Bear with me here, this will be my first entry. I want to take a moment and introduce myself and share really what flexible eating has meant to my life.
First, I love food, I love eating and I love cooking. I come from a family of food lover and was very lucky my mom was one of the best chef I know. I also definitively have a sweet tooth, and I can eat just because I love to eat. Unfortunately sometimes hunger has nothing to do with it. As far back as high school, I was reading cookbooks and thinking about what to cook next.
Fast forward way past high school to me discovering marathon running, the more I became into it, the more I started to obsess about every little part of my training, including what I ate and how I fuelled my runs. Keep on moving forward to finding Crossfit in late 2008, a community that definitively can get down right obsessive about every little part of their training and that included what we ate. I followed the typical Crossfit nutritional journey for the time and went from the zone on our first year, to committing to a pretty strict paleo lifestyle for a couple of years, to semi-paleo for a few more to finally finding flexible eating in late 2015 through my box owner Chris Harrison from Crossfit Lions.
I will be the first to tell you that there are many ways to get to the same destination and that nutrition is no exception. I do not like dogma and to me it’s a red flag when someone is telling me this is the only way to eat or train. In fact if anyone tries to sell you on this, run the other way!
But for me, at the time flexible eating came into my life, I was coming back from a pretty serious head injury that forced me to take a year off, finally feeling healthy and wanting to return to competing as a Crossfitter. My training volume was good, my skills were coming back, but something was missing. My joints were achy often, I felt sluggish and like I was carrying around more than I meant to. I wanted the reflection in the mirror to reflect the athlete I knew I was inside. Having seen the success my box owner Chris had in his journey and his training I decided to take a leap of faith and boy am I glad I did!
Since then I went on to educate myself on the matter, at first for my own knowledge by reading all the books, listening to literally any podcasts I could find on the subject to finally taking my certifications in the hopes of sharing my passion with others.
For me learning to fuel my body in a way that allows me to feel good in my skin, achieving my body composition goals, but also in a way that fuels my performance and prioritize my recovery has been a game changer. I discovered so much about myself in the process, what I need, what I feel best on. My body was for sure thanking me for the extra carbs and the level of performance I have been able to achieve since then has been more than I could have hoped for.
When I decided to create my program I wanted to give back, give others what this has given me and share my passion with others. I firmly believe you can have your cake and eat it too! I realize flexible eating is about more than macros counting, there are a lot of free calculators out there that can give you numbers that would probably work for you. For me it’s important to give everyone a great individual experience. Find what exactly works for them and to see them achieve and maintain their goals.
The program that will ultimately be successful for you is the one you enjoy and can see yourself sustaining long terms. I think this has longevity because of the flexibility in it.
Thanks for taking the time to read my first blog. And welcome to PowerUp Nutrition!
Annie 🙂