Hello world! My name is Anna and this is my blog!

I am currently a senior at Haywood Early college and I work at Kid Connection daycare where I teach. Over the last few months I have been trying to better myself, mentally and physically. It started in October when my friend told me about an online fitness program that her friend created. I have always been pretty self-conscious with myself so I went in with the intention of changing the way I looked. She sent me the program and the nutrition guide and I would start the following week. I went in thinking that the workouts would be so easy and only take me a few minutes, boy was I wrong. I couldn’t even get through the first set in the program without taking multiple breaks for a few days. Then on top of that, all I ate for the first week was chicken salads and almonds for counting my macros (fats, carbohydrates, and protein), which if you can imagine got old quick. I started to get really frustrated with my meals and keeping track of how many grams I was allowed per day. I talked to her about this and told her how frustrating the situation was so she told me to start experimenting with more recipes. With this I started to get more experimental and excited about cooking and eating my meals for the day. Then with my trainer’s guidance, I started doing more cardio and less strength training because I had injured my back while I was at work. With these two things combined, I started to feel more comfortable with being healthy, and it started to show as I started building more muscle and burning body fat. But it’s not just how I changed physically, I really started to change mentally. Going to the gym everyday helped me release built up stress, which took a lot of weight off my shoulders. It may sound odd but one day I woke up and just thought to myself that I love the way I am feeling and I honestly even forgot about the fact that I began my journey wanting to change the way I looked. Don’t get me wrong, I loved putting on clothes and realizing that they were now too big but it just wasn’t about that for me anymore. I started to realize that it wasn’t my body that I hated, I hated my perception of life and how I felt. I have to say, that month I had the best attitude, I absolutely loved myself and I felt myself being so much happier. Since then I have seen myself slowly go back to my old ways but I have decided that I won’t let it happen. I want to be happy and love life so I have decided to start back on the program. I have created this blog so that all of you can join me on my journey, and so that one day I can look back and see how one aspect in life can play such a big role in your happiness and to possibly inspire one of you to go on your own journey! I hope I get to share this experience with you!

See ya next time! 🙂

Hi everyone! Welcome back to my blog!

As you might have read in my last post, I talked about my overall fitness and health journey. In this post I’m going to go more into the mindset and motivation part of the journey. As you might recall, I went in with the idea that I wanted to change the way I looked because I was not happy. I always looked in the mirror and just didn’t like what I saw so when my friend referred me to her friend/personal trainer, I was super excited. She first had me take my weight and everything before the program and then every Sunday through the month. Let me just say that the first week really kicked my butt. I was physically ready for the workouts but I don’t think I was mentally prepared for what that meant. The first week I was so extremely frustrated because it felt like I always checked the scale and nothing was changing. I honestly got to the point where I just wanted to give up. But slowly with the help of my trainer I started to get more comfortable and confident with working out and eating healthy, I started to see my mood change drastically. Every morning I would wake up, make my protein shake, and head off to the gym. I couldn’t tell you how happy I was to step onto the treadmill or whatever I would be using that day. I would either put on some music to get myself motivated or I’d turn on a movie if I could. I’m not saying that it wasn’t hard because it definitely was. I just kept saying that by the end of the day I would forget that I even did it but I would feel so much better, and I did. I could be so stressed out and go to the gym and it was like I just decompressed. I noticed myself being so happier than I used to be. I have to say, this was really my motivation to keep going. I ended up realizing that it’s not that I didn’t love myself, I did, I hated the way I looked at life. I hated that I wanted to better my physical health but I completely neglected my mental health. Now that I look back, I regret not going into my fitness journey with a healthy mindset but I can’t express how happy I am that I have really come to be happy with myself. When you read this, I hope that if you decide to go on your own journey, whether it is physical or mental. Taking journeys, if it is in your career, fitness, educational, etc, they are what helps us grow. If we just live and don’t change at all, we are staying the same while everything around us continues growing. As I said in the last post, I’ve gotten off my fitness path but I have kept on the mental journey that I started. I love being able to watch myself grow constantly and have a happier outlook on life. I hope this inspires you and I hope that as you follow along on my journey that you can watch how much of an impact that a happy mindset can affect every other aspect of your life.

See ya next time! 🙂

Hi everyone! Welcome to my blog!

Today I will be talking about something a little different. A couple of weeks ago, one of my good friends and co-worker was killed. Recently, my other co-workers and I have been experiencing a ton of grief. I bet you are wondering why I’m writing about this on my blog. I decided to write about this difficult topic because I want to show you all my physical as well as my mental health journey, which is filled with it’s ups and downs. I worked with her for almost 2 years and I can’t even express how blessed I am to have known her. When I say that she had such a bright and kind soul, I mean it. No matter what she always had a smile on her face and would always be willing to help in any way possible. When we found out she had passed, it was just heart breaking. We never imagined that it would have been her. I can remember getting the phone call. It didn’t even process in my mind until a minute later. I kept praying that it wasn’t real. Even after I felt numb, I still just couldn’t completely comprehend what happened. I always thought that grief was this horrible and awful thing but I found a quote that perfectly summed up what we were feeling.

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot. All of that unspent love gathers in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and the hallow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”

I realized that grief is not a bad thing. It shows how much we all loved her. I only wished I could have loved her longer. It still makes me sad to think about her not being here with us anymore but I just keep thinking that as much as I am upset, it’s just that much more love that I am giving her, even though she’s not here. I will stay up sometimes at night and just think of memories I had with her. One day we had a bad day at work and when the kids got laid down for nap and she went on break. While this was her time to relax and decompress, she went to the gas station and brought us both back a pack of peanut and peanut butter M&Ms. This is the kind of person she was, kind and loving to everyone she knew.

I always see her as being someone who lit up a room when she walked in. She wouldn’t want us to remember grieving and being sad about her death. She would want us to use it to remember what a sweet and kind person she was. She would want us to embrace her life and learn from it. I strive to have a personality like she had, bright and kind. She would want us to take this love we have and share it with everyone. Every time I think of her I smile, I am happy because I know that it is how she wants to be remembered. Her death was very heart-breaking, but I am determined to embrace this tragic event and bring light to it, because even in the saddest times, she always found light in every situation. Thank you all for reading. I hope that this will help you if you too are experiencing grief in your life.

🙂