YUCK! It's good for me...?

This morning I ate Co-coa puffs for breakfast, a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, I had a bottle of ginger ale, then later a Iced Mocha Latte, and two hot dogs for dinner. Boy do I feel like I need a salad. Maybe I’ll eat one for breakfast tomorrow.

Eating healthy has lately become something more than just a “have to”. I really want to eat healthy, and for so many reasons. You see, I enjoy a quick digestion. Vegetables pass through the system faster than fatty foods. When I eat them I feel like they go straight through, distributing the proper nutrients to my body and pushing the rest down on through and, well, out the other end. When I eat something like, say, a hot dog or a BBQ sandwich, I feel like it takes a long time to get through, finally taking a rest in a little heap below my belly button.

Fruit especially always gives me a natural source of energy. I find that workouts or practices go better when I have eaten an orange or two before hand. Also a salad decked with bell peppers, tomatoes, carrots, celery and cucumbers topped with one’s preference of dressing fills you up with many flavors, textures and, well, veggies. It stays in your system long enough to sustain energy but doesn’t gather in your lower abdomen for a “fatty party”.

Besides those two reasons, I have found that I simply enjoy organic food better than junk. It tastes richer, cleanses my system and makes me feel more powerful. It boosts my confidence, and simply makes me feel healthy and well.

So, eat your fruits and vegetables, kids. Ha. What I mean is, do it, if you want. You’ll feel better, perform better, be better and live healthier. Your body, your mom and your coach will thank you.

~Jessica

What is a Jessica? (leisure blogging)

So, there’s this guy I really like. I’m not going to say his name because WHO KNOWS who may read this. I’m not going to say where he’s from either but ANYWAY…

Basically I don’t quite feel that soul mates thing, but I don’t quite feel the just here and now thing either. As a matter of fact…well, I don’t know. I just know I haven’t felt THIS strongly for a guy in a long while.

But you’re not here to read about that, are you?

You’re probably here wondering, “What is a Jessica?” Well, if you look it up in the dictionary, it will probably not be there. Look it up in the name book and you’ll see “God’s grace.” Look it up in the book of Jessicas and you will have to flip to “Barker, Jessica Claire.” There you will find the synonyms, “hyper” “klutzy” “stares off into space often” “highly caffeinated” “hippie-ish” “weird” “delusional” “can’t sit still” “creative” “overactive” “confused” “complains about being fat” “obsessed” “thinks too much for her own good” and “extremely bored half the time.”

Well, that much is basically true. At least, that is what friends and family have said. Which actually makes me consider…well, never mind. Anyhooness, tonight we’re gonna eat sushi and some soup-stuff that I can’t remember the name of, but it has seaweed and tofu in it. Basically, I’ve been eating healthy for a whole day now.

But I’m still fat!!!

Well, it might have to do with the fact that, despite my eating, I haven’t done any stomach-targeted exercises in two days. I swam yesterday and today I did yoga but I haven’t felt like doing anything else.

You know, it feels good to have a blog again. Maybe it just means I’m too insecure to go for very long without having a little place on the internet reserved for Jessica-nesses, or maybe I just love writing and sharing that plus lifeness with the world. Or both, perhaps.

Well, gotta go eat…so long and thanks for all the fish!

~Jessica

Ankles AWAY!!

It was a dark and stormy night.

Actually, it wasn’t. I just like typing that.

It was a day like any other day. I had sat in deep thought about stuff, gone to swim practice, gotten stressed out in chemistry and, yes, sprained my ankle. Again.

That is the third time in the past two months, I think. I mean, I’ve always had weak ankles. They were always getting strained in ballet and gymnastics. One day when I was seven or eight I was running around my house with a friend and that was the first of many ankle sprains to come.

Today’s seemed worse than most, though.

I have just started my own little triathlon training. I’ve never competed in anything of the sort, but someday I would like to. So I had decided to mix my normal swim practices with a beginner’s running routine I read about in Fitness magazine, and biking once a week, each week adding a mile.

Then tragedy struck.

