Hello from another Australian

Hello everyone, I'm so pleased to find this community and I have been inspired by many before-after pics!

I am 38 and I love working hard with weights. I have been in the 'overweight' category all my teenage and adult life. About 10 years ago I took up weight training but eventually gave it up when I moved countries, then had children and remained overweight!

I always missed lifting heavy at the gym but my real wakeup call was when I was unable to chase my young child down the street, I thought I was going to pass out from the effort. I could barely walk to the bus stop up the slight hill without feeling like I had to use ventolin.

In a massively fortunate turn of events, I became friends with a woman in a similar situation who was vegan and a qualified personal trainer. I wanted a trainer, she wanted a gym buddy so we hit the gym hard from our very first day. Her father was a comp body builder so she grew up having correct form drilled in to her, which she has now drilled in to me

In January 2011 I was nearly 20kg (about 44lbs) heavier than I am now. I cleaned up my nutrition but was not vegan. My trainer buddy told me that I didn't need animal protein but initially I was doing the whole omni BB diet like egg white omelettes, steamed chicken, brown rice, sweet potato... I eventually read The China Study and had been looking at vegan and raw/vegan sites and vegan BB and I changed overnight. I have been happily vegan since March 2012 and feel fantastic, although being confronted with the suffering my choices caused has been difficult!

I don't like to put numbers on things but I aim to lose another 10kg (22lbs) and more inches. I have been very slack with cardio and my nutrition has not been that clean and so my training buddy and I have really stepped up our cardio routine, tweaked nutrition and moved to a 4 day split with weights.

I still have body fat to lose but I'm gaining size (muscle) and I love it and want to be bigger. I had chronic back pain which has disappeared. I can sit up straight now without my back hurting three seconds later. I can see my abs under the fat too So I'm very much looking forward to getting the body fat down to show off the hard work of the past year. I might even post my before-after pics, although the 'after' pic could still be considered a 'before' pic!

I have my vegan bodybuilding tank tops but too embarrassed to wear them right now as I feel I should 'look the part' before flying the flag for vegan BB and fitness!

Thanks for reading!

Wow another Aussie, awesome you all are flooding this forum its great. I saw just recently several other Aussies have joined up. Welcome to the group. What is your name?

It's an invasion alright! Thanks for the welcome I'm really looking forward to sharing some progress shots down the track. And Robert's book arrived in the mail yesterday so I'm pretty excited about that too.