Hello world!
After many months of thinking of starting a blog, I finally took the plunge! My hope in starting this blog is to help others in some way. I try my best to live a balanced life by making it really easy to eat healthy and move my body in ways that make it stronger and feel good. I want to share the ways I do this so that I can help others who are looking to change their lifestyle and help them realize it is easier than it seems.
My name is (you guessed it) Hannah, I am 26, and live in Columbus, Ohio. Growing up, I was always overweight. I battled with weight loss for as long as I can remember. In my freshman year of college, I hit my highest weight and I remember vowing to change. However, this started a very toxic pattern of losing 20 – 30 lbs and gaining it back almost immediately. This happened on repeat for years.
Fast forward to October 2015 to when I did my first Whole 30 where I actually began to change my life instead of looking for a quick fix. Doing my first Whole 30 changed my life. I lost 16 lbs in those 30 days, I was feeling incredible, and I wanted to continue to feel these benefits. I was so amazed to realize that FOOD could make you feel this way. It was so eye opening for me.
For those of you who are not familiar, Whole 30 is a 30 day program that eliminates certain food groups (like dairy, grains, legumes, and sugar) that could have negative impacts on your health. The Whole 30 can be considered restrictive and requires a good mental state to recognize that it is only meant for those 30 days to help recognize what your body reacts poorly to. The creators themselves do not promote this as a sustainable lifestyle.
I did not go into my “Life After Whole 30” with this in mind however. This restrictive mindset led to my obsessive eating habits of consuming only whole foods that met the criteria. This coupled with bad influencers and surroundings had me eating only 600-800 calories per day along with daily spin classes. Sometimes if I “splurged” on the weekend it meant two spin classes on Monday. I lost 90 lbs in only a year. But I had no energy, I was constantly light headed and would black out upon standing. There were so many Saturdays where I came home straight from spin class and had to lay in bed all day long. I was miserable. But I was skinny. Until I wasn’t. Until it wasn’t enough and I needed to lose another 10 lbs. Unfortunately it took me fainting at the gym to realize something needed to change.
I started eating more and following people on social media that represented real, balanced lifestyles for motivation. I started seeing a functional practitioner who is still helping me heal my adrenal fatigue as a result of my extreme actions. I have put on about 15 net lbs as a result which is something I’ve had to accept. It has not been easy, it has been really hard. I still struggle with body issues regularly. Every day I fight though, my mind gets stronger.
I share this with you in hope of coming from a place of understanding. If you are just beginning your weight loss journey, I hope that my story can help you make better decisions than I did. If you are not looking to lose weight and just want to live a healthier lifestyle, I hope I can provide some easy tips to help you make this lifestyle real and sustainable.
I am far from perfect. But I am working on it. I hope you can come along and join me on this journey.
Whole Hannah