I want to first start off by thanking Daryl for this opportunity to be a guest blogger. A little about me, my name is Lindsay and I reside in the state of Michigan. My favorite Marvel Character is Captain America, but in the spirit of keeping it real, I just love Chris Evans.  Hobbies that I enjoy are reading, writing, and drawing.

I hope in the future to share my full story but that may take several articles because it is ever changing, so I thought for this article that I would share how my path of health and fitness have changed over the years.

When I first started my health and fitness journey over 10 years ago, my goal was to lose weight.  Now this would have also been a time that social media was not as prevalent but there were infomercials for exercise DVDs and weight loss pills. I started my journey walking 30 minutes a day to work and then would come home and do a 30-minute Jillian Michaels DVD. I kept a food journal, writing down everything that I ate in a notebook and even color coded each meal. As time progressed, I noticed results and those around me did too. I was able to maintain that for a bit, until a change in job changed how active I was and brought me back to habits that I had long given up.

I found the second time around to be a bit more of a rocky path. Times had changed social media had a bigger presence and with that was more to look at with those working in health and fitness but also those that were also on their health and fitness journey. You see, social media can lead to comparison. You look at someone else’s journey and start comparing yourself to them and it creates a bit of a mindfuck. It messes with your head and that can be a challenging thing to shake, I know for me it was.

I was not as consistent as I was the first time around.  I had gotten it in my head that it should be easy. You start a program, eat healthy and the weight should just start coming off, right? Well, it was not, so I would ultimately be good for a week, maybe two and when I wasn’t seeing the results that I wanted I would go back to my old habits.  And I would keep repeating this process. I hated my body and the girl in the mirror.

It's taken me years to build consistent healthy habits because I had to learn to let go of all the stuff that was thrown at me but also the pressure I put on myself.  There is a cartoon picture that I have seen floating around from time to time of a young girl and she has a bunch of magazine pictures scattered about her and as she is looking at these photos, she has a pair of scissors holding on to some skin getting ready to cut it off. That image speaks volumes because it's what we have been taught, it’s what is ultimately being passed on to younger generations if we don’t start having a different conversation when it comes to health. It’s this theory that we need to be perfect and that we need to aspire to look like everyone else, instead of embracing who we are flaws and all.

Where I was then, isn’t where I am now.  I no longer look at it as a weight loss journey, it’s a health journey. It’s not about weight loss or gaining muscle, it's having overall health. In the process I learned to love myself and my body. I don’t look in the mirror and tell that girl everything that she is not, I tell her everything that she is……strong, beautiful, smart, funny, artistic and worthy of all life has to offer her.