Fitness has always been a part of my life. My Mom was an aerobics instructor and honestly, my first memories of my entire life are of picking out her leotard and legwarmers and going to classes with her. For the most part, fitness has also been a very fun and social thing for me. I’m a big fan of group exercise (obviously, I started a wicked company that revolves around it, yay Hot Mama!). I love the people. I love the energy. I love the swearing. I truly love group ex.

Recently though, my workouts have become a grind. Like a “I really don’t wanna go in there and get on that treadmill and push, push, push myself. I hate it in there. Ugh” type of grind.

Here’s the thing, I was working out to lose weight, not to have fun. Yeah, I know. Me, the Founder of a fitness company that is successful because we make fitness fun, loving and supportive. Me, who battles against that F**KING scale and creates events to smash the aforementioned scales with sledgehammers. Yeah Me. I’ve been working out to lose weight. Because well, I’m uncomfortable in my skin right now and that’s not an awesome feeling. 

I have Hashimoto’s disease. It’s an autoimmune disease that attacks your thyroid. Basically, my thyroid doesn’t work at all and I take thyroid meds to manage it. It’s seriously not a big deal, but my medications never seem to even out and balance. This summer I became severely hypothyroid and couldn’t get on top of it. Weight gain and fatigue had me feeling self-conscious, embarrassed and oh-so-tired.

But, every morning I would get on my treadmill and hammer out some intervals. I would sweat and swear and couldn’t figure out for the life of me why I kept gaining weight. I would push myself and my workouts to a point where I started hating my body for not responding like it is supposed to. Stupid thyroid.   [Read more…] about DAMMIT! I Forgot Fitness is Supposed to be Fun, Not Punishment