Eat healthy without it becoming an obsession

Something we know many people struggle with is creating a balance of eating healthy without becoming obsessed. Without it becoming unhealthy.

In the past we could never relate to this – we've always eaten whatever we were craving and most times it was the nourishing types of foods. Then we would eat pizza when we were out with our friends. Thankfully, it’s still like this.

However, we did go through a season in our life, when eating healthy had become a bit confusing and honestly, draining. It was around 5 years ago when we started learning more and more and more about “good foods” and “bad foods”. We never counted calories or macros or anything like that, but slowly it was becoming a thing.

Suddenly, there were all these videos on Youtube of models talking about “What we Eat In A Day”, drinking 3 smoothies and eating salads without oil. People talking about supplements, gut health and how you should avoid this and that to feel like a superhuman. And we're not just talking pizza or burgers. We're talking major food groups like fruits, grains, legumes or animal products.

On the other hand, we'd see crazy mind-numbing cheat days with millions of calories.

And then – the next thing – people who talk about how dieting turned into an unhealthy fixation that ruined their relationship with food.

We do have our own experience and a few thoughts on eating healthy and how to let it work for you, without it becoming an obsession. What you eat does matter, and don’t get us wrong – food is great, but it should not be the center of the universe.

How To Eat Healthy Without Becoming Obsessed

1. Know Your Motivation

When you have a deeper why behind why you’re eating healthy, we're 99% sure you’ll be able to stay healthy without becoming obsessed.

Here’s our why. We want to eat healthy, because it makes us feel good. Because we have more energy during the day to run faster, to have fun, to play with our nephew and to be present around the people we love. We eat healthy, because it allows us to have the focus to work on the things we want in life. Things that are different than eating everything we want or being lean and looking a certain way.

We know how we feel when we don’t eat healthy. We feel sluggish, distracted and like we want to take a nap. Our head is foggy. And the fact that our jeans are too tight around our waist doesn’t help. We want to put on sweat pants and sit on our couch. But that’s not what we want out of life. It’s not the life we want.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting abs, but is it something that will make you want to eat a healthy nutritious salad? No.

Doing things because you have to achieve something, well let’s call it what it is – superficial, can easily wake up that voice of “That’s not enough…”. Thus leading to obsessing over unimportant things like whether you ate 10g more carbs (even if those were from lettuce!) today or not.

You might say, we want to look good, so we can be more confident. This is a deeper why, but confidence doesn’t come from looking a certain way.

It comes from within. It comes from taking the right actions and from staying true to yourself. Food has nothing to do with confidence. Having abs has nothing to do with confidence.

Decide what you want and don’t want in your life, and what you’ll be okay with, then make the everyday choices that will support that decision.

2. Bye, Guilt.

On the other hand, we know that the occasional slice of pizza (or three of those!) or a donut won’t kill us. Whenever we crave these foods, we have them and we're fully comfortable with our choices.

It’s fully okay that we had those mini burgers, the cake, the macaroons, the chocolate covered fruit at our friend’s wedding. And that we drank champagne as if it was water that day (it’s quite sneaky!). It’s her wedding, we're not going to eat this way every single day. What happens, happens.

We know for myself, whenever we start feeling even the slightest guilt around food, we start setting these crazy rules and we tend to overeat more and more. So whatever we do, we try to enjoy it, wholeheartedly and to not feel bad about it.

3. Understand What Your Body Is

Learn to appreciate and love your body for what it is: the reason you actually exist on this planet.

We think sometimes we forget that the body is not a doll that needs to look a certain way. That needs to be lean, curvy or skinny to be good enough.

Guess what? It’s already enough. It’s been enough to bring you right here right now. Your heart did not stop pumping blood, just because you decided to eat 500 less calories in a day. Your kidneys didn’t stop filtering blood and removing waste from your body, just because you had a pizza. Your body’s been there with you through all of your decisions, struggles and happy moments.

We wrote a blog post a while ago “7 ways to feel good in your body today“. And yes, we do get hits from Google that come with queries that may or may not make us feel like a sick pervert. But in that post we talked exactly about this – learning to appreciate your body for what it actually is.

