Although I have always been considered small, my weight has always fluctuated beyond what is considered to be in the normal range of 1 to 2 pounds. The heaviest I have ever been is 123 pounds and I hit that as a freshman in college, unlike most individuals, I was my second heaviest as a freshman in high school. As a three-sport athlete, I ate whatever I wanted thinking that I could burn it off on the field and being bigger, muscle-wise was better. At the time food was more important that what I looked like and I felt stronger weighing at the higher end of the 110s than the lower end, and accepted the extra body fat that came with my diet and muscle. At some point as a sophomore I started to care more about my what my body than what I was putting in it and started being more conscientious of what I was eating. It wasn’t until my junior year that I got my diet in check and began packing my own lunches. I finally realized how much my diet influenced how I felt and how I looked. At the time I knew healthy choices made me feel better, but I wasn’t able to find a solid plan that allowed me to get to the goals I wanted to, so I just went at it blindly and accepted whatever results came from it. The following year I got into weight lifting and found Pinterest and My FitnessPal and began to track everything from workouts to what I ate, hoping to find a pattern that could lead me in the right direction. Within a month I had managed to lose 3 pounds and saw the subtle changes that I was looking for. Unfortunately, with all the information and numbers I was able to track, it became an obsession.
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Having been a three sport athlete all through high school, I never had to worry about finding workouts or plans to stay in shape. With pre season, regular season and summer leagues there was never any long period of down time and what few weeks we had between seasons was considered recovery before the next sport to follow. That changed my senior year after cross country skiing. Cross country skiing was the only sport that spent any time in the weight room and while it was in interesting and unusual place to be at the beginning it was something that I enjoyed and grew to love. It was a place where I saw results in my performance, appearance and confidence in a short amount of time. The lifts were simple and we did low weight but it was enough to want to stay there. After the season was over a teammate and I realized that we wanted to keep improving our level of fitness from skiing rather than just recover for track and decided to devote the following month to hitting the weight room. In search of a plan I hit Pinterest in hopes of finding a workout that was centered at the gym but was simple and easy to follow. Most of the workouts I found were circuit based or involved mostly body weight exercises. Having spent only a season in the weight room she and I started with online videos then would hit the weight room with the knowledge of basic lifts and a simple plan. We did our best to mix the two together using the sets and rep counts from the workout and adding weight to the exercises or modifying them to make them harder. For the month we spent in the gym we made it work and we did see some improvements. Once track started we tried to stay on our gym schedule but track workouts took precedence and neither of us had any desire to hit the weights after a hour and a half track practice.
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