Finish all your food !!!

It’s a sin to waste and leave food.   Do you know there children in this world without food that are starving? These are the words I grew up with. The mentality of having to eat all your food that was served. Believe it or not,  I was never over weight growing up. I was under weight.   The idea of having to eat everything on my plate was exhausting, it left me not liking food.   It was till years passed that I gained all the weight.

My apologies, I didn’t introduce myself to you,  my name is Cori Flores . I am a 43 year old female. I have two grown beautiful daughters and 4 wonderful grandchildren.  Let me fill you in a little on my background. I have been in the medical field for as long as I can remember. I seemed to have a passion for helping and caring for people. I am a certified medical assistant, certified phlebotomist, certified x ray technichian, and certified biller and coder. I then became a instructor for the Everest Institute for 6-7 yrs until they closed down. I taught young adults and older adults to become medical professionals.  Helping people achieve their goals became my life, so much that I forgot about myself taking a toll on my health in the process.  My weight kept going up and up. The mentality of eating everything on your plate became me and next thing you know I’m 200+ lbs. I know what your thinking …. that can’t really be what did it.   But, I say to you we live in the fattest nation…. In America !! Where for a quarter more you can up size everything on a combo at any fast food joint., and it all sounds like a very good deal, but are we really getting a deal? Or just over eating?  Yes we over eat and how can anyone not reach 200 lbs that way. Sooner or later, so you guessed it I reached 200 lbs and started to have health problems , borderline diabetic and heart disease . The news of my beginning health problems made me think of a couple of things .

Firstly, I was already epileptic and had a seizure disorder since I was a teenager.  My question was did I want to have more things to deal with. More medications to take with the nasty side effects that come along with it? Secondly, what other things will these new diseases bring?  As an epileptic I have a lot of things my doctor said I could not do. So what other limitations would I have to face?  Finally,  how would this affect my time on earth with my kids and grand kids.  I started to look into exercise and changing my life style. I started to look for help and answers to all the things that pondered my mind. I went to a gym signed up … All I knew to do was get on the treadmill. I saw many other machines and knew very little about them.  Not to mention I could not begin to tell you how to use  them. So I hired a trainer and the trainer was not very helpful unless I agreed to sign up for 6 months,  in which at that time I could not afford.  I felt like I could not find help .. I decided to take a small personal trainer program to teach me how to use these machines and what they were for. I signed up with ISSA and went from there. Their program was very basic and user friendly and helped me understand the use of the weights and the machines. From 200 lbs I went to 180 lbs on my own with a bit of research and a lot of trial and error.  I do mean a lot of error.

Time passed and again I felt like their had to be more to this than what I was doing.. I began to get bored of the routine and started to plateau.  I then decided to buy a bike and ride it for more of a leisure way of doing exercise. I joined groups and rode my bike with them . Started with CCC cypress cycling club and met some very awesome people. They taught me about cycling and the road rules and hazards. I started to get more involved in the biking community. Met other groups in Houston and rode with them. Next thing you know I lost another 20 lbs.  I continued to ride and challenge myself. From small rides of 15 miles to 20 mile rides. Inner city rides to country rides. Training rides to fun social rides to the “we are bored lets ride our bikes to Kemah and back rides” . Yes , I rode my bike from downtown Houston to Kemah in one day and back with a couple of other brave cyclists just because we were bored, a total of 64 miles in one day.

As you can tell I have a passion for cycling and it has helped me a lot with my weight loss journey and depression. But as active as I have become, the weight loss is not something that just comes off with exercise alone. 80 percent of your weight loss comes from your eating habits. How you eat portions and what your eating is what really helps you with weight loss. So I started to learn about healthy eating and how to prepare and cook my food. I tried everything from juicing and shakes to organic meals . So that helped with another 20 lbs. I enjoyed learning so much about food I have started taking a certified nutritionist course to get certified with NASM. I have not yet completed that program but I soon will.   So back to the term “Finish all the food on that plate”, I no longer do that unless its in portions and healthy food.  I’ve learned to listen to my body and I only eat if I’m hungry. The funny thing of listening to your body it will also tell you what to eat. I sometimes feel like eating crunchy food, like a tostada to add a little sodium to my diet.  I tend to get passionate about all the things I do and fall in love with doing it all and learning and researching more. I believe that’s one of the important things in life is to love what you do. So now I’m going to love to be the person that brings you all the latest things in health/ fitness .  I will research and bring you the realest  of the health/ fitness out there that you can try. Remember not all things work for every body the same . So having the options to try and see what best way works for you is the beginning of your health/ fitness journey.