It is only up form here 💪🥵🏃‍♂️

I am feeling really great about where I am headed in terms of my fitness levels. I will be 30 years old in October and it is a good feeling to know that I haven't let my body fall apart. I have been athletic and thin for pretty much all of my life, but it is true what they say about it becoming harder to remain that way as you get older.

I spent a few years doing little to nothing when it comes to exercising. I got lazy, drank too much beer, and ignored what I saw in the mirror. I may have still been in the range of 150-165lbs, but I was getting a bit of a belly. You can see what I'm talking about in the beach photo on the left side of the thumbnail for this image. It is probably my worst angle, but sadly it was also the truth. My belly would only continue to get bigger the longer I kept fitness out of my life.

I started going to the gym again finally back in September of 2021. I didn't really set up a specific routine at first. I mainly just wanted to make sure I was putting in some effort to better myself and wake my body up from its lazy phase. The end of March will mark 6 months that I have been consistently working out again and it was such a wise decision to get to it.

As the title says, February 2022 stands out to me as my most productive month of fitness. My Apple Watch tracks all of my workouts and lets me know when I am going my hardest. I have had ups and downs through these last 5 months, but it seems like I am pushing myself further into a positive trajectory. As you can see in this next image, my last workout of February was my best one yet when it comes to how long I was active and how many calories I burned.

Let's take a look at my workout stats from September-February.

I'm just happy that I was encouraged to get back in the gym by Hive account@flowerbaby and that we both have continued to go since we started. We mostly go separately but do manage to fit in workouts together on the weekends. Some months have been better than others and future months will surely look even stronger than what I'm about to show you. Let's get to it.

February may be the shortest month, but it has my highest numbers. This tells me that in March I should be able to set new records for myself. I took a total of 8 days off, I'd like to cut that number down to 4 or 5 next month. Getting over 13,000 calories in one month for the first time is a great accomplishment. I'm aiming for 14,000 next. Now that I have started increasing the duration of each workout, I feel that I will be able to do this and even more.

January was a hard month. I got really sick for close to two weeks and it really slowed me down. Not only did I not want to get other people at the gym sick, but my body truly hurt so badly that I couldn't manage to do anything. This took out half of my month and in return, my numbers were cut in half. I really pushed myself once I finally felt better, but it was a terrible way to start the year. Better to get the worst parts of the year out of the way early I suppose.

December wasn't my best month, but it also wasn't my worst. I took way more days off than I had hoped to. Christmas time and being with family were more important at the time and I do not regret that a bit. This is also when the temperature started to drop here for winter. I always seem to function better with warm weather.

November is really when I was starting to get in a good groove. It was my third month of finally working out again. I was full of hype still and it hadn't gotten freezing cold outside yet. I fit in just as many workouts during this month as I did in February. I wasn't going quite as hard though since my average time and total calories are both quite a bit lower than February's.

No, I didn't go to the gym twice a day. When I first started going, I was separating my cardio workout tracking from my strength training. This made my total workout numbers way too high. I have since adopted a better practice that makes going over my stats a whole lot easier.

My first time getting back in the gym was September 26th, 2021. This left me with less than a week of stats to show during my initial month. I again was separating my workouts on my watch, so it looks like I went way more than I did. I am so grateful that I invited fitness back into my life. I have been feeling so much better ever since then. It will be very interesting to see where I am at in September of 2022.

My daily routine 🧃

I go to sleep and wake up each day thinking about what I am going to be doing at the gym next. I now am doing more specific workouts and have been hitting separate body parts each day. I am following a schedule of chest/triceps, back/biceps, legs, and then also throwing in some shoulder exercises and cardio.

I am seeing real progress in terms of how strong I am and what my body looks like. I am nowhere near where I aim to be, but I am well on my way. March is about to be a huge month when it comes to my personal growth.

In other awesome news, my gym just got its own personal juice and smoothie bar. A locally-owned shop https://thejuiceboxwv.com/ just opened its third location. It is literally inside of the same building where I go to the gym. This is something that many years ago I would have dreamed up in my mind, but now it is actually a thing.

It would be costly to get something from The Juice Box after every single workout, but I will surely be doing so weekly at a minimum. My life just keeps getting better each day and I am so thankful for what I have. I appreciate you following me along my journey. If you want to go back and see some of my older fitness posts, then look no further than @daltono/hive-176853.

Until next time my friends.

My NFTs: @daltono/nfts