How To Have A Healthy Relationship With Food
Having a healthy relationship with food is better than a diet, stop stressing over what you eat, its not worth it and having a healthy relationship with food will create better long term benefits alongside the short term ones.
A couple of months ago I was in my competitive season and I was on a “diet” for competition, this diet mainly consisted of no fried food, no desserts and making sure I eat balanced meals. I will admit I failed this diet quite a lot, and I realized I was only actually following this diet the week before a competition.
After competition season it got even worse, I was eating a dessert with almost every meal, lots of fried food and lots of pizza, and my performance definitely took a hit, I started to plateau, obviously it wasn’t just because of the food, but the food also had a large impact because it hurt my recovery time, when I’m putting fried food into my body after a three hour practice session, my body isn’t going to be able to recover nearly as fast. Which impacts my practice because then I am more drowsy during practice, leading to my plateau
After two months of this I realized that something had to change, I couldn’t eat like this until the next competition season. So I looked for solutions and I found that whenever I would completely take something out of my diet like desserts or fried food I would start to crave it, a LOT. So instead of completely taking these things out of my diet, I just cut back on them.
Then I found snacks that were sweet but also healthy, like trail mix or fruits, so now instead of packing cookies I pack a bag of trail mix and a banana, so not only am I getting rid of the unnecessary sugar of cookies, but also trail mix and bananas are great for fueling me and helping me recover from a workout
Now instead of eating fried chicken three or five times every week, I push it back to once or twice a week preferably before really light training days. So I am still getting to enjoy my food but also eating healthier. Having a healthy relationship with food means eating what you enjoy but also in moderation and then finding new foods that you like that are healthier.
Having a healthy relationship with food is much more sustainable than having a strict diet, because at the end of the day you should be eating what you enjoy not forcing yourself to eat something you don’t like. So instead of putting yourself on this strict diet, find healthy foods that you like and incorporate them into your current routine and switch healthy foods in for unnecessary sweets.
Here is how you can have a healthy relationship with food:
- Replace sweet snacks like candy or cookies with fruit, fruit chips, raisins or other more natural snacks. When eating sugar you want to be eating products that don’t have any added sugar but instead have natural sugars like fruits!
- Replace your morning Coffee, this one is really hard and just depends on how health you want to get, but replacing your coffee with a protein smoothie can be a really healthy alternative, or drink straight coffee with no added sugars or creams.
- Replace fried foods with grilled or baked foods, instead of eating fried chicken, try some baked chicken or grilled chicken, not only is this much healthier for you, but it can be combined into other meals like pasta and salads!
- When you want a sweet drink a bottle of water before it, this makes sure you are staying hydrated and also ensures that you are snacking because you are hungry not dehydrated. Of course its better to replace that sweet with something with a fruit, but something in moderation isn’t as bad for you
Changing what you eat can be hard, thats why cutting back rather than replacing can be a much more effective strategy long term, and eating healthy doesn’t just make you feel good, it can taste good! You just need to find the right combinations of foods that work for you!
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