1…2…3… Baby Steps.

I love, love, LOVE to eat. Ask anyone, my family, my boyfriend, my friends. They all know how much I love food. The best part about it? They all love food just as much as I do! Cooking? Eating? Talking about food? Yup, I do it all, especially the eating part, and I have absolutely no shame in it. But when does a person’s love for food become an abuse of food? The answer to that is this: When it’s not done in moderation.

I learned about what it meant to be an “emotional eater” and a “stress eater” in my senior year of high school. I heard those words and automatically knew that I was that, a stress eater. I used that as an excuse to eat more because “I was stressed out with school and needed a snack” and because “I was bored and had no choice but to look in the fridge”. I was so oblivious to what I was doing to myself! I was putting all this crap in my body and then complaining that I had a slow metabolism. Well gee, Ravyn, I wonder why? I always knew I had to eat right to be healthy, but I didn’t even know where to start when it came to eating healthy. My definition of vegetables was fried broccoli and cauliflower or steamed vegetables doused in butter. The veggies were completely useless since they were covered in oils that my body didn’t need so much of, but they were veggies, nonetheless, so I didn’t feel so bad. It wasn’t until last summer that I realized, I mean really realized, how important a good diet is to living a healthy lifestyle and getting fit.

As of now, in my fitness journey, I have a lot of factors that are affecting how I eat and my progress in my new lifestyle. First, buying healthy, organic food is expensive. I’m all for the idea of buying quality foods, but being that I don’t have the funds to do my own healthy shopping, nor the space in my kitchen to put my food if I did have enough money, it’s a no-go for right now. Right now, I eat what my family cooks every night and I am perfectly fine with that, since it’s always delicious anyway. It’s great food, don’t get me wrong, but it makes my weight loss and process of getting fit A LOT harder on my end, since it’s not always high in the nutrients I need since I work out often. I would love for everyone to eat healthier with me, but it’s hard to switch everyone’s diet so it can fit my own. However, I’ve been trying to find alternatives for some foods that aren’t so healthy. For example, my family loves eating white rice. So instead of having white rice, I suggested that we have brown rice and quinoa. My family didn’t sound too thrilled about it, but tonight we are having brown rice and quinoa with pork chops and broccoli. Considering we’ve never had brown rice and quinoa, this could either go really good or really bad. I would much rather prefer the former over the latter.

When I find myself slipping up when it comes to eating the wrong things, I don’t beat myself up for it. I know that my journey is all baby steps. As an active person who’s still getting used to disciplining my body to know the difference between my wants and my needs, I know that if I mess up once or twice, it doesn’t mean that ALL my hard work was for nothing. It just means that I need to work harder and focus back to why I started in the first place. So far I’ve lost 5 pounds and it’s clear that I’m losing inches around my waist and thighs. I couldn’t be happier with myself, regardless of the circumstances. It’s slow progress but nothing worth having comes easy, so I’ll take it.

~RG.