get smart.

If you have half a brain, chances are you're capable of perusing Pinterest and knowing better than to think half the explanations for the projects, exercises and wedding DIY's are legit. Let's face it - this super frugal girl pinched pennies and saved a fortune on her wedding, but you're probably not going to chalkboard paint mason jars and personally label them all just to save a few bucks on plates from the catering company. Someone's gorgeous DIY wreath is the average person's craft nightmare, and you HAVE to know better than to think you can legitimately lose 10 lbs drinking nothing but tea for three days [and not pass out].

Which brings me to my biggest issue lately - believing the health myths. Buying into the diet fads. Following a 1-2-3 plan to weight loss and not being an independent thinker. Here's a shocking idea: your body is not the same as mine. Mine isn't the same as my mom's, or my brother's, or my dad's - and we're in the same fucking family. So why in God's name would you think that you're going to get the same results as person A, B or C just because you both read the "30 lunches to lose weight fast" article and followed it to a T? Chances are, you're probably not.

If you've decided to get healthy, lose weight, tone up, build muscle or just eat better, you have to stop reading made-for-you plans that are supposed to fit the general public. I can tell you from personal experience that I have friends who can eat 100-calorie packs all day long and lose 20 lbs, and I would gain weight from them. I have friends who gain weight from eating chocolate, who lose weight from eating bread, whose bodies do things that mine would run away screaming from. If you've decided to make a change in your lifestyle, I totally applaud you. As someone who lived in fat-kid denial for years, sometimes the hardest part is just waking up with the commitment to making a change. But what I wish I would have done earlier, and what I wish more people would do now, is educate myself.

Educate yourself. Do not sign up for the coolest diet trend that gives you the highest probability of success. Following Weight Watchers, South Beach or Jenny Craig will not teach you anything in the long run if you don't know what the programs are designed for. Reading thousands of articles on pre-planned meals and trampling through your grocery store with a list you didn't come up with on your own won't help you. Blindly grabbing the 100-calorie packs and whole wheat pasta boxes won't teach you anything if you don't know what's in them. Learn what food does to your body - understand why foods on Weight Watchers with higher carb counts are now higher in points. Learn about why Atkins preaches a low carb diet, and understand that it doesn't give you the right to eat 6 lbs of bacon a day. Stop eating boxed meals from the freezer section just because there are pre-determined points or calories labeled on the front.

I'm not saying you don't have to start somewhere. Any change to your diet is a good one, and making modifications and finding low-fat alternatives to your favorite foods is awesome. What I'm saying is that so many people go through life not knowing what refined sugars are, what "good fats" and "bad fats" are and what carbohydrates can do to your body when eaten in excess. So many people go through life not knowing how to fuel their bodies before and after workouts, how to create habits that will last a lifetime, and not just until the hit their goal weights. Depending on a program to guide you in the right direction is AWESOME. Programs like Weight Watchers and even free tracking systems like My Fitness Pal are awesome for showing you how to monitor your portions, incorporate healthier alternatives into your diet and how to balance your intake versus output. But you still need to learn what food does to your body.

If you rely on plugging numbers into an online tracker or pulling all your resources from the latest "top 10 healthiest dinners," you may stay fit, but you're never going to know why. The internet and social media has been a great outlet for utilizing fitness options and finding new healthy recipes - but it's also made us so dependent on following directions from someone else instead of learning about how our own bodies work. If you learn about what you're eating, learn about what you're putting into your body and how your body reacts to it, you'll quickly learn that someone else's "healthy mac and cheese" is your body's nightmare, or that someone's favorite low-cal casserole is actually just full of high-sodium cans of processed food that you can't even read the ingredients to.

Lord knows I am not perfect about my diet and exercise routines. I love fried macaroni and cheese almost as much as I love a good cheeseball - and one time, I totally fell for my grandma's line that her delicious oatmeal cookies could be considered "breakfast cookies" because there are oats in them (no, I was not 10...this was less than a year ago). All I'm saying is that you owe it to your body to do a little research instead of just eating the 10 meals some food blogger hand-selected from the internet as YOUR top 10 healthy meals. News flash: Your top 10 healthy meals are constantly evolving, and they're going to be different than mine. Your top 10 healthy meals should be established by you and only you, once you learn and experiment with different foods and understand what they do to your body.

Your body is your body, not anybody else's. Nutritionists and informational articles can point you in the right direction - they can help guide you, and weight loss programs are awesome forms of accountability and putting all that nutrition "junk" into easily utilized numbers. But chances are, you're not going to spend the rest of your life tracking every snack you ever eat (that'd be a lot of snacks for me), so you should do yourself the justice of learning about what you're eating so you can function on your own without someone else telling you want to consume and when.

Independent thinking is something that's often lost today - and it's probably half the reason this country has an obesity problem. You only get one body. Learn about what you're eating, and treat your body like the temple that it is. Feed yourself what you know to be good, and indulge in what you know to be delicious (and sometimes bad). Don't live by anyone else's nutrition rules, and don't let someone else decide what's right for your body. Educate yourself, and your chances of maintaining a healthy lifestyle long after you commit to one are much higher.

End rant. Stumbles off soap box and apologizes in advance for offending anyone.