April 1st will be the beginning of a smaller weightloss challenge. I have formed a challenge group with beautiful, intelligent women who are progressing to a healthier lifestyle. April's challenge is a squat challenge! My booty is a bit flat so to help strengthen my knees, quads, calfs, hamstrings and glutes and build a nice behind, I will be doing squats.
Many times we feel to lose weight we need tons and tons of fitness equipment, or a gym membership but our best equipment is our body. I am still in the midst of my 60 day challenge but its great to change my lifestyle for the healthier with my friends and family.
My face was so swollen from the inflammation and water retention from all of the sodium laced fast food, I did not recognize myself at all. In 2007, I got the opportunity of a life time to be a student exchange student and travel to Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada for 5 months. I met and worked with some amazing people, in particular, 4 amazing roommates. I had never visited Canada but I took a leap of faith and yes I met my roommates on Facebook! But living with my roommates made me take a step back and re-evaluate what food had done to my body. I WAS HATING FOOD! I entered Canada at 202Lbs!!!! I had gained 62lbs within 3 years and I was so ashamed of myself. I went from wearing small sizes to a size 14. I was heartbroken. But my roommates ate really healthy, rarely ate out and cooked all of their food. So I started to adopt their healthy habits.
And I felt amazing! You can see a natural glow in the picture above. I stopped eating out, allow myself a treat meal that was always this delish veggie pizza at a place across the street from where I lived. I cooked everything. I mainly ate fish, fresh fruits, veggies, lamb and drunk tons of water! I was introduced to the fabulous magazine Oxygen which is a fitness magazine geared toward women who lift weights, do cardio and eat clean.
I also starting working out!!! I worked out twice a day. I would do cardio in the morning and water aerobics at night. By the time I left Canada five months later in May, I had lost 22lbs! As you can see in the picture to the left, I was fit, fabulous and happy. I LOVED HEALTHY FOOD! I graduated from college and was hit with the real world. I had no job, I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life and so I turned back to food, but this time food was used for comfort and not nourishment. I moved to Columbus and slowly started gaining weight again.
.She loved working out and so my journey back to the gym continued.
I started looking fly! At this time I was eating clean. I was working with a personal trainer and he would create a meal plan for my sis and I. I ate tuna, tilipia, broccoli, bell peppers, drunk protein shakes, ate almonds and it was working. Then somewhere along the way I started to LOVE eating healthy and working out. But again, I fell out of love with food and was HATING it once more. I was stressing at work and still getting used to being away from home so I turned to food for my comfort and gained back some weight.
You can see my face is a little bigger. One day I went to a routine doctor's appointment and this day is the day I took my health back into my life. The doctor diagnosed me with high blood pressure at the age of 26. I remember crying in his office because I thought this was a disease that older people were diagnosed with! I thought I was healthier. Still til this day I can hear him telling me " this is essential high blood pressure and there is nothing you can do about it, you will always have high blood pressure." He gave me a piece of paper with information about the DASH diet which is a low sodium diet recommended to individuals with high blood pressure. He offered no other help for my blood pressure other than medication. So everytime I would go back to the doctor, he would say, well the medication is not working so we have to add another medication for you to take. The interesting point is, even with the medication my blood pressure did NOT improve, which should have been a sign that medication was not the way to control my blood pressure, but hey, he was the one with the medical degree so he must have known what he was talking about, right? Um, WRONG!!!! The day he suggested I take a 3rd pill was the day I became my own doctor and used fruits and veggies as my medication. I BECAME A RAW VEGAN OVERNIGHT. 
Dr. Douglas Graham's book 80/10/10 (80 % carbs, 10% fat and 10% protein is the first book I came across showing there was other ways to improve health without medication. I had already started doing research on how to get my blood pressure down by using natural ingredients and came across David Wolfe's book, Superfoods. I had discovered my high blood pressure was a result of years and years of fast food and the effects had caught up to me. So I figured if I removed the fast food and sodium, fat, carb ladden foods from my diet and replaced those foods with healthier food like fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds then my blood pressure would return to normal and heck yeah, I WAS RIGHT!!! So I lost 20lbs within a few months by being a raw vegan and I felt so HAPPY. I LOVED FOOD. I would eat tons and tons of fruit, green smoothies and I was really enjoying life.When I felt good, everything was good. I started working out more and more and again because I had an increase of energy and I started looking fly. 
Since reading Oxygen magazine, one of my goals was to compete in a figure competition. I was living on my own so maintaining a raw vegan lifestyle started to get expensive so until I could do more research on making it affordable, I went to being a vegan.
But I still ate like a champ and felt great about myself! So I started working out preparing for my first figure competition. 
I started to get discouraged because in the bodybuilding industry, there is this misconception that you need a lot of protein, and a low amount of carbs in order to get lean and the only way you can get protein it through animal products and drinking tons of whey protein. Um, WRONG! But since the vegan lifestyle was so new to me, I started believing the hype and I started eating meat and animal products again :(. I ate a lot of eggs, fish, some chicken, and I felt like death. Literally, every time I would eat dairy, I hated life. I was so angry and frustrated and I did not understand where this anger was coming from but I started to realize that I didn't have this sense of rage unless I ate dairy so I removed dairy from my diet. I am not going to lie it was very hard removing ice cream from my diet because it is addictive but I knew it was for the better. Eating meat had me so discouraged, I almost did not compete in my competition but I have a strong family and support system and I did get on the stage ;) 
And though I was not as lean as I should have been, I think had I not listened to others and continued my vegan lifestyle I would have leaned down perfectly. After I competed, I rebounded really bad because I had to be so strict with my food while preparing for my competition and then after the competition, I ate anything in sight. So I tried every fad diet around, the Atkins diet, Dukan diet, low carb/high protein, low carb/high fat, low fat/high protein etc to lose weight and nothing was working. Then I got back to where my heart felt warm, and I went back to raw veganism/veganism. 
I AM LOVING FOOD ONCE MORE. Today as I write this blog, I love myself and only want what is best for my body. And through it all, fruits and veggies have never let me down.
I still have my moments when I eat meat and I do struggle with the guilt but I am human. I know that my preference for food will change throughout my life but one thing remains the same, food will always have a presence in my life and it is up to me if I am going to use it for the positive (nourishment) or the negative (comfort). I love exercising, meditation, lifting heavy weight and spending time with family, food helps me enjoy me great moments even more!!!
