My Introduction
This is my first post to tell everyone who I am.
My name is Yanyan Xu. I am 19 years old born August 9th, 1988. I go to school at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign studying in the school of Business. My major of choice is currently a dual degree in Accountancy and Finance.
I have always and always will be a nerd. What comes first in my life is school. No matter what, I try my best to excel. I don't know why, call it Asian nature, but it is in my entire being to do focus hard at studying. With this mentality, and getting some sweet glasses sophomore year, I fell more and more into the stereotype. I chose brainy extracurriculars rather than sports. To this day I regret this decision. Unfortunately, I really did not have a choice. My physique and my build lacks in all areas to really be good in anything.
I started working out senior year of high school following my good friend Ralph Kumarski in our strength and conditioning gym class. I found the year and experience to be awesome. With less than an hour each day, I felt like I was making a difference in the way I lived my life. By weight lifting, I found something that I was missing all my life. This activity helped separate my life from the book stacks and clear my head. You don't have to be good at it, you just have to be dedicated.
The beauty of weight lifting is that anyone can do it. My short stature, my eye sight, and my unfit body did not hinder me at all. Though it was difficult to get used to the different exercises, your body adapts as long as you keep the attempts up.
Fast forward a few years. I am now in college, I am still casually exercising and lifting everyday. I start to learn more about weight lifting and the different exercises people perform by researching and noticing what exercises people to do at the gym. The final piece of the puzzle falls into place when I sign up for Food and Nutrition Science Health 101. It opened thousands of doors for me. Not only did this class debunk many myths about weight lifting but showed me that diet and exercise fall hand in hand.
After finishing this class, I have a better understanding of how the body works and the proper nutrient it requires. During my winter break, I made a decision that starting January 1st, I would transform my entire body with proper nutrition and exercise. I spent days researching the perfect diet and completely redesigining and tweaking my exercises. I will post more about these in the next few days.
Today is January 1st, 2008. I will start my 365 day online journal following my progress. With this journal, I hope to improve my nutrition, improve my exercises, and give myself motivation to keep going.
My goals right now are just to see where everything takes me. As this year slowly progresses I will start setting more specific deadlines to accomplish what I want. One general goal is to improve my writing with this blog. I know it is one of my weaknesses, but I hope to improve it by writing more daily.
Right now this blog will be only available to close family and friends. Please help me follow my diet and workouts to accomplish this 365 day experiment!
Yanyan