Relationship with food
Okay so I recently shared a post to my Instagram story which listed some of the things I wish I realised 10 years ago regarding dieting and food:
Women need more that 1200 calories in a day
Carbs are not evil
It’s ok to eat after 7pm
Being overly restrictive will just cause you to binge
Your worth is not tied to your weight
Now when I say this post triggered me I mean it really really triggered me. I am one of the many people who were falsely led to believe that all of the above was true, and my relationship with food and myself was completely destroyed because of this. I struggled so badly with being over restrictive and binge eating as a result and I wrote a little bit about this in my story…
“I would go to the gym first thing on a morning, spend the entire time there picking faults in myself and how I looked, take a detour on my way home to go to Tesco and pick up a pack of 4 muffins and a big bar of chocolate and sit in the car park eating half of it then eat the rest driving home, hiding the rubbish in my car so no one knew I’d “failed” again. I’d spend the rest of my day beating myself up and secretly eating crap to cheer myself up, whilst putting so much pressure on the next day being perfect (I was going to exercise a lot and eat very little…) Next day comes, same thing again! I was stuck in a rut of hating myself and like some people would turn to alcohol, drugs etc I (and so many others) turned to food. I would eat a lot of food verrrrry fast (I wasn’t even really enjoying the food I was honestly just shovelling it down quickly as it was a “secret” to me) just to feel a very temporary sense of relief and satisfaction, then I would absolutely HATE myself for doing it…”. This happened for months on end around two years ago, but I can remember very well doing similar but slightly different things since I started going to the gym and caring about how I looked when I was 15/16 (instead I would leave the gym on an evening and go to the pizza shop or to Asda for chocolate and sweets back then). The behaviour has never changed but the context has slightly over the years… My car became the place I was most comfortable to binge and I found myself starting to go for drives whenever I was feeling low just so that I could do this, and this started to happen very very regularly. I remember in the summer I was driving to do an outdoor class and I told my boyfriend I was going to get a bar of chocolate for that night so I stopped at the shop on the way and bought 2 share size bars of chocolate (I was feeling super anxious this day so I knew I was going to eat one in the car to cheer myself up because I would quite often stop off and grab a bar). I ate both before I got to the field for the class (it was around 10-15 minutes away) without even thinking or realising what I was doing… I felt sick and I had to stop at the shop on the way home to buy a bar of chocolate so I could hide the fact I’d ate the bar (plus the extra one) already. I was so embarrassed. Even beyond summer it was still happening here and there, sitting in car parks to eat etc but it was gradually becoming less often as I started to shift my mindset and allow myself to eat more without guilt.
As soon as I shared the story I felt almost embarrassed and I thought about quickly deleting it… but then I realised that the fact I felt embarrassed to talk about this was a problem in itself. I’m so glad that I kept it up as I had such a positive response from it! Girls thanking me for openly and honestly discussing it, saying they were suffering similarly with their eating and asking for advice on overcoming it, and others telling me they were happy to see someone who works within the fitness industry being empathetic towards this. The response made me realise just how many of us struggled/are still struggling with this, and how little we talk about something which has impacted us so much. Binge eating is such a common eating disorder and we are literally, through no fault of our own, in this one together trying to break down the walls to discuss this so that we can learn more about it and how to overcome it.
I’m not a qualified dietician or a food specialist by any means, but I wanted to share my own experience and some of the things I feel really helped me to fix my relationship with food, in the hope that it might be able to help someone else! Disclaimer… don’t forget that we’re all so different and just because these things worked for me, does not mean they will work for you (I really hope they do!! But if not, don’t beat yourself up about it. Expect that you may have to trial and error a few different things before you find what really works for you).
My top realisations:
It’s not all or nothing
Food fuels your body
The more you restrict the more you crave
You will have slip ups
The fad diets ruined most of our relationships with food
It’s not all or nothing:
One of the biggest things I struggled with when I was at my worst with binging was my “all or nothing” mentality towards food. My diet was either 100% or non-existent, and whenever I ate something unhealthy I would consider this another failure to start my super strict diet and would spend the rest of the day eating everything unhealthy that I could to make the most of it before I tried again tomorrow. I would put so much pressure on the following day being unrealistically perfect (eating very little, low carbs, exercising a lot, no snacking etc.) and would set myself up for failure time and time again. This happened most days over a long period of time and was such an unhealthy and unbalanced way to live!
