My Fitness Journey

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to share a little bit about my fitness journey. I wanted to start from I was young till now.  I feel that my story can relate to many of you guys. Through trial, error and faith this is how it all stated...

I have always been an active child. Since I was little, my mentality was always trying to "keep up with the boys".  I did soccer, softball, cheer, swim, and dance! You name it and I probably played it.  I bounced from different sports constantly. The two sports that I actually stuck to for a while was cheer and dance.  I loved how active you were and the sweat you got from it.  But as I continued... I found out that my body was not fully suited for the job.  I was not as flexible as the other girls and my was not able to turn and twist properly. One day, I decided to change to golf. Golf has always been a part of my life. So it was not something I was foreign to. As I continued with golf I realized that my activity level was not as intense at dance. I was not getting that intense sweat sesh and my body felt out of shape. 

With this in mind I wanted to get back in shape.  But getting in shape was not just something I wanted.  I had a deep unhappiness inside of me with my body.  I wanted to change how I looked because I did not like what I saw.  So I took up running and did YouTube videos. It was around 7th grade where this all began.  Moving forward I learned about nutrition and different recipes. I googled and pinterested all day long in order to find new and healthy eats. I started to restrict certain types of food from my diet such as gluten and dairy. I followed the latest fad of eating only "clean foods". At this time I thought this is what "healthy" looked like. But really I was thinking...this is what was going to change how I looked and get the "goal body" that I wanted. 

 Since, I was also in a health and fitness kick I told my Dad that I wanted to "train" for golf.  He then agreed to take me to an athlete gym to be trained.  I then trained with a trainer for 2 hours a week 3 times and I ate little to nothing. To be completely honest I was over training and it may seem healthy but I was destroying my body from the inside. That is where my health and fitness journey started to rule my life.  I always thought about working out and eating healthy. I was developing a very unhealthy relationship that not only affected my life but my relationship with others as well.   All of this developed me into an eating disorder which lasted me from my 8th grade year to Freshman year of high school. 

Freshman year was the darkest year of my life.  I was filled with anxiety, depression and if I couldn't control anything then I would shut down.  I hit my lowest wait of 92 pounds at 5ft 3in.  I was starting to get lots of comments on how skinny I was. I had no energy and my period was gone for a whole year and a half.  This is due to when a person is under a specific body fat percentage or not eating enough then your body will not be able to carry a baby so it stops its period. I know that is kinda TMI but it is something that happens.  

After a lot of counseling with my mom I finally came to the conclusion that I am hurting my body and I need to gain some HEALTHY weight. I ate more food, specifically carbs. I continued to workout but I did not continue to go to my trainer anymore.  I started to google different ways to workout besides running. Then this is where I found my love for weight training. 

I looked up fitness girls on instagram and they all said that weight training was the way to go. At first I could not just do weight training. I thought it was going to make me bulky but after dong research. I thought I would give it a try for three months and If I did not like what it was doing to my body then I would give it up.  After the three months was over I looked at the progress photos that I took and I liked how my body was looking.  I had a lot more muscle and gained a little bit of body fat but that made me feel good and strong.  I continued with weight training and I fell in love with it! Committing to changing my training style and learning how to fuel my body was hard but I learned that it made me feel and look better too.

My recovery did not happen over night.  I am still growing today from my mistakes.  But I am broken free from the eating disorder and the fears that I had. God showed me how to love myself.  It was not just simply training differently and eating more that broke my eating disorder habits.  But it was the constant love from my family, friends and God that showed me how to love myself and how I look in all stages of my life.

Currently I am now training to become a personal trainer so that I can share my knowledge with others. I am going to college to study to become a dietitian. But most importantly my main goal is to change the way people see themselves.  The world throws many ideas and fads on what we should do or look like. But its how we see ourselves and how God sees us is most important.

Thanks for listening! If I could help any of you please comment or email me!