Part I: The Introduction

Life lessons can be learned best through real life situations. Since high school ended four years ago, I had 'let myself go' when it came to my overall health and fitness. I became obese, depressed, and lacked motivation to change any aspect of my life. It took me three years to realize how terrible my life habits were. Throughout this blog I will be sharing my life lessons, goals, and struggles as I make my way back to a healthy lifestyle. Becoming a healthy adult is more than just eating better and exercising. It requires a complete spiritual, physical, and emotional transformation. The process is long and overwhelming but worth all the effort put forth in the end.

I started my journey 'back to health' in March of 2013. There was a moment in late February when I took a good look at myself in the mirror. In this moment I realized the turmoil I had caused myself. I was flabbergasted by my own reflection this was a terrifying feeling. (When I was in high school I was a positive and active teen. I always was on the move because I hated sitting down or being lazy.) This terrifying feeling was caused by my laziness and my weight problem. It was a hard pill to swallow realizing that I had gained fifty pounds since graduating high school. Fifty pounds is a lot of weight to gain in a three year span. For some fifty pounds could be half or one-third of the average adults overall body weight. I immediately wanted to make a difference in my life. No matter what it took I was willing to correct my mistakes and begin to work out the kinks I had created in my life. At the time I thought changing myself was going to be easy, I quickly learned that would not be the case.

Finding a balance between school, work, and living a healthy lifestyle day-to-day was not easy. An even bigger struggle was finding the motivation to keep me on track and push me to continue my journey. With strict self-discipline and time I was able to balance my lifestyles into three of the most important quadrants of my everyday living: school, work, and my health. During this ten-month (and counting) journey my health became priority number one, as it should be.

Eventually I had to choose what healthy ways were best for me. Exercise and eating better seemed to be my best choices. I knew I could stick to both choices throughout this process even if I had to tweak them a little. In posts coming soon I will explain what steps I took to reach my goal for exercising and eating healthier. These posts will be all real life situations about the journey I am making to become a healthier person inside and out. It will involve exercise tips and personal stories of the processes I took to become 'the brand new me'. I will include pictures showing my progress with goals I set for myself. I will also discuss the main points of my journey that I believe would be helpful for someone looking to embark on a personal journey of their own. 

This photograph was taken during my senior year in high school, before I lost control of my health. At the beginning of my journey I wanted to be back to my high school weight and exercise more regularly then I was then.