I was playing with my dog and her three squeaky stuffed animals. I was going to quickly get off of my hands and knees, dart around her, and grab the duck she wasn’t watching. But when I stepped with my left leg to get up, the ball of my foot rolled in and my heel was thrust forward.

In excruciating pain, I fell with it, rolling over and grabbing it. But what hurt more was my running. This would put a stop to it for at least two weeks. I wasn’t ever very good at running, but I loved it and wanted desperately to get better. But the state of my ankle put my dream out of reach for a third time since the end of July. I was devastated.

My mom had fixed me on the couch with my leg up and icepack tied around my swelling ankle. I was sitting there half bored to , half too depressed to do anything about it, my dad came in.

Naively I said to him, “I don’t care. If it feels any better tomorrow then I’m going running.”

“No you’re not. You’ll just injure it more and then it’ll never heal.” Dad replied sternly.

I huffed, quickly admitting defeat. I knew it was true.

“Just look at all the things you can still do.” Mom spoke up. “You can still swim, do pilates and do some light yoga.”

It wasn’t enough for me. I wanted more. But I didn’t say anything. I nodded and turned away. All I can do now is focus on my swimming. I will swim harder than ever. After all, the only way to get fast in meets is to be fast in practice. And, well, it usually starts with practice.

That night before bed, thoughts drifted back to my ankle again. But this time, they were of thanks. I was thankful that it wasn’t broken. Thankful it wasn’t any other part of my leg seriously injured. Thankful it wasn’t anything in my arm. That would have put an end to my swimming then and there.

I’m still trying to get over my sprain, both physically and mentally. And I know everyone faces this sometime in their life, with something. It may not be sports-related, but it is crushing, and nobody wants to live like that. So, put it out of your mind and think about all the good things that happen to you, or all the bad or worse things that didn’t happen to you. It may not ease the pain entirely, but it certainly changes your mindset, making it, at least, a little easier.

Some skydiver pro-person who was in the army once said: "It's not a disability, it's an ability. Work with what you've got."

~Jessica

Why I am Here--the Second Intro

Keep in mind, this is a blog (soon-to-be website) for TEENS.

First of all, I did not specify a gender, only age. This means boys and s. Boys meaning you shouldn’t be turned off of a blog or site about fitness simply because it’s put out by a . I have lots of guy friends who take my advice and also will give me advice on how to advise guys, since we all know they build muscle differently, blah, blah, blah. I’m also mentioning guy friends because I can sic them on those guys that are clicking back to their own blogs because they are ists.

Second of all, I think that a lot of things apply to teens that don’t apply to s. We have different schedules, more sports opportunities and, believe it or not, more time. Also we are a clan of greater strength, speed and flexibility potential than older people. Meaning if you and your dad/mom decide to start a yoga class together, chances are you’ll be better at it.

Thirdly I have noticed that there aren’t many fitness magazines that market to teenagers. If we want anything on that sort, guys read “Men’s Journal” or something, and s read “Fitness”. These are fine magazines, but they don’t really have teen-targeted…um…anything. Post-pregnancy belly? Uh…I don’t think I have one of those. Let me get back to you in 15 years, okay?

In conclusion, I vow to provide as much teen-related fitness and healthness (which should be a word) to you as possible. I’m not sure what I will actually get down on paper, but I can promise that I will not get too off-topic. I can also promise that I will not bore you with boring facts. I will give facts, but I will make them as interesting as possible. I’ll know because if I become bored writing about them then of COURSE you’re bored!

Well, right now I need to go find something to eat (because I am hungry AND it’s dinner time).

Thank you for taking the time to read this second (and certainly much shorter) introduction. I hope you’ll come and visit next time I write. Because I want you to love fitness. Sounds weird, but…well, you’ll see.

The Magical Transformation--my little Testimony

I used to be a very pessimistic person who didn’t really accomplish much. Typically I saw goals as too far to reach and quit what I was doing, before I even gave myself a chance to see that maybe it was possible. I even got to a point where I saw finishing something as impossible.

I don’t have the slightest clue when my view on life began to change. I believe, however, it was when I saw Johnny Weir at the 2006 winter Olympics, and then at the 2006 Worlds. What I saw was a great skater with fire and passion. He had appreciation on so many different levels for his sport. It wasn’t really a sport to him. He skated as though it were more of a performing art than it was a competitive art.

