Welcome to Hungry Hobby!
Ever heard the saying, ask and you shall receive? What I share here constantly changes, depending on what my awesome readers ask for. Nutrition and health tips, tons and tons of healthy recipes, workouts (treadmill, strength, and more), fashion, and some random sprinkles of life. When I say sprinkles of life let me clarify, I share random stories, complaints, rants, things I’m learning, learning to adult (I’m 29, that’s still a work in progress), motivation (we all need it), inspiration, what I do all day (my readers love that, I think I’m boring but apparently they don’t), and things that happen to me (like Batman cars and scams).
In a nutshell, this is my mission:
To use my humor, creativity, knowledge, and personal experience to inspire, uplift, and empower others to live longer, healthier, happier lives.
Oh hey, that’s me, above there. The blonde holding the coffee asking herself why it’s 90 degrees in October. Oh right, because I’ve lived in Arizona my whole life. I’m this rare breed called Arizona Natives, (my hubby is too!) you don’t meet many of us anymore because most people are smart enough to leave a place that feels like an oven 9 months out of the year. But we stay, at least for now, and we make our Rhodesian Ridgeback crazy dog Nala stay too, because we feed, bath, and love her.
My name is Kelli Shallal, I’m a Registered Dietitian (RD), Personal Trainer, food blogger, food hoarder, lover of iced coffee, wine, and caramel. I’m constantly torn between cross fit and running, but I’ve injured my back twice so I’ve learned a few things about taking care of myself. I used to think healthy meant calorie counting, no carbs, no fat, and bland tasteless fake food. Now I realize healthy means confidence, energy, positivity, and real food.
I have rekindled my love of food, real food that tastes good and feels good. Sometimes that’s a salad, sometimes that’s a cookie, I eat it all, except kale. I can’t help but think kale is actually poison posing as health food. It’s taken my whole damn life, but I have finally learned who I am and how to be me myself. An only child, who gets bored easily and hates cleaning (except dusting). I especially don’t want to be bored with eating healthy so I make my own recipes and then pray a fairy will come clean up the mess. No luck so far on that one.
To get you started here are a few of my most popular recipes:
- Healthy Homemade Baked Corn Dogs
- Gluten Free Vegan Protein Pancakes
- How to Pack the Adult Lunchable
- Coconut Flour Pancakes
- Jalapeno & Cheddar Stuffed Salsa Burgers
In addition to blogging, I also have a nutrition practice, www.hungryhobbyrd.com. I received my Masters of Public Health Nutrition in June of 2012 from Loma Linda University and passed my board exam to become an RD in October of 2013. I offer one on one coaching, corporate wellness programs, seminars, regularly appear in the media, and more. I’m a holistic, integrative, and real food based Dietitian. Dieting doesn’t work, if it did, it wouldn’t be a multi-billion dollar industry. We have long since forgot that food is healing, functional, and energizing. Food gives us fuel and feeds our soul, food is freaking awesome. I LOVE FOOD. I coach my clients and seminar attendees to heal their relationship with food, to break up with dieting, and to enjoy it all by developing healthy habits as well as applying intuitive eating principles that become a part of their lives forever. (That includes stress, sleep, hormone balance, mindset, nutrition and exercise in equal parts.)
Want more? My Story
My journey to health and becoming a Registered Dietitian wand starting my own nutrition counseling and communications private practice was definitely not a straight path. In my first post here, I introduced myself as a person coming from a mostly Southern Cooking home and re-learning to cook. It all started in the winter semester of 2009 when I decided to slim down a bit after putting on 30 pounds of “college weight.”
When I decided I wanted to lose the weight I really didn’t know what to do. In addition to not knowing how to cook, I had zero idea what healthy was. Growing up my mom took me through drive-throughs for breakfast every morning to get a cheese danish, french toast sticks, or donuts. We ate tons of top ramen, macaroni and cheese, hamburger helper, and take out. At my Grandma’s house, we ate a ton of fried spam, cauliflower soup (read cauliflower covered with velveeta and butter), fried okra, etc… So I really didn’t have any idea how to “clean up my diet.”
I signed up for one of those online calorie counting programs which gave me a calorie goal of 1200 per day. Since I knew NOTHING about nutrition, metabolism, or working out I figured that was fine. What I didn’t know was that I was wrecking my metabolism, destroying my hormones, and it would take me years to recover from it. Eventually, calorie counting started working against me and I started seeing the damage to my metabolism. Luckily, I had learned a TON about whole foods based nutrition, smart (and effective) exercise programming, and how to stay trim and tone without living a life of restriction. I started Hungry Hobby to share the smarter nutrition, fitness, and mindset strategies that were working for me (and now for my clients as well.)
Formal Education
Although at first I took the wrong approach, I found out I loved learning about nutrition. After I graduated with a BS in Business from Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona, I spent a semester completing prerequisites to go to graduate school for nutrition.
(Photo sent in with my graduate school applications.)
I moved to Southern California with my boyfriend Paul (now known as Mr. Hungry), and I began my Masters of Public Health in the Coordinated Nutrition and Dietetics program at Loma Linda University in the fall of 2011. Eventually, Paul had to move back to Arizona for work, which marked the beginning of a year and half of long distance. Being away from him was hard, but I had made many friends in my program to help get me through it!
In June of 2011, Paul proposed to me while we were hiking in Sedona, Arizona. In his usual fashion he almost killed himself trying to make it a surprise, read the full engagement story here!
In June of 2012, I graduated with an MPH in Nutrition and Dietetics and began the last steps to complete the requirements to finally become an RD. I spent the summer in Palm Springs, CA completing my internship at Eisenhower Medical Center. With my degree in hand, I finally got to start a healthy living blog, something I had wanted to do for a long time. This was when Hungry Hobby was born!
Family
After a year and half of long distance, I completed my clinical internship and headed back to Arizona to finally be re-united with Paul and my family. Things went pretty quickly from there. I completed my first 10K, passed the RD Exam, trained for a half marathon, got hitched, went on a fabulous honeymoon in Hawaii, and then started a new job working at WIC.
Working At Life Time Fitness
I knew that I wanted to be more involved in fitness, sports, and weight loss coaching so I began as a Nutrition Coach at a major gym and became a NASM Certified Personal Trainer shortly after and continued to learn everything I could about integrative and functional nutrition. It was there that I began to learn about food sensitivity testing, adrenal health, hormone balancing techniques, and metabolic efficiency. I was able to rebuild my own metabolism and we were able to totally get rid of my husbands life long IBS, migraine and asthma symptoms. I fell in love with the functional and integrative nutrition approach to good health.
Starting Hungry Hobby LLC
After spending about a year at the gym, I took a job as adjunct professor at a local community college which allowed me more time to blog, see more clients, and write. The rest is history!
Signing Off
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Remember, Hungry Hobby is only worth anything because you find some kind of inspiration through a recipe, workout, or story I share. It’s like running a race, without the timing chip it’s just another run. Without you guys, this is a glorified diary. Do you have a suggestion? Tell me via email or social media, no seriously, I’m not just saying that I actually want to know! Be my timing chip!
