I have transformed my body three different times in my life.
The first time, I thought I had finally figured fitness out.
Two months later, I had lost almost 8 kilograms.
A few months after that, I had gained every bit of it back.
This is the story of mistake number one.
Let's rewind to 2015. I was doing my undergrad in Chennai, and I wasn't happy with my weight or fitness. The benchmark in my head was how I looked back in school — but there was one big difference: all physical activity had stopped by the time I finished school. Back then, we'd play for hours and never once think about calories or food. In college, that completely changed.
My college provided meals, and honestly the food was pretty good. But good food plus zero physical activity is a dangerous combination. A couple of years in, I realized I had put on a crazy amount of weight.
I was very unhappy about it. Every family function felt the same. Someone would smile, look at me, and say — right there in front of everyone — "Hey Solomon, enna pa adayalam-eh therila — nalla weight pota pola" (Can't even recognize you — looks like you've put on a lot of weight).
Everyone laughed.
I laughed too.
Inside, I hated hearing it.
I never showed it. But every comment stayed with me.
That's what eventually pushed me to start researching — and, honestly, to jump straight into quick hacks.
I started going down the rabbit hole — reading articles, watching YouTube videos — and without much knowledge or context, I got pulled into one of those "lose weight fast" hack videos. I won't name the channel. You know the type. This was 2015 — the early days of fitness content online. YouTube had a fraction of the creators it has today, blogs were the main source of information, and there was very little to help you separate good advice from rubbish. You just trusted whatever ranked well.
That was the first time I learned what a calorie actually was. Weight loss suddenly sounded simple: eat fewer calories than you burn. Burn even more through exercise, lose weight even faster. The logic wasn't wrong — it was just incomplete.
So what did I do? You guessed it — I laced up my shoes and started running.
There was an app back then called Runtastic — similar to what Strava is today.
It had a structured beginner program: Day 1 was 1 minute of slow jogging followed by 1 minute of brisk walking, repeated over 20 minutes. Each day the jog intervals got a little longer, until eventually you were running continuously for 30–45 minutes. Honestly, a solid program.
I also cleaned up my diet. No more fried food — not even appalam — a thin, crispy lentil wafer that is a staple side dish in South Indian meals — at home. No evening snacks at all. That change alone dropped close to 8kg in about two months. I felt fantastic. I was genuinely proud of myself.
In my final year of college, I also joined a gym.
The gym had two floors.
Downstairs: treadmills, bikes, ellipticals, spin bikes.
Upstairs: barbells, squat racks, benches, dumbbells.
I never once walked upstairs.
In my head, upstairs was where the giant guys lived. I honestly thought even picking up a dumbbell would make me bulk up overnight. I just wanted to lose weight.
So I stayed on the cardio floor. Running outside, cardio inside. No weights, ever.
Then final year caught up with me — job placements, final projects, the first real stress of my life. The runs stopped. The diet went with it. Within a few months, I had gained it all back.
Looking back now, the mistake is obvious.
I didn't realise it then, but I wasn't just losing fat — I was giving away muscle too. Without strength training, as my body got smaller it naturally burned fewer calories — and I had built very little muscle to help preserve my metabolism. When I eventually started eating more, the weight came back fast. I had not built anything real underneath the results.
I also knew nothing about protein, nutrition, or preserving muscle. Calories were the only piece of the puzzle I had learned. Nobody had ever taught me the fundamentals — and looking back, I still wonder why schools never covered any of this.
That first transformation taught me one lesson I will never forget.
Don't chase a lower number on the scale. Build a body that can keep it off.
I didn't fail because cardio doesn't work. I failed because I thought cardio was the whole answer.
Ten years later, that mistake still shapes the way I train — and it's the first lesson I'd teach anyone starting their own fitness journey.
That was mistake number one. Unfortunately, it wouldn't be my last.