Welcome!

This is not my first attempt at a blog - but I promise it will be my best effort!

A little background: my name is Stephanie; I am in my late twenties, and I live in Naples, Florida. I am recently married, and we live in an awesome house with our two-year-old Golden Retriever, Grizzly (that's us, on her first birthday - YES, I did get her a cake!).

Me, Grizzly, and Mr. Crab

I've been an athlete all my life - soccer in elementary and middle school; track and cross-country in high school; rowing in college. After I grew up and moved to Florida and met my (not-quite-yet) husband, I got into running again and triathlons too. At first I decided I was content with 5k races, but one day the notion of a 10k crept into my mind grapes. Just this one 10k, and I can cross distance races off my bucket list...little did I know I would be hooked on longer races.

Eventually I progressed to half marathons (five under my race belt so far), and I started planning races with some friends from across the country. I've had a great time at them, and feel accomplished completing them, but to be honest, I never trained very well except for the first two (2:26 in my first, the 2010 Miami ING, and 2:15 in the Disney Princess five weeks later). I wanted to break two hours, but was not very good at motivating myself, especially during our hot and rainy Florida summers!

Right at the 10-k point in the 2010 Disney Princess Half Marathon - feeling pretty good!

After we got our puppy (coincidentally just after the two half marathons I did well in!), I stopped going to the gym at lunch so I could go home for puppy duty, and I stopped running as much (can I blame the puppy again here?). Needless to say, in the last two years I've gained about twenty pounds.

TWENTY POUNDS.

in two years.

Yikes. I was definitely no "before" picture to begin with but I knew I had to do something to get back into shape. I joined a CrossFit gym last September, and within weeks I could see my cardiovascular and muscular strength increasing. I remember doing deadlifts in a workout the first week, and weakening quickly with a 65 pound bar. A few months ago we tested out deadlifts again to find our max weight - I lifted 200 pounds.

Just to be clear - I do not work for CrossFit or any of their affiliates. I know this style of training is not for everyone, but it has been very good for me and my lifestyle.

I lost a little weight - probably two or three pounds - but the rest was not budging (and no, it was not "fat converting into muscle, because muscle weighs more than fat"). On my wedding day, at the end of this past March, I had trouble getting my ring on. Within a few weeks, I had trouble getting my rings off. No bueno, amigos. Something had to give, and soon.

I downloaded a calorie tracking app and input my demographics - it spit out that I should limit myself to about 900 calories a day to lose two pounds a week... um, no. I adjusted it to about 1200 calories, but I had trouble obsessing over the numbers. I convinced myself I wasn't hungry just so I could stay at or just under those 1200 calories. I did this for four weeks (the month of June, 2012), and lost ten pounds (I did start adding in running a few evenings a week, on top of gym workouts four mornings a week).

At the end of a month of living like this, I was miserable. I was tired all the time. No kidding! I was eating 1500 calories a day and burning off over 300. I had all of my meals planned out and my time was spent counting and measuring and recording. I joined Fitocracy, (Fito, to citizens of the site) a website dedicated to fitness where you can log your workouts for points. On the message boards there, I stumbled upon the notion of Intermittent Fasting (IF). 

About the same time, I ran across a blog called 100 Days of Real Food and read all the entries surrounding their 100-day challenge. I was intrigued about the notion of "real" food (unprocessed sugars and flours, no added chemical agents that you wouldn't use in your own kitchen). I know at this point in my life, I will probably not cut out some unnatural items (like food coloring in my frostings!), but I did want to incorporate these ideas into my daily life as much as possible.

And that's where this blog comes in.

I love to cook, and bake. And eating better all around (which is pretty crucial for IF) is going to require modifications to my current recipe repertoire as well as an introduction of new ones! 

So keep coming back for seconds - I will start dishing them out!