I will preface this article by saying I do not have a degree in nutrition. Additionally, I am not a certified personal trainer yet. However, I am currently working on my certification for the latter. I am purely a man who has a passion for healthy and fit living. I want to help people whenever I can to be fit as well. This article will be based purely on life experience, and my hope is that this article inspires other people to start their fitness journey.
I will start by referencing that I have been working out for eleven years. I have not always lived a healthy lifestyle, and I started getting serious about fitness in my early thirties. The old saying “It’s never too late…” has a great deal of meaning to me. In my view, no matter the age, anyone can start getting healthy. 
At the age of thirty, I noticed that my waist started to increase. I had gone from an active lifestyle to mainly a sedentary one of playing video games and watching television. I had just made the decision to give my life over to Jesus, and you will see how that relates later. My clothes started not to fit, and I said to myself, “I have to do something…”
I was watching television one night, and a huge bodybuilder guy was being interviewed. He said, “The secret to losing weight is to do thirty minutes of cardio each day. Get your heart rate up with exercise, and you will see the weight come off.” I said to myself, “I can do that!” My plan was simple. I would put on praise music and praise God and Jesus for thirty minutes around my apartment, keeping myself moving for the whole thirty minutes. I managed to build up a pretty good sweat, but the pounds didn’t melt away, even after a month. I didn’t see my body turning into that bodybuilder guy’s body.
I wanted better results and wanted results like yesterday. I tried many quick fix methods, diet pills, this diet or that exercise thing. The problem was that there is no quick fix. Fitness is a journey and a long marathon. You cannot sprint the fitness race. Fitness requires a sustained lifestyle change. Anyone who wants to be fit needs to understand fitness requires commitment.
After my failed attempts at many different methods, I eventually purchased a gym membership. Soon after, I hired a trainer to help me understand the correct way to obtain my fitness goals. I hired a trainer because I quickly realized, entering the gym, there are weights along with a lot of contraptions, and I had no idea how to use any of them. My goal was to get results, and I figured out pretty quickly on my own my results would be fairly limited without help. Additionally, I wanted to avoid as much injury as I could and decided a trainer could help me prevent injuries and help me understand the difference between soreness and actual injury pain. 
As the trainer worked with me, I discovered form is vitally important for injury prevention, and proper nutrition is even more important. That’s not to say I have never had an injury or didn’t make a nutritional mistake over my eleven years. However, I have been able to prevent more serious injuries and, in most cases, recover faster. Now when I go to the doctor for my physical, I get a thumbs-up for everything being in the correct ranges for my age.
I had a trainer for about one-and-a-half years, and nine-and-a-half years later, I am in the best shape of my life. I love to still go to the gym, and at the age of forty-one, I can run between twenty-five and thirty miles a week. I am much stronger now than I was in what many consider the prime age. Age is truly nothing but a number. You can be in the best shape of your life no matter how old you are. I don’t believe that your body has to break down as you age. Proper exercise and nutrition can keep your body moving. I have a grandmother who is ninety-two, almost ninety-three, at the time of this writing. She still moves around on her own better than most, and up until this year, she got up and cooked for everybody in her neighborhood every day. On any day, you could literally stop by at dinner time and someone from her neighborhood would be visiting and enjoying a great meal. I attribute her long life to many things, but one major component is she believes in eating right.
A very basic plan for a fit life is commitment to proper nutrition + exercise = results
I could go into more details about how to exercise or what to eat, but this article would be much longer. Additionally, each person is unique, and their fitness journey is going to be unique. A great deal of factors come into play with fitness such as metabolism, current fitness level, medical conditions, which exercises internally inspire a person, etc. I found out a great deal about my body and what is best for me over the years. It is worth the effort, and in the end, you will find amazing foods and activities you did not think initially you would enjoy.
The goal of this article is just to inspire you to take that first leap or step into your own fitness journey. Make the commitment to be healthy and be active. When you do take that first step, you can imagine me and everyone clapping and saying, “Congratulations and welcome…” You are starting down an amazing life changing path, and you will find success, the results you desire, and much more.
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