Featured Blog: Family, Food, Fitness

Eighteen months ago, I would never have called myself a Fitblogger, let alone imagine that I’d be featured on Fitblogger.  I was overweight and had been overweight for most of my adult life.  I was mildly active, I’d go for walks, I belonged to a gym and had every intention of going, but didn’t.

When I decided to make a change to lead a healthy life, I left that sedentary person in the dust.  I started slowly, just going to the gym for a 30 minutes treadmill workout.  I counted calories and lost weight.  I read everything I could about getting healthy and at some point came across a challenge to step up your workout for 2 weeks to see what happened.  I did that by changing to the elliptical trainer and quickly getting up to a 60 minute workout.  I found that I lost 4 inches from my hips in one month!  I ended up losing 40 pounds, reaching my goal in February of this year. See the new me!

An exercise passion was born.  Exercise became a way to feel good, not just to burn calories and lose weight.  I started to run.  At first it was hard, I was slow and it was boring.  I continued to read everything I could about training and running and soon learned to push myself again.  Running became my new challenge to conquer.  And I think I have learned to enjoy running.

I ran my first 5K in August, a 2nd 5K in October and a Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving that I ran with my kids.  I’m so proud of my accomplishments as you can see from my picture above. I’ve set my sights on a new goal of a 10K in February. I will be sharing much of my training efforts on my blog in the coming weeks as well as looking for motivation and inspiration from other blogging runners.

At the same time that I was gaining strength in my body, I was continuing my journey to discover the thin person inside my body.  I struggled to find a balance in taking care of myself and discovered some deep body image issues. I also discovered a passion for health and fitness and am now embarking on the education to back that up. I’m starting an ADA certified RD program at a local college in January!

My blog has several goals:

• To help me work through the challenges in living a healthy life for myself and my family
• To give encouragement to people with similar goals (I consider myself a pretty good cheerleader)
• To network with other healthy bloggers as I begin my education in the nutrition field

Everyone is different, each of our healthy journeys are different.  What works for me may not work for anyone else.  But, maybe, just maybe, there’s something in my journey that is helpful to you.  That’s what I want to share.

Come visit Family, Fitness, Food; or follow me on Twitter @CarrieSinCA or Facebook – Family, Fitness Food.

Head on over to Carrie’s Blog and say hi.