Sobriety is that thing for me.  It gives me the mental edge.

When I’m sober, I’m clear-headed and focused.  As any athlete knows, there are a certain set of elements that you need to reach peak performance.  One thing is crystal clear to me after 700+ sober days… my peak performance happens when I’m sober.  

In success I’ve found that the advantage comes when you’re willing to do something that most people will not do.  It’s that simple.  Trust me, it’s much harder to live a sober life and go against the grain on something so integral to our society and culture.  Following the crowd will always cause less friction.  But in order to change the world at the velocity and intensity that I want to, I just can’t afford to follow the crowd. 

Before I stopped drinking, I probably read 100 books on success, leadership, and personal development.  None of them have come close to changing my life in the way sobriety has. 

The post Sobriety gives me the mental edge appeared first on Muscles and Meditations.

If 25-year old Alexa heard that, she’d be falling out of her chair laughing.  Last Thursday, I cheers-ed with ginger ale at my beach ceremony in Costa Rica.  

As I eliminated alcohol from my life, I tended to think of how I would deal with pain, grief, and disappointment without booze? And that was hard. It’s still hard. But what I failed to realize was when I was dousing myself with alcohol to deal with the hard things, I was actually numbing myself to the good things too. In an attempt to medicate the stress and pain of daily life, I also dimmed my joy.

We believe we need alcohol to enjoy life, but think back to some of the greatest moments of your life… the actual moment itself. Regardless of whether you were drinking or not, what made the moment special? If you’re anything like me, it was the people you were with, the beautiful location you were in, or the sense of accomplishment you were experiencing. It’s never actually the alcohol that makes the moment special.  

True joy exists in and of itself.

Without the influence of alcohol, I’ve opened myself up to feeling more present in my life. And while that means being more present to the pain, it also means being more present to the JOY. When I reflect on the past several years I think of several moments where I experienced truly unbelievable highs (getting engaged, getting married, the phone call from my sister when she got into medical school, the phone call from my other sister when she crossed the finish line at her marathon, embarking on my sabbatical).

How cool is it that I got to experience those moments FULLY? 

So going back to my wedding for a minute. As I sat on a private beach with the love of my life in the most beautiful location, I raised my glass to toast my new husband and I paused. Before we clinked glasses, I took a second to take it all in. I looked at his smiling face. I felt the sand under my feet and heard the waves crashing in the background. I let the joy and the bliss of the moment seep into my body. My heart swelled with a gratitude not only that I married my best friend, but that I got to do it sober.

The post I experience true joy more fully without alcohol appeared first on Muscles and Meditations.

I love sleep.  My childhood nickname was Alexa Bear (since I would “hibernate”).  And precisely because I value and crave my sleep, when I was drinking alcohol I became very irritated and annoyed after a sleepless night.  Tossing and turning, waking up multiple times, feeling a bodily heaviness and that inevitable headache, having weird dreams, and irregular sleep patterns always took it out of me.  Even knowing full well that my poor sleep was a result of my own choices to drink, I would still wake up grumpy and feel like shit.  This usually resulted in naps or sleeping all day.   

Since eliminating alcohol, I fall asleep instantly.  I rarely wake up in the middle of the night, unless there’s an earthquake (I do live in LA…), and I have no issues getting up in the morning.  I have proudly become that obnoxious morning person who sets one alarm, never snoozes it, and jumps out of bed.  My energy levels stay consistent throughout the day and I’ve even decreased my coffee consumption.  

A good day truly begins with a good night’s rest.

The post Eliminating alcohol has improved the quality of my sleep appeared first on Muscles and Meditations.

I’ve also been learning more about what psychologists have defined as ‘time affluence’: the sense that one regularly has ample time available.  There have been a multitude of studies that indicate that an individual’s sense of time affluence was linked to greater happiness. 

As someone who regularly wishes they could clone themselves because they don’t have enough hours in the day, I struggle with feeling like I have enough time (and I know I’m not alone in this!  A survey done indicates that 80% of Americans feel this way).  Yet the amount of time I used to allocate to going out and drinking, or recovering from said drinking is insane to me now.  Alcohol is literally a poison, and especially as my body has aged, I would feel it on a physical level no matter the quantity.  Even a single glass of red wine would give me a slight headache the next day.  And if I binge drank, my hangovers were absolutely brutal.  Thus, I found myself wasting sooo much precious time.  And then getting stressed and anxious *about* wasting the time. 

