The Beginning.

I am Robin and I love food.
Love food.
As in I think about it, talk about it, dream about it, photograph it, and instagram it. I even Google food when I get bored. I don't just love it the regular way that people do. Think Paula Dean. Take a chocolate cake, top it with a thin layer of butter, add a slightly thicker layer of sweetened cream cheese, drizzle it with caramel, add some raspberry jam to that and "poof"!...now we're ready for some frosting.
That kind of love can get you in trouble. So Here I was, 30 years old, dating my food and starting to outgrow my clothes; but not in a "teenage growth spurt" kind of way. In a "Oh, Blue Bell Ice Cream is on sale for $4.99? Let's get four different flavors" kinda way. And let me tell you, insecurity is a beast. It's hard on anyone, but with women I believe it does it's worst destruction. When you aren't happy with yourself, it effects EVERY area of your life. One of the worst things that spawns from insecurity is self talk. The way I spoke to myself...if a stranger had come up to me and said the same things, it would have warranted them a slap in the face. I constantly lied to myself. I told my self I wasn't attractive, I wasn't good at anything, I wouldn't ever become who God called me to be, and no one really liked me, they just tolerated me. I even thought, "Maybe one day I will get married, but I will have to settle for someone less than what I want because no one fantastic would want to be with someone like me."
Seriously? How dare I? Who am I to say those things to me?
And so I got really tired of it. And I prayed about it, a lot. And God answered my prayers with a question. He said, "What are you going to do about it?".
So I joined a gym.
I went for a few months. I saw some amazing changes in my body and that hooked me. I was losing weight and building muscles. I squatted, I lifted, I planked, I did push ups. I even ran. Before this time in my life, the only running I did was to the Italian bakery for a french cream filled lobster tail.
So it was a shock to me when in two months I plateaued. The issue was that I had added exercise to my lifestyle but my eating habits never changed. Actually, my literal thought process was this: "If I join the gym I won't have to stop eating Blue Bell Ice Cream. Better, I can probably eat even more of it!"
WRONG. Wrong. Wrong. Wroooooooong. Wrong. No.
I reeeealllly wanted to see results again which meant I needed to make another change, but diet wasn't the change I was ready to make. That was when I was introduced to Hammer Fitness and  Sports Performance. An incredible friend of mine named Craig had started his own training gym. In addition to my own personal gym time, I began going to Hammer twice a week. The changes returned! It was great. I was strong and I was surpassing my own goals. I looked better than I ever had before. But, I was still eating the same. And no matter how hard I worked, the plateau came again. This time I was addicted to fitness and I now had a vision of what I wanted my body to look like. After a few conversations with my trainers, I made the decision to change my diet. And now here I am two months in. I have completely changed what I put into my body. I literally threw out tubs of ice cream. It broke my heart. Have you ever, in order force yourself to stop eating something, thrown it away and immediately regretted it and thought, "Well, no one's here. How wrong would it be to get it out of the trash and finish it?".
Yep. Don't you judge me.
It's been two months since my first wave of diet changes. Since then, I have now almost completely taken out all sugar, salt , unhealthy carbohydrates and fats and I have learned portion control. It has been hard. It has challenged me as a person. Want a little more discipline in your life? Remove sugar from your diet and see what happens. Suddenly you begin to notice every cupcake within 3 feet of you. Out of no where a new bakery shows up one block from your apartment. Life got real. My body turned on me. I was in the grocery store the same week I stopped eating sugar and I remember walking past a display of fruit cake. Now, I DO NOT like fruit cake. NO ONE likes fruit cake. But in that moment, it took everything in me to stop myself from tackling that whole display just to eat one of those stupid things. I wanted sugar that bad.
Such a bad moment.
I seriously hate fruitcake.
All that to say, people have noticed the changes I have made. Many think my eating habits are strange; are eggs served with a side of brussel sprouts and oatmeal in the morning really all that strange? And when people started noticing my changes, I started noticing something about them too. I realized how many people really were struggling with the same issues I was dealing with. It broke my heart more than throwing out the Blue Bell. That's why I am blogging. I hope that I can help people make the changes they need in their lives. I hope to inspire you to eat better and live better. I hope I can help you understand that IT IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE to be who you deep down in your heart want to be.
I do not claim to be a professional. I'm still learning , but I love it and I am living it and it's working for me. So I hope you enjoy what you see and read on this blog. I hope you try some of the recipes I post. But most of all, I hope you fall in love with yourself in a way you never knew you could...

RB Xx