Hi! My name is Santiago Scolari and I live in Mexico City and I'm currently studying Chemical Engineering. For a long time, I was fat. From when I was about 8 years old until I went to study for a year (2002-2003) in the USA in a boarding school in CT, I was VERY fat.

Since I came back from the USA, I could see the lack of "health culture" we had in Mexico. Even though USA represents the highest quantity of obese people, we are number one in child obesity and number two in overall obesity. What I want to say is that Physical Education is far more important in the US than in Mexico. Almost everyone takes it seriously and really commit to it. I started my fall sport in the US. I chose Cross Country, because in the description, it mentioned something about going out in the field and "exploring". I imagined myself WALKING through the woods, and eating chunks off my chocolate bar. Well I was WRONG, TOTALLY WRONG. I remember my first training session. They made us run to see our condition. Of course I came last to the finish line, choking on my own breath and wanting to go back to Mexico that day.

I can still remember my first race. It was against our biggest rivals. I had improved a little, coming up on the 21st place out of 25 people in our team. Just before I got to the finish line, I had to sprint against this girl from the other team? she won.

After my first race I decided I was going to commit to it. I heard to every advice I got from my teachers. I started losing weight fast, and the gym they had at the school wasn't very good, but always grabbed my attention every time I went by it.

From then on I lived for sports. I started giving my best in every sport. I learned to snowboard that year; I had only gone to some ski trips where I only skied.

So after that I became more and more INTERESTED in bodybuilding. I found about bodybuilding.com in 2005. That's when I registered, but I only watched members' progress and read articles. I knew that starting bodybuilding would be the end of my triathlon training,

I couldn't gain that much muscle if I continued running, biking and swimming like crazy. I got injured from running, my knee hurt so much. So I started a rehabilitation program that involved lifting weights, and I just got hooked up. I started eating healthy and about six months passed.

On May 2009, I finally decided to START bodybuilding. I started on my own, trying to follow what articles said, about nutrition and working out. I started seeing results. Right now I am training with a personal trainer and seeing a sport dietitian. I've never felt this good before. I could see the changes coming fast. My goal is to gain muscle mass! Long live natural bodybuilding!