Sunday, January 3, 2016

Welcome!

  

I suppose if you are going to get to know me, I should probably start off by being brutally honest with you.

I am not an athlete.

I enjoy keeping up with my fitness routine. I enjoy eating healthy and I love keeping up with the industry. I am told by my doctors that I am in good shape and that I am one of their patients with the least paperwork.


 
I am a nerd for many things and one of them is fitness. However, I enjoy many other things as well. I love to read . . . science fiction and fantasy novels. I love to crochet and marathon Netflix while doing so. I love making chocolate truffles during the holidays, with real fat and real sugar and I will never be one of those people that make exercise and fitness the forefront of their lives.


This is me at Wasteland Weekend -- basically a Mad Max cosplay festival. NERD.    


     But it is an important part of my life, and it should be an important part of yours too. I became a personal trainer because a few years back I had an epiphany. It doesn't take much to slowly lose weight and get into shape. The only thing it takes is dedication and perseverance. I originally got into running when I was fighting to lose the weight after having a baby. It wasn't much. I have never had a weight problem, but that extra ten-fifteen pounds made me uncomfortable. I had to do something to get it off which involved more than I was normally accustomed to. So I start the Couch to 5k program.
   
     Working out is never really easy, but I learned that it doesn't have to leave you collapsed on the street, fighting to catch your breath. I started slowly, and built up slowly. Eventually, I was running 10ks and enjoying them. This made me mad. It gave me flashbacks of High School gym class and being forced to run a mile. Nobody ever taught us how to run. They just told us to, and we did. Once the mile was done, most of us were hunched over fighting the urge to hurl.


   
     Why was it that I was running over 6 miles and having a blast?
   
      I realized that:
 
     1. I took baby steps. Rome wasn't built in a day and neither is your fitness routine. You don't graduate High School and then become a lawyer. And . . .
     2. I discovered what I enjoyed and just kept doing that!

    So much of the fitness industry is build around "Do this and you will lose weight!" Maybe that's true. Maybe you will lose weight on their gimmick of the season, but do you enjoy doing it? Do you want to keep it up forever?
   
     My approach to helping others is what I call a freethinking approach. Freethinking is defined as the process of forming opinions based on your own logic and reasoning and not just blindly following what someone else has told you. My goal is to help you discover what form of fitness you enjoy. It is to help you discover what foods, and flavors you like so that we can create healthy options for you to make most of the time. It's good to indulge on occasion and that is completely okay within a healthy diet. There are no off limit foods, there are just on occasion foods. And by on occasion, it could even mean once a day.
   
     I've often heard people say, "Life is short so I am going to eat [insert junk food]." This is so true, and yet life IS short, so wouldn't we want to also try to be the healthiest version of ourselves? There is nobody telling us that we can't be healthy and then have that office doughnut on Friday.
   
     I really want to help everyone achieve their goals. You could be like myself, and want to be healthy, fit and indulge from time to time, or you might want to get ready for your next fitness competition and start a really strict exercise and diet plan -- I can help with that too, but my message is that you don't have to live like the latter if you would be at your happiest with the former.

     The healthier you get, the better you will feel and your goal might even change halfway through. Sometimes we don't know how lousy we feel until we don't anymore. It might hurt a little at first, but it won't be unbearable and I will be here to help and encourage you every step of the way. Have courage and faith in yourself. You deserve it!