M's Fitness Journey

25 | she/her | moving and loving SW: 193.8 CW: 189.9 GW: 135 Total Lost: 3.9lbs

[movinthrulife]

Hello!!!

Welcome to my blog! This will serve as a place for me to gather all of my thoughts as I learn to take care of myself. It is predominantly going to be fitness and nutrition related.

I'm M and I've struggled with being healthy my whole life. I grew up in an environment that wasn't the best for promoting health. Early on I developed and, unfortunately, deeply internalized the notion that being thin should be one of the biggest goals in life. I also thought that youth was fleeting and age was to be dreaded. It turns out youth is not as fleeting as I thought - I did not all of a sudden become ancient at 18 OR at 25.

I'm 25 now and I have a very different outlook than I did as a teenager. It's definitely a healthier mindset. My goal for this blog is to document my journey as I work on my health. I hope to develop a better relationship with food, become stronger, and reach a healthier weight. Feel free to follow and tag along for the journey as I continue to learn!

-M

10.15.25

[movinthrulife]

12.2.25 Dinner

I’ve been enjoying cooking foods from different cultures. This one is Greek inspired. Everything is homemade. A bit of a large dinner for me but I skipped lunch today and I’m pretty hungry.

Breakdown:

Chicken in a greek yogurt marinade

Greek Salad

Pita Bread

White Rice

Tzatziki Sauce

820 kcal and 61.7 g protein

[movinthrulife]

Week 2 Review

Weight: 191.8 - 189.9 -> 1.9lb loss

6 gym sessions, 4 with cardio

This week I made it to the gym 6 out of 7 days -- Monday through Saturday. I did 4 cardio sessions total, most of them treadmill. I like to do a stair master after my leg days, but I only did that Monday. Wednesday I was feeling a bit tired compared to my other days -- unknowingly, I was actually starting to get sick -- and Friday was Halloween. Since I was gonna partake in trick or treating I decided to skip cardio knowing I would be walking quite a bit.

Monday: I did another 30 minute stair master session at level 3.

Tuesday: I decided to do a treadmill workout. I was able to increase my running interval to about a minute and a half. I did 15 minutes total and ran .80 miles total.

Thursday: I did another treadmill workout, again running at interval of a minute and a half. I did 15 minutes and ran a total of .69 miles.

Saturday: I did a 50 minute incline walk at 2% incline and 2.5 mph.

This week I logged a 7672 calorie deficit and lost 1.9 pounds total.

[movinthrulife]

Week 1 Review

Weight: 193.8 - 191.8 -> 2lb loss

5 gym sessions, 3 with cardio

I made it to the gym 5 out of 7 days -- Monday through Thursday and Saturday. I followed the plan outlined in an earlier post. I only did cardio 3 of the 5 days, since this was my first week back, I didn't want to overdo myself and end up too sore.

Tuesday: I decided to do a quick treadmill workout. I ran for as long as I could, which currently is only one minute. I then walked until I caught my breath again and repeated this until I hit the 15 minute mark. I ended up doing about .65 miles total.

Thursday: I did another treadmill workout. I did one minute interval jogs again until I'd done 20 minutes. I ended up doing .93 miles total.

Saturday: Since I did a leg day, I decided to do a stair master session. I managed to do 30 minutes at level 3.

This week I hit a calorie deficit of about 3822 kcal, and I lost exactly 2 pounds. Seeing as my calories don't match the weight loss, about half of it must have been water weight from starting a caloric deficit.

[flyingfitandsugarfree]

Fr one of the toughest things about getting into working out is how humbling it is. When you're strong and fit, working out is fun. You can give it your all, you can push yourself, you can celebrate what your body can do, you can move in ways that feel good. When you're weak and unfit, it's a fucking chore. Everything is frustrating and demotivating and nothing feels good and you just feel like a failure. And it can take so long to push through that. It can take so long to build yourself up to a point where exercise doesn't feel like a waste of time, like something designed to mock you.

