anahorvath.com

Tag: fitness journey

  • 5 Pounds Away

    It feels so good to move, doesn’t it?! Well, I really think it feels good. And yesterday, I found myself 5 pounds away from my goal of bench pressing 100 pounds! I think that’s pretty cool.

    After whatever it was that happened earlier this month, I find myself more and more grateful to have a body that is healthy for the most part that can do so much for me. Exercise makes me feel so good. I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t feel strong. I think being strong is empowering and beautiful. I feel like I can handle myself and I feel capable of a lot too.

    I came into my fitness journey with the idea that my upper body strength was pretty decent from all the tennis that I play. Boy was I wrong about that!! My upper body strength was garbage, to put it nicely. I couldn’t do a pushup. I could barely bench press a 45 lb bar. Looking back on things, I have come such a long way. My pushups are pretty subpar, but they exist now. I’m on the brink of bench pressing 100 lbs. I’m working on getting pull ups now too!

    I think working out is so rewarding. You set a goal and you work toward it. You meet that goal and then you set another one. There is always room for improvement. I’m very excited to keep pushing myself and see what else I can do! Now let’s go get this next 5 pounds and I’ll see you all next week!

  • Stop Making Excuses

    Stop making excuses

    I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately and I’ve come to realize that people who complain and then do nothing about what bothers them really bothers me. In other words, making excuses has become a big pet peeve of mine. That being said, stop making excuses. Just stop.

    Now, I can understand when a person has a genuine reason to miss out on working toward their goal or completing some task. If you’re sick or injured, that makes sense. But when you’re feeling lazy or tired or sore, and that’s your reason for choosing to not go to the gym or study a little more or do whatever it is you’re going to do, I’m sorry, but come on!! I get that we all have days where we feel tired, sore, lazy, or just not quite right. That being said, it’s important to push past those feelings and get done what needs to get done!! You’re not going to get to where you want to by lying in bed watching Netflix all day feeling bad for yourself! The only person that can make you change is you!

    I’m not saying I’m perfect or that I don’t have bad body image days because I most definitely still have days like that! But, I used to be the type of person to complain about how I looked and I did nothing about it. Part of why I did nothing was because I didn’t know what to do with myself and I let that excuse be enough. Looking back, I wasn’t happy that way. I wanted more for myself!

    I found that when I stopped making excuses and worked toward what I wanted, it came. My results may not have come as fast as I may have liked, but I keep working and I have come to appreciate the process and develop my discipline. And that doesn’t just apply to working out and developing a more sustainable, healthy lifestyle! That can apply to anything! If you’re wanting to make improvements in any aspect of your life, you’re not going to get there by complaining or feeling sorry for yourself. Your excuses will get you nowhere. Step outside your comfort zone, make sure you have a good support system, and go for what you want!

    I know you all are so capable of many things. So, stop making excuses and go take care of business. If you need someone to cheer you on, I’m right here for you. 🥰 Have a great week everyone. I’ll see you next weekend.

  • Meeting Goals!

    Meeting Goals!

    This past week, I finally met a goal of mine that I have had for an incredibly long time: I hit my goal weight. While this used to be something so meaningful to me, I have come to realize that there are other places where meeting goals are much more important. There are bigger and better things to focus on than how much I weigh. There’s a lot I have to say reflecting on my journey to this point and all of the details associated with that, so if you’re looking to learn more about my mental and physical journey over the past year or so, stick around!

    I’d like to say that when I began my fitness/lifestyle journey when I felt that the biggest thing to me was to lose weight. I was fairly unhappy with how I looked as a result of some things that have happened in my past and as a result of incredibly low self-confidence. I had this idea in my head that becoming a certain weight would make me happier. And now that I’m at that point, I am happy, but it is NOT because of that goal I had set for myself over three years ago. Just because past Ana had this desire to be a certain weight, and current Ana has met that, it doesn’t mean all my problems are solved. It also doesn’t mean that I’m the most confident person in the world either. There is a lot that I still feel I need to work on, but I’m very happy with all the progress I’ve made. There is so much more that I have come to realize over the past year and that is what I am much happier about.

