The reason why I chose the word “journey” for this article title is because fitness has meant many different things for me. It is such a progressive concept that is subjective for everybody’s preferences. I’ve had to make many adjustments in my fitness journey due to lifestyle, body and health changes, and most likely will need to make more in the future! Fitness is very important in my life despite the changes its gone through, so I just want to establish a foundation of my where this journey has taken me today!
Sports
From a very young age my parents encouraged physical fitness and sports for my siblings and I. It was a huge part of our family’s life ever since I can remember – even if the sport was just a small seasonal league. Ranging from pee-wee soccer to volleyball, I was always involved in some kind of sport-related activity. I participated in fall soccer for about 4 years, moved onto volleyball which I also did for about 4 years, then started dance in between them.
Dance
Dance was central in my life for about 7 years total – mainly ballet. I continued with it after I stopped volleyball and soccer because I loved it the most! There was something about ballet that made me feel both graceful and strong. I mainly did this and lyrical dance, which meant that I spent 3-5 nights a week at the studio dancing for several hours.
Flexibility, strength and elegance were three pillars of dance that I took away from the experience. Despite the grace and physical challenge of ballet that I absolutely loved, it was an extremely difficult mental process. I’ve haven’t had many self-confidence issues in my life, but boy… I had a range of confidence issues while doing ballet! I was far from the best in class and didn’t have the strict physical requirements necessary to make it as a serious ballerina – every single class reminded me of that. Ballet was both an art and physical challenge that I was strangely addicted to despite the tumultuous emotions and life-long injuries. That strange commitment to ballet is an article for another day though!
Yoga
I started doing yoga to recover from a ballet-related injury with my knee and hamstring. I absolutely loved it and still do! It differs from ballet in the sense that you still challenge yourself physically, but not to the point where cross the line of overdoing it. Ballet pushes you to the breaking point and improves your skill that way, whereas yoga emphasizes the importance of maintaining awareness of what your body needs in the moment. It also stimulates you to be aware physicality and mentally.
I don’t practice yoga as much as I used to, but lately I’ve been making a point of doing it at least once a week! Yoga breathing alone is enough to put my mind at ease, take a break and focus on the practice for about an hour. I highly recommend this for absolutely everyone – old, young, male and female!
Weight lifting
When I started college however, I essentially stopped all physical activity – yikes! I left ballet classes behind me after graduating high school and also stopped regularly practicing yoga. I poured myself into academics by taking 18 credit each semester and strived for great grades. I really limited focus on my physical and mental needs.
I’m a very petite person to begin with, and lost about 12 pounds within the first year and a half of college. The freshman 15 didn’t happen for me, quite the opposite actually! Wanting to gain more muscle and feel strong, I started lifting weights exclusively. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when I started and was SUPER intimidated by the gym! I had this presupposed idea of all the beefcakes and Instagram fitness influencers judging me (very untrue by the way)!
However, I gradually felt more confident both mentally and physically. At that point I had never felt so good about myself in my life! Although I had strength when doing ballet and other sports, this felt so different because I looked stronger. I was the strongest I had every been and saw tremendous results that sculpted my body in beautiful ways.
A new heath issue…
I continued going to the gym and lifting weights after graduating, beginning to mix cardio in more. I started attending a weekly Zumba class that was SO much fun! I was able to dance again, have so much fun and got my butt kicked at the same time.
But out of the blue during a class one night, I started feeling differently about 30 minutes in. My hands began to itch and felt my lips swelling (not in a nice plump way). I’ve always had bad allergies so I thought it was just something related to that. But eventually I noticed that it was getting harder to breath and saw a rash on my arms and torso. I left the class early and went straight to the hospital because I never had a reaction like this before. Turns out I was having an allergic reaction – to cardio!
Even though I had no bad food allergies that I was aware of, I apparently developed something called food dependent exercise induced anaphylaxis. When eating certain foods (like grain, shell-fish and tree nuts) and work out with high intensity shortly after, it’s the perfect combination for an anaphylactic reaction. If I eliminate these foods from my diet, I can workout as hard as I want to. I’m a little selfish though and won’t give up bread unless have to! I did however give up shell-fish and tree nuts since I reacted very badly to those.
This is still a health concern for me at present that I’m still annoyed with to be completely honest. I can’t tell you guys how much I miss Zumba and getting my heart rate pumping without the fear of having to use my EpiPen. I just try to be more conscious of my diet before and after workouts in general now!
Current fitness process!
Encountering all of these different forms of fitness and health issues in my journey, I’ve found a happy medium that I’m content with for now. I mix weight lifting, barre-related exercises, light cardio and deep stretching. I am by no means an expert, but I try best to equally balance these four types of physical activity in every workout because I found that it works for me. Lifting light-to-medium weights, doing high reps, targeting different muscle groups on different days, and deep stretching after every workout is something I’m happy with!
