I used to be a twig in high school. I could eat just about anything I wanted…My sister can agree with this but I lived off of frozen pizza, pancakes, corn dogs, hot dogs, PB&J’s, soup, and ALL of the fudge rounds, cosmic brownies, and little debbies my little heart desired. I’m not even kidding….and I totally wish I was. To be honest I don’t know how I wasn’t pre-diabetic or 300 pounds (actually I know why I wasn’t 300 pounds but that’s a whole different blog post coming later, so, stay tuned friends!) .
Sure I may have been a little picky about what I liked and wanted to eat, but in reality, my parents did not like to cook. There would be the occasional lasagna or (OMG DELICIOUS) Tuna Helper when we were really getting spoiled! But everything was processed SHIT.
My mom despised cooking. One time I asked her to make me some tomato soup because I was sick. I complained and whined and she FINALLY started making it for me on the stove top. Now, I could not tell you what happened, but when she finished, she put the soup in front of me and it smelled horrendous. Like the smell of burnt cheese and pepperoni pizza on the bottom of the stove (because it fell out of your hands due to not opening the oven door wide enough, and then you burning yourself on said door)…..I digress. IT TASTED LIKE PURE SMOKE…. I fricken ate it! I felt so terrible putting up a stink that I ate as much as I could without vomiting and excused myself to go down a bottle of Listerine. Ok, that’s a lie, but I definitely went and brushed my teeth. Gross, I can still taste it to this day.
I didn’t grow up in a house that cooked which is why I believe I never became interested in it. I had this ridiculous limiting belief that I just could not do it, that I would suck and be bad at it. Until one day in 2014 my husband looked me in the eye and said “Jen, I just bought a 30 pack of Oscar Meyer hot dogs for $6.00, I don’t want to live off of hot dogs the rest of my life….” and I made a promise to myself and to him that day that we would not live off of weiners for the rest of our lives.
I started with crock pot recipes, following instructions RELIGIOUSLY. I finally got comfortable enough with the cooking and the CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM (which is SO good for you!) to the point where I was making something new every week. I was finally enjoying it and I was good at it! And when I didn’t know how to chop an onion, I YouTubed it! But holy crap I was making pasta, comfort foods, brownies, you name it. I really thought that because I was “cooking it” that anything I was cooking was healthy for me.
I started gaining so much weight. I was age 25 and I could definitely tell that my metabolism was too. I was hungry all of the time and cravings were through the ROOF. I would wake up in the morning and I HAD to eat something immediately otherwise I would be so incredibly crabby. Poor Lucas. And then after eating breakfast not even 90 minutes later I would be rummaging through the cupboards looking for something to eat! IT WAS SUCH A VICIOUS CYCLE.
It was December 2018. I had weighed the most I had ever weighed in my entire life. I was constantly energy drained and hungry and it felt like I was a slave to food. This was not the way I wanted to live life. I knew I needed to do something, and it had to be something different than I’ve done in the past. I’ve done low carb before but it was so many recipes full of cheese and dairy (which I am lactose). I tried Keto but it was honestly not realistically sustainable for me. Should I go back to doing Herbalife shakes? I didn’t want to spend that kind of money nor did I know what exactly was in the formula. I wanted an easy fix, just like a lot of people. But I just didn’t want to be hungry constantly anymore.
December was when I started my health journey. I started with reading a lot of self help books and, if you don’t know her by now you should, I started following Rachel Hollis. She has this amazing podcast called Rise that is mostly business and life coaching but it does have a little bit of everything. One of the episodes was titled “The Science of Hunger and Body Love with Celebrity Nutritionist Kelly LeVeque”. Rachel had already started changing my life and damn it if she had a nutritionist on her show, I was going to listen to it. What did I have to lose?……that is such a loaded question now. It wasn’t all about what I had to lose, but also what I was going to gain.
How do you feel? Really, ask yourself….how do you FEEL.
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I can relate to this in SO many ways. We ate Hamburger Helper and Kraft Mac n Cheese in my household A LOT. And I'll be honest those items are probably in my cabinet right now...BUT now that I feel I'm gotten the basics of adding active minutes to my day, I want to try to tackle nutrition! It's so overwhelming and confusing. This is good for you...wait nope, now it's not...WAIT, if you eat it prepared this way is it?! 😬 I'm lost. I can't wait to soak in the real life experiences you've had and hear what helped you to be successful. I appreciate the time you are taking for this! ♥️