About
Hello world, I’m Selena. Welcome to Nom Nom Crunch!
Like many other struggling dieters out there, I have tried countless fads and quick fix solutions and routines to lose weight. You name it, I’ve tried it. And if you ask me to try another, I won’t! It took years and years of yo-yo dieting that I finally had enough. I found a trainer I trust and got to work. What I do is a balance of eating the right portions, the right foods, and excising. Is it easy? Hardly. Every person is different and every person has a different lifestyle (both diet and fitness) that works for them. I just needed to find mine.
It was tough, and it still is. I went from calling a walk to Starbucks a “workout” to high intensity training 4 days a week with some cardio thrown in there. I cleaned out my kitchen of the junk food I like to call my comfort blanket and I only buy what I plan to eat. You can’t have a guilty midnight snack if there aren’t any in the house. If I don’t plan to eat it, why keep it in my house?
I’ve learned to use the nutritional building blocks my trainer gave me to make recipes and other tasty treats that won’t kill my dieting efforts. Sure some may be high in sugar and some are high in sodium; but who determines what’s “healthy.” It’s a blanket term that’s put on so many things, do you even know what it means? Probably not. Because what you think is healthy is different than the next person and the next. My recipes are “Selena diet friendly.” If I labeled them “skinny” or “healthy,” those were thrown in there because there’s still a lot of people out there Google-ing that stuff and I want them to see my recipe.
I started a blog called My Light 2 The Lighter Side just to keep myself on track and vent out my thoughts when I was yo-yo dieting. At the time I was on Jenny Craig and I shared my secrets at how I made their food taste better. When I started training at a local gym near my college, they taught me how to portion control and what I should and shouldn’t eat. I also learned to love fitness. As the balanced eating and gym visits became more regular, I stopped blogging. It wasn’t really a priority anymore because I no longer needed it to keep me on track like I had when I started. But I missed blogging, so a year or so later, I presented NomNomCrunch on Pride Rock to all the animals of the internet jungle. (If you get my Disney reference there, I love you!) I wanted to start off fresh. The old me of My Light 2 The Lighter Side was a yo-yo dieter. The new me is a knowledgeable person who is confident that she can do what needs to get done, but still struggles sometimes. The new me isn’t fooled by the gimmicks and tricks of the dieting industry.
My Philosophy:
My mom used to tell me that there’s a balance in everything. I used to think she was a little crazy because it was really her answer to everything, but it does seem to fit every problem I come across. For health, you have to keep a balance between food, fitness and the rest of life. Not enough sleep makes you fatigue faster, over training can lead to injury, not eating enough, eating too much… There are so many factors at play when it comes to your body, and every single person is different. What works for me may not work for you or the next person. You have to get out there and find what suits you best. What foods do you like? What type of exercise do you like? How do you reward yourself? I do enjoy the occasional hamburger or fapp. Just because it’s bad for you doesn’t mean you can’t have it. It means you have to be responsible for your actions. Be smart with your choices. Ultimately, everything you do brings you closer or pushes you further from your goals.
On My Blog Title:
I love food. I always have. I was reading my diary from when I was in elementary school one day and what struck me was that every day I mentioned what I ate and what I thought about it. My dad used to make us these amazing deli style sandwiches with the deli roll and carved meat with all the fix-ins. When he opted for regular bread, my diary knew about it. I was as obsesses with food back then as I am now. I was the kid who would scavenge the pile of unwanted food at the edge of the lunch tables (and more likely than not, I ate all of it). As I grew up, I also learned I had problems with being “territorial” over my food. I didn’t like to share it. And sometimes I’d eat like this was my last chance to eat in a while so I had to get as much as I can. I still struggle with that lack of self control sometimes and relapse into my old mindset. It’s one of those things that subtly takes over and then you wonder “what just happened” when you’re looking down at your empty bowl not really processing that you basically blinked your lunch away. So nomming is my problem. I love food and I have struggled with that love since I was young.
The “crunch” in my blog title is about my fitness journey. Way back when, when MTV’s Diary was aired, I saw Britney Spears’ episode. At one point during the episode, they showed us her fitness routine. She talked about how she’s always loved working out so I tried convincing myself that I love it too (but it didn’t work). She also said she loves doing crunches, and we all know how awesome her abs were back in the day! So I would convince myself I like crunches too. Even today, I still feel like I tell myself crunches are my favorite. I don’t really know if that’s true, but I made myself believe it way back when and there’s a fine line between things you actually like and things you tell yourself to like so much that your brain believes it.
What I Eat:
I learned over the years that losing weight is much more simple than most of us think. It’s as simple calories in versus calories out. My trainer taught me the basics of how most diets are structured and it all comes back down to calories. Most diets work because they control calories. I monitor my macronutrient intake per day. So you’ll see most of my newer recipes include the macros breakdown. Macros calculate into calories so if you’re monitoring your calories and not your macros, feel free to use this formula: 1g fat = 9 cal, 1g carb = 4 cal, 1g protein = 4 cal. I don’t deprive myself of things like bread and pasta. I also on occasion drink my fav Blue Red Bull. I work it all into my macros for the day. As far as cheat days, I am trying to cut my habit of calling them cheat days. I recently discovered the word “day” is a weakness of mine. When it’s a whole day, I eat way worse than if I just called it a cheat. Basically, if I knew I was going to go out to dinner and have a drink, I would start planning how I could make the most of the day and cheat all day long without going too crazy. But why cheat all day long if I would have been just as satisfied with dinner?
