The fat 17 y.o me was told to get my arse to the gym by my Dad. So I went to this dirty gym in a half-collapsed old sport center. There were a bunch of "trainers" - just self-taught fellas with no cert. Mine was a fairly athletic looking guy. He was squatting when I arrived.
Me: Can you teach me that?
Trainer: No, kid, you can't do that until you're 25. It makes you shorter. Here, take this DB and do some curls.
I lasted 2 sessions. Curls were boring.
I had about 2-3 similar false starts at the gym after that - all commercial ones with tons of certs. The PTs I had gave me some programs with machines and weird DB / swiss ball exercises so I gave up after a few sessions.
I've always been a fat bastard. The worse I got was 91kg, pant size 40, and I'm only 171cm. Did boot camp for half a year & ran like crazy, got my weight down to 71kg after a year, but didn't like how I looked (kinda skinny fat with no muscles).
Eventually, last year, I went back to the gym after a relationship breakup and this time was teaching myself how to squat, because the PTs were useless. A big bloke lifting at a powerlifting gym next door walked by & complimented me on getting ATG, and told me to come over to learn how to squat properly.
I squatted & did cardio machine stuff for about 6 months, took 3 months off (family issue) then got back to it late October last year and this time I learned all the other lifts, after running into PTC newsletters on another forum. I didn't care about my diet last year and blew up to 86kg. Been steadily loosing weight since I started to plan & prepare my meals.