Happy Thursday! I’ve been enjoying a few days in Pittsburgh this week and it’s been so good to be home with my favorite people. Linking up with Amanda today to think out loud. 🙂
On Monday, I was talking about my marathon training and I shared that one of my goals for this week was to eat more because I felt kind of weak and down last week. I’m running further and training harder, so I need more calories! #science
While that logically makes sense, I am struggling mentally with that idea. Mostly because this week, I am thrown off my “normal” eating schedule. I am in Pittsburgh visiting my family and while I love every moment that I spend with them and every meal that we eat, I am having a hard time being okay with my food choices. A few years ago, I would’ve completely restricted myself and been the person at dinner who couldn’t or simply wouldn’t eat certain foods. I am not really like that anymore, but this week is letting me see how much I still like to control what I eat for every meal and how interruptions are not welcome. I don’t restrict myself anymore, but I DO mentally beat myself up when I eat one of those foods that is “not allowed” (by my standards). While I have made great strides in eating, like not counting every single calorie I eat and paying attention to protein, fat, and carbs (you know, the good things), I still have work to do. So what’s the problem?
I am mentally beating myself up at every meal. With every snack. And it is driving me crazy. I am labelling everything I put in my mouth as “good” or “bad” and I feel like I have been eating way more of the bad, even though that is not true at all. My youngest brother has his driver’s permit and wanted to go out for food yesterday before I dropped him off somewhere. Or he dropped himself off. I don’t know, he has his permit, so he was driving and I was the passenger. 😉 Anyways, we shared a 12-piece chicken nugget from Chic-Fil-A and I mentally had a panic attack because OMGfastfoodIcanteatthisnowImgoingtobefat. But how can I say no to spending time with my baby brother? I can’t. And I won’t.
One of my closest friends from high school is expecting a baby and we went out to lunch. Besides our awesome two and a half hour conversation, here’s what I was thinking:
Broccoli cheese soup: bad. It’s a cream-based soup. That’s terrible for you.
Pecan crusted chicken salad: bad. dried cranberries and nuts on a salad just add extra unnecessary calories. Ugh, why did I order this?
Strawberry lemonade: bad. So sugary. You should never drink your calories.
I literally found something wrong with everything I put in my mouth at lunch. Two hours later when I was getting my hair done, I found myself telling my mom how terrible my food choices had been that day. I have many things to say about this because I KNOW I sound crazy. There is probably something good and bad about everything we put in our mouths. But do we need to think and talk about it all the time? No. However, there are articles on Facebook and Pinterest and all of our favorite websites about how to get healthier, be healthier, blah blah blah. It’s thrown in our faces all the time and personally, I love reading about health…but it’s obviously getting to me. One bowl of cheesy soup will not kill me. My salad also had spinach and chicken in it. And strawberry lemonade just tastes good. Also, as an aside, NO ONE cares about what I put in my mouth yesterday except for me. When my stylist heard me telling my mom about lunch, she said, “Oh my gosh, I love strawberry lemonade!” She didn’t hear the panic in my voice about all the bad choices I made. She also didn’t look at me and judge me by how I looked when I came in. Because in my head, I gained ten pounds at lunch. OY.
So where am I going with this?
I need to practice self-love. I hear the term self-love and I think crazy voodoo weird things and possibly also meditation, but honestly, maybe I need to meditate. Hahaha! I like to think that I am nice to other people and try to build them up…so I really need to work on doing that for myself. I hear that “one bad meal won’t make you fat just like one good meal won’t make you skinny” mantra playing in my mind…but what happens when I eat a few meals in a row that I deem “bad”? Keep moving forward. Make better choices next time. Enjoy your damn life. Another personal goal is to stop identifying food as good and bad. I really really really don’t want to do that. Do you do that? Probably not.
My family loves me. My friends love me. My dogs love me. Now I just need to love me.