About

My name is Madeline and I am a 25 year old living in Philadelphia, PA.

(licking the Liberty Bell. obvs.)

I have been a healthy eater my whole life. While some kids ate Cookie Crisp and Chicken McNuggets, I grew up on Flax-O’s (possibly not their real name) and Chick Nuggets (gotta love those garbanzo beans). I also grew up in a very active house. My dad regularly bikes to work (30 miles each way) and my mom walks daily. From the ages of 8-18 I was a nationally and internationally competitive fencer (yes, that thing with swords). My problem wasn’t exercise (2+ hour practices 5-6 days a week), it was that I ate a few too many of those delicious Chick Nuggets. I never really saw myself as being overweight, but I was definitely aware of the fact that I was bigger than many of my friends.

Me and my brother, too cute not to share.

My sophomore year of high school my dad was on sabbatical and our family was living in England for the year. I decided I was going to take this time to really buckle down and start eating right. I began running on a trail behind our house and started cutting back on my giant portion sizes. By the time I started my junior year I was right around my feel good weight of 120lbs. I held steady at this weight through the rest of high school despite a pretty devastating lower back injury that basically ended my fencing career. With physical therapy I started to feel like myself again and began slowly building up the running miles. When it was time to go off to college I was averaging around 35 miles a week and feeling and looking great.

Me freshman year with the rest of the Brown women’s fencing team. I’m the one in the middle in the sweatshirt (yay for injuries keeping me on the sidelines!)

Freshman year I actually avoided the ole Freshman 15 by staying on top of my eating, exercising, and avoiding alcohol. Towards the end of the fall semester I saw a flyer advertising a meeting for a cross-country cycling trip that would raise money and awareness for affordable housing. I called my parents immediately and said I was not coming home that summer. Bike and Build (http://www.bikeandbuild.org) was my big life changing moment. I found something I was incredibly passionate about (riding a bike and helping others) and people who really GOT me. On this trip I met many of the people I consider to be my best and closest friends today. The only downside to this amazing, earth shattering adventure? I gained about 20 pounds. How someone can gain 20 pounds when they are riding about 75 miles a day I have no clue, but oh baby it happened.

As hard as I tried the last three years of college (including a second Bike and Build trip) I couldn’t really shake that extra weight (the fact that I discovered that alcohol can be really tasty probably didn’t help matters). I wasn’t “fat” but I definitely wasn’t comfortable with myself.

Me and my friend Dom our senior year. I was probably around 140ish here?

The summer after I graduated I had a few months to refocus while working a coffee shop before my “real” job started in the fall. I began to make a more concerted effort to eat WELL, keep my portions under control, and really get my body back to the kind of shape I knew it was capable of being in. Well ladies and gentlemen, it took some time, a few pairs of running shoes, un-becoming a vegetarian (more on this later), and more than my fair share of hummus and baby carrots (mmmmm), but I am back to that healthy, happy, feel good weight of around 115.

I have lived all over the world and the US (Wisconsin, New Zealand, Kansas, England, Sweden, Rhode Island, Maine, Arizona, Pennsylvania) and I currently am living it up in Philly as a tech rep for an amazing outdoor apparel company and I run, bike, hike, and get outdoors as much as I can.

With my job as a tech rep comes a whole new world of traveling constantly and figuring out how to balance that with a healthy life style. As my boss describes me “has running shoes, will travel.”

Oh, and about fashion… Love is a pretty good word to describe how I feel about it. For me, my love of fashion goes hand in hand with how I feel about myself. I can finally say, at the ripe old age of 25, that I feel great about myself and the way I look and I actually look forward to getting dressed every day (well, almost every day). So while I talk about my love of couscous and almond butter (separately) most of the time, you will also get to read about my love of sunglasses and my tried and true Frye boots.

If you’ve read this whole thing you deserve a medal, or at least a hearty handshake and a pat on the back, but I hope to use this blog to continue to hold myself accountable for my eating and exercise habits and to have a place to gush about how I want every single thing in the September issue of InStyle (seriously though).

Questions, comments, or just want to say “hey?” Shoot me an email at greens.jeans@gmail.com.