it affected my life. I gained around 20lbs that summer. For some, that might not sound too drastic, but keep in mind that this was on an eight year old’s body. It all began with Lays Classic potato chips. I loved them, and I couldn’t get enough of them. They seemed to have the power to solve all of my problems (at least momentarily). Bored? Grab a bag of Lays. Sad? Grab a bag of Lays. Lonely? Hmmm… maybe uh grab a bag of Lays? So that’s what I did. I will never forgive Mark Messier and his damn good marketing campaign for Lays at that time. “Betcha can’t eat just one”. Let’s just say that I’m glad that I never made that bet. Now I’m partly kidding here. Lays obviously weren't my issue. It just happened to be the outlet I went to for my real, unresolved problems. This pattern of a toxic relationship with food is something I still struggle with today.
From that summer on, I continued to gain weight slowly but surely.
My habits around eating got worse and worse. Whole foods were not a thing in my household. I would eat cereal every morning, a few granola bars and a Lunchable for lunch, and a Hungry Man or Michelina’s frozen meal for dinner. My family never had meals together so I never learned how or what to eat. The only meal we would really have as a family was shared by my sister and I on Fridays. My mom would get us McDonalds and we would eat it in the same vicinity of one another while watching TV. Fast food grew to be symbolic of family time (well, kind of) and the weekend. Not exactly the healthiest of correlations.
I remember when I decided to make a change.
I was in grade eight and thirteen years old. I was 5’2 and weighed almost 180 lbs. For reference, today I am 26 years old, 5’9, weigh 180lbs and have been strength training for 12 years. I decided after watching the extremely below average movie, “Smart People”, to finally make a change. If you’re unfamiliar with the movie, it’s about otherwise very intelligent people who are miserable with their lives and are doing nothing about it. They then do something about it - kind of. For some reason, it inspired my little adolescent brain. I began working out every day. I had small dumbbells and would just do push ups, flys and curls. Thirteen year old Dylan did in fact skip leg day. I remember seeing the movie “Never Back Down” that had one of those cliche but motivating training montages in it. In it, the main character did chin ups - and so, I decided I would, too. I remember being at my Aunt and Uncle’s house where they had a chin up bar in the basement. This was it. My chance to live out my own training montage - and I failed. Miserably, to be blunt. But my tenacity kicked in and I refused to give up, I was absolutely determined to do a chin up. I was going to be able to do several. I started practicing them on an angled tree branch on the tree in my front yard.
Now picture a short, pudgy little brown boy, bangs hanging below past his chin, practicing haggard chin ups on an uneven tree branch in his front yard. That is how my introduction to training started.
Then my mother decided either out of support or sheer embarrassment, to buy me one of those chin up bars that you wedge into the top of a doorway. I started training with it constantly. Tracing back to my extremist ways, I was working out with this chin up bar four times a day that summer. I would wake up and do an assortment of chin ups, push ups and ab workouts with it. Then I would skateboard for a couple of hours, come home, eat lunch, and do my workout again. I’d go play outside, come back to eat dinner, and do another workout. I’d go hangout with my friends in the neighbourhood, and come home to do my workout one last time before bed. This was what I did essentially everyday for one summer. I would go on to lose 60 lbs over the next 6 months.
If only this was the end of my story.
That 60lbs would creep back on over the next 12 years.
Some of it was muscle but most of it was fat. The highest weight I ever got back up to was 210lbs. I was 210lbs but I could squat 405lbs, so I didn’t care. Or at least that’s what I told everyone. Looking back, the issue with me being 210lbs was how I got there. I got there with plenty of yoyo dieting, binge eating, binge drinking and many dogmatic practices with food. The only practice I never tried was consistency, patience, balance and empathy.
To this day, even after coaching clients for 7 years, navigating my relationship with food still isn’t easy for me. I believe that’s why I love coaching people when it comes to training & nutrition so much. I know the struggle. I still live with it. It is empowering to communicate the struggle, and to have the support and professional guidance around it. It’s not about writing the perfect training program or nutrition program. It's about designing one to meet a client where they’re at and help motivate them to stay consistent within it. Moreover, having the empathy, relatability and the ability to coach them through the challenges of it
Today you’ll find me practicing the skill of not being an extremist when it comes to my training and nutrition.
What does that mean? To me it means enjoying 3-4 beers instead of 20. It means eating a few slices of pizza instead of the entire box. It means enjoying my life and not always feeling stressed, guilty or ashamed about the way I look or eat. It also means training because I genuinely enjoy moving my body - not because I want to look a certain way. You’ll also find me coaching my clients to help support them in achieving their goals, whether it’s fat loss, nutrition and lifestyle coaching, gaining muscle, developing their strength and conditioning, teaching olympic lifting or recovering from an injury/improving movement quality.