It sounds like you took too long and did too many things to get to Revyn Sadri. The game tracks the level ups on each skill. Although you can temporarily prevent your character from going up a level by not choosing the "level up" option, as soon as you do, it looks at ALL the skill increases you got, and adjusts your overall level accordingly. So even though your character was level 1, you had obtained enough increases to boost yourself to level 10.
To avoid this, don't do anything else in the game. Get out of Helgen as quickly as possible, don't bother with any of the quests in Riverwood, and head straight for Revyn after gathering a bit of gold through easy means such as the Alchemy path suggested. The idea is to not only avoid leveling up your character, but also avoid all the skill ups, so that when you're ready to start training, you'll only go up a level at a time. In the early levels, the 5 skill ups from training alone will take you to the next level until around level 7.
It sounds like you took too long and did too many things to get to Revyn Sadri. The game tracks the level ups on each skill. Although you can temporarily prevent your character from going up a level by not choosing the "level up" option, as soon as you do, it looks at ALL the skill increases you got, and adjusts your overall level accordingly. So even though your character was level 1, you had obtained enough increases to boost yourself to level 10.
To avoid this, don't do anything else in the game. Get out of Helgen as quickly as possible, don't bother with any of the quests in Riverwood, and head straight for Revyn after gathering a bit of gold through easy means such as the Alchemy path suggested. The idea is to not only avoid leveling up your character, but also avoid all the skill ups, so that when you're ready to start training, you'll only go up a level at a time. In the early levels, the 5 skill ups from training alone will take you to the next level until around level 7.