Dashing Dish Love

Every blog has its “thing,” you know? I read some for the recipes, some for the decorating advice, some for the good stories, some for spiritual encouragement, some for great deals…you get the idea. My thing is that I have no “thing.” I just love to share the love! So if I find a great book or recipe that I think you should know about – I tell you. If I find a post that hits me – I’ll tell you about that. No endorsements. No paid advertising. Just this girl telling you about the stuff she’s fallen in love with.

You know. Like Picaboo. Or Essie Nail Polish. Or all my Pinteresting finds at the end of every month. Or, like today, Dashing Dish.

Dashing Dish was actually a Pinterest find for me. Someone pinned it to her board of blogs to read. I clicked because the blogger, the lovely Katie Farrell, was just that. Lovely. She’s so pretty and her smile so inviting that I thought I might need to be her blog friend. {Translation: I might want to read her blog while she had no idea I was on the planet.}

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Then I started reading/watching her story and I wanted to cry. I wanted to cry because she’s a girl who gets what I deal with on a food level. Different details, same struggle. Katie’s story was that she bought into a bunch of lies about food and weight back when she was a teenager, and she ended up struggling with eating disorders. My story is that I was fat my whole life until I dated Isaac and lost my appetite for four months during our breakup and could only eat about ¼ of a normal meal spread over a whole day.

God worked in her heart and life and taught her {and hear me on this because THIS was the key that made me love Katie’s approach to food} – how to understand the perfect place for her body to be.

That’s how she got healthy. She got in the Word and fell in love with Jesus in a new way. She was set free from all the “measurements” forced on her through clothing sizes and calorie counting and fat gram checking. {Not saying she might not still use those measuring tools but she stopped being enslaved to them.} And now she creates recipes that she calls on her blog, “healthy alternatives to the food you crave.”

I remember eagerly seeking Ryan in our house the night I first visited Dashing Dish and saying “I think this girl can help me. I think I can do THIS.”

You see, I lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 pounds through all the love life drama – but I did it while drinking full strength coke, sucking down frappes, and living on McChickens and French fries. (When you don’t actually finish a single one of any of those things in a day’s time, you can actually lose weight eating them.} But then my heart healed from the devastation and along with it – my appetite healed. Very, very well.

{This was my before pic.}

{And this was at the end of the drama.}

And Ryan and I really enjoy food. We enjoy cooking it, we enjoy eating it, and all the while, I had begun to tell myself I was a bad person for eating because I would undo all the weight loss.

I didn’t want to start weighing food. Or counting points. Or calories. I wanted to eat real food. And Katie makes that possible.

Know what I love? Her recipes have REAL INGREDIENTS. Real veggies, real meat, real dairy products. So far the only thing she’s called for that I didn’t have – was protein powder. Her recipes are filling, flavorful, and most refreshing: normal. Ryan and I try to make 1-2 of them each week as we learn what we love most. We still eat out. We still have strawberry shortcakes and Starbucks runs. And in all our eating out and fun date excursions, I try to make healthy choices. But I love the freedom in knowing I can still cook – and cook fun, normal food, when I cook from Katie’s site.

She has exercise programs too – for treadmills and ellipticals, and I’m excited about that too because we just got an elliptical a few weeks ago!

AND – because no, I’m not done! – she has devotionals and encouraging blog posts that help me remember the whole worth thing comes from the Lord, not from my jeans size.

AND…oh yes, there’s more! – this site is affordable. Several of her recipes and workouts are just there for you to see. Some are member-only, but a membership only costs $5 a month. And if you can’t pay that much, she lets you pay what you can afford. I think that’s amazing. And it made it safe for me to try it – and have hope that as I could have fun while keeping weight off.

We interviewed Katie on Mid-Morning last month. I was SO BUMMED that I didn’t get to talk to her. She was scheduled to chat with me but that was the day I was snowed in at home, so Lynne talked to her instead and it was a great interview. You can catch it here.

So all of this to say – I’m a big fan of Katie Farrell and Dashing Dish. I love the ministry component, I love her heart, and I love it that she’s so SWEET. I really wish she lived next door and we could drink protein shakes while working out. Okay maybe before or after the workout. And because I love her so much, I wanted to introduce her to YOU so you can love her too!