I like to move it, move it!

Anyone who knows me, knows how much I love to exercise. Ironically, I've never been the sporty type. I was terrible at ALL sports at school. I'm not a team player, I can't run fast, I can't catch a ball and I had have very thin, weak wrists. That pretty much meant my only extracurricular choices were the choir and guitar lessons. (time well spent I think!) But can anyone say, "Nerd?!" Needless to say, I didn't move around much, aside from walking to and from school. I was fortunate enough to be blessed with my father's fast metabolism and so, despite being mostly sedentary, and having a voracious appetite, I never really gained weight.

Can anyone say, "Skinny?!"

That all changed when I hit my late 20s! All of a sudden it was like I couldn't even LOOK at food without it finding its way to my hips. (Read yesterday's post to get a better understanding of what most people incorrectly call, the ageing process.) I had actually been gymming for many years by that stage. When I was about 18, my older sister persuaded my parents to take out a family contract at the new Health and Racquet gym opening in Westville (remember those?!) I wasn't much of a gym fanatic, and I had very little clue as to what I was doing, but I went fairly regularly. Still, it was only when I suddenly had a weight gain issue that I actually started paying close attention to the exercise I was doing and the fact that it WASN'T WORKING.

I signed on with a personal trainer for a couple of months and I paid attention to what he showed me. I learnt a bit, but I found he wasn't really listening to what I actually wanted and so I decided to go my own way. I became an avid reader of fitness magazines and I made friends with fitness instructors at the gym and I watched personal trainers and gradually, I started learning the right form and the best exercises to achieve certain aims.

I became obsessed, often exercising twice a day, doing an hour of cardio and then an hour of weights but STILL the extra body fat refused to disappear. I was getting stronger and stronger, focusing a lot more on weights than cardio (I get so BORED with cardio!!) By the time I shot my music videos for my second album, Unspoken Truth, people were jokingly calling me Madonna, and it wasn't due to my music success so much as it was to the biceps and triceps I was developing;)

My gym partner thought he was pretty funny taking this pic!

It was only when I made a decision, finally, to study exercise science, that things started to change. Studying coincided with our going organic and I am 100% sure that one complimented the other. After several years of exercising, the last, stubborn bits of body fat began to melt away. Hooray! Ironically, I was back down to exercising once a day, sometimes only 3 times a week.

So why, when I was exercising less, did the body fat decide to finally shift? Well, for one thing, I was finally realising the power of food over my body shape and size, and for another, I was exercising smarter, rather than harder. 

Over the years, my fascination with food has taken me down many different roads, but I never quite GOT it until I learnt the true meaning of real, organic food. I bought everything that was labelled "health food" and "low-fat" and I mistakenly thought I was doing everything right. Yet I was still feeling unhealthy (I kept getting sick) and I wasn't losing any body fat despite exercising like a demon.

Studying exercise science finally helped me to learn the proper way to exercise. I wasn't doing too badly in some areas, but in others, I was WAY off track. I found it fascinating to learn how the body actually works, from the tiniest of cells, to the blood vessels, muscles and bones. I realised that it wasn't one thing or another that was going to change my body, it was a COMBINATION of things. 

Going organic made me take an even closer look at my body and its functions and I realised that I was almost putting in TOO much effort when it should've been so simple. I didn't need to go and hunt out the "healthiest" health foods, and I didn't need to count every calorie and weigh everything, I didn't need to avoid fat, it wasn't about my blood type and it wasn't about eating strictly every 3 hours. It was simply about eating real, organic, whole foods and nothing else.

The minute I started giving my body what it needed, the exercise I was doing started paying off. The fat literally melted off and has stayed off. My exercise routine has changed as well. Now I exercise my body as a whole, rather than isolating certain muscles. It will take years of work and MANY exercises to focus on each individual muscle and, frankly, my days of spending 2 hours in a gym are over. I have a life to live! I love to gym, but I don't love it as much as I love to spend time with my GLM. We gym together, granted, but we are usually surrounded by loud, sweaty males... Need I say more?

We have talked a fair amount about food and health in the last few weeks, so, I think it's time we talk exercise! The next couple of blogs will be focused on exercise and why it is so necessary, but also, how to do it so that it doesn't take over your life, but you STILL feel the benefits of it.

Until tomorrow!