A Healthy J.D. comeback!

Hello world, I’m back. After over a year of not blogging I’ve decided to get back on the proverbial horse and do this thing. A lot has changed in my life (understatement of the year) since I last posted and I never intended on being away so long but I’m kind of glad I did take the break. I needed to step away, unplug and refocus my energy on figuring out what was going on in my life.

To be honest with you, I often found myself feeling like a fraud on the blog. I wasn’t in the healthiest state of mind when I last left off and I tried to ignore it, which led to a pretty incomplete picture on the blog. I constantly felt pressured to create new recipes, and take perfect pictures and yet I completely ignored the other aspects of what my blog was supposed to be about (like the whole exercising and losing weight aspect). Ultimately, I lost all sense of direction and found myself avoiding my blog due to the immense amount of pressure I put on myself to create the perfect picture. In fact I often felt like I was trying to force a square peg in a round hole.

All of this time off allowed me to re-evaluate why I wanted to start a blog in the first place. I never intended for this blog to be exclusively about food (as tasty as it is); it was always supposed to be a healthy lifestyle blog. What I’ve realized in this time off is that my healthy lifestyle involves much more than food and fitness and I really want to add more variety to my blog.

Last we left off I was mainly blogging about recipes and the occasional random outing. A lot was going on in my personal life and I wasn’t ready at the time to disclose this. Probably the biggest change over the past year involved my continued journey in trying to expand our family.

Spoiler alert:

I’ve got a whole ton of posts lined up regarding this guy, but let’s just say he has changed my life and I cannot wait to see what the world has in store for him (and us as a family).

So here is what the new A Healthy J.D. blog will look like:

Food – I will continue to post recipes, but likely not quite as often for the reason pictured above. To be honest, early pregnancy killed my desire to be in the kitchen and late pregnancy/post partum living has fueled my desire to bake ridiculous things I should not be eating, sigh. I’m hoping to find a balance between these two things but know time will be limited with a baby and a full time job. Any rare foodie outings will be documented here as well.

Fitness – 2013 is the year I establish a new and solid exercise routine. I’m planning on dedicating a whole post on this new routine. I’m not really going to be doing the standard body after baby thing because I wasn’t happy with my body BEFORE baby and I also lost all of my pregnancy weight within two weeks of having the baby which I cannot take much credit for, pure dumb luck.

Family – I’m currently obsessed with my kid; my poor dogs have received quite the shaft. I’m currently in the throes of my maternity leave and I know once I go back to work all of the special moments with this kid will be diluted by day to day life. I want to take the time to really focus on the special moments and document them for memories. Also this is the portion of the blog where I post a copious amount of pictures of my kid and my dogs, and who doesn’t love a baby/dog pic fest?

Fun – Reading, photography, crafting, etc.…I am a chronic hobbyist. This category will be a place for me to post book reviews, document any crafting projects I tackle, and chronicle all miscellaneous shenanigans I get myself into.

So for those of you who stumbled upon this comeback post and decided to give me a chance (even a second one), thank you for entertaining me and I hope I can return the favor!

- Jamie