Finding My Passion Through Social Media

I talked a little bit about why the subject of fitness is of any interest to me in my very first blog post (#tbt https://digitalfitnesstoday.blogspot.com/2017/08/in-this-digital-day-and-ageit-is.html), but that was barely scratching the surface. So now, I’d like to share a little bit more of my story of working towards my fitness goals simply because I attribute any and all success I have found to social media and digital apps. Without both of those things, my inspiration would have inevitably waned ages ago as it had time and time again before I found a consistent schedule that worked for me.

Thank goodness for Instagram. That’s where I found Kayla Itsines as I mentioned in my very first post. Once I stumbled upon her guides, I was sucked into this community of people and the way that they transformed themselves both physically and emotionally in terms of their confidence and self-love. Well who doesn’t want to feel that way, right?? So I tried her eBook guide, too. Well what do you know, half a year later, I was no closer to my goals. I have given up and started this process over at least 3 times, and it was just not working for me. I didn’t find it enjoyable at all, so onto the next thing.

My friend told me that when she didn’t feel like going to the gym, she just went to YouTube and looked up a Blogilates workout. Cassey Ho, the creator of Blogilates, has done an equally incredible job of using this online platform to build up a community and earn a living for herself. Well, Blogilates is great and incredibly challenging, but as someone who was an athlete my entire life, I feel like if I don’t sweat, I’m not working hard enough. After more trial and error, I realized that I wasn’t going to be consistent with that either.

Well at this point, I recognized that I could pretty much get all of the fitness motivation and information I wanted through the internet and social media. Combine that knowledge with the determination I had to actually stick to something by the beginning of my junior year of college, and I knew that this time around would be different.

I started by searching fitness-related hashtags on Instagram: #abs #workoutmotivation #HIIT. You can only imagine the slew of posts I was inundated with. That’s how I discovered my favorite influencers. The more I researched the quicker I determined that the people I found most motivating, who shared the best content, were all avid weightlifters. That was kind of scary because going near the free weights in a gym is always intimidating, and I’m a girl so won’t that make me look “manly.” No. On the contrary, weightlifting helped to make these women strong and confident and happy, and I wanted in on that. I followed countless Instagram influencers and discovered their associated YouTube channels, and suddenly I had enough free workouts to never repeat the same thing twice if I didn’t want to.

Armed with the new workouts I had found and the resolve to get to the gym every day after class and just treat it like another part of my schedule, I tried for consistency again. Turns out, once I got past the initial intimidation, I discovered that I actually really like weightlifting. It makes me feel good, and it doesn’t suck as much as hopping on a treadmill for 30 minutes or more.

Flash forward about 18 months later, and I am proud to say that I am still on top of it. There are obviously periods where my motivation wanes, but it’s then that I turn right back to Instagram to try to find it again. I’ve grown to enjoy fitness so much that it has become one of my “things” that my friends associate me with. I chose to center this entire blog around it, and I made fitness my personal brand for another class project. It’s so crazy to me that I discovered this passion of mine simply by searching through digital channels, but it’s true! Social Media is a powerful tool and I have come to know that first-hand.

I’m sorry, I know it was a lengthy post, but if you stuck it out, I appreciate you! That’s the long story about how this blog came to be, and how I got to where I am in my journey. I don’t plan on letting up anytime soon, and I think of this as just another way to hold myself accountable.