Food is Not the Enemy

This morning my best friend in the universe (and since the 7th grade) asked me to make him a meal plan for the next two weeks. He is currently in graduate school studying public health before he moves on to Medical school (obviously he is the scientist in this relationship.) While I’m not a certified nutritionist, this is something that gave me the same kind of excitement a giddy child gets in a Build-a-bear. All of the research I had been telling him I had been doing, and the balanced choices I had been making for myself, were finally going to go towards a greater good for someone else.

*Cue spending hours coming up with two weeks worth of meals, helpful superfood supplements and recipe explanations*

Earlier this morning I had been telling Michael about how I wanted to try and make almond flour cinnamon rolls with grass-fed butter, cinnamon and xylitol and now I had made him a whole plan of balanced meals and smart eating habits.

We live in a society that makes us afraid of food.

“Count your calories.”

“Don’t eat carbs.”

We hear all of these different ideas, decide to go with them for a week, a month if we’re really committed, then go back to not worrying about what’s actually going on in our bodies. It’s easier to hit a fad diet then go back to whatever it was we really wanted to eat.

There are so many reasons that I could give you as to why fad diets aren’t sustainable physicaly, but I will leave that for another post. The idea that food (and calories) are the enemy, is often a mental battle that we fight through and shame ourselves with.

When we set our nutritional values or our diets into crunched numbers, we often do not focus on what the food we are putting into our bodies is going to do for it.

“I’m only going to have 1000 calories a day” is a nutritional red herring that makes an enemy out of foods that they should not be associated with (btw, top nutritionists say that even stagnant people should not be eating less than 1200 a day – you don’t have to be afraid of them!)

As I was going over Michael’s meal plan, and thinking about my own journey through living a healthy lifestyle, it occurred to me that the healthiest “diet” I’ve ever been on hasn’t been a diet at all. I still eat (sprouted) grains. I still eat fats. I still eat carbs. I still eat cheesecake (with preservatives in it!!!) in moderation. The difference between being on Atkins, or drinking meal replacement shakes, or going Keto* and only keeping up with it for a month, and living out a clean every day lifestyle is that rather than telling yourself what you can’t have you learn to look at all of the nutritional goodness you get to add into your diet (shoutout to my trainer for the perspective change.) *note that I don’t think Keto is totally bad, just the back and forth idea of can’t have this, can’t have that.

When we begin to think of our every day diets as something we get to add nutrients in it becomes more exciting and easier to manage.

When I began this health journey five years ago I counted calories like crazy, and in turn drove myself a little crazy. Today I eat more almonds than half of a serving because I’m not worried that they’re high in calories and I am the healthiest that I have ever been (mentally too!)

I spend a lot of my time researching why foods are good for my body or why they’re not. I use a lot of coconut oil which is a fat and not calorie free, yet my body still responds positively because it is being fed nutrients not a crash course to getting skinny.

As my day went on a guy that works in my office called me over and asked if I liked the water in the fridge. Never having really looked at the label, I said “yeah, tastes pretty pure.” Little did I know this water is the only water in the world that is patented and clinically proven to hydrate more effectively, promote nutrient absorption and increase cell & energy efficiently.

Basically, if I were to take my morning vitamins while drinking this water the vitamins will go into my blood stream much faster than if they were to go through a normal digestive process.

That is something that I can get behind. That is something that goes beyond drinking water because I know I need to, but also drinking it because I know what it is going to do for my body.

I am less tired, less bloated, more mentally clear. These are the side affects of a healthy lifestyle that focuses on real nutrition first. I talked before in a blog post about how I became passionate about eating holistically because of my blood pressure, but most of the time to get to that place we have to first ditch the diet and have a mental awakening of what is right for our bodies.

Once we can get into the mindset that we are energizing our bodies and taking care of them day in and day out, we are given the freedom from restrictive diets and are able to live in that balance.

If you struggle with going from diet to diet, don’t fret. There are ways to live a healthy lifestyle and still have those snacks that make you happy. Even margaritas. Along your journey, your struggle and your triumph will help inspire others too. Food is not the enemy, it is our medicine.

23 years old and still best friends

6 years ago and still Christmas store fanatics