For me, personally, I find that starting to track my food really helped me to overcome this mentality. I know that tracking isn’t for everyone! I didn’t attempt to track my food until a few months ago because I follow someone who also struggled with binge eating and said that tracking made her worse as she saw it as another form of restriction, so I assumed it would be the same for me, but please remember that we are all different! I finally started tracking my food (mainly to make sure I was eating enough protein for quick recovery and to monitor what was going into my body a little bit more) and for me it has been an absolute game changer. It made me realise that I can comfortably fit any food that I fancy into my diet and it taught me how to balance things better. The foods that I used to try so hard to avoid can now be worked into my day and I’m not left feeling guilty about it... This actually makes me crave them less as I know I can work them in whenever I want them, whereas I used to constantly think about them and the fact I wasn’t allowed to eat them at all (pressure pressure unrealistic pressure… of course we are going to cave in and eat the things we enjoy!!!). Tracking has also made me think more about the food I’m eating as I plan ahead, which has stopped me eating on impulse and given my diet a bit more control. I always figured that I should be eating intuitively to overcome binge eating as I didn’t want to risk feeling like I was restricting myself again, but honestly that still made me feel like everything I ate should be healthy and I should have ‘treat days’ instead of working things into my diet little and often. I definitely don’t track everything to the gram and I don’t track all day every single day, as I eat a lot of the same things so I don’t feel the need to do this… I just make sure that I track most days and the majority of what I eat. Again, I understand this won’t work for everyone and it might not work for me forever, but it’s working really well for me right now and I’m enjoying being able to play around with my food everyday to make it fit my goals.
Food fuels your body:
Of course, I couldn’t write about this topic without getting into the technicalities behind why we physically need to eat and why fad diets promoting 1200 calories (or less) per day are ridiculous. For me, realising that my body is a machine which needs fuel in order to function properly was a big thing. I used to think that I had no self control for wanting to eat, that I was greedy and that I would never have a nice figure because of it; I hated myself for it. I began to realise that I wasn’t a failure for wanting and needing to eat.
To put it simply, your body burns a certain amount of calories at rest just through you breathing, your heart pumping blood around your body and through eating and digesting food. This is called your BMR, and this is the minimum amount of calories (remember, calories are energy) your body needs in order to function properly. I will use my own as an example here (sidenote - please don’t use my calories as guidelines for your own as we are all totally different and your BMR won’t be the same as mine): My BMR is 1483. So before I even move, before I go for a walk or exercise, I need 1483 calories and if I don’t consume this many calories my body simply won’t function the way it’s supposed too. To understand how many calories you need to eat, you have to multiply your BMR by your activity level which ranges from 1.2 to 1.9 (1.2 = little or no exercise; 1.375 = light exercise 1-3 times a week; 1.55 = moderate exercise 3-5 times; 1.725 = hard exercise 6-7 times; and 1.9 = very hard exercise and/or a physical job). Your activity level is important because it tells you how many calories your body needs in order to cope with the physical activity you’re putting it through… It needs energy and it needs to be able to recover properly. Based on your activity level your calories can differ quite a lot, for example with a very low activity level my calories would sit at 1,780 per day but at an extremely high activity level they would sit at 2,818. The vast majority of people will have an activity level of 1.375 which would give me 2,039 calories per day. For weight loss, a calorie deficit of 200-500 calories per day is sustainable, which would bring me down to a MINIMUM of 1,539 calories per day (this should be monitored regularly based on energy levels and expenditure, mood and results). Now the fact that so many of us were led to believe that eating 1200 (and even as low as 800) calories per day is crazy and very scary!
The more you restrict the more you will crave:
When you tell yourself you’re not allowed to do something, you will unintentionally make yourself want it more, because we always want what we can’t have. The more pressure you put on something, the less likely you are to do well at it, and the more you will feel disappointed when you have very normal and very human cravings (which are pretty much guaranteed to happen!). Please stop telling yourself that you can’t have chocolate, crisps etc. as by doing this you’re inadvertently making yourself think about them more and crave them more. In my experience the less you restrict these things, the less you will crave them. I used to think about chocolate constantly because I used to constantly tell myself I shouldn’t be eating chocolate… Now that I know I can work chocolate into my diet whenever I fancy it I don’t feel the need to as much, I don’t feel a sense of urgency to eat it because I know it’s not going anywhere. It’s really not about cutting out certain foods or not eating, it’s about being more mindful and aware of the things you are eating and realising that you can have anything in moderation. For example, if you’re really really craving some chocolate then have some chocolate! Some real chocolate, and enjoy it! Don’t have a low calorie alternative that won’t curb your craving for chocolate at all and then beat yourself up about the fact you still want chocolate… your mind isn’t silly and it knows you haven’t satisfied its craving yet. In the grand scheme of things, if you eat a little more than you wanted too or planned too today It really doesn’t matter; it’s not the end of the world and it’s not worth you mentally torturing yourself over! The more you do this the more you will think about how much you want it… just have it and move on with your day!