    As I have developed a more sustainable workout routine and worked on how to properly fuel my body, I have realized that there are more important things to focus on than what I weigh. There are more vital things to look at like moving my body for at least 30 minutes every day/getting a good workout in 5 days a week, drinking enough water, and eating when I’m hungry. If you’re also in a place where you feel like you want to make improvements for yourself, there are a few things I think you should focus on most:

    • How much water you drink. I go for around 100 oz of water, but again this is for me!
    • How many hours of sleep you get. This is when your mind and muscles recover!!
    • How often you move your body. Aim for 30 minutes a day at least and 4-5 days a week. Do what works best for you though and do what you think will be most sustainable!
    • Eat when you’re hungry. Food is fuel and your body needs it to function properly. I give my body what it wants and I know how to balance things out.

    While my body has been changing quite a bit in its composition over the past year, I think that I have also changed a lot of things mentally, and that has been the most impactful. It can be really hard to stay consistent and positive when you aren’t seeing what you want right away. It can be challenging to stick to what you’ve been doing when you see others progressing faster in a shorter period of time. What I’ve come to realize is that my journey is my journey. There is no need to focus on anyone but yourself when you’re working to improve yourself. Making progress more slowly is more sustainable for me and I know that I’m creating good habits with the things I’ve been doing.

    Meeting goals, whether they’re big or small is huge. Celebrate every little milestone and accomplishment you make because you’re so worth it! I hope you’re able to take something away from this post and just remember that no matter what you’re doing or what you’re working toward, your journey is your’s and your’s alone. Focus on doing what will allow you to improve and grow and good things will come. Have a good week. ❤️

  • The Perfect Protein Shake

    the perfect protein shake
    Image credits to Tasty Kitchen. I wish mine looked this fancy, but I do know it tastes pretty good. 🙂

    I’m definitely no nutrition expert or dietician, but I feel like I have also learned a thing or two trying to work on what I eat. While I definitely am still figuring a lot of things out, I have found one thing I really like: peanut butter chocolate banana protein shakes. There was never a specific recipe I found, I just decided to try things out and I loved it. So if you’re interested in learning how to make the perfect protein shake (at least according to me!!) then stick around. All you need is a blender, a banana or two, peanut butter or peanut butter powder, and your favorite chocolate protein powder.

    Here’s my recipe!
    – At least one banana
    – A good tablespoon of peanut butter powder (PB-Fit All Natural)
    – Half of a scoop of Simple Truth’s chocolate protein powder
    – Califa Farms unsweetened almond milk (I just pour this until it covers the banana, peanut. butter, and protein powder)

    With all of your good stuff in your blender, just blend until smooth and then enjoy! I really like to have this for breakfast in addition to an omelet or some hard-boiled eggs. Sometimes, this is really good on its own in between meals. I find that it serves as a good filler until I’m ready to eat an actual meal. Yummy yummy! 🙂

    I’ve really been working on adding more protein to my diet and I’ve found that this is one of the many ways to do so. Eggs and chicken are a few more of my favorite ways to get my protein in! If there’s anyone reading this that also enjoys a good protein shake, share your recipes with me! I’d love to try them. 🙂 Have a great week and I’ll see you next Sunday!

  • Fitness Journey Update

    fitness journey update

    On July 26, I posted that I was going to start working with a personal trainer to help me find a sustainable and healthy workout routine. If you’d like to read that post here’s the link to it! FITNESS JOURNEY BEGINNING! Not only that, but I had the goal of adjusting my eating habits and working to create more healthy lifestyle habits for myself. Here we are, now on October 25. I’ve been working with my trainer for about three months now and I just wanted to give a little fitness journey update!

    I think the hardest thing for me this past three months has been training my mindset. I’m easily motivated to workout and hardly find myself having to force myself to do my workouts, but I struggle with the progress part of this whole process. After dealing with such painfully-slow healing with my injuries in high school, my patience has really been cut short and I get frustrated easily when I don’t see progress or improvement quickly. There have been moments where I’ve stared at myself in the mirror and still hated what I see but I’ve noticed that I’m feeling that way, less and less as I’ve been working out more. I still struggle with my patience but I’m starting to appreciate the process and celebrate the small progressions and little victories. When I first started with my trainer, I was tracking my activity in a log but now with my watch, I just track my workouts from there. In my log, I was tracking the little victories I had and I think that’s part of the reason I’m starting to see a more positive mindset when it comes to progress and I’m starting to be a bit kinder to myself.

