Fitness is a Journey, not a Destination

When I first started my fitness journey, my main motivation was this idea that I was going to get me some washboard abs.

I mean, lets get real – no newbie walks into the gym without an ideal in mind. Habits don’t change just because – habits change because a fire has been lit under your bum and you are working towards something clear in your mind.

So I worked my butt off (literally) and a few months later, this is what I looked like:

I see abs! I mean, they weren’t totally visible – but for hardly having worked that muscle group in my life, I was proud of what I was able to accomplish.

So…. I did it. Now what?

I was proud of how defined I looked but at the same time I began to realize, there wasn’t much to define. I never played sports as a youngin’, and I was new to the fitness game, so there wasn’t much muscle there to show.

It was time to set off on a new mission: gains.

I left my low-carb ways behind and set my sights on a new prize.

Gains central. Actually, I went a bit overboard in my opinion. But just to be clear I’m not saying that because I hated myself or the way I look in this photo – I’m saying that because I developed food sensitivities during this time which caused a lot of inflammation and bloating.

Serious road bump.

A wrench in my plans when it came to dieting again, as it made it damn near impossible to lose a single lb. I may have had abs, and shoulders, and quads, but it was difficult to see them underneath the full body bloat and inflammation.

But, if you’ve been following my blog for a while then you know that I figured that mystery out. The picture above illustrates the transition pretty well, as once I quit all dairy products I slowly deflated, and continued on my journey until the mission was accomplished.

I realize that there are a ton of pictures of me in this post which may seem self-indulgent but I truly am trying to make a point so STAY WITH ME here.

This is a pretty good summary of that span of time. On the left: ab central. Middle: gains central. Right: me over the summer, somewhere in between. In each photo I am proud of the girl I see because I know she worked her butt off to get whatever she was working towards.

To my point: when I post a comparison photo like the one below, it can be a little misleading. It makes me look like I accomplished one thing. It makes it look like start to finish. It makes it seem like “beginning” and “end”. But the truth is that my journey has been anything but linear.

It’s been more like a wild loop-de-loop roller coaster, with a few upside-down turns.

A photo like this just doesn’t do my journey justice. It’s an effort to simplify a time in my life that has been anything but simple. It’s been hard work. It’s been dedication. It’s been seeing the scale go up and down, and up and down.

And that is the way it will continue to be.

Many of us start out on our fitness journeys looking to simply get from point A to point B. Those of us who fall in love with the lifestyle have met point C, D, E, and F until they just stopped obsessing about the destination and realized that it’s the process that they love so much.

Current photo.

I’m back to being a bigger, stronger version of myself.

I love me at any shape, at any size, and at any weight. I’m awesome big, and I’m awesome small. Weight gain means nothing, weight loss means nothing, I simply enjoy the working hard towards something, whatever that something may be.

My hope is that you will embrace yourself – no matter where you are at in your journey today.

I heart you all! Thank you for reading this.

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