I know after some people read this, they’re going to roll their eyes and call me crazy. I work full-time, go to school part-time, create content for this blog regularly (yay!), am in the middle of prepping for NaNoWriMo, and try to live a semi-normal life. What else could I possibly juggle? Well, I’m about to tell you.

Changing My Goals

I have been on a “fitness/weightloss journey” for I wanna say the last 3 years. It’s been a roller coaster of a journey for the longest time and it wasn’t until May of 2020 that it finally stuck and I started to see actual results. Sometime at the beginning of 2021 my goals veered from wanting to lose weight to just being the healthiest version of me possible. I weigh myself occasionally but I don’t obsess over the number on the scale anymore. I honestly don’t care what it has to say. I care about how my body feels and how I mentally feel day in and day out. When that mentality shifted from wanting to lose the fat to just being healthy, that’s when my journey really kicked in. And I’m not the only one who’s noticed.

What Diet Am I On?

I know that I always mention me having these conversations with coworkers and that’s because they are the people that I am around the most (other than my husband). I would have people ask me what I’ve been doing and if I could share my secrets. The most often asked question is what diet am I on? They are always shocked when I tell them I no longer believe in diets. I was actually appalled when I went into BooksAMillion a few weeks ago looking for educational books on nutrition and all I found was row after row of “diet” books. Each one seemed to scream out to eat this and not that. Fast for this long and only on this day. Chug a gallon of celery juice and meat was bad. I’m not going to say that diets or restrictive eating doesn’t work for some people. I’m not here to judge. I just know that when I was in that mindset that I couldn’t eat certain foods was when I struggled the most with my health journey. Because then if I ate something “bad” I felt like crap and that I was ruining my chances to be healthy. It honestly left me with a very bad relationship with food.

Inspiring Others

I’ve had one of those conversations a few weeks ago with a friend at work. I hadn’t really seen him in a few months as we were always super busy. On that day, I got a chance to just have a one-on-one conversation with him and noticed that he was losing weight and looked happier. I asked him what he’d been doing and he said that he was just being careful with what he ate. Not so much restricting the types of foods but more knowing when he was eating because he was hungry or if he was endlessly munching on pizza because it was there and he was bored. From there I asked what triggered the change. He told me straight up that he noticed my husband losing weight for the longest time (they work in the same department and are around each other every day). Knowing how picky of an eater my husband is and that he was still managing to lose weight without having to binge out on broccoli triggered his own version of a health journey. Now, knowing that I had triggered my husband’s desire to be just a little bit healthier, I felt a sense of pride. I had inadvertently triggered his health journey. I didn’t have to wave a flyer in his face or nag him to do it. I had inspired him by simply doing something that I love.

Taking the Next Step

Since starting my journey, I have been completely winging it this entire time. I’ve been following different workouts and trying to eat “healthier” but I haven’t had any real guidance other than the endless depth of information on the internet. I realize that I’ve been inspiring others this whole time but not really knowing what I’m doing, especially when it comes to my nutrition. I’ve been bouncing this idea around in my head for the better part of this year and I feel like it’s time that I take that next step. By the time this post goes live, I will have already started taking courses through NASM (National Academy of Sports Medicine) to become a Certified Nutrition Coach.

Why?

Just as I do everything else in my life, I’m doing this for me. I want to learn more about nutrition and how the different foods and different ways of processing food will affect my body and energy levels. I put my body through a lot on the daily with my workouts so I want to make sure that I’m taking care of it. In the future maybe this can be something that I can use to continue to inspire and help others as they try to reach their goals, whatever they may be.

As always, thank you so much for reading and until next time………….