    My favorite thing to do is look back on that activity log and see those little sprinkles of positivity. Like on August 22nd, I did bench squats for the first time and that was my first time ever lifting truly heavy weight. I squatted 95 pounds that day. When I first started in the gym, I was mainly working with 10 and 15 pound weights during arm circuits and arm workouts but it was really tough. For being a tennis player and also setter during my volleyball years, I’m shocked my upper body strength was so weak!! That has been one of the main focuses of the time with my trainer. Upper. Body. Strength. On September 19th, I wrote that I was finally able to EASILY work with the 15 pound weights. Good day. 🙂 The next weekend, my trainer noted that my core was clearly stronger because I was able to do an exercise that I hadn’t been able to do when I first started working with her. That was something that made me really happy. In October, some of the highlights came from October 2nd where I wrote that I didn’t expect myself to be able to do wide leg squats with a 65 pound kettlebell as easily as I did. I also bench pressed for the first time that week and lifted 55 pounds. Not much, but a good start. I also did some core stuff with these weird elbow sock things where you dangle off of the ground and I found those really fun. I stopped tracking my activity after I got my Galaxy Watch 3 for my birthday since my watch can do that for me, but I still note the little things that motivate me to push myself harder. Like last weekend, my delts were really starting to get some definition and just yesterday, I bench squatted 125 pounds, setting a new PR for myself. I was really proud of that. This fitness journey has been no joke. I’ve been really sore some days but I love the feeling of being sore. It means things are working and progress is being made!!

    When this all began, my first few workouts were very full-body focused and as I’ve progressed, the days have become more focused on arms, legs, triceps/back, glutes/back, and cardio. I appreciate the focused days, especially arm days. They suck but I find myself enjoying those the most because I feel like I die the least on arm days haha. My trainer has also been such an important part of this whole fitness journey. She’s an amazing person and I’m so happy to consider her not only a mentor but also a friend. She has done so much for me and I love getting to workout with her and laugh and have fun, even when she’s killing me with the intense workouts.

    I’ve really tried to refrain from making the goal of all of this to lose weight. That’s not what this is about. I’ve told myself that I’m working to get stronger mentally and physically. With that said however, I have lost 8 pounds to this day. I see and feel strength in my arms and core and my legs are feeling a bit tighter. As I mentioned a little before, I feel better about myself but I still have some things to work on regarding the mental aspect of this all.

    Regarding food, I try to stick to the same things when I’m at school. Breakfast is avocado toast with two poached eggs and I try to add some sort of sausage or other protein when I can. For lunch and dinner, it varies, but I’ve cut out pasta (unless it’s whole wheat) and have really tried to up my protein and fiber intake. I eat a lot of salads and soups and have really enjoyed making use of my air fryer to help keep vegetables and also potatoes more fun and hopefully more healthy. As far as sugar intake goes, I really limit that in the mornings because in the past, that’s where I’ve taken in a lot of sugar whether that was from some sugary coffee/tea drink or a pastry or some sweet yogurt, etc. I still enjoy sweets occasionally, but I’ve found that I’m just a lot less inclined to eat sweets now. I still do really enjoy the occasional trip to Starbucks though, I will say that.

    From the past three months, I’m most happy to see my mindset begin to transform. Nothing comes overnight and this is something my mom has told me over and over again but in the past, I’ve just been frustrated by that comment because I wanted results that instant so I could be happy with myself again. Sometimes, I still feel that way, but it’s all getting better. Some things just take time and it’s so much more worth it to celebrate the little victories and enjoy the progress. Have a good week everyone.

  • The Beginning of a New Journey

    Very few people know this, but I wouldn’t consider myself to be extremely self-confident, especially when it comes to my body and how I appear. I’ve never felt very comfortable sharing just because I never want people to think that I’m just complaining or trying to make the world all about me. I’ve always wished to have the confidence that so many people I know seem to have and I just find it embarrassing that I’m not in that place. I’m also not typically the type of person to share a lot about myself because my entire life, I’ve strived to be perfect and I’ve never wanted people to see a sad, frustrated, or defeated side of me. I’ve been working on accepting that perfection is truly unobtainable, but it’s hard and has been a rough journey!

