Fitness February?!

Not sure if it’s a thing, but I’m going to declare February as “Fitness February”! Most of us start strong starting with New Year’s Day but as the weeks go by, we kind of lose steam. And by fitness, I’m not talking just exercise in a gym. I’m talking about the whole thing. Going back to the definition of Fitness; “the state of being fit or in good physical condition”. To me, this means exercise, nutrition AND mental health, because it takes all of those things in different amounts to be in good physical condition. If I wanted to define “good physical condition”, that is a condition of homeostasis. And what is meant by homeostasis is “the body’s automatic, self regulating process of maintaining a stable balanced environment to function correctly” (being healthy or fit).

If I’m going to be 100% honest, is that I’m still learning. There is always something new to learn, including about ourselves. I was not feeling fit at all recently. I was eating what appears to be a healthy diet to most people. There was nothing that seemed odd about what I was eating. I was reaching my macros. I was eating a good amount of fiber. I was exercising 5 days per week. I ended up very sick. It was a food intolerance and I had recognized it as an intolerance to MSG. Only none of the labels on any packages of food I had eaten had MSG in it. What I hadn’t understood was which foods had NATURAL MSG in it. And yes, it is abundant in nature as well as chemically added to food to taste UMAMI. I ate lots of salads with tomatoes. I had natural parmesan on my pasta (not the shelf stable ones with extra chemicals claiming to be grated parmesan cheese either). I had deli meat that was only cured pork and salt (no extra ingredients, not even sodium nitrate), plus my normal protein yogurts and fruit. I was sick for days with gas, feeling sick, unable to eat (first sick day only taking in 700 calories and sleeping for the whole day, plus tea), and barely making it through yoga classes. It took so long to recover from this sickness with not moving as much, and having to work my way to fit larger amounts of food every day until I got to the amount of calories I needed to sustain and then power my body through workouts after the sickness passed. So what happened was, my body was telling me there was something wrong through extra gas and having slow or delayed bowel movements and feeling sick.

So the lesson is, don’t ignore your body when it’s telling you something is off. A body in homeostasis is more “regular” and does not have uncomfortable symptoms like gas. In doing my research, even healthy foods like tomatoes, aged cheeses, cured ham even with no nitrates, even soy sauce with no added MSG, walnuts, shiitake mushrooms, etc have natural MSG. A food intolerance does not mean you can’t eat foods that can cause an intolerance reaction at all (unlike an allergy where even small amounts can cause real damage to your body), it means you have to be careful of the amounts of these foods and balance it better so you can still enjoy some (just not to an extreme). So it’s balance (like the basics behind homeostasis itself) that we need to learn, just as we need to learn that all or nothing thinking never works for healthy eating or exercising - too little results in fat gain and possible physical damage and too much results in fat gain and possible physical damage. Learn and know your body (and everyone’s body is different - there is no blanket best way that works exactly for everyone-the next person over could eat all the stuff I was eating that made me sick and they would be perfectly fine and then some). Food intolerances are pretty common, but if you have one, take note, because if your body is TOO BUSY trying to digest something that it’s overloaded with, it’ll work on trying to digest and eliminate the substance causing the intolerance INSTEAD of digesting the nutrition from the food and delivering it to your body as fuel and recovery.

So as some of us “lose steam” after a month into the new year, declaring February as “Fitness February”; I want to remind everyone not to give up, even when we have obstacles (like food intolerance “attacks”-because that was what it felt like). We find out things, we learn, we make adjustments with really good educated guesses. We get back on, because consistency beats perfect pretty much every single time. There is no perfect. We are human. Learn and have grace, forgive the fact that you aren’t perfect.

Should you buy that cute gym outfit?

It’s about the 3rd week of January and my inbox is already starting to fill with emails advertising for cute athleisure in all shades of Valentines colorways (aka pinks, reds and purples), of which I’m a pretty much a sucker for. For me, athleisure is what I prefer to wear, in the gym, at home and even out and about if I add some elements to make it not look like I’m taking a studio class right then and there (excluding special events, occasions and fancier dinners). What I like about athleisure is that I feel much more comfortable in it than any other style of clothing. I like that I don’t feel restricted and even form fitting clothes don’t feel restrictive when you raise your arms or move around in general. All of this just got me started thinking about both appropriateness and motivation.

