Story time:
When I was a kid, I was fat. At eight years old I was
drinking three cans of Mountain Dew a day. Dinner usually consisted of Kraft
Macaroni and Cheese and canned vegetables (which I rarely finished.) My only
exercise came from turning pages in books and mashing buttons on my Gameboy.
And I was miserable.
Come middle and high school, I weighed 220 pounds. Growing
up without guidelines or rules for proper eating, I didn’t know what I was
doing was unhealthy. No one told me eating four bowls of Frosted Flakes in the
morning was excessive. And no one told me that eating an entire large pizza was
not something to be proud of. I had to figure this out on my own.
My transformation started in college when a buddy of mine pestered
me into going with him to the gym. Three months of intensive weight-training later,
I had endurance and strength I’d never experienced before. I found what I put
into my body directly affected my performance the next day. If I ate $10 in
Taco Bell at 2 a.m., the next day I slinked around my house like a sloth made
of Jell-O Pudding. Instead, if I fixed a garden salad and munched some
pistachios before bed, I was ready for a morning jog with my Border Collie,
Domino.
My girlfriend, Jessie, also inspired my research in
nutrition and wellness. I met her later in college in a Creative Writing class.
She’s vegan, so her intimate knowledge of everything
that goes into the food we eat helped me even more.
That brings us to today: I’m not some celebrity doctor,
nor am I an athlete. I am a college student who used to make his own trail mix of
BBQ Fritos, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and Buffalo-Wing Pretzels. I am the guy who
thought that the only place for vegetables was on top of a bacon cheeseburger.
In short, I am a recovering junkfood addict, and I want to share with you all
the things I have learned during my rehabilitation.
No comments:
Post a Comment