Food Is Not Always Your Friend

From about age 16 to 30, we young people think we are invincible — we eat what we want, drink like fish, and get away with hardly working out.

We also think we're always right, that authority means nothing, and that we will get a high paying job right out of college.

Eventually, all of that comes to a drastic halt. You end up with an unpaid internship or minimum wage job, living at home, and all of a sudden you notice those bags of M&M's and vodka cranberry's going straight to your hips. Uh oh, it's happening — the aging process

Grab the botox and get to work, there's no turning back now. But wait...

Fortunately for your health and bank account, there are much healthier solutions to this issue, and I speak from personal experience.

Until I turned 21 I thought I was totally invincible, I had the world at my finger tips and I took it all for granted. I was in great shape, going to school, and had a job I liked. I should have known then that I had it good, but apparently I wanted to teach myself a lesson.

Instead, I started eating a lot more, decided to go to summer school in a different country, and quit my job. This resulted in a 25-pound weight gain, a senior year of school with no fun job, and a less-than spectacular study abroad.

I had signed up to go to Costa Rica on study abroad for six weeks in the spring of 2010 thinking it was going to be a great experience and a way I could graduate college in four years.

Photo credit: Maria Bruggere
Photo of the sunset in Jaco, Costa Rica 2010

Parts of the trip were great, it was more of my personal struggles of being away that ended up hurting me.

We helped a lot of people in remote communities, visited schools and rain forests, and learned about how they are trying to keep Costa Rica green. Still a developing country, it lacked many things like good public transportation, healthy food, and good shopping.

But underneath a lot of the learning we were doing I was going through my own struggles. I ate like it was going out of style. It was an awful thing to do, but now that I look back, it was all out of anxiety and a feeling of not being in control.

I had been threatened to get sent home at the beginning of the trip for not speaking Spanish at the airport. We signed a contract before we left saying that we would only speak Spanish for the total time we were in Costa Rica.

My host mother force-fed me a lot of the time too. This was a problem with the language barrier. She spoke zero English, so when I told her I was going out to dinner with friends and coming back later, she would still have food on the table for when I got home. Even if I said no and went into my room to do homework, she would bring me slices of pizza and ice cream every hour. I ended up eating it a lot of the time because if I threw it away she would have seen that too, and I didn't want to be rude.

Photo credit: Maria Bruggere
This is what you see when you go on a real jungle cruise.

About halfway through the trip I realized what I was doing to myself, but I was so far out of my comfort zone that I felt like I couldn't turn it around until I got home. So, I just tried to enjoy myself and the rest of my trip and change my habits once I got home.

That's when I realized I wasn't invincible.

Although I'm nearly back to my ideal weight, it hasn't been easy. I've had to change my eating habits more drastically than normal and focus on making my life as positive as possible to get over what I did to myself in Costa Rica.

When I first got home I thought with a good workout routine and normal eating that my body would bounce back right away because I was still young. I was wrong — it was going to take a serious program to get rid of all the crap.

Healthy Eating Recipes From My Trainer:

Photo credit: http://rbgsocialclub.wordpress.com/2011/12/04/293/

          Kale Salad

• Chop up as much kale as you think you will eat
• Put in glass tupperware 
• Add 2-3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
• Squeeze all the juice from a fresh lemon into the container
• Add handful of dried cranberries or cherries
• Mix well
• Let sit overnight
• Enjoy.

As I continued healthy eating, I also trained for the Santa Barbara half marathon in 2011. That was one of the hardest training programs I had ever done. After my internship, I ran anywhere from three to seven miles, three times a week, and then one long run on the weekends. My body was crazy tired, but I lost about seven pounds doing that and it felt like a great accomplishment.

The only downside of that was I gained the weight back because I was so burnt out on running after the race that I took the holidays off from any hard exercise. So by the time April 2012 rolled around, I was fed up and ready for a serious change.

Photo credit: Maria Bruggere

I work out at an LA Fitness near my place and I'd been going there for months when I finally made the decision to bite the bullet and sign up for some personal training. The training director set me up with a guy named MarLon, who is a former trainer of NFL athletes and an overall great trainer for any kind of person. I was stoked.

He incorporated all aspects of fitness — cardio, weight training, plyometrics, and more. He also gave me a great diet plan that I will try to stick to the rest of my life.

I've been training with MarLon for nearly seven months and I have noticed such a difference in my overall health and wellness. Not only has he gotten me into better shape, he's helped me change my  eating and parts of my lifestyle for the positive.

Lesson learned: Don't let your emotions and the world around you get the best of you, just be your happy self, things will be ok.

"Don't You Worry Child" Feat. John Martin

Swedish House Mafia