O my….. I reallllllllllllly don’t know where to start with this post.  I just looked in my “post folder”, and noticed that I have about 8 different drafts in separate posts regarding nutrition.  Nutrition is something that everyone wants to ask questions about, and there’s no doubt as to why that is.  From my experience, growing up and living life as an All-American kid in the United States, I could see why it took me so long to figure out what in the hell I “should” be trying to eat!  I never had anything more than a brief introduction to what ‘good’ nutrition was all throughout school.  The notorious, ridiculous “food pyramid” was all I had to go off of, and what a load of crap that was.  I was happy to see the U.S. Govt. finally made some kind of reform to the ‘nutrition guidelines’ last year.  Guess it took that guy with the tv show, where he exposes how bad nutrition is/was in a public schools out in the south.  I never saw the show, nor this particular episode, but I was dumbfounded when I heard about it from a friend.  Can you believe that there was a class of kids that didn’t know what, or how to use UTENSILS!  All the food they ate, was stuff they could eat with their hands!  If memory serves, the kids weren’t even familiar with most vegetables!!

My parents aren’t off the hook.  They hadn’t given me too much solid information either.  Before they hit splitsville when I was 9 years old, they spent a number of years commuting several hours a day for work.  I grew up in an area of Northern California that some refer to as “God’s country”, and others that refer to it as “BFE; BumbF**kEgypt”.  Nonetheless, frozen party pizza’s, and pretty much anything microwavable was on the menu 5 out of 7 days a week.  Also, having a loving Grandmother who loved offering you food and making sure you said anything but ‘no thanks’, more than she actually loved cooking, meant that I grew-up with some bad habits from the very get-go.  You see, there is this concept called “portion control”, and I had no grasp of it what-so-ever.  I was never an over-weight kid, but I was certainly “big-boned”.  The words thick, solid, meaty, and maybe even ‘chunky’ at a few stages in live, come to mind.

I grew up happy, despite the crazy things going on around me as a kid, not paying too much attention to food and my body image.  Once I hit Jr. High, that’s when I started to become aware of the fact that I was not at all happy in my own skin.  It all started out with innocent calorie counting, then at the start of high school came anorexia.  Fast-forward a year and a half later, and we’re checkin out the bulimic scene.  Then, one of my best friends ratted me out to some faculty, and the therapy began.  Mind you, I was very ‘successful’ at hiding the ‘issue’ regarding my body image.  The story goes on from there, and only gets more intense.  I’d love to share it with you, however, YOU’RE JUST GONNA HAVE TO BUY THE BOOK EARLY NEXT YEAR!  Truly, my auto-biography is going to be one interesting, uplifting read.  Anyhow, all through life, until I reached a point when I decided to compete in my first body building show, I really never understood what “good” nutrition was.  I had tried everything from

-fat free diet.  check! been there, done that.  (nothing but white rice, bbq sauce, canned vegi’s, baked potatoe, diet coke….. what’s wrong with that?  it’s all fat free, right?)
-the atkins diet.  did that too….. (think I’m gonna get sick just thinking about the word itself)
-the hollywood diet.  yea, tried it.  (I LOVE fruit.  eating nothing but fruit didn’t sound like a ‘diet’ to me, it sounded like I had died and gone to heaven!)
-the cabbage soup diet.  uh huh…. can’t forget that one (can you say “donde esta los banos por favor”?!)

I even worked as a Fitness Consultant for 24HR Fitness for a number of years.  I was so good at my job, that I made it into management before I even knew what that word meant!  In the Northern California district, out of 52 clubs, all the managers were male, except myself, and one other woman at the time.  So you see, I was DAMN good!  Apparently, when it got to that bit about nutrition during my sales presentation/qualifying process, I was completely talking out of my @$$!!!

Through some wonderful mentors, and great books and programs, I finally realized that ‘good’ nutrition wasn’t that hard to understand after all.  There are just some basic principles ya need to follow, as well as be willing to make a lifestyle change.  There is ZERO doubt in my mind and heart, that most cancer related deaths (among a whole heap more of other nasty life-threatening illnesses), are triggered from all the chemicals used in our processed foods.  I will post a sample “list” of what I typically eat during an average day shortly.  I also have a fun challenge coming up for you, so don’t go anywhere.  So maybe there is some true to the ol saying, “you are what ya eat!”….

to be continued-