Hello, I'm new to here but I thought it would be a good place to ask this, considering I am thinking A LOT about taking Karate classes. I'm 23 years old and 215 lbs and I'm thinking about taking a Martial Arts class. Maybe Karate or Kickboxing or Japanese Shitoryu Karate. But the problem is, I'm out of shape. Now I'm not obese or anything like that, but I am a little overweight. I know that it'll get me in shape and show me how to defend myself if something was to happen, and that's exactly what I want to do. The thing that's holding me back right now is that I'm just a little self conscious. I don't want to go in there and be the biggest guy in there or something because if that was to happen, it'll just make things worse. It would be great to have some friends here that would go with me, but I moved away from the city that had all my friends so there's no way I can go with anyone that I know. I'm pretty confident in myself when doing my job, or doing my own workout, or doing whatever it is, but if I'm with a group of people and we're doing physical training or anything that requires me to do heavy physical or a lot of running etc with people I don't know or am comfortable around. So, has anyone been in this predicament? And if so, what did you do to conquer it? Did you just tell yourself, "don't be a lil biotch" and just sign up? Were there other people there that were overweight or older individuals? And if you can give me any more suggestions and just tell me how it went, I'd appreciate it.