Getting Healthy!

I've seen and heard it a million times. No matter how much you work out, the main factor in losing weight, is your diet. I've decided that this is how I'm going to BEGIN my personal journey in losing a few pounds and getting fit. I don't mean diet as in cutting out a specific part of what you eat or taking 'diet' pills, I mean your basic food pyramid with a healthy amount of food from each food group to sustain your body and keep it healthy. 

For as long as I can remember I have been incredibly body conscious. Most women that I know are, but not quite to the extent that I am (as far as I know). Even when I was very very thin (during my teen years) I still would stand in front of the mirror and nit-pick the parts of my body that I wanted to change. I would tell myself over and over that I was going to get my butt in the gym and get THAT body. Well, I would go to the gym for a couple of weeks, then skip it one day and then the 'one day' would turn into weeks, then months. So, obviously, I never got that thin, firm, toned body that I always dreamed of having but I was getting somewhat of a workout cheerleading. When I graduated I started gaining weight due to my lack of any sort of physical activity and my love of eating out. I was used to being able to eat all kind of junk food and fast food and not really have to worry about it. Now, 6 years and 1 baby later, I've gained almost 30 lbs and lost what little confidence I ever had in my body.

After a lot of beating myself up and making excuses as to why I could never have THAT body, I've decided to take control! Thanks to the internet, I've come across some very inspirational stories and some tasty looking recipes and I do believe that I'm ready to take on this problem once and for all! The exercise portion of it might have to wait a little bit but as I stated before, the DIET is the main factor in losing weight/getting fit. 

I started my journey this evening with a grocery store trip. While checking out, I looked at all of my items and I was proud of every single one of them. Not only am I cutting out all the junk food, I'm also cutting out foods with MSG's, added sugar, preservatives and other weird chemicals and additives. (You don't even want to know what I found out about vanilla essence!) This diet change isn't just about losing weight, it's about ridding my body of all the things that it isn't designed to process. Our bodies need and hunger for certain nutrients that we are made to think we are going to get from all these crazy foods that are on the market today. We often fill up on these fatty, sugary foods and then an hour later, wonder why we're hungry again! It's because our body is needing things on a cellular level that we aren't getting from these foods. I could go on and on about what I've learned through my research but, I'll stop here. I do recommend watching the documentary called 'Hungry for Change'. It's available on Netflix and it made a huge impact on how I look at food. If you're looking for motivation to start eating differently, this is where you'll find it. You can also check out Taralynn McNitt's blog-http://undressedskeleton.tumblr.com/- which has been another great source of motivation for me. She also has a lot of tasty recipes available as well as made menus and grocery shopping lists!