The Early Years
My love for fitness comes from playing over 15 years of various sports including basketball, volleyball, track, and cross country running. When I started college, I tried to keep the momentum going but despite running 4 miles every day, I was never educated on actual lifestyle health and wellness outside of being an athlete.
I gained almost 45 pounds in the span of a year, my mental health suffered, and nothing ever felt quite right when it came to fitness or eating. After that year, I decided enough was enough and took my health back into my own hands. I researched and studied almost every piece of material I could get my hands on. I began doing at-home workouts with nothing more than 1 dumbbell and a small, 2.5 feet by 6 feet space in my bedroom back home.
I pushed past a huge hurdle of social anxiety and made it to the campus gym a couple times a week during semesters.
This resulted losing several pounds very quickly, and I was definitely feeling better.
However, I still felt something was missing.
In 2017, I took a leap of faith in myself and started CrossFit. At the time, I couldn't afford to keep going so programmed CrossFit workouts for myself in my garage at home. Again, still with 1 dumbbell and a cooler I used for box jumps (haha).
I returned to that same gym (under a new owner) in 2019 after healing from a miscarriage while my husband was deployed, and here I was accepted into a community I never experienced before.
This introduced me to a whole new side of fitness where people support others doing hard things and we all learn how to care for our bodies for the long-term through functional fitness.