I was asked if I could go into what I eat on a daily basis so here is, first, some background on my eating habits growing up and, second, my eating habits now.
Up until around 4th grade, I really do not recall what our eating habits as a family were. I don't think we really sat down to eat as a family at the dinner table, but I could be wrong. I do know that I had a deep love for Texas "Ranch Style Beans" since before 4th grade because my mom would feed that to me, & it wasn't until 2 years ago that I began to dislike them. We were never really limited on sweets but we were low income so I don't recall every having a bag of chips or cookies in the house either. Once we moved to Washington & lived in a motel, ramen noodles was a daily staple in our...motel table. But, again, low income so never really had other junk around & we were active kids; falling down with our Rollerblades (gift from church), rolling down big hills, chasing after each other in the motel parking lot and laundromat (good times, actually) & all that jazz.
We didn't have video games, never really watched television but we loved to go to the library & play board games. In fact, one of our favorite games was, & is, Battleship. Imagine our surprise when my brother & I realized there was an actual Battleship game. Before then, we used to take a piece of wide-ruled writing paper, use a pen to make a deeply inked circle on one side of the paper, fold it, press on the circle & then see if it "landed" on the opposing players deeply inked circle (battleship). We can't be the only ones that did that......
Anyway, once we got a home, dinner become a nice routine, complete with prayer. But, the truth is, that food was never our focus. Sometimes we had a lot, sometimes we had very little but our lifestyle was healthy in that we were active kids with active imaginations & no real junk food around the home.
Things changed when we moved back to Texas & my mom started working. This was probably my freshmen year in high school &, from then on, our lives consisted of frozen, microwavable anything. I'm talking burritos, taquitos, pizzas, hot pockets, chicken nuggets, fries, pop tarts....& I really don't want to go on because it's making me nauseous. How disgusting! But that was life for a long time. On top of that, McDonalds, Burger King or Whataburger were on our DAILY menu. DAILY.
We were still low-income but the difference was that, in my younger years, low-income meant you bought what you needed (even if you were using government help) and that was it. While now, it means being able to use your foot stamp EBT card on Hot Cheetos and 12-packs of Coke. It's a sad thing. But anyway, I do recall that's when I began to get unhealthy (duh) & what is considered, "skinny fat". I was not big, nor did I appear overweight, but had my BMI ever been taken around that time, it would have shown that I was all fat, almost no muscle and very unhealthy.
So what happened? What made me change?
There was never just ONE "ah-ha" moment were I realized my eating habits were bad. There were a series of events that led me to change my life for the better.
The first one was when I was 16/17 & I began to wake up 3-4 times during the night just to take a few sips of Coke. I actually remember opening the fridge, popping one open, taking a few sips, putting it back for later & thinking, "this can't be good.". I decided then to not drink coke so much. Not quiet the "quit" step but a step nonetheless.
The second was when I was getting ready to join the military. We were going to run 3 miles and I stopped at about 5 yards. Not. Even. Shitting you.
The third was just knowledge. After having 2 kids, being moderately active, kind-of, sort-of working out & not really losing any fat, I began to research on how to fuel the body, what is good, what is not great, how it affects your body, life and health, etc.
Finally, making the decision to become a personal trainer made me step everything up a few notches. I can't expect others to change their lifestyle if I hold on to old habits out of nostalgia.
Either way, it all worked out the way it did for a reason. Tomorrow, I'll go into a few things I learned and how my daily eating habits reflect both my knowledge and my human-ness. :)
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