My Fitness Journey

Welcome to my blog! I figured creating my own personal blog would allow me to share more long form content without blowing you all up on IG stories! I’m so glad you’re here!

What better way to start than to introduce myself, talk about how I started my fitness journey & how I got to be where I am today!

Buckle up, it’s a bit of a long one!

How It Started

At the ripe age of 7-8, I remember logging on to our desktop computer with dial up Internet & looking up “how to eat healthy”, “best foods to eat to be healthy”, & “home workouts” — I was VERY independent & so eager to learn. Upon searching the internet, bodybuilding.com came up. From there I formulated a “healthy foods list” & a home workout that I said I was going to complete. I need to try to find the paper because my parents saved it for me & it’s actually the cutest thing ever.

Growing up, I started playing volleyball in 3rd grade & had dreams of playing division 1 volleyball. Once 6th grade rolled around & I was old enough to be in the weight room, I started lifting weights & going to the school’s BFS lifting program. I mainly started lifting for the sole purpose of being the best volleyball player I could be, in hopes of one day playing college volleyball.

Throughout middle & high school, I continued to strength train pretty seriously. I was actually one of the only girls to join the “450 lifting club” my sophomore year of high school — meaning your squat, bench & power clean PR’s equaled 450lbs or above. That was something I was super proud of. I always thought it was so cool that I was just as strong, if not stronger than some of the guys in the weight room.

Senior year rolled around & I committed to play college volleyball at North Dakota State University, something that I was SO excited to do. It was a dream of mine for so long & I was so pumped to have the opportunity to live out that dream.

How It Went

I ended up being super unhappy at NDSU. I didn’t love volleyball as much as I once did, I was missing a lot of school, & I was 5 hours away from family which was really hard for me. I was a Pre-Medicine major (I wanted to be a dermatologist) but decided halfway into my first semester that I wanted to switch to nursing. I knew that with this change, it would not be feasible for me to continue to try to stay on the team, especially knowing how time consuming and difficult nursing school & clinicals would be. I knew I wasn’t going to make a career out of volleyball, so I decided to quit & transfer to Rochester, MN to pursue nursing & be closer to my family. During this time, I packed on about 10-15 pounds because I was using the cafe as a coping mechanism for my unhappiness during this transition. I was not only unhappy with my situation, but with my body as well after my first semester.

It was sort of a blessing in disguise that I moved back home when I did because my mom ended up getting diagnosed with breast cancer as soon as I transferred back home & I was there to take her to her appts and be with her for treatment. I truly believe God knew I needed to be there with her & I was so happy that I was able to be there for my mom during that time.

Now that I was done playing volleyball, I knew I needed to find a way to stay active & take better care of the body that I felt like I neglected for months. So as you can imagine I was extremely uncomfortable in my body after gaining 15lbs. I then decided that I wanted to compete in a bikini bodybuilding competition. I thought that getting ridiculously skinny would make me happy again. This is also when I decided to start my fitness Instagram, @bodyfitbalance. I created this to share the meals that I was going to be eating while in bikini prep to hold myself accountable to my rigid meal plan.

A few weeks into my bikini show prep, I was eating tilapia & broccoli or asparagus & chicken for pretty much all of my meals, with your occasional rice cake with almond butter as a snack. On top of the extremely strict meal plan, I was doing 30-45 minutes of cardio every single day on top of workouts 6 days a week. I was miserable. I lost weight EXTREMELY fast, but at a cost for sure. I was no longer recognizable. If you know me, you know that I’ve always been on the thicker side. However, most of my rips were now visible. It got to the point in April of 2017 where I had run myself into the ground. This unsurprisingly resulted in me getting injured. I hurt my knee & decided to back out of competition prep. Little did I know that this was actually a HUGE blessing. It allowed me to realize what I was doing to my body. I wasn’t showing my body love. I wasn’t fueling my body properly. I wasn’t even allowing my body to rest. This is when I realized that I really needed to change my mindset & heal my relationship with food and exercise.

