As a teenager, Stephen Campolo tried out for baseball several times in high school, but never made it onto the team due to his weight. “Being overweight, it sucked,” he says. “When you’re young, people judge you on your appearance, you know, I got bullied a lot.”
In a recent episode of the Truly series Brand New Me, Campolo shares how at his heaviest—305 pounds—he came to the understanding that he had to change his lifestyle: “I said, I do not want to be the fat guy any more.”
He started running every night, and quickly began to lose weight. “I became addicted to seeing my body change,” he says. “I became addicted to seeing the scale drop… Ever since that day, I’ve not looked back.”
After losing a considerable amount of weight, he then discovered a love of fitness which helped him build strength and muscle. “When I lost that initial 50 pounds, I realized I had this loose skin, because I hadn’t replaced the fat with any kind of muscle tissue. So now I’m like, OK, now I have to do something about this situation, so that was what led me to join the gym and start weight training to really build up my body.”
Campolo has since leveraged his passion into a new life as a trainer and fitness influencer, and he enjoys being able to use the benefit of his own experience to advise and motivate people who are at the beginning of their own weight loss journeys.
“Once people started following me, and asking me all these questions, I realized maybe I could make a career out of this,” he says. “Because I love the lifestyle so much, I became a personal trainer and I started helping other people get in shape. I’m very proud of how far I’ve come on my journey, but what I’m even more proud of is that I’m able to use my own story and help other people.”
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