Hey guys. I recently found this website through google, and it&#39;s been very fascinating. I&#39;m still sorting through all of the information though, so there are lot&#39;s of things I don&#39;t understand. I am in need of some advice and sorting out.

I&#39;m 16 years old, from Ukraine. I moved to the U.S. when I was around 5 years old. I used to eat home cooked meals when I was young, but when I moved to the U.S., I eventually started to eat tons and tons of junk food, snacks, etc. It got to a point where I was literally eating McDonalds several times a week as there was nothing else I wanted and my parents couldn&#39;t get me to eat anything else.

When I turned 15, this stuff gradually stopped. I have always been a reader, and constantly find stuff on the internet. I was tired of the junk food and really didn&#39;t want to be a lazy couch potato forever, so, gradually, I began eating home cooked meals much more (wasn&#39;t intentional at first). I started to work out, do exercises, eat more and more home cooked meals. Now, more than a year later, I do not even remember the last time I have eaten at Mcdonalds or any fast food place, really. I haven&#39;t drank soda and Coke in literally close to a year now. It&#39;s been nothing but fresh-squeezed juices; mostly orange juice, as well as milk. I drink a good deal of Kefir (although it is more of a fruit flavored kind, but it does have the cultures and everything), as well as eat yogurts. My parents are aware of nutrition, and the things they cook, they tell me are balanced, healthy, and non-processed. They try to buy as much natural "real food" and non-packaged crap to make meals as possible, although some of this stuff is expensive, which prevents going all the way.

So, the things I eat that my parents make are recipes and such brought back from Ukraine and also passed down over several generations. We eat lot&#39;s of chicken and Pork and other meats prepared in different ways with herbs and the like. My parents literally buy fresh meat prepare it by pounding it with a hammer, season it with herbs and pepper and all that (I am not sure how that works though; I&#39;m not a great cook lol) then cook it over a flame on a grill, or in the oven. Usually as part of a recipe.

They make fresh salads with lot&#39;s of different vegetables. For example, today I ate two sausages and Sauteed vegetables consisting of Tomatoes, onions, eggplant, carrots, and some other veggies which I don&#39;t recall at the moment. Natural sunflower and olive oils are used for salads. The vegetables are bought fresh from Wegmans (as are most things we eat now since it&#39;s a great store with a lot of different stuff). Another thing I like to eat with many of my meals is pickled cabbage. The most recent batch was made using a cabbage bought at a farmers market on the way home from the Beach (as fresh as it get&#39;s). The cabbage is mixed with a few other vegetables such as carrots and onions. It&#39;s all stored in a giant jar with a bandage shoved into the top, and when it&#39;s ready after typically a few days, portions can be taken and loaded with a bit of sunflower oil and eaten directly as a snack, as part of a meal, etc. It&#39;s cold, crunchy, and tastes great.

But we also eat potatoes. Potatoes are a staple. We don&#39;t eat them that often. It variates weekly. Sometimes it might be several potato-containing meals and sometimes it might be several weeks before they are made. Lot&#39;s of variety. My parents cook them in the oven, bake them (not fried) and the skin is left on. Some sunflower oil is usually also added and maybe sour cream. So a meal might consist of oven-made potatoes, cut into halves or smaller pieces along with a big piece of fresh pork cut prepared directly on a fire just prior to the meal (most of the time my Dad will make the meat right when it&#39;s bought from the store and later that day we eat it for dinner and then left overs for later meals), along with a freshly-made salad. The thing that kind of puts me off of the salads is the herbs like Parsley and Dill, but even these I eat readily now.

Aside from potatoes, there&#39;s also buckwheat, which is prepared in a manner you won&#39;t find in America. I don&#39;t know how it&#39;s called, but it can be eaten as a side just like potatoes with a salad/vegetables and meat.

Besides that, I do still eat snacks sometimes. I have all but abandoned chips and other junk food (although I sometimes have a big bag or two of chips in the house that I might sometimes eat a bit from before I go do some physical activity). To compensate for my periodic urges for a snack, I started to get Mozzarella sticks. These have only a few ingredients, taste pretty good, and are only 70 calories meaning they are pretty small but just give me something to chew on. But I eat sometimes several of them at a time. Still, it&#39;s better than oreo&#39;s in a plastic bag.

Sometimes I get beef jerky from Trader Joe&#39;s.

I take a vitamin supplement in the morning-silver for teens or something like that.

And finally, In the morning I usually eat something egg based, like scrambled eggs or an omelet with sausages (and rarely bacon, although I ought to have more of it. I will do so next time I have an omelet). Mostly I eat oatmeal and throw some berries in, or waffles or french toast of the frozen kind. Lately, I have sort of dropped that stuff a bit and now I&#39;m trying to find more variety in the healthy alternatives besides eggs and meat. Salads are too much of a hassle to prepare for the morning (for my Mom, anyways). I haven&#39;t eaten cereal in god knows how long though, so that&#39;s a plus. Bad thing, though, is that as School started recently, I decided not to eat school food, and started taking my own stuff. I bring little lunch packs akin to lunchables that have some crackers, ham slices, and cheese as well as a candy (I just give the candy to my friends). Not satisfied with this junk, I also bring along an apple and yogurt.

It&#39;s mostly temporary. I have a small supply of these lunches and when they run out I should have some better stuff ready. I&#39;m still trying to find out what to replace it with, though.

So there it is. That&#39;s what my foods consist of. Back when I ate junk food in heaps when I was younger, I did not really fatten up. Mostly due to the straterra I took for ADHD which I dropped this past summer and am going well without. The drugs suppress hunger, and I could notice myself getting chubbier without them. But now I am in great shape due to my work outs and mostly healthy eating. I started working with weights recently, and after not going outside for ages and being a basement dweller for most of my life (And now really realizing that I need that vitamin D now if I want to grow past my 5&#39;6 1/2 inch height that I have been stuck on for awhile) decided to start riding my bike after school. I brushed it off, inflated the tires, replaced the seat, and rode for an hour yesterday. I was trying to go for a light ride like I read on one of the blog posts, but it didn&#39;t work out that way. I was sweating and damned if I didn&#39;t get a good cardio and leg work out from it all. All of those hills just left me no choice but to go up them. I traveled all around my neighborhood, breathed air, smiled, said hi to everyone I passed, and felt so alive when I went down a hill after several minutes of hard work peddling up one. I went for my second ride today. My legs are sore afterwards, and so is my butt and crotch area from the seat.

My exercices consist of every (or most) mornings doing 20 burpee&#39;s consisting of 4 different variations (so 5 each) along with push ups, crunches/leg raises/etc and a few other things before I take a shower (So I get up at 5:45 to go to my stop at 6:50 and get to school at around 7:20). I have really fixed up my sleep regime lately. I used to go to bed late, especially during the summer break, but now I am already in bed by 11 to get 7 hours of sleep minimum, and mostly try to be in bed earlier than that (but it takes awhile to take a shower and stuff).

I also use acne creams and washes twice a day to keep myself acne free. I might have one or two pimples every now and then, but I am pretty much entirely free on my face and body.

So there it is. Everything about my eating/sleeping/exercise/lifestyle habits. Anyone want to offer some advice, or comments?