Member Stories: Alan Gonzalez, Adolescent Weight Gain & Loss

Member Stories Alan Gonzalez - Adolescent Weight Gain and Loss

We’re extremely proud of our members. Over the years their work out agendas and sporting endeavors serve as healthy examples of how it feels to be “Elite,” and how exercise not only adds years to your life, but life to your years! Today we’d like to highlight another member’s experience:

Meet Alan Gonzalez, a member of Elite Sports Clubs since he was a kid. This is the story of how he experienced adolescent weight gain and loss over a period of about a year through discipline in eating, exercise, and in the classroom.

Preface:

My father guided me to an active lifestyle through soccer. Soccer alone sustained me physically and kept me fit, especially when I began club soccer when I was 10 years old. When I arrived at Marquette University High School, I won state cup with my club team and envisioned a similar outcome with high school. However, after my first year playing, I got complacent because of how often we destroyed teams. At this time I had been a member at Elite Clubs for a couple years but I rarely went.

Weight Gain:

The following year I gained weight. Multiple factors caused the weight gain: laziness, less playing time (JV at MUHS and U16 at Bavarians), and not fulfilling my grade expectations. My lifestyle transitioned from hardworking and disciplined, both in food choices and exercise, to complacency all around. My weight peaked the summer of my sophomore year at 175 pounds in unhealthy weight (see below). I still had not utilized Elite as much as I should have.

Weight Loss:

I realized what happened to me physically and decided that if I wanted to make varsity my senior year that something had to change. After that vacation, I learned about my club team getting a new coach, which gave me an opportunity to prove that I deserve to play and am a leader. My efforts increased ten-fold, I became disciplined in my diet and worked out outside of soccer practice. I have Elite to thank for providing the structure and resources I needed to give me that extra push and motivation. My weight loss accelerated initially by cutting off all refined sugars and almost exclusively drinking water.

Results and the Present:

By the end of my junior year, I lost about 30 pounds. That weight loss sufficed in my quest to make varsity soccer at MUHS. I continued to exercise outside of daily practice. I lost another 10 pounds by the time the season was over in October of 2013 (see photo below). Since then, I am continually making efforts to maintain, lose, or gain weight depending on my circumstances. While I have lost the weight, the discipline does not always last. Sometimes I compensate through the combination of calorie intake and occurrence of exercise.

Lessons:

Throughout my journey of gain and loss, I realized that weight as a numeric is not important. Weight distribution matters and differs relative to many factors such as height, body type, and metabolism. Weight loss differs for every person and it takes time. These lessons were not intuitive for me, but the journey allowed me to understand the mechanics of healthy weight loss and the importance of maintaining a physically active lifestyle.

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