Let me stop you before you think this is heading towards a productivity post.  I didn’t give up alcohol so I could have more time dedicated to the grind (work, school, etc.)  But rather the increased time affluence I’ve gotten from an alcohol-free life has given me the bandwidth to actually *breathe*.  And with that space to breathe I’ve gained a greater sense of what I actually want to fill my time with.  While I was drinking, most days looked the same: wake up, work, unwind with alcohol on the evenings and weekends, rinse and repeat.  Life became really monotonous and I felt trapped on that hamster wheel.  I find myself now having the space to also fill it with things I enjoy, not just the things I’m obligated to do.

I definitely still overextend myself to people, places and things, and it’s something I’m working to manage.  But at least now I’m not wasting my time on the consumption or recovery from alcohol.  I’ve given myself the ability to consciously be aware of what I spend time on, instead of just mindlessly shuffling through life.  

And to me, that is time well spent.

The post An alcohol-free life gives me greater time affluence appeared first on Muscles and Meditations.

At the same time, throughout my experience in various recovery circles, these sober people were always talking about how they were living a life of their wildest dreams. I used to roll my eyes at these kind of sentiments.  Living a life of their wildest dreams? Ok Bob, sure. 

But I get it now.  

Because when I decided to stop drinking and work on my sobriety, my wildest dreams did start coming true.  Quickly.  In the past 2 years I’ve been amazed at the speed at which things have been falling into place for me.  I do not consider any of this a coincidence.  For me, the magic of choosing an alcohol-free life meant that I removed one hell of a self-imposed limit on myself.  I’m *literally* doing the thing that I convinced myself for years I could not do.  If that’s not a kick-start to boundless confidence, I don’t know what is. 

I was raised to be achievement-oriented, and I’m proud of what I have accomplished for myself.  But I’ve since realized that I was only letting myself get to a certain level of personal success and development while I was hindering myself with alcohol.  Now that the barrier has been removed, I find myself laughing some days at how little scares me and how convicted I am that my wildest dreams can and will continue to come true.  Sobriety has been the quickest way to level up. 

I dare you to do the thing that scares you the most and then see how your life changes.

The post Life feels limitless without alcohol appeared first on Muscles and Meditations.

I’m grateful that I found a stigma-free method for recovery through Tempest, which I worked for over a year.  I’m grateful for some initial support from friends and family who stuck by me when I was figuring this all out. 

But I’m most grateful to myself for having the courage to fearlessly pursue a life less led.

It hasn’t been perfect, and it certainly hasn’t been easy, but it’s sure been worth it.  Since that fateful day, I’ve racked up over 650 sober days, started graduate school specializing in Social Entrepreneurship, gone deep into the depths of my trauma related to my drinking, researched absolutely everything related to alcohol abuse and drinking culture in society, sampled almost every non-alcoholic option on the market, networked with industry professionals, and built a business plan for my future non-alcoholic bar which I will be pitching in D.C on April 1st.

A key part of recovery is sharing one’s story, and I’m starting this series as a way to share my truth.  Each Friday I’ll share an IG post with a key finding from my sobriety journey and some personal context.  The content will also be posted on my blog (link in bio) if you’d rather check it out there.  If any of this resonates with you, feel free to message me and/or share the post with your networks.

“Sobriety itself is today’s high, for it is ultimately in the most centered consciousness that we find our power to transcend the world.”

-Marianne Williamson

The post Sobriety Reflections: A Series appeared first on Muscles and Meditations.

What I came to realize recently is that the pandemic was just the trigger that re-opened a fleet of unhealed wounds.  A major, life and world-changing beast of a trigger, but a trigger nonetheless.  Last year felt like a floodgate opening, with every emotion I had battled to repress or thought I had dealt with coming to the surface.  As the world fell apart around me, I fell apart within me. To worsen things, my healthiest outlets of group exercise, in-person volunteerism, and travel were eliminated overnight.  I was literally stuck at home with my thoughts, my absolute version of hell.  And like many others, I turned squarely to the most obvious, cheapest, easiest coping strategy of all: my old buddy alcohol. 

