My Health and Fitness Journey, Introduction

Hello book lovers!

Today we start something new in the blog. I ran a poll on Twitter and also asked on a blog post, and you guys were overwhelmingly positive towards a new series of health & fitness posts according to my personal experience. I will initially write these every two weeks in addition to my bookish posts (that I’d already scheduled for most of April anyway when I ran the poll) and then see how it goes and how much time I actually need for them. Might not be sustainable over time to have 4 posts in a week, so we will figure this out together.

I thought of creating these posts because it’s a good way to stay motivated (also being held accountable by the fact that all of you now know about it) and to maybe let other people see that it’s possible to be healthier without being skinny, super restrictive with your diet or a natural-born athlete.

I am not nervous about writing about such a personal thing to me (you guys have been amazing when I opened up about my mental health issues before, for example), but I am a bit wary that this kind of posts will bring a different public to my blog that might be far less kind than the bookish community. But I think these posts might actually make a difference for myself and for others, so I am motivated to write them.

My goals

1. To learn to love my body. I have disliked my body NO MATTER if I was underweight, with perfectly normal BMI or after my rapid weight gain 2 years ago due to illness & medication. Love for oneself needs to be independent of weight!
2. To feel confident in what I wear.
3. To improve and maintain heart health (I have a strong history of heart issues in my family & genetically high cholesterol)
4. To encourage myself and others to be healthy, whatever that means for each person
5. To become a runner
6. To make my body stronger
7. To improve my immune system by exercising and eating foods that fight illness
8. I do want to lose weight, too. I will explain this in a separate post.

What I will post

• Recipes
• My thoughts on certain diets, lifestyle changes
• My thoughts on gym and no-gym exercises
• My experiences as a runner (a VERY beginner level at this point)
• How I manage my expectations, motivation and routine
• How I deal with my mental health while trying to be active
• My experiences with fitness watches
• How I improve my heart health
• My obstacles, difficulties and failure
• Yo-Yo effect I experienced
• Websites, videos and blogs I like
• How I started running and why
• Running gear & Training gear
• Training as a woman (breasts, periods, building muscle…)
• My experience with intuitive eating
• Books on health & fitness and recipes books
• People who inspire me
• Etc

I always do a LOT of research before I make any changes in my lifestyle, so you guys will be sure to get lots of reference links, readings and videos. But all the content will reflect my experience personally, and must not be held as a standard for anyone. If you follow a diet I dislike, for example, you do you! We have different bodies, different objectives and different approaches. It’s not my place to tell you what to do (or vice-versa!).

What I will NOT post

• Nutrition tips (I’m not a nutritionist!)
• Medical tips (also I’m not a doctor)
• Training plans
• Telling you why YOU should not follow a diet/exercise plan. Not my place.
• Calories details. I don’t personally find that counting calories is a good way for me to make sure I am eating well, so my recipes won’t count them. Also, it’s easy to obsess over numbers (for me especially) and forget to enjoy what you eat and do.
• Details of my measurements, my weight, my body fat percentage, my BMI, before-and-after pictures and so on. I will explain why in a separate post.
• Promoting of brands. I may talk about brands I use, but that is not my objective and I will avoid it as much as possible. If curious, you guys can ask me in the comments which brand of watch/shoes/etc I use and I will tell you!
• Work-life balance. I can tell you how I do it, but my life is so much easier than other people’s in terms of flexibility, so I think there are better people to talk about this topic! I don’t have children, I work somewhere between 35-45h per week (at the moment)… so clearly I have more time than most people.

That’s it, guys! This is an introductory post, and I have LOTS of ideas of what to talk about.

Ultimately, I am no professional in the health and fitness area, so I will not be telling you how to do things. I aim to inspire more people to be healthy and stay fit, and to motivate myself, too. I would love to hear feedback on what you would like for me to talk about!