Being Real With Yourself And Your Nutrition
When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Do you see a person that bleeds confidence, or do you zero in on your insecurities? Do you work your ass off day after day in the gym and wonder why you don't see the results you hoped for? Does the thought of eating to your heart's content give you overwhelming anxiety?
As a society, our ideas of how we are supposed to look, feel, and eat, have been skewed by media, family, and various other sources. We are fed false promises of quick and easy weight loss every time we check out at the grocery store. You are told to eat less and your dream body is 2 weeks away. The idea of fast results is perpetuated by society however you feel broken when you can't get these results you were promised. You are in a constant battle with loving yourself but feel a cloud of insecurity hanging over you that could rain down at any moment. You want nothing more than to feel comfortable in your skin. You start to eat less and when this doesn't work, you restrict yourself further, you keep going until you feel starved all day and your will power is hanging by a thread. You finally break and eat everything in sight and hopeless defeat comes over you. You want nothing more than to feel good in your skin so you try again. Every time looks a little different but ends with the same result of defeat. You are not broken, you are not the problem. The idea that health and nutrition changes are quick and effortless is the problem.
The truth is, the journey to lasting body composition changes is slow. Rapid weight loss adds an enormous amount of stress to our mind and body and can lead to irritability, constant hunger, loss of sleep, inability to balance hormones, and the list goes on.
When you significantly cut your calories, your weight drops quickly and you may feel like you are on the path to the body of your dreams. While you continue to underfeed yourself, your body has no choice but to drastically slow your metabolism to regulate your weight. The small amount of food you consume in a day becomes the new normal and you now have no room to satisfy your hunger. When you finally feel happy with your results, you start to eat to satisfy your hunger and your weight starts to increase again.
The base of a healthy diet is always a calorie balance. Calorie balance helps your body carry out necessary functions and keep you healthy. To put it simply, if we eat more calories than we burn, energy gets stored in our body, and if we eat fewer calories than we burn, our body taps into our energy reserves for fuel. When making changes to our caloric balance, whether it is adding calories or reducing them, it is paramount that you do it slowly and with planned breaks for maintenance.
The food choices that make up your diet. No bread does not make you fat, and no you don't have to eat meat to be strong. As long you fill your diet with mostly healthy food choices, you will supply your body with the nutrients it needs and still have room to enjoy your favorite foods. Think of your diet as a spectrum of food you should eat more of, the food you should eat some of, and food you should eat less of. There can be room in your diet for your favorite comfort food without derailing your progress!