Becoming the fitness blogger of my dreams?

17 years later, we're about to see + the art of simplicity

Jul 10, 2024

Hi friends! Welcome back to the more-organized-by-the-day-stream-of-consciousness that is my voice. How are you feeling? What’s happening? Is there a cute animal near you?

I’ll tell you what’s happening here. I’m more obsessed with writing than ever. Writing is funny. You ever think about what you’re translating? Where it’s coming from? How you know which word comes next? How something you feel in your toes can come through the movement of your hands? Or how something you felt decades ago is only now being processed?

Seventeen years ago, I wanted to be a fitness blogger. Something about the idea of fitness struck me dead center in the chest. I was hooked. But I went about it all backwards, trying to look the part rather than become the part. I saw girls with “morning abs” (congrats if you were never subject to this alluring delusion) and workout bags and protein shakes and overnight oats (which I cannot believe are actually sold premade now… c’mon people!) and thought, “well, if I have those things, I’ll be just as happy as them!”

Sound familiar?

I tried and tried and tried, but I just couldn’t find that thing I was searching for. Of course, at the time, I didn’t know that thing was myself. Turns out when you’re convinced another person’s — or worse yet — an entire industry’s ideal, should be your ideal… self connection is pretty elusive.

After more than enough “copy, paste, repeat” and very little change, I started to suspect that mayyyybe what I had taken as gospel wasn’t the holy grail after all. Oh, drat.

With great trepidation, I went off and did my own thing, explored movement and food and fitness and creativity… and would you believe I began to actually learn what worked for me? It took a whole lot of grit and determination and yearning, and yes, it was embarrassing and heartbreaking to let go of beliefs I’d grasped so tightly about “the right way to be. Sure. Absolutely. But the tradeoff is, I got to take my own journey. Which is more valuable than an affiliate code for “Fit Tea” could ever be.

Curiosity led me to explore things far beyond my comfort zone. Some I embraced (heavy lifting, rest, butter, ice cream) while my instinct to stay away from others was confirmed (business coaches, rigid diets, men in their 20s).

Ultimately, what I discovered is simplicity.

Which may be surprising considering the literal hundreds of thousands of fitness and diets books available, the 1,359 workout classes at the gym, and the endless barrage of influencers with flashy apps and brand deals.

What a revelation. Fitness is actually really fucking simple. Not instant, not easy, but absolutely positively 10000% SIMPLE. Rejoice!

I know it, you know it: the age of social media is ablaze with shiny details. But when it comes to learning useful skills (things that create real fitness), being lost in the details is a recipe for disaster. Or at the very least, an incomplete skillset. A details only approach is like a portrait where the subject’s accessories — earrings, bracelets, necklace, nail polish, handbag, sunglasses — have been colored in, but the structure that supports all those things — their body — is nowhere to be found.

In the broad sense, there are only so many ways a body can move, only so many foundational movement patterns from which all the others (the details) are born. If you’re doing the work of strengthening those skills, you’re also building body awareness that will open the doors to the infinite fountain of creative permutations. It’s like painting. Every possible color you could mix comes from just a handful of base colors. Without access to all the base colors, you cut off your potential to experience the infinite color possibilities. Yet, even if you don’t mix more nuanced colors, you have the ability to paint something beautiful using just that basic handful.

So sure all those celebrity fitfluencers are bright and gorgeous, but you don’t need Tracy Anderson (whose monthly studio membership is $900 btw, wtf?!) to tell you how to kick your legs up in the air and wiggle your arms around like a ballerina on lsd. I guarantee your body has better ideas. And to access them, all you have to do is show up consistently, challenge yourself (in useful ways), listen to your body, and do it all with a good dose of purpose.

Oh, and don’t worry, we’re gonna get all up into the what and the how and, wait for it…

the WHY of all these things. It’s gonna be intimate af and fitness af.

Should we even go here yet?

I’m debating this. Shall we get into the wild world of food? I guess we should. I’m confident I can provide a small dose of good information that is better than 99.9% of the bullshit on the internet. I’ll dedicate future posts to this topic, no doubt, but first, I’ll say this: For every person claiming their diet is the “best” diet, there are 1000 others directly opposing them, and 1000 more making tiny adjustments, rebranding it, and selling it as something new. The point is, it’s all marketing.

So let’s break it down, shall we? (If you’d rather not go here… just skip this section, but I know there is a ton of confusion about how to eat well, and I’m about to shed some hard-earned light). Alright. Let’s go.

Did you think of MACROS when I started talking about food? The current conversations seem to consider macros as the “holy grail,” but I want to zoom out further - because we don’t eat “macros.” We eat food, which composes meals, which compose our diet, aka: the way we tend to eat.

