Healthy eating - how to overcome an obsession

 

Do you use food as a tool?

From a very young age, diet tricks, hacks and tips are introduced as a way to change the way that you look, to improve health or to gain control over eating. While some of these strategies can be helpful, many are unhealthy and sometimes hazardous to your health and well-being.

Your thoughts about food matter. In our diet-crazed society, eating too little, eating too much and never eating with pleasure can be harmful for the body. Both undereating and a cycle of restriction and binging can have serious effects, especially when this style of eating becomes a way of life. Feeling “fat” can make you more obsessed and preoccupied with food – making you more irrational about how you really look and more inflexible with your food choices.

Because under or overeating can cause many psychological and physiological effects, shifting the way that you look (and speak about) food is critical. The effects of poor nourishment on the brain can lead to difficulty in making common sense decisions. It’s not uncommon for people to give up interests and hobbies (ex. like training for an event), due to an obsession about food and weight. Always thinking about the next meal and wanting to get that meal “right” can make it extremely hard to give attention to other things in life. Learning to develop a healthy relationship with food can do wonders for your health, performance and well-being.

• Avoid the diet mentality - A diet mentality robs you of eating a wide variety of foods. To foster a healthy relationship with food, you must give yourself unconditional permission to eat. Your body needs and deserves a wide variety of energy and nutrients. As a performance-minded or health-conscious individual, sometimes it’s easy to lose sight of a sensible eating approach as you want to get everything just right. The truth is that there is no such thing as a perfect diet. A healthy diet doesn’t have to be perfect to keep you in good health. Nutrition looks different on everyone.
  
  
• Avoid the good vs. bad food list - When specific foods are prohibited (not for medical reasons), it creates a mental barrier. Saying that a food is “good” or “bad” may seem harmless, but this language often has a direct impact on how you feel about yourself. It’s as if you are assigning a moral value to food. For example, if you eat “good” food like a salad, you feel good about yourself. If you eat “bad” food like chips or candy, you feel bad about yourself. Transferring labels onto your self-worth can create shame and guilt – which in turn further affects how and what you eat. The reality is that enjoying French fries, a milkshake or regular pizza (instead of cauliflower pizza) will not make you a bad – or an unhealthy – person. To help you feel more at peace with food, learn how to remain calm with your food related decisions.
  
  
• Stay flexible - Relaxed eating doesn’t mean that you are letting yourself go or you are giving up on health or performance goals. It’s actually quite the opposite. Being at ease with the social, emotional and physical components of food allows you to eat with purpose. It’s the ability to listen to your body, satisfy your hunger and keep your body fueled, all while enjoying what you put into your body. This flexibility allows you to eat without judgement, punishment or the need to compensate. Eating should never be extreme or all-consuming. With mental health and body acceptance in mind, your eating should respond to changes in your daily routine, workout regime and mood, without obsession on food, your weight or your body image.

For more education, motivation and inspiration, subscribe to our free newsletter HERE. 

                                                -------------------------------------------------

Are you in need of improving your relationship with food and the body? 
With my new 6-series Whole Athlete course, you can understand any distorted views that you’ve developed with food and your body (some of which may be unintentional), while learning how to replace unhealthy behaviors with new ways of thinking. By doing so, you can elevate your performance, optimize your health and protect your well being.

The Whole Athlete course:
Lesson 1: Diet culture
Lesson 2: An unhealthy obsession
Lesson 3: Race weight
Lesson 4: Developing a healthy body image
Lesson 5: Developing a healthy relationship with food
Lesson 6: Thank you body

Once you understand why you think how you think about food, health and your body, you can fix the distorted views that you've developed with food and your body.

Learn more HERE.

GET STARTED NOW
(check out the FREE intro to see if this course is right for you)

Evaluate your "healthy" diet

picture source

            Are you looking for an easy dietary switch that will quickly improve your health?
                Are you looking for an easy lifestyle change to boost your immune system?
       Are you looking for a simple way to eat smarter in order to take your training to the next level?

                             Look no further because the magic answer lies in real food. 

This is the ingredient list for flavored oatmeal. Regardless if you are choosing low sugar for the "healthier" option or an instant flavored packet is more delicious and convenient, you can clearly see that there is more to oatmeal than oats in this package.
Guar Gum, Artificial flavor, creaming agent, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, flavored and colored fruit pieces, corn syrup solids.....

I realize that oats are very simple and plain but why does a company need to make oatmeal more entertaining when it is already so sustaining? 

I encourage you to raise awareness to the typically consumed foods in your diet and when you typically consume them. This is all in an effort to help you develop a healthier relationship with food and to keep your body in good health. In today's society, we are overloaded with information on good vs bad food and many times, extremely healthy foods that can reduce our risk of disease and illness are off-limit in your diet for a very silly reason.
You'd be surprised how many foods you are avoiding (or not consciously consuming) that can be so healthy for your body. Perhaps we should be asking ourselves as a society, "could many of our health issues be caused from simply never taking the time to create better lifestyle habits when it comes to cooking, meal prep and planning ahead?"

Don't blame food for being bad when you can bring attention to your past food choices/habits and what you have not been consuming that is "healthy". 

If you want a change for the future, you must reflect on the past. 

In order for you to better understand why your current diet isn't working, just look at the most commonly consumed in your diet and how you consume those foods? 

As you review your most commonly consumed food choices, do not become scared of food. If your diet is rich in processed food, start making some real food swaps. This doesn't mean that you can never have a M&M or eat a bright red cookie made by your child or you can never have a processed food. Being a savvy consumer when it comes to your diet is extremely important so that you associate "healthy" eating with real food. 

And that's it - real food, made from mother earth, is healthy for your body. You just have to make an effort to consume it regularly for it to do your body good. 

Always consider your personal clinical/health, fitness, religious, ethical and personal experiences with food when individualizing your diet. Just like any fad, like clothing, gear or accessories, you need to figure out what works best for you. So even if a food is "real" by nature, it's important that you personalize your diet to meet your individual needs. 

Your Trimarni homework is to dedicate at least 1 meal and 1 snack every day, to show your appreciate for real food. 

You will need to cook at home or take the time for meal prep and plan for leftovers but if you keep doing the same thing, you can't expect different results with your diet. 

We all know that food elimination is the most simple, easiest strategy for cleaning up the diet but the problem is that it doesn't bring changes. Removing a food without a lifestyle change is meaningless because you are not solving a problem, you are simply avoiding an issue. 

Simple real food swaps can easily improve your health, keep you satisfied and help control/manage weight and can also support your active lifestyle. More so, prioritizing more real food as your primary dietary change can keep you from considering an elimination food/mass marketed diet which claims to be a "lifestyle change". Without a lifestyle change, in 1,3 or 6 months, you will likely go back to old habits.

 Instead of avoiding dairy because you heard it is bad, simply swap out the artificially flavored yogurt in your life or sugary cereal with milk and replace with a healthy snack of 0% Plain Greek Yogurt and add real fruit for flavor and natural sweetness. If you are anti whole grain because you are afraid of gluten, ask yourself when was the last time you spent the time cooking millet, teff, wild rice and amaranth?

Rather than putting all your energy into what you shouldn't be eating and what you need to stop eating, how about getting excited about the changes you can make to incorporate more real food into your diet?

Like with anything in life, you can't rush changes when you want long lasting results.

So instead of questioning which cereal, oatmeal, yogurt, crackers, bread or bar is the healthiest, start from scratch and eat real food....the way mother earth intended it to be consumed.