So I started this thing about a month ago that has me feeling the most healthy and body positive I've felt in years. It's called "listening to my body".
I know that statement is brimming with pretentiousness, but I swear that this is something I had never really done until I started thinking about it. My body has been screaming at me to feed it what it wants and needs for a very long time and I have not so much as glanced over and rolled my eyes at it to at least let it know that I heard it but am SOOOO not listening. I've not only not given my body the love it deserves, but I haven't even been courteous enough to let it give me it's opinion. Turns out, my body is pretty smart, and ever since I've let her have a voice, I've learned to love her so much more, and I've stopped making her feel like absolute crap.
As many of you know, I recently figured out there are quite a few foods/ingredients that were making me pretty sick, and so for the past month or so I have had to change my diet drastically just so I was no longer experiencing daily physical pain equated to the emotional pain experienced while watching a marathon of Nicholas Sparks films. I realized once I actually HAD to restrict my diet for health purposes (yes, I am that annoying gluten free person in the restaurant now), the pain was gone but I was.....starving. Not because there's nothing to eat outside of gluten, but because for years I had been living my life based on my list of good and bad foods, and the good "clean eating" foods list was pretty small. Especially since about 2/3 of what I considered "clean eating" wasn't food I enjoyed eating, it was just foods I have read would help me lose weight, or at the very least, not gain any weight.
Now, following my list of good/clean and "bad foods" worked for a while to keep my conscience feeling good, it made me feel like I was doing what I was "supposed" to so that I would eventually look like I was "supposed" to, but my body wasn't feeling quite the same (nor was it looking any different regardless of sporadic completion of fat burning workouts from pinterest). When I could no longer convinced myself that being hungry would just go away, I would make myself sick when I would finally eat until I was full and "let" myself eat what I wanted, and I was becoming even sicker when I was eating things my body didn't like but I continued to eat....because I was starving. And to top things off, I usually binged at night, so my blood sugar would spike to unimaginable heights and I would lay awake unable to sleep and start my day off exhausted, sick, and with a plan to restrict what I ate for breakfast and lunch to small servings to "make up for it". Not a very good cycle.
Plus, making big lunches for work was something I was not willing to dedicate time to in the evenings after work-- I was way too tired! Little did I know, my lack of nutrients during the day and binging at night was the absolute reason I was tired at the end of the day, not because I was such a hard worker (which obviously I am but I'm a firm believer you should never be too tired to take care of yourself).
Flash forward to a gluten free, caffeine free, almost guilt free Hannah. An amazing woman who takes a solid half hour out of her evenings to make sure she won't starve the next day at lunch by actually packing a meal with her snacks, and feeds herself when she feels like eating. A woman who thinks about what to eat at meal times and when making the grocery list, not constantly throughout the day. A woman who sometimes eats a salad, sometimes brings some leftover pasta, and sometimes eats poutine when she forgets her lunch and enjoys every single bite without hopping on a stationary bike for an hour after. A woman who still sometimes over-thinks what she's put into her body and has moments where she wishes her hips were smaller or her stomach was flat. A woman who now craves fruits and fresh vegetables when she hasn't had enough and is still thoroughly astounded by this occurrence. A woman who sleeps through the night because I'm not starving and having to eat 3 meals worth of food right before bed!
So listening to my body is still something I'm learning about, but I am so proud of how it's felt so far. Nourishing my body has turned out to be pretty 50/50 with how it feels physically and how I feel emotionally about what I eat, but we can blame my misinterpretation of that on my math skills. I've un-followed all of the guilt inducing "fitspo" on my instagram and facebook and decided to be inspired by my damn self. I try new recipes because I like to cook, not because it'll make me skinny in 6 days. Food is good, but it will not run my life, so I am better-- I'm great.
Enjoy your food, take care of your body, and don't forget to sparkle!
xoxxxoxx
Glossary
1. Clean eating [kleen ee-ting] (verb): The act of eating nothing with sugar, fat, oils, or salt (nothing tasty or comforting).
2. Supposed [suh-poz-d] (adjective): Assumed to be what one is to look or eat or act like in order to accepted by society as beautiful, fit, or healthy. Includes a long list of expectations in regards to shape and size.
3. Make up for it [mayk uh-p foh-r it] (verb): The act of exercising for long periods of time with the assumption that burning calories will cancel out eating the things you starved yourself of. Engaging in exercise out of guilt for not having time in a normal day to engage in exercise in days past.
4. Fitspo [fit-spoh] (noun): Pictures and posts of women with the genetics, time, and money to have six pack abs, round butts, and arms with no fat on them. [see supposed].
5. Listening to my body [li-suhn-ing t-oo m-eye bo-dee] (verb): A practise involving thinking about how I'm feeling and which foods will maintain or change how my body feels and operates.
6. Bad foods [bad foo-dz] (noun): Foods that one actually enjoys: high sugar foods, fast food, carb heavy meals, large servings. Utter nonsense. Synonyms include: sometimes foods, night-out foods, FOOD.
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