In the beginning

My food history ...

Growing up I loved food. My parents (bless their hearts and tummy's) always kept our cupboards and refrigerator STOCKED with goodies. In high school my friends would always joke (in the most serious manner) about coming over so they could indulge in the dozens of snack cakes, cookies, chips, Cheetos, dozens of boxes of cereal and frozen food that we had available.

After school I would dive in to a bag of puffy Cheetos, eat half a bag of marshmallows dipped in chocolate sauce, or munch on package after package of Dunk-a-Roos until it was time for dinner ... (I know you remember those lovely little shaped grahams with confetti icing!) For dinner we'd normally "wing it", which generally entailed stuffing half a pizza, or a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in my face. On weekends I'd get fast food with friends. McDonald's double cheeseburgers and strawberry shakes, Wendy's chicken nuggets, Taco Bell Quesadillas and Grilled Stuffed Burritos.

BUT I was more active then most girls my age. I was on the pom squad and our practices which ran 5 days a week, for 10 months a year, which consisted of 3 hours of INTENSE cardio, coupled with my young and rapid metabolism allowed me to overeat and not see any ill affects.

When I graduated high school I was 5'3" and weighed about 115-120 lbs. depending on the day. I honestly don't think I had ever even looked at the nutritional information on anything a single time in my life. I ate what I wanted, when I wanted it.

Fast forward 4 years.

In 2006 I went to Mexico and from the looks of my picture and what I can remember I felt pretty decent about how I looked in bikini. I had been dating my boyfriend for a year at this point. He wined me and dined me. We enjoyed long dinners and many cocktails over our relationship. But he was also on our Division I collegiate soccer team so he manged to keep me in okay shape by encouraging me to join in his workouts.















































(Puerto Vallarta, February 2006)
(-- please forgive the repeated pose, I never know what to do with my hands in solo pictures!)

And then ...

We broke up. I was sad. And turned to food.

You know how it goes. You go out for happy hour mid-week with your girlfriends to get him off your mind. You party long in to the night and always manage to justify devouring a Styrofoam container of sweet-n-sour chicken in a drunk craze at 4 am. You then also justify your hangover by trying to cure it with a fat soaked grand slam breakfast at Denny's 4 hours later when you wake up.

Shortly there after I joined my family on a week long summer vacation and when I saw the pictures when I returned home I knew I had been oblivious to all the things I was allowing myself to indulge in. For the first time in my life, I looked at my picture and saw myself as fat. I am going to guess the fruity/syrupy drink in my hand "garnished" with a blow-pop probably wasn't adding much nutritional value to my lifestyle.





















































(outside of Buca diBeppo's in Charlotte, NC. July 2006)
The caption of this picture in my Facebook album is "stuffed" ... and I was!

It wasn't until a few years later that I took my weight by the reigns and made some drastic lifestyle changes ...

Jump on in - the water's fine!

Yesterday morning I did something totally random and out of my realm. I drove 2 hours away to meet a woman who's blog I read on a daily basis but had never spoken to in my life. Matt humored me and my Google Reader addiction and joined me on the journey to Healdsburg to meet Jenna (and a few other bloggers) in support of her "interview" for Murphy-Goode winery. While sitting in traffic on the 101 I kept occupied by thumbing through the Sunday paper, when I came across a rather timely article titled "The vast majority of blog start-ups are eventually abandoned by their creators".

Ha. I was a statistic.

"According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the previous 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled. "

I am a quitter. I have tried to keep a blog before. But I quit. More then once.

I just didn't and still don't feel like I really have anything worth contributing to the 133 million blog junkyard. Because really, who out there cares what I ate for breakfast, or whether or not I rode my bike to work.

I'm not sure that airing my dirty laundry for anyone to see make a difference? Who really needs to know about my struggles with disordered eating, or my icky past of obsessive exercise?

But then a funny thing happened. While in Healdsburg I got talking with Jenna, and Maggie and they opened my eyes to the opportunities available to me right here at my fingertips. They didn't begin their blogs to cure World hunger, or win the Noble prize. They simply had thoughts, and feelings and blogs were the perfect avenue to express those.

Me and Jenna @ Murphy-Goode Tasting Room in Healdsburg

So, I decided, why not now. My life has changed in ways I never could have imagined. I have seen, felt, and experienced things which have made me who I am today and who I will become tomorrow. I am just living and learning. I don't know what I will share on this blog. But even if I am the only person who contributes or reads it, that'll be okay with me. Because it's not about the number of hits my page gets, or how many comments I receive. It's about me, my soul, my journey and my renovation in to who I will become.