At the beginning of March, I knew something was up. My whole system was out of wack and conveniently, I had an upcoming annual check-in with my amazing Dr.

After talking to him about how I was feeling, out came the needle to draw blood and away my blood was sent. Results? High cortisol levels. My reaction: A very sarcastic “Yay.”

The basic thing was: My body was not reacting to stress as well as I thought it was. My results didn’t put me in the danger zone for cancer, or for Cushing’s Disease, it would be manageable by tweaking a lot of different aspects. Since I couldn’t exercise more than I already was (avid gym-rat), it fell to food and my job to help fix the issue.

The job thing would prove to be a pretty hard task as that same day, my company closed down (up go stress levels for new unemployment and bills that need to be paid somehow). But eating? I figured it’d be easy peasy. Hmmm… maybe. I got a list 3 pages long of what I couldn’t eat and about a page and a half of what I could eat. Luckily for me, I didn’t eat most of what I couldn’t eat already. Via my gym routine I was about a 85% clean eater, and now it was looking like I’d have to take the dive for awhile and become a full-on clean eater.

I’ve been spending a lot of time looking through recipes online that meet my required needs and didn’t feel like it would ever happen – until I found the site for Clean Eating Magazine (cleaneatingmag.com). I skimmed all the recipes – yum. Scoured the weekly grocery lists (Hey, this stuff is stuff I already buy!).

Three weeks later, the first dinner will be cooked tonight after following a full-day regime of “I can eat this”. Luckily, my husband eats whatever gets put in front of him.