Welcome to my health and fitness blog!

My name is Santana and I am a mother, wife, health & fitness coach, photographer and nursing student! Whew! This blog is dedicated to my journey to health. No, not skinny, health. I want to be healthy for my daughters, so that I can run with them and swing them around, but most importantly, to see them grow up!

Before we dive into that, let me back up a little. I was always a thin child and stayed thin through high school, and into my early twenties. At 24 years old I met my husband, we moved pretty fast and quickly got married and started our family. It was a hectic time! We were trying to get used to each other, trying to get used to marriage and then we added a baby to the picture. We were so happy, but so overwhelmed! I instantly could see that losing that baby weight would be hard. Everyone said that breastfeeding would help...ummm not for me! Life was chaos and we were so exhausted just trying to keep up. Needless to say, we didn't eat the best. My husband and I love to cook, but we didn't make the best choices. Then just when our first daughter came around to almost 23 months, we had another girl! We were so happy that our family was growing, but I hadn't lost the weight from the first one! I gained the appropriate amount during my pregnancies, but it seemed like after was more the problem.

Four months later my husband got a job offer in Arizona and with the lack of work in our hometown of Albuquerque, we were forced to move. We unfortunately had to move into an apartment complex, but the pro about that is that it had a GYM! Whoohoo! We started working out and watching what we were eating, and I started to finally lose weight! I was so stoked! Things were finally looking up. We were in AZ for about 8 months and then we had to move AGAIN! This time my husband was transferred to Colorado. We moved to a tiny town in southern Colorado, called Walsenburg. I mean TINY! We actually didn't even live in town, we lived just outside it. We had no family or friends. My husband and I found ourselves at home a lot. Which is fine, you can find many things to do at home! I had little workouts that I'd do and we bought an elliptical. My husband and I decided that I should look into going back to school. I wanted to pursue nursing and still do photography on the side. The closest school was 45 minutes away! Ugh. Childcare was not easy to come by so I decided to do online classes. So now I'm exercising my brain, but not my body so much. I spent so much time on the couch doing assignments and studying.

After finishing my prerequisites I was so excited because I could finally go to school on campus, we had a friend to help with the girls and I thought I'll lose that weight again. Not so much! Nursing school is no joke! I was studying so much I never seemed to be able to get off that couch! My 30th birthday was coming up and I made a goal to get back into shape, but with the amount of school work I had to do, it just seemed to be impossible. And we decided to make another change...MOVE AGAIN. We wanted to move to a better place for our kids to grow up and there is another beautiful town north of where we were called Rye. Closer to the city, better schools, more to do and just all around a better deal. We bought a beautiful house, I switched schools, and my oldest was about to start kindergarten. This program that I transferred to goes at a slower pace and I was going to take advantage of that! We got settled in and I was settling in with my new school. Life seemed to be falling into place.

I felt like I should be happy, but I wasn't. WHY? I have a beautiful family, home and life was going great! I realized it had everything to do with ME. I wasn't happy with myself. I realized 31 was coming and my original goal had passed me by. I started doing research. I told myself, I may not get to my goal by 31 years old, but I could be in the process and that would be major progress. I Googled like my life depended on it! On Facebook I noticed there were a lot of new coaches that kept popping up in my news feed. I found a mom that had the story that tugged at my heart, because I felt the same way she did, but she made it to her goal and looked incredible! I wanted her help so badly and started talking to her. She told me about joining a challenge group and I had never heard of one, but was desperate to try. I was all ready to sign up then in our brand new house we got a roof leak! Seriously?!? Seriously.

I couldn't spend the money. We were so stressed as it was and now the roof needed to be fixed. When is that ever cheap?!? So I put my weight loss on hold...AGAIN! Then after a couple months things were getting to be normal and calming down. My 31st birthday was coming up really soon and I decided that with the birthday money I usually always get, I'm making a change! I started following another coach who also happened to be an RN. I was so excited to talk to her because to be honest I was skeptical. She did the same program as the other coach but this was a health care professional. I felt like I could really ask her about my concerns and boy could she answer them! I was feeling so stoked again.

I joined one of her challenge groups with that birthday money and soaked it all in. I finally was seeing results again. This time I felt way more confident, because of all the education I was getting. Two weeks into it and my coach asked if I would like to join her team and help others. I was so happy, nervous and excited all at once! I decided what the heck! I love to help people, it could help me stay accountable and I know if I loved this program so much I gotta spread the word. I know there are other people out there that feel the exact same way. My mission to get FIT is better achieved with others and I'm searching for anyone willing to take on this mission with me.