Every year, the number one new year’s resolution is — yes, you guessed it, — to lose weight. But more and more people are looking to build up. David Laid, an 18-year-old bodybuilder and Gymshark athlete from Atlantic City, is involved in what has been dubbed “bigspiration.” Instead of slimming down, he is part of a wave of people who want to gain muscle. It all started when Laid was 14 years old, 5 feet 7 inches and 98 pounds. “I was a twig, an absolute twig,” he told ABC. Determined to make a change, he looked to YouTube for advice. The teenager has been working on his body for over three years now. He shares his progress on social media, inspiring viewers everywhere. Last year, he posted a video on his own YouTube account of his three-year transformation and it has since garnered over 17 million views. Continue reading for photos and details of his journey.Most would agree that there’s nothing wrong with this picture, but other kids teased Laid for being thin. He played hockey and was noticeably the lightest player.
“Every aspect of my life was heavily impaired by how insecure I was and how I looked,” he told ABC. “I was an absolute twig.”
“I kind of came home with it, and I went on YouTube and I typed in, ‘chest workout.'” Starting a workout routine is one thing but keeping it up is another.
In his YouTube video titled “David Laid 3 Year Natural Transformation 14-17,” we see changes in both his body and confidence levels. Take a look at his abs in this shot.
Many of us neglect our back muscles. This photo is inspiring enough, but Laid isn’t done yet.
Before looking to YouTube, Laid was doing a bit of weight training. It was recommended after he was diagnosed with scoliosis at the age of 14.
His mother Nino is from Russia but she later moved to Estonia, where he was born. His father died after falling from a cruise ship. Soon after, the mother and son pair journeyed to the U.S. where Nino bought a café, details Mel Magazine.
“I would watch YouTube fitness videos, eat, go to the gym, go home, watch more videos, go to bed, repeat,” he said in an interview. “That’s all I would do. That and go to school.” By this time, he had also quit the hockey team.
At 18 years old, he is 6 feet 2 inches and 192 pounds. He has more than 249k followers on Instagram and about 286k subscribers on YouTube.
Because of Laid’s success, he has received some negative comments, including accusations of using steroids. He has admitted to feeling tempted to use them but is committed to achieving his goals the natural way.
One person created a David Laid Facebook account requesting nudes from girls in exchange for a shoutout. Laid announced that the account was not his and that the only official one was posted in his bio.
His followers are a diverse group of people who are inspired by his story. One viewer on YouTube wrote, “This guy is the reason I started… it’s crazy.”
**Here’s a recent video of David Laid working out at Greate Bay Racquet & Fitness.**
New vid finally up ? took me a while to make this one, link in bio if ya wanna check it out ???#youtube #greatebay A video posted by David Laid (@davidlaid) on Oct 20, 2016 at 12:56pm PDT
**To go along with the clip below, Laid offered the following advice after losing some weight: “So the moral of the story is being leaner just makes you look so much bigger in the gym and in pics.** **”But you won’t really make much progress if you always wanna stay lean, so don’t be discouraged if you’re bulking and your physique appears to get worse, all you need to worry about is your lifts and body weight going up, and just enjoy lifting and making progress. Being shredded is overrated ?.”**
Its been roughly a week since I’ve been to the gym, getting settled in the house took pretty much all of my time and effort, I hardly even had time to eat. I dropped down from 190ish to 185lb in a week from hardly eating. Losing that tad bit of fat trimmed my waist down and just made everything pop more. But in reality I’m actually smaller and flatter than i was 2 weeks ago at a higher body fat percentage. So the moral of the story is being leaner just makes you look so much bigger in the gym and in pics, but you wont really make much progress if you always wanna stay lean, so don’t be discouraged if you’re bulking and your physique appears to get worse, all you need to worry about is your lifts and body weight going up, and just enjoy lifting and making progress. Being shredded is overrated ? A video posted by David Laid (@davidlaid) on Nov 20, 2016 at 7:28pm PST
**Just in case you missed it, here’s David Laid’s transformation video.**