First post! Hooray!

Hello all and welcome to my health blog! 
I decided to start this blog because as a future health care professional, I am constantly learning new, important information every day and am always dying to share that knowledge with others :) 

My hopes and dreams for this blog are: 
1.) To raise health awareness: Ignorance is NOT bliss. Ignoring the issues of the day will not make the problem go away. Our country is plagued with numerous epidemics; cancer, cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, just to name a few. The common denominators in all of these illnesses, aside from genetics, are food and nutrition. Or lack thereof. And sometimes it's not the individuals fault. Nutritional education is severely lacking in our society today...why else is the most developed country in the entire world also the most unhealthy? Shouldn't we be the healthiest with all of our abundant resources? I think we all know the answer to that, so it's time to educate and time to spread the word on how to develop a healthy lifestyle and change the statistics. Obviously my blog will not change the world..but if I can help educate at least a few people a day that is enough for me.

2.) To journey towards optimal health together: Sounds cheesy, I know. But I'm not one of those crazy health nuts who take every chance they get to flaunt their green juices in mason jars and kale chips in your face. Because in reality I am just beginning my journey towards optimal health myself, and am using this blog to record every step of the way. Don't get me wrong, I have been engrained with nutritional knowledge since the day I was born-literally (more on that below). And am also currently studying to became a Certified Holistic Practitioner. So far I am in love with the program and learn so much useful information on a daily basis that I was inspired to share it with the world. It also serves as great motivation to become a healthier individual. 
Many times I've gone to health blogs and been so intimidated and overwhelmed by the fact that some of these people are so amazingly healthy and seem to have bottomless pockets and like 2% body fat. While these people are great role models and very motivating, I feel that for beginners it's just completely too much to process and kind of gets you down because you don't know where to start. My goal here is to have a real down to earth blog from an ordinary girl with sweet tooth, a goal, knowledge and the desire to share that knowledge -along with fitness posts and recipes! 

Last but not least, I am dedicating this blog to my father. 

My dad, Mansoor Arain, owned multiple health food stores in New Jersey and worked at one of them, Healthway Natural Foods, full time. A former pharmacy graduate, he came to the USA and began working in a health food store and never looked back. He soon became an expert in the field of nutrition, using his pharmacy background to educate, not medicate.

I’ve never met a more disciplined person than him when it came to health. Tragically, he died young after being killed in a car accident ten years ago. I truly believe if he had survived that crash he would have aged amazingly and would have lived a very long life because of the way that he took care of his health.

Without him I never would have appreciated nutrition as much as I do, and would not have gotten that initial exposure from such a young age about the importance of a healthy lifestyle. I would never have gotten all that wisdom he passed down every chance he got. Wisdom that he somehow knew years before it even entered the minds of experts. I would never have gotten that chance to stand on a stool at the cash register as a child, decorating paper bags for the customers, watching people line up just to talk to him and have him work his magic on them. I can guarantee that every single person who has come to the store while he was alive can say that he either cured them or changed their lives forever. It’s sad that this little paragraph can’t even begin to explain how amazing he really was but I hope that it gets the idea across. I want nothing more than to carry on his legacy as a health food expert, and I pray that I can. 

So that ends my first ever blog post! Happy Halloween everyone! I'll be spending my halloween sitting in front of my computer eating my beans and rice and studying for my ayurveda final exam tomorrow.
P.S. Check out this article if you lack the willpower to stay away from all the candy binging tonight (like me... still kind of depressed about the candy corn part of the article though)