Best Health & Fitness Decisions

This week’s [optional] theme for the Fit Dish link up (hosted by Jill Conyers @ JillConyers.com, & Jessica Joy @ TheFitSwitch.org) is…the Top 5 Best Health & Fitness Decisions. :] I’m just gonna go ahead and assume that it means the best health/fitness decisions I’ve made in my life.

1. Changing my major to exercise biology
   I’ve gone on and on about this, but to date, I still think one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life was to switch my biology major to exercise biology. Back in sophomore year of undergrad, I worked in the music library, and because I have issues love to learn, I would sometimes read the course catalog for fun.
   

   I got to be close friends with the hydrostatic weighing tank. <3

   Shortly after dreaming that I was counting weeds in a vast field because in said dream, I was taking The Population Biology of Weeds (one of the class options for my general bio major), I knew I had to do something.

   Almost every class Exercise Biology had to offer sounded super interesting, so I decided to go for it! Ironically, I never got to take Nutrition for Physically Active Persons, which was actually the course that had made me want to make the switch the most. The professor went on sabbatical and it was only offered every other year. :'( Despite that, I still got to take a crap ton of super-awesome classes.

2. Learning to dance
   I learned Tahitian and hula dancing in undergrad, where I spent 4 years as a dancer + 3 years as the secretary for Na Keiki O’ Hawai’i, a social cultural dance group, and took up recreational pole dancing at Twirly Girls Pole Fitness after I graduated from college and finished taking my MCAT. In between, I’ve taken a whole bunch of other dance classes (e.g. salsa <3), and I love it all. It’s one of my favorite outlets + forms of creativity/self-expression.
   

   The former also randomly gave me the chance to teach weekly dance classes to the community while I was in med school. :D

3. Lifting weights
   This originally started in an effort to be less of a disgrace to my major, which was filled with athletes and other rather-physically-fit human beings. (Not gonna lie, my major had lots of eye candy.) I wasn’t exactly unfit, but aside from dancing, I wasn’t very physically active either. My significant other at the time was an avid runner/fitness enthusiast, so I asked him to teach me to lift weights.Apparently, he taught me well, because in med school, one of the guys at the gym saw me lifting and told me I was a total badass and informed me about the existence of powerlifting competitions, so I decided to enter one!
   

   Here’s me unknowingly setting a state record! :O

4. Learning to cook
   I didn’t learn how to cook until around my sophomore year of college, and only started cooking by myself when I went to grad school. (Back in undergrad, we’d take turns/tag team the cooking.)
   

   One of our tag team efforts included onigiri! <3

   It’s made a world of a difference in my life, both in terms of my health and with budgeting. Out here, there also isn’t too much in the realms of food diversity (I was super spoiled by that in the bay area/at Davis), so if I want to eat something more “exotic,” I usually have to make it.

5. Transmuting this blog into a food/fitness/healthy living blog
   As some of you might have read from previous entries, this used to be an almost-private blog that I created because I’ve been journalling for most of my life, and thought it’d be a nice way to keep that going while simultaneously keeping a couple friends updated on my life after I moved across the country for grad school.Last spring, I busted out of my antisocial bubble and I’m super glad I did, because I love the blogging and fitness community. <3 The support, encouragement, motivation, inspiration, well wishes, accountability and overwhelming positivity that I get from all of you fills my life with joy! :D