My Relationship With Food: A Turbulent Journey of "Healthy" Eating

As is true with many people, my relationship with food has been tumultuous. My mom’s a dietitian, I grew up doing competitive dance and cheer, and I was classified as “overweight” and even “obese” (especially from a BMI standpoint) until the end of 2020. Needless to say, it has been a wild ride.

Enjoying all sorts of food while maintaining my goal weight (feel) through intuitive eating principles.

I always associated morality with food. My mom taught classes on reading nutrition labels and counseled with individuals on how to make better food choices for weight loss. I learned through osmosis that foods are either “good” or “bad” for you. As children, we weren’t deprived of everyone’s 90’s favorites: sugar cereal galore, gushers, fruit rollups, pizza lunchables, pizza bagels, etc. Yet, I still knew that stuff wasn’t “good” for me. And I’m incredibly grateful for my mom’s education and for knowing at a very young age how important prioritizing “real” foods are. I still think of her whenever I eat an orange, apple, or banana while driving. 😊

I was also very body-aware during dance classes, costume fittings, cheerleading practice, or being placed in a formation based on “size.” I tended to carry weight in my stomach as a young child, which translated to being asked if I was pregnant fairly frequently as an adult. Since I’m short, this meant my Body Mass Index (BMI) always put me in the overweight or obese category. The measurement is quite deplorable (excellent podcast on BMI), as it is simply an equation of height divided by weight squared, not “healthy” vs “unhealthy” lifestyles. I was always athletic, strong, and active, and even while classified as obese I was running in 5K and 10K races, but just had some extra weight on my small frame. I’m sure lots of people can relate to feeling misclassified by this outdated way of measuring health.

Running a 5K in December of 2019 dressed as Christmas Twinkies & a visit with my sister in February 2020. Both of these were my "shape" my entire adult life (ages 19-30).

Finally, as traumatic as it is to think about, family members who I desperately looked up to often made fun of my body shape or weight, or treated me differently because of my weight (serving me less food than my brother, for example), that it was always in the forefront of my mind… “I am fat, and therefore not beautiful.”

I think because of these respected people (doctors and loved ones) reinforcing the idea that I was fat AND because of my constant need to rebel, I simply didn’t care about what I ate for a long time. I truly didn’t consider what different foods do to my body or mind, or how different foods make me feel after eating them, or if my meals or daily intake were well balanced with the different food groups. It was easy for me to spend a day eating mostly carbs and fat and drinking a lot of alcohol.

As most experienced, the early part of the Pandemic was filled with a lot of binge drinking. It felt like the only “activity” I could do from the comfort of my home, plus my gym was closed so I wasn’t getting in any exercise. On May 5, 2020 my grandmother, Mimi, passed away. She always told me I should be “healthier” to find an exercise I enjoyed, and to be “skinnier.” I always hated that word, and it always felt like that was what she wanted, my body to be less fat, aka skinny. But in retrospect, I think she was most concerned about my health, not necessarily the way I looked. Regardless, her passing made me reassess my health and motivated me to start working out. I chose to do at-home Beach Body programs as a way to incorporate activity into my daily pandemic at-home life.

Before & After: 1) May 4, 2020 - May 23, 2020: I had just completed 21 Day Fix Extreme, after just finishing 21 Day Fix. 2) April 24, 2020: I pushed so hard during each workout, 3) May 4, 2020 - Nov 14, 2020: I finished 80 Day Obsession, one of the greatest achievements in my at-home fitness and where I saw huge results!

During the workouts the trainers would refer to “sticking to your eating plan” or “eating your containers.” I became intrigued, so did extensive research on their nutrition program “Portion Fix” and of course, ran the program by my mom. She wasn’t thrilled with the calorie bracket I was in (1,200-1,500 calories per day), but overall supported the idea of the program, which was to incorporate all food groups into your daily diet, limit portion sizes, and create balanced meals using colored containers to measure and track. In July of 2020 I added the nutrition program to my fitness regimen. (Sidenote: if you ever want to purchase anything from Beach Body, now rebranded as Bodi, please hit me up! I am still an active Beach Body coach.)

Here's the amount of food I ate each day. Generally, I stuck to these amounts very strictly.

I became obsessed. I measured EVERYTHING. I counted out nuts (only 10 pecans in a serving!), used my colored containers to plate out every meal, and genuinely worried if I was eating too much or not enough. I lost a considerable amount of weight, saw a HUGE improvement in my athletic ability and strength, and felt amazing, despite not realizing how my mental association with food was massively declining. From May of 2020 to November of 2020, 7 short months, I lost a total of 50-60 pounds. It varies depending on how you count my starting weight – the heaviest I’ve ever been (180 in October of 2018) or when I started my journey (170 in May of 2020). Either way, that’s a lot of weight to lose. I went from a pant size of 12 to 00, a large to an x-small. I was getting compliments on the way I looked, but more importantly to me, I completely changed the way I saw myself. I was so proud of my transformation and felt like I could do absolutely anything I set my mind to.

A progression of my weight loss progress made in less than 9 months.

