Hey Steemit! I’m Suneet Sebastian – Entrepreneur, Fitness Coach & YouTuber. This is my story of being bullied, depression & overcoming that with fitness

Hello Steemit-ians (if that’s even a thing)! My name is Suneet Sebastian; Entrepreneur, Fitness Coach and YouTuber. I recently discovered SteemIt through @cryptovestor, and being a creator myself, I’m so excited to join and be a part of it.

One of the strongest basis of my lifestyle and my content is based on Science. Research, answers to the WHYs and Science & Evidence-based information is what I heavily rely on.

My fitness journey has more to it than just my physical transformation. It's my story of being bullied, getting into depression and then overcoming all that and making fitness my religion and to spread it, my life's mission. Here’s the video, but scroll down if you’d prefer to read instead.

Can you imagine how you’d feel if you were being bullied in front of your crush while being betrayed by your “friends” at the same time? That’s exactly what happened to me. Growing up, I was always that one kid in my group who was bullied by the rest for no apparent reason. And on this one particular day, my “friends” in my apartment complex were giving me the usual whooping. Except this day, they decided to dump a trash can filled with garbage over my head and kick me over it. I thought things couldn’t possibly get worse. When I took the trash can off, there she was, my crush, a short distance away, watching what was happening. She was my first crush. And I knew from that moment on, I could never look her in the eye again, much less ask her out.

I just knew that this had to stop. I promised myself – “Never again”

The reason why I thought they bullied me was because I was an easy target with low self-esteem. A fat chubby kid who wasn’t good at anything. I couldn’t run fast and also had zero athletic ability. I was always the kid that got picked last in any team. I felt that if I could somehow change that, then maybe I wouldn’t be bullied anymore. And that was the start of my fitness journey. No other sport appealed to me as much as Basketball. I loved how all the players were so strong, athletic, fast and practically FLEW through the air. That’s who I wanted to be. And so it began.

Fast forward a few years and I had made my way up to being one of the top players in my team. And although I wasn’t being bullied anymore; something felt missing. When I looked at myself, I was still the same chubby me, just a few inches taller. I was supposedly an “athlete” but didn’t look, feel or truly perform like one. Not surprising because my diet all through this time was downright TERRIBLE! I was practically addicted to sweets and guzzling soft drinks like there’s no tomorrow. So with this newfound realization, I embarked on my next challenge – weight loss. Now being as uninformed as I was back then; I only ate salads. After all, pretty much everything else had been demonized by the media and “conventional wisdom”. So for two whole months, all I would eat was a small plate containing a few pieces of tomatoes, onions, cucumbers and a bit of lettuce. For lunch and dinner. That’s it! And I paired that with 2+ hours of cardio every day in the form of Basketball. I did lose weight. A lot of it. I lost 18 kgs in those 2 months and was feeling on top of the world! Until, one day during our college fest, someone clicked a picture of me next to some girl. I noticed I looked scrawny compared to her! My arms were even smaller than hers. I realized that I had lost a lot of muscle too!

That’s when I entered the gym for the first time in my life and made Google and YouTube my tutors. Quick shortcuts or “tips” on how to transform my body in 4 weeks, 8 weeks, 12 weeks; whatever that article or video’s claim was. But after trying everything under the sun, I never seemed to get the results they promised and showed. And then one fine day, I came across a flyer that changed my life forever. It was for a fitness seminar held by a man who would eventually become my mentor. In this seminar, he exposed all the nonsense in the fitness industry. All the dieting blunders you could make, all the wrong ways you could be exercising and all the misinformation spread by popular media. He tore them all apart while educating us with scientific facts! The single greatest takeaway was- to ALWAYS ask WHY before trusting any fitness advice.

I got agitated at the endless misinformation put out there by gym “bros” and folks on steroids who perpetrated their “knowledge” without an iota of scientific knowledge but were blindly followed by others because of their physiques. Most importantly, I wanted to do for someone else, what my mentor did for me. I wanted to reach out to some other young kid who has the same passion. With such righteous purpose, I started my own website and YouTube channel with the aim to be the single greatest, go-to resource for Scientific and Evidence based information on everything Fitness and thus, Sebastian Fitness Solutions was born.

So that’s my story so far. To sum it up, I’d call it nothing but one hell of a crazy rollercoaster ride.

I’m really excited to start contributing to the Steemit community and hope this platform grows to meet the vision we all have for it. I’ll be posting some of my fitness videos that I think this community might find informative but I also intend to get involved in discussions in a lot of other things outside of fitness that I am passionate and curious about.

If you have any questions for me, please post them below. I’d love to interact with all of you and start some great conversations!

Keep Learning, Keep Growing!
Suneet.