We’ve all been in bad relationships before. Hopefully, we’ve all been in good relationships too. We’ve definitely all dated the person who was covered in red flags but we chose to ignore them. More than likely we’ve all been in relationships that we didn’t realize were bad until we got out of them.
Your relationship with food and exercise is the same. There are times when you think it’s good, there are times when you think it’s bad. There are times it’s so covered in red flags it might as well be a trump rally, but you still choose to ignore them.
The health and fitness industry is full of toxic messages, coaches, and trainers. They spew All-or-Nothing mantras like “No Excuses” and give out impossible to follow meal plans and programs. They often work you super hard in the gym. They use intimidating tools like body fat calipers to determine your “health” and assume you’re lying about your behaviors outside the gym if you aren’t getting results.
And quite honestly why wouldn’t you lie? When you engage in behaviors you’ve been taught are shameful you hide them. You ignore the red flags. Especially when your relationship with exercise comes from a place of punishment for what you’ve eaten or a desire to fix what’s you think is wrong with you. A desire to have the body that you think will bring you happiness.
Having an unhealthy relationship with food & exercise will leave you feeling less than instead of motivated, inspired, or confident in your progress.
So how do you know if your relationship with food and exercise is unhealthy?
You can’t keep certain foods in the house
Right now I bet you’re already picturing those foods you don’t let yourself keep in the house. The ones that, if you do purchase at the store, are gone the same day you buy them because you can’t control yourself around them. The foods you love, that you probably weren’t allowed to have as a kid, and now, they’re your kryptonite.
Restricting foods you love from your life only leads to binging on them. In a healthy relationship with food, you can keep even the most tempting foods in your house and not be fixated on them being there, because you know they’re available to you at all times. They aren’t something you lose all control around because they no longer hold any power. Imagine always having that one food you pictured available. While it might seem scary at first, over time it will hold as much power as a can of black beans in your cupboard. I don’t know about you but I’m not rushing to devour a can of black beans if it’s in my house.
You go HARD or you don’t work out at all
If you’re constantly working out at your MAX CAPACITY doing endless HIIT workouts or going too heavy without resting adequately you might need to take a step back. You don’t need to be pouring with sweat at every workout, or super sore afterward for your workout to have counted. No Pain, No Gain is a lie. You don’t have to go HARD every time, nor should you.
In fact, going hard in every-workout is more likely to leave you burnt out, injured and your body unable to recover enough for you to see gains. Sure, when you’re brand new to working out or increase the weight you’re using you’re likely to feel your muscles the next day. But being able to feel that you’ve done work and being unable to move without intense soreness after every workout is very different.
Some days your body needs to go for a walk, some days it might need a good dance or stretch session, others to lift weights.
You categorize foods into “good” or “bad”
If you keep a running list in your head of good and bad foods, odds are you also adjust how you feel about yourself based on if you at those foods or not. There are no “good foods” and “bad foods”, food is food. Yes, food can go bad but that’s the extent of a food’s ability to be bad. Some food is more nutrient-dense than others, but no food is inherently bad. “Bad foods” are a construct of diet culture.
It might be time to ask yourself why do you think certain foods are bad? Where did you learn that? Do you feel different about yourself if you eat these foods? Why is that?
You justify your food choices with your lifestyle
You never need to justify your food choices but when you disconnect from the importance of eating food that serves your active body “because you’ll work it off anyway” you never learn how to tap into your body’s needs. If you’ve ever binged a giant meal after a gig, or dancing all night and thought to yourself, “I’m active I can eat whatever I want and it doesn’t matter,” this is the flip side of categorizing foods into good or bad.
When you justify your food choices based on your line of work or activity level you excuse your binging and overeating as no big deal. You consistently reach for more processed, less nutrient-rich foods and over time these choices catch up with you. Either as you age and your metabolism slows, or your activity level changes and suddenly once again you’re associating your worth to your body, the food you eat and using exercise as punishment to maintain the “figure” you had when you could eat anything you wanted.
You skip meals during the day then binge at night
You’re busy managing your hustle, you don’t want to have a food baby on stage, you simply forget to eat because you don’t have a regular schedule. Next thing you know it’s the end of your day and you realize you’re freaking starving, maybe a little bitchy, and have a slight headache. You devour whatever you have on hand so fast you’re taking another bite before you’ve fully swallowed the first one. Five minutes later you feel, gross. Maybe you’re bloated or have a stomach ache. You might even continue to eat because your body hasn’t had time to cue itself that it’s full.
