New Year Post

I’ve been missing from word press for a while.

After Colombia I had to regroup my thoughts and pick myself up from I rut I started to get into. Although writing out my thoughts and emotions helps me cope with the stress and sadness I tend to get when I don’t have a job and I’m not looking forward to anything, I just needed some me time to think.

I want to become more dedicated to my blog but it is very difficult to write everyday. I think I’m going to make it a goal this year to write at least once a week for an hour. I think that’s doable.

Life has always been a roller coaster ride for me. And I’m either too too happy at one point or too too sad, I can never be okay with myself which is what I’m trying to work on !

It’s been two months without a job but surprisingly I’ve tried to make the best of it and my free time. I’m always thinking…what’s next?

I have a degree in journalism but I haven’t gotten any worthy opportunities although I’ve applied to many here in New York. It’s a super competitive biz.

I love writing but I always say I need to be more creative, more descriptive to feel good about my writing. And so my bestie gave me an idea the other day for taking creative writing classes since I don’t want to go back to school because I’m super duper broke. I think I would really enjoy those and I’d look forward to writing more too.

Since my last writing job for a health publication I decided that I should get a job that I feel I would be happy at, even if it isn’t journalism.

I don’t like the feeling of wasting my life away, which is what I feel everyday when I’m home just reading a book and not being productive. So I set out to find myself a part-time babysitting job and a part-time retail job.

In two weeks I will be starting both and though it took a while to find and apply I landed the jobs all by myself which I’m super proud of! 🙂

I did have a lot of anxiety going into the interviews but I know that staying in the house isn’t going to help me come out of my little shell.

I’m really anxious to start and nervous too because I don’t like new beginnings, they scare me since I’m such a perfectionist. But I think I’m going to do really well. Actually I know I’m going to do really well because I’ve been through a lot. And now I’m learning to appreciate all the opportunities I am given even more.

I’m also getting married soon ! To the best man on earth   ❤

I know this year will be full of changes and challenges but as long as I’m passionate about learning all will be well

 

 

5 Ways Hope Impacts Health and Happiness

Every morning I wake up and do the same routine. I check my Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and Flipboard. The Flipboard app is my favorite because I have bookmarked topics such as health, women’s health, health mind and body. And then I can finally get up, brush my teeth, wash my face and prance down the stairs usually singing a made up song about eating until I get to one of my favorite places ever, ZEE KITCHEN! Yes the kitchen.

But back to still being all cozy. I start my day by using my noggin to store all that helpful health information I get from the news.

This morning I read an article from the Huffington Post. The article focuses on hope and how it is such a powerful thing to have in life.

I would say I lost my way at around the beginning of my junior year of college. I was feeling the affects of two break ups in one because one was a rebound relationship and the other a serious 2 year and 10 month relationship, ugh! Because of it I started drinking a lot in college and I just always wanted to get drunk to forget. I was stressed and heartbroken and those two things combined were not good.

I was stressed because I had gone through 3 years of college only to realize that I didn’t know if journalism is what I wanted to do because I was never confident in my writing.

I was heartbroken and never wanted to be alone. I always looked to hook up with guys and by hook up I only mean kiss. When you aren’t in control of something in your life you want to have it in another area at least that is how I think I thought back then. Worst idea ever!

It wasn’t until senior year, winter break that I decided to make a big healthy change. I needed to stop feeling so sad all the time and be healthy. I started to go to the gym while at home in Long Island and I absolutely loved the feeling I had after a workout. Although 30 minutes of the elliptical wasn’t much it made me feel a lot better about myself.

My second semester senior year, I drank a whole less. I didn’t drink to forget this time, I drank to celebrate finishing my home work early. I drank my 95 calorie Michelob Light, lol. I went out a lot less too because I was focusing on me and wanted to stay healthy.  I worked out almost every day and started eating and cooking healthier.

I still got sad from time to time because it seemed everyone around me were in relationships and I wasn’t. Date nights were alone nights for me and that is when I used to cry by myself and wish life were easier or had somebody to care for me. I had a really difficult time all through out college, but I got a lot of lessons out of it, ones that I cannot replace and ones that I am thankful for. I found fitness while I was there, my number one love now. I also found life long friends. Alyson, Ethan, Melanie and Nelson. These are my best buds and I wouldn’t have survived college without them. I knew they knew I was sad but they cared for me. They cared for me when I was sick in bed for a whole week on some strong crazy ass codone medicine for the flu, they cared for me when I felt at my lowest about everything, they simply cared about me, something I thought wasn’t possible but it was and is.

