About Me

The Ketchup Diaries: Eat. Move. Enjoy.

Hi!   Welcome to The Ketchup Diaries and thanks for taking the time to read my blog.  This is my first blogging experience and I’m a little nervous, but excited too!  I’m talking to “you” as though I actually expect to have a following.  In actuality, I bet only a handful of people will read this, including my boyfriend – Mr. Ketchup Diaries – who will only read because he’s obligated

The Ketchup Diaries was born out of pure passion for food – both the healthy and the unhealthy – and that delicate “balance” for a healthy lifestyle we are all trying to achieve.  My name is Lindsay and I’m a self-diagnosed, food-obsessed maniac .   My love of food is well-known to those that know me, but allow me to take you back a bit, so you can understand my desire to start journaling and sharing with others.

Ever since I was a kid, my family loved to eat and centered any occasion (good AND bad) around good food.  I come from a really large family and some of my earliest memories are of eating large dinners at my grandmother’s house every Saturday.  The motto was always the same: “You haven’t eaten enough!  Take more!  You can’t be full!  It’s time for dessert!” (Sound familiar?!?)

Luckily, I was a fairly active kid and never had a weight problem – which is ironic – because I always thought I was “fatter” than the other girls.  I didn’t understand how some people could be so “naturally skinny” and eat whatever they wanted.  This mentality carried with me through the years, but I never really let it bother me until after my college graduation when I realized I had let 20 lbs creep up on my once-small frame (Yikes!).  I realized I was disgusted with myself and had to take action.

A year after graduating, I had lost all of the weight by following the Weight Watchers Program.  It certainly was a great starting point for me, but I felt like a slave to counting my “points” every day, so I eventually stopped.  Ten lbs crept back.  I would start counting the points again and the weight would come off.   Once again, I would slack at counting and gain.  And thus the cycle began…

I started to realize that the maintenance aspect of the weight journey, as well as coming to terms with a new lifestyle change, is often much harder than the weight loss itself.  This brings me to the present.  I am currently 26 years old and have been trying to understand weight maintenance and healthy living for almost 5 years.  Through this journey, I have learned that the number on the scale is not the only thing to consider.  The quality of the food one eats, as well as its nutrition makeup, is SO important and essential to a healthy lifestyle.  At this point, feeling great in my jeans IS still important, but I’m trying to make my health the number one priority as I continue down this healthy path. 

Equally important to my physical health is my mental health and the way I feel about myself when I wake up each day.  I am finally learning to follow my own advice and accept myself as I am, as well as how far my body has come (I’m more physically fit than EVER before!!).  This includes realizing that my body type was not meant to be a size zero and even if I starved myself, I would NEVER look like one of those “naturally skinny” girls I used to dream of being – nor do I want to.  I want to look like ME (or Kim Kardashian, but that’s for a different blog).  I’ve learned that EVERYONE can be their OWN SKINNY, so long as you do a little planning.  You have to find your body’s balance and this is different for everyone, so listen to your own body!  It’s trying to talk to you RIGHT NOW.

You’re probably wondering what I’m actually looking to accomplish with this blog, huh?  I’m hoping to share recipes that I find for savory (yum) and sweet (double yum) treats, which can be incorporated into a healthy lifestyle.  I also hope to share my daily menus, through pictures and a quick babble about day-to-day things we can all relate to, including fitness tips and new workouts that I come across.  I’ve spent a great deal talking about food and while that IS the number one component, we all know how essential exercise is to our health and well-being.  I’m hoping this will not only work as a  food/fitness journal, but also as a therapeutic place to admit when I’ve eaten one-too-many cupcakes (or slices of pizza or Chinese food OR….).  I’m certainly not perfect and you’ll see days where I eat too much.  I’m young and have no kids and there are definitely still nights when friends get together and the beer is plentiful runs like the Amazon River.  I’m hoping, however, that this blog demonstrates the balance between those nights versus the planned, healthy eating I do most of the time.

I am also hoping you’ll see that I eat REAL food.  This not only includes whole, “clean” food, but every day, average, unpretentious, American food.  I try to incorporate as many fruits and veggies as I can in one day, but I’m not ready (or sure I’ll ever be) to eat clean 100% of the time.  Life is short and I want to treat my body well, while also enjoying all the things I love (the list is approximately 2,394,782,452,934 items long).  Luckily, I enjoy cooking and generally do 5 – 6 nights out of the week, but I also love the experience of going out to dinner or simply relaxing in my sweats and ordering takeout.  And I occasionally even – GASP – eat at McDonald’s.  I’m hoping you will respect that I’m trying to find a balance for myself where I am not a slave to the scale or calorie counts, but rather to listening to my body and being mindful of what it’s trying to tell me.

I realize there are a lot of food/healthy living blogs out there, so I am hoping to create my own niche.  Like everyone, I have a lot going on in my life and I’m hoping to demonstrate staying healthy and balanced while living within a moderate food budget AND with my significant other for the first time (Double whammy, eh?).  We all know that living with your S.O. can EASILY pack on the pounds (What shall we do today?  Want to eat pizza and cake and sit on the couch and watch our Netflix?).   Mr. KD and I do the best we can to eat healthy during the week and try to let ourselves have a plethora of few splurges on the weekend.  Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail.  We’re really “good” at enabling each other, i.e. we can enable each other to eat badly just as easily as we can to eat well. 

He and I certainly do not agree on all things, so I’ll certainly share his take on recipes, restaurants, etc.  I am a huge fan of veggies and grains and he could eat a pound of chicken with each meal.  As you can imagine, this tends to mean that we have varying opinions about recipes, restaurants we eat at and what should be on our week’s menu for meals (FYI: When we go out to dinner, it takes approximately 45 minutes to decide on a place and we often resort to picking out of a hat.  Yes, I am serious.).   This works into the balance mentality – a healthy protein for him, a healthy grain and veggie for me!  And luckily, we both agree that chocolate is the be-all and end-all of delicious food

Oh, and, why the name “Ketchup Diaries”?  Well, despite my GINORMOUS sweet tooth, french fries are my FAVORITE food on the planet (very closely followed by 5, err, 50 things) and I am known for my love OBSESSION with HEINZ ketchup (HFCS and all!!!).  What you use on your entire order, I probably use on one fry!  I think Heinz should consider hiring me to be their “Subway Jared” equivalent!!

The tagline of the blog: “Eat, Move, Enjoy” is something that I hope we all strive to do.  I hope we all eat the things we love, move as often as we can and enjoy everything this life has to offer!

Until we eat again…

***Note*** I’m not a registered dietician, but I am extremely passionate about food, nutrition and fitness and do a lot of research on the topic.  All of the opinions on this blog will be mine and only mine and certainly should not be taken as “fact”.