Food is…complicated. Most of us admittedly don’t have the healthiest relationship with it, and for that we aren’t our healthiest. Be it because we eat our feelings or we feel like we shouldn’t eat at all, food almost always seems to end up as the enemy; food is not the enemy.
It’s taken me a long time to realize that eating right isn’t about counting calories, carbs, and sugars, it’s not about starving myself, and it’s not about weighing myself every day to see if I’m doing something right. As someone who’s always been a bit heavier than my peers, I’ve thought about my weight and how food affects it a lot, and in the back of my mind food has definitely seemed like the enemy. If calories equate to fat and everything has calories, how can I eat anything? But focusing on numbers isn’t healthy for your body or your brain.
Recently I picked up a book called Eat Pretty, by Jolene Hart, and in just a few days it has successfully shifted the way I think about food. Of course it will take a lot longer to fully fix my relationship with food, but the structure of the book goes into the chemical processes that will occur in your body to affect your weight, skin, hair, etc., based on the chemical structure of specific foods. Now when I think about eating unhealthy food, I don’t think about all of the weight loss experts telling me that I shouldn’t eat these foods, I don’t think about a big fat ban on them, I think about what chemical processes would start occurring in my body if I eat them.
I want to be healthy. I’ve written a fair bit on this blog about my insecurities about my weight and my struggle with self love. Well, this is to me a much more loving, healthy way to think about food. There’s still some of that “I shouldn’t eat this,” but it’s not because eating it will add weight to my body and make me look worse to others, but because it won’t promote healthy processes within my body. The idea now is to go forward with taking care of my body so it will take care of me.
Traveling around with my family last month, I was the only one below the age of 50, and I was constantly reminded of my youth. I can walk longer and faster than my family members, even though I’m overweight and out of shape. I have so many years ahead of me to do whatever I want, and I can tell you that I am not going to be hindered by my body. I’m going to get into a healthy shape, and my body and I are going to conquer the world together. Food is not the enemy, and neither is my body. I just need to keep in mind which foods work better with my body.
So if you’re struggling with this idea of food being the enemy, I encourage you to think instead about all of the foods that will help you, and how they do that. Think about how to fuel your body and your beauty from the inside out. It’s not going to solve all of your problems, but it will start you down the right path.
Maybe I’ll write more on some of the foods I and my body are loving. What do you think? And what are some of your favorite foods/recipes that are good for you too? Let me know in the comments!
dream.think.work. 