Somewhere along last summer, with no end to the pandemic in sight, I fell into a debilitating depression.  A depression so deep it felt astronomically foreign to me.  I had come to terms with the anxiety that had plagued portions of my 20s, but depression felt different, weakening in a way I couldn’t fathom.  In one of my first sessions with my current therapist, I told her that oddly enough anxiety always felt like a productive byproduct of struggling; anxiety actually made me over plan, find things to fixate on and goals to achieve.  In a weird way, the brainwashing that our sick patriarchal capitalist society had put me through told me that if I just tried hard enough with my anxiety, I could use it as a tool for productivity and structured planning.

But I couldn’t sell myself on this new depression.  In fact, I couldn’t do much of anything because my willpower, energy, and motivation were entirely depleted.  Despite getting plenty of sleep the night before, I was taking an almost daily midday nap during my lunch break.  Dishes piled up, food went uncooked, texts remained unanswered, nothing interested me.  A particular moment that terrified me was when I had the stark realization that I literally had nothing to look forward to. 

Yet I kept putting alcohol into my body, thus heightening my anxiety and deepening my depression, all the while wondering why nothing was seeming to improve…

In a recent session, my therapist highlighted a point that stuck with me.  I told her the other time in my life where I felt I did not have much of any control on myself and certainly not my drinking was my early 20s… and 2020.  After I described how my early 20s were spent in a place where I had minimal real responsibilities, money to blow, and was living in a location that always felt like you were on vacation, she observed that I probably had a lot of time.  And the past year, living in California during the pandemic where virtually nothing was open, I also had a lot of time on my hands.  Sure I had work, but no commute, no activities, no weekend plans, and minimal familial obligations.  Again, TIME.  So, what was it about this excess time that led me to fill it with drinking?   Was it, perhaps, because filling this time with drinking as a coping mechanism was the easiest way to blatantly choose to ignore dealing with the open personal wounds that had been triggered when the pandemic began?  I told my therapist she might be on to something.

Truthfully, I am still charting out what this all looks like for me.  But one thing I unequivocally know after the horror of last year is that if alcohol were a healthy coping strategy for me, my life would have at least incrementally improved over the course of its usage.  Right?  But that is not what happened.  It only made things worse.  FAR worse.  SO much worse that while I knew I was hurting for 9 months, I didn’t even seek therapy until December, when my anger and helplessness came to an obvious breaking point.  So much worse that I read 44 books, watched 20 television series, and did 3 sad puzzles to distract me from doing anything remotely close to confronting my own shit and dealing with my healing.

Therapy, exercise, meditation, reading, and writing are all fundamental to my healing.  But I’m adding a new one: sobriety.

The post Growth appeared first on Muscles and Meditations.

Then COVID happened.  And it’s happening, and still will be happening for a while.  It’s hard to properly articulate how depressed and devastated I have been about this because quite frankly, I think I’m still in denial.  Part of me is clinging to the hope that I’ll wake up and this will all be a bad dream.  I’ll magically arise one morning and instead of seeing endless apocalyptic headlines, I’ll be on my way to REI to buy a travel backpack.  It’s taken me 5 months to write this blog post because when I think too much about how I should be preparing for my trip of a lifetime, I get too sad.  I’ve been sitting in a void of reality, where every day kind of does feel like a simulation.

And what the judgmental corners of my psyche initially didn’t want me to accept is that these lost plans can be soul-crushing.  I am able to acknowledge, as I have, that my current situation could be a lot worse, while also struggling to show up each day thankful for what I do have.  The same goes for you.  You can grieve for those less fortunate than you during this pandemic and also grieve over your lost trip, concert, or college football season.  Both things can be true.  It says nothing about your goodness as a person or your character, but simply speaks to your humanity.

So there it is, the “trip that wasn’t” has been unveiled.  I know someday I will get my big adventure, but right now it honestly feels too far off to imagine so ending on an overly positive note feels insincere.  As I’m sure many of you are doing right now, I’m just clinging to the small victories I can get.  Stay strong everyone.