After graduation I had some dark times too. I was so angry at myself for not knowing what I really wanted to be in life and I felt like a failure to my parents. I had so much anxiety and all I wanted to do was work out.

I started working at TGI Friday’s only because my dad kept nagging me about finding a job. He kept telling me well you can’t sit on your butt forever except now that I think of it I could of been worse. I could of gained weight and started stress eating how I usually did at college but I didn’t. I tried to stay in control in some aspect of my life.

I quit working at Friday’s because I felt myself getting unhealthy physically and emotionally. I would not eat at the times I should and found myself starving at the end of my night shift at 1 a.m. gulping down fried chicken and mashed potatoes. Not good! I felt like I could do so much more because I have a degree in journalism. So I quit and focused on what was healthy for me.

Days came and went and I felt antsy. Applying to jobs and not hearing back. I just wanted to know where my future would lead me but there is no way of knowing that. I couldn’t give up hope. I had to keep thinking that someday I would find something suitable for me and my interests.

I had gone too far to lose hope. Working out kept me going. When all is failed the gym never failed me.

“When all is lost, all is left to gain,” is what I want my first tattoo to say. It’s my most favorite quote in this world because it has always motivated me. Being lost is only temporarily because what is meant to be will always find it’s way as cliche as that is.

So when nothing else was working. I thought about plan b and c. I decided I wanted to become a personal trainer because I was so great at working out, lol. I’m kidding. I wanted to become a trainer because I wanted to reflect that wonderful feeling of accomplishment onto somebody else. This I what I am passionate about. Fitness makes me happy.

After all my doubts I put myself together. With the help of my mom I got my study materials to become a personal trainer. 

I want to be a personal trainer, I want to compete in a bikini competition, I want to be a fitness writer and I will do all of those things and will be.

Aside from fitness I am also grateful for the wonderful people in my life who have kept me going too. They never let me lose hope and neither should you.

“When was the last time you lost your way? Maybe you experienced a job loss, divorce, or an illness. How did you get back on track? I used to think about hope as just another fluffy, positive emotion, present for a short period of time then disappearing. It wasn’t until I lost my own way that I realized the importance of hope. I burned out after practicing law for seven years, and toward the end of my practice, I couldn’t figure out the next steps in my career. I had no idea what to do next and realized that I had lost my way. I needed to re-craft a new point B.”

Click here to read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paula-davislaack/hope-wellbeing_b_2815246.html

 

 

 

 

 

Put In The Hard Work And You Will Get Far In Life

This post is from Friday, February 22. I wish I had time to add more content to my pages and shoot some video for my workout section. I worked every single day this week and I am so pooped!

Personal training is hard work. It’s even harder when all you’ve been doing for the past 5 months was getting up in the morning, taking your sweet time to make breakfast, working out, taking long showers, instagraming, tumbling, facebooking, eating again, studying for your PT test after you’ve realized you have spent countless hours on billions of social media, eating some more, and then again and then going to sleep (hence my past 5 months).

Besides my morning struggles to get out of bed, meal prep for the day and get out the door quick enough, training to be PT has been a great learning experience. There is never a day that I don’t learn something new, whether I learned it from someone I had a conversation with, I read it in my PT study materials, I read it through the news or by Googleing it. PT’s have to be up to date much like journalists, the concept isn’t new to me, the information is.

I wanted to write a post yesterday but my bed would not let me. I’ll write about yesterday and today, a dual post!

“TGIF!”, is what I said to myself as soon as I woke up yesterday morning. I had my first official session with Consuelo at 10 a.m. I got up at 7:30 a.m., got ready, cooked ground turkey meatballs, with steamed sweet potato and broccoli for lunch, then cooked my breakfast, ate, and tried to remember the workouts I was going to do with Consuelo but remembering was hard so I took the paper that I wrote down the workouts with me and was off to work.

I am so used to waking up at 10 a.m. so this week was rough on me. I definitely wasn’t a happy camper but you have to do what you have to do right? Anyways my crankiness disappears when I’m at the gym, it’s like I rejuvenate as soon as I walk in, lol.