The simple truth is – your body needs nutrients, happiness, rest, movement, air and love and you should aim for that. Not making it lean or manipulating it through diet, supplements or exercise.

4. Stop Playing By The Rules

Remember that those rules, and diet rules, are made by people. People like you and I. Not by some higher power, but by people.

Eating healthy has nothing to do with math. Who knows how many calories your body needs to sustain life? Calories aren’t everything in our food.

There are things in food that aren’t even mentioned in the nutritional breakdown. They aren’t even discovered and identified yet. Calories are not even half the story.

Eating healthy is about listening to the signals of your body. It should be a natural process. You’re hungry – so you eat something that will satiate you. And you try to not eat past that point. There’s nothing natural about counting calories.

Life isn’t made to be lived only by rules created by people you don’t even know. Sure there is some information that is useful (for example that vegans need B12), but other than that? Do you need to count and overthink everything in your life? Do you have the mental capacity, the time and energy to calculate every bite you put into your mouth?

Seriously, we think soon enough someone will come up with a strategy on how to poop better. You’re not doing it right! Oh, wait, they already did – here’s the blueprint.

We kinda roll our eyes every time we read a comment like this. 1st. Where is the proof these foods are inflammatory? 2nd. Read the article 3rd. We didn’t say you should make these wraps. We made them, because we're not choosing to follow a strict anti-inflammatory diet every single day.

We're okay with eating bread and cheese every now and then when we crave them. We're fully aware that it does make us feel a little sluggish, but so do other things in life and we're doing them too. We're not solid.

Right now we are eating gluten-free and dairy-free for a little bit, just to see how it will impact our body and other parts of our life. But we do have a strong why here and we don’t feel deprived at the moment. If that changes – we'll change it. For now, this dietary change works for us, we're feeling better and we're doing great.

Life’s not solid. So do what works for you and don’t overcomplicate things.

Healthy Foods

If you decide you want to eat healthy and more nutrient-dense foods, here’s what you can be eating:

• vegetables – all colors – green, red, orange, yellow
• fruit – again all colors
• protein – fish, poultry, legumes
• seeds – flaxseeds, chia seeds, sesame seeds, hemp seeds
• nuts – walnuts, pecans, Brazil nuts
• herbs and spices
• whole grains

That’s it. Don’t ask us which brand. Don’t ask us how many carbs. Make sure to get a combination of these foods most days. That’s a reliable way to ensure you’re satiated and that your body gets enough nutrients to fulfill its functions.

And if you do add the occasional treat without overstuffing yourself every night, that would be okay. Don’t ask us how many % those should be.

How it comes together

So we said and we hear it everywhere: listen to your body. But if we’re honest here, the body can sometimes be a bit confused. You can’t tell someone who’s 100 pounds overweight – just listen to your body it will tell you what to do. If that would’ve been the case, millions of people around the world wouldn’t be overweight and unhappy with it.

So here are a few, fast and simple things you can do to help you make more nourishing choices without tracking EVERYTHING in your phone or bullet journal aka how to actually listen to your body:

• Make water your drink of choice and have it throughout the day. This simple habit will change so much – your energy levels, your cravings and your skin! Trying to cure thirst with food is actually a thing! Dehydration has its way of making us crave foods our body didn’t actually ask for, so when in doubt – drink water first and have it between meals.
• Chew your food. Some sources say you should chew your food until liquid, which might be between 20 and 30 times. This will help with digestion and satiety. Also, we read somewhere that food that makes you addicted, for example cheetos, are designed to melt, or disappear in your mouth quickly, thus leaving you wanting more. Focus on foods that taste good when chewed more than 5 times. Here’s a little fun experiment to try: Chew on a grape and then on a cupcake for 20 times and see which one tastes better.
• Make rest a priority! Finally, enough sleep, stress relief and the one or the other 10-minute yoga session in the morning instead of intense exercise can help you listen to your body better. Nobody can make a reliable decisions when they’re sleep-deprived, overexercised and overwhelmed with stress, and yes – that includes food choices too.

So that was our little rant and we don’t know if it was helpful, it’s a bit all over the place, but we were on a walk and these thoughts popped into our head and made us kinda mad. We don’t like being mad, so we just had to let it out and we hope it didn’t make you mad, we hope it helped, at least some of you.