These days it’s as easy as breathing to jump online and search for the information you need, whether you’re looking for some entertainment, some advice on a health issue or whatever it is you want to know. For the most part though you’ll often come across information that was merely indexed on the back of some attempts by some very good writers and website owners to make a bit of money and rank highly on the search engines, and you may very well find some very useful information you can really use. If you want to make sure to always get the very best information however, always seek out that content that was published as a personal account of someone’s experiences concerning a certain topic.
Nothing beats personal experience and today I want to share my own personal experience with some health issues I’ve had to contend with, ultimately leading to my fitness journey. It’s undeniably a rather unique one, but the health issues I’ve suffered and subsequent steps I took to rectify them will undoubtedly be familiar to some people who find themselves on this blog, while the “gaps” will hopefully be filled in by some readers and contributors who have their own personal stories to share.
So here’s how my fitness journey has played out so far.
I grew up a very skinny child, which for many people is a blessing of the weight gods if ever there was one, but in a world where teenagers are made to feel very self-conscious about their bodies, this was a bit of a problem for me. Fortunately I had many other “distractions” to allocate my time to, such as the small matter of my academics, so looking back now I can definitely say that having led a full life as a growing teen effectively saved me from falling into the dark side of the world of eating disorders and the likes.
I might very well have become a bulimic, as I remember it like yesterday how one day I thought I’d eaten way too much and was just about to stick a finger down my throat, only for the doorbell to ring, signalling the arrival of my friend’s mom to pick us up and drive us to netball practice. I came back home too hungry to entertain that thought of the finger and I’d done particularly well at practice that day, so those were some distractions I can honestly look back on and say that they really helped me avoid what would have been major health and psychological issues to deal with.
Striking that all-important balance
Who would have ever thought that a lesson learned as a teenager on the brink of the path down Self-Destruction Avenue would have someone like me modelling my entire fitness regime around that, in that I aim to strike a balance as far as my fitness plan goes. I’ve given some details about the regime itself in a separate post, otherwise this is indeed how my fitness journey unfolded.
It’s a story of how as someone who grew up with a very high metabolism, I’ve not really had serious weight issues. My body apparently looked like that of someone who spends a good deal of time in the gym, even though at the time the only place I had ever seen the inside of gym was on the computer screen of one of my brother’s video games!
So I believe in striking a balance when it comes to health and fitness, with just the right amount of time allocated to that area of one’s life in proportion to its importance.
Focusing on how I feel as opposed to how I look
All the troubles I had with my body growing up as well as the realisation that I wasn’t nearly in the worst situation anyone could find themselves in inevitably led to a different outlook on life in general and in the way through which to approach my fitness terrace. So I decided that the goal is to feel good as a result of the time one invests in the gym, out on the road, out in the field, or wherever else it may be where you go to get some exercise!
How one looks is only an added bonus…
