When I was younger, gymnastics was my life. I started competitive gymnastics when I was seven, but I was training to make it into competitive for a year or two before that. Before it was, “cool” to have muscle, everyone wanted to be skinny. Growing up, all my friends were small and thin, while I was much bigger than them as I started to gain muscle really early. I remember just feeling really out of place and even though I knew I wasn’t overweight, I couldn’t help but feel like I was.
Fast Forward to high school when I quit training, I really didn’t do anything active for a year or two. I pretty much lost all of my muscles, but for the first time that I could remember, I was skinny. In grade 12, I had my first boyfriend and life was good… until we broke up; which is really where my fitness journey starts. I felt BROKEN after my boyfriend broke up with me, more broken than I’d like to admit. I pretty much went into a state of depression that I wasn’t able to get out of. I wouldn’t eat, I slept all the time, I didn’t see my friends, it was one of the worst mental states that I’ve ever been in. I remember one of my best friends saying that I needed to find a hobby, and I ignored him for a while, until one day I decided that my hobby was going to be fitness. And so, my fitness journey starts.
It’s kind of remarkable how much working out, whether that be weightlifting, running, crossfit, etc, can change your mental state. I decided that I was going to look SO hot that my ex would regret breaking up with me (crazy, I know) and to do so, I was going to get a big bum. Which, i admit as I’m writing this, sounds completely ridiculous. But three or four years ago, the trend of having a big bum took off, and that’s what I wanted. I started by training in my basement, where I only had two sets of dumbbells (a set of 8lbs and a set of 12lbs), but somehow I made it work. Even after months of working out, I still thought that when I got to where I wanted to be, fitness wise, there would be some kind of remarkable change in my life. It really took me until university to realize that I don’t work out for anyone else, I workout to feel good about myself, but mostly for my mental healt. The photo above is obviously more posed, but also so much more confident.
I started out with a four week plan to transform the body I had into the body I wanted. Three years later, my fitness journey continues. I would be lying if I said that my body is where I want it to be and I continuously struggle with how I feel about myself when I look in the mirror, but I have grown so much from the person I was a few years ago. Fitness has helped me become more confident in my body and helped me deal with my anxiety. Sometimes you have to be at the lowest of lows in order to find something that you are truly passionate about. For me, I found fitness, but for you, that passion might be totally different.