My mom is a great cook, and family dinners were a must growing up, even if that meant eating at 10 p.m. when my dad got home from the hospital. It's where we did our family bonding.

We can try to reform healthcare, but the fact is if we don't have a healthy food source, we are only treating the symptoms and not the problems.

The most imminent battle our generation is going to have to fight is food transparency: how food is made/grown, where it comes from, the quality of the source, and how it will effect our health long term.

Figuring out how to eat healthfully on your own without your parents' guidance is one of the hardest lessons you must learn when you leave home for college.

I wanted to lose 30 pounds healthfully and still be able to enjoy my college experience. Having succeeded in doing just that, I wanted to share my experiences with others who could benefit from my direct knowledge of the difficulty of trying to balance college life with being healthy. It became a journey about healthy lifestyle choices, including tips and tricks for creating a new relationship with food where I was in control and could learn to love food healthfully again.

The only reason I write at all is because I am going through, and growing through, something in my life I want to share with others through my personal experiences.

I am proactive and looking to change my own behavior rather than others' - which is generally much more successful!