I’ve decided I will never properly get into yoga, but I will admit as a fitness I do see the benefits of stretching.
I never really cared for yoga and it’s peaceful, meditative lifestyle. I am an anxious person so yoga never resonated with my sense of always wanting to do something. Even sitting in silence is a difficult task for me and that just comes from my mind always thinking. In this challenge I was just going to focus on learning yoga poses and just see if I could actually vibe with yoga. Spoiler alert: I didn’t.
Honestly, it wasn’t until I picked up a different fitness hobby that I really learned the importance and value of yoga and how much of necessity it is to stretch out my body. As a fitness I definitely acknowledge yoga, where as before I didn’t care for it much entirely.
I will say that I will never properly get into yoga and I don’t see myself ever doing just yoga for a solid workout, but I will definitely keep in in my routine as it is important to stretch out muscles and make sure the body is okay, especially after a workout.
After battling bad acne since I was 14 I can finally say I am more confident in my skin. I will admit it is still not perfect, but my skin will have bad days and I shouldn’t be too hard on myself because compared to the old days my face is worlds different.
I remember the first time I ever broke out and got cystic acne and I remember all the ways I tried to get rid of it. In my teens I had tried all the skin creams, the medications, the cleansers, the serums, the exfoliaters, everything; well everything except for accutane. Accutane later would become my savior, but back when I was a teen all I had ever heard were horror stories of accutane and it’s side effects and I didn’t want to go through that. I genuinely believed I would grow out of my acne once I got older and just focused on washing my face.
Obviously, I was wrong. I couldn’t grow out of my bad acne and no matter what regime I did, it didn’t matter. My bad acne wasn’t a product of a dirty face, it was a product of something going on inside my body and genetics. When I saw a dermatologist in July 2018, they told me accutane would be the only way to clear up my acne. I expressed my concerns and the dermatologist alleviated a lot of my anxiety and after all the years I spent hating my acne and what it did to my self esteem I finally rationalized that the side effects are worth it in the end.
Looking at it now I am upset with myself for how long I went with bad skin. I didn’t realize how bad my self esteem really was back then. I had a lot of people say things about my face and I had a lot of people “give me advice” and it really effected who I was as a person. I spent a lot of time believing I was ugly and that there was no hope for me or my face. Even back then when I thought my face was clearing up, it still was what people considered bad acne, but for me it was clear and I thought it was better. It took actually being on accutane and looking at my old pictures to really see the amount of progress I’ve had and the amount of dedication I’ve had to clearing up my skin.
I also want to mention that even after I finished accutane my skin was not perfectly clear. It took another year until my skin actually started behaving again. It had cleared up exponentially, but I really had to focus on skin care to get to where it is now. It’s not like I did accutane and never have to worry about acne again. It’s that I did accutane and now I can actually manage my skin with a regime and actually see progress, where as before my skin didn’t respond to anything. So I still get acne, but it’s not as much of a battle and having a solid skin care regime is really the reason why my skin is so much better now.
I am nervous to do this, but it’s not a success if I don’t show the proof. I had to dig through a lot of photos and a lot of these are really bad pictures of me and honestly I don’t even care because I really would like to show the process and how long it took to get to where I am now.
Pictures are from the last 5 years and they start with when my acne was at it’s worst, to before accutane, during accutane, after accutane, and now.
Originally this was run everyday for a month and then I remembered how much I hate running every day. I could go a solid 15-20 days, but I would just get more and more annoyed with running. I never became one of those people who loved running and got the runner’s high. I just got pissed and would drop running everyday and do it every couple of days a week instead. I’ve tried so many times, but no matter how many times I have tried I just can’t make it a full month.
Which led me to changing it to a different form of cardio that I actually like: Dance! Listen, I don’t need to dance well to dance everyday. I can line dance, salsa, hip hop, flail about like an idiot, etc. Dance as a form of consistent cardio was way better for me because though dance was consistent the type of dance was ever changing and I never got stuck in the state of mind I did when I was running.
It was so freeing to spend an hour everyday to dance. I wasn’t trying to impress anyone, I was just doing something to better myself and it allowed me to have fun. Dancing is fun and you don’t have to be good at it to have fun and get a good workout in.
1 Million Dance Studios always inspire me to learn their hip hop choreos and dances. I can always bust out a line dance the moment country music touches my ears. Somewhere deep, deep, deep inside me is a Latina and I swear when I hear salsa or reggaeton I try to call upon my inner Puerto Rican and get those hips going (note: it doesn’t go well, but it is hilarious).
Doing this challenge gave me a hate for running, but a love and passion for dance. I think it worked out much better that way.
This one was important to me as far as health and fitness because back in 2016 I signed myself, my brother, and my dad up for a Tough Mudder and I remember it being brutal, but every time I recall the experience I remember having an absolute blast.
So I convinced 2 friends of mine to do an obstacle course race with me. I told them we shouldn’t go for a Tough Mudder as that is a commitment, but I wanted to do a smaller one and just something we could do for fun. Which led us to find a 5k Terrain Race with around 15-20 obstacles. Which was perfect for us and price wise much more affordable than other races.
These kinds of races are the best because there is no pressure and it’s just the perfect excuse to play in mud and be a kid. It’s like adult field day or just playing on a bigger version of a playground and it just makes me so genuinely happy.
