Up unto the age of about 16-17 I didn’t really care about what I ate. I was a regular omnivore in Belgium, ate home cooked meals every day but candy and such as well. Each day I would eat a chocolat bar, I sometimes made cake dough and eat it like that. I would sometimes make fries and eggroles for breakfast. I never gained weight so I didn’t mind.
The first thing I stopped was drinking soda, like coca cola, because I heard about how bad it was for the body.
Then I became a vegetarian because I heard about what happened to the animals, it was an easy decision and I simply replaced meat with substitutes. I had anemia as an omnivore, which I cured when I became a vegetarian. This was probabyl because I cut out a lot of crap from my diet. After a while I became vegan because I heard about abuse in the dairy industry as well. Anyway, I began to research more about food because I was starting to cook meals for myself. Doing this, I also found info about what is healthy and what is not. I found it mostly online but also it was in TV shows sometimes. It was all very intresting to me.
One day I came upon a raw food website, 80/10/10 , high carb (fruit) and low fat. I heard about peoples amazing results + it was even better if I also didn’t have to eat plants! Only the fruit that drops from the plant. I decided to try this. I believed it was the way to go, that it was the healthiest. I started to eat massive amounts of bananas and dates, as well as other fruit such as pineapple for example and pears. In the evening I mostly ate a huge salad. I noticed that my bowel movements became very loose and big in quantity. Also I would never really feel satisfied when eating. I have to add that I was not eating enough according to the 80/10/10 principle of over 2000 , more like 3000 calories a day. I was eating about 1500. That was because my mom refused to buy so much bananas. One evening I decided to have a smoothie and mixed bananas with broccoli, cuccumber and dates… Man, did I regret doing that! I got serieus cramps and was on the toilet for a long time. I noticed more consequences, like I got some white on my tongue at the back which I never ever had, my skin turned yellow, I got very little pimples on my face, I got cold even faster, I got urticaria and felt weak when I went dancing and got a bacterial infection on my hand. Also I had to have surgery for my wisdom teeth, and therefor I had to be measures and such… There I found out my weight was 57kg, and I came from about 62 kg which is around my “normal” weight (im 1m76). So that means my BMI was 18 , which is underweight. I was kinda anxious about that, togethe rwith all my other complaints, so I ate a chocolat bar lol.
Some people pointed out to me that I was holding on to believes about healthy eating, and this was true. I looked at it, and saw this clearly wasn’t working for me. I am not saying this can’t work for anyone else who is able to do this PROPERLY, but not for me. So I decided to stop and start eating what I liked, what my body responded well to, and which I have had good results with long term from my past. So I returned back to eating vegan, with also sometimes eggs from our own chickens.
I don’t know what would have happened if I continued with this, but it is good that I stopped. I was placing my believes about health, above the actual health of my body. Thus I was actually doing what I tried to prevent = being unhealthy. I had adopted an eating style that caused severe reactions. And I did that for months and months. Because I knew, sometimes it takes long for your body to adjust when you come out of bad habbits.
Now I still eat a lot of raw, fruit, but cooked as well every day, and much more fat, which feels much better. I got my strenght back, the weird symptoms went away, and my weight went back up to 61kg. Now often when I eat bananas, it doesn’t feel good in my stomach, and sometimes makes me feel ill. So I thought that maybe I just cant properly digest them and my body doesn’t need them at this moment. Sometimes I need more of this, and another time of that. It is never really set in stone and can fluctuate over time.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold my health believes above my actual health, eating in a way that I think is healthy, while my body is telling me the opposit. And holding on to it for months in a row, simply because I believe it was healthy,while in fact it wasn’t.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not do what is best for my body = which is eating what it requires to maintain itself. But rather I ate not enough, of food that I thought was the healthiest, and refused to eat enough because that would mean I had to incorporate “bad food” to get my daily amount of calories in, and I thought it was not as healthy, assuming that eating less but of the “right food” would be better than eating more but with including some “bad food”.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not listen to the signs my body sends me
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to try and convince others about a healthy eating habbit, while in fact it was not making me healthy at all
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold on to something that was not working for me, simply because my mind convinced me that it was stil the healthiest
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not do something properly, and treat my body in as inferior to my mind
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear eating so called “bad” food because it may make me sick, and I would only find out later, when it is too late, and then I would regret it and hope that I never ate those things, but would have no way to reverse it
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear not being able to reverse something I did wrong
I realize that it is ok to test out different eating habbits, for your body to be healthy , not for vanity reasons. And that it is ok to test this for a while. But if it is not working, it is best to not stick to it just because you believe in it.
When and as I notice that I eat something because I believe it is healthy, but in fact my body is showing the opposit, I stop it when I realize it is clearly not working.
When and as I doubt about what to eat, I listen to my body and find out what it enjoys to eat, and eat that. I realize sometimes it may be trial and error, and there is no judgment in trying something. The problem is when you stick to a believe that is causing you harm, and never let it go even when it is not doing what it is supposed to do= which is maintaining a healthy body.
A Girls Journey To Life 