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Beginning a healthy lifestyle seems exciting at first; opting for a chicken salad at lunchtime instead of a sandwich and chocolate bar, going for runs in the evening and sipping on detox teas. You start to feel fresh again; not to mention the great feeling when your old jeans start to fit you and your waist is trimmer than ever. It’s a wondrous feeling knowing you are putting good into your body.
But I can’t help but feel as though healthy eating and fitness can often lead to overwhelming feelings of guilt, underachievement and lowered self esteem the more we strive for a healthy body. Of course, depending on your personality and your weight goals, a healthy lifestyle doesn’t always lead to these feelings, but instead a sense of confidence and happiness. But for some like myself, the more I eat clean the more guilt I feel when I cheat. The facts are that you have to eat around 3,000 more calories than your usual daily intake to gain a single pound in body fat. Yet, the more healthy I am, the more the disappointment mounts when I fall of the wagon.
The same goes for exercise. We are encouraged to exercise as much as possible, then grow impatient and dissatisfied when we don’t instantly see results in the mirror. This can lead to irrational feelings of low self esteem, when realistically it can take months to see results and reach our weight goals. It’s almost as though the more fit and healthy we look the more we strive for an even thinner waist and more toned body, which in fact isn’t healthy at all.
When we are constantly calorie counting and missing out on treat day due to a sense of underachievement, is healthy eating really making us happy? We tell ourselves we are merely switching to a healthier lifestyle, but we have to question whether we are really doing it to be healthy, or just doing it to lose weight. When focusing solely on the waist line we are more likely to put ourselves down whenever we have a cheat day, forever panicking that a foot out of place will pile the pounds on. In contrast, when simply choosing to live a healthier lifestyle, we are less likely to put such pressure on ourselves and will forgive ourselves if we miss out the occasional exercise routine. Sometimes using the word diet is enough to make us feel suffocated and crave the things we shouldn’t be eating more so than ever. We need to change our mindset; teach ourselves to eat healthily but in moderation, and to not punish ourselves for cheat days, because surely if our minds aren’t healthy then a healthy body is redundant.
