I indulged the writer's block for about 45 minutes but at some point I need to make some dinner and get back to Selling Sunset on Netflix so let's get this party started. I've been thinking about starting another blog for a while, indeed ever since the roaring success of my blog documenting my travels around the USA captured the national attention of... my mum and possibly a couple of her friends. So since I've already got a dedicated fan-base I thought it was about time to make a comeback to the 'blogosphere'.
I am in the process of embarking on a new project in the realm of fitness and wellbeing. "Not another self-proclaimed fitness guru" I hear you cry ('you' being my mum, thanks for reading ). Yes, you got me there. I know it's an industry that is already saturated with people offering advice, information, diet plans and, if your name is Gwyneth Paltrow, selling £50 stone eggs on the off chance that it might bring 'joy and well-being to you' if you stuff one up your vagina. Strangely enough, I am intending to steer clear of all of that kind of stuff and instead I want to learn more and write about Body Positivity, Health at Every Size, and a few other movements and campaigns that are trying to chip away at the entrenched societal standards of beauty and health.
Before I go further, I want to explain that this blog is mostly for documenting my journey of challenging the beliefs that I've long held about myself and how I look. I am aware of the privilege I have as an athletic, slim, white, able-bodied, middle class woman, and my intention is not to claim any of the aforementioned movements for myself. Rather, I want to learn more about them and hopefully be able to share this knowledge with you, dear reader, as well as my friends and family and future clients. The topics of fitness, wellness, weight-loss and health are divisive - people get defensive, offended, angry, upset... the list goes on. The amount of emotion that is wrapped up in all of these things is important to acknowledge. I want to learn more about it all as trying to understand other people and their experiences is SO important!
However, I have spent 13 years seriously struggling with my own body image and relationship with food and exercise so I will hopefully be able to share some of my own personal experiences too. My mission is to help teenage girls and young women find a love of exercise, sport, and movement that has nothing to do with social media aesthetic or societal pressure. In my own experience, it has not been the medical professionals that have helped me the most, but its been the conversations and support from women who have recovered from the same illness. I want to become an 'Expert by Experience' (as they are known in clinical settings) in order to help other people.
I qualified as a Personal Trainer when I was 18 and still at school doing my A Levels. I went on to study History at university and had never really entertained the idea of becoming a PT because I wanted a proper 'career' worthy of an expensive education. How GRIM!? Also, I had pretty much ruled the career out because I felt as though I had to reach a certain level of fitness or 'look' in order to be taken seriously. I genuinely thought that until I reached a level of thinness and muscularity that I deemed acceptable, no one would want to work with me. I can now feel sad for the young woman that felt so insecure in her body that she'd never have entertained the idea of using the expertise in her BRAIN to help other people until her body looked a certain way. Anyway, I have realised that actually I have too much energy and enthusiasm to sit behind a desk all day and I miss my days of sports coaching and fitness instructing. So WATCH THIS SPACE!
Anyway, writing this has taken an absolute age and given that mum has probably already stopped reading now I will sign off without too much ceremony. Stay tuned for updates!
Trinity
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