Hello and welcome to my blog! I am so excited you are here and I am so thankful you are taking the time out of your day to listen to my story. So THANK YOU!
I wanted to start off my blog by sharing with you my fitness journey before I start sharing meals or fitness tips or even acting like I know what I am talking about. I think it is so important for my readers to know where I am coming from before I share all of this information with you. I feel like this is important because I am not a fitness expert nor am I a registered dietitian, so why should you listen to me? I hope the reason is that you can relate to the struggles I have faced and are facing with the hopes that I can provide you with some solutions. Other than that I am just your average 24 year old girl who found something that works for them and who continues to succeed with her health and fitness goals. I am at a spot in my life that I can comfortably say that I am happy with where I am at mentally, physically and emotionally. Of course, I strive to always become the best version of myself I can be, so there is always more space to improve, but it has been a long journey to get to where I am at today.
The Beginning
For those who know me, know that I have always been active in sports growing up. All the way up until my high school years I was always super tiny and didn’t have to worry about my weight. I loved being outdoors and played many sports including Cheerleading, Softball, Track and Horseback Riding. Some other outdoor activities I enjoyed and still to this day enjoy are surfing, biking and going on hikes. I have always been a very active person. The first year of high school I was still pretty small but I became more conscious about my weight. As high school went on, I kept putting on the pounds and I didn’t know why. I was involved in sports and kept active most days so I did not understand why I wasn’t comfortable with my weight or how I looked anymore. I was far from obese but always fluctuated from being ten to fifteen pounds overweight for what someone my height should weigh. It took a lot of trial and error during this stage of my life. It was a lot of jumping on and off of the healthy bandwagon and I could not seem to figure out a way to lose the weight and to keep it off. At this point in my life, I tried a lot of diets that seemed to work, but never seemed to last and that never kept the weight off.
The Middle
College came fast. Going into college, I always told myself I would never gain the “Freshmen 15”. Although I didn’t gain another fifteen pounds, I never lost it either and did put on a few more pounds. College is where I learned how to emotionally eat. I was taking classes Monday through Friday, working multiple jobs before, in between and after classes making my weekdays very long and exhausting. On the weekends, my life never slowed down a bit. I played in a band and also continued to work my jobs straight through the weekends. This left me with absolutely no time to focus on my fitness and nutrition. As much as I hate using that excuse, “I just didn’t have the time”, I actually genuinely did not have the time. My days usually started as early as 5:30 AM and ended as late as 11:00 PM depending on the day. My focus at this point was on my education and to put money in the bank to pay for it. Thankfully walking around campus and having active jobs helped me maintain the weight I put on but that still was not good enough. My senior year of college, I discovered Beachbody. I was still working the same jobs but I was mostly taking online classes which freed up a majority of my time. The program was amazing and I actually stuck to the program for a whole month which was the longest I had ever stuck to a weight loss program before. I saw incredible results but unfortunately it was short lived. I did not repeat the program and what the program had taught me I wasn’t taking with me and making the lifestyle change that I needed to. I was just looking for an easy way out and had gained the seven pounds that I lost right back.
The End (Only Just the Beginning)
Fast forward another year, I graduated college, got engaged, accepted my first big girl job and moved in with my fiancé an hour away from home. This year in particular was a very hard year for me. Adjusting to all of these huge life changes, missing home at times and having to deal with an unhealthy situation and a very bad turning point in my life, was a little more than I could barely hold on to. This turning point in my life, which will go unsaid, caused me to be very sick the majority of the time. I was throwing up on a daily basis to the point where I was contemplating on going to see a doctor to find out what was wrong with me. The things I loved to do, I didn’t do anymore. I had been putting other people before myself and I was either emotionally eating or rarely eating at all. I realized that I wasn’t happy with where I was at, even with all of the amazing things that had been happening in my life, this situation started eating away at me little by little. This stressful situation I was in lasted for about a year until I eventually said enough was enough, that this could not go on any longer. My health was at stake and I knew I did not deserve this. I was beginning to lose who I was. The person who loved fitness and cared about her health was gone. The girl who was always happy and could find the positive in every situation changed to the person who was sad every day and had to have her fiancé pick her back up. I knew it was time for a change. I was going to put a stop to all the negativity that was going on in my life and finally focus on something that I had put on the back burner for so long, I was going to focus on me. I got rid of all of the negativity in my life and started to train myself to get into a better mindset. And that is exactly what I did. That moment when I made the decision to cut all of the negativity out of my life, I could see my body, my mind and my health instantly change. The changes I saw to my body and my health from getting out of this situation was absolutely remarkable.
Fast forward a few months to March 2018, the morning before my fiancé’s family and I were going on vacation. My aunt had told me all about how she was going to run a very popular 10K that was in our home state. I had only ever ran a couple of 5K’s in my life and had a love/hate relationship with running my whole life. There was no way I would be able to run this 10K with her. Out of pure impulse though, and for some crazy reason, I told her I would do it.
I can remember the day I came back from vacation I was determined to make this a lifestyle change and not just another thing I did for two weeks just to fall right off again. Something was different this time; something had clicked and I finally had a purpose as to why I needed to change. I went to the grocery store and stocked up on healthy meals I would eat for the following week I hooked my dog up to her leash and started to run. I just started to run, even when I did not feel like running, I hit that pavement anyways and just did it. I had six months to get back into shape and do something that the idea of doing it was so overwhelming to me. Here I am though, only two months in, I have lost ten pounds and I am down two pant sizes, and I have not skipped a beat. Throughout this journey of mine, I have found that sometimes you need to go through bad situations to be able to come out on top and succeed. I decided to create Run Pretty to prove to people that no matter what situation you have been or are in, that it is possible. I couldn’t thank my dog Natalie enough for being one of my biggest motivators of getting off the couch every day and taking her on a run. This is my story, this is my journey and I am so excited for you all to come along for the run!