At that time I had been swimming two days a week on a swim team for about four months. It was my first swim team, and my first sport. I hadn’t been very athletic at all since I had dropped ballet for theatre in 2002. And you can imagine how I started to look once puberty hit and I grew taller, and grew hips. Don’t get me wrong; I did small things like mile-long bike rides ever-so-often when I felt like it, and swam six or eight laps at my pool every few days in the summer.

I loved swimming, and had always wanted to join a team. But I was afraid to. I guess I was mostly afraid of trying out. That is, trying out and being told that I was terrible at my strokes, or that I was too slow. I realize now that, by fearing the outcome of something like trying out for a team, I automatically limit what I actually can do. If I have a fear of not being fast enough, I slowed down.

It was late November, 2005, when I decided to let go of inhibitions, go to the pool and try out. Why? Well, I was angry and bored. Two weeks before I had just completed the production of a Christmas play with my drama group then, HeartBandit Productions. So post-play time was aggravating, and I had just gone through a rather devastating heartbreak the day before. During my tryout I was the only one there, and my anger plus my desire for anything to take my mind off everything drove me to swim faster and better. Within five minutes I had made the team.

Four months later, I had competed in one meet and placed second in the 50 free. But something wasn’t right. I would go to practice and swim the bare minimum. I slowly stopped enjoying long sets or challenging sprint reps. I started only caring about getting better. Better than myself, better than other girls on the team. My only driving force was competitiveness.

Watching Johnny Weir, I saw that, even though he hardly placed in top six in both the Olympics and World Championships, he had a love for skating. His driving force was way beyond competition. Sure, he wanted to win and was extremely bummed when he didn’t. But that didn’t take away his passion for his sport.

I wanted that. I wanted to love everything about swimming. Suddenly I wanted to get into other things too. I started getting up earlier and doing things on TV. I would do half-hour yoga programs and half-hour pilates programs. There were plenty of mornings when I just didn’t want to get up. But I would tell myself that, as sleepy as I was, I loved it. This was going to up my physical activity, enhance my swimming and I was going to love it. Just doing it would bring me joy. Because Johnny Weir loved it through all the hard times, why couldn’t I? After all, at the time, my only hardship was getting up an hour earlier than I used to.

Gradually my desire to want to like exercise faded into a desire to exercise. I’m not saying that every morning I jumped out of bed and started doing jumping jacks with a gigantic grin on my face that screamed “too much coffee”. Far from it, actually. But I began to enjoy my exercise time by myself, and with my swim team.

This never turned into an obsession with exercise (aside from a few days when I really did have too much coffee), but it did develop into, some time in July or August, a passion for athletics. A desire to strengthen, tone, to get faster. Most of all, a passion for swimming, which is really what I wanted most of all. And now I see it’s not only what I wanted, it’s what I needed.

A love for sports, athletics and fitness is something I want to share with everyone, especially highschool students. Whether one is overweight, chunky in areas, underweight or just fine (defined by your opinion of yourself and not Vogue magazine--nothing against it, just making a generalization) I want them to be healthy and fit in one way or another. And I want them to not only love the benefits they reap from being fit and healthy, I want them to love the process. It gave me a meaning in life, a meaning in my sport and, let’s face it, a better body.

I am going to try to blog at least three days a week. I’ll share personal experiences with you in my own journeys (such as a running program I started this week, which you will probably hear about a lot), share tips with you and give you a little insight into the life of a Jessica. I’m only 16 and do not have a certificate of any kind as a trainer, but I have learned a lot about many different health and fitness-related topics over the years and especially over the summer. With that in mind, feel free to comment about my entries and ask questions. I will give you the answers to the ones I know for sure I can answer myself, and the others I will recommend someone or something that can.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this. Soon I hope to have a website going with even more information.

Have fun with life. Go do something fun, preferably active (sitting down and reading about how to do it can help your mind to prepare you to do it, but sitting here forever playing online poker afterwards is not). Just kidding around.

I’ll write later, seeya!