Shut Up and EAT!
I seriously doubt if anyone has as unique relationship with food and fitness as I do. It’s ridiculously funny at one point but rather inspiring at another.
Well, to understand it, we’d have to first retrospect on how my brother was acquainted with his food choices.
See, here is a case of a sharp stark contrast. My brother had the luxury of having the typical baby goo such as Gerber and Cerelac. Little did he know that for the next twenty or so years he would inevitably embark on a gastronomic journey towards sweets, junk food and soda. Flashback however to 1990, baby Me got the raw end of the deal. (A little backwards there, don’t you think, Mum?)
Mum thought that the artificial flavourings and such tweaked my big brother’s brain and made him all too picky. SO, like what any Asian Mum would diligently do, she shifted me towards the other end of the spectrum — all organic, all natural, RAW VEGGIES.
The results? My parents saving largely on my share of the baby grub, me mistaking for the nth time tomatoes for apples, me not having the normal capacity (is there even one?) of a toddler to wait for carrots to be cooked, or sautéed or steamed…or washed for God’s sake.
(I wonder if I ever did a facepalm when I was a kid? — OR, if I was ever caught red-handed doing one?)
Anyway, fast-forward to 2019, and here I have found one of my deep-seated passions: HEALTH.
One of the lovely reasons I maintain whenever I indulge myself in striving to keep healthy and fit, is that I receive a lot of message and questions from friends on and off the internet regarding food, preparation of the same, an active lifestyle, and other things related to this.
A few people know this, but I have actually committed to keeping a healthy lifestyle and updating myself with the myths and the innovations when it comes to being fit. I find myself personally and heavily invested whenever information regarding my body and mind comes up.
The monster chunk of this drive comes from this: I love seeing people, especially my loved ones be motivated in their own way towards having a better overall outlook in life. It is something that feels so rewarding at the end of the day, whenever I look back at how many icky wellness shots I took or how much leaves I crammed down. It is not at all bothersome for me to go scour the web and different books worth of theses just to answer people’s random questions about what they should build up, change, take or what they need to stay away from.
Having said that, I have come up with my top three truths when it comes to HEALTH. These are things that I personally live by, personally tested, heavily rely upon for every stage of my health upgrade and of course, the overall enjoyment to life.
Health means every single aspect of it.
I cringe at the elementariness of this principle. Trust me, I will bet my entire life savings (albeit future ones) on this: when people think of health, majority of the time, they think of the BODY.
And while yes, that’s correct, it is nowhere near accurate.
Health implies our physique, mental disposition, emotional quotient, social involvement, and spirituality. You cannot — I repeat — you simply CANNOT take out any of these from the equation and expect to be truly healthy.
It might seem really basic reading it, but a lot of us find ourselves often sacrificing the destruction or lack of one, or some of these in favour of fostering the other or others. The reality is this, taking out one is like removing two of the bottom blocks in a jengga tower — sooner or later, we will find ourselves in a tough bind to maintain a healthy balance in what aspects of our health we need to boost or revive.
Still not convinced? Here are some scenarios.
In this digital and highly superficial age, one of the most common vices we have is building a persona for the approval of strangers who could not care less if we exist, i.e. social media. Lady Gaga actually was onto something when she was singing ‘I live for the applause, applause, applause…’ Yes. A lot of us do. And so, for the sake of social (or social media) gratification, we voluntarily offer to compromise our physical health in order to cater to what we think is socially pleasing. Whether it be levels of attractiveness or grasping for political influence like a piñata, we go in head first. What comes after is the havoc of psychological problems arising from crowd pressure and trying to address the issues which society throws at us, not knowing when to stop, or the truth that some of them do not need addressing anyway.
So you see, we need to always have a mindful drive to keep ourselves in check with a single question: Are we actively immersing ourselves too much in one aspect of health to the detriment of some or all of the others? If you uttered a little hell yeah then you must necessarily identify WHAT it is and HOW MUCH you unnecessarily invest in it.
2. Everyone has a “SWEET SPOT”.
Are we on the same page here?
This is one of the things that bind all the five aspects that I mentioned awhile ago together.
Keyword: balance.
As I mentioned moments ago, there is a certain percent of indulgence that is helpful, and there’s that amount that is obviously not.
One concrete example I can give is when people make the following remarks: “Wow, you must eat so much good food every day!”
Clue: I don’t.
There is something about cravings that are innately instinctive and natural. Everyone, men and women, young or old, have it. It’s our natural inclination towards certain food and/or beverages depending on our DNA, culture, social standing, past experiences, personal preferences, and so much more.
Let’s get this straight. Cravings are not evil. And you can argue with every pregnant woman if you want to say otherwise. Trust me, hormones ain’t that pretty.
