How I Really Feel About Diets
Body image is a tough aspect to deal with as an individual - especially with the added pressure of dieting. January is known for fresh beginnings & resolutions that might be broken within the first two weeks. Most people feel that diets are the ultimate answer to reach your optimal health or fitness goals, and I didn’t want to be just like everyone else. I wanted to be different and handle "my “diet” in a physical and mental way. So here is how I really feel about diets.
I have struggled with my body image since I was a young kid. I was bullied in elementary school, and kids on the school bus would call me a horse because of how much my jaw stuck out of my face. From then on, I was utterly insecure about my body image, and how others saw me. I was also mocked for how skinny I was, and how I should “put some meat on those bones,” as if I had a choice on how fast or slow my metabolism was.
Eventually, I grew out of my crippling body image perception and started to love my body more. Maybe I loved my body too much since I gained weight & gained it fast. I would like to blame my weight gain on getting married or the medications I take, but sadly, the weight gain is all my fault. I’ve never had to be concerned about what I ate, how much I ate, or when I ate. I just ate my food at my leisure until I was full.
But now that I am a 24-year-old with a declining metabolism, I am not as fit as I used to be. My relationship with food is not the best, I might say. I went from not being able to gain weight, to not being able to lose weight. Co-workers around my desk started talking about the different diets they were going to try out in the new year. And it got me thinking - maybe I should look into dieting. Maybe going on a diet will help me reach my ideal weight based on my height. After all, I don’t have the best relationship with food.
The internet doesn’t tell you how hard diets are to start & be consistent with.
Within the first week of January, I tried to cut the extra sugar and carbs out of my diet while keeping an eye out on how much sugar I was consuming, and when I was eating. This lasted for a couple of days. But the diet is only half of the battle when it comes to weight loss and being healthy. You have to be active as well. And being active was a struggle for me in my daily schedule.
I would wake up at 6:30 am, leave for work at 7 am, start work at 8 am & leave by 4:30 pm, come home around 5:15 pm and relax until dinner at 6:30 pm. Theoretically, I could work out after dinner, since I have a time gap between dinner and going to bed. But the energy just isn’t there. I know that effort is crucial for sticking to a diet and exercise regime, but this is one of the toughest mental battles I’ve had to overcome. And I am still overcoming it - I don’t think the struggle will ever stop. I think it will just be an aspect of my life I have to recognize and put more effort into. After all - this is the only body I am going to have in this lifetime.
Diet is defined in (2) ways by the Oxford Dictionary:
the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats. (i.e. vegetarian diet)
a special course of food to which one restricts oneself, either to lose weight or for medical reasons.
I don’t ever want to restrict myself from what I eat or how I live my life. But I do realize that I have to care about what I do more and put more intention behind what I eat. This may seem like common sense to some, but as I mentioned before, I don’t have the best relationship with food.
Food should be for nourishment health, and not something you need to do as a coping mechanism or act as a variable for the mental health struggles that are really lying underneath the surface. I want to make sure I am eating because I am hungry, and not because I am bored. I want to enjoy every bite of my food and be mindful while I eat.
I think that my “diet” I will be following this year is eating fewer calories, and burning more calories. I will eat what I believe is healthy, and I will stick to 3 meals a day, with snacks in between to tide me over until the next meal. I will not starve myself to achieve a certain figure, and I will not restrict myself from the once-in-a-blue-moon sweet snack. There are plenty of ways to eat good & also be healthy with that food.
I hope that this blog post will help someone out there who is caught up in the diet trend in the news media and on our social media platforms. If you have a medical reason/concern to lose weight, by all means, do so. But if you just feel pressured by the “perfect” bodies that you see, keep in mind that the only body that really matters is YOU. This vessel that you are living in is the only one you will receive in this lifetime (unless 2020 brings about some robot-bionic movie magic). Please cherish your body and love it for as it is. The human body is an amazing thing, and we should not punish ourselves for living.
