Walk Home Together

Being in the health and wellness community teaching yoga, I am often asked about my own eating habits or thoughts on certain diets. It’s a loaded question. I struggled with disordered eating for many years, beginning when I was about 14. I came of age in the glory years of Kate Moss and fat-free everything. Girls of average weight or more seemed non existent in media. All the actresses and singers and performers were tiny, tiny, tiny. I remember wishing I didn’t have hips so I could look good in boys Levi’s like some of my slimmer friends. Adding to the pressure was a lot of other personal external and internal unrest. In high school I existed on handfuls of Special K, Stairmaster sessions and anxiety. In college it was more of a binge eating/shame cycle situation. Then the Atkins diet, the Cabbage Soup Diet, Slim-Fast, Dexatrim. Piles of sugar free fake food.  Ironically we aren’t really talking a dramatic amount of weight either way, and probably no one noticed my ups and downs but me. 

It took a lot of work to silence the insistent voice that kept telling me I was fat and terrible. Years of un-learning what I thought to be true. It was really only when I was pregnant with my first child that I started to eat with another goal besides unattainable thinness. I had a baby growing inside me who needed better than what I usually allowed myself. There was a gradual shift, and it started with treating my body with kindness and appreciation. 

I’m not a nutritionist and I have nothing to draw on besides my own experience. But I have conquered the disordered eating, and I have been pretty much the same healthy weight and size (for me) for over 20 years. No more scales except at my yearly checkup and I do not diet. Ever. But I want to share with you two concepts that have worked for me. 

1. Focus on being healthy, not trying to be a certain “ideal” size. 

Forget that outdated and arbitrary construct created by society and advertisers trying to sell you stuff. Your body is not something to be punished and deprived. Whatever your body looks like when you are healthy physically and mentally…that’s your “perfect” size. It’s where your genetics want you to be. If you can be physically active daily without being short of breath or easily fatigued, you’re probably doing just fine. Thin does not always equal healthy, and a larger body isn’t necessarily unhealthy. In fact, the opposite is often true. 

2. Practice 80/20. 

Try to make 80% of what you eat be a variety of unprocessed, whole foods. If people ate it 200 years ago, it’s probably good. Protein, fruits and vegetables, grains. The key is balance…aiming to have some of all these things at every meal. That way you’ll be satisfied, your blood sugar will be steady, and you’ll have plenty of energy. Eating all kinds of real food, either in its natural form or without a long list of complicated ingredients, is the way to go. Be honest with yourself about what “whole” and “unprocessed” actually means. Eat until you are comfortably full, not needing more but not stuffed. Listen to your body. 

20% of what you eat can be things like fast food, fried food, sugar, soda, alcohol, and processed foods. Let’s be real…we love those things and we aren’t going to give them up. But they don’t need to be the bulk of our intake. When you’re craving fries, get the fries. Sometimes only a real Coke will do. If the hot doughnut sign is flashing and that’s your Saturday morning tradition, go for it. Just keep those fun indulgences at around 20% of your diet. 

It’s the boring truth. Diets aren’t sustainable long term. Eat real food in moderation. Don’t deprive yourself or you will boomerang right back to overdoing it. 

Here’s an example of what 80/20 looks like. This is what I ate yesterday:

Breakfast: coffee with sugar and milk, smoothie with green apple, ginger, 1/2 avocado, spinach and plain full-fat Greek yogurt. 

Lunch: Large green salad with tomatoes, cucumber, walnuts, feta cheese, olive oil, lemon, and leftover salmon from the night before. Slice of homemade bread. Small piece of chocolate. Water.

Snack: handful of pistachios in the shell

Dinner: glass of red wine while cooking, two chicken fajitas with peppers and onions, sour cream, avocado and salsa, glass of wine while eating. 

As you can see, it’s not fancy, it’s not perfect. But it’s balanced. I ate until I was full. Should I have stopped at one glass of wine? Maybe. But I was listening to music and cooking and enjoying myself so I topped it off. And my husband is experimenting with making sourdough bread, so I’m not about to pass that up. I try to eat enough at meals so that I’m not looking for snacks all day, but if my stomach is rumbling I’ll grab a little something salty. Sometimes it’s nuts, but sometimes it’s Doritos. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth but if there’s strawberry cake around count me in. 

I’ll be honest, when my clothes get a little snug it’s very easy for me to mentally slip back to being a teenager and panic, thinking that I’m disgusting and out of control. I have to calm myself down and remember that girl with compassion, because she needed it. I have to take a deep breath and remind myself that a little fluctuation is perfectly normal, especially if I’m trying to relax and just enjoy life. And this body has carried two healthy pregnancies, fought off all sorts of minor and not-so-minor illnesses and injuries, and can do just about anything physically that this 48 year old would want to do. 

We have to stop treating our bodies as something to be punished and controlled. Our bodies are miraculous, self-healing, uniquely beautiful vessels for our hearts minds and souls. We should treat them as such, with delicious real food, enjoyable physical activity, and most of all, kindness.