I used to be obsessed with healthy living.
I used to follow healthy living bloggers religiously, counted calories like it was my job, and beat myself up if I missed a day of exercise.
I was at my skinniest during my freshman year of college. I walked everywhere, went to the gym five days a week for an hour, and ate Subway nearly every day. I was around 120 lbs, a size two in jeans and a size small in dresses.
I joked that if I were to lose any more weight – and of course I wanted to lose 10 more lbs – I’d have to start shopping in the kid’s section.
Then real life intruded and I started commuting to school. I was taking a full course load, working 30 hours a week, and doing an internship. I didn’t have time to exercise, I spent more time sitting around, and I just shoved junk food in my mouth whenever I had a free moment to breathe.
The weight began to slowly creep on.
5 lbs… 10 lbs… 15 lbs… 20 lbs…
Every time I looked in the mirror, I hated that girl more and more. I hated her for who she couldn’t be. I hated her for not having more self-control or motivation or respect for herself.
I whispered lies to that girl in the mirror. Lies that told her she wasn’t good enough. That she’d never find someone who would love her. That she wasn’t worthy of that.
As I look back on that time of my life, that time when I hated who I was because my mirror didn’t reflect the societal ideal, my heart breaks for my younger self. I want to go back to her, wrap her up in my arms, and whisper that it’s all going to be okay. I want to tell her that what she looks like has no bearing on who she is as a person and that anyone who would judge a person based on the size of their pants wasn’t worthy of her.
It would be nice to get back to that 19-year-old skinny girl (though, of course, I never saw myself as skinny back then, as women are wont to do), but do I want to commit to 1,200 calorie days and five hour-long workouts every week? Or daily Subway? No, not really.
There’s very little enjoyment in that kind of life. When your days are spent carefully measuring out every morsel of food you eat and tracking everything you consume… it leaves little room for spontaneity. It makes social functions difficult because all you can do is worry about what you can eat which will keep you at my ideal calorie limit for the day. And let’s not even get into all the different ways to beat yourself up when you don’t eat in the way you were supposed to. Like ordering chicken wings with dinner instead of a side salad. I want to enjoy the chicken wings because good goddamn, chicken wings are delicious! And life is not lived on side salads alone.
I want to be able to eat those chicken wings, enjoy every single taste, and then move on with my life. I don’t want to spend the rest of the night fretting about how to input them into MyFitnessPal or beating myself up for not following my meal plan or, even worse, combating the chicken wings calories by eating less the next day. (<– Which used to be my M.O. and a habit I certainly do not condone.)
I just want more from my life. Food is meant for fuel, but it is also meant to be enjoyed. That is, essentially, what it is biologically designed to do. When I’m counting calories or measuring out specific servings, food becomes less about enjoyment and more about punishment. It turns eating into a moral dilemma and makes me feel as if I’m being a good, disciplined person when I eat healthy foods and a bad, unmotivated person when I opt for the more fattening or carb-heavy foods.
Food is not inherently good or bad. It is just food. Following my meal plan doesn’t make me a good person any more than having a 2,000-calorie day makes me a bad one. It just makes me a person who eats. Some days, my meals will be healthy and some days, the chicken wings will be ordered with my dinner. And I refuse to feel bad about making that call. It’s just not worth it to me.
It means I’ll probably never be that size-two skinny girl I was at 19. But that girl also couldn’t see past the 10 lbs she still wanted to lose, the stomach that wasn’t quite as flat as she wished it to be, the legs that still hadn’t acquired thigh gap. She was thin, but she didn’t accept her body as it was.
That’s what this all comes down to: body acceptance. Once we can learn to accept our bodies, love them for what they look like and do for us, that’s where the magic happens. That’s when we begin to look at healthy living as something we do, not something we strive for.
Think about it this way: when we diet, we’re acting out of a place of fear. Fear of gaining weight and therefore appearing less worthy in the eyes of society, fear of not making the morally conscious choice when we eat. But when we take diets out of the equation and just eat in a way that intuitively feels good – meaning, some nights you want the chicken wings and other nights you want the side salad and not beating yourself up for ordering the wings or praising yourself for ordering the salad – we can truly start living in freedom. Freedom from worrying about how we’re eating and what we’re eating… freedom to just eat what feels good at the moment and owning our decisions.
I used to be obsessed with healthy living because I used to be obsessed with thinness. Aren’t we all, living in a thin-privileged, fat-phobic world? To be thin is to be beautiful, to be thin is to be on the right path. But I don’t want to be the girl who obsesses over calories, over good foods and bad foods, over the number on the scale. That’s not healthy living to me.
