The Background

Growing up, I was always considered to be a tall skinny (6'2"), kid. My friends would constantly tease me and my parents' friends and relatives would mention “Your such a skinny-mini”. It sucked, thinking back on it makes me realized how much has changed over time.

I have always had trouble fully committing to a lifestyle change to add on some extra pounds. It always seemed like a daunting idea. This being due to my thought process around combining more eating food and increased physical stress; with my ongoing celiac battle in my digestive tract. Little did I know I was going to be proven myself very wrong.

When lockdown hit, I took it as an opportunity to focus on myself and reflect on how I could become a better me, mentally and physically. What else could I do during lockdown…...

Huge shoutout to the community, friends, and family for providing so much in-depth, knowledgeable information, one could ask for on topics of fitness! I don't think my mindsets, workout plan, and diet would be as optimized without you all.

And so...

Armed with new mindsets, a +3300 calorie diet, a gym membership, a mask, and no daily plans. I started to commit to my mission and stick with it.

I love data and making it look beautiful! It's a passion of mine to track things close to me to see how to learn and grow. It's one of the main reasons why I am a Director of Product at a Mar-Tech SaaS.

As with many of my goals, I attempted to track as much of my progress as I could. Through tracking my progress, I learned many do’s and don'ts when bulking, lifting, and personal growth.

The Journey

Here is my recent journey over the past year all visualized! Wrapped up in a bow just for you! The reports include my full workouts, workout performance, progress, calories, etc.

The Tech Stack (Anyone can do it!)

Visualizations

• Google Data Studio for visualization.
• Google Sheets/Drive for the data warehouse.

Data Tracking

• Samsung health, all apps I leverage sync their data back to this app.
• Samsung Gear Sport Watch for activities.
• Fitdays (Smart Scale app) for weight and body composition.
• MyfitnessPal for food tracking.
• Sleep as Android for sleep.

Data Access

All the apps I use sync to Samsung Health. Through the service, they offer a way for you to request your raw health data in JSON and CSV format. Trust me is very RAW! Upload it to Google Drive and Voila! It's ready for Google Data Studio.

I hope to one day pull the data from Samsung Health automatically through a REST API but none is available at this point and time. I do hope for Google Health to add back the connector for Data Studio though that I have heard rumors about!

Top 5 Learnings

Upon reflecting on this journey, I started to document all the tips and tricks in a journal. Through this I came to the realizations, the mindset tricks I discovered going through this process could also be applied to professional growth as well. Here they are:

1. Short-term pain, for long-term gain.
2. The mindset to persevere through the ups and downs helps drive resilience and strength for the future.
3. Fitness is crucial to balance out the brain to alleviate and improve mental health.
4. Trusting yourself to push further than what you thought possible is key to growth.
5. Being consistent is better than trying to be the "best" every day (It's just not sustainable!).
6. Consistency is key to steady, stable improvements.
7. Failure is good! You need to fail to succeed. Those failures will teach you how to improve through reflection.

Through this time, I have learned many new personal growth methodologies, successfully gained an extra 25+ pounds of extra weight, and have a newfound passion for weight lifting. I still have a long way to go to reach my next goal but I’m happy with the progress so far.

tl;dr started taking my health seriously when lockdown hit. Ate a lot of healthy food and lifted heavy weights to gain 25 pounds. I tracked it all in a dashboard. Upon reflecting, I discovered my learnings through this journey can also be applied to professional growth as well.