No matter what you are about to eat – it is unhealthy. For every food group, there are a hundred books, which will explain you in details, why a particular food is harmful for your body and why you must exclude it from your diet.
Actually, I am not saying it as an eyewitness. I am saying it as a person who went through everything:
-fats? Don’t you even dare to put that butter close to my plate!
I do not have a post about that time of my life, because I didn’t have a blog. Still, this is the time when I started with my disordered eating habits, when I started binging and when bulimia became a part of my life. In the post about emotional eating you will understand why it happened like that.
After all, it is not fats that are unhealthy, but their quantity and the type of fats and when you exclude them completely from your diet, then your body suffers and you start feeling bad – both physically and mentally.
-dairy and grains? Don’t you even mention those! Imagine how fanatically I avoided dairy and grains, when you keep in mind that during a family dinner, my father looked at me and said: “I expect you to start hunting your meat with a spear.” This was the Paleo era in my life.
For about two years, I didn’t even taste a dairy product and I abstained from grains between 5-6 years. All the mistakes I made, just demonstrate how powerful is the human mind, when you decide that you want one thing and that you dislike another one.
-if it is not “bio””, you shouldn’t even offer me to taste it. This was a tough period. When you start thinking about the origin of every bite; when your whole day is engaged with thinking about where to find “quality” food, which farm is better and so forth, life becomes ridiculous.
There came a moment, when I realized that bio is not a guarantee, but just fashion. Actually, nothing that you haven’t harvested by yourself, in small quantities, couldn’t be called bio. If it is meant for commercial goals, different from exchanging 10 eggs for a kilogram of tomatoes with your neighbor, then we shouldn’t get obsessed with “bio”.
–Malls and tall buildings? Artificial Electromagnetic Fields? Please, keep all that technology away from me. This was the toughest period. The time when I was fanatically following every word from Dr.Jack Kruse’s posts.
By the way, I still admire Dr.Kruse and his knowledge. I believe he is genius and I know that what he says and writes is true. Still, I think that fanatically following all of this makes you get stuck in some kind of psychosis. It makes you feel bad when you are in a taller building and when you know there are artificial electromagnetic fields; it makes you feel bad when you are supposed to work under artificial light and so forth.
-Biorhythm diet – here I was already about crazy. I was a maniac about synchronizing every action with the natural rhythm of nature – the sun rises and sets in a particular time, and I was supposed to reschedule every meal and physical activity with this. After all it was so important what hormones are being released in that particular moment and what I was going to do about it.
-Fasting – I tried every fasting protocol. I experimented so much. I didn’t eat for 24-36 hours. From everything I did, the best was that I realized that it is not scary to be left without food and that everything comes to mindset and convictions – the same way you might need food every four hours, you can go without it for more than 2-3 days.
I can keep on sharing my experiments. I have a huge experience with self experiments. I read hundreds of books and I’ve tried most of what is written in them. I went through periods, when I fanatically believed in everything I used to do and that is exactly what helped my explore every extreme in details.
Every time when I experienced a mindset change, my ego used to suffer – unbearably. It is just me who knows what used to happen in my mind and how much will and determination I needed in order to cope with myself and my thoughts.
Still, from today’s point of view, I am really thankful for everything I tried and everything that worked or didn’t work. This helped me see how my body and my mind react in different situations. It helped me explore through the prism of my personal experience – every little detail, emotion, feeling, training and nutrition. It helps me in my work with my clients, because as it is said – I can meet them where they are – I know how they feel, what they do, what is going through their mind and what they need.
The other day I was thinking how funny life can be. We start from one place and we go through a bunch of things, and one day, we return back, where we used to be, when we took that journey.
Today I realize the meaning of “balance”. Balance is about reacting to the particular situation, and not about following the same thing and trying to fit yourself and your life in a short term believe. Because on every stage of your life, what we do or what we believe is true is the right thing – it is what we need in that particular moment and that situation. But just because today something is true or wrong, doesn’t make it such tomorrow or in a year.
Today, I feel so free from rules and limitations and I know that I do not need to limit myself to Paleo, high fat, low fat, gluten-free, bio and so forth.
One of my delicious breakfasts :)
Today, I believe in something different – I believe in my own body and the way it feels. Because, the years that I wandered, helped me recover the relationship with my body and now I know when and what it needs; I learned to read its signals.
Today, I am not afraid to by tomatoes from the supermarket and eat them. Because, I believe that nowadays, if you do not grow your own food, nobody could guarantee you about its origin and quality. But I know one thing for sure! I know that the body recognizes real food, even when its quality is not good.
I do not need to know, that eating veggies, eggs, meat, nuts, fruits, potatoes and so forth is good for my body – it shows me it is good with the way I feel, when I eat these foods.
I often give example with this – read the text below.
You understood everything, right? No matter that the letters are mixed. Just because in our mind, in our body, there is something more and something that recognizes the truth, even when it is masked or a little bit misleading. Now go back to food. Think about food modifications and if you want think about genes and gene modifications, artificial ingredients and so forth.
When we eat this food – the real one, but modified in some way, our body still recognizes it and it knows how to use it.
Tomatoes from supermarkets might not be the best quality food, but in their nature they carry the genetic code of real food – and the body recognizes this.
Powders, packaged sweets, cookies, mixtures for bread, pancakes, muffins and so forth, harm us – because they have nothing real in them – they are just chemistry that has a nice package – that is why the body suffers when we eat them.
The only way to be fit and healthy is to free your mind from rules, schemes and strategies and to start listening to your body.
I know that when I choose healthy food, no matter where I am, I feel good and energetic – then, I do not really care if I bought it from the farm or the supermarket. In every single moment, I strive to do the optimal best for the particular situation – but the optimal best is always different. Sometimes it means buying my food from a supermarket, and other times it means buying it from a farm. Food if part of the experience and a part of life, and not a goal itself.
I’d rather live fully and enjoy emotions and traveling; enjoy the opportunity to do what I love, while taking care for my body, without going crazy about it. Because it is exactly getting obsessed with something and going into extremes that makes the body sick. Every disease is first planted in the mind and then reflected in the body. For a mind which suffers, even healthy is harmful.
And do not get me wrong – I am not the type of person who thinks that we live one life and that we need to eat everything, all day long. It is exactly because we live one life, that we should do the optimal in order to feel great from the beginning to the end – both physically and mentally. Nobody who treats his body badly, couldn’t convince me that he feels good from this. And nobody who gets obsessed with counting every bite and exploring the origin of the cow that gave the milk for his coffee couldn’t convince me that he feels good.
Take care for your body and do the best for it, but do not forget that you do not need to fit yourself into rules and you do not need to put labels on yourself that define and limit you. In every moment, live your own truth and learn to listen to your body and not to follow the media.