Health and Balance with Z

Hi everyone, welcome to my first blog post with the Health and Balance with Z blog. I appreciate you going to my blog site to see what I have to say whether you a friend, family member, or you are just curious to see what I have to say.

My journey to Health and Wellness up to this point has been an interesting one. Growing up I played sports such as Baseball and Racquetball and played both sports in High School and was on the BYU Collegiate Racquetball Team. I also ate healthy sometimes but like most kids and teenagers, I had a lot of sweets, junk food, and other unhealthy foods as well.

During my time pursuing a Bachelors Degree from BYU, a few members of my family tried this thing called Whole 30. The basis of it is that you follow a diet for 30 straight days. I had the bright idea to give it a shot and even posted about it on Facebook. The diet didn’t last very long. I think I broke it in like a day or two. I wish I was kidding! If you were to ask my family what one of their all time favorite Facebook posts of mine were, they would say it was the one where a Twix and a Brownie broke my Whole 30 diet. So needless to say I wasn’t very good at the whole diet thing. At least when I was playing sports growing up, there was something balancing out the times where I ate unhealthy foods along with a fast metabolism and other factors as well.

There came a period in my life between the summer of 2019 and the end of 2021 where I did my Master’s Program and then started my job after graduating. During this time, I did not exercise nearly as much as I used to whether it was due to the Master’s Program, the Pandemic, or just getting used to living in a new state when I moved from my new job. Needless to say, I gained weight and I got out of shape since I wasn’t exercising as much and I was still eating the same way I was before. I got to a point where I wasn’t feeling good and I knew that I needed to make a change.

The question is what factors came in to play to allowed me to start my health and fitness journey:

• I found a method of Exercise that is great for me and that I enjoyed and discovered the effectiveness of certain types of Exercise
• I figured out that being on a health and wellness journey doesn’t mean you have to go cold turkey from things like eating sweets and other unhealthy foods
• I discovered Healthy Alternatives to foods that I commonly ate and incorporated them into my diet
• I came to enjoy certain fruits and vegetables such as Strawberries and Broccoli
• I realized the importance of portion control

I will go into more detail on these points in later Blog posts. Thanks to these factors I have mentioned, I have been able to lose around 70 pounds since the end of 2021/beginning of 2022.

The reason why I am doing this blog is that I want to share things that I have found, things that I have learned, and things that have worked for me in terms of my health and fitness journey in the hope that people find something that works for them. The name of this blog is Health and Balance with Z because I truly believe that balance is extremely important in Health and Wellness whether it’s having cheat meals that you enjoy or sweets as long as you make healthy food choices a majority of the time or having off days in your exercise regimen when needed. Like I said earlier in this post, you don’t have to go cold turkey when it comes to eating sweets or other unhealthy foods.

I look forward to adding more posts to this blog and I truly hope that this blog will make a difference to those who read it. If you made it this far in this post, I want to thank you again for taking the time to read it!