For those of you that are new here, you may be wondering how I got into nutrition and fitness.

When I was younger (maybe the end of elementary school) I was very overweight. I still can’t really pinpoint the moment all the weight started to pile on or the exact moment I decided to do something about it, but the thing that would end up surprising me the most was how wild the journey would be.

Towards the end of high school, I decided to start Weight Watchers. I wasn’t one of those girls that went to the meetings. I was the person who had their mother’s friend pick up a points book and calculator at the meetings for me (yes, this was before apps were a thing). Weight Watchers was a huge starting point in my weight loss journey and as the weight came off I started to work out too. Before this, the last thing I would want to do was exercise. I dreaded gym class and dreaded that mile run they made you do even more.

Then came college, and my entire environment changed. I was now in charge of my own meals, my schedule and pretty much my entire well-being. I had to make sure I was getting to class, getting all my work done and getting enough sleep. I didn’t have my parents around telling me what time to be home and checking in on me to see where I was. I still attempted to stick to Weight Watchers on and off throughout my college career. Still to this day my college roommate and I joke about how we would go through periods in college where we “did Weight Watchers.” I say joke because looking back on that, our college version of Weight Watchers was to count points in the morning and throw them out the window when a party came up that night. We also frequented the gym, but really only stuck to the elliptical machines. This became my “dieting” theme for years. I would be in a dieting mindset and then revert back to eating what I wanted.

When I graduated college, I went back to living at home. I still went out on the weekends, but the drinking definitely lessened. I was working out more and, in my mind, I was eating “better.” Reflecting on this period in my life now, I was still cycling through that dieting mindset I talked about above. I would eat “healthy” during the week and then treat myself on the weekends. In actuality, I was restricting what I was eating during the week and going crazy on the weekends. I wasn’t gaining weight, in fact I was losing weight, because during the week I was eating 1200 calories or less. I went through countless fad diets, one being the cabbage soup diet. The last diet I did before completely shifting my mindset was one that I found from an influencer on Instagram. I lost a ton of weight; it came off quick and I thought that this was OK. On this particular diet, I was probably eating about 1100 calories a day along with intense cardio workouts.

Every diet I ever went on, I thought they worked because I lost the weight. I thought 1200 calories diets were normal. What I didn’t realize then was that they didn’t work because I had to continually start them again or try some other new diet. Quick fixes cause you to gain the weight right back when you stop them. Even when I was doing Weight Watchers, I was eating very little throughout the day so I could eat more, less nutritious foods at night.

Just as I can’t pinpoint exactly when I started gaining weight as a child, I can’t really tell you one pivotal moment that changed my entire mindset around nutrition and fitness. I did start to shift the social media I was consuming and I started educating myself more on nutrition and fitness. I started a nutrition and fitness program that had me eating way more than 1200 calories per day and mainly consisted of strength training, not cardio. Once I started to learn more about how to properly fuel my body for my individual goals and needs, and saw results doing it, my mindset slowly changed. It was definitely scary doing something out of my comfort zone. I went from 1200 calorie diets (or less) to 1800 calories or more per day. I went from all cardio exercises to a majority of weight training days mixed in with some cardio. And these changes brought results. It wasn’t the quick weight loss that I was used to, but I was able to keep the weight off and learned what foods worked for my body.

About a year after this new mindset shift, I became pregnant. I was always afraid of pregnancy because of the weight gain, but pregnancy had the total opposite effect on how I felt about my body. I really embraced it and it pushed me even further into a healthier frame of mind. It wasn’t just myself that I was taking care of anymore. I continued to work out and fuel my body with nutritious foods throughout my pregnancy. Yes, I definitely ate a few more tacos and grilled cheese sandwiches than I used to, but I the more I became educated about nutrition and my body the better equipped I became at finding balance in my diet and in my life. This continued when I had my son and breastfed for a year. I started working with a nutrition coach who had me eating 2200 calories while breastfeeding – and I was still losing weight, healthily. If you told me even three years ago that I would be eating 2200 calories a day I would’ve called you crazy.

Everyday isn’t easy. We all have our days that we struggle with body image and food, but it is possible to live a healthy lifestyle without giving up the things you enjoy. It is possible to be wife, a mother, have a career and still prioritize our own self-care. We just need to have the proper tools to do so.

This whole journey is what makes me so passionate about continuing to expand my knowledge and helping others through their own journeys.