My best non-diety diet advice

Before you start eating, pause, take a couple breaths, tune into your body, and maybe, if you’re feeling really crazy, offer a little gratitude for your nourishment and where it came from.
Make an effort to nourish yourself with as much real food as possible. Get on board with eating stuff you can recognize.
Eat a reasonable amount of food. Don’t be eating yourself into discomfort on the regular. Also don’t starve yourself.
Make. It. Yummy.
Eat enough protein. Try to get some at every meal. Supplement with protein powder if you feel like you aren’t getting enough and don’t wanna spend all that time chewing.1 Protein is the BUILDING BLOCK of our bodies; we need it to maintain and rebuild muscle, which becomes especially important as you add more movement to your life, which I’m hoping you might become inspired to do.
Eat enough fats & carbohydrates. They are the FUEL for our bodies (versus the building block that is protein). How you account for these nutrients is up to your personal preferences. And how your body responds is, well… up to your body. You’ve just gotta be willing to listen.
Know it will take some experimenting to see what works for you. Give it time. Some people thrive eating more fat/less carbs, others thrive the opposite way, and still others are somewhere in the middle. Remember those bajillions of diet books?
Have the ice cream (or cake, or cookies) and move on. We know what happens when you make something totally off limits. It becomes all the more enticing, right? One night, you find yourself eating an entire box of cookies and shame at 2 am. Or maybe fishing that cake out of a trash can, Miranda Hobbes style? Listen, there’s nothing wrong with having something that’s not “the epitome of health,” and when you let it be part of your “regular life” in moderation, the tendency to overdo it lessens. But also, sometimes you want the whole pint of ice cream! Celebrate that shit. Your body is wise, and the more you focus on creating a better relationship with your body, the more you can trust each other.

Remember: there are endless ways to go about this. Fixating on relatively unimportant details like “superfoods,” meal timing, food combination, and any of the bajillions of miracle fads popping up every day will more likely than not discourage you from discovering a simple approach that works for you.

Last note: aim to eat in a way that feels good.

Start noticing how you feel before and after meals, and generally throughout the day. Notice what you’ve been eating when you feel better. Notice what you’ve been eating when you feel worse. Adjust accordingly.

Know this will likely change depending on stress levels, activity levels, your menstrual cycle, the weather, whether that guy texted you back, etc.

Pay attention to your habits, and if you don’t like how you feel as a result of your habits on an ongoing basis… maybe it’s time to make a shift.

I went a little off my normal route… but we needed to

And now, despite bemoaning “pitches” a couple days ago, I’m gonna go ahead and give you mine. Well, my non-pitch. My mission statement. After all, what’s a gal without a mission? Just a lil spack floating in the big wiggly abyss? I need a tether to this flying space rock. Plus, I want you to know what you’re in for. It’s only fair, right? (yeah, maybe that’s what the about page is for, but I’m not quite ready to drown in the rewrite).

So here it is: as much as possible, I want all of us here to enjoy the fuck out of life, and I want it to be SIMPLE. For me, simplicity means focusing first and foremost on creating better relationships with our bodies. Through movement, through nourishment, through play, through creativity, through connection.

Fitness either is or isn’t a sexy word depending on your outlook… but I'm gonna take a risk and call the grand symphony of all of the above a pretty stellar recipe for fitness.

TL;DR — there will be no “life hacks” or “perfect diets” or “optimized morning routines” or any other sort of “magic bullet” here (though that is a surprisingly nifty blender). What there will be is showing up consistently, doing the damn thing, paying attention, and adjusting accordingly.

Maybe it’s not the perfectly packaged program the marketing gurus would have you buy. And that’s on purpose. The benefit of not taking shortcuts is that we all get to learn, think, and express freely through the big beautiful process. We get to carve our own paths.

That was a ride, huh? I’m excited out of my mind to share more of this stuff with ya’ll. Till next time!

If being a paid subscriber isn’t your cuppa tea, I get it, and appreciate you being part of this community all the same. If you’d like to support me, I am always accepting coffee and chocolate donations. I know you know.

caffeinate me <3

A simple tactic is to have a 1-2 palm-sized portion of protein (3ish oz/25ish grams of protein per palm) at each meal (I’ll do a post about protein sources another day for those of you who wanna dive in deeper.)

A slightly less simple tactic is to aim for a certain number of grams of protein a day. The (insane amount of) research tends to fall within the guidelines of between .7 grams - 1.2 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight per day for muscle maintenance & building. Experiment and see what works for your hunger, your digestion, and your sanity. Try not to expect a miracle overnight