One year ago I started this journey, and today I’m celebrating! Belle Meets World started as a style blog for real women with real bodies and real budgets. Since then it has evolved to include beauty tips and tricks, fitness adventures and lifestyle stories. Along the way I have learned a lot, made mistakes and achieved some goals. It’s been a wild ride that’s worth reflecting upon in order to keep growing as a blogger and a person.
Over the last two months, I’ve kept up my quest to build a fitness habit, and it has been hard. Not just because of the whole I-lack-motivation-to-exercise-daily thing, but also because of the cost. The types of classes I want to try – the trendy, new, popular ones – are very expensive, coming in at 25-30 dollars PER CLASS. Enter Class Pass – a monthly universal pass to various gyms and studios in your city that’s designed to cut down on cost and expand your fitness horizons. Intrigued and determined to save money on fitness, I gave it a try. Read on for my review of Class Pass!
I did it! Three full weeks of fitness commitment completed and two new classes to report on, including FlyWheel and SHRED415. Would I call it a habit now? To be honest – I wouldn’t. Fitness and health will always be a struggle for me, and I’ve learned over the last few weeks that I will have to push myself everyday to be active. I love it when I’m doing it, but the motivation doesn’t come naturally to me. And that’s okay.
I’ve completed my second week of building a fitness habit with some success but also a little bit of a slow-down in enthusiasm and motivation. In fact, I encountered a hurdle we all do – a very hectic work week – that kept me from fulfilling my goal of doing some activity everyday. Rather than beat ourselves up about this, I suggest we make up for it by choosing a more active set of weekend activities. Which is what I did! I tried two of the items on my bucket list: a Pure Barre class and a walking adventure on The 606 Bloomingdale Trail in Chicago!
I reached a big milestone as a blogger last week – I hosted an event! As I’ve posted in the recent past (here), Sine Qua Non salons in Chicago chose me and three other local bloggers to be the faces of their new Desperate Measures campaign, as well as to help launch their new Siné line of haircare products – by throwing a party!
I never intended this to be a fitness blog, but I guess I never ruled it out either. I’m certainly not a health expert, and I struggle every single day with staying motivated to eat well and move often. One thing I do know, though, is that sharing my health journey with my readers is a great way to keep myself accountable to change and to hopefully show – with full transparency – that it isn’t easy as a woman in her 30s to put her health first. But it’s worth a try, and I’m ready to take us there one week at a time. Here we go!