Fitness Journey – The Beginning

3 weeks ago I started going to the gym, not every day. About 3 or 4 times a week. The change I’ve experienced in my body has been incredible so far. Have I lost weight yet? Not really but I’ve lost some fat and gained muscle. I’m not going to use the scale as my proof. Scales are inaccurate, weight fluctuates.

For full disclosure here are my stats just so you can know what I’m working with physically.

Age: 29

Weight: 199 lb

Height: 5ft 2in.

I have congenital joint deformities, arthritis, and acute scoliosis. About a month ago I could barely walk around enough to get groceries. Minimal housework was torture because of the back pain. If my friends inviting me anything that meant I had to walk I couldn’t go. The pain would get so intense just making trips to one room in my house to another my legs would start shaking and my body would tense up so bad I could hardly take a step. This past year it was getting out of hand. The fact was really disrupting my life was doing a number on me mentally. When simple tasks seem impossible it makes you feel pretty awful.

The scoliosis is the main source of pain. It’s something I’ve dealt with since I was little. It wasn’t diagnosed properly until I was 19 by my GP despite seeing specialists as a child and spending most my childhood in physical and occupational therapy. Had it been diagnosed earlier things may have been different but it’s too late to worry over that. My body is what it is now and I’m trying to make the best of it.

So here I am 3 weeks into a new lifestyle. One I’ve never had before. I let my physical state hold me back too long and had the mindset of “I can’t” and “you’re disabled” too long. This month with my first trip to the gym all that changed. I realized I can.

I can’t remember the last time I felt so good physically and mentally. My body pain had been greatly reduced and as I shed fat and gain muscle it’s only going to get better from here.

My first visit to the gym, I could barely do anything there. Today, I can do almost everything and even increased the weight I’m training with. Every day trip I try something new and work to get better at each workout every time.

Here’s a little thing I’m super proud of; last Friday me and the girls went to an Art Crawl downtown. I was thinking it was just walking around to a couple booths all close together. Nothing physically demanding but no. It was walking the length of 3rd st. to various places of business where the art was inside. I’m not sure how many blocks length it was but it was a lot. We started out at 6 pm with a cheese board at Embers ( an upscale pizza place) then walked a block to the pub and hung out for a bit. Then walked all the way down to the other end of the street to see some friends play. This trek was the hardest because we walked straight with no stops and was the only time my back hurt. After that we strolled back down toward where we started, stopping in all the galleries and shops looking at stuff and ended up at The Mirror Room for drinks. Point is, we spent about 6 hours bar and shop hopping. Something I haven’t been able to do in years. Just enjoy walking around. I would have been miserable if I’d done that a month ago.

This is my introduction to a new topic here on Bee Beauty.

  

This is a proclamation of a lifestyle change and I’m blogging about it so all you guys can hold my ass accountable to it and hopefully I can offer some motivation and inspiration too.

PS. Thank you, Nisa. Nisa encouraged me to post about all this. In a future post, I’ll go into how important a support system is. Also, Nisa and I will be sharing some workout tips on here in the near future.