I remember when I started getting interested in lifting weights to look lean. I thought, all I had to do was lift weights and I would see results. Then, I started learning about “healthy eating,” so I started making “better choices” to improve my healthy eating habits. To be honest, it wasn't difficult; because I ate what I knew was healthy, and this was long before I started learning that "carbs were the enemy." The first thing I learned about dieting was not to eat eggs because of cholesterol.
At 15 years old, I didn't know what cholesterol was, but I thought that if I wasn't healthy I wouldn't have the flat stomach I wanted so much.
Although many people who didn't eat healthy had great abs.
I remember being confused, so I did what everyone told me; even people who didn't want to be healthier. I also wanted to gain weight because I was thin and needed more leg size.
I did everything I could for both goals.
Until I found myself eating uncontrollably and exercising to compensate for what I ate.
This cycle affected me in many ways.
I changed my career, my ideals and many of the important life decisions that I couldn't make because of how conscious I was in this cycle.
As much as I wanted.
I wasn't making the progress I wanted, even if I tried and tried.
What mattered to me was not how I looked anymore, but how healthy I was.
Of being in this fight and flight mode.
Like when you want to breathe, but you can't because you're not able to release it.
How did I survive all that?
There is something I learned;
Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs."
Sometimes we want to progress in life, but if those first survival needs are not met, we will not be able to move up to the triangle of needs.
This is how I understood how important my health was.
When we listen; "Heal your relationship with food"
What relationship? I like all food.
But believe me; It has nothing to do with food.
It is towards our conscious and unconscious behavior with food.
Healing is not putting a bandage on and hoping it heals.
It's about taking off the blindfold and seeing how we react to all those things that tempt us to hurt ourselves.
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