Slowly but surely, I started working on my relationship with food. I allowed myself to eat whatever I wanted. At times this meant that I consumed far too much food. This was because for SO long I had such an unhealthy relationship with food & exercise. I viewed SO many foods as “bad” or “off-limits”, so when I finally got to eat them I went a little overboard. Sound familiar? A LOT of women that commit to restrictive fad diets end up doing the exact same thing. Then, of course, you end up punishing yourself with excessive cardio and/or training sessions. It took me a LONG time (months) to break this habit. I finally stopped labeling foods as good or bad & focused on enjoying everything in moderation instead of restricting myself. From then on my relationship with food improved tenfold.

Once I started incorporating more balance into my life with nutrition & training, I started to post workouts & realistic meal ideas on my Instagram. On top of that, I opened up about the struggles I had been going through months prior that influenced the shift in my Instagram content. I think by sharing my struggles instead of the boring meals, I became more relatable to a lot of people, which is when I ultimately noticed my page starting to grow. 

During nursing school, I decided to get my NASM-CPT certification & start my own business, Body Fit Balance LLC. Once I found my groove with fitness and nutrition, I became inspired to help others start their fitness journey & live a happy, healthy & balanced lifestyle. 

Before I knew it, it was doing better than I ever could have imagined. I was able to quit my nanny job & work on my business full time while attending nursing school. 

Once I graduated from nursing school, I decided to try to work as a nurse so I felt like I wasn’t wasting my degree. After 5 short months of working in the trauma ICU, I decided to quit because I was extremely depressed & burnt out. It was nearly impossible to work 40 hours/week in the hospital while trying to run our businesses full time & attempt to have somewhat of a social / family life. I was in one of the darkest places of my life when I made this decision but knew it was the right one for me. Since December of 2020, both Zach & I have been focused solely on managing our online fitness business & it has been the absolute best decision we have ever made. Obviously, it’s always hard taking that leap to invest in yourself & your business, but in order to be truly successful, you cannot be afraid to bet on yourself — if you work hard & stay consistent, it will pay off!

How It’s Going

For the past couple of years, I have been pretty consistent with my training & nutrition. My goal for the gym is to become the strongest version of myself. I no longer care about striving for a certain number on the scale or pant size – I am only concerned with being the strongest, healthiest, happiest version of myself. I care more about how I FEEL than any number on the scale. I only pray that everyone will get to this point in their fitness journey because truly, it is such an amazing feeling. This is why we create new fitness challenges every quarter because we want YOU to feel the same way – care more about how you FEEL & perform vs. getting caught up on a number on the scale. We want you to get to this point with your nutrition & exercise where it’s just second nature, you don’t have to think about it. It has become automatic. 

You see, you shouldn’t be MISERABLE on your fitness journey. You should be implementing small changes here and there to your daily life that add to your life – you shouldn’t have to make crazy sacrifices, do crazy workout routines, or any insane fad diets to see progress. Balance is key. In order to truly make these healthy habits last a lifetime, you must make them realistic & sustainable to implement. It takes time, but with practice & consistency, you will get there. I promise.

It has taken me YEARS to get to where I am today. I am at such a great place now, but I want you to know it obviously wasn’t always like this. I also want you to keep in mind that I still make my fair share of mistakes, I still fall off track with my nutrition & workouts, I still make excuses for myself from time to time, I still have days where I am not motivated, nor do I want to be disciplined, I still struggle in life, I still face hardship, I still have dark days. I am not perfect. I am human, just like you. However, from the start I have made a promise to myself that no matter how tough life gets, I will never give up on myself — I will never give up on my business, my community, my fitness journey & health, my mental health, or my relationships. 

If you are starting your fitness journey or currently on your fitness journey, I BELIEVE IN YOU. You can do hard things & you are capable of SO much more than you think you are. Take it one day at a time, give yourself grace & strive for consistency over perfection. Small changes lead to big results. DO NOT GIVE UP.

Bailey

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