Nearly 4 years ago, on June 22, 2010, I started this blog. I love chocolate, to a pretty unhealthy degree. I prided myself on being able to keep up to date with every bakery, frozen yogurt joint and dessert spot throughout the 5 boroughs and beyond. The moment a new place opened, I was there ready to give it a whirl. I was literally at 16 Handles the day it opened, before self-serve froyo was a thing that even existed. People used to come to me, and want to know what their dessert options were in the West Village. What about the Upper West Side. Was there anything worth trying in Times Square. And I always knew. Enough people joked around that I should blog about it, and so I did just that. I started this blog as a way to extend the research I was doing, the places I was finding, and giving others the chance to have that experience.
A lot has changed in these past 4 years. I've developed many health issues, and currently try as hard as I can to follow a paleo diet. For those of you who don't know, in a nutshell it means clean eating. No packaged foods. No soy. No gluten. No lots of other things. Fresh, natural, from the earth is the core foundation. What the cavemen used to eat. I started this diet primarily because over the years I've developed a ton of allergies. I did Weight Watchers back in 2005. And while I lost 33 pounds and was the skinniest I'd ever been (and probably ever will be), I started eating a ton of packaged foods. Anything that was low calorie, fat free, low fat, low carb. The lessened version of a normal food, and I was in. I stopped eating meat. I switched to soy. Ate a lot of processed whole grains. A couple years into this, I developed a soy and gluten sensitivity. What did that mean? If I touch soy, I feel like I'm going to die. If I eat barley, malt, rye, and most forms of wheat, I don't die, but my body hates me and I typically have to go home, sit on the couch and cry. For years I've dealt with this, until a few months ago it was getting worse and worse and someone mentioned paleo. I decided to give it a go, and have never felt better in my life. I've always paid attention to food labels, but now I was reading them in a whole new light. The fewer ingredients, the better. If you don't know what the word on the label means, it's probably something you shouldn't be eating. I subscribe to pretty much every health and wellness newsletter and blog that exists, and every day Caryn and I send each other at least 5 new articles about ingredients we didn't know were bad for us, vitamins we should be taking, and trends we should be following. This combined with my last job at SHAPE and current job at MapMyFitness make me feel like I've become much more knowledgeable about health and nutrition than about the latest bakery on Bleecker Street.
Tonight Caryn and I went to see the documentary "Fed Up", about the dangers of sugar and childhood obesity, and it was mind-blowing. I walked out of the Angelika theater feeling like I've spent the last 31 years in a cloud. Even with all of the information I've been reading, I still didn't know how bad for you half the foods I still eat are. We grew up in a generation of packaged foods. We were at the cusp of it. I spent my Saturday mornings as a child sitting in front of the television watching the Care Bears and the Snorks, sprinkled between commercials for Fruity Pebbles and Double Stuff Oreos. Sugar is pretty much the devil, and watching this film tonight (thank you Katie Couric and Laurie David) was terrifying but also educational to a new level. I've been thinking about becoming a source for my friends in the nutrition space, and have officially decided tonight to put my Chocolate's Why I'm Fat blog to bed, and switch to a new, healthier topic. I want to share with people the things I've been learning every day, instead of sending an article to Caryn or explaining to a friend why I no longer put any sweetener in my coffee.
So this will be my last entry in this blog. Thanks to everyone who's been a reader over the years, and to those of you who've accompanied me on my journeys and served as a 'guest blogger of the day'. Now instead you can learn how to eat right, and be healthy, and screw sugar.
To be continued elsewhere shortly....