Today we did the Terrain Race and we got muddy, climbed, jumped, crawled, and fell off quite a few obstacles and every bit of it was perfect. I encourage everyone to at least do an obstacle course race once in their life because it’s not a competitive atmosphere and even if you aren’t in great shape it’s still worth it to go and try your best. Plus it gives you a perfect excuse/opportunity to go play in some mud!
Which speaking of mud… After our 5k we were an absolute disaster and instead of waiting in line for the 1 hose to clean off we went on an adventure to a car wash and used the power sprayer. That in itself should be considered an obstacle cause that spray stings! Yet surprisingly does not get the mud off as easily as you would think. Also yes there was a line for the car wash and yes as we were spraying ourselves down with the power sprayer we were getting judgement from this guy behind us. No we don’t regret our decision, the car wash was the right move to get a proper body wash.
Y’all I have discovered Racquetball and I am in love!!!!!! It is honestly one of the most fun and stress relieving things I have ever done. Plus as a bonus I end up going for an hour to an hour and a half and don’t even notice. It’s nice to do something exercise focus that’s fun, I don’t know why it has always been a struggle for me to find activities to genuinely enjoy.
So since that was such a short declaration of my new found love of racquetball it’s time to tell how it came to be.
Story time!
A couple months back at pool league my captain mentioned how in the winter he plays racquetball for exercise and I immediately asked him to teach me. He being happy to find someone to play with gladly took on the task of teaching me the ropes. Day 1 of racquetball did not go well, but by day 2 Captain had told me I had improved by 110%. I was really uncomfortable the first time and I wasn’t really sure what I was doing, but by the next time I had already gotten some confidence and decided to fully throw myself into learning racquetball. Since then I’ve slowly gotten better.
Now with that said I actually am not good even with improving 110% since I started, but I found out after I started playing my Dad apparently is super good at racquetball. So I challenged him to a match today (also today is my bros bday!) and let’s just say I got absolutely destroyed multiple times. It was a stupid decision trying to play in the big leagues. My Dad hasn’t played since I was born (probably) and I swear he didn’t even release half of the beast that he probably is on that court. In fact he saw me scrambling around and gave me 2 pity points (and we played 3 or 4 games)!
Moral of that story is that I have a new goal in mind: Beat my Dad (or yeah know actually get well deserved points and not pity points). Actually I would suffice at just getting better at racquetball all around, but defeating an opponent is such a satisfying goal too.
Also on a completely random, but still relevant note racquetball has made me buy an actual gym bag and it’s got a special compartment for my shoes. It’s so nifty.
Y’all I am getting behind on my goals I gotta buckle down on some of these. Luckily I have just went through my kitchen and have discovered that I am quite healthy. Meaning: I have completed a goal!
What I have learned about me and my healthy recipes is that I buy the same groceries and just mix it up differently. Which means a lot of this crosses over, but it allows me to consistently eat the same things and have them be different. Keeps my kitchen stocked with the basics and still have a variety of choices.
Also, a lot of these things can easily become unhealthy if you over do them. So when I am focusing on cooking healthy meals I make sure not to go ham on any thing and try to keep portions low for heavy carb things. Cause not all carbs are bad.
Let’s be real, everyone should have health and fitness goals. It’s a factor in life that’s super important and directly correlates to how you live your life.
Get some knowledge and build an arsenal of healthy meals. Criteria to meet the goal is food that I have cooked over 5 times. I try plenty of recipes only to never make them again.
I have struggled with severe acne for the past 10 years and I’m at a point in my life where it affects me more than I’d like to admit. I am actively working on this and have dermatologist appointments set up this month. So, hopefully this will actually be completed way before I turn 30.
Over the years I have tried a lot of things, but nothing that I have committed to fully and stuck with for longer than 6 months. I want to find something that I will love and will want to do for the rest of my life.
Get to and maintain a 59 kilograms weight
I’ve decided this will be my goal weight because let’s be honest who doesn’t have a goal weight. Also, side note I don’t actually use kilograms on the daily it’s just I have yet to figure out how to change my scale and I’ve grown to like seeing my weight in kilograms now.
Keep consistent pace on a full run
This is just gonna take practice, practice, and more practice. Eventually I’ll get there!
This was originally run 100 days in a row, but I’ve since learned that I don’t want to risk injury just to get to 100. So now I have changed that goal to just a month and seeing as I’m not a strong runner, I’d rather not go over board and just focus on my pace. Hahaha! I’d run about 15-20 days every other month and then I would just stop. Then you know what? It dawned on me: I HATE RUNNING. And I just can’t convince myself to do it everyday, just not my thing, so I’ll just focus on running for #5 on this list. So now I’m swapping running with a different cardio: dance. Which includes flailing around for 30 minutes like an idiot. I sense this goal will make my mindset much happier than running ever did.
I did a Tough Mudder 2 years ago and absolutely loved it and would like to get another one or a different obstacle course race under my belt.
Complete P90X
I have a feeling this is going to take multiple tries…
20 Consecutive Push Ups
Push ups will be the death of me.
Yoga
I don’t know why I’ve never been the biggest fan of yoga, but I feel like everyone does yoga. I suspect there is something there that I am missing and I would like to find out what that is.
Commit and Venture 