In March of 2021, my family all met in Scottsdale, AZ and it was the first time we all saw each other since Christmas 2019. It was also the first time my Mom (remember, the dietitian) and my sister observed my newly formed eating habits. They saw me measuring, scrutinizing, counting, and most importantly stressing about what we were going to eat next. I couldn’t decide what I should eat now if I didn’t know what or when we’d be eating later. At the time, I considered my relationship with food to be improving and very healthy because of the changes I was seeing in my body. But I was blind to my mental association with food and how eating certain things or the uncertainty of the next meal was throwing me into chaos.

Examples of dinner while following Portion Fix strictly. I always enjoyed my meals greatly and never felt deprived. And, I learned how to cook better!

My sister had the hard talk with me at our next family gathering in October of 2021 in San Diego. I remember we were on a walk and she simply said, “yeah, but if you’re hungry, can’t you just grab a handful of nuts?” Or something like that. It struck me that because I had trained my brain to be so completely obsessed with portions and food groups, I couldn’t do that. My mom then introduced me to “intuitive eating” which was a compelling way for me to, yet again, update my relationship with food. Honor your cravings, eat when you’re hungry, pay attention to how you feel after eating each food. It was a complete game changer!

Utilizing all the information I learned while strictly following Portion Fix (prioritize vegetables, proteins, fruits, and complex carbs) I slowly transitioned into planning less, worrying less, and getting back to enjoying food. Most of 2022 was spent with me practicing these new ideals, yet I was still eating roughly four meals a day, every 3-5 hours. But it worked for me! The first six months of 2023 I felt like I had perfected my multiple small meals per day, eat when I’m hungry, honor my cravings, and I was eating generally very healthy whole foods that left me feeling satiated and extremely happy.

In June of 2023 I started living with my boyfriend and he can cook up some amazing meals! His favorite meal is dinner, and he was making extremely delicious dinners, and plating VERY large portions. At first, I was still eating my first three meals of the day and then the giant dinner, leaving me feeling pretty awful before going to bed. I was too full, not getting great sleep, and starting to gain weight. But of course, more importantly than the weight gain, I was starting to feel sluggish, sad, and not like my best self.

He suggested I implement Intermittent Fasting. Since 2021, I had been doing 12/12 IF, meaning I was fasting 12 hours a day and eating the other 12 hours a day (typically 8:30-8:30). This prevented me from snacking at night and not eating too early, which allowed me to get hungry enough for breakfast. But, 12/12 IF is fairly standard or easy to implement. If you have trouble with late night snacking (meaning you are NOT hungry, yet continuing to eat, and/or eating foods, generally highly processed, that leave you feeling crabby and slow), then I highly suggest this as a great strategy to help eliminate unnecessary mindless eating. Yet, he challenged me to do 15/9 IF, meaning I fast for 15 hours and eat for 9 (typically 11 am – 8 pm). At first, I was waking up feeling so hungry! I could barely make it until 11 am for my first meal. But, as most healthy forming habits go, it got easier and easier to achieve. Some days, I find myself waiting to eat until 12 or 1 pm just because I’m not quite hungry yet!

By waiting this long to break my fast, typically I only end up eating one meal before dinner. I’ll have a smoothie bowl or cottage cheese with fruit or scrambled eggs with veggies and toast and that would keep me full until we ate dinner around 6 or 7 pm. Then, when he plated giant portions of delicious food (and I’m talking better than most restaurants delicious!) I would leave that meal feeling perfectly full, happy, and I’d sleep easily at night. I was eating the same sort of dinner as I was back in June, July, and August, yet I was feeling so much differently! I got back to my “normal” weight, which really means I was fitting into my clothes better since I do not carry around a scale in my gypsy journey… 😉. More importantly though, I was feeling good!

Some of the dinners he's cooked... as I said, better than most restaurants!

And that brings us up to today, December of 2023.. Everyone has their unique journey and relationship with food. I hope that by sharing mine, you see that it truly is a journey, always evolving, ever changing. I encourage you to assess your relationship with food. Are you applying morality to food, meaning when you do have ice cream or dessert you think of it as being “bad”? Are you paying attention to how you feel after each meal or each snack? Are you only eating when you’re hungry? If your body is craving something, like steak, do you honor yourself by eating something high in protein, like steak? Are you proud of yourself? Happy with your body? Think of yourself as sexy or beautiful? All of these questions are part of our relationship with food and self-image.

Here's a quick tip to reducing associating morality with food. When you pay attention more to how you feel after eating certain foods, you can use words like “when I eat a lot of gluten it gives me a really bad stomach ache.” Rather than thinking of pizza as being “bad” for you think of it as “really hurting your body” if, of course, that’s the case, as it is for me. Even though my stomach KILLS me after eating pizza, I still eat it! But very sparingly… maybe 1-3 times per year. Also, pay attention to how you feel while you’re eating it. I’ve noticed I have a much easier time digesting pizza when while I’m eating it, I’m smiling, happy, and excited by what I’m putting into my body. If you’re thinking about how bad something is while you’re consuming it, then it probably won’t feel good in your system while you digest it.

You’re not alone if you are struggling with your relationship with food or unsure where to start. Please reach out, I’d love to talk about where you’re at in your journey so we can help each other along the way. There’s always time to learn, change, and grow in our health and wellness journeys.