Healthy living to me is loving my body as it is today and treating it well by making sure it gets exercise and good foods and plenty of water. It means eating food as it is biologically designed – for pleasure and for enjoyment. It means not worrying so much about being thin and perfectly toned, but instead appreciating and celebrating my body for what it does for me right now.
Girl, this entire post is the story of my life. I was super thin and healthy before I had Caleb because I hated my body before that. I worked out for hours a day and logged everything with precision on MFP. I liked my body for the first time ever, but missed out on a lot of enjoyable food and other things. Now I’m starting to hate my body again because of what I gained from the pregnancy. I’m trying to strike a balance between being healthier and shedding some weight but also enjoying life and not stressing so much about my food. It is SO HARD. I’m working on it everyday and also working on body acceptance.
I’ve definitely come to accept my body more as I moved from my 20s to 30s. There are still things I don’t like about it, but I’m better at focusing on what I do like. I think health eating looks different for each of us. For me, it’s about primary eating foods from the perimeter of the grocery store (fruits, veggies, and protein). When I start to slip into less healthy habits, I make a change not because of what the scale might say (I don’t own one), but because of how awful I feel! I can’t be on things like MFP indefinitely because it does take the joy and fun out of eating and is a source of shame and frustration, though. But I need periods of it to keep me on the right track. I miss the days when eating was more intuitive for me but that was when I was able to run lots of miles and didn’t have restrictions on the kinds of workouts I could do. I miss those days, but I know that my body is great the way it is right now, even if I’m carrying a few more pounds around than I would like.
In general, though, I wish there was less emphasis in society on being a certain size and more emphasis on being healthy because a healthy weight is different from person to person based on their body type and genetics. I think that what is most important is fueling our bodies with high quality foods and ensuring that things like our blood pressure and cholesterol are in a healthy range!
Recently I’ve started to realize that I think I actually might be *happier* being at a bit higher weight. The enjoyment I get out of food is worth it! I still have to fight against the idealized version of myself I have at the back of my mind, but that realization has brought me a lot of peace.
I have totally lost interest in healthy living blogs – for a while it’s all I read. Now they really and truly almost bore me to tears. Life is so much more than that. I will probably always struggle with food, calories, body image – it’s in my DNA. I firmly believe you never “recover” from an eating disorder just like alcoholics are always in recovery. But one positive thing pregnancy has done for me is that it’s helped me care a lot less about being so strict with my food and exercise. I won’t lie: I’m nervous for how my mindset might shift post-partum. But right now? Being able to eat ice cream simply because I want it without feeling guilty? Not spending hours at the gym and not feeling guilty because it’s what’s best for the baby? It’s such a breath of fresh air. I need a mental reminder to come back to this post in 8 weeks when I hate my body again.
This was a beautiful post Stephany! When I think of you, I picture a radiant smart woman.
Due to some hormone / health issues I’ve been experiencing for the last 20 months I have gained about 20 lbs since January 2015. It’s been very very disheartening and depressing and I keep telling myself I need to start tracking with my fitness pal again but then not doing it. Finally, very recently, I kind of just threw up my hands and thought ‘whatever’. Most of my clothes still fit decently well. I’m rocking out some hard fitness blender workouts and some tough yoga classes lately and I’m walking more than ever these days thanks to getting a fit bit. I am kind of just done with worrying about food and my weight. My mental health is soooo much more important anyways.
Do I sometimes still see photos in my timehop app or facebook memories and think “dang! I wish I looked like that again” — but you know what, I didn’t even appreciate looking like that when I DID!!! I always thought I had more weight to lose!!! So, for now I’m just trying really hard to appreciate where I am RIGHT NOW.
Anyways, this post totally resonated with me and I am very much in the same boat these days. It’s a tough road to walk for sure!
In our fitness group we say “workout because you love your body & celebrate what it can do, not because you hate it.” When I think about it that way, that I love my body & am so thrilled for all it can do, it shifts everything for me. How I feel about my food, clothes, what others think, etc. The last 16 months have been a big change/shift for me when it comes to how I see my body and I’m finally to a place where I don’t hate it. Are there some things I don’t love? Sure, but that’s true of anything.
I hate that society makes us feel like we have to count calories or eat kale all the time or run on the treadmill for an hour each day because a) it’s not realistic to live life that way 100% of the time and b) we need to enjoy our lives, like you said.
Really enjoyed this post!
I totally believe that life is there to live it… and what good does it do if you obsess about every little thing and punish yourself all the time.
I’ve learned that I feel the best and am the happiest when I treat my body right (which means eating healthy, drinking water, and exercising), but I also know that treating myself and not obsessing about numbers or societal pressures are good for the soul.