I took the step a week ago to begin eating intuitively, which is often perceived as a bad idea when trying to recover. What if I don't eat enough? What if I eat too much? These were all very valid questions racing through my mind when the idea first came to me.
I now realize how ridiculous this way of thinking is. As long as I am no longer counting my calories, or actively restricting myself, there is no such thing as eating too much or too little. Take a young child for example, when served a large plate of pasta, they will generally eat as much of it as they please and then stop when full. Other days they may finish the plate of pasta, and still be crying out for more. My point is that on some days we will inevitably eat more, but on other days we may eat less. And this is perfectly fine, as it evens out in the long run. This is why no single food in itself can make you fat, just like eating a carrot one day will not automatically make you skinny.
I tend to eat in a less structured way now, and eat the foods I thoroughly enjoy. Rather than forcing myself to eat the same 2 weetbix, milk, 2 slices of toast and juice every morning, and the typical sandwich and dessert at lunch etc, I eat the foods that I want and love!
As a kid I never would serve myself such structured food, I would take out a bowl and make my porridge in the microwave, slice up some fruit into it and plonk myself down in front of the television to watch the cartoons. Other days I would have a bowl of cereal, or toast. It simply depended on what my Mum was serving that morning.
The best way to recover in my opinion, is to return to the eating habits you had as a child. Binging was never a thing, your parents would never allow you to rampage the cupboard for multiple bars of chocolate until you made yourself sick, would they? And so you never did it. Stress did not lead you to overeat or under eat. You never thought much about food, it was just something your parents provided to you and you ate until full.
Scales did not exist, I highly doubt that as a four year old you were racing to the scales every morning wondering what fate it had in store for you that day. Of course not, because they did not matter. You were too busy chasing that soccer ball, playing that new video game, discovering that new park down the road.
So why don't we eat more like that these days? As a kid, I was always brought up to eat relatively healthily, but I never skipped dessert. Sometimes it would be a bowl of icecream or biscuits or chocolate, but other nights it would be yoghurt or fruit salad or a fruit pop. It was balanced, I never felt hungry or deprived and I never felt overly full either. It wasn't until I got older and started dieting that my binging became frequent and rather than losing weight, I was gaining it.
Eventually I stopped binging as often and got better at restricting, I lost the weight I had gained plus more, but it never felt like enough.
So how have I developed a normal relationship with food?
By telling myself that no food is forbidden! Sure, eating healthy 90% of the time is great and I do find that this works for me the best, but I'm not obliged to eating sweets everyday if it makes me happy. It is much better than cutting it out completely, only to binge out later, then start restricting again.
I decided to do a what I ate today post, just to give you an example of what I had today. Do not use this as a guideline to your recovery, I by no means eat like this everyday, in fact this was probably one of my 'good' days. Quite often I will have more than this, and that's perfectly fine. I don't count calories, and I am eating what I want and I have no idea what I weigh nor does it matter.
FOR EXAMPLE, HERE IS WHAT I ATE TODAY!
Breakfast is pretty typical for me, I always tend to have the same thing. This isn't disordered, I just really look forward to my porridge every morning! So for breakfast I had porridge made with vanilla almond milk and topped with a whole banana.
Lunch was also another one of my favourites; A poppy seed bagel filled with john west chunky tuna, lettuce and praise mayonnaise. Yum!
I got a bit peckish mid afternoon and decided to grab a snack of a large fuji apple and a tub of chobani greek yogurt. This held me over quite nicely until dinner!
Dinner was pretty light, my sister recently had an operation so she is on a liquid only diet and requested pumpkin soup. This was made by my Mum and was absolutely delicious. It was pretty simple to make too, just 4kg of kent pumpkin, 1 and a half liters of chicken stock, and one chopped onion.
At the end of the night, we were settling down to watch the latest episode of My Kitchen Rules and I got a little peckish so decided to grab a little something from my box of treats. This was my first time trying a creme egg, and after all the hype I must say it is really good and it will be a shame when they disappear after Easter!
