Health, Fitness and Food Blogs

First, it started with Lauren.

I met Lauren my freshman year of college back east. Lauren and I became good friends our second semester (she was a sophomore, and I was a freshman). She was my friend who was super smart, (she always beat me on tests), had a great music play-lists, was so great to be around, always talked about her running, and was a vegetarian.

I'm on the left, Lauren's on the right. This is circa 2004, people. On our way to my first and only trip to NYC.

Um. We're posing, people. It's Central Park. What else do you do in Central Park? (We're in the middle - Lauren on the left, I'm on the right).

Unfortunately, the college we attended wasn’t for me, so after my first year I moved back to California. Lauren stayed at school and graduated with a degree in Psychology, then ended up getting her Master’s in Public Health. Lauren and I stayed in touch via Facebook, and one day I saw a posting about her blog. Lauren’s blog is about running, health, and eating yummy and healthy foods. I occasionally read her blog, and was inspired to create a blog of my own. (Not a health or fitness blog, clearly).

As I became a blogger, I read Lauren’s blog more often as well as some other blogs to get inspiration. Then, I read this post. Lauren and her running buddies did a 2 day, all night relay race – yes, someone on their team was continually running. Throughout the night. It was insane! And inspiring. And motivating.

Through that post I found some of Lauren’s running friend’s blogs.

And this is where my new obsession with Heath, Fitness, and Food Blogs began.

It all started innocently, really. I enjoyed reading Becky’s and Tina’s blogs. They seemed like nice women, and they knew my friend Lauren. So I technically knew them.

And in their blogs, they have tons of great recipes, weight loss stories, and other inspirational nuggets that make me want to get up at 5:00am to go work out.

(Un)fortunately, I started reading every single Heath, Fitness and Food Blog that came my way. (Un)fortunately, most of the women who comment on Lauren, Becky and Tina’s blogs are also health-nuts who write similar blogs. (Un)fortunately, I started to read more and more each day.

Like my obsession with Facebook, I quickly became addicted with my favorite blogger’s post updates. I would check their blogs multiple times a day, waiting for a new post. One of the things some of the bloggers do is post what food they eat that day – let me just say I LOVE seeing what they eat everyday. Thus, many of them post blogs as many as 3 times a day – so I kept checking back for the next post. It started to become a real problem.

Good news, my friends. My preoccupation with Health, Fitness and Food Blogs has calmed down. The reason? Google Reader. It automatically updates me when each new post arrives and organizes the blogs all together in one nice, neat, little package. (It is way better then RSS feeds. It will change your life. I promise you!)

The other good news? Reading all of these blogs has motivated me to do two things I haven’t been doing a lot lately:

1. Exercise regularly
2. Cook at home

I had been eating out a lot lately because I was so sick of cooking for myself and I was so sick of the food I knew how to make. But, I have been encouraged by all the blogs! I have so many recipes to choose from that I just can’t wait to cook each night.

And tomorrow? My lazy self will get up when my 5:00am alarm clock goes off to go to the gym instead of hitting snooze like I’ve done so many times before. 🙂

I guess my new addiction isn’t so bad after all.