Yesterday marked my 11th CrossFit Anniversary – yep, 1 week before Christmas! I cannot comprehend how it’s been that long already. It’s true, time flies when you are having fun :p.
I always knew I had to have some sort of fitness/nutrition focus in my life.
The “Freshman Fifteen” turned into being called the “Freshman Thirty” was something a lot of people seemed to mention as I reached my high school years. It happened to me without me really realizing it or knowing why. Thinking back to what I ate then and how little I understood about macronutrients and energy balance, I now know why!
Knowing that I needed to keep active in some way since graduating and no longer doing physical activity through sports, I joined California Fitness with no clue what I was doing. I just ran on the treadmill every time I went, looking at my arms in the mirror, waiting for the “toned” look to show up. I paired that with a super low calorie diet where I had to buy all their food products and would crush a box of Miniwheats when I could no longer stick to it.
I was clueless.
I recall my roommate counting calories and asking her why she did that? My program had me only counting fat (and I tried to keep it under 5g a day *gasp*). I also did the soup diet many times while I lived in the city.
I eventually moved to Unity onto an acreage where I did Insanity and other workout DVD’s. I really hated those. I hated having to follow along and keep up. I bought a few other programs on the internet and none of them stuck. Eventually, I saw a girl on Facebook doing CrossFit in her bedroom who had a coach online. He sent her a new workout every day and she was ripped. This intrigued me immediately, I wanted a coach, I reached out to him and the rest is history!
It was the week before Christmas and I went head first into a new workout program, learning all these new movements, this new style of training and learning about how to eat well for the first time in my “dieting life”. CrossFit was about eating enough to support your activity but not too much to support excess body fat. It was about eating the 3 macro nutrients in balance and getting it from quality foods.
Learning all about this from my coach who was very passionate about this CrossFit thing lit me up!
I was so excited to do my workouts every day before work and eating well was exciting for the first time, not a chore.
I learned how to train, how to do important functional lifts that would make me strong, fit and able in my life, and learned how to cook.
I didn’t see a need to wait until the holidays were over, I just sent the email and got started.
Little did I know that decision would lead me to become the person who never waits for a perfect time to start anything.
“Just start and figure it out later” is my motto.
I have done this with so many things since then which has led me to success in many areas of my life.
There is no perfect time and there never will be, I’ve yet to find it. The time spent stumbling and figuring it out will provide valuable lessons that help with the overall success down the road. May as well pass that time figuring it out so you can hit the ground running when the time is right.
I am so grateful that I made that decision eleven years ago, who knows, maybe if I didn’t, I would have talked myself out of it, changed my mind, forgot about it and never got started. I don’t even want to think about how different my life would be had I never sent that email to get started.
-Coach Lindsey (Owner)
Photos by Erika Reimer Photography
