my fitness journey

I was never the athletic kid in school. I always wanted to be good at a sport but I was so afraid of failure and being bad, I just never joined. I went my entire school career, kindergarten through senior year without ever playing a sport. I just always admired from afar.

After I graduated high school in 2018, I started to feel really sick all of the time. I would have a resting heart rate of 150 when I wasn’t active, and low blood pressure. The result was that I felt tired, dizzy, out of breath, and anxious all of the time. I went to several different doctors, all with very different diagnoses. This all happened over the course of a year. I became depressed and frustrated that I felt like crap all of the time. I had just gotten out of a long term relationship, and was struggling with that as well. Overall I really just felt miserable.

I ended up seeing a specialist, a cardiac electrophysiologists to be specific. He told me that, I was in fact not dying. That my heart was structurally healthy, and that I would most likely grow out of my high heart rate low blood pressure combo that had caused me to feel so lousy. He prescribed a medication to help keep my blood pressure up, and recommended that I start exercising regularly.

That is really the beginning of my fitness journey.

I got a gym membership at the local family owned gym here in my home town. I still remember the first time going in there to workout. I was terrified. Actually, I was beyond terrified. I thought that everyone would be staring at me, and judging me, and secretly talking about how I was using a machine wrong.

It was that fear that kept me confined to the treadmill doing an hour incline walk for the first month of my membership.

I soon became more comfortable at the gym, and realized that people weren’t actually staring, judging, or talking about me. I ventured out my tried and true comfort zone of the treadmill and started using some of the weight machines.

At first lifting was hard. Like really hard. I wasn’t that strong, because I had felt sick and been inactive for so long. I never played sports in high school so I really had no idea what I was doing. I felt so sore after working out, and the next day was always worse. I remember the day after one of my first weight training sessions, I could barely stand to get out of my car my legs hurt so bad.

The one thing I did know, was that I loved the feeling that I got after my weight training workouts.

I then fell in love with watching myself be able to lift heavier and heavier weights. About three months into seriously lifting I finally able to see results.

What I never expected was that the gym would help my anxiety and depression. Lifting became my therapy of sorts, and the gym became a place where I could focus on bettering myself. The gym and lifting helped me to see my self worth, and increased my confidence.

I know that I would not be the person I am today if I hadn’t fallen in love with lifting weights.

My fitness journey is far from over. In fact, it will never be over. The thing about fitness is, is that it’s a lifestyle.

I can’t wait to see where my fitness journey leads me, and what else I can accomplish.