This week was definitely a huge change for me and this weekend I’m taking a much needed break. Next week I will go to Bally’s on the weekend but this weekend I’m taking the time to study and to chillax for a bit. It has been a lot to take in. I never knew there were so many parts to being a personal trainer until I saw it with my own eyes and lived through it for a week.

Right now I’m calling it a paid PT internship because I am not an expert yet! There is so much to learn from knowing how to work around injuries to talking the talk to looking the part. I have the looking the part part, haha but everything else is in the works. I have to get used to being at the gym and being surrounded by so many people again. Since I spent a lot of time alone I got comfortable with just thinking about myself, my family, my friends and my boyfriend. Now I have to be willing to care about others and I do. I said I always wanted to help people because I never did much volunteering. I see it as a way to give back to everyone who wants to be healthy. I’m always touched by people’s stories whether fitness related or not. People overcome so many things. So yes anything is possible in this world.

I never have much direction in my personal posts so bare with me!And I say so alot…

So yesterday I wasn’t fully there at the gym in the sense that I feel like the only inexperienced one there although I know I know more than most people at the gym. I feel like that has affected my ability to talk to members these past two days aside from the friendly conversations I had at the beginning of the week.

I want to know that I’m giving the right workouts to the right age groups and how to work around injuries. That is what I’m going to become more knowledgeable today, tomorrow and Monday.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I have scheduled best starts and I want to be fully prepared. Although it seemed like I had it all together this week I was super stressed and tired. I know its all about just getting back into the hang of working again ,but it’s also more than that.

What I’ve learned this week is that some people become PT’s just as a part time job because it’s a hobby. And some turn it into a career. They live and breathe fitness. I honestly thought I wouldn’t start working as a PT until May, then from there I figured I would apply to jobs, I would have a lot of content up on my blog because I would have more time to construct but being a PT came sooner than I expected.

I haven’t been happy with a job in years. I’ve been a cashier at a supermarket, a server at a Mexican restaurant, a hostess right after graduation (that’s a whole other story). It feels lovely to finally feel like I’m getting a grasp on life again because it’s been a bumpy ride.

So I’m not upset that I came early but I do this thing where I question myself a lot. Like am I fully ready? Everybody tells me that I’m going to do great at Bally’s because there are a lot of Spanish members and right now I’m the only Spanish speaking female trainer. That’s good and all but it isn’t everything.

So going back to my day yesterday. The first session with Consuelo went well. We talked about life and everything came naturally while I was training although I was super nervous. They say often time PT’s are like therapists for members because they make have other things going on and the escape from it by going to the gym. I do that myself, escaping from all the stresses. I’ve learned that becoming healthy does make you happier, it makes you feel like you have control over something but it doesn’t stop the fact that you may have other worries besides your health. I want to write a post about that soon in terms of my own experience.

Yesterday after my session I shadowed PT Conrad as he trained two girls for fitness competitions. The first one was preparing for a physique competition and the second one a bikini competition. Conrad is one tough trainer and those girls are so strong! Conrad told me in terms of my body I had the foundation to start training for one if I wanted to because I’m lean.

After having watched two hours of training I decided right then and there that I would train for a bikini competition later on in life. It is the body I’ve always wanted. I want abs, I want toned legs, defined arms with muscle and nice calves. Training for a competition would definitely help me with being a PT because really people do judge you on how you look. If girls want to look lean like me they will train with me. But if they want more muscle they would train with PT Pita.

I am in no way financially and physically stable to train for one yet but it’s on my list of things to do in life. Maybe in a year or two when I can afford it and when I fix my hamstring, my bicep tendon and my knee. All I need is for my groin to be pulled again like in tennis and it’s a wrap! -___________-

Any who, I’ve been thinking about my future lately. It’s always changing. This time though, something tells me it’s for real now and it’s here to stay.

I plan to improve as a PT, keep writing and inspiring others, get my MS in sports nutrition or nutrition and exercise science, compete in a bikini competition, freelance for fitness magazines and the rest is still unwritten, well so is this, but you catch my drift!

I’m going to enjoy my couple of days off. Prepare myself for my CPR test on Monday and relax.

If you have read my mini short story. High five! You’re awesome.

Good day beautiful people!
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