Hey, it’s me!

I want to start this blog being as real as I can with y’all. I’ve been pretty private about my struggles with food & fitness, but honestly the more I get to know people, the more I see the value in sharing our stories—I wouldn’t have grown as much as I have without someone sharing their story with me.

I think we’re at a really pivotal time in the whole realm of health & wellness, and I want to walk through that with y’all. I want to figure out what it looks like to be comfortable in our own skin, but not afraid or ashamed of wanting to change for the better—whether that be for your physical or mental health.

I have struggled with my body since I was probably about 8 years old. By age 10, I was pre-diabetic, on weight watchers, and was dealing with some serious bullying at school. My family did everything they knew how to help, but I mostly just hid what I was feeling inside with a smile and my positive spirit. By high school, I was fed up with how I looked and how people were treating me, so I started counting every calorie and spending at least 3 hours in the gym everyday. It got to the point where I lost my period because of my diet and training & I was totally obsessed with losing weight. 

It was my hobby.

It effected my friendships, my mental health, and it really was an addiction. I was overwhelmed with guilt if I had something “unhealthy”, and even though everyone thought I was looking great on the outside, in my mind, it was never enough.

When I was finally able to express what was going on with me internally, my friends helped me see that I was doing this for everyone else. I thought people would stop commenting on how I looked if I was “skinny”, but instead, I was getting a different kind of attention—girls only wanted to talk about how I lost weight, and guys just saw me as a body to comment on. It had nothing to do with being healthy—I equated optimal health & wellness with physical appearance.

Long story short, about halfway through college, I found out I was allergic to dairy, which pushed me into finding a new way of eating. At that point, I had completely swung in the opposite direction—my blood pressure was spiking, I wasn’t doing any sort of physical activity, and mentally, I was just so tired of quick fixes that never seemed to stick with me. I had spent most of my life trying to put bandaids over wounds that needed some serious healing. Weight was literally just the surface of it all.

Fast-forward to now— I’m in graduate school, eating plant-based, and honestly, have never been more inspired to make my physical and mental health a priority. I’ve been able to get my hormones back working properly & regulate my blood pressure through food lifestyle changes. I still struggle with wanting to resort back to those old weight-loss methods—especially when I get overwhelmed with how much longer it takes to change your lifestyle instead of just your appearance—but my motivations have completely changed, which fuels me to keep learning and growing.

This isn’t a blog to tell you to go vegan, and it’s not a blog to tell you what is going to work for you specifically. This is just me letting you into my process on cultivating a healthy relationship with the food I eat & this body I’ve been given to take care of.