How to stay sane while changing your diet

People often go full circle on this path. It starts by gradually kicking out stuff from your diet and ends with feeling bad because you ate a bloody walnut.

Great, I thought, now I can eat all I want and I won’t gain any weight, as long as I train hard! Those were the first days of my new, sport life. I started running long distance and doing cross fit. Then I realized the sad truth. You need to run for two full hours to burn the calories of that chocolate bar. That is how my journey to eating well begun.

I call it “eating well”, not “dieting“ or “clean eating”.

Dieting means that I’m depriving myself of enjoyment, taste, happiness. This can’t last long, and the willpower will eventually break. I like food too much.

Clean eating presumes that the food in general can be categorized as good or bad, clean or dirty. I believe that food can only be measured by the nourishment it gives us. Does it bring light, healthy energy or it holds us down, makes us sleepy? Does it give us strength and clarity, or pack us with hard to digest matter that finally makes us unsatisfied with ourselves?

Eating well means that I’m doing the best I can for my body and my health in terms of nutrition, according to my knowledge and ability.

Recently I watched a show on a local Serbian TV channel, where this very beautiful and fit mom of five was explaining that the way she looks is a result of her conscious decision. She said that she doesn’t exercise and she eats everything she fancies.

Before every meal, she looks at the food, smiles and says — I am grateful for this meal. It will bring wonderful nourishment to my body and soul. My body knows exactly what to take and what to expel from this meal.

As much as this sounds like BS, it got me wondering. What do I say to myself when I start a meal? “Hm, a nice salad, but this olive oil and this cheese… I could do without… I ’m dying for this cake, but it will ruin my training…” I analyze and tend to find all the bad stuff in the meal and imagine how it will stick to my butt.

Food carries energy. We become what and how we eat. We become what we think about.

Have you heard about the rice experiment? The experiments of dr. Masaru Emoto show that the molecular structure of water can be changed with human thoughts. This experiment has been repeated numerous times, and you can try it at home.

Place 1 cup of cooked rice into two separate containers, place a lid on each and write a positive “thank you” note on one, and a negative “stupid” note on the other. After months and months, only the rice in the “stupid” container will go rotten. Masaru Emoto’s experiments proved that the water reacts to our emotions. We are 60% water, our food is mostly water. It is certain that it carries energy, not only in the nutritional sense.

Eating well for me implies having knowledge about what we eat and what it does to our bodies, but also having balance and being mindful of both our food and our inner needs.

I have witnessed that people often go full circle on this path. It starts by gradually kicking out stuff from your diet and ends with feeling bad if you ate anything that is not a fresh fruit or a vegetable. Or, in a different version of clean eating, feeling bad if you even looked at a carb.

You go from the standard American diet to obsessed raw vegan or maniacal Paleo specialist in ketosis.

Food becomes a big part of your identity. You add “raw vegan” as your middle name on Facebook. You take photos of 10 kg of bananas you plan to eat today, share recipes of quinoa dishes, add stevia to your tea and discover strange plants no one else eats.

I don’t want to give food such importance. Giving so much power to anything in life moves us out of balance. This is why I stick to my “eating well” philosophy.

It consists of eating everything in moderation (except meet, but that’s another story), striving to eat as much fresh, organic veggies and fruits, experimenting with new foods, eating as little processed foods as I can, eating small portions and indulging in a great desert or mom’s special treat from time to time. Being positive about food, enjoying it and being grateful for it.

I admit, I don’t look like a model. I need to shed some pounds and add some muscle, but I’m sure that I would be feeling the exact same way about my body even if I was eating the most perfect diet in the world (which ever one that might be). The problem is in the mind, not in the food.

I will rather enjoy good food, have a nice, maintainable, healthy and functional body, and a healthy, fast mind that goes with it, than obsess about little imperfections in either nutrition or the way I look.

For me, the key is in balance, finding joy in the process of eating well, of mindful eating and exercising, loving what you do every day, not only the results you expect to get one day.

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