The Haircut that Defined Me
Growing up self confidence was never my forte. Sure I was good in the classroom with fairly sharp math skills plus I was relatively good at sports, but my social gas gauge always found itself on E. Seeing myself in the mirror every day before school and not liking the person that stared back ate at me more than I realized. Seeing my peers having that significant someone (sure it was a high school fling, but then again at the time high school was everything), made me question why I couldn’t achieve the same thing. If I had a dollar for every time I questioned myself, I would be an octillionaire.
Reflecting back on life in high school compared to life now as an adult, I laugh at the things I used to find so important. I can think back of an instance in my life that shaped the way I looked at myself then and how it led me to become the person I am today, and that is the dreaded freshman year haircut. A little back story to set up this situation. I have always had a big head, I’m talking Tommy Pickles can’t fit a shirt over it big head, and it made me a tad self conscious. The day before freshman year band pictures, I got my hair cut to make sure I looked my best to make the money spent on those pictures worth it. To make a long story short, I left the hair cut place but my hair did not.
Adjusting to this reality felt like my world was caving in. Despite the constant, “you look good,” or “it’ll grow back,” I felt my big ole noggin was on display for the world to see. I hated myself because it was my fault I looked like a circus side show. I wanted nothing more than to crawl away until my hair grew back. Fast forward, I am now in college. I had developed an irrational fear of the buzz that comes from clippers that I could not bring myself to have them used on my head. Going to the Florida State University without a car meant that to get to class the only transportation was my God-given method, walking. Starting college my weight was in the 260 range. Without trying and really focusing on losing weight, as I came home from school people I had known for years started commenting on how much weight I lost.
I decided at that point that I was going to start taking weight training and getting healthy more seriously. I decided to ditch the pop tart diet and start focusing on eating proper nutrition and gaining my self confidence. During my first years of college, I went from 260 to below 220. The dreaded freshman 15 was not a factor for me. As a part of personal transformation, I decided to face my fear of the clippers and get a real hair cut, (I was also tired of getting my hair stuck in my bookbag). Fast forward another 10 years and hear I am working on my goal of starting a fitness and training company. The goal of The Fitness Hypothesis is not sell some gimmick AI generated workout, the goal is to provide the guidance I wish I had when I started. I had no idea what macros were. I had no clue what my BMI, basal metabolic rate was, or even what a bench press was. My goal is to help train clients to lead a healthier, more active lifestyle.
