My Healthy Little Secret

So just between you and me, I love working out. There are days when I can’t wait to be done with work so I can go to the gym, put in my headphones, and just run on the treadmill. Weird, I know!

This all started a little over a year ago when I joined my first gym. While I’ve always been active, I’ve never really “worked out” at a gym with any regularity. Let me give you some backstory.

Straight out of high school, I moved to New York to dance ballet. I did that for several years along with a short stint dancing in California before an ankle injury was the beginning of the end of that. After moving to Seattle, I got into running with a friend and that became my primary (and sole) source of exercise. I ran all while I went back to school but health issues got in the way and started me on a weight gain path that didn’t end until last year. Basically, it was a combination of getting really sick, changing my birth control and, what I now realize, severe depression caused me to balloon to the heaviest I’ve ever been.

It’s incredible how even a slight change in our weight can take such a toll on our self-esteem. For me, I went from being a professional ballet dancer to not owning a single pair of pants that fit me. It was terrible.

But I got some help and made a change.
And that leads me to join a gym for the first time at 26.

At first, the gym is a terrifying place. I was lucky that the gym I joined gives you one free personal training session a year so I was able to get started with a simple routine that was easy to follow and allowed me to get comfortable with the space and general gym routine. After a few months of this bare-bones basic routine, I started this 12-week program and I highly recommend for anyone who wants to be told exactly what to do when working out (ie: me).

After completing that 12-week plan twice, I realized that I had turned into one of those gym people. The people who say things like “I’m just craving a workout” or “I really need a run to clear my head” but I may have uttered these phrases in the past year.

Now I work out 5-6 days a week with a mix of cardio and group exercise classes and I’ve moved on from my 12-week plan to a variation of this workout plan that I’ve been loving (and seeing amazing results with).

Joining a gym and becoming one of “those gym people” has not only helped me lose some of the weight I gained but also helped with other areas of my life as well. It feels incredible to get up at the end of my day and move, either running or through some other form of cardio. I find that it gives me more energy and has really helped ward off regular seasonal depression that is often crippling for me living in a grey place like Seattle. And finally, I now know more than ever that it’s a blessing to have a healthy body so I’ll do all I can to maintain it.

I hope you enjoyed this novel of a blog post. Fitness is such a big part of my day-in-day-out life that I never really mention on here. If you have any questions feel free to ask away as I’d be more than happy to share more about my fitness plan and goals to lose the remaining 20lbs in 2018!

Until next time,
Ana Luiza