When I came up with the topics for my blog I loved every one of them, but it wasn’t until recently that I realized I was incredibly passionate about #FitnessFriday.

Staying active is my saving grace. It is the only consistent thing that has kept me sane and focused and feeling like I’m really doing something. For the longest time I thought my passion was specially dance. Over the last two years, however, I have been struggling to deal with the fact that I didn’t have that same passion anymore. I still love dance, but it wasn’t in my heart enough o continue to actively pursue it. That’s really hard, and also a story for another week.

Sometimes realizing what you’re most passionate about happens out of nowhere. Somewhere in the last month or so I realized that it was just dance that I was passionate about, it was staying active in general, and the physical and mental health that it brings.

I went from dancing 16-25 hours a week (depending on if there was a musical or not) my senior year of high school to no physical activity at all in college. I was miserable, but I didn’t know my lack of activity was the cause of it. Every break I would go home and go back to my dance studio and I’d be happy again. I began to think that school itself was the reason for my troubles and that caused a whole slew of problems and unnecessary drama. It took a couple years of back and forth from home and school to realize that school wasn’t the problem, it was me.

That seems like a pretty harsh thing to say about yourself, but it’s true. I had spent 15 years of my life being told how to be active in dance classes. I didn’t have the motivation to consistently keep myself going on my own, with no instruction.

The mental health issues that limited physical activity was causing were getting to be too much and I knew something had to change. If I wasn’t going to do it on my own then I would need support. So support I sought out.

I joined two organizations in the past couple of weeks. The first was YogaWorks, a yoga studio chain that has a studio in SoHo, about a 20 minute walk from my dorm. By signing up and paying money in advance, I knew I would have to go to as many classes as possible to get my money’s worth. In my first week as a member I went to 8 yoga or Pilates classes. 8! Each week I create a schedule for myself of what classes I’ll take. That way there’s no, oh I didn’t have time, or oh I forgot kind of excuses. I hold myself accountable for getting to those classes, just like I did in high school.

The second thing I joined I’m super excited about. It’s called CHAARG (check it out here) and it was started by a college student in an effort to find like-minded people who wanted to stay fit and healthy, and is totally the right place for me to be. Unfortunately, my school doesn’t have a chapter but fortunately there is an online chapter called #VirtCHAARG. So I joined up and the immediate love and sense of caring that I saw in all these girls was wonderful. It’s so nice having people to fall back on and who will be there to support you. The site also has a blog with all sorts of features, from food to lifestyle to inspirational stories. I’m really excited to be moving forward with them!

It’s good to have goals. So out of all this, here are my goals:

1. Keep continually active in ways that make me happy
2. Advocate for living an active lifestyle because it promotes physical and mental health
3. Learn how to do yoga inversions and all those crazy cool poses
4. Become certified to teach yoga, and do just that

The first two are obviously lifetime goals, things that I will never stop working on. The last two I hope to accomplish by the time I graduate college, or in regards to the certification, soon after.

So I hope you all will follow me here and be inspired to live your life actively. I will also be posting on my special #CHAARG Instagram (@liz_inchaarg_) so make sure to follow me there as well. This is going to be amazing and I am so looking forward to sharing my milestones, my failures, and my stories (past, present, and future) with you all.

Namaste.