    I recently decided that I’m sharing my struggles because I’ve decided to invest some time and energy into improving my physical state. It’s not good to bottle up all those negative feelings and emotions and so I’ve decided to do something about it. Being injured throughout high school resulted in a lot of inactivity for me, which was very unusual. I went from dancing competitively, playing volleyball on a competitive team, and also playing tennis at a very competitive level to sitting and doing absolutely nothing faster than you can blink when I found out I fractured my sesamoid. I continued to eat as if I was trying to maintain my three-sport lifestyle but since I wasn’t actually burning all of the calories I was used to burning, I gained quite a bit of weight. When I was finally cleared after my ankle surgery about a year-and-a-half later, I was decently more heavy than when I entered high school and my self-confidence had tanked.

    Yes, I had the ability to play tennis, but everything else had been wiped off the table. Things were slow and in my opinion, they felt too slow. Fast forward to freshman year of college- I was still struggling with my weight but I received the opportunity to compete at the Miss Colorado USA pageant. I saw this as an opportunity to better myself, physically and mentally, and see how much I could do to prepare my body for the competition. There is a swimsuit competition, as many of you know that keep up with the Miss Universe Organization and its pageants, so you would be familiar with this. Even before my freshman year of college, I decided to dedicate my time to working on my fitness. And I did! I worked out a decent amount and ate cleaner (which was hard in the dorms), and I managed to lose about 15 pounds, which I was pretty proud of. By the time the Miss Colorado USA pageant rolled around, I was in a place where progress had been made, but I still wasn’t happy with myself.

    Following the pageant, I still worked out a decent amount, but there wasn’t the same motivation I had for the pageant. I relaxed a bit but was proud to see that I hadn’t gained any weight back. Now let’s move on to the beginning of sophomore year. Same situation. Again, I prepped for the Miss Colorado USA pageant, as I did the year before. This time, I picked up kickboxing and started working out more on a treadmill. I really came to love and enjoy kickboxing actually, so that’s something I’d like to continue to incorporate into my fitness routine. Anyway, pageant time rolls around and I had decided to wear a two-piece suit this year instead of a one-piece. I thought I had made decent progress and so I made the move to wear a cute golden yellow two piece by Gianni Bini. It was a pretty cute swimsuit, but I don’t think I’ll ever truly wear it again.

    As we got ready for the swimsuit competition in the dressing room, I realized how big of a mistake that was. One of the girls in front of me stared down at herself and commented, “Oh my goodness I feel so fat next to all of these-” I looked around and noticed all the toned thighs and tight tummies and shrank into myself. This girl looked up at me and then around the room and that’s when she stopped talking. Me, in that moment, thought that she suddenly felt better about herself because she looked at me and saw that she had much fewer problems than I did. Looking back on that, that was a REALLY unhealthy and sad thought for me to have. I tried to shake off the thoughts I had and when I walked out on stage, I felt pretty good about myself. However, all confidence or self-assurance I had was lost the second I got my pictures back.

    I looked at myself and was honestly disgusted. I started crying. I saw stretch marks on my big, strange thighs. I saw the extra fat I have hanging slightly over the bottoms of my swimsuit. My false lashes looked horrible and my smile looked fake. The person I saw on my computer screen was not the person I had felt like. In that moment, I felt like I couldn’t trust the confidence I thought I was building anymore. Since that moment, I’ve had a really, really, really hard time finding any confidence in myself, especially in the way I appear. I’ve tried to wear more loose clothing to conceal my dislikes and as I write this and reflect on everything now, it’s really sad that I’ve felt like this about myself.

    Things weren’t too great for my self-confidence when we all went into lockdown either. I couldn’t go to the gym and I couldn’t play tennis either. Any work I had done and any progress I had made was seriously lost. Currently, I’m sitting at an unhealthy, overweight BMI and yes I find frustration with it and I’m upset by it and how I appear, but I’ve decided to do something about it.

    I recently found a gym in my area that only operates through personal trainers. After speaking with the director of the gym, he matched me with one of his personal trainers and I start on Tuesday. I’ve been looking for something like this for a while now, because I’m at a place now where I really just feel like I can’t be my own cheerleader and supporter, so I need someone else to be there for me and to help me out. From this, I hope to find confidence in myself and mostly, I hope to be kinder to myself. I hope that I find solutions and build habits for the long-term. I was tired of feeling so upset and frustrated with myself, so I decided it was time to make a change. Let’s hope it’s for the better!

    If you’re interested in following the fitness journey, let me know! I’d love to share the progress (hopefully there is some) and the things I learn along the way. This could be interesting. Be kind to each other and yourselves this week. See you all next Sunday.