I don’t know when I started to look good. It was tricky for me because I had a long history of on again, off again anorexia and bulimia. In practice that meant my default state was quite overweight, and whenever I tried to diet, even if I started out sustainable and steady with the progress, I’d always succumb to the toxicity of my brain. I think in hindsight, the reason why I was never happy with my body when I did lose the weight was because of lack of muscle.

So that means that when I did actually start lifting, my only goal was to get stronger. Eventually I found myself losing weight because I was in a better headspace and able to improve my eating habits, but that was probably at least a year after I started. I was never able to cope with the bulk/cut cycle, that feels like a fairly advanced “technique” to get right. the weight loss I experienced was in part due to increased muscle mass and activity levels increasing my needed calories and my actual intake being fairly stable, combined with trying to eat more home cooked foods.

Another thing that delayed my actual strength was that I had a lot of weaknesses in various supporting muscles. It’s probably something you’ve experienced too, if you were on machines for a while. I think I loosely followed strong lifts, but I’m not sure. I had help from the powerlifting society. I had to put a lot of work into flexibility and stability, because it was like I was starting from the plateau, but once I started making proper progress and I understood good form, I improved quickly.

If I had to give advice to anyone wanting to get strong, I’d say to be stern with yourself about form. Yes, it’s satisfying as hell to see the number go up as you get stronger, but doing it properly is way more efficient in time and effort than letting oneself off with half reps or bad form. It’s one reason why I liked barbell exercises so much, it was much easier to make adjustments to target different muscle groups - little things like having a wider stance for squats, for example.