I guess an introduction is in order, and I'm really no good at those. Here's my rambling attempt at telling you the basics about myself.
I'm a 30-something Kansas native, where I've lived for-EV-er and a day. I've never married and I've never had any human babies. I have three dogs, Dingo, Savannah, and Lillie Bean, that are my children that I love more than anything on this very planet. I've always had babies in my house, of the fur and scale variety. I love animals. All animals.
I'm a vegetarian, bordering on vegan, and have been for 13+ years. Yes, it helped me lose weight, but no it didn't stay off. I was what you call a "junk food vegetarian", sustaining mostly on preservative loaded calorie-laden crap food. I have done the weight loss battle for as long as I can remember, but quitting smoking pushed me up to the 200lb mark at one point in my life. At 5'3" that's a little much!
Shortly before I began nursing school in 2009, I began having gallbladder problems. I was tipped off to this by my lack of appetite for the following seven weeks. Thirty pounds down, I had my gallbladder removed and decided it wasn't all going to be in vain. I started dieting and exercising my ass off - literally. I lost another 50lbs. Hitting 120lbs was a number I hadn't seen since high school when I truly believed I was "fat" as well. Oh, to be as fat now as I thought I was in high school!
The gym became my BFF until I began to notice my knees popping and catching almost constantly. This probably had nothing to do with the gym, I'm sure. I went to the doctor for something unrelated and mentioned my knee problem. He checked me over and informed me I had "patellar tracking disorder" that he explained to me as a type of "runner's knee". What?! I had never run a mile in my entire life! I was the little chubby blond kid that couldn't even make it a lap around the playground in gym class!
This changed my life.
And I decided if I was going to have runner's knees, I would earn them.
I started out on the C25K program, determined to start running, and vowed to myself that if I hated it after I finished that I'd never run again. But it wasn't going to be because I couldn't! (I'm also ridiculously stubborn.)
In four months and 30 minutes at a time, I had fallen in love with running.
Now, I'm an avid runner, have completed 2 half marathons, a 10-miler, and numerous five and 10ks. I recently started going to a yoga class and have found that it may have been a missing piece of my soul! I continue to be a gym-rat and I've even taken up the weight machines.
For a long time I've thought about trying to get in on a group blog, and today as I was sitting here doing nothing I decided to see who'd join me. Hopefully we'll soon have some great reads for you!
If you want to know more, I'm a blogger, and can also be found on Twitter and Pinterest.
Happy reading!
