Adventures in Clean Eating

For the final installment in this series, I’m focusing on two related issues: disordered eating and self-esteem.  I struggled with disordered eating for many years.  I don’t say I had an eating disorder, because my problem wasn’t nearly that severe, but I did have an unhealthy relationship with food and weight loss.  Slowly, I’ve overcome it.  I can’t say that I never experience food guilt anymore, but I’ve made a lot of progress over the years.  Here are some things I’ve learned along the way.

21.  Beauty comes in many forms. That sounds so corny, but it’s true.  Society’s perception of what is beautiful is constantly changing.  Once upon a time, curvy ladies like Marilyn Monroe were considered the ideal, but they’d be considered overweight by today’s standards.  Likewise, Kate Moss’s waif-like frame isn’t in style anymore.  I appreciate the fact that a little bit of muscle is considered sexy now, but who knows what we’ll be trying to attain in five years.  My point here is that you shouldn’t judge yourself based on what the women in the magazines look like.  Sure, they can be great motivation to get your butt off the couch, but that look isn’t attainable to most women.  It’s barely attainable to those women.  The amount of photo-shopping done to models these days is ridiculous.  Stop holding yourselves to those standards.  Even if we all had access to the same resources those celebrities have (personal trainers, private chefs, basically a whole team of people whose job it is to make them look amazing), genetics would keep most of us from looking exactly that way.  Our bodies are all proportioned differently, and getting down to supermodel weight would be really unhealthy for most people.  You need to look at yourself as individual.  Don’t strive to look like anyone.  Aim to be a healthier you.

22.  Separate your habits from how you feel about yourself. Belle explained this theory really well in a recent post, but I’d like to expand on it a bit.  Just like you should still lead a healthy lifestyle even if you love the way you look, you should maintain healthy habits even if you don’t.  Drinking juice all day is not healthy.  Think about how your doctor would tell you to eat and exercise, and do that.  No doctor would tell you that extreme diets are healthy.  Yes, if you are obese, you need to work harder.  But, there is always an extreme you should not reach.  Do the healthy thing, which isn’t always what’s going to work the quickest.  But, it will gradually work, and it will be much easier to maintain when it does.  So, while everyone should eat healthily and exercise, there is no specific formula to health.  If you hate to run, don’t do it.  You don’t have to run to be healthy.  Choosing “healthy” gives you a wide variety of choices.  Do what you like that makes you feel good.  Healthy doesn’t mean militant restriction from treats and sweets, it means having a balanced diet where splurges are minimal and controlled.  It doesn’t mean you need to beat yourself up because you caved and ate a cookie.

23.  It’s just a damn apple. Pardon my language, but it’s true.  Once, thoughts of food consumed me.  I planned out every meal a week in advance.  I counted calories religiously.  I weighed myself daily and it ruined my whole day if the number was up.  I felt like I was constantly in a state of deprivation.  I stopped keeping cereal in the house because I couldn’t “control” myself around it.  Same with peanut butter.  Those are healthy foods that I couldn’t seem to eat in moderation because I was so miserable from never letting myself eat what I wanted.  I remember one day when I had reached my calorie count for the day, but I was up late studying and got myself so stressed out because I was hungry but didn’t want to eat since I was at my limit for the day.  I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  After an hour of that nonsense, I just had to laugh at myself.  Eat the damn apple.  It’s just an apple.  You’re hungry, it’s good for you, eat it.  This stuff is not so complicated.  So began my journey of becoming more intuitive about how I eat.  I learned to pay attention to the cues my body was giving me, and started eating in a way that made me feel good.  Yes, I’ve gained a little weight since college, but I have more energy now than I ever did then.  Now, I don’t think about my day in terms of how many calories I eat, or when my next workout is going to be.  The other day I realized that I had started buying cereal again.  It wasn’t even a choice.  I just picked up the box at the store one day, and then would occasionally eat a bowl in the morning (without having to measure out a half cup serving, I might add).  It didn’t tempt me throughout the day, because I no longer lived in a state of deprivation.  I didn’t feel the need to stuff myself with unsatisfying cereal because I had learned to eat in a way that I enjoy and makes me feel good.  If you don’t feel that way, then you’re either not eating enough or you’re not eating the right things.  Find healthy foods that you like.  Eat mostly those things, only when you’re hungry and not when you’re full.  Treat yourself once or twice a week.  If you’re really craving something, eat a little bit of it.  Eventually you’ll find a rhythm that works for you.

24.  Don’t do it for anyone but you. I spent many years dieting to revenge ex-boyfriends who broke my heart.  I’ll show him, I’d think.  I’ll get so hot he’ll regret ever having left me.  I’d push myself to extremes out of jealousy.  Not only is that not an attractive personality trait, but it made for motivation that was bound to fail.  When I eventually lost the weight, I still didn’t feel good enough, and then I’d eat a pint of ice cream.  Don’t do it for anyone else but yourself.  You deserve all the  great things that come along with being healthy: a long life, energy, strength.  You are fantastic, no matter what the scale says.  You deserve it all and more, and if that asshole can’t see that, then he’s too stupid to deserve you.

25.  Appreciate all you can do. The human body is capable of incredible things.  I remember when I ran my first 5k.  I was so nervous at the start.  I didn’t think I could run the whole thing, but then I did.  I was so happy and… surprised that I could do it!  I wanted to keep going to see what else I could do.  It became an addiction of sorts.  Two years later I ran my first marathon.  What kept me going through the training and the injuries was the sheer amazement at what I had accomplished.  It was just so exciting to see how much stronger and faster I was getting every day.  It did more than help me lose weight, the physical strength translated to mental strength.  It made me feel powerful.  Five years ago I never would have dreamed in a million years that I could run a marathon, but I did.  My next goal is to finish a half-Ironman, and eventually a full.  I know I can do it.  I’m not sure when, but it will happen.

You can do amazing things if you work hard.  Watch your progress.  Appreciate the little milestones, whether you can start lifting heavier or you cut a few seconds off your average mile time.  The physical achievements will give you so much more satisfaction than your dress size will.