You Are What You Eat

Food.  I have a love/hate relationship with it.  It's delicious, but that's where the love ends.  I have been told since I can remember to watch what I eat or I'd be fat, which turned into watch what you eat or you'll get fatter.  I grew to feel guilty about every bite I ate, no matter what it is or how much of it or if every other person in the room was eating the exact same thing.  I have major anxiety about eating in front of people because I feel so judged.  Food is delicious, but I somehow enjoy and hate eating it at the same time.  It's hard to explain.  All I know is that I need to change the way I view food.  I wish it were something I could completely quit, like smoking.  I quit smoking 3.5 years ago, the day I found out I was pregnant, and although the craving is still there I find it is easier for me to do something all or nothing.

I have gone on crash diets since I was 14.  I can do them, but it always goes the same way.  I loose the weight, feel better and then I go off the diet and gain back what I lost plus some more.  I am not doing that again.  I am not counting calories.  I am not beating myself up when I have a Reece Cup or a piece of birthday cake.  Nobody is perfect.  It is progress, not perfection.  I am not going on a diet, I am making changes. 

I will pay attention to my portions and learn to recognize when I am full.  I will pay attention to what I am eating and work on making lifestyle changes that will be permanent.  I am going to start eating more real food.  Foods that I can pronounce all the ingredients on the label of or preferably foods that come with no label at all.  I am going to work on eating colorful foods from nature, not from factories.

 
My goal is that everything I am putting into my body is something that I can tell you where it came from or how it was made.  Much like with exercise, for the food aspect of getting healthy, I have my overall large goal and my baby-step goals along the way.  I have already started to work on it.  I quit drinking soda about two months ago, which was super difficult, but for sure necessary.  I have started drinking a lot of water, some days are better than others, but I have been keeping water with me at all times.  The next item on the quit completely list will be fast food.  I eat too much fast food.  I can't afford to continue to consume fast food both financially and physically.  I feel like Soda and Fast Food are things that I have to give up to commit to a healthy lifestyle.  They are like cigarettes where just not touching them at all is the best thing I can do for my health.

I am going to work on decreasing my consumption of processed food and I would eventually like to wean myself from processed food completely.  I want to only eat foods that I would of given to my daughter in her first year of eating.  If it wasn't good enough for me to feed her during those early days then what makes it any better now for me to feed it to myself or her?  It will take some time to get to that point, but I will be making conscious choices and taking steps to get there.

I know what I need to do to eat healthy.  Now it is just a matter of deciding that I would rather live with more energy and feel better than eat junk food.