Who Is This HeartBreaker and What Is She Doing Here?

I will begin with the obligatory "Who I Am" post to satisfy the curiosity of the masses before I turn to my usual ramblings.

Hi, my name is Alexia and I'm a heart attack survivor.

[Hi Alexia!]

I'm a young, healthy, 38 year old female. I'm a vibrant woman with no family history and good blood pressure and cholesterol numbers. I'm an on-again, off-again exerciser and healthy eater.

In other words, I'm the last person one would expect to have a heart attack.

And yet, here we are. Me having survived a heart attack and you reading about my experience.

Okay, okay. I'll admit to my risk factors.

I smoked. Way too many cigarettes for way too many years.

I had stress. I am a goal-oriented, motivated, perfectionist who was climbing that corporate ladder and doing quite well at it for way too many years.

I also carried anywhere from 20-40 extra pounds of weight on my body for most of my adult life.

[Addition December 2009 - I do, in fact, have a family history. It just was not discovered until a family member started having heart-related issues two months after my heart attack!]

But that's it.

I never thought that was enough to bring on a heart attack... turns out, it was more than enough. If only I knew then what I know now...

So, that's who I am... but why am I here?

I'm here because I wanted a public blog to record my experiences, to keep track of my health journey, and hopefully to educate and help others.

I feel a calling now like nothing I've felt before.

Of course, I'm prone to change my mind quite a bit...

This experience has been the impetus to my decision to change my life's direction. While I have loved my career for many years and it has been good to me, I am not passionate about it. Having a heart attack and traveling down this road of recovery has brought me full circle and I am staring right back in the face of my first love.

I am passionate about fitness, about exercise, about nutrition, about healthy living... In my younger days, I was a nationally certified (ACE) group fitness instructor for 12 years and I studied a year of pre-med in pursuit of some health related degree - sports medicine, exercise science, I wasn't sure at the time.

But that was over a decade ago now. The lure of the money to be made with a good job and promotions lured me away from my love. So, now, I am currently studying for my Personal Trainer Certification and applying to take classes for my second Bachelor's Degree in Exercise Science. I hope that my second career involves fitness writing and personal training or lifestyle/executive coaching.

So... that's the short version.

If you stick around, and I hope you do, you'll learn a few things.

You'll learn pretty quickly that I'm a rambler.

You'll learn about my experience with my heart attack and my personal journey of recovery.

I really hope that you'll learn a little something about fitness along the way too.