Like many people who have struggled with their weight, I have a messed up relationship with food. I wish I could be like my friends who have been thin all their lives as they seem to really enjoy food. It would likely surprise them to know that many overweight people do not derive the pure pleasure from food that they do. Our relationship with food is more of a love-hate relationship. We have emotional connections to food they can only imagine. One moment food is comfort and love. The next it is the enemy - the thing that makes us fat and prevents us from living to our fullest potential. Food is something to be monitored, tracked, feared, loved, despised... Is it any wonder, with this as the basis of our psyche, that most diets are doomed to fail?
Since moving to Whistler, BC I have dramatically improved my fitness. I have lost and kept off 45 pounds for two years. Along the way I improved my cardio and strength, which has paid off in all the sports in which I participate in this outdoor mecca - cycling, alpine skiing, nordic skiing, hiking, Pilates, and Crossfit. I have participated in Fondo's, Cyclocross races, and triathlons. I work out often and at high intensity. I feel like I have that part of my health dialled in.
But I am not yet at my goal weight. I would like to lose another 50 pounds. And I know to do it I have to change my relationship with food. Diets only work short term. The restriction ultimately leads to rebellion. It becomes all or nothing. On or off.
Like I've done with exercise, I want to make healthy eating a habit, something I want to do. I want to create a healthy relationship with food that I can maintain the rest of my life.
So begins the 50 Week Food Challenge. Each week I am going to introduce a new Food Habit. I am reluctant to call them rules as rules are made to be broken. Habits are established over time. If they aren't followed on occasion, they can remain habits.
I hope you will join me along my journey, adapting habits that will help you be healthy where they fit with your life or just supporting me along the way.
I too had an unhealthy relationship with food and found a career where I could surround myself in it. Now I'm free and after taking a course from the Institute for the Pyschology of Eating called Transform your Relationship with Food, I don't let food control me and I can indulge without feeling guilty.
ReplyDeleteHi Cathy! Thank you so much for your comment. It shows you never know what's going on with someone as I always admired how you could be around food all day and seemed so balanced about it. I'm glad to hear you found something that worked for you. I'm hoping the habits I form over the next 50 weeks do the same for me.
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