This Guy Went From 260 Pounds to Skinny to Muscular. Here’s How He Did It

Logan Ansede’s fitness story is one that so many 20-somethings can relate to. The 22-year-old was a serious childhood athlete (killing it in the 200-yard freestyle and butterfly events to be exact), so he didn’t worry about what he ate and burned more calories than he could possibly keep up with. 

Then came the adulting… 

He quit swimming and got a job, and his eating habits didn’t really change. He noticed that he was putting on weight and wanted to do something about it. So he did what anyone would think to do: He started going hard at the gym on his own. 

And that worked! Until it didn’t. 

“I went from like 260-ish pounds to 185, but I noticed that I had just gotten skinnier. I hadn’t really built any muscle,” he shares. 

Here comes takeaway #1. 

Change Your Mindset to Stop Burning Out  

“When I first started out, I was focusing a lot more on how I looked as opposed to how healthy I actually was. I think that affected the results I had for how much weight I was actually losing and my ability to keep up,” shares Logan. 

I think it’s safe to say we’ve all been there. 

He found that exercising to get leaner was working for him in the short term, but he fell off the wagon because, well, life happened. After a major heartbreak and an injury at the beach during a low point in his life, he hit a wall. 

“I hit a knee-deep divot in the ocean, and my leg stayed in there but my body kept going forward, and I completely tore my ACL. I had to get surgery and that pushed me farther out from going to the gym because I had a reason not to go.” 

Recovery was long and painful, but he knew he needed to try something new to get back on track. 

When You Get Stuck, Find Your Life Raft 

With a little push from his physical therapist, Logan knew he needed help to regain the strength in his leg and get his mojo back in the gym. 

After looking into personal training options and realizing that his schedule was too jam-packed for the usual suspects, he stumbled upon the world of online personal training. 

Logan explains how he started with Kickoff: “I put in my application, and almost instantaneously, someone had reached out to me.” 

After working with a different trainer for a few weeks, in came Craig. 

“Craig immediately called me and I was on the phone with him for about 45 minutes. He asked me a bunch of questions like how I got here, what I want to do, what my goals are, and what specifically has worked for me in the past, and what hasn’t … and kind of just went through everything, which I thought was fantastic.” 

Craig was given quite the challenge with creating personalized workouts to help Logan through his injury while slowly working on his ultimate goal: building muscle and stamina. Here’s what worked for Logan.

Start Slow to Build Muscle and Stamina

With the workouts Craig put together for him, Logan worked toward rebuilding the strength in his injured leg while slowly increasing the number of reps and the amount of weight he could lift. This was Craig’s approach: 

• Start with workouts that Logan could do safely with one leg weaker than the other 

• Tailor workouts with instructional videos focused on technique

• Begin with less weight for each rep to build stamina

• Increase weight slowly to build muscle and avoid injury 

• Keep workouts consistent; increase the difficulty as Logan got stronger

“There are example videos from Kickoff, which are pretty much what I always use, but for any special stuff that Craig wants me to do, he’ll make a video or will leave a note next to the exercise with how I can do it differently based on what I am trying to build,” explains Logan. 

Logan noticed that, over time, he was able to do more reps with heavier weight than he’d ever lifted before. He slowly got the strength back in his leg. How did he do this?  

Find Your “Why” to Stay Consistent

Logan’s Catholic faith helps him remember why he’s investing in his health and fitness. For anyone, it could be as simple as creating a hierarchy of what really matters to you and investing in yourself to make it happen.

“I think you want to get your priorities straight before you start going to the gym, because if the rest of your life is falling apart and you’re going really long at the gym, it’s not going to last and you’ll eventually fall off.”

Logan kept up with his workouts, despite a packed schedule, by just fitting in his workouts where he found the time. “You’ll never be able to make a perfect schedule… it's really just being able to be reactive to what the world is gonna throw at you.” 

If you have found yourself falling off the wagon time after time, and need to try something new, take a page out of Logan’s book. Ask for help, find your “why,” and take things slow so you create habits that stick.