The Road Less Traveled - Fitness and Dieting

MERRIBALLZ ON FITNESS

I don’t even know what to focus on, so here’s a list: hoards of selfies, false advice, fucked up dietary advice, objectification of women, objectification of men, waist training, personal training, body image, judgment, narrow-mindedness, fake versus real, opinions versus fact, me, you , them. What I have written above is called a stream of consciousness and is great when you have a topic in mind but don’t know what theme or idea to work with. As I sat down to write my first fitness post I found myself rambling and jumping all over the place with my ideas, so I deleted everything and instead just typed out several topics I will eventually cover in my fitness related posts. True to my libra nature I have the tendency to pass judgment severely in all aspects of my life.

 Growing up, I have become conscious of this part of my personality and have been making a big effort to become well researched and informed before forming my ideas and opinions. In regard to fitness, I have learned that my journey and experience is only relevant to me. My methodology may be useless to one person and extremely helpful to another. I cannot emphasize how important staying true to yourself is when it comes to body image and fitness. Fitness isn’t only about having physical strength and an aesthetically pleasing figure. One must have a happy and healthy mind as well . To begin, I will give that generic “My fitness journey” story so anyone reading this can have an outline of where I’m coming from. Generic as it is, this will help readers as well as myself with organizing future thoughts and arguments.

As a child I was always skinny and never applied any energy or thought to physical fitness. My mom was a homemaker who was always there to make my family healthy home-cooked meals. Growing up I learned to love everything. I had my favorite fruits and vegetables and always loved beef, chicken and especially seafood. I also developed a huge sweet tooth. My mom is a MEAN baker so I always had fresh cookies and cakes to choose from for my dessert. My lifestyle was very active. Growing up before iphones and ipads I had to… GASP! PLAY OUTSIDE!! Dodgeball, manhunt, and street hockey were my favorites and I would spend all day with my friends running all over the neighborhood. Going into high school I started buying lunch and started some less healthy eating habits. I lived on soda, bacon and cheese bagels, and sweets, however I still had an active lifestyle dancing and walking 2 miles a day to and from school. When I went to college things began to change.

 My freshman year I developed seasonal depressive disorder because I was living in Syracuse, NY which is very cold and dark from November to April. I spent most of my time sleeping and would only get up to stuff my face with unhealthy cheap foods. When I wasn’t sleeping or eating, I was drinking like a fish. When I transferred to school in New Orleans I was much happier, but still eating like shit and partying all weekend. My “fitness life” started at about age 20. My mentality was “I want a 6-pack.” Ughh… So I started as I think most young women do, running on the elliptical and doing some crunches. I lost some weight over the summer going into my senior year, but gained it back quickly when I returned to New Orleans for school. With the help from some friends I discovered my love for weights. Starting with the basics I was curling 8 lb dumbells and doing lightweight tricep pull downs along with my elliptical bullshit. I started eating really well and learned how to deadlift.

I had a crazy 3 hour gym routine involving weights, abs, cardio, stretching and sauna time, followed by a healthy post-work out meal. My body was finally starting to look great… and then 2 things happened. I got back together with the love of my life just in time for Mardi Gras season. The party that year was great , but when it ended my routine was fucked. I would finish class and instead of hitting the gym would go and spend the night in bed with my man smoking weed and watching TV with some burgers and fries. Upon graduating another depression hit. What was I doing with my life? What would become of my relationship now that we were apart? So I came home and drank, smoked and ate my feelings away and throwing all my progress out the window. When I saw the photos from my annual Montauk vacation with my friends I was pissed. What the hell happened? This is when I became obsessed. I started following a lot of “fitness girls” on facebook and looked at their posts as my bible. I started all kinds of crazy dieting. Not eating any bread made me a psychopath. Protein pancakes were gross. But I still forced myself into these other people’s diet plans hoping my body would look like theirs. THE WORST MENTALITY EVER! However, my weight training improved as I became more informed and soon I cut out cardio all together and focused on the weights.

I started to love how my body was looking, but my mind was still unstable. Eventually I unfollowed all those “fitness girls” and started making decisions for me. The process was slow but soon I found a way to balance my love for sweets and comfort food with healthy options. This was long process I won’t go into on this post, but I learned dieting was a personal thing you have to do WITH your body not AGAINST your body. Wanting to look like someone else wasn’t working for me. Last year I started dancing again which has proven to be the best way for me to be healthy. Not only does it work my body physically, but mentally as well. I dove headfirst into ballet, contemporary, west African and other styles of dancing. I have re-kindled my true love and have never been more content with my body and mind.

My fitness journey is on its 5th year and had a lot of ups and downs. Besides figuring out your diet, injuries, heartbreak, and stress have a big impact on physical fitness. Your journey has to be all about YOU which is a huge challenge this day and age with influences from friends, family and social media most of all. It really is a challenge to stay on track but anything that knocks you down will make you stronger if you choose to learn instead of lament. My next posts about fitness will be targeted toward certain topics so please feel free to comment something you would like me to write about. I will do my best to be objective, but certainly be prepared to hear some ranting and raving as I find many aspects of fitness culture to be extremely problematic.

~~MERRI BALLZ~~