Let The Self Hate Die, Already!

Ever Had to Deal With One Of Those People? You know the ones I mean! The girls who cry cause they ate a grape, or those guys who are so obsessed about being ripped that they don't own shirts that fit them properly?

What do I do if I ate too many carbs yesterday?

None today? None for the rest of the week?

God, I'm such a fat ass, I ate that whooooole  cookie! Should I just live on the treadmill or what? Wahh... Wahh ...Wahh!

 Just shut the hell up!

Trust me, hating yourself over what you eat is the hardest habit to break. I have been there, a few times...maybe like hundreds...but the point is, STOP! Hating yourself is not gonna help you. There are plenty of people in the world who will gladly shred your self-esteem to tatters - DON'T HELP THEM DO IT! You are your own master, to quote Aida. No one but you is in charge of you. Yes, you will eat junk food, yes you will accidentally eat too much of your favorite food, and yes sometimes you will even have more than one glass of wine...for fun...not to help your heart. We all do it. There is no shame! People lay on the guilting just because they want to do it! I am not gonna tell you, "never eat cake." It just won't happen, it is unrealistic of me to lecture anyone. Cake is AWESOME! Well...except American fruit cake...that stuff is shit - But the point is RELAX!! No one is a saint when it comes to their favorite foods ( I myself am addicted to nectarines), and it is every one's cross to bear

 

...unless you are Jewish like me.....and then its our star of David to bear....

ANYWAY!

Yes, over-doing anything is bad for you. And why? Because life is all about moderation. The human body should not binge drink daily, because it would die right? So, given the same logic, eating copious amounts of non-healthy foods will also put your body out to pasture at a much earlier date.

This being said, there is a way to help make you honest about what you eat, without the self hate and residual longing stair at that box of donuts at work.

WRITE IT DOWN!

I started keeping a food journal when I was 8 years old, thanks to something I like to call Fat-camp-Auschwitz (that is not the true name of the camp, but let's pretend shall we?) "Nutrition classes" were all about "healthy substitutions" and we had to write down all our unhealthy decision, and we were told exactly why we were making stupid choices. Now, of course this is traumatizing and in no way shape or form am I suggesting this blog be about publicly flogging its followers into embarrassing situations. But as an adult, there was one thing that made sense. I would forget to eat on a daily basis, and I am the type of person that remembers everything she writes down. So, to keep me on the straight and narrow, in this case 'actually eating 4 times a day', I kept to a schedule. I would have 4 designated times to eat, and I would either make or buy something to eat at that time. This took 3 months to flesh out into a much better, much more flexible eating day. Now, this is what my food diary usually looks like:

Food Diary Example

  8:30 am

2 eggs over easy with 2 pinches of Cayenne pepper

4 medium strawberries and 1 kiwi sliced

2 slices of whole grain toast

1 Earle Grey tea (light and sweet)

1 pm

My Tuna Salad Recipe 

(see recipe)

 Small garden salad, drizzled with the juice of half a lemon, pinch of cracked black pepper

(cucumbers, tomatoes, green olives, thinly sliced onion and carrot, etc)

3 pm

Small apple, 1/3 cup of spicy hummus, 1 - 2 cups of carrots 

(depending on how hungry I am)

7 pm

Veggie Stir Fry 

(Many different variations and recipes)

10 pm

Something Sweet 

(like cookies I have baked recently, or popcorn if its a movie night)

"This will be the hardest step in the direction of healthy living. When to eat, what to eat, and how much to eat will be difficult for those first few months."

- Jason Verdisco

If I have to be totally and bluntly honest, there is a reason this process took so long to stick. It is tedious, annoying, and people made comments ("who does that?" was a popular one). Social pressures, like going out to lunch and/or eating unhealthy foods at social gatherings, are always difficult to navigate. Most of the time, when I was growing up, it was a wright of passage to leave the school grounds and go out to lunch with people. Most of the time, these restaurants were Chinese take-away, pizza places, sushi bars, or fast food chains. And being the only one getting a chopped salad and water, when every one else is devouring garlic knots and slices, and guzzling down soda, can be awkward. As we get older, however, everyone becomes obsessed with health, which flips the social stigmata in the opposite direction (if you are the only eating bad things, everyone else will judge you). 

So my advise? 

• No one is perfect, and everyone will eat bad stuff sometimes. So take a breather! You can eat your favorite foods, you can eat health foods, you can do whatever you want! But remember it is all about moderation!

• Buy a nice, small book and start writing down what you eat.  The more you write, the more you will be aware of what choices you make. The only thing you loose by eating healthy and being more active, are unhealthy habits and the excess fat.