Since I stopped going to counselling and have felt comfortable calling myself recovered from my eating disorder (a few years now) I haven’t paid much attention to my food. I naturally eat healthy options to take care of myself, but calories haven’t been anything that I’ve given a second thought to, much less tracked, in ages, and fast food has been pretty much a weekly occassion (especially on the way home from the bar- damn you, drunken munchies) with zero guilt.
Now that I am doing my little experiment, I truely appreciate my outlook on food.
Aside from cutting out the crap, I am simply tracking my calories, and its drudging up old feelings. Not old eating disorder feelings where I need to restrict or see how low I can go, but old recovery feelings. I feel like the simple act of tracking my calories, not even changing my eating habits based on those calories, is putting too much emphasis on food. I’m not used to it, and quite frankly, I hate it.
I don’t like the way it feels to have to account for everything I put in my mouth. Food is food. Whatever. Im not trying to lose weight, I’m just trying to eliminate some crap, and make sure I’m eating ENOUGH for the extra training I’m doing. Even though my goal is the different than what it used to be when I food journalled (make sure Im eating enough for my workouts as opposed to making sure I’m eating enough to stay alive) I still think its too much work. Too much emphasis.
Its sucks. I hate food journalling. I hate weighing in (no loss this week- which is a good thing). Even though its for a completely healthy goal, I feel like even just tracking is making my life too hard. Unfortunately, to do this right, I have to track, though, and it is helping to get a full picture. I just can’t wait till the 22nd when I dont have to do it anymore. I don’t know how people do it indefinately. It makes me really examine what is healthy mindfulness, and what is unhealthy emphasis. Im just writing stuff down in a little book, and that’s almost too much for me.
I guess if it shows me anything, it shows how far I’ve come. Its exhausting and annoying thinking about calories and food. I can’t believe I wasted so much time on it for so many years, and it makes me sad some people will never know a life without that constant burden.