Derek Licek

ABOUT

DEREK’S JOURNEY

My Fitness journey has been exciting, challenging, profound, and fulfilling. I love fitness because it’s like an addiction – once you start, you never want to stop. Even when you feel like giving up, you still find one more reason to push yourself further, especially when you notice that you are gradually getting the shredded body you had always admired.

Most importantly, fitness teaches you discipline, persistence, resilience, and molds your character. You take new challenges and dismantle the mental blocks that held you back. Sometimes you even surprise yourself when you realize just how much you are capable of doing.

However, I probably couldn’t have become a fitness enthusiast were it not for the event that took place in 2003. After a bad falling out with my father, my relationship with him rapidly moved from the best to the worst. I felt frustrated, empty, and eventually slipped into depression. When I met him during my grandmother’s funeral in 2005, he wished me a nice life and from then on, we never spoke again for years. The deceptive calm that followed between us after 2005 was a like a slow puncture to my heart that was slowly sapping the energy from my body, and the life from my soul.

When my wife and I were expecting our son Jaden in 2014, I happily wrote to my dad informing him that he’d be a grandfather. Deep down in my heart, I wished that the news would soften him and bring us closer together. But after writing each other letters for sometime, he told me that he was not ready for such kind of a relationship. Then the worst happened in 2016 when he committed suicide on December 23, two days before his birthday. I felt shattered and the hole in my heart sank deeper.

As I became more vulnerable to depression while these events unfolded, I turned to food for comfort and began gaining weight. With time, my health and that of my wife deteriorated and she got put on blood pressure medication. This was our wake up call. I started my weight loss journey in 2020 along with this YouTube channel to track my progress and create a community of other people who want to lose weight. Since I started this journey, I take 20-50K steps in a day, and have lost 70 pounds so far.

I dare say that like a Phoenix, I have risen from the ashes and endured pain to get where I am today, and I’m pressing on. If you want to achieve something, not only losing weight but also in other areas of your life, you better start putting in the work than just wishing to get the results. Keep challenging yourself!

To see Derek's full profile please login or register.