Learning to feed my body, part 3: actually eating healthily

If this post seems to be coming out of left field, then you maybe should go back and read part 1: the problem, and part 2: it gets better. (Spoiler alert: part 1 is sort of depressing.)

I've been asked to give a short talk (ha!) to the directors at my workplace on healthy eating, presumably because people think I know something about this, which is sort of funny. So while these recent posts have been germane to my blog as a whole, they're also relevant to my thinking about this presentation. I guess the first two posts were the mental work I needed to go through one way or another to even be able to discuss the nuts & bolts of how I've gone about changing my disordered eating habits--how I've learned to eat more healthily. (Sidenote: I can't even believe "healthily" is a word.)

Most of the time, when people talk about "healthy eating", what they end up talking about are, for example, big lists of good and bad foods, or "superfoods", or learning to saute things in broth (pro tip: this is impossible, and if you go into a real restaurant with a real chef and ask for something to be sauteed in broth, your food will be spit in--just fair warning, I've worked back there). You know, clickbait advice for fixing your diet. I think there are two big problems with this method of discussing so-called "healthy eating": (1) most of the advice given isn't supported by strong evidence (i.e., these ideas are generally stupid), and (2) even if they're good ideas, no advice is given for how to actually incorporate them into one's life. I mean, diet plays a huge role in one's self-identity, one's lifestyle, one's family, and so on. A clickbait list of "7 ways to eat healthy!" from HuffPo should not be able to budge those central facts of one's person (and if it can, that person has bigger issues than their eating habits).

In truth, I don't really think that "healthy eating" has much to do with exactly what foods one is eating, or even how much or when eating is happening. Frankly, I don't think there is one thing that is "healthy eating". I think healthy eating is all about being in a sane relationship with food and with how I eat such that I'm achieving my goals, maintaining my health, and overall, staying happy (and also not making my family crazy). The actual foods I choose to eat are almost irrelevant, because if the other stuff is sorted, the foods and amounts I choose will be fine. So here are some of the discoveries I've made that have been central to me changing my eating habits for the better:

1. There is no One True Way. We all know that the standard Western processed food/fast food diet does not confer good health, but what diet does? I think this depends a lot on who you are, and what you want/need out of your eating habits. Why did I want to change my eating habits? My reasons revolved largely around a desire to lose fat and build muscle. I also have a laundry list of ethical constraints our family has chosen to put on our eating, and maybe I'll talk about those some other time. But I'm me, and those are things that are working for me. Maybe someone else wants to address problems with heart disease, or diabetes, or hypertension, or low energy, and so on. And it isn't just physical needs that matter here, but also mental and social. Telling someone from an Eastern Bloc country that they don't get to have sour cream or potatoes anymore will not go well for anyone. Myself, I would sooner die that give up bread (although I have perhaps cut back significantly). That said....
2. I had to learn about what I eat, and how it makes me feel. Diet tracking is a much-touted method for understanding one's own dietary habits as they currently are or for changing dietary habits, and one I use regularly. I am aware that some people can go down very dark paths with diet tracking (e.g., becoming obsessive about it, which can lead to its own disordered eating), so I try to keep a mental eye on my relationship with food tracking to make sure it's healthy. What food tracking has done for me is to help me learn things like, e.g., how much I really eat in a day; how are my calories distributed amongst the macronutrients--carbs, fats, and protein; what effects do dietary changes have for me; etc. 
3. I've really had to create an overall attitude of experimentalism regarding my diet and eating habits. I have come to understand that my instincts for hunger and satiety are completely FUBAR at this point, and can't be relied upon. I use data from things like diet tracking, and then do almost scientific method-style experiments to see what happens when I, e.g., increase my overall calories, or my carbs, or fat, or add HIIT to my workout regime, and so forth. I stick with things for as long as they seem to be working, and when I detect that they aren't working anymore (usually after 2-3 weeks of no progress on the fat loss front, or maybe if I see my energy flagging or my lifting progress grinding down), I make adjustments. I tend to follow "If It Fits Your Macros" kind of dietary guidelines, loosely, so typically I'll monkey around with my percentages of fats, carbs, and proteins until I'm feeling better/making progress again. The point is, I don't hang on to any part of my diet, or exercise for that matter, with a death grip. Nothing is inviolable. If something isn't working, I change it. Allow me to reiterate, there is no one true way!
• Want to find out more about macros? Here is (to me) the definitive guide.
4. I am working on healthifying my disordered eating habits (if "healthily" is a word, then so is "healthifying"). I'm finally starting to have a healthy relationship with food. Tracking has helped me learn a lot about what I eat and how it makes me feel, but I still have to be able to put what I've learned into practice. Otherwise, diet tracking just becomes a bludgeon I use to beat myself with every day--yaaaaaaay. =/  So what have I done here?
• When I overeat, I know that I feel like crap--both physically and mentally. Instead of berating myself about it every time it happens, though, I've tried to foster a sort of Buddhist-style detachment and attitude of observation about what happens. If at all possible, as soon as I realize what's happening, I try to take a mental step back and observe how I'm feeling, what's going on, what sorts of motivations I have in my head, etc. This is how I first discovered that weird panic reaction I discussed in part 1. I've also discovered that my brain lies to me while I'm choosing to eat more, like "one more piece won't hurt" or "you ate well at lunch" or, as often as not, just sort of does a shout-down "LALALALALALAA" in my head until I've gotten my next serving. It's easier to derail undesirable behaviors if I can see them coming and then I can play intercept. Incidentally, this goes for when I meet my dietary goals as much as when I miss them. I want to be able to observe when I, e.g., stop eating when I'm full (rather than continuing to eat), see what's going on in my head, and then cultivate those behaviors. 
• Through weightlifting and improved fitness, I've been repairing my feelings about my body overall. I've gone from being generally ashamed (or worse, disgusted) by my body to proud as hell of it. And let me be clear, I am not talking about "looking good naked"--by conventional standards, I'm not there. I'm talking about pride in what my body can do, and the desire to see what else it can do. And what that means is that I have to feed my body what it needs to excel at these awesome things. It's hard to begrudge cutting back on carbs when I know that those calories get in the way of the protein I need to build more muscles. Similarly, it's hard to begrudge the extra calorie hit of carbs when I know they will fuel a killer gym session wherein I Will Crush All The Things.
• I learned more about what my body really needs. I've been down the deprivation path, and I can say firsthand that it sucks. Also, statistically, it almost universally fails in the long run. Of course it does, no one can live like that long term. For awhile, I stuck to a diet of 1700 calories/day (which would be high by some diet's standards). I ended up exhausted, face-down on the couch every night, unable to crush things the gym (*sadface*). I couldn't be building muscle like that, I was probably actually burning muscle instead. I've come to find out I was pretty far under my maintenance needs, so in all likelihood my body was cutting off energy & such in order to conserve calories. I might love my body, but it is a wily SOAB when it comes to hanging on to its current fat reserves. So I increased my calories, which was really scary since I had in fact been losing weight (but probably muscle + fat rather than just fat). What happened? I kept losing weight, I didn't feel nearly as deprived as I had been, and I had gobs more energy for everything I want to do. Way preferable.
5. I DO THE ABSOLUTE MINIMUM I NEED TO DO TO SEE RESULTS.
    
