Ajay Sharma, a resident of Kogarah in New South Wales, wasn’t healthy in school.
“I was an overweight teenager, and looking back, I can see that the reason why was that I didn’t really have a reason to follow a healthy diet. I didn’t really feel the need to do anything about my health and I never was much into sports activities or anything like that outside of what I was forced to do at school.”
After just one semester in university, he decided to start his weight loss journey to become more active and fit.
Ajay was 120kgs by the end of high school.
“When I started training, I was weighing in at 130 kilos (286 lbs.). At this point, I hadn’t ever done any sport or exercise to try to lose weight. But over the first 6-8 months, I dropped from 130 kg to about 105 (231 lbs.). This was not through diet or cardio! It was mainly just through weight training. I would lift weights for about 1.5-2 hours a day, 6-7 days a week.”
During the first semester break of university, he started going to the gym.
Ajay soon started noticing the positive effects of training and exercising on his life.
He told the Leader:
“After about a year and a half of it I was still just training and I had reached about 95-100kgs. It was good progress but I knew I could go further. So, in 2019 I started researching and experimenting with different diet plans. I formed a five month plan and was very strict in following it. I ended up losing 22kgs, reaching around 70-75kgs.”
Determined to push his limit, Ajay kept going aiming for a local competition.
“The thought of bodybuilding and weightlifting was never in my mind until then. There was this competition in April, 2020, I was interested in but that was cancelled and I kinda gave up. It was difficult to train with COVID as I had to drop training for about 12-14 weeks with gyms being closed, but I did still keep to my diet.”
When gyms reopened in NSW, he enlisted the help of a trainer at the end of June to participate in Nov. 2020 competition.
Ajay says that he ate the same meals every day.
“Starting in 2019, I began to research deeply into diet, nutrition, meal prep, and weighing my food. I’ve been vegetarian since I was 18 years old, so I wanted to be sure I was getting enough protein as a high priority.”
Ajay is solely on a vegetarian diet that also includes tofu, cottage cheeses, and yoghurt.
With this diet, he reached 74kg with about 5.5-6% body fat.
He achieved First place in the Men’s Juniors and Third place in the Novice Men’s.
“I have plans to compete for the same federation along with another federation hopefully on a yearly basis, if not twice a year. Hopefully I can get a pro card and possibly represent the Australia Federation.”
Ajay is looking forward to future competitions.
“My goal is to keep pushing past each limit, and if I get a pro card, maybe possibly come overseas to compete. That would be amazing.”
