Lately, I’ve realized how much of living healthfully is mental.
A stack of pizzas were delivered to my office on a recent busy day. I love pizza, so I took two slices, one of the white and one of the sausage. Even after I finished those delightfully greasy, floppy, cheesy slices, my mind kept wandering back to the stack of boxes. And that frustrated me.
It’s not like I was breaking out in a sweat or totally obsessed with the pizza, because I wasn’t. I was just angry at myself for even giving it a second thought. To me, that was fat unhealthy behavior, thinking about food. It felt like I was regressing.
But then I had an epiphany: Thinking about food is much healthier than not thinking about it. I think a lot of people who’ve never struggled with food or their weight have visions of overweight people dreaming of seven-course meals, but quite the opposite is true.
I didn’t think much about food at all when I weighed 300 pounds, which explains how I got there in the first place. Pierogies and french fries were daily eats in the months leading up to my peak weight. I didn’t think about it. I craved, I ate, and that was that.
Now, food is one of the topics I think about most. I think about what I’ll have for a snack, what I’m having for dinner, and if I’m going out, I’ll think about how I will still make good choices. I would bet that most food bloggers — some of the healthiest eaters around — are the same. When you’re thinking about food, you’re thinking about what you’re putting in your body, and you’re going to make better choices.
And speaking of better choices, how am I only now discovering Hungry Girl? I knew about the cookbooks but I had no idea the Web site was so useful. Amazing!
Unfortunately, while I’m committed to thinking about healthy living, I won’t be blogging regularly about it for awhile until after Christmas, as my digital camera died in September. Please keep checking back for periodic updates, though, and come January, you’ll see a totally made-over Fashionably Fit.
(I’m sure you’ll be waiting with breath that is bated.)
2 comments
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November 10, 2009 at 9:35 pm
Tyler K.
I agree that healthful living includes making informed decisions about meals. More than once I’ve been at my work desk, craving some fast food for lunch, and gone online to research nutrition info for Panda Express, Chik-Fil-A, et al. The calories and sodium in even the lightest offerings are staggering and I end up having a veggie sub from Subway or an equally nutritious alternative because I can’t bring myself to knowingly ingest such unhealthy fare. Whereas my non-thin coworkers go for wings or to Five Guys (www.fiveguys.com) once a week without any apparent concern for how those meals will negatively influence their health.
December 11, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Falsquellunda
Awesome, I did not know about this topic till now. Cheers.