Hello! My name is Jordan and I am currently a student attending Penn State University. I am currently majoring in nutritional science, and hope to pursue a career in a similar field. I was born in Arizona and have moved around a little bit as I grew up. I was never someone that grew up, knowing exactly what I would like to do when I get older. I have many different hobbies and interests, so I always try new things. My mom helped spark a huge interest in nutritional and physical fitness for me. She is a woman with such amazing determination and she would never let anyone hold her back. She has been interested in health and fitness most of her life. My mother use to be in body building competitions, even after having children. She soon became a physical trainer and occasionally worked at weight watchers. Due to my mother and my dad being health nuts, I always grew up around whole wheat bread, diet soda, and many vegetables. I always enjoyed when I would go to a friends house and be able to eat pop tarts, or chips. Now that I am older I realized how much I appreciated that I grew up around healthy food. Even though I did grow up being cautious about food, it is still a daily struggle for me to make the right choices for a healthy lifestyle. I chose to major in nutritional science because I never want my weight or bad habits to affect my life. Time is a precious thing to have, and so I know it is not worth risking. I am creating this blog to help anyone that stumbles upon it by just giving a little encouragement to get up and try to life a better lifestlye. I understand decisions can be some of the most difficult things but making tough changes, and choices are always a little easier when there is some encouragement. :)
In may of 2011 I ran my first 5k, and that was such an accomplishment for me. I am not much of a runner but I read once that the hardest step for a runner is the first one out the door. I have pushed through that first step several times and each time I get out my door, I realize I am proud of myself and what I have accomplished. I try to run every week, with varying distances, trails, and speed. Running can start with just a few walks around the neighborhood, or jogging. Take your time and do what you can. I also go to the gym and lift weights. People may not believe that lifting weights will do much, but when you put in the determination and time your heart rate can rise and the number on the scale can lower. The most important thing is to just move. Be sure to listen to your body and know the difference between a good hurt like being sore and a bad hurt that can lead to injury.
Another very important aspect of living a healhty lifestyle is diet. I truly believe it is 80% diet and 20% exercise. Diet and food choices are the most difficult decisions one will face from day to day. One thought that always helps me is to remember how good food does tastes when you sit and enjoy it (like my delicious ice cream above, a taste I will never forget). Overtime indulging in food containing a lot of fat and sugar, it begins to lose the fun and excitement in eating and starts to show around your waist. So just try and keep a special meaning to ice cream and chocolate for little joys in life every once and a while. I try to stay around 1200-1400 calories a day, and drink lots of water. I write down everything I eat so keeping track of my calories is one less thing to try and remember. It is such a satisfying feeling of being full on vegetables and good protein versus the feeling of hunger from sugary and fatty foods. If your just starting or have been wathcing what you eat for a while now, you will realize the hardest part is resisting food, but trust me when I say this it will get easier to resist as time goes on. Another tip is to never completely shut off ceratin foods, that will cause the desire for the food to increase. The trick is to make eat it on only special occasions and watch portions. The best foods to eat are the fresh ones, that don't have any added chemicals you cannot pronounce. Fruit and vegeatables can delicious and will have better influence on your body than and processed or chemically created foods.
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One more tip to living a healhty lifestlye is to have goals and people to encourage you. Personally, I create goals almost every day, the key is to make sure they are reasonable (hint: most things in life are possible, just possess the power to prove it to yourself). Write your goals down and either hang them up or put the list in a special place, just so you its easy access for you to cross them off. Another useful tool is to have people who you can look up to. I look up to my mom and brother (first picture) especially. Both are affected with muscular dystrophy. The disease affects the muscles in their hands, and legs causing difficulty with day to day tasks such as walking and writing. Both members of my family have accomplished so much, my mother is an amazing, gorgeous woman who can do anything she puts her mind to. My brother is a senior at Penn State and he has already traveled to multiple countries and succeeds in school every year. Together they push me to treat my body right because it is so common for someone to take something as simple as walking for granted. Unfortunately, some people would do anything possible for legs to walk, and I would never want to take something like that for granted. I receive daily encouragement from them and if you don't have someone around to always encourage you, hang quotes or pictures that push you to live a better life. In the end, though, one must realize the most important person that will keep you going is yourself. Your main reason to be healthy has to be for you and no one else. I always think about all things I want to be able to do in my future and I know I want to be there for my family and friends, so what better way to assure that than to be as healthy and fit as I possibly can. No one can promise you the perfect solution to changing a bad lifestlye into a healthy one except for you. So step up and take the challenge and promise yourself, you will be healthy for YOU, and you will be fun, fit, and fabulous!!!
I am very proud to say I am Sweat Pink Ambassador! We know how to sweat and we know how to do in pretty shoes!
We climb.
We journey.
We balance.
We reward.
We journey.
We balance.
We reward.