For me, when I do any sort of activity, I have to be comfortable to be all in (doesn’t matter how I look per se, but the mechanics of doing the exercise), whether it is spin class or yoga. For instance, I had made the mistake of wearing a regular bra to spin class and yoga class and the whole time some of my focus went towards adjusting the straps to where they should be. One day I wore a super loose and flowy shirt to yoga and while in down dog, the shirt drifted down and I couldn’t see the back wall or whether my legs were lined up correctly going into a lift and then a 3-legged down dog. This is the same shirt that I love for lifting (as long as I’m not laying down on a bench) and I sometimes wear to spin, because it’s loose and flowy and allows air to cool me (and because I don’t yet feel comfortable to just wear a bra top with no shirt on in front of other gym goers). The clothes you pick to wear for each activity does matter (but your mileage may vary) to some degree.

Which brought me to my next thought, is that since I like athleisure, and I am at the gym a good 5 days of the week and I need the clothes to “perform” in a way so that I can perform, it is kind of motivating in that I want to feel that I look good in the clothes as much as they feel good on me! It is kind of like an extrinsic type of motivation to reward yourself with clothes that make you feel good and comfortable to champion you on to do the activities that you enjoy. So in other words it’s a great way to use extrinsic rewards to help foster intrinsic motivation.

So, if buying that cute gym outfit helps you feel good doing your activity, I say go for it!

Should exercise guidelines be updated?

I read a pretty interesting article in the National Geographic on “Why women may get more from exercise than men”.

Exercise guidelines by the American Heart Association states that people should get 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise (or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise) per week. A study conducted by the Journal of American College of Cardiology of over 400,000 adults in 2024 revealed that regular physical activity was associated with 24% lower risk of mortality in women and 15% in men (150 minutes exercise equated to 22% lower risk of coronary heart disease for women and 17% for men).

Women reached the mortality benefit at 140 minutes of exercise and men at 300 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise per week (for both aerobic and resistance exercise). When exercise increased to 250 minutes for women, risk dropped to 30% and 530 minutes for men. Most likely the difference could be due to estrogen, which can increase the effects of exercise in the blood vessels to the heart by improving blood flow through encouraging growth of new blood vessels.

The key take-away from this article for me is that, if you can work your way up to it physically and fit it into your schedule, there is a lot of benefit for you to do more than just the recommended 150 minutes per week of moderate (75 minutes of vigorous) exercise per week. 150 minutes is great! But 250 minutes for us women is probably not too hard to obtain for a bunch of us and we can get even greater benefits from more exercise!!

NEW YEAR, NEW YOU!

January 2026

Happy New Year!!! You know that cliché “New Year, new you”. I feel like every year many of us decide this. Almost every year when I was much younger, the “New Year, new you” was almost inevitably “this is the year that I will lose weight!! AND keep it off for good!!” I had always started strong, but then by March, something happens and I lose that momentum. Then I would restart around my birthday (after I’ve eaten cake) and my birthday wish was almost always “I wish to finally lose the weight”. I would start again pretty strong and then by Christmas (or even by December) I would lose that momentum again! I would start over and over again (if I hadn’t given up for a year or so altogether).

I did finally break this dieting cycle when I started in 2020, but I hadn’t known it at the time. This was a rough time for me. I realized that I needed a divorce. Things were not right. I was at the highest weight (I definitely stopped weighing myself at 168 pounds – which is a lot on a 5 foot tall frame, but I knew I must have gained more, because my clothes still got tighter and I had to “suck it in” to fit the size 14’s and Larges). Covid lockdowns also began. There was no gym opened (not that I had a membership anyway). I was miserable overall.

My child though did still have Phys Ed class even though school was virtual. There was some attempt through the education system to teach about the new MyPlate and the kids were asked to do exercise videos from YouTube. I kind of thought that ‘at least they tried a little’, because growing up, I did not remember much of nutrition taught at school. Phys Ed was sporty games that suited only some individuals. Health class for a marking period didn’t cover nutrition. I didn’t grow up in a household where nutrition and exercise were prioritized either. I really just didn’t know how things were supposed to be, but the only thing that was apparent was that I had more fat percentage than most of the other kids. I didn’t eat much, especially in front of others to the point that another kid asked how I got so fat since I didn’t seem to eat much. I do remember entering college and trying out the gym. I loved this one leg press machine and focused on it. But when I got married, the gym membership was dropped. I gained more weight. Then when I decided I wanted to have a child, I had troubles conceiving and the doctor suggested for me to try the South Beach Diet. It did work, I lost about 12 pounds and I got pregnant. That was when I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes, early in the pregnancy. I was told it was a warning sign I might get diabetes later in life but that it usually went away after you gave birth. I had to take an insulin shot in the leg every night during pregnancy. Some time after I gave birth, I was told I have elevated or pre-diabetes. It was the same level as what it was when I was pregnant. The diabetes just never left like how they said it would.

