My relationship with food has not always been the best. Don't get me wrong- I love to eat. LOVE, I say! In fact, there are very few foods on this planet that I dislike (ehem, brussell sprouts... you fiend).
It's what used to happen AFTER I ate that was the problem. The guilt. God, the guilt. Have you ever felt like your entire life was revolving around just one thing? And you tried so hard to control it? And if you couldn't, you felt like you just might spin out of control? Well, this "one thing" consumed me.
When I was trying to lose weight and get "slim" for my wedding, I counted every single calorie that passed my lips for the better part of a year and a half. I had a little purple notebook FULL of dates, foods I ate, their caloric value, grams of carbohydrates, sugars, protein, fiber, blah, blah, and BLAH. Then, in a completely neurotic way (isn't hindsight 20/20?) I plugged them into a strange concoction of algebraic equations that would tell me exactly how much I could eat throughout the day and lose X number of pounds per week. Oh, and don't forget to subtract calories burned during your daily (hourly) workouts! What's the order of operations again? I swear, rocket science might seriously be less stressful.
Y'all, it was exhausting. And I must have been burning more calories than I thought while I was so busy calculating the calories that needed burning... because I'll be damned if I wasn't hungry all the time. And those nights when I couldn't control my cravings, I would spin out of control. Those were the nights I'd find myself face-deep in the Halloween chocolate stash. Or the Christmas chocolate stash. Or the Valentine's Day chocolate stash. Or the Easter choc- well, you get the idea. The same holiday chocolates, mind you, that I was planning to bring to work for my colleagues as a "present." I'd hide in my closet and try to think of ways to cleverly dispose of the wrappers so that my husband didn't see them. Please. Who's kidding who?
I know what you're probably thinking. Crazy chick says what? But seriously. Have you ever obsessed like that over anything? Maybe not to that degree. It doesn't even have to be food. Maybe it's your workout regimen, or your car, the clothes you wear, that meticulously manicured yard, or even the work you do at your job. And if, at some point, things start going wrong, you have a melt down. This can't be what life is supposed to be like. In fact, if I really take a step back to think about it, it isn't really life at all. I was just existing.
So what now? Well, I promise you, I'm not toting around that purple notebook anymore. Although, to be honest, it's taken me a while to loosen my Vulcan grip. Actually, where is that thing? Hopefully back where it belongs... in hell! Bwhahaha!
Anyway.
The point is, since I started with Beachbody and T-25 in late January, I've learned a very important rule when it came to my eating habits. It's simple. It's direct. It's the 80/20 rule. Let me explain: 80% of the time, eat clean. Follow your plan's guidelines, try not to eat anything you can't pronounce, get plenty of veggies in, and drink your Shakeology (I'll discuss Shakeology later... best thing to ever get in my stomach) daily. Easy. 20% of the time, allow yourself to indulge a little. Have that piece of chocolate cake at your Dad's 60th birthday party, but don't have two. Drink that glass (not the bottle) of Cabernet at happy hour on Friday. Don't deny yourself the simple pleasures in life, but don't live in them either. The more you "forbid" yourself from having something, the more you want it. Seems adolescent, but it's totally true. It's almost primal.
Sometimes it can be hard to let go of the guilt, but to get to a happy, healthy place it's totally necessary. The things I've learned may seem simple, but they were hard lessons. I'm a stubborn girl, and it took me a while to get my mind right. We all need a little help along the way. Even though it may sound cheesy, I can be that help if you need me to be.
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