Welcome!

Welcome to Virginia is for Health Nuts!! Shelb and I are so excited to start up this blog in hopes of keeping ourselves on track and inspire other college students to maintain healthy lifestyles.

Our decision to blog about staying fit all started out when Shelby met me in D.C. after returning back to the States from a month and a half of studying abroad in Peru. While my experience was AMAZING (a post about my trip is coming soon!),

I came back feeling awful. Not only did I come back with some extra baggage (ten pounds to be exact) I also came back with a significant amount of symptoms that result from gluten intolerance. The second I landed in the States I immediately stopped eating anything with gluten in it. It's been about 3 weeks of living gluten-free and I have seriously never felt better!

So besides catching up after not seeing each for so long, we spent a majority of our day searching for a good salad and also talked about our goals to stay healthy during the school year. Shelby has been interning this summer in D.C. at a marketing firm and has learned a ton about social media. She came up with the fantastic idea of creating a blog to get us going, allowing us to learn more about the blogging world and to keep up our healthy lifestyles.

A little bit about me:

I grew up in San Diego, an amazing place to live if you want to lead an active life! While California is definitely a great place to grow up, I wanted a change of pace and decided to go to school on the east coast: the University of Virginia.

Charlottesville, being one of the fittest cities in the country, has been an awesome place to attend school. I am constantly motivated when I see all of the runners around Grounds (what we called "campus," don't blame us blame Thomas Jefferson!). I also started working at the Aquatic and Fitness Center at UVa which has caused even more inspiration to exercise regularly.

I played tennis all of my life until a serious ankle injury kept me off the court my senior of high school. Tennis was the only way I knew how to stay fit, so I soon realized I would have to figure something else out. So I started running and have been addicted ever since! At first I could barely run a mile at a time but I soon improved. Within 6 months of my first "real" run I had finished my first half marathon.

From then on I had set a new goal of running a marathon the next year. It was the hardest thing I have ever done! While it took me longer than I had hoped, this just caused me to make a new goal. I hope to run a full marathon in under 4 hours and 30 minutes by the end of next year!

After the marathon my knees were hurtin' so I decided to start yoga classes at Haute Yoga in Solana Beach and quickly found a new passion. I've brought this new hobby with me back to school and now practice at Bikram Charlottesville. I now balance yoga and running as a part of my exercise regimine.

Not only do I hope to write about my "obsession" with exercise, I also hope to log my entrance into the world of being gluten-free. I know it's going to be a tough journey, but I am so excited to finally feel better! It's important to note that I do not have Celiac disease so I'm not an expert on that, but for anyone else out there that has a severe intolerance to gluten I'm here for ya!

Happy Monday everyone! Keep lookin' for a post about my travels to South America!

-Alexis