the life of a foodie... who is.. fortified.. nutri-fied.. and satisfied..

I grew up in a southern family... yes, we are southerners in Kentucky. I don’t think I ate a green bean that wasn’t in a can or basking in the oily glow of ham until I was in my twenties. My grandmother would pick them fresh from her garden, throw them in a pressure cooker with some ham bullion and a ham hock and let the beans melt away until they were a nice army green color. Don’t get me wrong, they were certainly delicious but pretty high in the calorie department. When I think back to being a kid, I can clearly see where my distorted relationship with food came from.

I was premature, by two months, and I weighed two pounds and ten ounces. My mother and I were both battling toxemia so in order to save our lives, I was taken via cesarean. Due to this little undernourished baby coming early and being so little, I was often a member of the clean plate club. Perhaps I was even fed a little extra just to assure I was a healthy weight.

As a small child I was average sized. It wasn’t until I hit puberty that genes and food became my enemy. I wasn’t sure how it all occurred, but I was pushing two hundred at the age of sixteen. My family have always struggled with their weight. My mother and I joined Weight Watchers together and by the summer before college I had lost about twenty pounds, putting me around one hundred and seventy five. Still not a small number for a girl of my stature.

My relationship with food was a little unequal, I loved it and it hated me. I remember being a pre-teen and asking my grandfather to order me a twenty piece chicken nugget and fries, oh and don’t forget the sweet and sour and barbeque sauces! Or the cans of beef raviolis and packages of flavored ramen noodles that stocked our pantry. Not to mention the boxes of sugary cereal, the packages of cookies, the cheesy broccoli soups. I had to learn about portion size, and it was certainly heartbreaking to learn a twenty piece nugget should feed several people. I had to learn what a tablespoon was and that two of those was one serving of peanut butter, not four or five.

Mom and I would make meals together, with Weight Watchers recipes, and use measuring cups and spoons. We would count our calories for the day and work out at the gym together. We succeeded in losing weight and keeping each other in check. Which I will admit, certainly makes things easier. When you are accountable for what you eat not only to yourself, but to someone else, such as a trainer, partner, friend, or family member, it makes it a lot harder to “cheat”. You feel guilty, like they’ll know you snuck that cookie in the middle of the night.

That reminds me, I’ve never been an extreme sneaky eater, but I have been known (or not known!) to grab an extra bite, or a spoon full of ice cream when no one was looking. It bothers me to admit this, for several reasons. Number one, now you know my secret! Number two, people shouldn’t have to “sneak” to eat what they want. If I focused more on portion control I wouldn’t have to do that.

We would make orange rolls for breakfast sometimes, you know the ones that taste like orange danishes, and I am certain I would eat at least four. Their creamy, sugary, orangy goodness. If Mom took me to school, we’d go through the drive-thru and have hash browns and a flaky-buttery biscuit with egg and sausage. There was enough baking in my family with cookies, pies, brownies, cakes to spark a humongous "sweet tooth" and soon, it over-powered most of my "vegetable and lean meats teeth".

By the time I was twenty-five I had gained and lost, gained and lost, and gained again. I weighed 230 lbs. and at 5'3", I was a heavy weight. After a long struggle with dieting I realized something really had to change. That something, was me. I'll never be that person that can eat burgers and fries every other day, pizza on the weekends, biscuits and gravy for breakfast and not gain weight. But... I have learned how to still eat the foods I love... the correct way.

It's been a long stretch of determination, self preservation, self education, and healthified food-ation... but here I sit, 92 pounds lighter and clearly on my way to losing the last 8 I have set for myself as a goal. I've created this blog for not only selfish reasons, like, keeping myself on track, but also to share what I've learned with my friends, family and fellow bloggers.

To see my before and after photos, click here. The Blogger...