The less you eat, the more your body will crave food as a cry out for help (your mind may want to be skinny, but your body needs to eat!) You will start to feel very down in yourself and low in energy, and eventually you will cave and eat. When you eat, your body releases endorphins which make you happy which will lift your low mood and make you want to eat more. You’ll become addicted to this temporary feeling of satisfaction and happiness, and you will then start to subconsciously associate these feelings with the foods you have craved (making them even more desirable) so you will crave them more. And so on and so on. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, and that’s exactly what this ongoing cycle of restriction is… It hasn’t worked for you before, it’s not working for you right now and it’s never going to work because it’s not sustainable! Through being more mindful about what you’re putting into your body and having everything in moderation instead of removing things from your diet completely, you’ll break this vicious cycle and with that you will start to see physical changes. You may not get the results you want as quick as the 14-day-juice-cleanses you see advertised, but these changes will be real and sustainable, and you’ll enjoy them without hating yourself. The best things come to us when we stop desperately searching for them, stop trying to make drastic lifestyle changes and instead start enjoying a balanced and therefore healthy lifestyle… then you will start to see the changes you’ve been searching for.
You will have slip ups:
Don’t expect not too and please don’t beat yourself up when it happens! It’s not going to be as clear as black and white. Some days the toxic thoughts will enter your mind again and you may act on them like you used too (likely the days when you’re feeling down, tired, hungry… feelings we used to turn to food for temporary relief from) out of habit. When this happens, you simply need to recognise that it has and let it go. Don’t beat yourself up about it. This doesn’t mean all of your hard work to fix your relationship with food has been undone and it doesn’t mean that your mindset has shifted back to an unhealthy place, it just means you’re human and you feel emotion. You’re probably just having a bad day! So here’s the good news: Tomorrow is a new one. Accept today for what it is. If your head is in a bad place try to have an early night, do something for you and maybe try having a plan for the next day so you don’t feel like you’re stuck in a rut. Keep working at it everyday. Getting over this and fixing your relationship with food is not going to be easy but it is going to be worth it. There is honestly nothing more satisfying than the moment you look back and realise how far you’ve come and how much healthier and happier you are now than you could have ever been with your old mindset!
The fad diets ruined most of our relationships with food:
Sadly, a lot of our relationships with food were destroyed as part of a big money making scheme; big companies selling us fad diets, juice cleanses, 14 day detoxes and a bunch of other products/plans which we bought into with the false belief that they would make us skinny and fit. We were often sold these things by online influencers, people who we looked up too and aspired to be like, so we bought into the things which they weren’t even doing themselves thinking it would make us more like them. Instead, they were being paid to advertise and we were buying into bullshit and destroying our metabolisms when we used the products and didn’t look like them (as advertised). I believe we were looking up to the wrong people who were spreading the wrong message just to make some money and get publicity, but I don’t think they realised the extent to which it would ruin people’s relationships with food and how much it would damage their self-esteem. We were told not to eat carbs because carbs make you gain weight (carbs are literally energy) and not to eat fats because they will make us fat. These diets had us believe that we were going to become fit and healthy while running us into the ground and making us hate ourselves in the process.
I am so glad that we are breaking out of this way of thinking but I think the damage that’s been done is still rooted into society and the desire to eat little and look skinny is still a very big problem. For the majority of us, the desire to be thin and look a certain way is all we could think about for a lot of our teen and early adult lives and that plays a big part in shaping who we are and how we think about ourselves; if you were lucky enough not to be affected by this then you will never truly understand how it took over our lives (and that is ok as you can’t be expected to understand a feeling that you don’t know, but I hope this makes you aware of it and the crazy affects it continues to have on a large part of society). We were/still are obsessed with being skinny and we would buy into anything which promised to get us there, unknowingly destroying our mentality towards looking after ourselves. While some of us have realised a lot of this and have started to shift our approach to ones more healthy and sustainable, unfortunately there is still not enough awareness about this. As someone who works in the fitness industry, I’m asked questions every single day about whether or not it’s okay to eat at night, if 1,000 calories is too much, should you cut carbs out, what should I eat to make me lose weight, etc. and it honestly saddens me! We have been so brainwashed into thinking what we weigh and how we look is the be all and end all.
If you want to fix your relationship with food, start enjoying your food and making yourself more aware of what you’re eating and why. Eat to fuel your body and eat to look after yourself. If you love your food and hated it so much when you were told you couldn’t/shouldn’t eat, change your goals. Instead of wanting to be lighter, change your body composition so that you have more muscle (the more muscle you have, the higher your metabolic rate meaning you will burn more calories at rest). You can look healthy, lean, strong and your body will become a calorie burning machine.
If you need someone to talk to about this, my inbox and email is always open!
Jasmine :)