Fitness

Last week, we went through my financial journey, giving some context to why I will be writing about finance. This week, I would like to talk about why I am going to be writing about fitness.

My earliest memories are physical activity with my parents, walking through parks and running after my mom while she trained on the track. I was also enrolled in as many sports as my parents could sign me up for, not because I asked, but because they wanted me to try different things. They never forced me to do anything, if I didn't enjoy the sport, I could stop. But, they wanted me to have an active life.

Overall, I always enjoyed sports but I wasn’t good at most of them. Soccer, my brain couldn't get my foot to hit the ball and all the running was too much. Baseball, amazing because there was less running but I just couldn't seem to hit the ball and throwing was somehow harder than kicking for me. I have one tiny memory of Martial Arts where I distinctly remember not wanting to mold a mouthpiece so that was that, not Martial Arts for me. Throughout all of that, every summer, my parents also had me swimming. And swimming, that, I was good at.

In swimming, the water seemed to nullify my uncoordinated self. I didn't have to catch, throw, or kick anything. There were no flying objects to predict the movement of and I had no teammates to let down (well I did for the scoring but not in me swimming my race). All of that coupled with the fact I was swimming since before I could remember made me pretty decent early on. (apparently I jumped in after my sister and my parents just gave me a second to see if I could figure it out, I didn’t drown and the next day was enrolled in swim classes).

I swam competitively from 5 years old until I was 18 and enjoyed every second of it. In the beginning, I loved it because I was one of the best. As I got older, I loved it because of my friends. Swimming was such a huge part of my life, when living abroad, my mom would bring my sister and I back to the USA during the swim season so we could compete.

As I grew, I wasn’t instantly the most in shape. To be completely honest, there were a few years when I was pretty fat. By not enjoying any sport but swimming, by 13, I was only swimming which meant 9 months of the year, I was inactive. Eventually my friends pushed me to swim year round and by 16 I was in the best shape of my life. I finished High School swimming half of the year and through college I tried to stay active. Without having organized practices, I never did a good job at being as active as I once was.

In the years since college, while I haven’t gotten overweight, I also have not taken as great a care of myself as I could have. I spent the majority of my 20s eating whatever I want, not going to the gym, and barely stretching. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy fitness, I’m just extremely lazy and never spent the time to motivate myself. Still being young, my body hasn’t shown any negative impacts from these horrible decisions but I know as I get older, I must build good habits to ensure I can live a long healthy (pain free) life.

Last fall, I decided to start doing something about it. After moving into a place with some friends, working from home, figuring out my personal finance situation, I have some brain power to start doing other things rather than surviving the day to day. I’m also lucky enough to have enough space in my room that I can fit my bike trainer, and my roommate has a set of 15 lb dumbbells. In the fall, I started attempting to do a few workouts a week. As most things, I started strong in the beginning but after 2 months, going into Thanksgiving/Christmas, I stopped. Now, I am through the distractions and as motivated as ever. I am currently participating in a fitness challenge and once it is over, I will type something up to share my experiences and next steps.

Over the past few months I’ve been watching tons of different fitness content, getting back into working out, stretching almost every day, and I want my blog to be a place where I can share my learnings and progression in fitness, in addition to finance.