Where it started
I was born in 1977, and I've carried extra weight for as long as I can remember. It started in early childhood and never really left.
The wake-up call
About nine years ago I weighed 136 kg. I was taking three blood-pressure pills a day, and I'd developed severe sleep apnea. I couldn't tolerate the breathing machine — instead of helping me sleep, it triggered panic attacks. I'd wake in the middle of the night with no air. That was the bottom.
Losing 63 kilograms
Over the next year and a half I lost 63 kg, down to 73. The sleep apnea disappeared after just the first 10–20 kg. I came off the heart medication entirely. For a while, I had done it.
And then it started coming back
Over the last two years, the weight has been creeping back. I'm 111 kg today, and back on a single pill for my blood pressure. That's the part most "transformation" stories leave out: losing the weight was hard, but keeping it off is the real, ongoing fight — and it's the one I'm still in.
Why I build TrackMaxima
What I learned the hard way is that adherence is where it falls apart. You don't regain 40 kg from one bad week — you regain it from a thousand small daily decisions going the wrong way. And willpower isn't a tank you fill once. The self-control you spend saying no to the snack draws from the same well as your job, your kids, your stress and your bad night's sleep. By evening that well is low, and the choices stop being made by the version of you with a plan — they get made by convenience, habit and whatever's in reach.
That's why systems beat willpower. A habit, once it's built, runs on almost no mental energy — the right action becomes the automatic one instead of a decision you have to win. A kitchen with no junk in it, meals already prepped, a training plan already written: that makes the right choice the convenient one, so the depleted version of you still lands in the right place. When the willpower is gone, you don't rise to your intentions — you fall back to the quality of your systems. Tracking is what tells you whether those systems are actually working. What gets measured gets managed — not because writing it down does the work, but because seeing the numbers keeps you honest and shows you where the plan is quietly slipping. So that's what I'm building: a simple logger to keep you measuring, meal prep that holds your calorie and macro targets without you having to think about it, and a way to build and run a training program you'll actually stick to.
Not for a six-week "after" photo — for the long game of keeping it off. I'm building them because I need them, and I'm sharing them with anyone in the same fight.
This is my personal experience, not medical or nutritional advice — see the disclaimer. I write more about the thinking behind these tools at bursasiu.ro.