The only difference when trying to live a healthy lifestyle is the RESPONSE we have towards our cravings.
I can bet another round that majority of our cravings, about ninety percent, involves food that do not exactly make it in the healthy and/or organic scale. I do understand that a lot of Beverly Hills folks say ‘Oh, I think I’m craving for a salad right now’, but most of us lowly humans tend to wish for chicken tenders, a face full of pepperoni pizza, and a jug full of soda on a bad day.
Whatever it is, here is one cardinal truth: if you try to obliterate your cravings every single time, you will not find your sweet spot.
In an article by the Association for Psychological Science regarding food cravings, it is said that cravings are unlike hunger. In a nutshell, hunger is just ‘I want to eat something’. When we take it up a notch and say ‘I want some sour cream and onion flavoured baked potato chips from Walmart’, then that specified wish is a craving.
I remember my Consumer Behaviour and Product/Brand Management instructors emphasising the same principle before: a want is a specified need.
However, the problem here arises when, as according to the previously mentioned article, we tend to guilt-trip ourselves (and yes, whether we admit it or not) whenever we “give in” to our cravings. And I know a whole range of people who are obsessed at calorie-counting and beating themselves up whenever they reach into a bag of chips.
The red flag here is our mentality towards food.
I would like to reiterate the header for this item. Everyone has a sweet spot. This verily translates to everyone has a craving or two, once or every now and then. And giving into one or all of them sometimes is not a crime. I repeat, it is not a crime.
Don’t get me wrong. Part of how I manage to maintain a healthy lifestyle is an ample amount of self-discipline in choosing the right food, the proper food preparation, following up by reaching activity minutes every week, reading self-enriching books and the like. BUT, what I do not do, is impose a harsh penalty on myself whenever I cave in to my cravings. Hey, I’m a pistachio ice cream kind of woman. What of it? Mental battery for the sake of physical shapeliness is nowhere near fit.
To put it succinctly, cravings are not inherently bad. Our self-mutilating thoughts about them are, though.
The definition of a sweet spot in life is when we are self-aware regarding what our personal health goals are, while at the same time acknowledging that it is only human to be tempted to sway once in a while. See, it is more destructive to obsess over what we did wrong. Rather, we need to continuously motivate ourselves to choose better, and to be active in helping ourselves to feel better.
3. To each our own.
There is a big and glaring reason why nobody could wear the shoes that Cinderella’s fairy godmother gave her: it’s hers.
Applying it to us health nuts, I had never — not even once — tried to embark on a journey that wasn’t mine to begin with.
I often talk about social media or magazines, the paparazzis, and those other stuff in my blog posts. I cannot help but emphasise the impact of these entities on our choices towards living.
Rule of thumb: Just because Kim K does it, doesn’t mean you should too. And yes, those hips do lie.
Every person is unique. You may not feel like it, but that is the truth. Even twins do not get to have the same, exact chemical, much less mental, make-up. We grow up and develop differently. We have our respective outlook on what is pleasing to the eyes. Our bodies each require different amounts of vitamins and minerals. We feel sensations differently from one another. And the list goes on.
Given that, how can we enslave ourselves in the hopeless following of the latest personal diet journeys of celebrities? Sure, it is helpful to study different meal plans and routines in order to understand what they are good for or meant to do. But we need to draw the line between guidance and idolatry.
Any form of excessive compulsion to push ourselves towards extreme disobedience, to the point of needless spending and stressful routines, will never help us reach our desired healthfulness.
I will always stress on this: A healthy mind is an integral part of a healthy person.
It is pretty much useless to see an ideal physique without the feeling of genuine appreciation of it.
And just to hammer on another familiar point, due to genetics and culture, we do not operate on a one-size-fits-all scheme. We cannot all be size zeros. Not all thick women are unhealthy. Our bone structure, age, culture, geographic locations are crucial in determining what will be the ideal healthy weight, height, face shape, skin tone, and other physical attributes for us. This is I think, something that we all need to absorb deeply.
It actually saddens me a bit whenever I see the double eyelid trends, sun-kissed tan or the thigh-gap trends going too far.
There is something unadulteratedly beautiful whenever we stop struggling and start appreciating the reflection we see in the mirror. The features we have are God-given and impressive — special in every way. It takes nine months, sometimes more, to just bring a human being out and up into this wonderful world. what society dictates on us as its standard of fitness does not need to be our end-all and be-all.
As Beyonce aptly said in her song Pretty Hurts, it is indeed “the soul that needs surgery”.
I am nowhere near a health goddess.
What I am is a woman striving to inspire one person at a time to live healthily by looking at herself or himself in the light of how we all are — beautiful in every single way. Inside and out.