   
   I don't think I can overemphasize this. I know that when people decide to make a life change, it's very tempting to use the strategy of Go Big or Go Home. That may be awesome for starting a business or remodeling your kitchen, but I've found it to be a terrible strategy for changing my lifestyle. Unless there is some super-compelling reason to make seismic changes in one's life (probably medical reasons), doing the absolute least I can do and see the results I want is what I do. This isn't just to ward off burnout or to keep things from being harder than they need to be, although those aren't small matters. This is also a bottom-line decision about making long-term changes in my life. 
• Let's say I dove into all of this fitness & nutrition stuff head-long, deep-end: 5-6 days a week working out, big cardio sessions, big weightlifting sessions, cut overall calories down to 1800, BOOM, man, I am in it. Yeah, so setting aside all of the damage I'm probably doing to my body at this point, what happens when I hit my first dreaded plateau? (It happens to us all.) Where do I have to go from here? SEVEN days of working out? 1500 calories? Adding exercise classes? What? I'm already nearly ragged from my starting point, now I have to do more? It would be right about at this point that I throw my hand up, grab a bucket of buttered popcorn, and plunk myself down in front of a 2-week long Walking Dead bender.
• No no no, that's silly. Instead I carefully calculated my basic calorie needs, cut that number by just a bit (actually, I cut it a lot, and then made myself miserable, and raised it--live and learn!), upped my protein (this works for me, ymmv), lift heavy 3-4 days per week, walk on Sundays with my spouse. If my fat loss progress stalls, I might add some High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) for awhile, or some big cardio finishers (e.g., kettlebell swings, burpees, mountain climbers), but I sort of keep those in my back pocket for when I need them. If my energy is flagging, maybe I'll adjust how many carbs I aim for, or see if there's a better time to eat them such that they give me energy when I need it. A trainer I know and highly respect recently said his instincts are that my dietary fat target is too high, but then again, as long as I'm making progress and am happy, that's what matters. That's another place I could make adjustments if I need to. Or maybe my body needs a break, so I'll take a deload week (i.e., cut the weights I lift by ~20% or so). So many options! I don't feel trapped, or stuck!

I don't know how well this would translate into anyone else's life, but I'm just reporting on my own, and so far, this is working for me. At the end of the day, I very much believe that if one wants to change their dietary habits for life, one has to start working on finding a healthy relationship with food. Getting clear on the WHYs--why eat the way I do now? why change it? what do I want to accomplish? These questions drive everything else, give it all purpose, keep it from being torture for me. Maybe that would work for others? I don't know, but I'd like to think so.

This wraps up our three week exploration of The Cray-Cray that is Robyn's relationship with food. See, I told you it has a happy ending!