My Story

I haven't always been passionate about health. I grew up eating pretty poorly and not exercising regularly. It wasn't until I got pregnant that I decided to turn things around for myself and for my new family. I wanted to be healthy for myself and my daughter so my boyfriend and I decided to completely change our eating habits. We almost completely stopped going out to eat and started cooking all our meals at home. It was hit or miss at first. We didn't know how to cook, we didn't know a lot about healthy eating, and we didn't really know what kinds of healthy foods we liked. With time we figured it out, found our style of cooking, and we love it! I would never go back to eating the way I used to. Your cravings change and all of a sudden you realize your craving banana with peanut butter instead of candy or cookies. That's a pretty awesome feeling! When I think of eating now I think about nourishing my body, not just eating whatever is in front of me because it tastes good. Of course, we go out now and then or make something unhealthy at home. It's good to indulge sometimes. The key, as we've all heard, is moderation.

Exercise has become a really important part of my life too. When I don't fit my workouts in I just don't feel as good about myself and I'm not very fun to be around because I get grumpy. I make sure I plan time in my day for it, and my family respects that. We workout together when we can, yes even my daughter joins in quite frequently. I started with yoga and pilates and lost most of my baby weight doing these. Then I moved on to running, or going to the gym and getting on the elliptical. Lately, I've been really into circuit workouts and lifting weights. Not body building style, but heavier than I've ever tried before and I'm getting really great results. When it comes to exercise, I think the most important thing is to find something you like and something that you will continue to do. There's all sorts of advice out there, but if you don't like something you're not going to keep it up. The only exercise that's going to work for you is the one that you'll do. I do think it's good to switch things up now and then, but like I said, the most important thing is just doing something.

My goal is to become a personal trainer and nutritionist. My boyfriend and I made a decision that since we have our daughter it's best for us personally to only have one of us in school at a time. He'll be finished in a year and then it's my turn to go. There's a great school here that I plan on going to where I can get NASM, nutritionist, and corrective exercise certifications. It's a nine month program and I'm really excited about going! I've had a lot of different ideas about what I might "want to be when I grow up", but I keep coming back to this one. It's my passion, so hopefully that means I'll be good at it and be able to motivate people to be healthy.

Outside of health and fitness, I love spending time with my family. I have a wonderful, smart, opinionated, strong-willed, funny, beautiful 5-year-old daughter. I've been with my boyfriend for almost 8 years. School is the only reason we've postponed a wedding for so long. We just feel like we'll be able to plan the wedding we really want if we wait a little bit longer until he's done and working. He wants to be a biology teacher so we're outside a lot looking for bugs, playing in the mud, and working on our garden. I love to bake, healthy or not, and I still love yoga even though I don't do it as much as I used to. We're living with my parents until my boyfriend is finished with school to save money. It's a great situation, because my daughter gets to spend tons of time with grandma and grandpa and we all help each other out around the house and in the garden. I'm not going to say it's never without it's difficulties, but overall everyone's happy with how it's going.