My mission of fitness made it's first brief appearance in 2007. I was a senior in high school, on the fringes of the the "popular kids" and sick of not getting the female attention that many of my closest friends were getting (go figure; girls as an incentive). So hell with it, I started using the fitness facilities at my high school: running, jogging, lifting, eating better, yada, yada, so on and so forth. This lasted all of 5 months until Senior Trip came along, I got noticed for losing my thirty-or-so pounds, stopped caring after the trip, and fell back on the fatty wagon (give me all of your food, please).
Fast-forward to 2009. I vividly remember this day. I had my Kairos Moment (Google it). I was a roofer at the time during my pre-nursing days in college (more on this later), and was up at the ass-crack of dawn like always and had just finished my breakfast, ready to roll out the door. I looked at the table in front of me and was utterly disgusted... It hit me like a ton of lard-filled bricks that I just ate (ready for this?) ice cream for breakfast.
Ice cream. A big, gnarly bowl of ice cream. Before work. My hot, sweaty, manual labor job.
You fat shit. What the hell, man? Ice cream? Really? REALLY? Good God. Get it together dude. I got home from work that day and looked in the mirror -- rounded gut spilling over my jeans. Man-boobs pointed toward either elbow like the eyes on a sad clown. Twig-shit arms dangling at my sides. Cratered belly-button you could stick a grape or two in. Pathetic. There it was. Gym time. Time to bust some ass, 'cause you ain't gonna look like this much longer (I talk to myself all the time. Telling myself what I need to work on seems to work... Hey, leave me alone).
Some time later (couldn't tell ya how long it was), I finally stepped on a scale. I like to tell people that at my known heaviest I weighed in at 286 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal. As if I needed more motivation. I finally started to utilize my roofing job as an opportunity to lose weight, treating it like a workout instead of a job (good Lord, "workout" is an understatement). I'd commute to school in my grimy, gritty-ass clothes and tarry hands. Sit through class smelling like a diabetic foot. Then spend 90-120 minutes in the Rec Center. (Turned out we had one of the top 25 Rec Centers in the country -- who'd'a thunk it?) My good friend from high school was my accountability partner. I wasn't allowed to go any less than 3 days a week to the gym or else he'd make me do more shit as punishment the next time we worked out together. I got exposed to fitness magazines. I would (and still do) just flip through these things, looking at the aesthetics of famous bodybuilders and say "damn... Jay Cutler's shoulders..." or "fuck, man, could you imagine having Ronny Coleman's quads?! That monster!" Then the supplement addictions... oh yes... The supplements (Eh, call me a tool... I don't care. It works for me.) Either way... Finally... fitness was in my life to stay.
Since that time, fitness has been a part of my every day life, and every freaking chance I get to tell people about it, you better bet your ass I'm blabbering about it. Hell, I even got my (formerly) bum-ass brother to become a fitness geek! Also, one-two-skip a few, I finished school, passed my boards, and became an RN. This most recent piece of information serves as my motivation for this blog (along with some nudging from my buddy and partner in Mursing, @MurseWisdom). Once fitness becomes ingrained in you, you spend a lot of time noticing other people. You just can't help it, man, it happens. And during my time in nursing school, I spent a long time noticing how fat our profession is. We are nurses. Say it with me now, "WE ARE NURSES!" We are proponents of holistic health, education, and wellness**!
**Other people's holistic health, education, and wellness.
Time to take away those asterisks(es-es-es), people. One more time, "WE ARE NURSES!" We're some smart, time-savvy motherfuckers, it's time to start acting like it. This is a blog with a mission to incorporate health, education, and wellness, in the holistic sense, into OUR lives. Every post (ideally) is gonna be some little tip, nugget, morsel, that can be used in every day life to make a healthier YOU. And I hope you done paid real good attention to this piece, 'cause I'm gonna be referencing back to this for tips that got me started on the path to health and wellness and making it a part of who I am on a day-to-day basis.
So hear I am. A meat head. Fitness buff (is that redundant?). Call me what you want, but I also apparently have some sense about me. I mean, I got my BSN and passed my boards to become a Registered Nurse. I work in a CCU where they let me take care of fresh open-heart patients, I know how to use an Oxford Comma, and I came in second place in my fourth grade spelling bee, too. (See what I did there?)
Plenty more to come, folks. Thanks for checking in and seeing what this is all about. Thanks again to @MurseWisdom for his encouragement and accountability. Also, a thank you to @KevPrescribes for naming this thing. Kev's just starting his path to fitness as well. He's also my roommate and fellow CCU RN (Get it? Get the name of this thing? CCU... pressors... We're witty. Anyway...)... so I'll probably talk about him from time-to-time too. Go follow them both on Twitter and get some MurseWisdom from his blog. Follow us all on Twitter, and I'll catch ya all soon.
Pressors and Presses
@RyanWithAnS