The post The Trip That Wasn’t appeared first on Muscles and Meditations.

After eating our weight in ceviche in Lima and spending a few days to acclimate to the altitude in Cusco (the altitude is no joke, but we were actually ok; other than climbing stairs or doing anything strenuous, we were able to breathe fine), we set off on our journey to Machu Picchu. There are only two ways to get to the city of Aguas Calientes, which sits at the base of Machu Picchu- take a slow but scenic train, or walk (the famed Inca Trail).  I think you can assume which one we did.  Those train operators sure do have a monopoly on the region, but I’m not mad about the hustle.  The train ride takes about 4 hours from Cusco, and what we found to be hilarious is how slow it goes.  The train barely moves 20 mph.  The path through the mountains is very untouched, and there’s a lot of twists and turns along the way, so it ultimately became a quiet, scenic journey.

Now besides booking multiple spa visits, the best thing we did the entire trip was agree to spend the night before our big Machu Picchu day at a hotel in Aguas Calientes.  The alternative is taking a really f*cking early train ride from Cusco, or starting at Machu Picchu later in the day.  The obvious downside of waking up at 2am to take the first train from Cusco is that you’ll be exhausted the entire day at Machu Picchu, and probably miss out on some of the moments because you’re trying not to die.  For people who love themselves and like to sleep, and don’t mind shelling out for a hotel, I would definitely recommend spending the night before.  Give yourself as much time at Machu Picchu as possible.  A place that special you won’t regret.  So we arrived about midday on a Tuesday, and had plenty of time to relax and explore before waking up at 4am the next day to hike.   We even took a preview of the remix and took the bus up the mountain to the entrance of Machu Picchu to poke around and check out the luxury hotel up there.  

So when you scroll Instagram or read Travel & Leisure and see all the famous shots of Machu Picchu, there’s a mountain in the background called Huayna Picchu (see below).

That mountain is what we hiked.

No, I am not joking.  No, we did not die.  What we accomplished was a feat that made enjoying the experience of Machu Picchu even more rewarding.  Because the hike is so hard, the paths are non-existent in parts, and they don’t want overcrowding on the mountain, the Peruvian government limits this number of people that can do this hike to 400 per day.  Note to anyone considering this– book your tickets early.  These hikes can sell out months in advance, especially during busy times of year.  We bought our hike tickets in April for our August hike.  We purchased them for the 7am time-slot rather than the later 10am one.  The early bird catches the worm, right?

The night before the hike we laid around in our hotel room, relaxing and psyching ourselves up.  In true Alexa fashion, I think I did 3 face masks.  The morning of, I felt the excitement and adrenaline similar to the day I ran my marathon.  I knew this hike was going to be one of the most physically taxing things I’d ever do, but I was insanely excited.  This hike in particular has a portion where you have no handrails and essentially hike straight up, aptly titled “The Stairs of Death”.   I knew the view from the top would be worth it.  We woke around 4am and ate breakfast, prepared our backpacks and got in line for the bus.  From the base of Aguas Calientes you take either a 30-minute bus or a nice little 2+ hour walk up.  We bused.  The line for the bus was SO LONG we felt like we were at Disneyland.  I will say the line for the bus was really the only main part it felt like a tourist location.  Our personal journeys became shared journeys in that 400+ person bus line.

Thankfully the buses are a plenty, and we finally boarded one and headed up.  We had to show our Huayna Picchu hike ticket (which also included our general Machu Picchu ticket) and a passport to get in.  Also– for those who have to pee every hour like myself, have a ton of change on hand, as it costs soles (Peruvian currency) to use the restrooms there.  In true runner fashion, I nervous-peed and then we were off!  We walked to the entrance of Huayna Picchu, where they make you sign a log when you enter.  You sign in, and if you don’t sign out by the end of the day, well, I think they just assume you’re dead.  I would LOL, but people actually do die on this hike.  So there’s that.