Skipping meals to look a certain way or because you’re so out of tune with your body you don’t realize you’re hungry is another big ol’ flag. Your body performs and often feels, it’s best when it eats at regular schedules. It’s also less likely to get that food baby belly that happens when you eat large meals in a hurry. When you eat slowly, mindfully and at regular intervals, you’re less likely to overeat yourself into discomfort.
You workout to earn your food
Have you ever said to yourself or your friends something like:
“I have to work out later, I ate soo much today”
“I feel so fat/gross/disgusting after what I ate, I need to workout”
“I have to get in a workout before we go out tonight so I can eat more”
“I didn’t workout today so I’m having a salad”
If force yourself to go to the gym but don’t enjoy it, it could be because you’re using it as a way to earn your food. Food should never be something you need to earn and workouts shouldn’t be a form of punishment for the food you ate or plan to eat. This type of thinking creates patterns of judgment in yourself and others, based on the foods you eat. It’s that annoying Aunt Becky who always asks if you really want to eat that at family gatherings.
You only workout as a means to change your body
If you only consider working out when you dislike the way you look in the mirror odds are you still look at exercise as a means to an end. Instead of a way to care for your body and keep it feeling and operating it’s best. You’re motivated to workout by the belief that if your body looked different your life would look different. You expect drastic changes to your body, life, and happiness.
On the flip side, you avoid working out because in the past you didn’t get the results you were hoping for. You’ve boiled down working out to something only worth doing if it means you’ll look different.
You’re either “All In” or “Off The Wagon”
When you set overzealous goals like I’m going to work out every day this week or I want to lose 20 pounds this month, you set yourself up for failure. Sustainable habits happen in small increments over a long period of time. It’s why you feel sore and defeated when you go from rarely working out to hitting the hardest workout class you can find. When setting goals it’s better to under-promise and over-deliver or pick something that seems too easy and end up feeling like a fucking boss because you hit your goal.
Instead of making a goal of working out every day this week, try a goal of I will work out for 30 minutes today. Small wins repeated over time equal big results and feelings of success. Unlike being disappointed that somehow you didn’t get to the gym twice. Let alone every day or lose those 20lbs (side note you absolutely don’t need to lose weight to be worthy).
You use food as an emotional coping mechanism
Yes, you should be able to eat the foods you love without feeling bad and it’s perfectly okay to eat your favorite snack when you’re sad but always turning to food to deal with your emotions creates overeating cycles. If you eat because you’re upset, stressed, or sad and then feel bad about what you’ve eaten and odds are you’ll end up binging more.
Food can becomes a crutch that holds you back from dealing with what’s really going on. Possibly because you were taught that showing emotion makes you weak or you were never given safe healthy outlets for your emotions. But, to break the cycle, it’s important to find other ways to nurture yourself so that you can begin to remove your emotions from food.
You won’t eat foods you consider junk but you still drink all the time
Choosing not to eat certain foods like potato chips, McDonald’s, or frozen dinners because you consider them bad for your body is irrelevant if you’re drinking multiple nights a week. Having a couple of Margaritas, Guinness, or shots of Fireball multiple nights a week is possibly more detrimental to your overall health. If you’re going to eliminate certain foods from your diet based on their “value” or “impact on your body” you need to look at everything you consume.
While items like potato chips and fast food contain some nutrients and provide your body with energy, alcohol is simply empty calories. Yes, it’s possible to enjoy alcohol and be healthy but quantity matters. At the end of the day consuming large amounts of alcohol multiple-night a week is no better than eating fast food multiple times a week.
If any of these felt a little too close to home, it’s not your fault. Diet Culture has gaslighted you into believing if you can’t follow “the rules” you aren’t worthy. When in reality, you’re in a really shitty relationship you can’t seem to get out of.
True healthy eating has nothing to do with eating endless amounts of broccoli or cutting out entire food groups. (unless it’s for ethical or clinically diagnosed reasons)
To help you better understand how diet-culture has clouded your thinking around eating and help you develop true healthy eating habits I put together a guide with 10 Habits of Healthy eaters. You can download it here.
If you’re ready for more than a simple guide and want to start diving deep into your health & fitness journey fill out my contact form and let’s schedule a coffee talk to see if 1-on-1 coaching is right for you.