04 | The Tribune | Weekend
Friday, March 13, 2020
INTERVIEW While many Bahamians are trying to lose weight, this fashion/fitness model struggled to pack on the pounds. He tells Cara Hunt how he was motivated by movies and TV shows to turn himself into a ‘Greek god’, and share his knowledge and experience with others.
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he motivation behind Romel Kelly’s fitness journey came from wanting to beef up his “skinny boy” appearance. And the self-proclaimed “Greek God” – the title he goes by on social media – is happy to use his own experience and the lessons he has learned to help others be their best. “Ever since I could remember I hated being skinny,” he told to Tribune Weekend. “Looking at muscular guys on TV or in person, seeing how huge they were, how women admired them; they looked at them different then they would the average guy... them being able to make their chests move, I knew it was something I wanted and had to have.” Romel embarked on a journey that would not only change his physical appearance but also his life, as he launched his Greek God Fitness brand. It was not a journey which came overnight, he is quick to point out.
“When I first started out I was inexperienced and didn’t really know anything so it took me two years to see maybe about 15 to 20 pounds (gain), then I ran into hard times and I wasn’t able to go to the gym for almost year. But when I started back I knew exactly what I needed to do and how I needed to go about doing it, so the second go-around it took me two months to see real results,” he said. Romel describes this journey as a marriage in which consistency and dedication are key. “This lifestyle is like a marriage; you have stay consistent and faithful some days you can see your results moving forward, other days backwards. I used to be 170 pounds and I’m 6’5, so you can imagine how skinny I truly was.” “Today I’m 230 pounds. My biggest struggle was getting the necessary calories intake that I needed for my weight gain, but you only ever truly fail when you decide to give up,” he said.
Romel Kelly “I know what it is to stand on a scale at six to seven times a day just going crazy when you don’t see results, sacrificing six days a week towards working out, torturing every single muscle in my body, consuming almost 5,000 calories a day, lifting weights until it feels like the blood in my body was going to burst out, feeling like I was going to pass out in the gym, days of sore muscles.... I was willing to sacrifice it all to transform my body. Everything comes with a price and I’ve over paid my dues for my results.” Romel’s new body also led to a new confidence in his image, something he was able to translate into a new career, that of a fashion model. “I got the hang of it pretty quickly. Some things were harder than others – learning poses, angles, lighting, how to walk – all that good stuff, but it was new experience for me