Although I grew up in a household with access to food, most of the time there was a lack of concern for nutrition with the standard American diet of processed foods loaded with unhealthy trans fats and saturated fats, refined sugar, refined oils, and fast food encompassing my diet. At times, I would chronically eat over 100 grams of refined sugar a day along with copious amounts of junk food, little to no consumption of fruits and vegetables while being at a caloric deficit. For example, an average “healthy” day of eating for me would consist of meals centered around cheap quality chicken (or other animal protein such as steak, eggs, bacon, etc.) cooked in vegetable oil, pasta or rice, a single serving of vegetables such as broccoli or carrots, maybe a single banana or serving of other fruit, and the rest of calories were filled with nutrient-poor, processed snack foods. Little did I know, this style of eating was not promoting homeostasis and was lacking in many essential nutrients… I had never felt any negative health effects from my past habitual way of eating until my junior year of high school, age 16, when my body went through a series of physical and mental challenges. At this age, I was involved with cross country and was running an average of 6-8 miles a day in addition to playing basketball or other sports with friends after school and using a bike as my main means of transportation. Although my physical activity was at its peak while getting enough rest and stretching in the day, my body strained immensely. Physically: my body temperature was constantly low with my skin being cold to the touch due to the lack of calories I ate, I had wide-spreading acne on my face that would be itchy chronically, sleep never seemed to satisfy my fatigue, I had trouble gaining muscle/strength even with proper training, my soreness never went away even with stretching and adequate recovery time, and financially I was at a loss due to the amount spent on addictive, processed and fast foods. Mentally: I couldn’t focus in school, even in classes that I found extremely interesting, no matter how hard I tried, I would get into severe mood swings, usually either anger or depression when I didn’t eat sugar, and had overall poor mental health. There were other factors that played into the causation of these problems, but from my perspective, all these issues could’ve been and eventually were helped solved through learning and utilizing physiological nutritional knowledge to add a full spectrum of bio-available essential nutrients to my eating habits in order to promote the functions of metabolism. Over these past four years, with me implementing the knowledge I’ve gained from reading scientific nutritional studies (combined with other skills: culinary arts, etc. and making other adjustments to lifestyle: sleep, etc.) , slowly my health problems minimized, and an array of both physical and mental benefits have come with that. As cliche as it may be, since my personal experiences with studying and practicing nutritional science have been deeply beneficial for me, an interest in spreading nutritional knowledge has sparked as one of my main pursuits. Although, focus on open source, nutritional science information/education to benefit ANY individual or community is more of an objective of mine rather than pedaling products and books through the power of nutrition salesmanship.