Hello there! I hope that you all are having a wonderful and relaxing Sunday. I’ve been wanting to get more posts done, but I have so many things going on at once right now, it’s been a little hard to keep up here. Overall good things, and I am hoping to soon share some big updates here with you all! : )

But for now, I want to talk about two very important areas and the importance of them together; fitness and health! When we think of fitness, often times our minds may go directly to the physical and tangible results we can see. Building muscle mass, having a nice butt or great abs, etc. Which of course its nice and great to be in good physical shape, however, fitness is so much more than our physical form.

When I think of the idea of fitness, I don’t just think of exercise or going to the gym, even though it very much includes these things; rather, I think holistically, the way that fitness is very much a mindset and lifestyle, it’s choosing things which are not only good for you but that are beneficial and help you to become a stronger and healthier version of yourself; eating right, being mindful of your nutrition and diet, living an active lifestyle and exercising, as well as being mindful of your own thoughts and in control of the ways which you express them. It’s not just about lifting weights or running; it’s about a certain level of self-control, discipline, and love for yourself which will ripple out into all other areas of your life.

I’ve always had a on/off relationship with exercise, at least since my early twenties. As a kid, I was super active, athletic even. I grew up playing softball into my teens, ran cross country track, even did soccer for a bit (which I honestly didn’t enjoy). Outside of sports, I grew up in a generation where being outside all day with friends was just what you did. We would be running all over the neighborhood, or biking or rollerblading, it didn’t matter. When I think back to it, we were easily taking miles in a day. So yeah, I was always pretty active, even into my early twenties, I was snowboarding, going to the gym…it all started to slow down for me and become harder as my health issues worsened due to mostly endometriosis, but also because for a good chunk of time I was also struggling with depression and anxiety. It became a sort of rollercoaster of issues that fluctuated over the years, and it felt like a ride I just couldn’t get off.

Even in the times where I was falling off from keeping a consistent work out routine, I did stay physically active at the least, but still, my health was definitely suffering from the lack of physical exercise I had in my life. A struggle which I ended up having as well, something which started sometime in my twenties, was that oftentimes when doing any physical activity, I would get light-headed and dizzy pretty quickly as well as short of breath, I still don’t know for sure what was causing this, I had brought it up to doctors in the past and I was never given an answer or really any concern; it still amazes me how much medical professionals can just shrug off the concerns and serious health issues of a patient, but then again, the medical profession has turned into nothing more than a dealer for big Pharma. Anyways… this issue with dizziness/shortness of breath has been an issue for years, not even when I exercise but when doing anything with any sort of physical exertion, it was upsetting every time it happened, I would feel weak, pathetic even… as simple things were almost causing me to faint.

It’s actually been more recently that I have started to have massive improvements with this, to the point where I am barely experiencing it, and it is to a more milder effect when it does occur. I’ve made a lot of changes to my lifestyle over the past few months, so it’s hard to pinpoint what exactly it could be that is helping, although I am sure it is the combination of many things, but what I can say is that I have started taking my supplementation routine much more seriously, doing higher dosages of multiple vitamins/minerals, but the big focus for me is on Magnesium, B-Vitamins, Inositol/IP6, and Vitamin D. I feel that getting the nutritional part right sets you up for other things to fall in line. As I started adding more of these things as well as cleaning up my diet, I started to have more energy and sleep better, and at the same time I started pushing myself to workout at least 3-4 days a week.

My Pre Workout Fuel

This has been for about three months now, and not only am I able to work out for 1-2hours straight without getting dizzy or short of breath, I am feeling mentally so much calmer and clearer than I was before I added these things to my daily routine. It’s no secret that exercise can help with our mental health; that it can reduce anxiety, tension, even depression. It helps to release endorphins and dopamine into our body, therefore making us feel pretty good. We all know these things, but just because you know something is good for you, doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily easy to implement. And this can be for so many reasons, and I get it… I don’t think it’s always so simple as saying it’s laziness or lack of discipline. Sometimes, we have other things going on and as much as we may want to change or start exercising more and making fitness a goal in our life, sometimes we just aren’t fully in a place to start, or maybe don’t even know where to. I think it is always best to start where you are, even the smallest change will eventually turn into something more if you stick to it.