I know a lot of people - myself included - who loved working out or doing sports in their teens/early twenties but stopped for whatever reason and then can't get back into it because it just doesn't feel good anymore, because your body's not capable of doing the things that made it fun anymore, and it's just frustrating and saddening and leaves you with a sense of grief for some part of your identity you were still clinging onto. You used to call yourself a dancer and then you stopped for five years and now you can't do the splits anymore and learning choreo feels like putting your brain in a beehive and giving it a shake. You used to be so proud of how heavy you could lift and now you're barely able to shift half of what you could before. You used to be a yogi with the most insane handstand game and now even basic arm balances leave you shaking. You have to come to terms with the fact you are not the thing you once defined yourself as and it sucks.

And then there's the people who never had that in the first place. Who've never been fit in their life. Who've never known the sheer joy of being able to move freely, to be able to help others shift heavy items, to sprint for the bus without getting out of breath, to move seamlessly through sequences and choreographies like water. What a fight it must be to push through this phase of being absolutely fucking shit at everything without even understanding the true wonder of the reward at the end of it all. To struggle day in day out, knowing only that it's arduous at best, until they're left thinking, maybe I'm just not cut out for this.

I'm trying to push through it. I'm trying to remind myself I have to go through this phase of sucking absolute balls before it becomes something I actually enjoy. It's tough though. It's tough and I hate it and I'm not going to sit here and pretend I'm not just relieved I can tick the damned thing off my to-do list half the time. It will be fun, it will be enjoyable, but it has to be shit and boring and humbling and infuriating first.

(Also, this is why it's important to find exercise you like doing. Exercise that you do not for the sake of doing exercise, but something you do for fun that happens to be some form of physical activity. But please accept you're going to have to go through the beginner phase and you might be a beginner for a LONG time, maybe even forever, and that's okay!)

[healthandfitnesstipsthings]

[movinthrulife]

Journal #1

10.15.25

About a year ago, I graduated from college and decided to take a much needed break. Unfortunately, after moving in with my boyfriend that break led to the greatest weight gain of my life. I've always bounced around a bit, losing and gaining about 20 pounds. This time, however, I've ended up at around 190 pounds. I'm only 5'0". This is not healthy for me.

I've been working out on and off for the past 5 years now. Around February of this year, I started my latest bout of weightlifting. I'm definitely much stronger than I was then, and now that I feel more comfortable moving my body, I hope to begin losing weight. My goal is to get in the gym five days a week, and at least three of those days must end with some form of cardio. The form of cardio I actually enjoy is the stair master. However, one of my goals is to be able to run again, so I try to alternate stairs with jog intervals as I work on my endurance.

My plan is to follow six week cycles where the first five weeks I push myself to lift heavier. The sixth week will then serve as a rest week where I will lower the weight. The next cycle will start at the weight of the previous cycle's week 2/3. I will be doing this because in the past, I have noticed that around the six week mark, I begin to feel overly fatigued. This always discourages me, and it's definitely one of the reasons I haven't been able to stick with this new lifestyle I've been trying to build.

Ok now onto my actual workout plan. This workout plan has been five years in the works now! I've been doing the same split since the beginning, only tailoring the exercises to fit my goals during the time. The current plan aligns with my desired goals and includes exercises I actually enjoy doing. If I don't like the exercises I just won't do them and eventually I won't enjoy working out anymore. I write this from experience. Trust me.

The Plan:

Monday: Leg Day 1

Barbell Squats

Romanian Deadlifts

Lunges

Hamstring Curls

Leg Extensions

Tuesday: Upper Body

20-minute core circuit

Hammer Curls

Arnold Press

Overhead Extensions

Front Raises

Wednesday: Glute Day

Hip Abductions

Hip Thrusts

Bulgarian Splits

Hyper Extensions

Glute Kickbacks

Thursday: Back Day

Sitting Rows

Lat Pullovers

Narrow Lat Pulldowns

Reverse Flyes

Face Pulls

Friday: Leg Day 2

Good Mornings

Sumo Squats

Calf Raises

Lateral Lunges

Hip Adductions

I hope to get back into the gym the rest of this week. I've been super unmotivated since the weather has been gloomy. On top of that I was getting awful sleep, but that's been better. Tomorrow I get back to it.

-M