How Healthy Living Blogs Changed My Life

Hi! My name is Brittney and I blog over at Brittney Breathing. My blog documents my healthy living lifestyle while wedding planning, dog-owning and cooking nutritious meals. As soon as I saw Tina’s post calling for guest posts, I knew exactly what I wanted to talk about. Healthy living blogs have completely changed my life and I felt the urge to share with all of her readers my experience…so here we go!

I had to include a picture of my dog, Murphy, in a post for Tina obviously!

The title is very melodramatic, isn’t it? Well, in all honesty, I tried to come up with a less cliche title, but this one truly encompasses my feelings so I figured I should just go with it.

Let’s start with a little background about myself.

I graduated college in May 2010 and began my transition from being a college girl to a working girl. I won’t lie, I wasn’t the healthiest in college by any means. I was what you would say a typical college student looked like. I went out with my friends a lot, ate whatever I wanted and rarely exercised.

The summer after college graduation

To say that I regret all of these things would be a lie. I don’t regret the nights out with my friends or all of the wonderful memories I have from college, but I do wish I would have been more aware of what I was eating and how much exercise I was getting.

With going out multiple times a week, getting take out at least 3 nights a week and basically being immobile, that of course left me feeling lethargic, overweight and unhappy.

Once I started working in the real world, I knew something needed to change. I couldn’t keep downing cups of coffee to keep me awake for the 8 hours of work every day. I knew my living habits needed to change, but I didn’t know where to begin.

Enter: The healthy living blogosphere.

I wish I could remember how I stumbled upon this goldmine we call healthy living blogs. I know I found them about a year and a half ago (so about 6 months out of college) and I quickly became obsessed. It’s all I ever wanted to do with my free time. Any fchance I had, I was reading these blogs. One of the first ones I found was Healthy Tipping Point. Caitlin would link to several other bloggers often, so then I would find new ones like KERF, Eat Live Run, Meals & Miles and of course Carrot N’ Cake.

To me, all of these women were (and still are!) so healthy. So vibrant. So real. I was never one to fall for the latest fad diet but it still felt so unreal to me that these women became healthy by simply changing small bits of their daily habits.

I’ve always been such an all or nothing type person, which I feel a lot of women suffer from. Reading these blogs made me realize that life doesn’t have to be all or nothing. So you had a bad day and ended up eating too many sweets. Who cares! What matters is that you get up the next day and make a healthier decision. You don’t have to be perfect, you can just be you.

Reading these blogs day in a day out, I began to realize I was slowly changing my habits into healthier ones. I’m experimenting with kale, trying tofu, going to Body Pump regularly (and loving it) and choosing to not drink my calories in a form of n alcoholic beverage (as much…).

Most importantly, these blogs led me to Claire at Fitting It All In, who is a student at the Integrative Nutrition. After seeing a few months of her posts, I finally decided to check it out.

From that moment, my life changed. I set up an appointment with an advisor and gushed about how I needed to be in this program. I want to change lives, just like mine has been changed.

So now I’m enrolled in the school (class of January 2012!) and couldn’t be happier with my life.

I wouldn’t have learned of Integrative Nutrition, the awesomeness that is kale or what the heck Body Pump even is if it weren’t for healthy living blogs. My life has completely transformed, from my eating & workout habits, to a new part time career path in holistic nutrition and I couldn’t be more grateful.