At a Crossroads

Hey guys! It’s currently Friday night at 1am, but I can’t sleep because my room is 1000 degrees and I have ice cream running through my veins (not a decision I regret though). I’m sitting outside (much cooler) watching drunk people slowly trickle back from one of the wilder parties of the year. I wasn’t feeling it-I spent my night with my only friends I need:

Kidding. All jokes aside though, I’ve never actually had Ben and Jerry’s, so my roommate and I decided to fix that! But today’s recap is for another post. I have a slightly more serious (how serious am I ever? Let’s be real here) post for tonight. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and reflecting. I guess this past month or so I’ve been feeling a bit of blogging identity crisis. What’s the point of what I’m posting? Is it interesting? Deceptive? (I hope not). Who am I writing to? Who am I trying to please?

In this post, I’m going to attempt to piece my thoughts together in a way that makes sense, as much as possible.

Tonight, I spent some time reading through some really old posts from another blogger-one that inspired me to blog wayyy back when.

Additionally, my blogging was slacking for a bit there, thanks to my so-called food rut.

I guess here’s what it comes down to. When I’m eating junk and feeling bad, it’s hard for me to be passionate about the things I care about and love and find SO incredibly interesting-nutrition, metabolism, etc. It’s something I truly am passionate about, but when I’m not following my own advice, it’s hard to find that spark.

I feel like my blog has really more fallen into what I tend to call it, a food and fitness blog, versus a healthy living blog. This isn’t inherently a bad thing, but it ends up turning into lazy posts where I throw up pictures of my food and say “This is what I ate.” Don’t get me wrong, this is fantastic for me to look back on. But what value is in that content? A lot of what I’ve been eating hasn’t been particularly healthy, so who am I hoping to inspire?

On the other hand, I find myself not talking about my exercise and fitness-just brushing it off. Even though, as a food and FITNESS blog, this could be a big thing. And it’s a big part of who I am that gets neglected quite a bit! But here’s where I run into trouble-and as I’ll probably elaborate on in a minute, maybe the source of my blog rut-I’ve been worrying too much about what people will think. Will they say I’m exercising too much? But here’s the thing. Everyone is different. My exercise routine is balanced, and I look forward to most of my workouts. Crossfit is fun. I pick and choose the workouts I go to based on what I would find the most fun. If it wasn’t fun, I wouldn’t go. Also, I’ve been an athlete my whole life. I’m in good shape. But I tend to be self conscious about the fact that I usually run in the morning, and then do Crossfit in the evening. So I don’t discuss these things. But I really should! It shouldn’t bother me what people think because I know what works for me. I love running, and training for races, and I love Cross-training. So be it.

And onto the topic of caring what others think…I’ve ALWAYS wanted Fitness is Sweet to be a positive place. I don’t want to be negative in my posts. And there’s one topic I absolutely hate talking about, but I’m going to talk about today. This is a weird one though-I’m not worried so much as to what others will think, but rather what future me will think. I cringe at all those past-Aurora posts freaking out over this or that, and all those random “a-ha” moments (OMG I need to eat Paleo! OMG I need to avoid gluten! UGH.)

So this post is probably not one I’m going to look back and love, but it is what it is. Because the one topic I HATE talking about is weight. But hey, why not talk about it then?

I’m in college. It’s spring quarter. Nutrition seems to once again have gone by the wayside. So here I am, up a few pounds. And running SLOW (priorities, right?). And as much as I HATE discussing this, here we are. Because as much as I preach a healthy lifestyle, I never really did figure it out. I never returned to my pre-college weight, which drives me crazy, and I never returned to my pre-college eating. I’m active, which is fantastic, but my eating habits clearly leave a bit to be desired. Sure, I eat my vegetables, but a lot of sweets and snacks never make it to the blog. I guess I’m at a crossroads because I’m ready to really dig into this issue, but not too sure where to start because after all this time I’m still not there!

I feel like the extra pounds are really holding me back, in terms of my confidence and my athletic capabilities-I really want to PR my half this fall!

This past week, I’ve been trying to focus on staying calm and mindful, which helps but is still hard to stick with!

And at the same time I want to make myself healthier, I also want to have healthier content. I want to show delicious, nutritious meals, not just thrown together pictures of froyo and muffins.

However, I firmly believe that a negative attitude and negative relationship with food is never going to help with weight loss, so there is going to be none of that here. Which is why I have zero regrets about that Ben and Jerry’s-it was delicious! And it’s over, and I don’t regret it. I don’t plan on eating it every night forever, but it is what it is.

So I guess the summary of this long and super rambling post is that I’m going to take better care of my health and also work on improving my blog content-but I also think the two go hand in hand!

So if you made it this far, thank you! I know this post will probably make me cringe later, but I also think it is important. As bloggers, it’s easy to paint a healthy glow on everything, but we’re not always as healthy as we make ourselves seem to be! That’s very important to remember!

What makes you uncomfortable?