Fast forward to 2018. I went to a normal doctor’s appointment and was told my blood pressure was 198/98. My doctor wanted me to go to the emergency room. I bargained with him and he sent medication to my pharmacy for me to pick up and take right away and then another in the morning to help with the blood pressure. I also asked him what I can do to make this better. He told me that I needed to move and that I needed to eat a healthier diet and lose some weight. I asked him to be more specific. He told me start off small. Walk for a little. Increase the walking time as much as I can. I asked about diet. He told me he thinks I should eat meat and vegetables primarily and then add on small amounts of other things. Honestly, I didn’t know how to cook and how much and of what.

2020 me still did not know how to cook, but started to use a calorie tracker app, started walking and hiking on nicer days and followed 20 minute – 30 minute exercise videos on YouTube with my kid. I was losing some weight. Then when I separated, I moved in with my parents and they are retired and enjoyed hiking most days. I went on a lot of hikes and I lost a lot of weight. I lost about 50 pounds in total. I hadn’t changed my diet so much, but just ate smaller portions. I was able to wean myself off the blood pressure medication though because my blood pressure was now more normal. I did still have prediabetes though.

2023 me had joined a costly fitness coaching program. They are all costly because it’s a semi personalized experience. Booking a nutritionist and a trainer separately would have been even much more costly. I was down to a size 4 to 6, but I didn’t feel healthy or fit. The real missing piece was nutrition. I did not know how to cook, so I ate pre-packaged foods and takeouts primarily. With this group is where I learned what nutrition truly meant. It did not mean just reading the labels on the back of the box. Nutrition meant eating whole foods. They had lists of foods for you to pick from that were considered whole. They wanted you to meal prep and every day in a week you would eat the same meals and it would switch weekly. These were not foods I grew up eating regularly, but ones I would try and learn to like or love or at least try and say I didn’t love them.

In December 2024 I experienced a very unexpected death of a family member. I didn’t cope well and drank more than I should and could not get to the gym, could not do exercise even from home and no longer even attempted to meal prep what-so-ever. I just was not present. I did try to eat what I thought was maintenance at first. Then by April 2025, my then company moved me to an office space 50 miles away and I gained “a bad commute”. By May, I decided I needed to move. I moved in July to an apartment with a similar commute as I had previously. I sold my old house by September (I had gained back some of the weight I lost from not tracking, and not exercising at all from December 2024 – September 2025). In September, during lunch I started going back to my old gym (a gym where you can go to any location) and walking up and down the stairs to my job on the 10th floor (I could feel that just doing this was helping because my pants were feeling a little looser). In early October, I joined a new gym in my new area. It was a flat monthly fee and you could take as many classes as you’d like (I discovered that I love spin, yoga and Pilates). At the same time, I decided to remember all of the nutrition advice that I had learned and I weaned off takeouts and wanted to learn to make just simple foods. (I still have things to learn) Later in October, this last company laid me off. I spent a lot of new found time going to yoga, spin and Pilates classes once a day, sometimes twice a day, sometimes I took a day off. When I went to my new doctor for bloodwork in November, I discovered that after decades, my A1C was down to normal and that I was no longer pre-diabetic! So in other words, I really needed much more daily exercise and much better nutrition to get to healthy levels. I just never knew what it really took and now I know. I learned a lot of lessons in 2025: alcohol is a bad coping mechanism and is a lot of empty calories and not making time to do any exercise and sliding back into eating all takeouts means you are going to start gaining the weight back. Fitness is a lifelong journey and if you go off course, it is up to you to find a path back and no fitness coach or nutritionist is there to make you accountable. You are accountable for you. You have to love yourself enough to spend the time to care about your body, because no one else will.

So here in early 2026, the timing is right to say “New Year, new you”! The new me wants to educate and help others, because chances are if I never “got it” before, then maybe others also don’t know. It took a lot of trial and error and I researched a lot too. I want to know the mechanics of how it all works, so I am going to take certified fitness training and nutrition mastery courses in addition to my previous independent searches on these topics plus my own trial and error on myself. I had always felt that the people who need it the most are probably the least able to afford a personal nutritionist and trainer, so my passion project is to figure out a way to educate more people about fitness and to make it more affordable to most.