I won’t lie to you, the hike was really tough.  I don’t really hike or work with inclines too much, so it was hard on the sections where you are going straight up.  It didn’t help that the stairs are huge (even though Incans were short ass people historically, they had the largest stairs.  Perplexing).  My friend Laura even had a broken FOOT.  But we kept going.  We discussed as a group that it didn’t matter how fast we went, we just had to keep going.  Slow and steady always does win the race.  So we trekked, for about 90 minutes, maybe a bit shy of it.  From our scientific internet research it seemed that if you were really being fast, you could make it up in about 45 minutes- 1 hr.  We obviously stopped for a bunch of photos along the way, but it wasn’t until the last 20 minutes or so when the views really become apparent.

What was most noteworthy was how quiet everything was at the top of the mountain.  The loudest thing were my own lungs, panting from the hike.  But when they say the view is worth it, they were not joking.  I know I sound like an asshole, but the photos really don’t even do it justice.  In a world that sometimes feels like it’s collapsing in on itself, it feels unreal that places like this exist.  The sheer beauty of nature in its purest form is a gift.  For me, nature is the closest I ever feel to a higher power.  It’s a smack-in-the-face reminder that there is something so much bigger than all of us.  Maybe it was the literal ascension in meters, or the silence at the top, but at the peak of Huayna Picchu on that Wednesday in August, it sure felt like heaven.

All in all, if you’re taking a trip to Peru, Huayna Picchu has got to be on your list.  Machu Picchu is incredible and interesting and historic in its own right, but this hike is another level.  If I can do it, you can do it.  If Laura with a broken foot can do it, you can do it.  The feeling you’ll get at the top is worth every ounce of blood, sweat, or tears (thankfully no blood for me, just the other two).  After our moment at the top, we descended to take a break, eat, relax, and get ready for some history.  It’s not required, but we hired a tour guide at the entrance of Machu Picchu to give us background on the site.  It’s basically a person who knows all the history on the site who will walk around with you, teach you things, and take photos for you.  I think it’s a worthy investment considering there are no signs with information or anywhere you can really learn about what the ruins were.  If you’re on a tour group already, this won’t be necessary, but if you book this part of the trip on your own I’d definitely recommend it.  After a few hours at the ruins, we were maxed out.  Not only was I physically exhausted, but I was emotionally exhausted.  Travel always challenges me in new ways and this day humbled me.  Not humbled in the sense that it brought down my confidence levels (those are sky-high, I’m amazing and I own it), but it humbled me as a human.  Beautiful, destructive, all-consuming nature has a way of reminding you how insignificant you are when it comes to the scope of the universe.  Being at the top of the mountain, taking it all in and having a moment with God reminded me how sacred my existence is.  And I vowed to never take for granted the privilege I have to travel.  Every new place I visit and each new experience is a gift.  Machu Picchu was the ultimate gift.

The post Machu Picchu | Travel Guide appeared first on Muscles and Meditations.

But as I neared 30, I’ve found myself striving for calm.  While my early 20s were a time of learning and growth, my late 20s have been a time of acceptance.  I made peace with a lot of my past and started to really love and feel content with myself.  The Libra in me has really prioritized balance and healthy downtime.

I moved to California, back on the West Coast where my family all resides.  The closeness of family has been incredible.  In college and living in Florida I could go an entire year without seeing a single blood relative.   I’ve reached some milestones in my career but am slowly making plans for my future.  I got plans, just you wait.  I started volunteering regularly and finding ways to give back to my community.   My weekends are way chill now and I stopped partying as hard as I used to.  And, I fell in love.  I’m in a happy and supportive relationship with my best friend (and yes, I hate myself for how cheesy that sounded).

So let’s have some fun. 

This site will still center on fitness and philosophy, the core of my passions.  But I’m also going to share some more of my passions, including travel, Los Angeles, trying new things, my friends, face masks, feminism, reading, and my boyfriend.

I’m still a work in a progress but I’m ready and excited for this new decade.  I searched near and far, but I finally realized that I already had all the tools I needed to love myself.   I hope everyone can find that for themselves and truly fathom how POWERFUL you can be when you love and believe in your authentic self.

Bring it on 30s.

The post Thirty, Flirty, and Thriving appeared first on Muscles and Meditations.