3 months into consistently working out

In my experience, as I have lived most of my life with chronic pain, chronic fatigue, as well as issues with anxiety and depression, it’s so extremely hard to find the motivation when you are dealing with not only the mental battles, but also the physical pain and disability that comes with it. I remember distinctly one time, about 6 years ago now, I was trying to push myself back into a workout routine; I wanted so badly to get back to exercising and to feeling healthy again…but as I pushed myself, working out this one particular day, the dizziness started, the shortness of breath began…my heart now racing as I am doing truly the most simple of exercises. I broke down. I fell to my yoga mat, laying on my back and just started to cry. It didn’t feel fair or right that here I was, twenty something years old, doing everything in my power and to my knowledge to be healthy, fighting every day for it, and I couldn’t even fit in a 20 minute exercise before feeling faint. It was certainly a low point, one of many, where I felt trapped in my body, trapped in my mind, and trapped in a cycle of weakness, pain, and despair. But if there’s one thing you should know about me, it doesn’t matter how many times I fall down and cry, I will always stand back up and keep going. I refuse to give in, give up, or accept that this pain was the one running my life.

There’s things that I wish I had known sooner in life, there’s actually a lot that I wish I had known sooner, but I am still so grateful, appreciative and thankful that I learned and have grown at all, that I have found my way out of the many things which were holding me back, that I never gave up in searching for answers and ways to help heal and reconnect with my body and to become more in tune to what it needs from me. I think that this was actually one of the biggest pieces for me…re-learning to listen to and trust the signs, signals, and messages my body gives me. To intuitively hear what it asks for and then providing. A journey of self-love, self-care, and coming back to myself, to providing and nurturing myself. How often do we ignore or flat out not even listen to our bodies? How often do we deprive ourselves of what we need, for whatever reasons. We live in a culture that tells us to just go, go go, consume, consume, consume, until we are burnt out of all energy and end up becoming zombified in front of our phones or TVs, binging Netflix or whatever latest drama is happening on the internet. The way most of us live, the way which our society currently tells us and expects us to live, is not only beyond unhealthy, but it is unsustainable. Unsustainable in the sense that you are giving up so much of your precious energy into things which only drain you and provide nothing to you.

It may feel as though they are though…oh, I like to go home and rewind after a long day of work, putting on some Netflix relaxes me. Oh, I enjoy going out on weekends and grabbing drinks or doing some shopping, after a long week, it relaxes me and I deserve it! And these types of perspective can go on and on and on. But just for a moment…let’s think about this and reframe it. The typical mode of thought when it comes to choosing unhealthy behaviors or actions, is that, well “I deserve it”, “I’m relaxing”…it’s about a certain feeling, a feeling of release and reward. After a long week of probably doing a bunch of things you don’t really want to do, of dealing with the stressors of daily life and work, of course we all want to decompress, destress, and “reward” ourselves. But what happens when the things we choose as our “rewards” are actually just digging us deeper into a cycle of disease, stress, dissatisfaction, and complacency within our own lives? I raise this question and subject, not to diss on or belittle anyone for choosing to do any of these things, I’ve been there myself and I don’t think there’s anything even wrong with these things…within moderation. I mention it because we all go there, we all get stuck in our little patterns and routines, we all get stuck in areas of life we are comfortable in, and it’s only by stopping, pausing and reflecting at least every so often, to really check in with ourselves, our life, and assessing where we are, that we can find our own weak spots, blind spots, to realize whether we’ve gotten too comfy, to the point of stagnancy, and deciding to make changes that actually reflect the life we want to live.

It’s cliche, but it’s also very true; the way which we live our daily life, is the way which we will live our life. It really is as easy and as hard as refining the habits we have day to day. For me, feeling my best and healthiest and continuing to learn and grow is essential. When it comes to discipline, focusing our energy, and having the energy to make changes in our life, finding the balance between our diet/lifestyle/mindset and in committing to a consistent routine of exercise will help you grow and gain confidence in your abilities to change your life. None of us will start on the same ground, but we all can make it to the same place; determination, discipline, and consistency is key.