So, I turned 40 last March.  I have to admit I like getting older.  So far, I love most things that come with getting older. Among them I find myself looking inward instead of comparing myself to everyone around me—one of my favorites.   In addition, I’ve heard we all become more at peace with ourselves as we get older, but I’ve also been gearing up for something else….a slower metabolism!

It’s almost like someone pushed a button the day I turned 40.  I never weigh myself, but over the summer I did notice that my clothes… Just. Weren’t. Fitting.  Yikes!  For the first time in years I found myself obsessing over what I was eating in order to lose weight.  (And blogging about healthy eating wasn’t helping either so I took a step back.)

Well long story short after a few months of overexercising, cutting out carbs and basically feeling like shit.  I wasn’t losing any weight.

So….I threw up my hands and decided to stop all this nonsense and go back to what I know.  Eat sensibly, stop overexercising and quit obsessing.  I went back to cooking pasta when I wanted to.  Eating oatmeal for breakfast. Made a fabulous gnocchi with sausage and sage butter the other night (I’ll share later), having wine and basically stopped making eating so hard! All while ignoring the scale.

You know what happened?  You guessed it.  My clothes started fitting again.

We are surrounded by diets.  Keto, paleo, low carb, plant-based, Atkins, cutting dairy, gluten, sugar, red meat, night shades. Exhausting.

Everything is bad bad bad.  When did eating become so damn hard!

Now, I get that there are more and more processed foods out there that shouldn’t be eaten.  They have a shelf life of 20 years and hardly classify as food.  I don’t blame avoiding that.  But, all these diets, I just have to be a bit skeptical for the average person.  Do you have to pick one of these in order to be healthy?

I have to say I know they work. For people that have serious weight to lose a diet works as a gauge to follow.  But, once we’re at a healthy weight, it’s time for the insanity to stop.  Because it can turn into an obsession.  There is a way to be in balance.  Enjoying food while living a healthy life.  It doesn’t have to be completely black and white.

I stumbled onto an article about Orthorexia a few months back and, seriously, I can see people like me who blog about healthy eating falling into that trap.  Orthorexia is actually defined as an eating disorder.  It’s when people become obsessed with healthy eating.  There’s actually a fear of foods that aren’t clean, pure or ‘safe’.  Many people will cut out dairy, red meat, carbs, etc and are afraid to consume them.  I believe with all the social media and yes—blogs out there coaching and preaching, it can get out of hand.

So, my intent now is to provide some easy recipes that are tasty and mostly healthy.  Sensible. Because, I really don’t want to perpetuate this trend.  This website is more fun than anything else.  I just like to cook and share what I cook.  Share recipes and pics of food.  Because eating is fun!

And if you’re wondering, not that it matters so much, but it just so happens that when I stopped obsessing, that extra weight fell off.

So, let’s break bread together.

Literally.

xo-Megan