Yep you read that title correct. We have all seen these phrases: keto, low carbs, cutting, bulking, shredding, fasting, diets blah blah blah……
This is something that boils my blood! We do not need to follow a diet to be healthy, we need to listen to our body and eat what food is right for us. Whats the first thing we want to do when we are telling ourselves we are on a diet? Eat everything we shouldn’t!!
When I tried the FODMAP diet, I lasted 3 days and then I started craving fried food. I don’t even like fried food. But it was the principle of all these list of foods I could and could not eat that made me feel so controlled and restricted. It made me want to break them and binge eat on something. That’s not saying everyone will do that on a diet, but what happens after we finish the diet?
Once we stop, because maybe we lost the weight we intended to lose. What happens then? We go back to how we ate before and end up putting back on all the weight, feeling shame and guilt again and we are back to square one.
This leads to a feeling of failure and makes us more inclined to quit.
The only reason we should be counting our calories is if we are trying to educate ourselves. Once you learn it, stop counting and measuring, enjoy your life and eat what makes you feel good. We cannot live a life with rules and restrictions on what we put into our body. We are depriving ourselves of what our body wants.
That feeling of deprivation will eventually lead to over indulge, guilt and shame.
Instead, try and stick to a variety of wholesome foods, veggies, proteins fats and good carbs, yes we need carbs! Educate yourself and find what works for you. There is so much pressure and stress around diets and certain meal plans but we can only figure out what is right for us by experimenting and being mindful of how we feel after. The key lesson here is mindfulness.
Be mindful of how you feel: do you have energy, how does your skin look, are you sleeping well, are you happy, is your self-esteem growing, are you feeling energized when you exercise? For some do not know what it feels like to feel their healthiest and in this case there needs to be education on proper nutrition so they can judge for themselves the difference between food that fuels and energies their body and the food that will drain their body.
Society has us scared to even step outside of a diet. The diet culture makes us think we can’t be successful without rules and restrictions. But we CAN!! You have the power to listen to your body and no one else can do that.
Learn the difference between emotional eating and intuitive eating.
Intuitive eating is tapping into what your body is asking. Listen to your cravings, eat the food that makes you feel good and energized. Some days it might be chocolate some days it might be carrots
Emotional eating is eating for comfort. Here is when we need to find the underlining reason. Is it the job you hate? The relationship? Or maybe it’s a lack of self-esteem? When we find ourselves comfort eating we need to dig deep and ask why. Then work on that. When we eat emotionally we feel an urge to eat more and more as fast as we can but we’re not actually hungry. So when we feel that urge take a deep breath and see is this what our body really needs or is there something else going on.
Forget all these diets that are in fashion unless you need to be on them for medical reasons or a certain food doesn’t make us FEEL good, Ketogenic, Atkins, veggie, low carb, no fats, paleo, fun free, diary free, gluten free, fish free, egg yolk free💩 just no. Social media can have a big impact on this because we see pictures of ‘how we should look’ and ‘what we should be eating’ which leads us to think this is the right way. If there is someone on social media that is posting a 6 pack and a pizza, do yourself a favor and unfollow them. Ask yourself, is this serving me in a positive way? Does this make you feel anxious when you scroll?
If so, I am giving you permission right now to set yourself free from this BS💩
I do believe in eating home cooked food as much as possible so we don’t have to eat out all the time, it saves time and money and we know exactly what is going into the food. But please don’t stress over measuring and counting. This is doing your body and mind more damage than good. When we stress, we release a stress hormone that actually holds onto fat. I am not a nutritionist, I am speaking from experiences but even a nutritionist can’t tell you how you feel.
You is kind, you is beautiful. Please share this if you can relate or know someone that can benefit from reading this blog!
