Who is Meg Wiczynski??

Hey everyone! Wow I never thought I would be doing a blog! Never thought I had enough to talk about. However, several people have been asking me to begin one so I thought "What the Heck"!

So who am I and how did my journey with fitness/nutrition start??

I grew up in a family where nutrition was taught to me at a very early age. My sisters and I laugh when we think back on it because my mom would buy us one box of fruit snacks that were supposed to last for a week and say "when they're gone, they're gone." Then my middle sisters best friend would come over and eat them all before we had a chance to! At the time it was not funny…but looking back she was doing us a favor :) We rarely ate junk and if we did, it was when we went to our grandparents or friends houses. 

I didn't start putting on weight until I hit puberty. Up until the age of 13, I was a very muscular, lean girl. I thought my genetics had blessed me, until puberty. I quickly began to put on weight and tried to ignore it until one day a boy called me "fat" because I broke up with his friend. That woke me up pretty quickly because I never thought of myself as being overweight. I was in denial. I remember crying to my mom about it and she immediately got me out running with her and my dog Libbey at the local park. I couldn't even run a quarter of a mile. I complained constantly when we would be out running together. I was still sneaking junk food here and there  with friends and wasn't seeing any changes, actually gaining more weight. I hadn't quite understood the importance of "healthy eating and exercise". 

Then high school came and I began hanging out with a girl who had some unusual eating habits. She convinced me to do crazy deprivation diets with her like "no sugar for 30 days" or "no eating until dinner". This is when I developed Bulimia. I remember that moment very vividly. It was a conscious choice. I realized that depriving myself of things wasn't working because I just binged as soon as I got home from school and away from my friend. The only way to continue to lose weight (in my mind) was to throw up everything I ate. This eating disorder lasted for almost a year until my cousin made my mom aware of it. I have such an amazing mom and she didn't attack me with accusations. She sat me down and we talked about what I was really doing to my body. Bulimia doesn't help you lose weight like most people think. It more so damages your insides. I made a promise to my mom that I would stop and took up running once more to keep my weight in check. I quickly signed up for the cross country team and finally was on the road to creating healthy habits.Or so I thought.  I became obsessed with the way running made me feel and continued on with running cross country from my sophomore to senior year in high school. 

I did a lot of research on what could make me a better runner and realized that fueling my body correctly was the best way to improve your running along with speed/agility work outs. I became so interested in nutrition and how the body works that I decided to get my degree in nutrition from the University of Dayton, OH and completed my 4 year degree there in May 2009. While in college I taught spin, kickboxing, and bootcamp classes. Looking back, I had another form of eating disorder at this point-- Exercise Bulimia. I would work out for hours upon hours and then not fuel my body right. Guess what? I wasn't super skinny either. I actually ended up GAINING 30 lbs during college. How so?? I would eat a ton during the weekend when we were out drinking and partying and then not eat very much during the week. It was a vicious cycle and my metabolism was SHOT even though I was working out like crazy everyday. Your body is such a precious gift from God and is not stupid. If you are not treating it right, it will rebel against you. 

Graduating college I finally had to take a hard look at myself in the mirror and realize that what I had been doing the past 10 years…wasn't working. I needed to actually treat my body right and get out of the vicious additive cycles I had created through my teen years. That's when I found turbo jam and the Beachbody community. I quickly realized this was WHERE I needed to be. I found friends who supported my newly found healthy habits. I lost the 30 lbs over the next couple months and kept it off for 2 years. 

Then I started a new relationship with my now fiancé Kirk. When you're in a new relationship you're going out to eat a lot and not focusing so much on WHAT you're eating. I packed on 20 of the 30 lbs I lost. This went on for a year until I realized enough was enough. I was running a fitness business and knew in order to be successful with that business I HAD to be the product of the product. I was also so sick of looking in the mirror and being disgusted with myself.  Right when I was ready to get focused I severely broke my wrist in a car accident and had to cut down my intensity in my work outs. I was out of commission from August 2013- January 2014. 

Kirk and I at the beginning of 2014 decided that we were going to hold each other accountable to lose weight. We began p90x3. Kirk started losing weight immediately. Me- I started to gain. I was feeling chronically fatigued all the time, moody and stomach aches every time I ate. That's when I took matters in to my own hands and contacted a Beachbody Trainer and well known Holistic Nutritionist- Sagi Kalev (creator of Body Beast). Through several tests we discovered I had developed Candida from several years on birth control (because of severely bad cramps and skin) and rounds of antibiotics. My body had killed off all the good bacteria and the candidiasis (bad bacteria) had taken over. This all happened in March 2014 and I went 2 months on a very strict Candida diet. After clearing up my Candida, we switched my thyroid medication from Synthroid to Armour, which seriously was like night and day!

Now today, I am finally feeling BETTER. No more brain fog, no more chronic fatigue, less rare occasions of moodiness( I am still a girl :) ) and can see the changes happening in my body everyday. I have 75 days until my Wedding and am following a Paleo meal plan as well as mixing up my work outs from Body Beast, Piyo, Crossfit and running. I have already seen so many changes and cannot wait to see what the future has for me. I WILL look and feel beautiful in my Wedding dress. I have also gotten rid of the crazy obsessive dieting. I know that if I am eating healthy and working out for 30 minutes per day I will see results.

Want to follow my journey? Check out my like page: www.facebook.com/MegWiczynski . I will be posting lots of progress pictures, what work outs I'm doing and meals :)