Guest Post: Jenn of Girl Heroes!

I will be featuring a few guest bloggers over the next week as I vacation in Jordan with family & friends. Today I feature Jenn of Girl Heroes, a beautiful, healthy woman with a healthy outlook. Read more about her journey and lifestyle below, and then head over to her site to read more! Thanks, Jenn!

Hello RhodeyGirl Tests readers.  My name is Jenn and I blog over at Girl Heroes about my neurosis quest for health. I found Sabrina’s blog a few months ago and was quickly drawn in by her simple and healthy approach to food and by her genuine love for life.  When she asked me to write a guest post I immediately felt completely intimidated honored.  Thank you, Sabrina.

For many years my quest for a healthy lifestyle felt like a labyrinth, a maze , a complex branching puzzle with many choices of paths and directions.  I would try one “diet” until I read about the next healthy diet.  In a search of the perfect plan, I went from a 5 year stint eating macaroni and Fruit Loops as a vegetarian (I didn’t know better), through many detoxes and raw foods for a brief time to plowing my way through plates of beef and broccoli on Atkins.  Each new philosophy held the hope that the perfect plan and a perfect body was only a meal or 1000 away. It was both exciting and exhausting.  Freeing and frustrating with more frustration than freedom.

Through the many twists and turns of the maze I learned valuable lessons and information.  I learned what works for me.   What works for my body.  What fits my personal convictions and my personal limitations.  I learned there are foods that make me feel great and foods that I cannot eat in moderation to save my life…(refined sugar products…cough cough).  I learned that I would also never entirely give up Cheetos no matter how much I wanted too.  I learned that I feel and perform better with adequate, for me, amounts of protein.  I learned that eating locally grown foods were  not only satisfying to the palate but satisfying to the heart.  I also learned that every once in a while I may drive through a drive thru and I no longer feel criminal.

Sometimes I feel like a paradox.  Once I remember picking up my veggies from my CSA and then feeling the crunch of time I drove thru Taco Bell.  True story. Sometimes, I feel inadequate.  I read blogs where people are making their own cheeses and breads from freshly sprouted hand ground grain and I wonder why can’t I do that?  Then I remember I am me and I do the best I can.

Over the course of time, I have come to believe that freedom and health is much more than a plan, than a perfect combination of nutrients, than food groups.  Freedom is also forgiveness. Forgiving myself for the ridiculously high standards I had set for myself and for my imperfections.  Today my quest for heath is simple, I do what I can.   I eat real whole food.  Well most of the time.

Thanks again, Sabrina.

Hugs and High Fives,

Jenn

Related posts:
Food Philosophy
Eating Seasonally