Kevin Tran

BEFORE AND AFTER: Here is Kevin Tran V2.0 V1.0 (top) V2.0 (bottom)

“My not-so-journey into weight loss: I wasn’t active like I am today. Back in high school weight was not an issue to me, or rather I did not understand or appreciate the lingering dangers associated with being obese. I didn’t care about being overweight and generally accepted my weight as a legitimate body type.

The only activity I did was the weekly school sports, however after high school I went into uni and my activity level dropped to nothing, stress kicked in and so did binge eating. By 2006 I reached 115kg.

My journey into weight loss: At 21, a friend convinced me to join a Kung Fu school to get fit. I joined and 2 years into the training I had only lost 10kg. Another friend suggested to try bodybuilding, seeing as though there are no fat bodybuilders I gave this a go. After a couple of weeks I gained a small increase in muscle size but what surprised me was losing a small amount of weight, at a rate much quicker than 10kg in 2 years. I got fascinated with bodybuilding and ended up reading about clean eating. I replaced soft drink and juices with water or tea, in 3 or 4 months of weight training and Kung Fu I had lost about 15kg.

My initial thought about weight loss was about all exercising. At my peak of obesity, everything was too hard and too tiring, exercising to lose weight was too big of a task. However, being obese and avoiding workload would only encourage laziness and increase weight, a terrible downward spiral. I learnt that it is real that you can lose weight simply by changing your eating habits and stay consistent with it, training is optional but encouraged.

My thoughts on 365 Performance: I was training in Muay Thai kickboxing and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for a short while, I was surprised to see Tom Foster here as well who I met in Kung Fu. I knew he was fit but he manhandled me in Jiu Jitsu, he was pulled, pushed and threw me around, I had to know how he got so strong for his size. He told me about 365 Performance, and I also learnt that Vu who is a high school friend, was also a coach there.

CrossFit, to me, is a training methodology which exposes weaknesses people may not be aware of. 365 Performance has helped me get stronger in ways more than ordinary gyms can do and it has made me more athletic than I thought I would be, it is hard to imagine any other fitness system that covers as many areas of fitness as CrossFit does. If you have general fitness, CrossFit will get your knives sharpened.

But that is what CrossFit does, however what 365 Performance means to me is: fun and engaging workouts that are already pre-programmed to take the guess work out; great attentive coaches who provide mentoring and support; and a great community of people who have become a family to me.